Post: #126

Well, yes, but I meant Fredric Brown.

That said, I do need to read PKD as well. I've put it off because friends who have done so say his writing is terrible, and that he's that rare author whose adaptations are far better than his originals.

Post: #127

(10-09-2017 11:48 PM)Alsos Wrote:  Well, yes, but I meant Fredric Brown.

That said, I do need to read PKD as well. I've put it off because friends who have done so say his writing is terrible, and that he's that rare author whose adaptations are far better than his originals.

They're right. The concepts were more interesting than the stories he wrote, probably in part because he was high on amphetamines while writing just about every single one of them.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #128

I just finished watching season 1. And I don't understand why some of you guys are so positive about it.



Let me start with the good:
The part of the story regarding the politics and power strugle in the 3rd reich, and how it connects NY characters with Berlin.
Visually speaking good quality.
Some of the details are interesting and almost tongue in cheek, for instance I like the idea that the Nazis have "Concorde" supersonic planes, in reality a Franco-British plane. Also, Japanese gaining nuclear knowledge by way of micro films with copied blue prints (just like the Russians gained crucial information that created sort of a nuclear equilibrium).
If I'd have to choose a favorite part that happens in SF (that isn't directly linked with Berlin) I'd have to pick the art dealer and how his perspective changes on the Japanese.


Neutral:
Whatever happened in the Neutral Zone


Bad:
Pretty much everything that happens in San Francisco except the last minute (don't wanna spoiler) and the Nazi being the attempted assasin of the crown-prince (which has more to do with Berlin power strugle and a desire for war among some of the Nazi higher echelon).
The resistance.




Really bad:
The Frank - Juliana - Joe love triangle is basically a soap opera.
Half of it can be re-edited into a new series called the Juliana Crane "adventures". No, I'm not complaining about a woman being a main character that gets that much screen time, it's the writing that's just bad (mainly once she's back from the neutral zone).
Frank's character arch.

Post: #129

From my recollection it required getting through over half of season 1 before it started getting interesting and/or enjoyable.

AB's comment about the neutral zone Marshall belonging in a different, "much stupider" show was spot on.

As well as the general observation that these millennial male actors have a hard time portraying characters from other eras with any convincing masculinity.

Post: #130

Just shut up and watch season 2.

The Japs, the Nazis, the chicks, they are all better in season 2.

If you cared enough to make a post about season 1, you will be happy after 10 more episodes.

Trust me.

Especially the Japanese. Bad mother fuckers. And the Nazis back in Germany. Whoa.

Post: #131

Haven't watched the show; was reading the book but I got busy and tapped out on it around the 90-page mark when nothing much had happened. Kind of like Dune.

Will try again later.

Post: #132

(11-06-2017 02:23 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  From my recollection it required getting through over half of season 1 before it started getting interesting and/or enjoyable.

AB's comment about the neutral zone Marshall belonging in a different, "much stupider" show was spot on.

As well as the general observation that these millennial male actors have a hard time portraying characters from other eras with any convincing masculinity.

Quote:Just shut up and watch season 2.

The Japs, the Nazis, the chicks, they are all better in season 2.

If you cared enough to make a post about season 1, you will be happy after 10 more episodes.

Trust me.

Especially the Japanese. Bad mother fuckers. And the Nazis back in Germany. Whoa.

That's kind of what I needed to hear. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered watching season 2.

Post: #133

In season 1, once you get out of the Neutral Zone, it gets better quickly.

Season 2 rapidly gets better from there.

I like it because it's what SF is supposed to be: an exploration of ideas. Despite its flaws (and yes, the love triangle was annoying - in Season 2 they're all separated completely, solving that problem), each episode has something that makes you think: about what-ifs, what-does-that-means, how-does-that-fits, and what-does-that-say-about-Xs. Plus, knowing a bit about that era, there's an anticipation factor in seeing just what tweaked real historical detail they'll drop in next (the Saturn V toy advertisement on the comic book, for example, or LSD, or Atlantropa). If you watch closely, the attention to detail is sometimes incredible.

Plus, unlike the recent Trek and Star Wars offerings, it actually assumes the audience is intelligent enough to understand and get those references, allusions, inclusions, and ideas. And unlike nearly all mainstream SF nowadays, it actually has the courage to present who you would expect be the villain in a sympathetic light - so much so that his arc is by far the most interesting one in the show. In the current SJW/PC climate, that fact astonishes me.

Post: #134

So far season 3 sucks ass. Julianna is the smuggest cunt I've ever seen.

Post: #135

^^ Well that's fucking disappointing, I really liked the first 2 seasons

Post: #136

Binge-watched season 3 this weekend. Came away vaguely disappointed, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Some random thoughts (POTENTIAL SPOILERS):
- I thought they handled the "Nebenwelt" stuff well. You knew all through what it was building up to, but then how it played out (and the little zinger about the travelers right at the end) was nicely done.
- I didn't expect the bathroom scene. "Wait...she...what?!"
- Everybody seemed fatter. Particularly Helen Smith and Joe Blake.
- The fascination-with-evil elements re: the John Smith and Kido characters are wearing a little thin. Much as I like both, Kido even with his character arc this season seems unrealistically brutal and sadistic. Smith...I don't know. There was something off about his portrayal this season.
- This season seems to have been produced by Joss Whedon, given a major character seems to die in each episode.
- Is it wrong that I cheered the last scene with Kido and Frank...?
- The gay. Raeder wasn't the only one beat over the head this season. Jeez. (Though I did get a chuckle over the irony of the gays feeling more free once they got out of San Francisco.)
- Too much "fuck". When Julianna first said it, it was jarringly out-of-place. May have been used in the previous seasons, but once I noticed it I kept noticing it as something anachronistic to the period.
- It took me a full episode before it dawned on me who George and Edgar were. I liked the fact that it was just sort of assumed the audience would pick it up.
- The Liberty Bell and Statue of Liberty scenes were nowhere near as outrageous as in the trailer. The trailer actually made me mad, but in the episodes those scenes were watered down by the context.
- I was dreading based on the trailers that this season would be a bunch of peace-train war-protest Boomer nostalgia. What the trailers lead you to expect is not at all what is delivered - the episodes are of a piece with previous seasons, there's no re-stitching of flags into the Mercedes logo/death rune, and thankfully, barely one protest march (and that against oil shortages).
- The oil embargo thread seemed thrown together and poorly explained.

Overall, it felt like half a season compared to the last two, and a little superficial by comparison.

Post: #137

They spent 5 episodes on epilogue for the events of the last 2 episodes of season two.

Should have wrapped that up in one episode max.

There was a ton of padding. They even brought a character back from the dead so they could kill him again.

When stuff finally started happening, it was good. But the whole season should have been like that.

Season 2 is still really good.

Post: #138

Interesting thought: a certain person traveled who was previously shown in "native instance" in our timeline. If that person is shown in a different timeline in future episodes, it will necessarily be one we haven't seen before. (One without WWII at all would be a bold direction to take - what would such a world look like?)

Add to the above that the whole Thomas Smith thing dragged on way too long as well, but I liked where they went with it: his story gradually morphing from a tragedy to a morality play to a legend to apotheosis. The Smiths' reactions to it all in the context of their constrained situation were handled well, too.

And was it me, or was this season really, really bloody? As in, over-the-top squirting-ketchup effects.

Post: #139

Watched the 4th episode yesterday and seems I will avoid this thread till the end as most people probably will put spoilers here. I just want to say that biggest takeaway from this season I have seen some far is the "gay story arc" and lots of violence. It's if they are relaying on violence as a shock factor where in previous seasons they did it with plot and of course gay agenda is here from our usual suspects for usual reasons.

Post: #140

Why the fuck won't this show come out on Blu-Ray/DVD!? I've been wanting to watch it for ages thinking it would come out eventually but it's not. I'm too stingy to fork out for Amazon Prime or whatever it's on as I already have Netflix.

Post: #141

This is only on Amazon or other platforms have it too?

Post: #142

(11-06-2017 10:31 PM)Alsos Wrote:  Plus, unlike the recent Trek and Star Wars offerings, it actually assumes the audience is intelligent enough to understand and get those references, allusions, inclusions, and ideas. And unlike nearly all mainstream SF nowadays, it actually has the courage to present who you would expect be the villain in a sympathetic light - so much so that his arc is by far the most interesting one in the show. In the current SJW/PC climate, that fact astonishes me.

Nailed it, I think the last time I found a sci-fi as good as it was the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. In terms of ideas and themes anyway.

Post: #143

Resurrecting this thread, as I figure by now anyone who was interested in watching the latest season has done so and won't mind spoilers.

The good: The John Smith arc continues to be interesting, especially his dethroning of George Lincoln Rockwell and the fact that he's apparently being groomed and guided by Himmler personally. The Hawthorne Abendson arc heated up towards the end, and some interesting things are revealed about the source of the films and how the parallel histories work. VTOL airplanes. Kido remained enjoyably menacing. The arc following Helen's murder of Alice, which unlike most situations involving primary characters in a TV series, you were never quite sure how it was going to play out. I half expected Smith was going to have her suicided to protect himself and the children. Best part of the season: Frank gets killed at the end. (Was I wrong to cheer that scene? Man, I despise that character.) Rockwell as a character, and his ultimate fate (didn't see that squirm-inducing situation nor its climax coming at all). Hoover's portrayal was enjoyably slimy and weasely, whether or not it was fair to the historical figure.

The neutral: My second-favorite character, Tagomi, was underutilized this season apart from a bad-ass takedown of a couple of Nazi assassins and despite a good bit of screen time. The new Irish character from the Neutral Zone starts out as a cliche, then comes into his own after the raid on the coal mine when he uses his network to distribute the film, then out of nowhere he pulls a 'Day of the Jackal' (the book version, except he both succeeds and gets away), which seemed implausible since we'd been shown nothing (that I recall now) to establish that he had that specialized skill set or that any preparations for the hit had been made beforehand. On the other hand, they did show Julianna learning to fire a handgun, but of course she was being taught by a woman. It took me three episodes to figure out the two characters were actually Rockwell and Hoover - I liked their inclusion, but their introduction at the memorial service should have been a little clearer (they were just George and Edgar).

The bad (about 2/3s of the season): Ed's gay. Nicole's bi. Hoover's gay. The propaganda lady's a lesbian. Her husband is gay. Rockwell's...who knows what. Jeebus, Helen, cut back on the strudel already. Frank survived the bombing at the end of Season 2, now with yet more to whine about. That flushing sound in the bathroom was Joe's entire character arc. Brokeback Neutral Zone. Nazis kill Jews, we get it, let's explore some of the story's novel elements, hey? You can see Julianna gradually morphing into a standard-issue bad-ass girl-character. Ed's gay? Really? I hadn't noticed on the dozen or so occasions he hoovered Jack's tongue, totally missed that. Frank's no Sabo. Ed's gay, yet again. Alternate-reality lesbians are less cant-addled and butch than ours, but vaguely creepier. More gay Ed. Gestapo raid! Looks like Nazis hate the gays as well as the Jews. Mengele was a missed opportunity, while Raeder was completely thrown away. Childan betrays Frank to his death, and can't not realize it later, but doesn't seem to react to it at all - is he a sociopath or is it just lousy writing? Doesn't matter that Kido beheaded Frank, you just know that that twat will be back in the next season. Helen's female solipsism overriding her survival instinct and the welfare of her family may be a surprisingly realistic portrayal normally, but in that context "I'm not haaaaaaaappppppyyy!" is laughably and jarringly implausible. Oh, and by the way, Ed's gay.