For those who don’t have Paramount Plus, the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is available on YouTube for free and is embedded below.
While Captain Pike, Spock and Number One along with the Enterprise were introduced in the second season of Discovery, you don’t need to have watched those episode to enjoy this episode. Would it help? Sure. Second season of Discovery is when they started rightening the ship so to speak. And there’s an episode or two in there that covers Pike’s accident that was mentioned in the original series episode, The Cage.
The first two episodes I’ve seen has got the Star Trek: TOS-vibe down (minus the sexism from the 1960’s Television Standards & Practices) and is family friendly so if you were turned off by Discovery, you’ll find the tone of SNW to your liking.
The video below is the pilot for Mr Robot in it’s entirety, is completely legal and should be watched since it’s a good pilot.
Mr Robot stars Rami Malek as Elliot, a cyber-security expert by day and by night he’s trying to keep his demons at bay. Demons like men following him that may or may not be real according to his shrink, Krista Gordon played by Gloria Ruben. Krista’s problems are just one of many plot lines in the pilot. The majority of the pilot concerns Elliot’s company providing cyber security for a company with the same icon as Enron and for the rest of the pilot is known as Evil Corp. Elliot knows a lot about people but can’t really interact with them as well as he should until one day during a emergency at work he finds a file that leads him to one of his demons, Mr Robot, played by Christian Slater. Mr Robot leads him down the rabbit hole about the secret war between his group and Evil Corp. I found Mr Robot to be a very good show. The hacking isn’t Hollywood it looks real enough. It has good direction and the characters were well rounded and hopefully Christian Slater will get a show that can last more than a season. This is his second espionage show after Breaking In and Mind Games. With the exception of guest staring on Archer he’s starting to become the male version of Summer Glau: television series kryptonite. My minor quibble I had with it was trying to figure out why this isn’t The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo TV show. The English adaptation of the movie was perfect even if it didn’t do bang at the box office. Translating the concept of a bi-sexual, woman white hat hacker sticking it to the man doesn’t take much. Replacing Sweden with New York or San Fransisco isn’t that far of a stretch, either. Mr Robot will be debuting on USA on 6/24 and so long as it can keep it’s production quality high it shouldn’t have any problems lasting a few seasons.
“On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered. The Question is just “Doctor Who?”” So the big news of the weekend is BBC and BBC America will be doing a live show to announce the actor playing the twelfth Doctor. At 2pm ET we will know who takes over Matt Smith’s shoes! My mother is happier than the rest of you, trust me. Everyone else remember four years ago when we just got a picture? Like this one? Don’t get me wrong I love the fact that BBC/BBC America’s advertising machine has gotten up the speed. I’m wondering if we’re reaching Apple Keynote levels of hysteria. Or is Hall H without the lines? It should come as no surprise the Doctor has a randomizer, er, reality distortion field. The Time Lord’s golden handcuffs are tighter than most, I fear. Having nothing to do with the actor/actress but more to do with the writers and the fact this is still considered a children’s show. When this new season, the new Doctor and the writing staff debut I’m going to give them a chance but if this next season turns out like last season then we got problems. Having seen Matt Smith twice during The Nerdist’s SDCC Podcast he seemed to have his feet on the ground. He was the nicest to people from recording someone’s marriage proposal to donating to a fan who had had her wallet and bags stolen. As Smith’s era comes to a close I think his seasons flowed better than the end of Tennant’s even if I liked Tennant’s portrayal more than Smith’s. Tennant’s truncated final season was okay with the season finale making up for it. It’s a pity his era didn’t get the advertising push Smith’s is receiving right now. Here’s hoping the next regeneration goes smoother than fan reaction when the 50th Anniversary Trailer was not released after SDCC.
The lead up to Comic Con begins with the mad rush for tickets. This sounds really easy but it’s become more like getting Red Sox tickets. The hotel reservations is ten times worse and looking at places on VRBO is easier. Then reselling unused tickets which ends with the scheduling being dolled out two weeks before the con. Over the years the convention website has gotten considerably more detailed and easier to use. They even started allowing pre-ordering of t-shirts so no more lines like the ones I complained about in 2011. The introduction of My Schedule through sched.com is one of the better additions to the con. No more dogeared newspaper pages looking for panels! It’s all at your finger tips on your tablet or smart phone! Unfortunately, that’s if the SDCC Comic-Con and the SDCC Comic-Con Sched App were updated. In this day and age you live and die by the app. Neither of which have been updated in a dog’s age. Something I hope was just overlooked but with a week to go it’s looking like we won’t be seeing a proper working SDCC App with sched.com integration until 2014. And then there’s the giant elephant in the room that Emerald City Comic Con is streaming their panels through FlipOn Stream it and they will pay. So let’s take a look at things going on after the cut.
Well, the good news is, this episode is nowhere near as bad as Victory of the Daleks. Sure, the Skittle Daleks show up but the old school Daleks outnumber them about a billion to one. It does not declaw the Daleks and instead it gives up a little peek into the Dalek’s closet to see how far Dalek’s science has evolved. Let’s recap, when we last left our heroes, ya know what, let’s ignore Season 6 because it makes my head hurt and I think I’ve complained enough. The Daleks return in grand form to where it all started: Skarro. Ever so brief, the Doctor appears from his self imposed exile to help someone in need, but it’s all a ruse for the pepper shakers of doom to capture their predator. Meanwhile, for those who missed Pond Life, Rory and Amy have settled down and stopped traveling with the Doctor even if elements are moving through their lives like the Ood Butler until things come to a point and it appears things are on the rocks for the Ponds, the plot line established towards the end of last season with Amy becoming a model comes back until the Daleks capture the Ponds, kidnap them onboard one of their ships and bring the Doctor, Amy and Rory to the Asylum of the Daleks. It is here where they want the Doctor and Co to find out why there’s a signal coming the shielded planet, a planet where there should be only Dalek life and instead, classic music is playing. The classic music is coming from Oswin played by Jenna-Louise Coleman of a ship called Alaska. Alaska crashed and she is the sole survivor. But once the Doctor and Co. land on planet they find everything is not what it seems. The Daleks have created a field to change any human survivors into Daleks and begins with an eye stalk coming out of people’s heads. I imagine the cos-players are already designing their stalks now. The episode on a whole actually made the pepper shakers of doomer scarier and slightly more comedic in spots. Polished and shiny enemies is one thing, when your enemies have taken a few licks and battle damaged then chained up and left alone to their own devices for years it reminds you why we love them so much. They are fracking creepy. I’m going to keep this review lighter than most due to several spoilers. I enjoyed the Oswin’s arc better than most of the one off characters, she came across as believable for the amount of time she was on screen. Unlike last year’s over arching plot, this episode was mostly free of foreshadowing, not counting the situation with the Ponds until they they come to an end in four episodes. The one and only problem I had was the lazy CGI at the end with the rockets. Givin’ it three regenerations out of four.
