Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

[Agema]

This is Star Trek, you can't go to a system without tripping over, not only habitable planets, but ones that have intelligent life, and pressures and atmospheres exactly like Earth. And really. They don't actually need a habitable planet. They just need somewhere do dump everyone until they can move them somewhere better. With replicators it shouldn't be a problem to give everybody a pressure suit and set up a bunch of air refill stations and whatever sort of future space tents they would need.

Picard, at some point, says the Federation is 8000LY in diameter with 150 inhabited worlds. This means the density of inhabited planets is well below that of an average of 10LY between each planet.

There may well be other planets that could theoretically support life. However, assuming the relocation of 10+ billion people, how do you propose they dump them on a planet with no infrastructure to keep them alive when they are there? Food, energy, other resources. Even replicators can't make something out of nothing. They'd need a second huge armada just to provide for them. A planet that were not habitable would be even worse, because they'd also need life-support domes.

And you can do math all you like, but it's a canon fact that warp 9 can do 10 light years in 51 hours.

All that chart tells you is that the canon warp speeds from episodes are completely meaningless because they are utterly inconsistent. I mean, there's another "canon" report of warp 9 in that chart that's half the speed of the one you cited.

One could argue that warp speed is just a "base" that is modified by other factors (gravity wells, space dust, etc.), either way there's no particular reason to think that a round trip to other useful planets is shorter than the scale of days-weeks.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

THE BAD

None of these points are too bad, really, but the show has some glaring issues. Namely:

-Certain plot points are raised, but then discarded. For instance, the character of Yolanda confronts her family, with a conversation that can be paraphrased as "hey, can I be allowed outside these days, because I've been effectively grounded for three months?" followed by "no." Which is then followed by her...um, having the run of the town, as a civilian or hero either way? FFS, the kids Courtney recruits go into hiding with her family towards the end, but their own families apparently never bring it up. Or, alternatively, at the end, an ISA villain is killed in Courtney's house. What they did with the body, and why it was never traced back to them, is never explained, or even mentioned.

-Not all powers are created equal. We have Stargirl who's got, um, stargirl powers, Wild Cat (agility), Hour man (who can get super strength for one hour a day, and is useless the other 23 hours), and Beth, whose powers are...um...wearing goggles with an AI installed? Um, yeah. Hate to be that guy, but I think some members of this team are more important than others.

CONCLUSION

Despite gripes, show's pretty damn solid. Started watching season 2, and so far, the overall quality has been retained.

Neat stuff.

Glad to see some-one else enjoying Stargirl.

On the point with Yolanda it's a bit of a weird arc in the first season but the basic idea being because of what happened with her at school and resulted in her being grounded for months and then with the Wild Cat mantle it allowed her to get some degree of freedom again only as a sort of set up for what happens with her at the end of the season.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers but suffice to say the arc isn't over and we get to see some level of fallout from those events happen in season 2.


In terms of Sportsmaster and Tigress they're goofy but it's already sort of shown what they care about with the ISA being more a relationship of convenience for them to set themselves up for their present lives and to try and make Artemis a sporting star. Also her name may or may not ring a bell for you as this isn't the first DC related TV show she's been in (the character to be clear).

Also on other plotlines seemingly being hinted at and discarded, they're not discarded.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Picard, at some point, says the Federation is 8000LY in diameter with 150 inhabited worlds. This means the density of inhabited planets is well below that of an average of 10LY between each planet.

There may well be other planets that could theoretically support life. However, assuming the relocation of 10+ billion people, how do you propose they dump them on a planet with no infrastructure to keep them alive when they are there? Food, energy, other resources. Even replicators can't make something out of nothing. They'd need a second huge armada just to provide for them. A planet that were not habitable would be even worse, because they'd also need life-support domes.

They'd need to transfer some of the existing power generation infrastructure to whatever rock they set down on or fabricate something new. They must have a huge stock of dilithium crystals, or whatever they get enough power from to power a planet. And then once they've made the initial evacuation, with every load of refugees that they relocate permanently they can bring supplies on the return trip. Heck, they could even make more transport ships. You are basically funneling the entire production of a well established planet into this evacuation. Those 10 billion people are an asset before and after relocation.

It's not like Romulus is some third world country full of uneducated bums, they are a single nation with enough power to actually contest the Federation. Every load of refugees is another batch of patriotic and educated workers to help with construction. If they aren't capable of setting up some quick survival infrastructure to keep a couple billion people alive for a couple years until they can be transferred, nobody is. It's not like people take a lot of energy to keep alive compared to powering massive star ships to move faster than the speed of light. I'm sure they have all sorts of high density food that can last forever and provide high amounts of nutrition and their water recycling technology would have been long perfected centuries or millennia ago at the start of their space faring.

I just looked on the Wiki and saw they had 2+ years to do the evacuation. Come on, you are going to argue that a galactic super power can't set up a survival shelter for it's people in the nearest star system in more than two years with all the fantastic technology at their disposal?

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't know about "complete".

A bad ending is still an ending, if that's what you mean.

GOT did finish it's story, IIRC. It just faceplanted the last season or two pretty hard.

 

[sXeth]

The logic is more off in they apparently had no warning their star was about to explode. And that they were ever in an "emergency" state to handle the evacuation/relocation.


Like, it would make sense that their homeworld (system actually, but they only ever mention the one planet) going down is going to put them in a rough position. Much like Undiscovered Country with the Klingons, it might be the catalyst for a cessation of hostilities or even aligning with another power so they could stand down their military enough to recover.


But yeah, this is a star spanning empire, I'm not buying that they couldn't terraform worlds or set up space platforms even if they wanted. They certainly wouldn't be reduced to living in squalor on a rural planet like the one Romulan settlement we see in the series. I could even see the Romulans just not giving AF and putting the casualties up as a martyrs.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I'm watching Dr Strange 2 on Tuesday but haven't seen any of the Disney Plus shows or the last Spiderman, what did I miss that matters to Multiverse?

It exists.

 

[Hawki]

In terms of Sportsmaster and Tigress they're goofy but it's already sort of shown what they care about with the ISA being more a relationship of convenience for them to set themselves up for their present lives and to try and make Artemis a sporting star. Also her name may or may not ring a bell for you as this isn't the first DC related TV show she's been in (the character to be clear).

Yeah, I've got that far in season 2, where Sportsmaster claims that he and Tigress were never really into the ISA (though were apparently willing to go with the mind control thing because...reasons?) I burst out laughing where Pat's forced to tolerate them in his house, and Tigress and Courtney's mother have 'the mum talk.'

As for Artemis, I do recall that Artemis is an archer from the Green Arrow family (briefly featured in Arrow season 5, IIRC), so it's...weird, to see this Artemis here, when she hasn't wielded a bow once as far as I can tell.

 

[Gordon_4]

Drop the Dead Donkey; seasons 1 and 2.

Boy, journalistic maleficence was such a ripe area for comedy in the 1990s.

 

[Agema]

snip

Okay, let's cut to the chase here.

How long it takes starships to get anywhere in Star Trek is unclear. What the state of the Romulan Star Empire is, is unclear. Where planets are and what state they are in is unclear. But in that vagueness you can as easily imagine a situation where the task of evaculating the Romulans' home system in 2 years is beyond the capability of the RSE as you can a situation where it is within the capability of RSE.

Our start point is that Star Trek says it was beyond the capability of the RSE to manage. So, the sensible and constructive thing to do is imagine ways that the RSE was not capable. And as long as there is one, that credible possibility cannot be disproven merely by conjecturing other credible possibilities.

So, mine is that the RSE is a competitor to the Federation because it devotes a hugely disproportionate attention to its military where the Federation does not, but underneath that it has a vastly lower population, economy and industrial production. It is furthermore heavily centralised and over-reliant on a highly developed homeworld, with a limited amount of underdeveloped colonies that do little but send resources to the homeworld. These are credible assumptions. When therefore faced by a crisis of this magnitude, it simply does not have the fleet capacity to evaculate the home system on its own in the timeframe, which is also credible under the vague / contradictory information about the Star Trek universe (e.g. starship speeds, distances to planets, etc.) So, job done. It's credible.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Yeah, I've got that far in season 2, where Sportsmaster claims that he and Tigress were never really into the ISA (though were apparently willing to go with the mind control thing because...reasons?) I burst out laughing where Pat's forced to tolerate them in his house, and Tigress and Courtney's mother have 'the mum talk.'

As for Artemis, I do recall that Artemis is an archer from the Green Arrow family (briefly featured in Arrow season 5, IIRC), so it's...weird, to see this Artemis here, when she hasn't wielded a bow once as far as I can tell.

Oh that's a different character in Green Arrow as far as I'm aware.

This Artemis is the one from a certain animated series about young superheroes.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished watching Tokyo Vice, along with the six other people on this planet. Honestly I feel a little ripped off. I was 100% convinced this was going to be a limited series, but then as "season one" ends nothing has been resolved or paid off and the plot is still years ahead of the pilot's opening teaser scene. Honestly the finale felt more like a typical episode before the actual finale, aka. the low point where the characters are licking their wounds but nothing has really concluded for better or worse.

At this point our hero reporter has yet to do any actual reporting and our hero cop has yet to do any arrests. They brought in Babel/Pacific Rim's Rinko Kikuchi and gave her nothing to do for all of 8 hours. The prostitute sells out to the yakuza, which doesn't really change her situation much - instead of being a freelance whore as she dreamed of she goes from getting pimped by some scumbag to being being by the mob. Big whoop.

I don't mind the slow pace or the downer ending but this feels like it's missing one or two episodes. And I could've swore I'd seen (several times, by official sources) the breakdown for 10 episodes instead of the 8 we got but I don't have the energy to devise a conspiracy theory around it.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Maybe this belongs in hot takes, but it's annoying how not only could all of the MCU Disney+ series been just movies, they don't take advantage of the benefits of the episodic format. I've been enjoying Moon Knight a lot more than the other MCU stuff, but even then I'm frustrated with how the show manages to be a little draggy AND unsatisfyingly short.

Anyway. Episode 5. It was alright. The asylum setup isn't mysterious or spooky, but as usual Oscar Isaac carries the show on his back. Backs? But this also marks the 2nd episode in the row without any actual Moon Knight, which is disappointing. I know the show is trying to be a little more high brow than the usual MCU shtick, but at the end of the day this is a show based on a comic book superhero and I demand to see him do a backflip onto a baddie's spine. They had the perfect set up to show just how brutal Marc was in the suit, but instead we are just told how ruthless he was.

 

[sXeth]

Maybe this belongs in hot takes, but it's annoying how not only could all of the MCU Disney+ series been just movies, they don't take advantage of the benefits of the episodic format. I've been enjoying Moon Knight a lot more than the other MCU stuff, but even then I'm frustrated with how the show manages to be a little draggy AND unsatisfyingly short.

Anyway. Episode 5. It was alright. The asylum setup isn't mysterious or spooky, but as usual Oscar Isaac carries the show on his back. Backs? But this also marks the 2nd episode in the row without any actual Moon Knight, which is disappointing. I know the show is trying to be a little more high brow than the usual MCU shtick, but at the end of the day this is a show based on a comic book superhero and I demand to see him do a backflip onto a baddie's spine. They had the perfect set up to show just how brutal Marc was in the suit, but instead we are just told how ruthless he was.

Yeah the superhero side of it is a little weird in that they're telling an origin story for Steven, but technically Marc (And the other one) have had the powers and been doing their thing for awhile now. And trying to also squeeze in the mini-arc where he loses his powers and has to regain them.


It is a very busy plot for a short run all in all. I think they may be running on a lower budget then the more directly MCU tied in shows have as well (this one apparently was never pitched or brainstormed as part of the churning wheel of MCU, though they sneak some loose mentions in). So that may be limiting the CGI suit use and action scenes down.


There's also the wobbly state of Moon Knights actual powers being haphazardly defined in the comics. Ranging from actually not having any but being a Batman-parallel (which doesn't work in the show cause he's not rich dude to make the gadgets), or only having powers at night with strength based on the moon phases. The show may actually be running on the latter since the Moon Knight scenes occur in the nightime and we see (or don't see) Marc/Other fighting just as himself against other humans in daylight.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Vagrant Queen

Rating: 3/10, I don't know if I should be relieved the set didn't fall over or disappointed as that might have made the show better

Short version: Some-one compared this to Farscape and it feels like some-one just compare a a crude statue of a person jerking off to a highly crafted well thought out piece of art with depth and meaning.

Longer version:

I paid for this. I went out of my way and paid about $20 for this show. It's now going to sit on my on demand account reminding me because I'm not going to remove it having spent money but it's going to be like an oily stain on my account.

I watched it through start to finish because some-one (who will remain nameless on this forum) said it was a bit like Farscape. It is NOT. Farscape was a quite complex series with depth to it's universe and themes. Farscape was the Nihilism of the late 90's and 2000's crashing head long into the optimism of late 80's and Early 90's Star Trek The Next Generation. Sci- Fi shows. Farscape was a show where the crew could end up landing on a planet, see the inhabitants suffering and or bad things going on, come up with a solution to help the people only to end up being told to basically fuck off by the people on the planet and having their attempts to help utterly fall on deaf ears. It kept up the same idealism of shows like Star Trek the Next Generation while also having those ideas run smack bang into modern world sensibilities attitudes such that it showed how the ideals while good may not work out quite as they're shown to do in Star Trek. Farscape was a show that had reverence for it's inspirations and the ideals it was almost and things it was almost providing a counter argument to. Farscape also framed it's story as an allegory for the argument over the power of nuclear weapons. Vagrant Queen on the other hand just feels hollow and reflective of pure millennial apathy.

While Farscape had a complex narrative allegory for nuclear weapons and the debates round them Vagrant Queen's debate is about.....um.... why order is good and people should respect their governments.......This really does feel like modern garbage designed for the twitter generation who tweet "Down with Capitalism" from their Iphones in Starbucks.

I came into Vagrant Queen hopefully and wanting to be proven wrong and what I got was a show that would almost lampshade the sheer unoriginality or formulaic ness of it's sci-Fi stories before charging on ahead with them anyway doing nothing different. This is a 10 episode series where at least two episodes can be explained as plot wise as "characters end up captures by beings on a planet and thrown in a cell then have to figure out how to escape". The show feels very much like the aspect of the MCU where it feels the need to mock itself before its audience can make any jokes. Hell it feels like a show for Hipsters as it's forever mocking genre tropes before using those exact tropes itself normally while trying to present itself as cool by talking about how many drugs it's done and how wasted it got last night. It's for Green Day who once made a song about not wanting to be American Idiots and then went on to say how people should listen to the media and the government. It feels like it doesn't know what it stands for other than general apathy and is like a teenager lashing out at everything and wanting to pull down the conventions while just having nothing worthwhile to replace them with.

The whole villain spends most of the show being almost comical and over the top relishing in the torture of others but when it comes down to it his whole plan is seemingly wealth redistribution and while he does use a level of mind control to make the ruling class kill themselves he specifically never uses the mind control powers on regular civilians so what makes him the villain more is he's a bit over enthusiastic about the whole torture thing and has a bit of an ego and dares to be against the monarchy. Character wise the other characters are mostly pretty good and it's one of the better parts of the show except of Elida the Queen who mostly comes off as kind of socially awkward and still a rebellious teenager despite the fact she's meant to be in her 20s. A lot of her character seems to be about not wanting responsibility and kind of just getting through life being able to drink / do drugs and have fun with her only on the adventure because she still cares for her family that she is told are still alive and in prison.

Where the show fell down hardest or me was the prosthetic and costumes. Yes they look initially good to see but unlike even those of Farscape which was 20 years ago it doesn't seem like the actors can act in them. The full head / full face prosthetics in Vagrant Queen look stiff and as though the actors in them are struggling to try and express any emotion in them such that even the puppet characters in Farscape are comparatively more expressive.

Also the show suffers a level inconsistency in it's own internal logic. Apparently the guns the heroes use to shoot through the guards armour which is fine but later on it's shown just 1 armour plate from said armour can is able to stop the guards weapons but only when they try and shoot one of the heroes when they shoot one another or are shot with their own weapons by some-one else it goes right through. Also who the hell designed this armour such that a punch to the faceplate or a hit to the back of the head still sends enough force through to knock a person unconscious. Even modern riot helmets stop people being able to easily do that.

Ultimately the show isn't as entertaining as the strange tales a drunk vagrant could tell you nor tales with the level of thoughts and dignity that a queen could talk about having met so many people and heard so many peoples experiences.

Oh and the digital version doesn't even have a subtitles option which shows how little SyFy themselves seemed to care for the show after farting it out onto services to buy.

 

[Gergar12]

WTF Kagura in Boruto actually dies. He was such a good character. This guy's grandfather was a murderous dictator, but he was kind-hearted, and while he fell into a bad crowd of sword-wielding rebels he redeemed himself. I get it Boruto will end up being more depressing and will lose everything, but this guy had a really good personality.


RIP Kagura.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Moon Knight
I'm about half-way through, watching with the wife. It is ultimate Marvel stuff- completely stupid if I try to think about the plot or circumstances for like a second but boy howdy is it fun to watch. Cast a dynamic actor, do some stylish action set pieces and, yeah, I'm in.

Outer Range
Amazon Prime show where Josh Brolin and his family run a ranch but there is strange stuff happening, so it's like mixing the shows Dallas and Twin Peaks I guess?
It's doing that thing that sometimes premium cable shows do where they try so hard to be so serious about themselves. Result is that it's interesting enough to keep watching but it's not great? A show where you can watch the trailer and the show will be exactly what it looks like, even though the trailer is weird, if that makes any sense.

 

[thebobmaster]

Finished Moon Knight. Best Disney+ MCU show so far. Oscar Isaac really carried this show on his back, and he was so good at switching between the three personalities as needed. It was quite impressive how easy it was to tell which personality was in control not just because of the accent change, but in terms of body language, speech patterns, and overall behavior. Arthur Harrow was also always an interesting villain to me, and I liked that he never came off as hypocritical. Too many times, when shows have a cult leader/religious type villain, they come off as "everyone should suffer for their sins. But not me.", while Harrow truly seems to hold himself to the same standards as others.

If I had to name off a complaint, it would be that the final episode felt a bit rushed, and ESPECIALLY the way Harrow gets the upper hand on Marc/Steven, is about to kill him, and then...third alter comes out and beats Harrow off-screen. came off as a big Deus Ex Machina, with only the mid-credits scene lowering it from being a major issue with the ending of the season to just being eye-rolling.

I also appreciated how little it ties into the MCU for now. It definitely takes place in the MCU, as there are a couple of nods to the MCU as a whole (such as the afterlife from Black Panther being mentioned by name as one of several afterlifes), but the show stands on its own. You could go into it completely blind, having seen nothing else in the MCU, and you would be able to follow the plot just as well as if you were someone like me aka, an unemployed loser with too much time on his hands who has seen all of the MCU offerings to date.

 

[Piscian]

Watching Slow Horses on apple+.

Im episode 5 and im surprised to say its the opposite of its namesake its quite the opposite. The title refers to a branch of MI 5 or 6 I forget which where agents who fuck up are put out to pasture and basically forced to sit at a desk and do menial work like digging through trash. I assumed it would be a slow burn sorta quirky agents doing dirty work type show but its not. Within the first episode the branch is swept up into a aryan terrorist plot that goes sideways and turns a face paced spy thriller. it wouldn't surprise me if this designed to be a 1 season miniseries at the pace its going. I always prefer these shows to shows that fuck about for 6 seasons. Anyway its borderline must see highly recommend.

On the note of shows faffing about Ozarks just ended. Im sad to say I was pretty meh going into season 4 and it felt less like it was reaching a conclusion and more like it was Netflix mandated closing of the shop. The 4th season jumps the shark several times ignoring some basic logic to get all its set pieces pulled together in order to give fans closure. Breaking Bad benefited from making monstrous characters compelling. You "needed" to see what happened to them even if you didn't like them. Ozarks suffers from never really growing wendy and marty byrde. By the end of season 4 their characters never learn or change and do things that ride a hard line between actual realism and the jj abrams style of having characters do things simply to get to point b rather that from any meaningful reason or twist. In retrospect, while I enjoyed most the first 3 seasons of Ozarks. If you haven't watched it yet you hate plot devices that all have to fall a specific way for outcome to work Id recommend against it.

 

[Piscian]

Finished Moon Knight. Best Disney+ MCU show so far. Oscar Isaac really carried this show on his back, and he was so good at switching between the three personalities as needed. It was quite impressive how easy it was to tell which personality was in control not just because of the accent change, but in terms of body language, speech patterns, and overall behavior. Arthur Harrow was also always an interesting villain to me, and I liked that he never came off as hypocritical. Too many times, when shows have a cult leader/religious type villain, they come off as "everyone should suffer for their sins. But not me.", while Harrow truly seems to hold himself to the same standards as others.

If I had to name off a complaint, it would be that the final episode felt a bit rushed, and ESPECIALLY the way Harrow gets the upper hand on Marc/Steven, is about to kill him, and then...third alter comes out and beats Harrow off-screen. came off as a big Deus Ex Machina, with only the mid-credits scene lowering it from being a major issue with the ending of the season to just being eye-rolling.

I also appreciated how little it ties into the MCU for now. It definitely takes place in the MCU, as there are a couple of nods to the MCU as a whole (such as the afterlife from Black Panther being mentioned by name as one of several afterlifes), but the show stands on its own. You could go into it completely blind, having seen nothing else in the MCU, and you would be able to follow the plot just as well as if you were someone like me aka, an unemployed loser with too much time on his hands who has seen all of the MCU offerings to date.

Same on all points, this is the only Marvel show that Id be excited to get another season of if they can make the stars align. It benefited majorly from not being bogged down by kind of need to deliver fan service. It was a nice change of pace. I suspect its going to be an odd duck because this wasnt a scheduled project. This is one of those rare Chronicle like where the studio just needed to fill a slot and struck gold gambling on someone's idea. In retrospect Id actually be concerned if they do jump on the hype and rush a second season with a bunch producers getting their grubby hands in it.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

The latest couple of episodes of Outer Range seem to have returned to the quality of the first two episodes at last. Not sure why exactly, but if I had to guess, it would be the directing of the last 4 episodes felt a tad bland and uninspired. Now it's got direction and directing and shit's hitting the fan alongside affecting moments of acting.