TV Show Review: Murderbot Season 1

IMDb listing; available on Apple TV

Pros: Skarsgard is brilliant as Murderbot, really good special effects and sets, interesting characters, good soundtrack, social commentary, thought provoking, lots to discover on subsequent viewings

Cons: uncomfortable to watch at times the first time through, a few gauche sexual comments

The first time I watched the show I’d only read the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells that this show is based on, All Systems Red. That was in 2018, so while I remembered the premise of the book, I couldn’t remember any details. I thought the story was interesting, the characters were fun, and the special effects and set designs impressively realistic. I also thought the show had a lot of cringey, uncomfortable moments.

The second time I watched the show I’d read all of the books and stories. This time I realized that the show is designed to be uncomfortable on one side and shocking on the other. The books are all told from Murderbot’s point of view. And Murderbot finds human interactions awkward and uncomfortable. By making the show uncomfortable to watch at times, the directors are putting US in Murderbot’s shoes. We feel uncomfortable because IT feels uncomfortable. My third time through I started noticing just how brilliant an actor Alexander Skarsgard is as Murderbot. While horror and discomfort come easily to its features there are very tiny, very subtle facial movements when it’s happy. On the flip side, several scenes are incredibly shocking and while Murderbot is nonchalant in the face of violence, the humans aren’t, so this time we’re put in THEIR shoes. Because of the shock you can’t appreciate the humour of Murderbot’s commentary in those scenes until you’ve watched them a couple of times and – like it – have become inured to the violence of their world.

The show also does an incredible job of showing not telling. There’s a scene in episode 7 where Murderbot is fighting an enemy SecUnit and the humans are ‘helping’ as a visual play on the sarcastic comments Murderbot scatters all over the books. It’s even funnier when they’re congratulating themselves for the good job they did in the next episode and we get flashbacks of what actually happened.

The musical score by Amanda Jones is great and reminds me of background music in the Portal games by Valve (composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky). The theme song for Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is surprisingly addictive.

The show does deviate from the text in a lot of places. Several new plot twists were added to make up the run time for the season and most notably, except for Mensah the humans never really trust Murderbot.

I did find LeeBeeBee’s sexual comments genuinely uncomfortable, and not just in a Murderbot kind of way. Those scenes make it harder to wholeheartedly recommend the show to everyone I know who likes science fiction.

This is a show that, like the books, really benefits from contemplation and revisiting.



After finishing the show I came across a video called The Murderbot Ending is Different in the Best Way by Pete Peppers that covers Murderbot’s journey of emancipation. It’s really good and mentioned several things I’d missed. It contains full spoilers for the show, so only watch it if you’ve seen all the episodes.

TV Show Review: Fallout Season 1

IMDb listing

Pros: interesting character arcs, some great plot twists, good action sequences

Cons: lots of blood and gore, some nudity

Lucy MacLean leaves her mostly idilic nuclear fallout vault to rescue her father who’s been kidnapped by raiders. She is wildly unprepared for the world she finds on the surface.

I have never played the Fallout games though I watched part of a playthrough once (can’t say which game it was). So while I knew a handful of facts about the Fallout world (Pitboy, mutants, vaults), I was basically coming into the show blind.

I had concerns about the amount of gore in the trailer. I’m not a fan of gross humour/horror. So I watched the first episode as a test. And then kept watching. While there is a fair amount of gore, strategically closing my eyes at the right moment has helped (and the moments are generally telegraphed, so this worked well for me).

There are 3 main protagonists whose stories interweave, and they’re all compelling in their own ways. Two of them (Lucy and Maximus) have fairly simple backstories and motivations. The Ghoul’s story gets more and more complicated as the series progresses. The world’s complexities makes achieving their goals a real challenge. Watching Lucy confront her beliefs and see how she’s forced to change in order to live in this new world was heart-breaking. Ella Purnell is brilliant showing the progression from Lucy’s naivety to survivalism. Similarly, seeing who the Ghoul used to be before the nuclear blasts and wondering what’s brought him to this low point is interesting.

The set designs were beautifully done. I loved how they reinvented technology based on the divergence of history. The VHS style videotapes were kind of fun, as were some of the robots.

There were a lot of great fight scenes in a variety of locations. I appreciated that they were all fights for survival, rather than feeling cleanly choreographed. Everyone fights dirty in this world, or they die.

The story had some excellent plot twists (though, apparently many of these are known game storylines, so may not be surprising to those who’ve played them). I was happy that so many questions were answered by the final episode, while leaving enough to segway into a second season.

If you’re ok with gore and some nudity (one episode has a weird scene where a group of people derobe), then give this a try. The acting is great, the characters compelling, and the story shockingly good (especially compared to some other video game shows lately *cough* Halo *cough*).

TV Show Review: Severance Season 1

Created by Dan Erikson (2022)

IMDb Listing

Lumen Industries has discovered how to surgically separate the brain. Their workers have no memories of what they do on the job, and their ‘innies’ have no life outside of work.

After a co-worker suddenly leaves, Mark S. is promoted to team lead of data refinement. His first task is to help the team’s replacement, Helly, with her adjustment to severed life.

But Helly doesn’t want to work at Lumen and it’s truly bizarre office culture. And she will do whatever it takes to get out.

This is an absolutely brilliant show on Apple TV. It’s slow moving and takes its time letting you get to know the core characters and their issues. It asks some great questions about memory, work, and work-life balance. Having seen it twice now, it’s also a show that gets better upon rewatch as you can pay attention to smaller details you missed the first time around.

The story is bizarre in all the best ways. There’s so much that’s simply ODD about Lumen and the office. The show has a lot of bright lights and long white corridors. It’s also got some creative photography choices, making good use of reflections and cramped spaces. There’s a sweet office romance between 2 older men (one of whom is played by Christopher Walken). A lot of 60s inspired sets and parties. A new age guru, and more.

The season has an electrifying finale that poses a lot of new questions and deepens the mysteries around the company.

I hope the series gets all the seasons it needs to tell its story as planned.

TV Show Review: Colony, Season 1

IMDb Listing

First aired: 2016

Pros: fascinating premise, interesting characters, difficult choices, fairly diverse supporting cast

Cons: 

No one was prepared for the Arrival, when aliens came and separated the US into small colonies. Now, dissidents are sent to the factories, never to be seen again. When Will Bowman’s attempt to cross into another colony to find his missing son fails, he’s forced to work for the occupation, hunting down a resistance group. He doesn’t realize his wife is part of that group, and he’s just become a huge source of inside information for them.

I love that the focus of the show is on a loving couple and their struggles to survive in this new and horrible world. They’re caring for their two children and both hurting from the fact that they are unable to even look for their missing third.

The show is full of difficult decisions, from finding insulin now that the aliens have decreed that  such medicines should no longer be made so only the strong survive, to who’s worth saving from a resistance standpoint.

Katie Bowman (Sarah Wayne Callies) has to be clever - and dishonest - in order to keep her husband from discovering she’s helping the resistance, which causes a lot of tension in the story, and in their relationship.

The supporting cast is excellent and wonderfully diverse. I was a bit sad that some characters disappear for a while as the focus remains firmly on the Bowman family, but it is nice seeing several POC actors in different roles.

Season 1 kept me guessing and I am really looking forward to jumping into season 2. 

Note, there are 3 seasons and the show has been cancelled.

TV Show Review: Twin Peaks, Seasons 1 and 2

Pros: some great storylines, good representation, cultural impact

Cons: some hokey storylines, slow pacing, occasional over the top acting

When Twin Peaks aired on television in 1990 I was too young to have been watching and old enough to know what a phenomenon it was going to be. And it was a phenomenon. Most shows at that time were episodic, so if you missed one episode it didn’t matter (as they generally aired at one time on one day - and in reruns, if the show was popular enough and you could catch those episodes). So a show with a continuous storyline that required you see every episode, in order, was unusual. And then there was the hype around the tag line: Who killed Laura Palmer?  

Rewatching the show as an adult, it’s interesting what still worked, what didn’t, and what from the various storylines I remembered all these years later.

First off, I remember the show being quirky and mysterious. I did not remember it being a soap opera. And it most definitely is a soap opera.

Season 1 starts off with a 2 hour made for TV movie. It sets out the mystery of Laura’s death, the coming of FBI agent Dale Cooper to Twin Peaks to investigate the murder, and a decent number of the people who live in the town. That season ended on a cliff hanger when the season was riding high in the ratings. It’s surprisingly coherent in storytelling, with little jokes continuing from episode to episode (like the bizarre conferences going on at The Great Northern Hotel). As an adult, Agent Cooper’s mysticism didn’t work so well. If the FBI en mass actually worked the way he does in this show, no one would trust them to solve cases. While he does examine the evidence he’s got too much reliance on dreams and whatnot for me to believe any sheriff would follow his lead.

Season 2 solves the murder of Laura Palmer a third of the way through. The special feature on the DVD set I watched pointed out that solving the murder so soon was a mistake. Once Laura’s death was solved, the allure of the show vanished and all you were left with was the soap opera. And while the characters were interesting, the increasingly lurid storylines just weren’t compelling enough to get the show a third season. Until 25 years later.

A few things really impressed me about the show. As I said, the storytelling on the whole is impressive. There are a large number of storylines and quite a few of them are resolved. 

The DVD special mentioned that Josie Packard was originally written as an Italian woman, but they liked Joan Chen’s audition so much they rewrote the part so she was from Hong Kong instead. Deputy ‘Hawk’ was played by an actual Native American. I was also impressed by representations of disability, like Donna Hayward’s mother who’s in a wheelchair (and it’s never explained why) and Nadine Hurley’s missing eye. Season 2 has a trans woman (played by David Duchovny - X-Files started in 1993) and while her scenes can be awkward at times, it’s still impressive in terms of representation for its time (for our time too, to be honest).

Almost every character in the show has some quirk. And they’re pretty in your face obvious, like the log lady carrying a log that speaks to her and FBI Director Gordon Cole’s propensity to shout due to his difficulty hearing. On one hand it made some people feel like caricatures, while on the other, it made the town feel more realistic.

The music was great, offbeat and quirky to match the characters. We had the soundtrack so I still remember all the different character themes.

Watching it nowadays it’s a fairly slow moving, often boring show. There are a lot of panning shots and close-ups that last too long. Some of the storylines are just comically bad and some of the resolutions disappointing as they depend on mysticism of some kind. The acting is often over the top (especially Leland Palmer, whose scenes of grief are hard to watch - and make me wonder if Lynch was trying to show how callous people are in the face of others’ grief, expecting them to get over tragedy quickly as it’s hard to watch someone else break down).

The show had a huge impact at the time and still has its moments. I don’t think I could watch it again though.

I tried watching the more recent 3rd season and just couldn’t. It was so slow and several episodes in still had no plot. Some things are products of their time and there’s no going back.

TV Show Review: Gravity Falls

Pros: fun characters, siblings that fight and still love each other, intricate storytelling, great humour

Cons:

Twins “Dipper” and Mable Pines are shipped to their great uncle’s place in the woods for the summer. Their grunkle Stan runs The Mystery Shack, a tourist attraction of bizarre made-up creatures and no refunds. When Dipper uncovers a mysterious journal he begins to see that there are real monsters and mystery in the town.

The show’s got a great supernatural overlay, making it feel like a kids version of X-Files paired with the weirdness and interconnected storytelling of Twin Peaks. There are hidden codes and astute viewers will see side characters pop up in strange places. It’s a great show for easter eggs and esoterica (if you don’t feel like solving all the mysteries yourself, you can find a lot answers/translated cryptograms online).

The characters are fantastic. I loved that the twins fight a lot but it’s clear that they also love each other and will do anything for each other. Quite a few episodes end with them working through their differences in order to save the day. The same goes for their friends and enemies. Each character has their own motivations, and work towards their own goals as the show progresses. As the two seasons are a continuous story, you really get to know everyone in town.

While it is a show for older kids, there’s a fair amount of adult humour. Not crassness, but jokes that will go over the heads of the kiddos that adults will enjoy. Most of these revolve around Stan’s being a con artist. So for example, in an early episode the kids are seen making counterfeit money as part of a family bonding activity. It’s also a show that gets better with each viewing. The first time through some of the characters/episodes annoyed me, but rewatching them I could see where the characters grew due to their interactions and how each story built into a larger whole. You’re also more aware of the various easter eggs and ongoing jokes peppered through the show.

Season one is basically monster of the day stories, while season two starts to tie the larger mysteries of the town together.

It’s great to find a show that’s so well written and brilliantly voice acted. The characters all seem real and the final episode really tugs on those heart strings. And when you finish watching, if you’d like more, there are some books that flesh out the world, including Journal 3. Gravity Falls is a wonderful rabbit hole to fall into.

TV Show Review: Battlestar Galactica Episode 1 (1978)

IMDb listing

I saw this a few years ago when I watched the 2004 remake, but watched this again today so I could compare it to the first two issues of the 1979 comic books (volumes 1&2), which I will be reviewing on Tuesday.

Pros: some great characters, brilliant world-building, good special effects, excellent music

Cons: rushed storytelling

Just before the peace negotiated by Baltar between the alien created Cylons and the humans of the Twelve Colonies, can be ratified, there’s a surprise Cylon attack.  But they don’t just destroy the fleet, they also target the colonies themselves.  Only one battleship remains: Battlestar Galactica, which escorts the remaining survivors on a quest to find their ancestral home: Earth.

The pilot episode had a lot of ground to cover and clearly didn’t want to spend much of that time on the destruction of the fleet and colonies, taking a fair amount of time to set up some of the characters on Galactica, then jumping ahead to the humans in their scrounged ships leaving on their quest.  Having said this, a surprising amount of time is also spent on a planet they encounter later in the episode that might have been better served as the plot of the next episode, as it tells a mostly self-contained story.  But this first episode was apparently marketed as a TV movie, so maybe they needed to fill out the time slot.  And maybe the battle/destruction would have cost too much to do properly, so they opted to bypass most of it.

The character building at the beginning does mean several protagonists are quickly remembered, which I thought was well done considering the size of the cast.  I also liked that there was some diversity in the cast.   

The acting’s pretty good, if at times over the top - I’m looking at you, Starbuck.  The scene with Zac at the beginning gets quite tense.  

I have to admit that Boxey, the kid, is kind of annoying, as he’s always running off.  While I liked his mother (played by Jane Seymour), she’s clearly unable to keep track of him.

The special effects are quite good considering when this came out.  There are a lot of similarities to Star Wars in this respect, with the heavy use of models and lazers lights.

The world created is quite rich, with specialized terms.  It’s only touched on but the different colonies appear to have some different accents/dialects, religious practices, etc. 

One of the best aspects of the show is the music, which was fully orchestrated and sounds amazing.

The show has a bit of camp - as must be expected given when it was made.  But the remake took a lot of liberties with the story (and made some great changes), which makes the original worth watching.

TV Show Review: Continuum Season 1

Pros: conflicted protagonist, interesting future dystopia, time travel conundrums

Cons: sometimes cheesy special effects, police accept Kiera's story too easily, partner accepts her lies/half truths too easily

A group of terrorists who use explosives to protest the rule of corporations as government in 2077 are scheduled for execution.  Something goes wrong and they, and one of the guards, Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols), are transported back in time.  Despite being desperate to return to her own time - where she has a husband and son - Kiera knows she's the only one who can stop the criminals.  So she joins Vancouver's police force as a special advisor on the new group of terrorists in town, terrorists determined to see their future changed.  She's helped by the creator of her high tech police uniform, who's still a teen in our time.

The show is not only filmed in Vancouver, it's set in Vancouver too.  The main characters are conflicting at first, since the future's a dystopia where corporations have become the government, you're not sure you want everything to stay the same.  This feeling is compounded by flashbacks of Kiera's life over the course of the season that show just how corrupt the future is.  Her character fights to keep things the same, though that requires her to make difficult, and often morally ambiguous decisions in the present.  She even joins with the terrorists in one early episode when they claim they can take her back to the future with them.

The acting's pretty good and, with a few cheesy exceptions, the special effects decent.  I did wonder that the police accepted Kiera's cover story so easily, even with the fake file Alec Sadler (her tech contact, played by Erik Knudsen) set up.  Her police partner puts up with a lot of lies, half truths, and evasions, which surprised me as well.

All in all it's a fun show that questions the power corporations have, a gutsy move given the power corporations have.  You'll recognize a few actors from X-Files (Cancer Man and Alex Krycek).  Given how well done the show is on the whole, I'm surprised how little I've seen about it online.

Flashforward - Robert J. Sawyer

With the TV show airing Sept. 24th at 8pm (or Sept 25th at 8, as ABC has decided to air the premier twice) I decided to read the book. The trailers look amazing. The premise is interesting. So I wondered where the story came from.

The book was originally published in 1999, with the original experiment that is believed to have caused the flashforward happening on April 21st, 2009. It's odd reading a science fiction book, looking to the future, about a future that's just passed. Sort of like reading 2001: A Space Odyssey in 2008 and wondering how humans failed to make all that amazing science come true.

One of the main differences between the book and the show is the time span of the flashforward. In the show it's a mere 6 months in the future that the world glimpses. In the novel it's a little over 20 YEARS. Which caused problems for me. The willingness of people to fundamentally change their lives due to a glimpse of 2 minutes of an (in my opinion) uncertain future 20 YEARS AWAY seemed rather farcical. How can 2 minutes show you enough to tell you your life will be entirely bad/good to the point that you'd need to radically change how you live, etc. now?

*** Minor Spoilers Ahead ***







With a few exceptions. Obviously if you learn that you'll be murdered, as Theo does, you'll want to learn how and by whom. But in general, the number of people going out of their way to affect their futures based on a short glimpse seemed strange. Any number of things could happen to cause those events - and people probably wouldn't consider even a small portion of them (like how you assume you know how a person is about to die in the TV show DEAD LIKE ME and then something totally ridiculous happens that you'd never could have foreseen).

One character commits suicide because he sees himself working at a restaurant in 20 years. That's it. He decides he failed in his dream of becoming a novelist and can't live with that. I was left wondering how that brief glimpse of the future proved he failed. A lot of novelists have day jobs to pay the bills. Getting published is not the same as becoming rich and famous. It seemed that most people came up with one interpretation of their visions and couldn't conceive of any others.

I was also disturbed by the scientist in charge of the experiment's determined belief that the future could not be changed. That whatever people glimpsed, that's what would happen. The idea of free will, of personal accountability, was missing. (On the other hand, I loved the explanation of WHY he was so bent on holding to that viewpoint.)

The ending left me a little bemused at how various characters lives turned out by 2030. Each seemed to get what he/she expected. Those that believed the future was immutable got the futures they saw, those that believed they could affect their futures managed to change them.

In the end, I enjoyed the book more because it made me question my own possible reaction should such an event ever occur than because the book was a scientific possibility regarding our future. In other words, it read more like philosophy than science fiction (though the scientific explanations for the flashforward were based on real science).

Based on what the book managed to do, the TV show has the potential to be a real SF hit.

Check out the official website: http://flashforwardtv.com/ where I got the information about the double airing of the pilot. It also has links to more trailers.