Category: TV


Swords, Starships, and Superheroes–Writer recounts 30 years writing for genre television

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — 1 Comment
January 18, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

For most television viewers, the names after a show scroll by without much notice.  But if you pay attention, you may find the writer of one of your favorite episodes is the writer of many of your favorites, which may point you to other series and episodes you’ve not seen yet that you may like.  You might not have heard of Paul Robert Coyle, but it’s likely that anyone who is a fan of one or more genre shows has watched the results of his work.  Or maybe you haven’t heard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Superboy, The Dead Zone, Simon & Simon, or earlier detective and police series like The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Crazy Like a Fox, Jake and the Fat Man, and CHiPs.  Coyle wrote for these series, and readers of his new book Swords, Starships, and Superheroes: A TV Writer’s Life Scripting the Stories of Heroes may find he wrote some of their favorite episodes.

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WandaVision–What’s going on here?

Filed under: Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
January 16, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

A year ago here at borg we previewed the first look at Marvel Studios’ new series WandaVision, and based on the unusual trailer we asked the question:  What audience is WandaVision aimed at?  The series at last began this weekend on Disney+ and two half-hour episodes in, I’m no closer to answering this question.  In any other time that hasn’t been sidetracked by a pandemic, audiences would have already seen the big-screen release of Black Widow by now.  The commonality is that each is a story focused on characters that have already been killed off in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  We won’t know until this summer about the prequel movie with Scarlet Johansson returning as Natasha Romanoff (killed off in Avengers: Endgame), but it is a welcome sight to see the return from the dead of Paul Bettany as cybernetic superhero Vision (killed in Avengers: Infinity War) reunited with Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch aka Wanda Maximoff in this short, nine-episode mini-series.  But here we don’t even know when it takes place in relation to the Avengers movies.

Two episodes in and you’re going to ask:  What the heck did I just watch?

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Seven’s Reckoning–A Star Trek Voyager story told like a lost episode of the TV series

Filed under: Comics & Books, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 12, 2021

   

Review by C.J. Bunce

Star Trek Voyager’s Seven of Nine takes center stage in a new limited series from IDW Publishing.  In Star Trek Voyager: Seven’s Reckoning, writer Dave Baker (Action Hospital, Star Trek: Waypoint) and artists Angel Hernandez  (Star Trek: Picard Countdown, Star Trek/Green Lantern) and Ronda Pattison have created one of those rare tie-in stories that is solidly believable as a missing episode of the TV series.  In Seven’s Reckoning, the Voyager crew encounters an alien vessel filled with a cryogenically frozen crew, which should evoke thoughts of Star Trek Into Darkness and its source story, the original series episode “Space Seed” (it also might conjure images from the Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence movie, Passengers).  As Captain Janeway and the crew attempt to assist the peoples, called the Ohrdi’Nadar, Seven lands in the middle of an uprising of the worker aliens–the Vesh–against Septa, their oppressor and leader, getting a close encounter with the Prime Directive.

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The Watch–Funny, clever, light-hearted fantasy series begins on BBC America

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, TV — Leave a comment
January 10, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

A worn-down cop that looks like Johnny Fever (from WKRP in Cincinnati) with a partner that looks like Korg (from Thor: Ragnarok) with a tough-as-nails front desk gal who evokes Janine Melnitz (from Ghostbusters), and a human adopted by a dwarf fresh off a hike to the big city (like Elf in Elf), encounter a rebel woman who wants to make a fantasy world act like our real world… with the aid of a dragon.  It’s a little bit The Librarians and very much Vagrant Queen.  And it’s filled with characters out of the Tolkien fantasy world and adapting characters from a Terry Pratchett series of novels.  It’s the light-hearted fantasy series The Watch, airing Sunday nights on BBC America in the States.  You can catch the first episodes this morning on BBC America, and the third episode tonight.

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Roadkill–Politician rises up the British political ladder in new Hugh Laurie drama

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January 9, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

We’re always on the lookout for the next great British/Irish/Scottish/UK police procedural or mystery, and the new Hugh Laurie four-part star vehicle Roadkill may not be the Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes, Hinterland or Shetland, Marchlands or Lightfields, Derry Girls, The Woman in White, Mr. Selfridge, Zen, Quirke, or Sherlock, but it’s better than most of the UK series that have made it to the small screen in the past few years.  Airing in the UK on BBC One this past Fall and first in the U.S. as part of PBS’s Masterpiece series, it is now available on Amazon and DVD (still the PBS choice platform for British productions).  A lucky show that finished production before the pandemic kicked into full force, Roadkill will be a must-see for Laurie fans, and its angle on politics and telling a politician’s personal story should be enough to keep other anglophiles interested.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina–Final season ends with a tour of the eldritch terrors

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 8, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It had a promising first and third season, twists and turns, clever story arcs, and a contender for the most faithful adaptation of a comic book series from the past decade.  The creators of the fourth and final season of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gave 2020 a much-needed batch of two complete seasons, and we already gave the third season kudos in the 2020 Best of TV review here at borg.  Kiernan Shipka proved to be one of TV’s best young actors, embodying a character that is next in line after Buffy Summers, Veronica Mars, and Liv Moore as young genre heroines who led series you can count on the first time and after re-watches.  Already a contender for one of the best TV series of this century, and one of Netflix’s most creative efforts, how did the final season fare for our heroine Sabrina Spellman?

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Revolution of the Daleks–Whittaker and Chibnall hit their stride in holiday Doctor Who episode

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 6, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s always a big surprise when the holiday episode of Doctor Who is a critical not-to-be-missed episode.  When we last saw the Doctor, she was trapped millions of light years away in an alien prison.  The New Year’s Day 2021 special Revolution of the Daleks is not a filler, out-of-continuity holiday showpiece, instead continuing after ten months have lapsed for the Doctor’s companions back on Earth, and after the Doctor has been imprisoned for years in that same relative time span.  If you missed this episode you missed: the return of John Barrowman’s universal fan-favorite character Captain Jack Harkness, another Law & Order/Law & Order UK crossover/reunion, the last we’ll see of some major characters, a new Prime Minister, a preview of a new companion, and one of the best Dalek episodes in the 57 years of the series.  As the studio releases word that Jodie Whittaker will be soon leaving the series, Revolution of the Daleks reflects that both her performance as the 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall’s running of the series has finally arrived.  It’s a timeless story full of important, lovely emotional beats, fantastic new sci-fi special and visual effects, and a return to the classic framework and themes of the show’s past.

Let’s take a look at why this episode was superb and offer up some candidates for the 14th Doctor…

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Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration–Excellent chronicle of the seven-year series arrives for 25th anniversary

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 4, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

For a fan like me, Star Trek: Voyager was the definitive Star Trek series, the crew that most fully embraced Gene Roddenberry’s vision beyond the television series he created in 1966.  It featured a crew on a ship that explored like no crew before it, with only their available technology and their wits to survive.  Helmed by Kate Mulgrew’s personable yet tough Captain Kathryn Janeway, the crew would travel 70,000 light years home after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.  The 25th anniversary of the launch of the series was 2020, and worthy of the celebration, authors Ben Robinson and Mark Wright have created the definitive behind the scenes account of the 1995-2001 series, Star Trek: Voyager–A Celebration, available now here at Amazon.

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Preview–Disney Parks cookbook–100 recipes to re-create flavors from theme parks

Filed under: Comics & Books, Con Culture, Movies, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 3, 2021

Even if you haven’t visited Disney World or Disneyland, odds are you heard someone rave about Dole Whip, a frozen dessert that seems to have made converts of millions across the country.  Now you can make your own Dole Whip at home, and 100 other recipes replicating the foods you can buy at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and other locations in The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook, available now here at Amazon.

Check out our look inside  The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook below, including the recipe for Dole Whip, courtesy of publisher Adams Media:

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Vikings–Final episodes of Michael Hirst’s epic series cinch one of television’s finest uses of the medium

Filed under: Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, TV — Leave a comment
January 2, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Deceit, betrayal, glory, destiny.  

At one level the back half of the 89 hours of History Channel’s Vikings series had two key components that kept viewers coming back week after week: the next scene always was completely and terrifically unpredictable, and each increase in stakes for your favorite character was just plain nail-biting.  Like walking a tightrope, at any point every character–no matter how great or small–might get wiped away.  Creator and writer Michael Hirst plucked cultural bits of Norse history and intertwined them with the written histories and mythology of historical figures to make something riveting, compelling, and permanent–the spirit of a historical saga that Viking descendants can be proud of, while also meeting the needs of fantasy viewers for the next swordplay action-adventure.  Primarily a denouement for the long six season run, the final ten episodes have arrived on Amazon Prime, with History Channel to air them at a later date.

The reach of the Norse influence, the survival of the Lothbrok line, the direction of early England and Russia.  It all intersects here.  Does the end measure up to the rest of the series?

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