Postby Johnmcl7 » 08 Feb 2019, 03:59
I noticed Person of Interest was on Amazon Prime which oddly Netflix didn't have the final series for despite having the original four, the series was canned but the compromise was a fifth series half the length. It's extremely well rated but I thought it was quite rubbish as it had all got too serious where I'd liked the original series when it was quite simple and each episode they were simply trying to find if the targetted person was going to kill or be killed and stop it happening.
The Orville and Discovery go head to head this time in the UK unlike last year when Orville was shown months after Discovery. So far Orville seems to be continuing on from the end of the first season with less over the top silliness and a bit more serious but it's not worse for it and I've been looking forward to it each week. They seem to know that their target audience is the Star Trek crowd and don't shy away from it, I also like that they're a lot more creative with their alien species than Star Trek ever was and there's an unpredictability in the episode , they appear to be following an old trope then don't follow the predictable ending they appeared to be. It's great to see some Star Trek cameos as well with Robert Picardo {Voyager's EMH) and John Billinglsey (Enterprise's Doctor Phlox) both having a turn recently.
Discovery on the other hand just seems awful and I can't bring myself to watch the third episode. They've carried on with the same concept as the first series with one long storyline although the pace is glacially slow and unfortunately it once again features Michael Burnham and so far has ignored the rest of the crew bar Tilly who is almost as annoying as Burnham. Stammets and Saru have both been shoved to the sidelines and we still have no idea who that android is on the bridge, how well those sleek augmetics work on the crew member who'd been badly injured or any of the rest of the crew. The series also continues its jarring disconnect between having sophisticated technology one moment looking years ahead of Voyager then the next moment they remember it's supposed to be a prequel and chuck in an old red alert noise or similar. Although the first series was poor I did like some of the concepts but it feels it's time to give up on it.
In light of that I've been going back to Deep Space Nine which seems even better than it was previously although I think that's just because it highlights how poorly depicted the characters are on Discovery. The series is of course horribly dated and not just the CGI, it perhaps wasn't so bad on a low resolution fuzzy CRT but on a sharp HD display many of the outfits and set dressings just look really cheap. However it doesn't take long to see past that and appreciate the show which gets so many different aspects correct and in particular that not everything is black and white. I didn't realise it was all the way back to the first series when a Cardassian comes to the station for medical treatment and who turns out to have been a file clerk at a Cardassian labour camp where the Bajorans had been treated as slaves and regularly beaten and killed. Further investigation shows he wasn't the file clerk but actually the brutal leader in charge responsible for the appalling conditions for the Bajorans and once unmasked, he brags about what he'd done for his people and wished he'd been able to kill more Bajorans perfectly fitting the image of a despised Cardassian the Bajorans have. However as they investigate further yet they realise he is actually just the file clerk and he had cosmetic surgery to look like the leader. The confused Bajoran in charge then asks why he's done this and he briefly maintains his fascade until he realises it's done and he crumbles in front of her admitting he lay in bed covering his ears to keep out the screaming from the Bajorans and felt a terrible guilt that he could do nothing to stop it. He had the cosmetic surgery done in the hope he'd have a very public trial and execution which would force Cardassia to admit its guilt and move forward. It set a tone which would continue with it turning out the Federation had some dark secrets as well.
On a non sci-fi note I've been keen on the new series of Hunted which initially I just find annoying but it quickly gets me hooked and I'm disappointed it's down the last episode next week already.
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