What TV shows are you watching?

[Aitrus]

Episode five of the second season of The Mandalorian was, in fact, a good episode, not a bad episode. Hurrah.

[Det.Bullock]

I caught up with Adventure Time: Distant Lands.
I sort of dreaded BMO because I don’t really like them but in the end the episode is more about the new character Y5 so I liked it overall.
I liked Obsidian a lot, but then again I always liked best the episodes centered on the vampire punk rocker and/or the mad scientist princess the best.

[alms]

So they didn’t quite ruin Amos Burton in season 4 but they are trying some kind of partly hamfisted evolution of the character by expanding the caring, protective nature that was flaunted since Season 1, instead of his ruthless homicidal tendencies.

The intention is commendable enough, but the execution is leaving Amos in a no man’s …sky (sorry!) that feels bland and generic, neither fish nor fowl.

That was my regular reporting from The Expanse. Soon to be watching season 5, because I’ve made this far, even though it is often an exercise in paying attention deliberately, and intently, because my focus wanders so easily away from the show and to more mundane matters.

[ToomuchFluffy]

That’s interesting, I still haven’t watched Season 4. It seemed like a better idea to at least wait for Season 5 to come out. My opinion on the show has been mixed, but even so, I haven’t watched anything at such a fast and regular pace as this one since Babylon 5 and Dark Angel. Well, ok, Battlestar Galactica is probably another case, at least as far as the first two seasons are concerned.

[alms]

And that was the end of Season 4. Oh well.

All along, I kept thinking how Murtry was such a terrible, cookie-cutter villain, whose only redemption was being played by Burn Gorman.

Along the way, there were some glimpses that made me hope for something less stereotypical, but the finale basically brings him back to square one. Predictably he plays a pivotal (but predictable) role in providing a conclusion for Amos’s new, season-long arch.

Season 4 contains significant plot developments for a number of main characters, including Avasarala, Bobbie Draper, and Miller, (the Rocinante’s crew mostly proceeds as usual, except Cas Anvar is not featured as much as a result of the action shifting to planetary), and introduces a number of new characters for whom things are wrapped up to what’s intended to be a satisfactory point.

The finale is thus meant to play as a convergence of the various new character arches peaking, and end on a high note, but mostly fell flat for me; there is what I believe had been planned as a GoT-like death, which had no other effect of letting me appreciate how, even though I kind of liked both the character and actor, ultimately I cared very little about them, and that’s in spite of being one of the most colorful figures in the series.

BTW they keep mixing hard-SF moments (such as a minor character acquiring a weapon in free-fall by blowing on it, until it bounces on a wall and back to them) with utter disregard for basic physics.

For instance, they have a character thrown out of a spaceship (how this comes to be is also not the greatest writing), and then saved by another who basically throw themselves out to catch them.

If their exit velocity was the same (I did not spot any engine), it seems obvious that the rescuer cannot reach the first; in order for this to happen, their speed should greatly exceed the victim’s, however the rescuer appears to be simply jumping out of the spaceship.

So I just resigned myself to it being another one of those “yeah who cares about the physics, this is one of those exciting moments for you to grab the edge of your seat and hold your breath” that didn’t pan out, not just because of the unconvincing, underlying mechanics, but also for the character being saved, is one of the least involving among the newly introduced, and I’m not sure what the emotional impact on the viewer would have been. That character I thought was mainly instrumental to another’s, who is better developed but not very likable anyway.

[LexW]

If their exit velocity was the same (I did not spot any engine), it seems obvious that the rescuer cannot reach the first; in order for this to happen, their speed should greatly exceed the victim’s, however the rescuer appears to be simply jumping out of the spaceship.

I don’t think there was any reason to believe their exit velocity was the same, though. One fell away from the ship by accident, the other, as I recall, sprung off the ship (with a push from their legs), which would potentially give them a significantly greater velocity. I mean, maybe I misremember but that’s how I recall the scene.

That said I agree with your general point re: “physics when it’s convenient”. The show has a lot of relatively realistic physics but also a lot of bollocks and the further the science gets from physics, the less plausible it gets, generally-speaking. I also agree that the new character was not a compelling one and even if the physics made more obvious sense to you I think the scene would have been kind of “meh”.

[alms]

I wasn’t saying the show implies they leave at the same velocity, rather that it is suggested, both explicitly and implicitly, that the victim is ejected at a higher speed than the rescuer can impart themselves by jumping.

The meaning of my observation is that, even if they left the ship at the same speed, the rescuer wouldn’t have been able to close the gap - but she doesn’t.

The victim is thrown out of the ship by a strong collision from a punctured canister, and that is before the pilot tells them to ‘brace for impact’, to which they respond by applying their open palms on the ship’s surfaces, an action underlined by a ‘clunk’ sound effect that implies the gloves can exert a magnetic force like magboots, which are realistically supposed to be engaged (there is no other safety retention system in place).

There is a shot framed from inside the ship which shows the victim getting rapidly smaller and smaller as if gaining distance rapidly. Then wide shots show that indeed she is quite far from the spaceship.

Moreover, the rescuer doesn’t immediately jump after her, but rather takes some time to get to the hatch, and then secure herself with the space winch, so in the intervening time, the distance between the two has only increased.

The only way I figure the sequence could work in the way it is depicted, is if, for whatever reason, the victim was losing momentum: this seems confirmed to me by a shot in which the rescuer extends her hand to stop and seems to be slowly decelerating and being on the brink of missing the catch.

However, while the rescuer is attached to the winch, which might indeed be affected by some attrition that would explain her progressively losing speed, I can think of no reason while the victim would also slow down, as they are in open space and there is no atmosphere, thick or thin, to provide any deceleration.

BTW the canister hits the victim quite violently and near the upper back and head; with the strength of the collision being large enough to overcome the resistance of the mag boots and gloves, and impart a significant speed, both the suit being damaged, and the person being injured, would appear as realistic consequences of the incident.

I believe the sequence was designed mainly as spectacle, and can be thought as the space equivalent of someone getting thrown off a ship into the sea, and then be saved by the skin of their teeth, so it’s probably not super productive for me to keep analyzing minute details.

Anyway, since I’m finally out of Expanse episodes, and for who knows how long, I’ve moved on to Upload, and have been enjoying it so far.

[BillButNotBen]

Episode 5 of The Mandalorian was very interesting.

For one thing, it was hardly about The Mandalorian.

The show continues to look amazing, and the opening scene was beautifully done. The lightsabers in the mist was cool, although I guess Phantom Menace did already do that, and the turning them on and off for stealth was great.

I spent a lot of the episode trying to work out who was playing Ahsoka, and also who was playing the soldier guy. Finally worked out both right near the end. I’ll always have a soft spot for Michael Biehn (despite never being able to spell his name) and Rosario Dawson is another actor who is always reliable. She seemed really good as Ahsoka in this. (Bearing in mind that while I know who the character is, I’ve never actually seen her show).

The actual episode itself didn’t really amount to much, but it was fun to watch.
I guess I should give up on my hope that the show remain detached from main SW and be more of a space western, that’s clearly out the window these days and I should embrace the fandom.
I do wonder how casual viewers who have only seen the movies and are only watching the show because of BY will respond to big dramatic reveals being… references to swords or characters that they’ve never heard of.

That said, if you wanted to persuade me that bringing in EU characters was a good idea, the way to do it would be with Thrawn. (though I’m not familiar with his nu-SW incarnation, but i think LexW said it was good).

[LexW]

That said, if you wanted to persuade me that bringing in EU characters was a good idea, the way to do it would be with Thrawn. (though I’m not familiar with his nu-SW incarnation, but i think LexW said it was good).

Yeah his appearance in that was very good. It was the character from the original EU (unsurprising, given said character has also been brought back by the original author too), in pretty much all his glory (just missing the Ysalamiri, though he has a statue which alludes to them). I mean, this is a dude who uses art history to fuck with the rebels. Art history son. That’s my boy Thrawn. He’s an absolutely great villain, and the judgement on his usage in Rebels was perfect, making just cool enough and exactly badass enough that he was a serious threat, not a joke but also not a “Villain-Sue” (despite being nearly omnicompetent), and he doesn’t always get it right, he just almost always has another plan (until things finally get so berserk than even he didn’t see it coming).

So I’m pretty excited if he turns up in future shows. Also his theme music is played on a pipe organ, which has to be a first for Star Wars.

I found the episode okay if a little confusing myself. Especially re: how old BY is mentally. Like, is he in fact, Teenage Yoda? or at least ten-year-old Yoda? Just with some kind of mental problem. I did like that it maintained a pretty intense “old Star Wars” vibe (moreso than anything else Filoni has done, I think), despite the novel setting and modern elements, and it was nice to see Michael Biehn. Also Dawson nailed all the Ahsoka posing - the show character has a very distinct way of moving, which she maintained here - also thankfully they went closer to her Clone Wars appearance, rather than her Tori Spelling-esque Rebels appearance. Even her lekku (head-tails) are shorter than on Rebels, despite this being chronologically later.

[Aitrus]

I found the episode okay if a little confusing myself. Especially re: how old BY is mentally. Like, is he in fact, Teenage Yoda? or at least ten-year-old Yoda?

I’ve just been assuming the development of the Yoda species isn’t one-to-one analogous to humans. Mayhaps their intellectual age far outpaces their emotional age. So like, 9 years old intellectually on how he apparently understands all speech and communicates fluently and maturely with Ahsoka, but closer to toddler age on an emotional level. I don’t expect they’ll ever really pin this down though. Yoda’s original depiction was pretty childish, but then again subsequent younger depictions of him weren’t childish at all. Canonically, was it an act, or did he just become more kooky in his old age?

I do wonder how casual viewers who have only seen the movies and are only watching the show because of BY will respond to big dramatic reveals being… references to swords or characters that they’ve never heard of.

I was gonna write about how Mandalorian is becoming the perfect example of a new form of storytelling, narrative-via-relational-worldbuilding (and how we have Tolkien + videogames to thank for this form) and wondering how the Sequel Trilogy will fit in to the future of Star Wars given how all three films kind of threw world-building out the window in favor of immediate character and action, but my thoughts got all jumbled up and I don’t have the energy to sort them out so that sentence is all I’m writing. Point is though, this is the future of popular storytelling, for better or for worse. The “casual Star Wars viewer” will eventually just stop existing as mainline story and new-EU continue to merge into the same thing.

The show continues to look amazing, and the opening scene was beautifully done.

Yeah, I really dug the design of the whole town. Beautiful location. I’ll continue to be a Disney slave and drool over this show as long as they dump buckets of money on unique settings.

[MiniMatt]

Alien Worlds (netflix documentary) - having watched 2/4 we’re not bothering with the remaining two. The premise is catnip to me (and, given the time this thread spends on Expanse, RPS forumites) - given varying geological characteristics, how would life evolve on alien worlds?

It’s basic. It’s dumbed down. But for the netflix budget it’s the sort of thing you’d watch for a few minutes on The History Channel before they started banging on about nazis again.

Pretty graphics and really qualified, interesting specialists featured who were not allowed to talk at a level that would challenge anyone over the age of 10.

First epidode: high grav worlds. Exclusively spent on “high grav = thick atmosphere = permanently flying aero cows” - no discussion as to likely atmospheric composition, bone strength/gravity/mass interactions, chemistry changes at pressure. Just a neat concept with a script written around it. About 15 minutes spent on fliming mongeese because… I’m not sure why… they eat stuff? And therefore on alien worlds things will also eat other things?

Second episode: tidal locked worlds. This time we have pentapods - five limbed critters. Why five limbed? What is it about tidal locked worlds which might promote the evolution of five limbed critters? THEY LOOK COOL, SHUT UP, OUR ART TEAM HAS ALREADY DRAWN THEM NOW. Not a specialist subject of mine but odd number of limbs is rare aint it? I mean, starfish - anything else? Why? What evolutionary pressures might evolve a five limbed critter on a tidally locekd world? They look cool, and we’ve already drawn them.

2nd episode almost redeemed itself with a brief segment on just why liquid water is so important - universal solvent and all that. Could have gone on to anomalous expansion of water but no, that was five minutes of technical stuff, your quota of science is up, here look at these “damn, nature, you crazy” pictures of earth critters.

Disappointed. At least half of it is entirely earth bound, and entirely mediocre (extraordiany camera work notwithstanding), the alien stuff is the most basic science backfilled onto random cool concept art.

[Skalpadda]

Not a specialist subject of mine but odd number of limbs is rare aint it? I mean, starfish - anything else? Why? What evolutionary pressures might evolve a five limbed critter on a tidally locekd world? They look cool, and we’ve already drawn them.

I am absolutely no expert so don’t take this as gospel, but even number of limbs is a result of the bilateral symmetry that most animal phyla have. It seems to be fundamental to our body plan and our fetal development so it would be a difficult thing to change with gradual evolution. Add another limb to an animal and you’ll almost automatically add a pair because our fetuses develop in mirrored halves (on the outside at least). I know there was some arthropod species during the Cambrian that had 5 eye stalks but I’m not sure how that fits in (they’re otherwise bilaterally symmetrical).

As you say though, starfish and cnidaria (jellyfish, sea anemones, etc.) don’t have bilateral symmetry but instead have radial symmetry which can result in uneven numbers of appandages, so it’s not something that’s fundamental to life or even what we consider animals, it seems to have just been a split that happened very early and some successful ancestor species set a standard so fundamental that it’s lasted over half a billion years for the vast majority of animals.

On an alien world with its own completely separate evolutionary process I suppose you could end up with virtually any kind of symmetry, maybe pentagonal or hexagonal or whatever you want. There doesn’t seem to be any evolutionary pressure towards any specific number of limbs on Earth (we have anywhere from two to hundreds) so a body plan that can accomodate an uneven number of them seems to be the key.

As an aside, in Look to Windward Iain Banks has a species that was sort of a very large tiger-like creature (or at least a furry predator) that used to have six legs but two of them got fused into a “midlimb”. I think that might be a feasible way to get to five limbs even with bilateral symmetry but it’s hard to imagine what sort of evolutionary pressure would cause it to happen.

About 15 minutes spent on fliming mongeese because… I’m not sure why… they eat stuff? And therefore on alien worlds things will also eat other things?

Well, fundamentally we (animals) are all just tubes that can have stuff passed through them and absorb some nutrients between the two ends. All the rest of us (including brains and conciousness, complex behaviour, sex and all the other things we like so much) is just bits bolted on to make us better at passing stuff through the tube and… making more tubes. Biology is wonderful.

I can see how Mongooses would be disappointing in a program about alien life though.

[Sarfrin]

Disappointed. At least half of it is entirely earth bound, and entirely mediocre (extraordiany camera work notwithstanding), the alien stuff is the most basic science backfilled onto random cool concept art.

I thought that looked interesting but it sounds like I’d be disappointed too.

[Sarfrin]

Just finished season 2 of The House of Paper (aka Money Heist which is an inexplicably terrible translation). Absolutely fantastic. It has flaws, sure, but it also has a brilliant plot and most of all strongly drawn memorable characters. I could, and probably should, stop watching now as there’s no need to eke another three seasons out of it, but I won’t because I’m not ready to say goodbye to Tokyo and Denver and Helsinki and all the rest of them yet.

[BillButNotBen]

I must admit the name put me off. I saw a trailer for it a year or so ago, and it looked ok. But then the name came up and I assumed it was some kind of cheap straight-to-video knock off of better shows.

[Sarfrin]

Give it a go. Episodes are mostly 45 min and you’ll know for sure by the end of the third one if you want to watch the rest.

[alms]

A billion years ago somebody recommended that I watch The Shield since I enjoyed The Wire so much.

Almost stopped at episode 1 because it looked so bad (not sure if the transfer is entirely to blame), but I didn’t and am making progress through Season 1, now.

While I am enjoying it, whenever I stop thinking, I have mixed feelings about how sympathetic Vic Mackey is depicted to be. After creating a character that is deeply flawed but loved by so many of its peers, it puts a lot of effort into making him likable, and he does get across as a quite nice and even honorable fellow IF ONLY you can look past a thing or two.

Like some of Dexter, the writers put Mackey in a place where much of the terrible things he does are ultimately excused, because he’s not truly a bad guy, with episodes having their own villain that is far more problematic than him, like, like, like …rapists! and child abusers!!

It does seem like that the damage Mackey does to innocents is often downplayed or minimized because they are crooks at the end of the day. Look at Mackey and how well he treats his buddies. Look at him put pressure on Michael Jace (it’s not blackmail! it’s legitimate defense) and then make up to him. Look what a good father and husband he is, as long as you don’t pay attention to his affair with Danni, and how literally Mrs Mackey dances around him to accommodate his antics.

I suspect the viewers that should be thinking hard about the terrible ramifications of Mackey’s work will be (rather, have been) exactly those who don’t or won’t take notice.

Another thing that gives me thought is how the moral grey world is hardly inhabited by any positive character. Aceveda seems more interested in putting down Mackey as a consequence of personal dislike that happens to align with his aspiration to a political career, while Dutch Wagenbach is kind of a loser with delusions of grandeur, a try-hard who thinks he’s better than anyone else, aching for a chance to show the world just how so great.

Nevertheless, this is proving entertaining, and I’m eager to see how it will develop down the line.

[Rath]

Yeah, alright then. Cheers Bob.

[LexW]

I enjoyed that Rath, thank you!

The music and Robert Picardo were definitely never the problem with VOY. Man, I even read an article recently about the actor who played Paris’ career after VOY, and it seems like he realized he was never meant to be in front of the camera, but like a lot of Trek alums, has had a good career directing TV afterwards (Frakes had a similar feeling, I understand - he kept comparing himself to Patrick Stewart and finding his own acting wanting, but has been a really fun TV director since - one of the few TV directors I’ve ever thought “Is this [director name]?” about before finding out).

Wife and I have been watching Cheer on Netflix, which is kind of fascinating and horrifying, following the top university competitive cheerleading squad in the US. As my wife pointed out, the main thing everyone has in common on the squad is no parents (either dead or gone), parents who don’t give a shit, or parents who are totally irresponsible, and the person in charge of the team is basically their surrogate mother. There’s a lot of really interesting little detail, like that the woman in charge (surprisingly young-looking and athletic herself) is very religious in an evangelical US Christian sect, but given at least half the guys on the squad, maybe more, are openly gay, manages to embrace them and defend them, by thinking of Christ’s non-judgmental attitudes (which, really, more evangelicals could stand to recall). Apparently she’s gotten into more than one argument with her pastor because of her consistent defense of them. It’s hard to see if this is natural, or a cognitive dissonance she developed to enable her even run a competitive cheerleading squad (yes, some straight guys do it, but it’s clear the superstar men are all gay, probably because to some extent they’d have been driven away from other sports for that, despite their innate athleticism but here they can be open). It’s disturbing because the stunts they’re doing are hugely risky and they’re pushed extremely hard.

I understand there’s some sort of scandal associated with one of the people on it, but waiting until I finish the show to look it up (I think I might have guessed but we’ll see).

[The_Velour_Fog]

watching the original Dr Who starting with William Hartnell, and it is incredible how much better the writing is than Nu-Who

was prepared for shoddy sets and cheesy scripts but even the cavemen are Shakespearean trained apparently

memory can be a funny thing (i grew up with Tom Baker Who) but i was very pleasantly surprised