Television

I got to watch the movie 'Network" go from cutting edge satire to staid docudrama in real time.

Outside the show, it's not even known whether Spartan IIs have skin below the neck, let alone genitals. Things from Halo are just shoehorned into an unrelated story, which is thought by some to have started out as an adaptation of Mass Effect. Commander Shepherd definitely has skin and genitals in the games, and isn't afraid to use them.

Halo was something that shouldn't have happened, the writers admitted they wanted their own story unrelated to Halo.

In a slight defense of Rings of Power, I don't think the lore "problems" are really a big deal. It had to not follow the Silmarillion for legal reasons. As someone who hasn't digested that "book" the lore parts seem ok. The problem is most the writing still sucks and has many problems that are more substantial than that's not what Tolkien said in the book that can't be named. Also the weirdly cheap appearance is totally accurate. I think there's also a lot of merit to the rumors much of the writing and props were originally intended for a dragon age adaptation.

Seconded. It was just such an enormous pile of shit from the first episode.

Edit: felt like it was worth mentioning that I've read all the books multiple times, and love them. I just hate what they did to the characters.

While watching season 1 as it was airing a friend bright up the two time periods theory and that the the Man in Black and William are the same.

I said I didn't think it was true because It would remove the narrative anchor they had built the show around. There wouldn't be any thing to keep audiences emotionally invested in the plots that are going on.

It turns out we were both right.

I loved the 1st two seasons! Although season 1 was far better. Season 3 I have vague memories of and season 4 I gave up. They never should have left the park, that was the best bit.

Picard lost me the moment they had a scene where a bunch of down on their luck blue collar workers were complaining about shitty rations and being forced to work on a holiday.

WHAT PART OF POST-SCARCITY LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNIST UTOPIA DID YOU INBRED FUCKING DOGSHIT FOR BRAINS MORONS NOT GRASP?

I swear to god, Picard is a Star Trek show written by people who have apparently never watched a single episode of Star Trek in their entire lives. Unbelievably poor grasp of the basic concepts of the setting, and of Roddenberry's core thesis. And it's not like you can't make Star Trek grimy if you want to. Deep Space Nine did it frequently, playing with concepts of liberty vs security and so on. But the writers of Picard were just too lazy to engage with the core ideas of the setting and instead just wrote a bunch of generic, broadly science fiction filler and then slapped the Star Trek logo on it.

Discovery I feel more kindly towards, even though it was also terrible. It at least makes some kind of an effort to be Star Trek, which automatically puts it above Picard, but god that is such a low bar. It still has the same basic problem of being written by people who seem to be deeply embarassed about the idea of writing Star Trek. They had to go in and try to retcon in a bunch of crazy tech, rewrite huge parts of the setting, throw out everything about the Klingons and start from scratch, all out of some kind of weird hatred for the universe in which they were telling stories. Also, dear god it was just incredibly slow and dull. Some of the worse pacing I've ever seen.

Thank the lord almighty for Strange New Worlds. If you're soured on all the new Trek and skipped it because you were worried about it being more of the same, holy fucking shit go watch it now! Strange New Worlds is perfect. It's a Star Trek show written by people who absolutely adore Star Trek. It's a love letter - a love anthem - to the original series. And it manages to somehow find an unearthly balance between being one of the most campy and fun takes on Star Trek, and one of the darkest and scariest. There's a musical episode, and there's an episode that's basically "What if the plot of Aliens happened on the Enterprise?" and somehow both of them fit in the same show perfectly. Also, THE KLINGONS ARE FUN AGAIN! They're loud and boisterous and drink blood wine and yell "Qapla" while they headbutt each other and it's fucking great.

What good ideas? There were none.

I want them to dump all the current mythology and go back to the basic concept; 500 humans and aliens on a ship designed for research and military purposes. No Vulcans, or Klingons. No six foot tall aliens with five fingers and funny ears. Aliens that look alien.

Idk what it is about modern TV but it's like it's like everything made in the Streaming Era is like this. I have trouble putting my finger on it. Even good shows coming out right now like White Lotus seem like they're a bit dumbed down compared to "prestige television" of the past. It's also like the later seasons of Game of Thrones vs. the early seasons. I know a lot of that is running out of source material and having to rely on their own (bad) creativity but I do wonder if part of it is something to do with the format of streaming or maybe even the impact social media and smart phones have had on our attention spans. It's like shows are designed with the fact that you're going to be watching with a phone in your hand scrolling Instagram and only half paying attention in mind. Even Better Call Saul vs. Breaking Bad, it's like everything is a comedy, nothing can be too serious, and everything is just a bit dumber. Idk.

God I found foundation so frustrating to watch, the only characters I liked were the emperors. Everyone else was stupid and insufferable. Such a shame as the books are so so good

I considered reading the books before the series came out, and I’m really glad that I did didn’t. As a result, I fully enjoyed the show.

Didnt even know it was out, burnt out the story trying to keep it going.

It could have been a great 1 season of a closed story. They could have continued by looking into the conseqeunces of that story.

Hell it could have been an anthology series with the name being groups across time and space finding themselves in odd senarios.

I feel the same! Season one was so good. The second I didn't really like but it was still ok. This season feels like it's gone off the rails. But I love Misty and Walter

That was some serious shitshow indeed. The director completely focused on the first episode and a very few parts on the other ones. When they were rushed, they sub-hired some Korean studios, and in the end even cheaper Chinese ones, if I recall correctly. I think the result speaks for itself. An absolute disaster.

What's really surprising is how once piece ended up being pretty good, after all the garbage adaptations.

It's pretty amazing how out of touch Netflix can be

Oof. Yeah, that one really hits. Great start, then creative differences collapsed the whole endeavour and it just went to shit.

And it's not like I can even recommend the book anymore given, well... y'know.

Just a fucking mountain of disappointments on disappointments.