GwydionMW

I liked it when the detective hero loses a fight with a passing teenager right at the start. Refreshing not to have the lead character a super-hero who outfights everyone.

We then get a glimpse of New Zealand society. In particular the life of the Maori.

How they were ill-treated in the past, and are still far from equal.

And also real imperfect characters. Different from each other.

We start with one mystery, and then several more crop up.

The season ends with at least one mystery cleared up. More for Season two, I assume.

And some excellent scenery. Places where real people are living and having complex lives.

Real drama with the accident and the return.

Some mystery as they show the timeline spilt.

Then more on exactly the same, and that's when I found it irritating.

You see the mother or the daughter traipsing through the snow. Or the mother exploring a burnt-out version of the home she has come from. Or the daughter hiding in a cupboard.

Then you see exactly the same thing, and possibly the same events, this is never clear.

Then you see it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

At five episodes it would have been fine. Four for what we've seen and then however they play to wrap it up.

But no, they decide to show irritatingly familiar episodes again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

What a waste. But I am thankful for Fast Forward.

More generally, and as others have said, it strains belief that none of these highly intelligent people have caught on to the fact of Alternate Worlds. It has been done many times, including on Star Trek.

This film fascinated me for the first 30 minutes, and then I started fast-forwarding.

Only once were we given a view of the man's wider life: it remained obsessed with this Unique Man On His Own.

The supposed philosophical insights were not worth spitting on.

The opening story - he would have rescued personal items and not his relatives - tells us just that this is a man close to sociopathy, or maybe fully so. He seems not violent, but also totally insensitive to how he must be regularly upsetting people by his burglaries.

I have a nasty feeling that the director and script writer are much the same. They definitely wanted us to like this creep.

The man seems to resent the success of his victim, when his own art seems never to have gained money or recognition. But many live with such things, including a few who get fame after their deaths, as was true of William Blake. It is no excuse for this fictional character being a criminal parasite and wrecker of the lives of others.

It seems many were offended by the slowness, just as I was. They expand on the man's life just once, which was a welcome break. But there should have been a lot more. A lot less about his struggles to break free.

I'd found the two films OK, but this remake from the first book is much better.

I had never read the books, so changes did not bother me. It was the author who wrote the script, so complaints are silly.

But I also notice a consistent pattern of people who take the trouble to write several reviews of later episodes of a series they supposedly were bored by. I take this to be another case of racists trying to spoil a dramatisation that dares to have non-white characters in important roles.

Annabeth, described as blond in the book. And also Zeus, whom I felt was played very well.

The end follows the book in having Sally's obnoxious husband choose to open the parcel with the head of Medusa. The book is much more savage - Percy considers using it so, but leaves it to his mother. She later writes, mentioning how her husband had vanished, and meantime she has been able to sell a sculpture than is strikingly life-like. Much less ethical: it would in fact count as pre-meditated murder.

The TV series also copies the film in putting it with the end credits. An irritating habit that I suppose is put to make us watch them, and shows a lack of respect for the audience.

Still, it was an excellent adaptation. I assume we get the rest of the books.

Unlike Rogue One, the script did not have the originality to find a sensible alternative plot.

The Japanese original had a bunch of bandits as foes - plausible. Rogue One had sections of a well-organised Resistance. This has a scattering of unlikely individuals, who for some reason get involved in an entirely local matter.

I also found a lot of it silly - ploughing using a horse-like animal, in a society with advances spacecraft.

And there was a grimy look to a lot of it. Only by making the villains irrationally bad could one feel for the heroic characters, and they were not that heroic.

It was not a waste of time. And I fancy I can guess what part two will be about. But I'd not expect it to have much impact.

Political fiction - Gorbachev is a grand success. The USA and Russia become partners. China is still relatively poor and not a major space power.

Yeltsin and Putin are not mentioned, so far. Putin might appear later as a KGB man, presumably as a villain.

Al Gore gets elected President. The Clintons get divorced with Bill just ex-Governor. Presumably no more will be heard of them.

Having reached Mars in Season Three, we were already told an asteroid is next. It does indeed open with the landing on an asteroid: one that I assume is fictional, but looking like some of the actual asteroids. That part was convincing.

The asteroid is close enough to Mars to be put into orbit around Mars, to be a source of raw material. Is this valid science?

The asteroid is tethered, and then pushed. Obviously a source of tension, which I will not spoil.

Meantime Margo, having betrayed NASA, is being neglected in Moscow. The administrators there don't want her views. But from the amount of time spent on her, it seems safe to assume she will somehow come back. Maybe get a Presidential pardon.

As of 16th September, no Third Season has been confirmed. But many have seen this season as better than the last.

It is of course very different from what Asimov wrote, but still very entertaining.

And with many plot twists.

When Harri Seldon reappeared, I assumed he was actually a humanoid robot. I still believe that there are more beside Demerzel, which she anyway hinted at in the last episode. It would explain apparently dead people appearing again. And I'd have preferred it to the slightly improbable way his death was faked.

I had been finding it hard to believe that Terminus was gone. They chose to say it was, but the people saved. A handy machine to serve as 'Deus Ex Machine'.

And of course Empire is back - too good a set of characters to lose. A lot to work out, including the run-away Brother Day. But with the Imperial Fleet destroyed, there should be a lot more successful rebellions. It should be more like the fragmented galaxy full of warring states that Asimov describes before the rise of The Mule.

I assume they introduced this character early, to improve chances of a third season, since the first was less popular than had been hoped.

I was dismayed that they chose to make him the huge physically powerful character with blue glasses to hide his terrible gaze - actually a false report from the books. But later in the season, we learned that Mentallics can look like someone they are not, and also do damage by making the target think it is real. So maybe the real Mule will be more like the original vision.

Not at all like the original vision is Gael and Hari being bowed down to by the rescued Mentallics. Not saying that this is excessive. Asimov's version is notably egalitarian, with the First Speaker having limited powers.

Still, I really enjoyed this season, and very much hope we get a third.

I never tried the original books. The cover of the first put me off - just another author doing a weak rehash of Tolkien.

The TV show led me to try the first book, but not to change my view. I'm not reading any more.

But the TV series was fun. Moiraine as played by Rosamund Pike was wonderfully convincing, and remains so.

It was genuinely surprising at times, at least to those of us who never read the books.

An interesting on-going story.

I got depressed by the True Believers who seem to keep watching just so they can complain about how much it bored and offended them. I'm puzzled as to why they bother. They can't actually put off the rest of us.

We get to learn a lot more about Demerzel and her relationship with the first Cleon. And this ties back to the wider story of Asimov's books, which is good.

Not so good is the decision that the Encyclopedia Galactica was never produced. In the book, it continued as a minor function. Asimov used it to give summaries that were well-informed, but not always correct.

The planned visit by Emperor to Terminus happens, of course, but with unexpected twists and turns and a cliff-hanger ending. One wonders just how many more changes the script will make to Asimov's tale.

Meantime Gael's story continues, with some emotional stress and a very unexpected helper arriving.

But I'll give nothing away: the surprise is much of the fun. I will be adding spoiler details in Trivia.

As entertainment, this was serious and thrilling. You see the problems that war veterans have with confronting a former enemy.

And as an incidental, you see what looks like a preparation for winding up the Spock / Nurse Chappel romance, meaning that events will stay fairly consistent. You could even see this as the task for which Ensign Boimler was sent: he had wondered if there was one.

But what offended me was a regular character getting away with murder, and with people helping cover up. Even of the Klingon had lied about aspects of his past, he was still doing good work.

It seems to me that it is another case of the scriptwriters endorsing dishonesty as the best methods. And not showing the same commitment to peace.

From the book version, I noticed that a lot of it was a transposed SF convention. Fair enough.

Told differently, with everything centering on a social gathering, whereas the book had it as several separate conversations. I'd say that was intelligent, but it clearly offends some people who treat the books like Holy Writ.

I'm looking forward to the remaining three episodes - likely to be much more like the book. I won't say more, naturally.

The whole series seems OK to me. Some very good special effects. Too many characters for my liking, but that is how the story was told. It also goes for good television - being too literal would not suit anyone except those who see it as Holy Writ.

A thriller with conventional heroes and villains in alien costume.

Nothing particularly unexpected. And they have decided that Spock will have less control of his emotions than in the original, and the other versions. Not to my taste.

It looks like we have some new characters joining. A Chief Engineer who will be quite unlike any previous.

A new story arc seems to be beginning, but so far we know little about it.

Broadly well done, but I wish they would do more stories that could only be done as SF. And make the villains less like regular US stereotypes of the Bad Guys.

I look forwards to the rest of the series.

A time of great social change. But some idiot decided to lead with absurd figures in stag skulls.

And most of the rest is trivia.

Like many others, it glamorizes crime. Not the squalid reality of actual crime.

This wastes a lot of effort that must have been put into making the people look like the period.

And then dumps in some modern pop songs. Someone at the BBC must have decided that every historic drama must have pop dumped into it, to reassure the audience. It was just as wasteful in a drama about the Roman invasion of Britain. Fascinating real events were discarded for a mix of silly mysticism and pop.

As a UK viewer, I just discovered this on Netflix.

Like many others, I was disappointed that it got cut after three seasons. And not taken up, as The Expanse was.

On the other hand, it had rather too many episodes that were fillers. Away from the main story arc, doing things like time loops, a visit to today's Earth and a subverted person that had been done before.

And it never was anything like as gripping or realistic as The Expanse was. Still, sad it was axed, when so much rubbish keeps going.

I've seen articles saying that the key was that Scfy did not own it, and so could not make money out of its wider use. Which suggests a bad overall system, and streaming may end such things. Or at least make them rarer.

For the first two episodes, I wondered what was going on.

I then got increasingly suspicious that the script writers didn't know and saw no need to sort it.

Some of the failures of understanding by The Consultant are just not believable.

Given that a violent death has occurred and would be a police matter, the main protagonist's failure to go to the police is increasingly absurd.

It ends treating the villain as almost a hero.

This is a pity, because at times it is a decent picture of the games industry and its pressures.

And the absurdities of management.

But it could all have been done in three or four episodes. A lot of padding.

For my taste, extensive and needless medical details were out of place in something advertised as comedy thriller. And the blurb on the disk I got gave no warning.

It also seemed to me disrespectful for a bunch of actors to be treating real human suffering as raw material.

If done in a different spirit, it might have been a good drama, since the central event was actually real.

Or it could have been done comically, but without showing so much suffering and death, all of it based on real events.

Clearly it does not offend many viewers. But I regard such people out of line. Making a joke of things that are not funny.

The formidable Borg / Dissident Changeling alliance fell much too easily. With a scene borrowed from something just as improbable in 'Return of the Jedi' - enemies who neglect the simplest defense of their most vital assets.

I had been expecting both of the Alternative Borg to play a role. Never mentioned, though they are likely to be in the presumed spin-off series.

I also felt it would have been much stronger if Picard and some others had died in their suicide missions.

But as I said in the title, that is my taste. It was still good. And the other reviews show that an Old Friends Reunion is just what others wanted.

I assume we now get the much-wanted Seven of Nine series, and she will command her own version of The Enterprise. With Picard and the others popping up from time to time.

My guess also is that she and Raffi will remain ex-lovers who can work together. The norm in all series is to have almost all the main characters single and free for one-episode dramas. And to be free for the sexual fantasies that a lot of fans are said to have. Not something I've ever felt, but it is part of the show.

Overall, it was an excellent three season show, and with more good stuff to expect.

It looked like it might be interesting.

Robots in a 1950s, and they are also settling the moon.

And in some unexplained way, it is multiracial in a way that the USA then was not. And mostly still is not.

And within this ingenious set-up, nothing much happens.

Lunar time shares are banal, apart from not being believable.

A series of entirely dull scenarios. Dull people have dull and predictable emotions.

So much more might have been done with.

And with so many excellent SF novels out there, it is very disappointing that such banal rubbish gets funded.

And it it fails, it will be seen as meaning SF is not that popular.

This is the best yet.

The previous two seasons were mostly a fresh start, with a limited role for people from Next Generation.

Also and brilliantly, Seven of Nine.

Here, they are being brought back in, in various ways. Compensation for the previous end in the mediocre Nemesis.

I'm expecting to see Worf behind a mysterious depersonalised voice that is almost certain to be someone we know. An admiration for warriors is a clue.

I'll say nothing about the plot: just that two separate threads can be expected to converge.

But it opens with Beverly Crusher not at all what you'd expect. She'd let herself slip, looks old, and thinks she has a dangerous secret.

The similarities to the real-world Bonnie and Clyde are obvious.

The twist is having events go in a way that never happened.

Including having a teenager step into the male role, the original Alternative Clyde having been killed earlier.

Which is a glitch: this would have been all over the papers. Eugene would have known at once he was being lied to.

It is also ridiculous to think that small-town cops would accidentally kill their neighbours. Never mind a small child, who anyway would be too short to be in the line of fire.

The originals were trigger-happy and caused the death of innocents. Likewise these.

Much of the film was devoted to asking us to sympathise with an obnoxious woman, and a young man who follows her without reasonable excuse.

A nice example of what's wrong with the USA, and which some Britons also go along with.

This is a six-episode series that leaves most of the story lines open.

I had very much enjoyed it, up until then. I don't know the west of Ireland, but it certainly felt authentic. Though there did seem rather a lot of outsiders.

A series of twists and turns in the plot.

And hardly a spoiler to say that people who get involved in drug smuggling find out that things quickly run out of control.

It was developing nicely. But Episode Six ends with most of the crucial plot-lines still open. I assume a second series is planned, but then have also short-changed their audience.

I reduced my score from 8 to 4, because no one should do that to their audience.

From the extras, it seems that the makers were absolutely fascinated by the idea of recreating routine food deliveries in New York.

Plus some details of cooking.

They even cut our an opening showing more about the gangsters, available as a Deleted Scene for the disk.

I really could not share their enthusiasm. A lot too much of it. And we could have been shown all sorts of other things that were just as worthy.

That said, I liked it, despite liberal use of the fast-forward switch. The characters were very believable. One sympathized. And it mocked some common ideas - several explained how they faked a political motive when they just wanted to make more money than the could back home.

The original stories have a fascinating but imperfect character. A drug abuser when it wasn't really illegal.

This sensibly updates the original format.

He's no superman: one of the original stories has him successfully beaten up when attacked by two men, which is realistic.

Having a female Watson and having them clever is new, but I think it improves it.

If you think about the logic, the originals have Watson telling it to let the reader know what's going on. On television, you have the cameras doing that. So the supporting character doing more makes sense.

I've only just started, having found it on Amazon UK. I am pleased to find a series of entirely new plots, rather than modernisations of stories we already know.

Excellent all round.

I'd been guessing that The Stranger was Sauron, and that Sauron had genuinely repented and was trying to do good. I blogged on this, 'The Rings of Power: Not All Who Wonder Or Wander Are Lost'.

It all seemed vindicated, but then everything turns. First, we see Halbrand giving vital clues to Celebrimbor about a process of tapping power. And he meantime uses exactly the same words that Adar reported Sauron as using.

She confronts and confirms, and meantime The Stranger turned out to be some other powerful being, and banishes Sauron's servants. But not forever, I'm sure.

Incidentally, they should not call him Sauron. In the book, they never do because the name is an insult.

We get the Three Elven Rings made before the 16 that will go to Elves and Dwarves. Since these are credited to Celebrimbor, I'd assume that Halbrand / Sauron manages to overcome Galadriel's denunciation, which she cannot explain.

And I was right about Sauron genuinely trying to be good. He saved Galadriel because he was partly free of Morgoth's influence, and wants her beside him as his Queen, and being good rulers. But does not see that his own power might be a bad thing.

And it ends with Nori and The Stranger heading for Rhun. Which Tolkien wrote little about: just that Sauron controlled it at the end of the Third Age.

A brilliant ending!

From Episode 5, we were expecting the big battle between Orcs and the humans of the Southlands. Which happens, but with several surprises.

What really astonishes is what Adar later explains. His relationship with Sauron, which is not what was expected.

From Episode 5, I had thought of an extra. Tolkien's own notes, written up for The Silmarillion, suggest that Sauron tried to repent. So he could both be The Stranger and genuinely trying to help. I wrote a blog on this: 'The Rings of Power: Not All Who Wonder Or Wander Are Lost'.

What comes out now is nothing I expected, but supporting this view. Watch it and be amazed!

We now see why the start was slow. What is unfolding is different from what Tolkien wrote. But very consistent with his repeated point that it is easy to become evil by using the wrong methods with a real intent to do good.