What TV shows are you watching?

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the return of Black Mirror, the first episode of which was somewhat creepy and rather well done.

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Yeah i quite like it it has definitely turned into a modern hour long Twilight Zone, it was pretty damn good.

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Charlie Brooker is suddenly everywhere with Weekly Wipe on (it's good, not so sure about the film review section which falls a bit flat but the rest of it is up to usual excellent standards)

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I liked the first week talking about Django but the second week they were talking about Hitchcock which is a nothing movie so they can't really talk that much. Also usually 1 of the 2 gets sidelined since time is short.

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Originally Posted by Lambchops

Black Mirror, the first episode of which was somewhat creepy and rather well done.

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This one and the memory one (third episode) share a lot of things in common because other than the tech, they're not too distilled from reality. I think that really helps make it even moodier and creepier than it would ordinarily be. Anyhow, yeah, I really enjoyed it. There are some really sick and twisted things that are left unexplained that you have to fill in with in your head, for me this is specific to two things, [spoiler]that the company behind the doll/robot/things would know and accommodate sexual desire, although that's probably not as bad as the emotional reliance, and that she kept it around and let her daughter see and know it![/spoiler]

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Originally Posted by Xercies

Yeah i quite like it it has definitely turned into a modern hour long Twilight Zone, it was pretty damn good.

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Turned?! It always was! It actually irked me a little when BM first came out that people didn't realise that was the point. These weren't stories to be taken entirely seriously. Not that they necessarily could, but they're all asking the question of "What if?" Now obviously they'll hit harder because they're intentionally as close to a possible reality as possible, but the day we accept that what happens in the latest episode can enter society and be appreciated is a terrible day for humanity. From what I remember of The Twilight Zone though was the same intention - warped enough that it won't happen, but close enough that we get the point and its connection to contemporary stuffs.

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Also usually 1 of the 2 gets sidelined since time is short.

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That section is just really poorly thought out and doesn't really fit. You have his voice over everything, broken up by Doug Stanhope, but it's his voice. I don't want him to introduce these two people to prattle on for a few minutes about nothing in particular. Also, had to skip the discussion on Django because I haven't seen it yet. A shame.

Anyhow, on my own I've barrelled through season 2 of 30 Rock. I'm firmly in love with Liz Lemon. The show is so very, very, consistently good.

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Originally Posted by The JG Man

Anyhow, on my own I've barrelled through season 2 of 30 Rock. I'm firmly in love with Liz Lemon. The show is so very, very, consistently good.

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I think season 6 flags a bit but it's still better than a lot of other shows out there. Season 7 was incredibly strong and I was pretty upset when it ended. They did really well to end on such a high-note after 7 series. Very tempted to go back and watch it all again from the start and remind myself that Liz is indeed the Perfect Lady.

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There are some really sick and twisted things that are left unexplained that you have to fill in with in your head, for me this is specific to two things

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One of the things I didn't know why she didn't think of

[spoiler]Why She didn't think to send back the robot in the first place if she was that unhappy about him, even at the end its clear that she is still very unhappy about him being around, you would of thought she would of thought that these things could have been returned if it was a company doing this[/spoiler]

But yeah some really disturbing things in it, I liked the horror filmness of when the guy is first coming out of the bath really tension filled.

Well, it was only after some time that she really started noting the flaws. [Spoiler]Very possible she just uses him for sex. After all, there is no mention of another man, nor any sign of her living with anyone else apart from her daughter. I don't think you're necessarily supposed to know what she does, thus making what she could be doing all the more imaginative and twisted.[/spoiler]

Let's rewatch some Farscape. 2x18 - A Clockwork Nebari.

In which this happens;


http://www.tor.com/images/stories/bl...rk-nebari4.jpg

And the world shuddered with revulsion, because the eyes.

Oh god. I'm shuddering just looking at the thing. I love Farscape and that was a really great episode, but god damn. God damn.

In other news, I've started on season 3 of 30 Rock. It is so very, very funny.

I've never seen that part of the Farscape episode on TV and have a hard time believing they'd show it. Was quite a shock when it came up on my DVD set. And by shock I mean cradling myself at night and constantly rubbing my eyes to make sure they're not popping out.

On my blu-ray set, there's a couple of episodes that bump up the age rating of those discs. Funnily enough, they're both stories including Nebari in some way (this and the first was also in season 2, Taking The Stone, the third episode). God knows what they'd have done in season 5, considering that was supposed to be the Nebari declaring war on the Peacekeepers or something like that. When watching that episode back after about a decade of first seeing it, it did ring a bell, but I don't think it was quite as explicit.

Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome. The 90 minute HD failed TV pilot/mini-movie version that came out last week. I enjoyed it though it was the early hours of the morning and I'd drunk a lot of beer and whisky so that may be a factor. Overall, it's decent but I can see why the network cancelled it.

(Maybe minor spoilers)...

The good:
It's way better than the woeful Caprica, though that's not aiming high.

The first half. The biggest space battles BSG has done since Season 1, if you like the franchise at all then it's worth watching if just for this. They must have blown the season budget on effects for the pilot. A reminder of some of the good stuff that the early new BSG did well; at heart it's an old war movie, Aces High dog-fights, hangar deck banter, submarine command room tension.

A few great minor characters, particularly the lady commander of Osiris who deserved a whole series story of her own. Shame she was only on screen for about 10 minutes.

The pre-organic Cylon back-story stuff was fun.

The bits of the second half on the snow planet that reminded me of Mass Effect when it's good.

The so-so:
The rest of the second half.

The wrestling of a giant rubber snake from the 1980's Doctor Who props store. Oh how we chuckled.

Adama's 'I bet you can't see this coming' romance and bromance, that the script editor of Hollyoaks would have thrown out as too trite.

The casting of young Adama who seemed to have wandered in from just having failed a boy band audition. The young Eddie J Olmos would have kicked this pre-pubesecent brat crying home to mommy in the first ten minutes. In the last 5 mins there is a lame attempt to explain how the magnificent cratered face of Adama came about not from acne (this kid had a face smoother than a Johnson's baby lotion commercial) but from a few specks of battle damage. Bah.

And what is it about watching digital film (I assume that's what it is) on a big TV that sometimes makes close-up dialogue shots feel like you're watching a cheap web series or FMV from an old Wing Commander game. A shame, when they've clearly thrown a lot of time and money at it and the space battles looked great in 720p.

Blood and Chrome has been on my to-watch list for a while. It's a shame that it's not great but it makes the fact that it didn't make it to full season-hood more bearable.

I'm up to episode three of The Americans and it's proving to be pretty good. It doesn't rest on it's USPs. The 80s setting is used respectfully, without drawing undue attention to it, and the spy side of things is handled quite subtly so far. I'm very interested to see where they go with it.

Venture Brothers,funny cartoon.

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Originally Posted by The JG Man

doll/robot/things

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It's interesting that we don't really have a word in our lexicon for this, isn't it? And the show made no attempt to provide one. Much like "The Entire History of You", (and The Twilight Zone for that matter) "Be Right Back" was so effective because it kept its focus very narrow. We're not lectured the moral implications of the situation before us like in Black Mirror's first two episodes, but rather shown the local effects in one possible instance and left to decide for ourselves what they are.

I wouldn't even say the lecturing of the implications was a draw-back in the first one because it was built on that specific principal. It is certainly the weakest of the lot, although not making it bad, but I think it was a good starting point to go "Look, this is what technology is doing to us right now", albeit skewed to an extreme, whilst everything afterwards has been, "Look, this is what technology we could make could do to us". As for the second, I don't think it was so much about moral implications, but an (overly?) cynical look on society. They were present, sure, but I think they were woven in better than the first one.

That said, I don't disagree with your point and I generally much prefer it when it's left up to the viewer to make conclusions outside of the plot, or maybe come up with their own implications. It's a level of sub-text I really appreciate and it also shows that there is some faith in the audience, that we don't need to be spoon-fed.

As for your lexicon thought, if I had to push for one answer, [spoiler]I'd be more inclined to go with robot, considering its on/off features, general capabilities, power systems, memory operation, but lack of perfect copying. That with an organic shell, not dissimilar to the Terminator.[/spoiler] I don't know what else you could use that would get you closer, really.

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Originally Posted by The JG Man

As for the second, I don't think it was so much about moral implications, but an (overly?) cynical look on society. They were present, sure, but I think they were woven in better than the first one.

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I think there's some degree of morality manifest in cynicism, skewed as it may be.

I'm almost done catching up with the third season of Treme. Can't help but feel like the show is losing focus/momentum, though I might change my mind in a couple episodes' time.

The second Black Mirror of this series was excellent (once I got past the disconnect of Tyres from Spaced being in it! Actors you strongly associate with a certain role are always distracting - see also Ross Gellar in Band of Brothers!). Disturbing but excellent, I'd kind of guessed a bit of what was going on but not the full extent.

I keep seeing it referenced as being a modern day equivalent of the Twilight Zone, which has me thinking that maybe I should watch the Twilight Zone (my boss always raves about it). Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Lambchops

I keep seeing it referenced as being a modern day equivalent of the Twilight Zone, which has me thinking that maybe I should watch the Twilight Zone (my boss always raves about it). Thoughts?

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Yes. 67890

I thought the latest episode of Black Mirror started off sort of alright, but obviously events later on put it into a greater context and retroactively makes it superior. Interesting that it went for straight horror as opposed to blurred sci-fi, which episodes 2, 3 and 4 have all included. Just like the last episode, the ending throws up so many questions about the wider societal context. So much grey and grey morality. I particularly enjoyed the footage interwoven with the credits too. And once I realised it was Tyres, it was both humorous and deeply distracting.

I'm wondering if there's a theme between this set of episodes. Both this and the last have focused on stored data or data collection. I'll be intrigued to see if that holds true in the next one.

On a related note, did anyone think it was making reference to [spoiler]the Moors murders? Some of the mug shots, the area, the moral panic/pursuit of justice etc.?[/spoiler]

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I keep seeing it referenced as being a modern day equivalent of the Twilight Zone, which has me thinking that maybe I should watch the Twilight Zone (my boss always raves about it). Thoughts?

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Oh yes it pretty much is the grandaddy of TV science fiction and probably modern science fiction at that, its very well written the characters and the themes are surprising for a half hour show that needs to get a lot across in a short amount of time. Even the weaker episodes have a certain kind of atmosphere to them. M Night shyamalan has nothing on the twists. Plus it has very inventive stories I was very much inspired by the folk lore quality to it.