Star Trek: Discovery
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun,
Battlestar Galactica Ben 10: Omniverse, Blake's 7,
Caprica Crusade, Dark Skies, Doctor Who, Duck Dodgers,
Earth 2 Eureka Seven Farscape,
Firefly First Wave, Flash Gordon, Future Man, Hyperdrive, Intruders, Inuyashiki: Last Hero,
Justice League Lost in Space, Marvel's Rocket & Groot, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Out of This World, Quark, Red Dwarf, Space: 1999,
Star Trek Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Voyager Star Wars: Droids, Stargate Atlantis, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Transformers, Threshold, ThunderCats, Torchwood, UFO, Ultraman,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
The 1960s Star Trek show did not have the chance to do a true series finale. All of its successors did though, until now. From The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine to Voyager to Enterprise to Picard, every show had the opportunity to make a final statement and sum up the years of adventures in some fashion. Yet, despite being the primogenitor of the franchise, The Original Series just sort of ends, with the sense of the conveyor belt simply stopping, and its last output accidentally becoming an end, if not quite the end.
And yet “Turnabout Intruder”, infamous though it may be, is a surprisingly fitting finale for TOS. It features the good notions and abiding themes of the 1960s show: the idea that this crew knows their captain well enough to sniff out a fake; that become a well-functioning team that can work through even the most unorthodox problems, and that after seventy-nine episodes’ worth of outlandish adventures, they remain open to new and unexpected possibilities. It also features the bad ideas and problematic elements that plagued series time and again: from a mixed-at-best perspective on women to William Shatner’s over-the-top acting. In that, the show’s final outing is an inadvertent but strangely apt swan song for the series.
In its new season, Star Trek: Discovery follows in those hallowed, unexpected footsteps. This is Discovery’s fifth and final year on the air, but as reported by the cast and crew, they didn’t know that when writing or filming it until the last minute. Despite the promise of a hastily-shot coda to give the show an air of finality, that makes this last leg of Discovery’s mission an accidental ending, not unlike the one endured by the original Star Trek series. Continue Reading →
Palm Royale
SimilarAnna Karenina, Återkomsten, Blackeyes, Jewels, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Monarch of the Glen, Oh, Doctor Beeching!,
Planet of the Apes The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
StudioApple Studios,
There’s something undeniably inspired about casting Kristin Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. A social climber attempting to ingratiate herself into late 60s Palm Beach high society, Simmons shares with Wiig a certain constant desire to change herself. The actor's years at Saturday Night Live and subsequent film roles have established her as a chameleonic performer. She has enough versatility to play everyone from the painfully grounded to live-action cartoon characters. In this case, Wiig pours that talent into a woman trying desperately to be a different version of herself.
As a kind of middle-aged conservative version of Tom Ripley, Wiig does indeed excel. The actor invests a mix of brute force cunning and barely hidden desperation in Simmons. That makes the would-be social maven compelling and repulsive in equal measure. Her machinations are too intriguing to ignore, but her very presence can be almost unendurable, especially for viewers with an overactive sense of vicarious embarrassment.
Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney try to hash it out. (AppleTV+)
The show also adds an interesting layer to her performance of wealth and class. Simmons’ claims often sound outlandish, the scrambling lies of someone trying to stay one step ahead of being exposed. However, Palm Royale slowly confirms a great many of them. Unlike Ripley or Saltburn’s Oliver Quick, she’s not a total fabrication. She has the credentials for the inner circle, but can’t stomach the time it takes. Continue Reading →
Station Eleven
NetworkHBO Max,
SimilarAround the World in 80 Days, Helltown, In the Land of Leadale, M*A*S*H,
Planet of the Apes Santa Evita,
Sherlock Holmes The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Summer I Turned Pretty,
StudioParamount Television Studios,
When Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel hit shelves in 2014, it was a standout in science-fiction. HBO’s adaptation can’t help but hit differently in 2021. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about what’s left of the world after a deadly flu ravages the populace. The parallels to current events are glaringly obvious. Continue Reading →
Colin in Black and White
I wasn’t alive during the days of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, and Jim Brown’s stands against violent forms of discrimination. Therefore, Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to back down from his principles despite obvious NFL blacklisting makes him the closest my generation has to a genuinely revolutionary athlete. In refusing to stand for the national anthem in the wake of racial discrimination and murder by the U.S. Government, Kaepernick demonstrated he is who certain athletes (I’m looking at you, Kyrie Irving) think they are. Continue Reading →