What TV Shows Are You Watching?

The first two episodes of Star Trek Discovery were excellent. CBS’s streaming service is bullshit. Hopefully the company comes to its senses, but if it doesn’t, I will be pirating the show.

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Here in Germany it just turned up on our Netflix home screen so we just pressed play. W quite enjoyed the first episode but didnt have time for episode two or else we would have watched it right away.

This is the one time where the rest of the world benefits from the opposite of “media not available in your region”!

Yeah, in literally every country except the US and Canada, it’s on Netflix.

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All our non-US forum goers are really enjoying shoving this region locking in our faces for once :slight_smile:

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Watched the first episode of Electric Dreams. Looks like the format is one Philip K Dick short story per ep. First ep was well paced, didn’t drag, didn’t race, used the medium well to pack a lot into the time frame.

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The Expanse Season 2 finally turned up on Netflix here in Germany so we started in again. I just got up to episode 5.

The show gets REALLY good. Episode 5 is the point where the story started in Season 1 really ends, with the culmination of the action and characters matching what happens at the end of the first book in the series. So my complaint about the weak ending of Season 1 is really just that they stopped after the wrong episode. Treat the Season 1 storyline as reaching up to S2E5.

A few things:

The extra money spent on this season is seriously noticeable in terms of effects and sets and direction and everything. I’m really pleased it got the cash injection it needed to do the story and action justice.

The acting in the season opener wasn’t all that good, but the new characters quickly find their feet. Also Miller becomes a bit more interesting, mainly because he’s freed up slightly from what was written about him in the book.

I love the fact that the science and physics in the show is kept as real to life as possible. There are some major exceptions though, of course, like gravity in ships and noise in space, both of which I’m totally fine with. They are movie/TV shortcuts to easier filming and more immersive action. Good.

More importantly, because physics exists in the universe, things like time and space and fuel and inertia matter! The action depends on the speed of light not giving different factions time to talk things out. Contrast this to the latest Star Trek Mind-Meld-Across-1000-Light-Years immediate communications bullshit. It’s also important for making things interesting when something starts breaking the humans’ understanding of physics. It becomes meaningful.

Just the scene where and old couple are saying goodbyes, but having to talk from the Moon to the Earth and deal with the two second radio delay. It was amazing! It was the first of two times I cried during that episode. Sure, I was watching on a plane, and probably suffering from AALS (Altitude Adjusted Lachrymosity Syndrome), but I don’t remember crying twice during any single TV episode before.

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Passed the Spigot threshold.

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while the gravity isn’t always hard and fast to physics on the show, they do make some flubs and exceptions; the canon reason they have gravity on the ships is the efficient fusion drives allow constant acceleration or deceleration for the entire journey which allows the ships to maintain various levels of G load. So while that level of efficiency isn’t possible for most regimes, at least the people on the floor as long as the engines are firing is legit.

Noise tho, yeah.

The Battletech Universe did that with Dropships. So most of the ships in the Battletech Universe were arranged like buildings with rockets on the bottom floor

They had ships that also resembled airplanes, but they were generally smaller Military Dropships where the crew and cargo were strapped down for the flight.

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I haven’t been watching the Expanse because I like the way the book characters look in my head, but I am glad that it seems like a good show.

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I’m about halfway through the second season of Into the Badlands. To be honest, this show isn’t great by any means. The acting is so incredibly over-the-top and almost laughably bad in some cases. What keeps pulling me back to the show are the fight scenes and the amazing martial arts choreography.

I don’t understand how this show can have such amazingly good fight scenes yet Netflix’s Iron Fist has such terrible fights.

Was it the same fight choreographer? Also, not all actors can pull off pretend fighting as well as others.

No, it wasn’t the same fight choreographer, I’m sorry for any confusion on that. My point was that both shows are centered around martial arts. As a result, you would expect both of them to have passable fight choreography. While I have no idea what the budget for Into the Badlands is, AMC is one of the top-tier cable channels outside of the subscription ones. You’d think if Into the Badlands could afford good fight choreography, than so could Iron Fist, which is on Netflix and probably has a decent sized budget.

As to your second point, if you hire an actor that can’t pull off pretend fighting, get a competent stunt double. Daredevil does this, why can’t Iron Fist?

Daredevil has a mask. Easy to stick in a stunt double.

I didn’t watch enough episodes of Iron Fist to see any of the fight scenes, good or bad, but I guess his face is more visible?

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Iron Fist should be wearing a mask as well, but for whatever reason, the show hasn’t put him in his traditional costume.

Problem solved.

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I skipped over the Iron Fist series and went straight to the Defenders show. I thought his fighting was passable. I didn’t care for the character though he is kind of a naive idiot. He also could power up only one fist and not both like your image shows.

Started watching Frontier, in that I saw the first episode on a transatlantic flight with nothing better to do. But I’ve been home for almost 2 weeks now and I have yet any desire to go back to it.

It has some things going for it but I’ve seen the period done better, don’t care about anyone, no one seems to have any motivations except the obvious bad guy who has a generically bad motivation, the enforcer bad guy is just a tool who has no sympathetic traits or potential for redemption that I could care about, nor does he seen like a viable threat.

There isn’t one character that I wanted to see more of, so I wont.

I would not recommend watching Iron Fist, unless you’re a Marvel Netflix completionist. Saying that Finn Jones fighting in both Iron Fist and the Defenders was “passable” is being very generous in my opinion. I don’t even want to get started about how unlikable Danny Rand is in both Iron Fist and the Defenders.

Concerning him being able to use his power in both hands, at least one time in the Iron Fist show, he powers up both fists. @Cremlian might be able to back me up on this. He doesn’t do this at all in the Defenders. In general, for a character named “Iron Fist,” Danny Rand rarely uses his power in either the Iron Fist show or the Defenders.

They don’t put Danny Rand in it, but they do have a brief moment of a previous iron fist in a very similar costume. Doesn’t really count, but it is there.

Nah, I think you’re thinking of the aforementioned previous iron fist. Danny’s better superhero detector never lights up on both hands, only the old iron fist we see for like 20 seconds in a video has it.

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The one that smartly stayed and finished his training instead of running away after eating the heart of a dragon ;-p

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