Reviews

There's the story. Then there's the characters. A great story will survive clumsy characters. Great characters you'll come back and watch even if the story is nonsense or the production weak. Particularly if the script has charm.

I think what we have here is an ensemble cast to give character focus to a global audience and a script that isn't too challenging.

No character takes dominance so we're watching a number of story arcs and time periods played with mixed ability. Some of the acting is not great - I mean acting = talking without blinking or disturbing the lipstick on my new trout pout, not great.

They've tried to do the same Expanse/Game of Thrones thing with a whole gang of fascinating people. But by and large the characters are a bit dull or as flat as a dehydrated alien.

So a brave attempt, but the doubters who said the books were unfilmable might have had a point. The things that made the original story was the occasional pauses to dip into interesting details and personal dynamics - like in the cultural revolution. But there's no time for that. We're skimming the fine detail to chase the story.

It takes most of the first book and hindsight over the story to begin to appreciate the aliens and what's happening. I think if you haven't read the books, then it's just a sequence of oddness. Like being dropped into the middle of a game where you have no idea of the rules.

Be a shame not to do Season 2, but I won't grieve.

Considering the storyline is a lift from 7 Samurai/Magnificent 7, you borrowed your universe from Firefly and Warhammer and you clearly had shed loads of budget - how do you make something this clunky?

Somebody tell the director his imposter syndrome might be real.

Not the worst thing I've ever seen, it's pretty enough in a 'where have I seen that before?' way. I can only imagine they thought they could paper over a weak story and a script chatGPT would laugh at, in post production with a thick layer of cgi - so didn't put the work and necessary critique in at the start.

Writer AND Director? I think I see the problem.

I vote they ask Jim Henson to do part 2. It would work with Muppets. No, really, certainly couldn't be worse.

Anthony Hopkins as the hippy robot (I am so pleased Isaac from The Orville found a new role) was outstanding. He got an appearance fee without his actual face being associated with it.

Let this be a lesson to Directors everywhere who forget that if the story is bonkers and the script/acting weak, no amount of special effects lipstick can hide the pig.

I am so sorry I was rude about Aquaman. If only I'd seen this first.

As musical light entertainment it was actually rather good to average. Well, mainly average with a few witty moments mainly based on how incongruous it was.

But when you are in your 5th decade of a franchise universe, you have established a form of contract with fans that you won't deliberately harm their comfortable imaginary utopia.

It's not that this episode was bad, it is that it was mocking Star Trek for cheap laughs. Is that disrespectful of part of the audience? Probably, it is certainly trivialising something they value. You have broken it in their faces and laughed at them.

I couldn't watch it to the end, it felt like it was me being mocked.

If 30% of the audience hated it, that's too many. It may be showbiz, but it is simply rude. You could have got away with it as a Christmas novelty special.

Clearly not for me. It is possible to make animations that appeal to all ages, but this I suspect isn't one of them. I presume not intended to be so. We should maybe have a way of classifying modern animations.

Not actually bad, but as far as I watched the humour was more slapstick than clever, while the writers desperately mine the globe for diverse cultural luck cliches. It's content. Possibly educational if you are 10. You just eventually feel you have come here in error.

Is it just me, or is the cgi a bit lo-fi? It had the feel of a halfway house between the quality and refinement you see when they do a cinema release and what happens when it transfers to being a TV series. There were bits when some unconscious part of me sensed a clunkiness. I think it was when characters walked around they had a machine evennesses to the motion that looked like the graphics engine was walking them from A to B with a regularity that said 'puppet'.

Having had the Mandalorian as a practice run and basic template, I'd accept a slightly less polished spin-off, but seriously. Was this script and storyline written by a chat bot?

Dull. Every scene was utterly predictable. No originality. No imagination. It was crying out for some pithy one liners or just one thing that was unexpected, quirky, smile inducing. Even the big fight scenes could have been given some twist, a tiny sprinkle of personality that set them apart. But no, the standard low budget TV series throw the hero around then he wins using the method you knew he'd use at the beginning, was good enough for this production team. Not strangling the monster with his chains would actually have been more Boba Fett. This is Boba Fett remember, not a nightclub bouncer.

This one's on notice. I await to see if episode 2 and 3 pick up the ball.

No, not a comet. Our ability to live in self-inflicted denial whilst being led by idiots and distracted by trash media.

It works because like something like the Handmaid's Tale it is only a slight stretch from the reality we've seen.

Funny. Perceptive. The unbelievable made all too believable. And probably the scariest film since Dr Strangelove.

So I get the 'based on' approach they have taken, because the original books are not very 2021 and our concept of future worlds has evolved. Only two episodes in, but not warming to it in a 'tell my friends to watch it' way, like I did with The Expanse. The characters are sort of OK, but I am not believing or liking anyone, except the three emperors and I'm not sre these are the people I should be rooting for. The good news is that it turns out the far future has precisely the right ethnic mix to satisfy today's hypersensitivity about being accused of faling to include everyone in a positive and affirming manner. Phew.

The algorithm (borrowed from Netflix) that decides the optimal number of times intercourse must be shown per episode has also been applied. That's a relief. After all watching people having sex every 30 minutes is a normal daily activity for most of us and the story just wouldn't work or make sense without it.

I'll watch it. I'll enjoy bits of it, but my mind I doubt will ever embrace it, because this isn't a great story, polished characters, or fantastic dialogue falling from the pages of a novel. It is a script produced by a team of script writers and story editors; who were doing a cop show last week an an historical drama next. Sometimes the formulaic natue of the end product is shouting at you so loud, it's hard to get lost in the story.

UPDATE: Now 5 episodes in and the acting and story is now so so.idly wooden and fresh out of acting college, it makes the Muppets 'Pigs in Space' look like the Royal Shakespeare Company. The good thing is that I don't have to try to make sense of the melodramatic storyline delivered with Church Hall enthusiasm, as I am beyond caring.

All that time and effort pulling together a great cast. The acting would be exceptional, if more of the characters were believable. The Beeb (and others) now seemed trapped in a formulaic approach to drama, where nothing must be too complicated because the public are a bit thick, right? And of course we have the storyline trying to establish itself while tripping over an obsession with quickly letting the world know that the BBC is committed to positive imaging and minority inclusiveness. All very laudable, but the UK is a messy imperfect place, thus you might be looking at a parallel universe. The result is a world that doesn't feel real, a fairytale version of London in a story populated by too many characters that seem false or clumsily constructed media versions - shallow cliches and are exactly not at all mirrors to the people who hold these jobs in the actual London. If you want to do a political drama, then you need people to think that it could really happen. But from prison riot and druggy daughter to the special advisers sleeping with each other, everything is just too convenient and contrived.Overdone. Artificial, yes, it feels artificial like a bad sales pitch in a car dealers, full of exaggeration and false empathy. Forget covid, BBC drama seems to have caught a bad case of Netflix. It's not clever, it's not scary, it's not funny. It's certainly not House of Cards. It's a bit like picking up a new John le Carre book, only to discover he's switched to writing teen fiction.

So after the first 10 minutes of every episode, you can pretty much guess the exact trajectory of each scenario being set up - it really does feel like a cut and paste of every cliched soap storyline ever. There is no drama here because nothing feels real or unexpected.

I'm not sure this is accidental in this case. Certain Netflix series seem to follow a formula of a set of ethnic characters representing their key national target markets, hooked onto simplistic stories and scripts that are easy to follow if english isn't your first language. An international programme for an international audience.

Science and sci fi geeks will find it a really painful watch as they obviously saved their budget on any science advice. I have turned spotting ridiculous impossibilities into a game.

My wife is enjoying it. I check my emails on my phone.

Made it to episode 6. Please give him back to the Borg. It would be a kindness for all of us.

OK, I get it. I see what has happened here. The writers took all the storylines and all the scripts and chopped them up into pieces. Then they jumble them in a sack and pick them out randomly to be taped together.

Yeh, just like David Bowie wrote his song lyrics. How cool is that?

This isn't as bad as it sounds as the script probably doesn't make any more sense even with the words in the right order. Seriously, series 2 makes Knight Rider look classy and Dr Who highbrow.

Did the writers from Star Trek Discovery do this on their day off?

The new lead is not Takeshi Kovacs. Is he an actor of some sort? Hard to tell. Poe has turned into the third Mario brother and the producers were delighted to be able to pick up some cheap 'alien world' sets from the early Star Wars films.

Where is the darkness? Where is the moral corruption of the technology. Where is the pithy, smart hero? Where is the depth? Who cares as long as we've ticked all those identity and demographic boxes that the network guys say is now the audience we have to relate to. I just have to stop watching before they ruin these books for me.

Oh dear, how quickly have hopes for this series been dashed. There is nothing appealing in a future where what is supposed to be an enlightened elite turns out to be a group of shallow, selfish clowns. I really don't know what has happened to scriptwriting, or maybe I do?

If you write by committee, you get this sort of patchwork mess of an incoherent story. The characters are the standard off the shelf adventure road trip set. The constant virtue signalling and nods to every group that might sit down and watch - driven by an assumption that a lower quartile audience can only relate to a lower quartile world with a bit of gore and fashionable rudeness and offensive language. The sheer lack of imagination that places the 23rd century somewhere around 1995.

I feel sorry for Patrick Stewart who has found himself in a local am dram disaster. 7 of 9 was the only highlight, but even she must have shuddered at where they had taken her.

The world's English speaking population is so much bigger than it was in Shakespeare's day, that you wouldn't think it was so hard to find someone who could write decent dialogue. Stuff that gives characters depth and colour; transports you to a future peopled by beings you'd be happy to hang out with.

Yet people who are meant to represent the elite of an advanced society are as witty and erudite as the guy who serves my coffee. Wait, that's unfair. This morning the guy with the coffee made me laugh. He's cool.

I've not met anyone I like or believe in yet. Starfleet admirals. Romulan office sex pests. The best actor had 4 legs and hit his marks like a pro. I just don't get this idea that to make a show appeal to the masses, nobody ought to seem too clever or even 3 dimensional.

I dunno. I'll give it time, but I'm getting flashes of STD with some of the characters and scenes and scenarios that simply lack credibility. The acting is definitely Star Trek quality, but I can live with that.

Holywood nearly ruined these books with a schmaltzy kiddy version 'The Golden Compass' But these books work because they address difficult issues of soul, God, morality, authority, parenthood, death, love and duty. The Disney treatment simply destroys its essence.

So how was episode one? Acting Tick. Script tick. Cinematography and sets, tick tick. This looks like it is going to turn out well. Good production values and it seems as though it will be true to the book with actors who can carry it off. Finally an adaptation that compliments a classic and doesn't have some idiot egotist Director or committee of 'We know what our demographic needs to see and hear' network executives doing a version that paints over a masterpiece.

Finally, we see where Trump's America is heading.

In the future, America assembles its finest idiots, barely capable of holding down a job in the worst fast food chain, to be sent into space on a mission to save humanity. The Goonies would have been a more believable selection.

I just don't understand how executives competent enough to run a global TV network (maybe it's not that hard) let this garbage get to the screen? Usually even in a bad show there is one redeeming feature, even if it is just the special effects. But even they looked 20 years old TV movie quality.

I suspect they realised when it was too late to stop production what a dog they had created. So they saved money on post-filming special effects work. Added to what they saved on script writing by having a class of 10 year olds do alternate scenes, they might just break even.

I would comment on the acting, but didn't see any.

I already see my Netflix subscription looking like a saving it would be easy to make.

You know when you watch a movie and half-way through you get up to make a drink but don't bother pausing it because you know you won't miss anything critical? There are no surprises in the storyline, it is like the splicing together of familiar bits from every standard dystopian sci-fi story you know. Bit of 'Moon', nod to 'Alien', '2001' painful silences.........

And I think that's it. The production values are nice enough, but the script feels weak. There are few surprises you didn't see coming, no humour, no drama. Nothing to make you remember it.

Robot mother raises girl. Good robot turns out not to be good robot. Poisonous Earth outside, not so poisonous. Obedient girl becomes disobedient. Outsider is a mass of contradictions, but has a gun and is soot stained ala Rambo/Ripley/RogueOne. Run through poorly lit corridors. You always kill the one you love. You get it.

If there are deep insights about the nature of motherhood or the idea of a 'good' human/mother, then I must have missed them. Do damaged psychopaths make good mothers? Who knew?

Can't say either of the human characters are endearing enough to make me relate to them or even elevate to the grade of Facebook friend. Plus, when you see where it is all going, the story holes you have to fill to make such a scenario work seem an impossible reach. At which point it all seems far less profound and a bit too contrived.

So go get a beer. And maybe grab me some nachos while you are about it........

And yeah, both my wife and I guessed who and what the outsider was.

You read the comments about how dismal this show is, then look at the episode star ratings (that seem to suggest otherwise), and you realise that the only thing working at this studio is the team of robots manipulating the star ratings on review sites.

I actually abandoned watching this three episodes into season 1, but have been dipping in to see how much worse it could get. They have not disappointed. Every attempt they have made to catch this falling knife cuts deeper.

It isn't all bad. It does make me laugh out loud.

Come to think of it, if you inserted a scene where the bridge crew did a rendition of 'Springtime for Hitler', I doubt anyone would think it was anything but a normal part of the chaotic story.

I'd mention the acting, but even using that word in the sentence flatters.

My hope is that because it is sooo bad, it has already been recognised as an aberration leaving open the hope of rescue.

Maybe Admiral Sulu will drop out of warp in the last episode and phaser them all? It would be a cleaner death than season 3.

OK, I accept that a certain editorial leeway has to be given in order to dramatise history, but eventually there is a point where you have to title it 'Work of fiction'. This film is sufficiently removed from actual history that even 'Based on historical events' is bordering on flattery.

I know, I know. Nobody is meant to care and it is all just entertainment. But this film dresses itself up as some kind of historic truth. If polititians or companies rewrote history for commercial gain and presented it as truth, we'd rightly be up in arms. God knows the real story and events are exciting enough without having to lard them up with hackneyed characatuers and cliches.

The Bruce was a great man and a flawed man in a complex age of power politics. His allegiances vis a vis Scotland and England were fluid at best. The murder of Comyn was just that, murder. Edward II, though a useless King in other ways had to be dragged from the battlefield - there was no mano a mano showdown. I could go on.

Enjoy the yarn, but appreciate this is a 'Disney' film about boy with sword meets girl with modern sensibilities, whilst charming minority group with pleasing ethnic music overcomes neighbours who are all shallow, sadistic stereotypes. It's the medieval equivalent of a 1940's war film with monocled German baddies.

And the film? Nice scenery, bit of blokey bonding, splatter battle scenes. Not one you'd watch twice.

I give Sci Fi and fantasy shows a lot of leeway, but visual effects apart, this has all the qualities of one of those fan made films. And not a good one either.

I can live with unbelievable and predictable scenarios, but we have soap quality acting with characters that have been written by people who clearly don't know much about families, or even people. Maybe they don't get out much.

OK, so it has a 12 rating, but even a family show is watched by people with brains.

If you get handed a property with minor cult status, you don't fumble it as badly as this.