TV Musings: Winter 2017-2018

In this series of posts, I’m discussing science fiction and fantasy television I’ve watched recently. There are far too many interesting shows out there for me to keep up, so I tend to have some time lag in the ones I’m watching. Today, I want to talk about two shows that have just gotten started via their first season, and two that have been canceled. I have linked where the shows can be watched online.

Starting Shows

Mars (National Geographic Channel, Season 1): This one is a half-drama/half-documentary about the colonization of Mars.  On the documentary side, there’s a lot of neat information on the recent history of space programs. For instance, I enjoyed seeing interviews with people involved in SpaceX and the efforts to make reusable rockets.  The drama side was sometimes a little dry, but also an interesting exploration of what it might be like for humanity to attempt to build a sustainable habitat on Mars. The planned second season will jump forward in time, to follow the imagined future development of the Mars colony.

The Gifted (Fox, Season 1, free to view): I am a big fan of the X-Men, so I had high hopes for this show.  So far, it appears to be the X-Men show I always wanted.  In this future, the Brotherhood and the X-Men have vanished, and the government has cracked down on mutants.  The viewer is introduced to the world through the Strucker family, who have been privileged enough to never have to care about the ethics of their government’s policies about mutants. This all changes when the two Strucker children display mutant abilities. The Struckers join the mutant underground, a group struggling to help mutants survive (or, according to the government, a “terrorist group”).  The show has an excellent ensemble cast, the special effects are well done, and the writers seem to be very aware of the political environment in which their show will be viewed. I’m looking forward to the second season of this one, and it was my favorite show of the winter.

Ending Shows

Dark Matter (Syfy, Season 3, also available to stream on Netflix): Dark Matter is the story of a crew that woke up one day on their spaceship with no memories.  They reforged bonds with one another and reconstructed their identities, even as they sought to learn who they were before. The show has been canceled after its third season, and finale doesn’t provide much in the way of a conclusion.  I enjoyed watching the show, though its story never quite seemed to find solid footing. The characters felt stronger after the backstory episodes of season two, but the overall plot still lacked a throughline. Is it about a corporate war? Is it about an alien invasion?  Is it about the definition of consciousness? Is it about a Japanese empire’s succession? It’s about all of these things and more, changing from one moment to the next. Each short story was pretty interesting, but they never seemed to come together into a coherent whole. Still, I’m sad that we won’t get to see this one through to a conclusion.

Extinct (BYUtv, Season 1, free to view): Extinct was a science fiction show from Brigham Young TV, but it does not appear to be explicitly Mormon. The show takes place hundreds of years after the human race was wiped out during an alien invasion.  A mysterious benefactor has recorded the biological and mental forms of a collection of humans, and it is recreating them to revive human civilization. Three people--Ezra, Abram and Feena--are awakened to find an emptied settlement and a tribe of humans controlled by alien parasites. They must put the pieces together to find out what has happened to humans who were awakened before them.  I enjoyed how the mystery is slowly revealed over the course of the season, and how the characters are slowly built up through flashbacks to the invasion and their current choices. This show was canceled after a single season, but I would say that the it provides a story with a satisfying conclusion.

TV Musings: Fall 2017

Today, I want to talk again about some of the science fiction and fantasy television shows I’ve been watching lately.  There are so many fun ones out these days that I’m still pretty far behind. This season’s batch is very heavily science-fiction, and covers the end of one show and the beginning of three others!

Orphan Black (BBC America, Season 5): This season was planned as the conclusion of the show, and it successfully wraps up the many mysteries and character arcs that have been introduced over the previous four seasons.  In other words, this show does have a complete story, and it was not canceled before its time. In broad strokes, the show features a group of young women who discover that they are experimental clones created and monitored by a mysterious organization focused on the artificial evolution of humanity. I appreciated the emphasis on the importance of both nature and nurture in human development, showing how each of these women lead very different lives while sharing similar traits.  In this season, it was also nice to see Sarah (one of the clones) begin to acknowledge her daughter as a person with her own hopes and desires, not as a Macguffin to be protected. Not all of the many memorable supporting characters made it to the end, so it was bittersweet seeing the survivors move forward into their future. Farewell to a show that was suspenseful, clever and often darkly humorous, and which featured a vibrant cast of complicated people.

Salvation (CBS, Season 1): I was not really expecting a science fiction show from CBS, but it looks like they’re starting to be interested in embracing the genre (they also have Star Trek: Discovery and an upcoming Twilight Zone reboot). In Salvation, a bright grad student one day discovers that a massive asteroid will strike the Earth in six month.  He soons becomes involved with the US government and Darius Tanz (an Elon-Musk-like scientist), as they plan to divert the asteroid and save humanity. That seems like a sensible plot that would wrap up fairly quickly, but this assessment ignores that humans are often horrible and self-destructive.  Luckily, the main characters are all sincere people with good intentions, so it’s easy to root for them in their struggle against malice and corruption.  There’s a fair amount of artistic license with the science, but the story is a lot of fun.  I expect this one is likely to wrap up in its second season.  

Legion (FX, Season 1):  Legion is a show that has a very strong sense of style, and it presents a colorful, confusing explosion of a story. It revolves around a very powerful (and dangerous) mutant named David, who is living in a mental institution.  He ends up taken in by a mutant group that wants to help disentangle the effects of his powers from his mental issues, all while contending with threats from both inside his mind and out.  I thought the over-the-top style worked well to convey the blurring of reality and illusion, and it was sometimes pretty comical as well. On a side note, it must have been incredibly fun for the actress who played David’s friend Lenny (and she was amazing in the role). I also liked that the show surprised me; I couldn’t really see where it was going and I didn’t predict some of the twists. I’m excited to see where they’ll take things in the second season.      

The Orville (Fox, Season 1): This was not the strongest sci-fi entry of the fall, but it was light and entertaining enough that I watched the full season.  I really like the idea, showing an exploratory vessel in a Star-Trek-ish universe that is run by ordinary people.  There were some neat touches, which illustrated what it would be like if the crew members saw their work as just a job and not necessarily a calling (e.g. “Is is okay to have soda on the bridge?”).  Like Star Trek, it is episodic in structure, with each episode telling a short story focused on one of the people of the Orville. Some of these stories are really interesting and funny (“Into the Fold”--a supercilious robot and a family are crash-landed on a post-apocalyptic planet), and some are unintentionally horrifying (“Cupid’s Dagger”--basically an extended rape joke).  Some continuing weaknesses are a lack of creativity in alien species, glaring plot holes, and the focus on the captain and XO’s failed relationship as a source of humor.  Still, there were enough fun episodes that I am planning to try the second season next year!

TV Musings: Summer 2017

It’s long since time for another post on the science fiction and fantasy television I’ve been watching lately!  If there is ever a future where I’m fully caught up on blog posts, I may switch this back to a show-by-show format. For now, I have recently enjoyed watching a nice collection of new and returning shows, with a good balance between science fiction and fantasy.

New Shows:

Cleverman (Season 1, Sundance TV): The first season of this Australian series only runs 6 episodes, but the second season is also going to be available on Netflix at the beginning of October. The show draws a lot of inspiration from indigenous Australian traditional stories, which are all completely new to me.  Given how little I know about current social issues in Australia, I’m sure I also missed some allegory.  I thought it was a fresh and interesting show, and I enjoyed the chance to watch a fantasy that was not focused on North America.

In Cleverman, a mythological race called the hairypeople have suddenly appeared, and they have been promptly labeled as subhuman and restricted to ghettos or prisons. The story follows two aboriginal half-brothers with ties to the hairypeople.  The elder, Waruu, fights to make the world a better place for marginalized groups, while the younger, Koen, is a selfish and irresponsible jerk.  Unexpectedly, their uncle passes his cultural (and magical) Cleverman inheritance to Koen.  There’s more to both of them than meets the eye, and I felt the show was really deft in how their characterization was developed.

Travelers (Season 1, Netflix): This time travel drama is already renewed for a second season, which is good because this one leaves us on a cliffhanger.  In this show, a grim future for humanity has led to the development of time travel technology.  A person’s mind can be sent back into the body of someone in the past, shortly before their death. Teams of time travelers are sent back, desperate to shift the future to another course. They have faith in the plan of the Director, whether or not they understand the tasks they are given.  This one is light on special effects, but it is a really engrossing sci-fi drama.

The characters we follow find themselves dropped into some fairly complicated lives, and it was interesting to see how they tried to acclimate to being a different person.  Of course, they also have to be willing to drop their new lives at a moment’s notice, in order to attend to the needs of the future.  It seems like it must be a really difficult way to live.  While it might sound like a setup for a episodic kind of show, the story is actually very serial and character-driven.  The events in the finale were pretty major, so I’m impatient to see what impact they will have on the team’s future.

The Shannara Chronicles (Season 1, MTV): I’m not the demographic target for this teen show, but I have a soft spot for epic fantasy television. The second season has jumped to a different network (Paramount) and it has already started airing now. This show is based on the series by Terry Brooks, and its quirk is that it actually takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States.  Aside from that, it is a pretty traditional setting, with elves, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and trolls around the countryside. The main plot follows a group of three attractive teens on a quest to save the world.  The three of them--Wil, Amberle, and Eretria--are all really earnest and endearing, and I wanted to see them succeed.  There are also some subplots with druids and elven politics, but they mostly involve people making very poor choices over and over.

I thought the show was charming and fun, but the writing is inconsistent and some of the actors are still settling into their roles.  The teens’  interactions felt the most natural when the script wasn’t pushing the love triangle angle, and some episodes had pretty lazy plot choices (e.g. why are there torches laid out for them at the beginning of a tunnel in the wilderness?). The Black Guard at the Elven capital has also become a running joke in my household.  They are so utterly incompetent, it’s bizarre that anyone relies on them for protection. Despite my complaints, I did enjoy watching the show, and the remains of our former human civilization give the story a special touch.

Returning Shows:

Killjoys (Season 3, Syfy): The latest news from the Syfy Channel is that Killjoys is going to conclude with its fifth season.  This season ends on a pretty major cliffhanger, so I’m happy it’s going to have two seasons to resolve everything. This third season is more serialized than ever, and it focuses on the brewing war between the Quad and the alien Hullen.  While all the characters we have met play a role in the conflict, the heart of it is between Aneela and Dutch. If you’re interested in learning why they’re doppelgangers, this is the season for you.  The answer is probably weirder than you think!

In general, this show has a lot of convoluted lore, but I think a lot of the questions were cleared up in this season.  The quality of the show is pretty consistent with the second season, in terms of the writing and acting.  I enjoyed the balance of humor and seriousness in the dialogue, even if the jokes didn’t always land for me.  I also enjoyed seeing all of the minor characters find their own paths and strengths.  It feels like everything is starting to come together, and I’m excited to see where things will go from here.

The Man in the High Castle (Season 2, Amazon):  This first season had already started to diverge significantly from the original novel, and the second season firmly establishes the show as a completely separate entity.  The writing, acting, and production quality is as consistently excellent as was the previous season.  I had expected the parallel worlds to play a larger role than they did, but I like the understated way it is wrapped into the continuing alternate history drama.

The overall story, about preventing two fascist regimes from destroying the world with nuclear weapons, seems unexpectedly relevant to modern politics.  On the smaller scale, the season elegantly provided an emotional arc for essentially all of the characters, major and minor, and resolved many of the open questions from the previous season.  I do not know where the story will go after this, but I feel like the show has passed the first test of longevity.  It is beyond its source material, and the story is even more engaging than ever. I am looking forward to the next season!

TV Musings: Spring 2017

We are currently in something of a golden age of science fiction and fantasy television, and there are far more options out there to watch than I think any one person could possible handle.  Even narrowed down to the subset of television shows that I personally enjoy, there’s simply too much content for me to stay up to date!  This is a nice problem to have, and I’ve got all my shows queued up to watch at leisure.  However, it also means that my posts about television may be some time behind the initial air dates. In this post, I wanted to point out a few fun science fiction and fantasy shows I’ve enjoyed this spring!

The Expanse, Syfy (Season 2): I love space opera, and this particular show is based on an excellent series of novels by James S.A. Corey (I have reviewed the first three here, here and here).  The second season picks up mid-first-novel and ends mid-second-novel, though I think there have been some small changes in the course of the story. As expected, season two gives us a lot more of the elderly and irreverent politician Avasarala, the tough Martian marine Roberta Draper, and introduces the botanist Praxideke Meng.  I also enjoyed seeing a bit more development for Naomi and Amos, as they both try to follow what it means to them to be decent people.  The show has lots of action, humor, politics, a terrifying alien virus, characters you can root for, and a vivid future for humanity in the solar system. The Expanse remains a solidly entertaining show with excellent acting, high production value, and a well-designed story.

The Walking Dead, AMC (Season 7):  I’ve stuck with this show from the beginning, even though the writing is uneven and the stories are often violent and depressing.  From my perspective, the dramatic intensity of the best episodes make it worthwhile to keep watching through the weaker ones. At the same time, this latest season made it clear to me that there is a rift between what I want from The Walking Dead, and what many other people seem to want. I love stories about building societies, and about the ideological conflicts between groups that must interact with one another to survive. The show does have this angle, but it seems overshadowed by the need to defeat a series of over-the-top evil human enemies. This season’s enemy was Negan, and all but two of the episodes in the first half of the season were dedicated to showcasing how evil he was.  I was bored by this, but really enjoyed the episodes that featured Carol and Tara.  The second half of the season picks up the pace, and I was thrilled to see diplomacy take a larger role. I’m still on board to see what will happen next, and I hope there is some kind of a happy ending for my favorite characters one day.

Emerald City, NBC (Season 1, only season): I did not have high expectations for this Wizard-of-Oz-based drama, but I was curious enough to check it out.  By the end of the season, I was thoroughly hooked (and sad that it had been canceled).  The show starts out a little slow, but it gets progressively more interesting as more details about the unusual world of Oz are revealed. The story begins with Dorothy searching for her way home, but soon spreads out to a wider cast with larger-scale problems.  The primary conflict during this season involves the Wizard, a whiny and violent man from our world who had risen to power, and the Witches, who had suffered great losses in a conflict shortly before his arrival.  Everything seems peaceful at the beginning, but there are problems brewing just below the surface.  As a side note, I especially loved the stories of Jack and Tip, but I don’t think I can say much about them here without spoiling plot twists! I am disappointed that NBC chose not to produce a second season, but I believe that the first season alone is still worth watching.

The OA, Netflix (Season 1): This is a weird one, and definitely not a show that everyone will enjoy. If you don’t mind a cautionary spoiler (otherwise skip this paragraph), it is about near-death experiences causing people to come back to life as angels who can bring about miracles through interpretive dance.  If that’s too silly for you, then you should probably skip this one.  The writers also chose an odd starting point, leaving almost all of the action of the first season to happen in flashbacks.  As a result, we get very little time to get to know the ‘present-day’ characters, and some of them are not very likeable or interesting. There is going to be a second season of this one, and I’m curious to see where it’s going.  I would not give it a high recommendation at this point, though.

Black Mirror, Netflix (Season 3): Black Mirror aims to be a kind of darker Twilight Zone for the information age.  Each episode of the show tells a different story, showing disturbing extrapolations from current technological or sociological trends. I’ve been watching Black Mirror since the first season, and I think it has had some pretty interesting stories.  For this season, my favorites were “Men Against Fire” and “Hated in the Nation”.  The first addresses how future technology could be used for dehumanization and violence, as we follow soldiers who are tasked with eradicating “roaches”.  The second addresses a behavior I think should be criminal, that of making death threats against people on the internet.  It reminded me of “White Bear”, though, in that the story goes way beyond simple justice.  I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll come up with for the next season!

Hugo 2017: Dramatic Presentations

This final post about the Hugo fiction categories is intended to review short and long dramatic presentations from 2016 that I think were particularly impressive.  There has been a ton of science fiction and fantasy television in recent years, and a decent number of films as well.  I can’t possibly watch everything, but here’s my favorites out of the films and shows that I have seen.

Dramatic Presentation: Long Form

For science fiction movies, I think my clear winner would be Arrival. It’s both an interesting original story about first contact with an alien species, and a deeply touching story about love and time.  There are also a few franchise films that, while they had some flaws, I thought were pretty good entertainment: Star Trek Beyond and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This category can also include seasons of television shows, and the one I think would particularly fit this bill for 2016 is the 80s-style sci-fi thriller Stranger Things. In true Netflix style, the season fit together nicely into a compulsively watchable story about a missing kid, a mysterious young girl, and a creepy government experiment.

I usually default to science fiction first in these categories, but there were some notable fantasy films as well.  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written by J.K. Rowling, introduced us to the adorable Newt Scamander and the wizarding world of the United States.  Also, Moana was a touching adventure/coming-of-age story with truly amazing music.  On the television side, season one of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was a highly original show that works well when considered as a full season arc.

Dramatic Presentation: Short Form

In some ways, this is a more difficult category.  Each television show has so many episodes, and it is hard to narrow seasons down to the episodes that are the most dramatic and effective. These are a few of my favorites:

12 Monkeys, “Lullaby”: This was a relatively self-contained episode, which involved using time travel in a desperate attempt to destroy the origin of time travel.  It ends up as a kind of Groundhog-Day-like story about the day the inventor of time travel’s daughter died.

Orphan Black, “The Scandal of Altriusm”:  There were a number of episodes that were really good in this season, but this one stood out above the rest.  As part of a desperate plan to save themselves, Sarah and Cosima attempt to make a deal with the enemy.  This goes even more terribly than I expected.

The Expanse, “Leviathan Wakes”: This is another show that has a number of award-worthy episodes.  I chose the finale, which brings the story of season one to a climax.

The Magicians, “Thirty-Nine Graves”:  The Magicians is another new Syfy show which had a killer first season.  This episode stood out, because it marks a major shift in various storylines, including the reveal of what exactly Jane Chatwin was up to, Julia and Quentin’s reunion, and the journey to Fillory.

3%, “Button”: This episode is the finale of a Brazilian Netflix dystopian series.  It showed that the series has more story to tell outside the testing of the process, and brings all of the surviving young adults a better understanding of themselves, their society, and the philosophy of the offshore community.

Killjoys, “Johnny Be Good”: This was the standout episode of season two, for a show that is getting more and more interesting as it goes.  This episode involved a city penned in by government walls, and the horrifying resolution of a particular character’s arc.

TV Musings: Fall Science Fiction and Fantasy

Welcome to my latest discussion post for television I’ve enjoyed recently.  This one covers mostly television shows that premiered in fall of 2016, some seasons of which have only recently finished.  There is a massive amount of genre television out there these days, and I’m enjoying being spoiled for choice in my entertainment! My next post on television will probably involve a lot of original streaming content from Amazon/Netflix.

Falling Water (USA) Season 1: This unusual show follows three characters whose lives are taking unusual turns due to situations involving lucid dreaming. Burton struggles to differentiate dreams and reality as he aids his firm in brokering a sketchy deal for rights to “rare earth metals”. The detective Taka pursues a deadly collective dreaming cult, spurred on by the hope that they may be able to reach his catatonic mother. Trendspotter Tess is convinced that she has given birth to a son, though she remembers no details beyond the vivid experience of childbirth.  She begins to see a young boy in her dreams, and joins a collective dreaming study in exchange for help in finding him.  Their three stories interact in unexpected ways as we slowly begin to see what is going on with dreaming in this world.

I think the writers really took a risk with this one, because the show is unapologetically weird and confusing.  For that reason, it also doesn’t work particularly well as a one-episode-a-week show.  After the first few episodes, I waited until the full season was out, so that I could watch everything at once.  It’s much easier to keep all the details in mind and to make the right connections if you watch the episodes back-to-back.  Watching it this way, it was easier to appreciate the originality of the show, as well as its ability to capture the baffling logic and unexpected transitions of dreaming. This is a show that demands patience and attention, and it doesn’t hurt if you have a fondness for stories about dreams. There’s no word yet on whether there will be a second season.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (BBC America) Season 1: Humor is a very tricky thing, since what makes one person laugh until their sides hurt will always make someone else yawn.  Dirk Gently’s dark, absurd humor was perfect for me.  I would say that if you aren’t laughing by the end of the bridge scene in episode two, you can safely assume that the rest of the show’s humor will not be your thing.  If you are, though, then you will probably love it as much as I did!

This is another show that requires some patience, this time because in the beginning it intentionally and aggressively doesn’t make any sense.  For instance, Dirk Gently’s original goal is to investigate a multiple murder that happened in a hotel penthouse.  The murder weapon is apparently a shark. There are tons of different factions (the police, the FBI, a cult, the Spring family and staff, some energy vampires,  the holistic detective, the holistic assassin…) and a multitude of little details that only begin to slot together near the very end. The plan of Dirk Gently and his reluctant assistant Todd is to just keep doing stuff until everything makes sense, and so the viewer also has to surrender to the flow of the universe.  The ending did fit most things together nicely, though, and I was happy to hear that there will be a second season for this one!  

3% (Netflix) Season 1: This Brazilian Netflix series is an interesting take on a familiar premise.  Civilization has mostly collapsed, and a small subset of people (3% of the world’s population), like in a technologically-advanced offshore paradise.  The founders of this community were believers in meritocracy, so “the process” is held each year to select the top 3% of the world’s 20-year-olds as new members.  This show follows the process in Brazil, where the egalitarian terrorist group “The Cause” is attempting to infiltrate the offshore.

It starts out simply, following a group of young people as they try to pass the various tests in the process.  However, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface, both in terms of the motivations of the young folks and the machinations of the testers themselves.  It’s unclear whether the process is actually selecting the ‘best’, and whether that definition is even something that everyone would agree with.  The show can be pretty violent at times, because it does not flinch from the darker side of human nature.  At the end of the first season, there is clearly still more story to tell.  I believe I have heard that a second season is planned for later this year.

Frequency (the CW) Season 1: The CW primarily targets a teenage demographic, so its adult-targeted shows are rare and almost always cancelled after one season.  Containment was a victim of this tendency last summer.  It was a pretty decent show that had a very disappointing series finale.  I’m afraid Frequency is now falling to the same fate.  The second-to-last episode was a very good conclusion to the season, so I opted not to watch the finale this time.  I enjoyed the series, but I feel like the story has reached a good stopping place.  

The show involves a father (Frank) and daughter (Raimy) time-travel-communicating over a twenty year gap using a ham radio.  They’re working together to stop a serial killer before he abducts and kills Raimy’s mother.  They make a lot of understandable mistakes in the process, since neither of them are used to this sort of time-hopping investigation.  I appreciated that they stayed consistent with the concept of how the timeline changed, and I found the mechanics of how it worked really interesting.  Raimy’s working knowledge of the world didn’t update instantly when something in the past changed.  Instead, she would only realize the alteration when she actively retrieved the memory, realizing in the process that she recalled multiple overlapping versions of events. I can’t imagine how disorienting it would be to have your reality and history shifting underneath you like that.  All in all, the father-daughter teamwork, the high stakes, and the timeline-changing mechanics made it a pretty compelling show to watch!

TV Musings: Summer Sci-Fi

Recently, there has been a truly massive amount of science fiction and fantasy television to enjoy.  In fact, I believe there are around 100 active (airing, upcoming or returning) genre shows right now.  Put in that context, I feel like my watching habits are fairly modest, though I’d prefer to think I’m just highly selective and generally busy reading books.  Today I want to talk about the shows I have enjoyed in the summer of 2016.  All of the following shows have already been renewed, so there will be more to come next year! Did I miss one of your favorites?  Let me know in the comments!

Orphan Black (Season 4):  

Beware of spoilers for previous seasons in the second paragraph.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show, Orphan Black is the story of Sarah Manning, a con artist and single mother, who learns one day that she is a rogue clone from a clandestine, wide-reaching experiment. Over four seasons, Orphan Black has shown itself to be a show of consistently high quality, and has earned a number of awards that include an Emmy (for main actress Tatiana Maslany) as well as a Hugo Award for short form dramatic presentation.  Next year will bring us the final season, and I really hope the writers have an amazing ending in store.  For this year, I expect I’ll nominate “The Scandal of Altruism”, one of several particularly powerful episodes, for the Hugo award for short form dramatic presentation.

At the start of the fourth season, I was surprised to see the story jump in time to the days before clone Beth’s suicide.  The audience has only ever gotten to know Beth through the memories of others, so I was eager to see her world.  On the other hand, these past segments were emotionally intense, and it was hard to watch her suffer with the knowledge of how it would end.  When we returned to the modern day, things were lightened a bit with humor in the lives of criminal soccer mom Alison, ex-assassin Helena, and cosmetic conspiracy theorist Krystal.  Through the past and present, we learn more about Neolution, including the goals and origins of the movement. One last thing that I especially liked in this season is the continuing consideration of how Sarah’s self-absorption affects the people she loves.  Her relationship with Felix is a prime example, and I appreciated that we were able to see some aspects of his life that don’t revolve around Sarah’s drama.  

12 Monkeys (Season 2):

12 Monkeys is my favorite of Syfy’s latest serious scripted science fiction shows, and I’m happy that a third season has already been confirmed.  In a nutshell, the story is initially that of a small group of people who are trying to use time travel to prevent a plague that has wiped out most of humanity in their present.  By the second season, things have moved into a bit more mystical territory, and the main focus is to prevent the Army of the Twelve Monkeys (architects of the plague) from destroying time itself in order to live in an eternal now.

I was a little skeptical of the mystical turn, but the quality of the show was undiminished.  The plot is even more clever and intricate than the first season, and it continues to push the boundaries of how time travel can be used in storytelling.  I enjoyed seeing how Cole, Ramse, Cassie, Jennifer and Jones changed as they face the painful consequences of their actions in this and the previous season.  I really love this cast and how well they play off of one another. On a side note, I was slightly disappointed that Jennifer’s mental health problems were given a supernatural origin.  At the same time, Jennifer also sought psychiatric help and learned to manage her condition with medication, so the writers kind of took this both ways. I think I’ll probably nominate “Lullaby” for a Hugo this year, a fairly self-contained episode where our time travelers attempt to protect time by traveling backward and killing the inventor of time travel (Katarina Jones) just after the death of her daughter.

Stranger Things (Season 1):

I think I and pretty much everyone else on the internet enjoyed this one.  Netflix is putting out some really quality original programming these day. I didn’t know what to expect going in, except that it was some sort of 80’s style sci-fi thriller.  The story involves the disappearance of neighborhood kid Will, whose distraught friends come across a mysterious, frightened, and powerful young girl named “Eleven” during their search for him.  Eleven has escaped from some kind of government compound, whose activities may put the town in danger.

I really liked the consistency of the 80’s vibe (the set, behavior, costumes, etc.).  The story also had a sense of nostalgia, and it was easy to binge-watch the whole season.  I also liked that, while violent things happened, it wasn’t as grimdark as some shows get these days.  I think sometimes I just want to watch a story about people stopping a nefarious government plot and rescuing a little kid, and I don’t want it to have a depressing ending.  On a last note, I liked that this one didn’t go the route of having clueless adults and hero kids.  Each age group tried to solve the problems in front of them as best they could, and for the most part they all believed one another.

Killjoys (Season 2):

Killjoys is another Syfy scripted show, which I thought showed a lot of promise in its first season. The show followed a team of three ‘killjoys’--Dutch, D’avin and John--who take on reclamation contracts for a living.  Dutch is the all-around leader, D’avin is a veteran who specializes in physical, and John is his little brother, who speciailzes in the technical side.  The end of the first season was a game changer, and the three of them became more embroiled in the violent politics of their star system.  After the events of the finale, they are still officially killjoys, but they only accept jobs that aid them in pursuing their own interests (allowing them to cross closed borders, etc.).

The world-building of the previous season pays off now, as there is a ton of story to tell in the Quad System.  I was impressed that just about every character in the show had their own arc. All the same, everything eventually ties neatly together into the broader story of the secrets of the system and the mysteries of Dutch’s past.  In more detail, the two major topics are the intentions behind the isolating wall that Qresh has put around Oldtown (in Westerly) after its bombing, and what is going on with the “Sixes”--sociopathic, self-healing assassins.  My only nitpicks about the show so far are pretty minor, such as the ridiculous spellings of the characters’ names (seriously, Khlyen? Pawter? D’avin?).  The end of the season marks another major shift in the premise, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.  I didn’t nominate any episode from season one for a Hugo, but I’m thinking that “Johnny Be Good” is award-worthy this time around.  

Dark Matter (Season 2):

Dark Matter is yet another Syfy show, and let me just say that I am loving how many space operas they have on their production list at the moment.  I thought the first season was promising, though it had some weaknesses.  Due to starting the series with mass amnesia, I felt like it took a really long time to firmly establish the characters beyond superficialities.  The world building is also a little unfocused, to the extent that I’m only starting to get a sense of the connections in their universe near the end of the second season.    

In the second season, the show suffered from a lack of focus.  Every single character had a subplot of their own, but they didn’t really seem to be building into anything larger.  There are hints of an imminent corporate war, but it doesn’t really seem to interest the crew of the Rasa all that much.  Also, with the way the story hops from one character’s personal story to another, sometimes the revelations and climaxes feel a little rushed.  On the positive side, all of these unconnected stories are really entertaining. There’s Portia’s history as a deadly science experiment, Android’s exploration of humanity, Ryo’s imperial succession family drama, tough-guy Markus’s uneasiness with his unsavory and grief-filled past, and more. I like the individual pieces, I just hope they build into something larger and more coherent in future seasons.