13 Best TV Shows Similar to Doctor Who

There’s probably something meaningful to say about the current state of politics and the seeming revival of the swords and sandals genre; unfortunately, Peacock’s new series Those About to Die engenders very little desire to engage with its material on any deeper level. Created by Robert Rodat and directed by Roland Emmerich and Marco Kruezpaintner, Those About to Die is a historical drama centered around the fading rule of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), his sons Titus (Tom Hughes) and Domitian (Jojo Macari, eating every piece of available scenery), and the bloody and politically treacherous world of chariot racing.  Set in 79 AD (reading up on that year will provide some spoilers if history is a spoiler), Those About to Die wants to have it all. It’s a drama! It’s an epic! It’s historical fiction! It’s sexy! It’s violent! Well, sure, it’s all of these things, but sadly none are enough to raise it above its vaguely ‘90s television miniseries feel. The series sags under the weight of its scale. Feeling at times like nothing so much as “James Michener’s ROME," Those About to Die features no fewer than 15 primary characters, many of whom fade into the background and reappear with such little fanfare that the audience struggles to keep track. Though the storylines blend fairly swiftly after an overpacked premiere, the characters make so many rash and death-defying decisions per episode that nothing seems to carry any sort of weight. Anything dramatic that can happen does but with varying (and unearned) degrees of consequence. There are attacks on characters but then they’re fine; characters lose money and then get more. When it feels like everyone has plot armor until a “surprise,”  nothing is a surprise anymore.  Continue Reading →

There’s no honest way to say WondLa looks ugly or uninteresting. The environs, in particular, make wonderful use of gentle pastels broken by sharp primary colors to create a world both beautiful and utterly alien (no pun intended) to our protagonist, Eva (Jeanine Mason). But visually attractive isn’t the same as unique or arresting. Sadly, once one begins to scratch the show’s surface, it reveals many all-too-familiar elements. Sometimes, it is just a general sense of the thing. At others, it is nearly one-to-one. For example, Eva’s first otherworldly ally, Otto (Brad Garrett), is a furry talkative sibling to Raya and The Last Dragon’s Tuk Tuk. Similar design elements are typically easy to accept for this critic, provided the story utilizing them offers enough to chew on. It is here that WondLa truly stumbles. A collection of other “coming of age” and “humanity’s end” stories’ greatest hits, the series never offers something fresh enough to get its audience to sit up and take notice. A collection of strong voice work, including Teri Hatcher—who has proven herself a real voice talent asset over the years—is further hamstrung because the voices come from mostly thinly sketched characters. Sarah Hollis and Jeanine Mason love your new look. (AppleTV+) In some unnumbered future year, Eva is the only child living in a vast underground bunker known as a Sanctuary. Her only true companionship is a robot surrogate parent, Muthr, who sees to the child’s physical—and, with time, inevitably—emotional needs. When Eva turns six, she—and the audience—learns she is part of a program to “save” humans from themselves. Under the direction of Cadmus Pryde (Alan Tudyk in a rare straightforward voice performance), the dwindling human populace built an array of Sanctuaries. In each, a robot raised children until the planet healed from the various environmental catastrophes and violent conflicts people visited upon it. When the Earth is ready and the children properly trained, they will be released to the surface to re-establish society and maybe treat each other and their planet right this time. Continue Reading →

It is perhaps unfair to compare a single 10-episode season of Orphan Black Echoes against its predecessor’s 50 episodes over five seasons run. After all, that much more real estate allows a show so much more time to explore and resolve its mythos satisfactorily. But if one stacks up Echoes’ season against the original’s debut, the newest member of the franchise still suffers by comparison. Created by Anna Fishko and taking place about 40 years after the events of Orphan Black, Orphan Black Echoes opens with an immediate hook. A woman (Krysten Ritter)—who we’ll eventually know as Lucy—awakens in a well-appointed living room. She has no memory of who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Dr. Kira Manning (Keeley Hawes)—the adult daughter of Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany), who is sadly only glimpsed in a photo—attempts to calm and remind Lucy of her past. It fails and the amnesiac has to be chemically restrained. Later, she manages to escape the room, only to discover that it is little more than a set built inside a massive warehouse. In 2052, the cloning process at the center of the original series may be illegal, but science has found a workaround, creating a different kind of copy called, colloquially, “printouts.” From there, the series follows Lucy’s attempts to discover her past and protect those she cares about. The quest sweeps up several others in its quake, including a teen, Jules Lee (Amanda Fix), who’s deeply connected to Lucy and Kira. Others pulled into the situation include Kira’s wife (Rya Kihlstedt), a seemingly altruistic billionaire, Paul Darrios (James Hiroyuki Liao), a shoot-first-ask-questions-later enforcer Tom (Reed Diamond), and a single father (Avan Jogia) and his tween daughter (Zariella Langford). Continue Reading →

In reviewing Dark Matter, it feels fitting to follow the moral of the show’s story. While it is easy to get lost in forever puzzling over details, the far more useful—and rewarding—path is to take a step back and fully appreciate a thing. There are elements in creator/showrunner Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own work that do not work, especially concerning pacing. And yet, by the time the credits roll on the final episode, one is largely left satisfied and, perhaps, a bit exhilarated. The temptation to dwell on each choice at the expense of the larger picture is something Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) knows well. But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. Dark Matters begins with the Jason I’ll christen “our Jason” for clarity. Our Jason is a Physics professor living in Chicago with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), a former artist who now focuses more on the administrative and business sides of art, and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). One night, Jason meets up with his friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) to celebrate the latter’s academic success. The vibe is strained, with parties seemingly aware that Jason should’ve received the same award, if not over Ryan, then certainly before him. Continue Reading →

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 →

The ScienceSaru-produced animated series rebuilds rather than retells Bryan Lee O'Malley's beloved comic. Late in the final volume of Bryan Lee O'Malley's 2004-2010 comic series Scott Pilgrim (Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour), once the action's done and the hateful Gideon Graves has been slain, protagonists Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers take a moment to process everything. Defeating Gideon meant facing not only the vicious misogynist swordsman but also their respective character flaws (It's telling that one of Scott's key moments is his realizing just how alike he and Gideon are, and by gaining that understanding, he affirms that, yeah, Gideon has so got to die). There are a few candidates for Scott's actual finest hour in Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. His after-action conversation/reconciliation/renewal with Ramona is my pick. Bryan Lee O'Malley/Oni Press. As Ramona says, change is one of life's constants, which applies to Scott Pilgrim's ventures into new mediums. Edgar Wright's thoroughly enjoyable movie shifted around characters and reworked some of Scott's flaws. The colorful, impeccably soundtracked, hair-tearingly difficult Ubisoft-produced video game ramped up the goofy save for one particularly pointed ending. And now, with the Netflix animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, creator O'Malley—joined by co-writer and co-showrunner BenDavid Grabinski and animation studio ScienceSaru (with episode director Abel Góngora) have changed things up yet again. Rather than retell Scott Pilgrim as it's been since 2004 (a story already told, with riffs, as a comic, movie, and video game), the creative team opts for something more radical. It's a work as much in conversation with the Scott Pilgrim that came before as an adaptation. Continue Reading →

One of the common complaints about Marvel’s attempts at multiverse storytelling is that it renders everything meaningless. If there is another Ikaris of the Eternals out there—or a possibly infinite number of them—why should one care if the one in front of us dies? Generally, this writer finds the argument unconvincing. If I told you there were infinite versions of your friend out there in the multiverse you might someday meet, you’d still care quite a bit to see your version die in front of you. Continue Reading →

After averting the Apocalypse and stopping a more militaristic Leaper from the near future by leaping into his own past, Ben (Raymond Lee) and everyone else at Quantum Leap expected him to leap home. Instead, he was nowhere to be seen. Continue Reading →

Patrick Stewart is still carrying much of the weight as "Star Trek: Picard" continues to pile on the lore & find its footing. “Maps and Legends” improves on Star Trek: Picard’s series premiere. It’s filled to the brim with new lore and exposition and features another extended bout of table-setting. But it also features plenty of Patrick Stewart acting in one-on-one scenes, his forte, and puts him opposite performers who can hold their own. Making those conversations and confrontations a bigger focus here helps balance out the wobbly plot mechanics and less-exciting new faces the series strains to introduce. That catch is that the series still dumps a ton of lore on the audience here. "Maps and Legends" is full of implausible and contradictory nonsense that constantly tries to top or overcomplicate (or both) whatever’s come before. It’s not enough for the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police, to be involved in this conspiracy. There has to be an extra-double-secret force that’s even more hidden and even more deadly! Apparently the Romulans just hate androids and A.I. and any complex computing whatsoever, for reasons we’ve never been privy to before but which will assuredly be retconned down the line! Despite that, they still have fancy molecular reconstruction tools and can perfectly scrub a crime scene at the molecular level, but somehow not so well that Picard’s former Tal Shiar buddy can’t figure out what happened! And this new secret agency has also apparently infiltrated the highest ranks of Starfleet, where the latest corrupt commodore turns out to be a sleeper agent whose two goons are going after Dahj’s twin sister! Phew! Continue Reading →