A friend recommended Buffy 10-15 years ago. We recently saw all of it again. Really enjoyable due to the great characters, writing, and humor. Some of the episodes showed truly outstanding writing, way above average for a series.
And there’s Spike! Worth it just for him, but the whole package is terrific.
Catching up with Season 09 of Archer. This year it’s a spoof of Tales of the Gold Monkey and other such “South Sea adventure stories.”
Not that impressed. Maybe there’s not enough decent source material out there to parody, or maybe the writers didn’t bother to look for any. And there’s quite a bit of what I imagine they thought was “ironic satirical racism” that feels like just regular racism.
I am watching Babylon 5 for the first time (I didn’t own a TV set when it first aired).
And… parts are good, parts are bad. Some of the rationales offered for what humans are doing in space make Enterprise’s infamous gazelle speech sound good.
On the other hand, I am pleased with how alien the aliens are.
Recently watched the Transfiguration, a sort of vampire film with an interesting twist (and some overtones I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with, but I wont’ get into due to spoilers). IT had a wonderful soundtrack, a couple of songs, but mostly very eerie soundscaping. The actor who played the main character was pretty amazing, rarely expressing any emotion at all. I recommend it pretty highly, despite the somewhat troubling overtones. In fact, if someone does watch it (it’s on Netflix) I’d love to talk about it…
Also finally saw the docufiction-mockumentary Houston, We have a Problem, which explores truth and myth (and includes Zizek pontificating on such things) with regards to Yugoslavia and the Balkans. It posits an easy narrative for the early 90s failure of post-Tito Yugoslavia, related to space exploration. It reminds us that there are no easy answers, though. I’d love to talk about this one, too.
I read about it before the premiere in, what, Starlog magazine, I think? We were blown away by the basic concept, the effects, the quality of the writing, the humor and the whole idea of a series long arc (new to me at the time). Of course that was in 1995. It was, by far, the best sf on TV we’d ever seen. And the exec producer, JMS, was an actual sf fan, not just some network guy who wanted to put on a scifi show (“now, let’s see, space ships. And aliens. And explosions.”. JMS had his problems with the network suits of course, and the fact that it was always a matter of “will it be renewed?” was really irritating.
Stick with it – it’s rewarding, despite some faults.
I just saw the first episode Walter Koenig appears in. He’s so famous for Chekhov it’s easy to forget he’s a really good character actor. It was nice to see him playing a semi-baddie.