Jett Reno returns!
Discovery‘s season finale takes place later this week. We’ve watched some of the strongest moments in recent episodes, and also a few significant stumbles. The last two seasons have been the show Discovery should have been from the start, but the current arc has proved a positive and a negative, for reasons I shall opine on below.
We hope to hear your opinions, too. With the exception of Enterprise, few Trek series have divided fans more.
Discovery has returned, bringing its characters into an extremely dangerous situation.
(Hey, it takes effort to write a clickbait headline that’s inaccurate even by internet standards)
We do have some Newspace stories, including a record-setting breakthrough in the field of practical fusion power at the Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK.
Neanderthals and more, below:
“My name is Lamia. What fun we’re going to have today!”
Raised by Wolves returns, as the most problematic survivors of earth’s apparent destruction deal with internal and external conflicts and whatever challenge #7 presents.
The Expanse leaves the airways and it also leaves a number of plot threads resolved, at least outside of the novels.*
Three months have passed since the end of season one, and Clark still can’t get a shave. Meanwhile, John Henry Irons tries to bond with his daughter, Lois is distant and irritable, Superman isn’t getting along with the DOD, and the drama amongst the world’s oldest fifteen-year-olds has been turned up to Riverdale2 (while their antics remain CW-PG).
The Eisner-award-winning, fan-lauded comic series finally came to its definitive conclusion and a complete, full-colour collection, clocking in a 800 or so pages, became available in October of last year. This year, Amazon will present the first season of its TV adaptation. We offer it as a special New Year’s review.
In 1988, a group of 12-year-old bike-riding paper carriers in a small-town-seeming suburb of Cleveland encounter an SF mystery that will send them careening through time and space.
Note: Paper Girls started publication a year before anyone heard of Stranger Things.
…for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst.
–Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Chapter One
(trans. J.J. Graham)
“Here we are, still trying to kill our way to a better tomorrow.”
–James Holden, “Redoubt.”
Earth and Mars take the war to Marco Inaros, Holden makes a controversial decision that stirs dissent among his crew, and Drummer issues a challenge.
We can only hope that 2022 takes a turn for the better. Meanwhile, SF and Fantasy is coming repeatedly to a screen near you. We have a list of some of the new shows and movies you might want to watch in the next twelve months:
(Subject to frequent updates as new series come to my attention. Did I miss any?)
We’re only getting to the Disney+ Marvel shows now, and we decided to start with the “Christmas one.” Short version: the acting and production are solid, the leads have great chemistry, the story keeps moving, and it features a killer holiday soundtrack.
If you want a more detailed review, read on. You will encounter some minor spoilers, though I’ve avoided the more serious ones.