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Post by Prometheus59650 on Nov 21, 2023 18:45:43 GMT
Caught the first three of this Lena Heady sci-fi series on MGM+.
Behr produced, a decent start, and a lovely DS9 callback in Ep 3.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Nov 29, 2023 14:03:31 GMT
SPOILERS SPOILERS
I really like it so far. So much that they succeed in making me subscribe to MGM+. I watch the four episodes they have up so far and I am engaged by the story and the acting. In my humble opinion this is going to be a reflection on AI and what is the meaning of remaining human. My only qualm is my usual (guy in his 50's) qualm with the current state of storytelling in the streaming age: character development seems rushed. Today every content producer want quantity for easy, fast consumption and some stories that ask for more meat in their bones ends up being too lean. For example: on the 3rd episode they introduce the character Coley to have her killed off in the same episode. The dynamic and the background provided as Aster former lover was awesome and deep, and yet one feels cheated of what could have been a more permanent character with a deeper mark on the plot.
Dabo table on the casino!!!! Ahhh, lovely. 
I am staying.
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Nov 29, 2023 17:03:57 GMT
SPOILERS SPOILERS
I really like it so far. So much that they succeed in making me subscribe to MGM+. I watch the four episodes they have up so far and I am engaged by the story and the acting. In my humble opinion this is going to be a reflection on AI and what is the meaning of remaining human. My only qualm is my usual (guy in his 50's) qualm with the current state of storytelling in the streaming age: character development seems rushed. Today every content producer want quantity for easy, fast consumption and some stories that ask for more meat in their bones ends up being too lean. For example: on the 3rd episode they introduce the character Coley to have her killed off in the same episode. The dynamic and the background provided as Aster former lover was awesome and deep, and yet one feels cheated of what could have been a more permanent character with a deeper mark on the plot.
Dabo table on the casino!!!! Ahhh, lovely. I am staying.
It's more glaring a thing in a show like B23. In a big, ensemble thing like Picard, I don't like that, but I understand it inasmuch as "There are plot points that are more important to us, and there are so many people here, so we gotta plow that train into the station. But B23 is a small show with a small cast. It's a bottle show, and, when it comes to "The Artifact," no one seems to be in a rush to find it or do anything with it. As such, it really feels like there's TIME to draw some of these things out and give them heft. I'm increasingly of the belief that it's a symptom of 2023's need to give rapid hits of dopamine through phones and electronics, so "something happens--no digesting that event---something else happens--- etc. |
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Post by Garak Nephew on Dec 13, 2023 0:38:53 GMT
Ep 6 was really good. Almost tap into something unique. The incorporation of the artifact plotline and how it amplifies the dimensions and type of a character (Aster) was smooth and engaging. And the little things scattered here and there; Barth playing with the girl, the weird psychology between the girl and her mom, the commentary on social classes, a kind of general "humaness" (I don't know how to call) of it all. It was a sharp episode, lets see if they can keep it up.
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Dec 13, 2023 17:09:23 GMT
Ep 6 was really good. Almost tap into something unique. The incorporation of the artifact plotline and how it amplifies the dimensions and type of a character (Aster) was smooth and engaging. And the little things scattered here and there; Barth playing with the girl, the weird psychology between the girl and her mom, the commentary on social classes, a kind of general "humaness" (I don't know how to call) of it all. It was a sharp episode, lets see if they can keep it up. I hope so, too. This show is really engaging, and I very much hope we get a second season. |
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Post by Garak Nephew on Dec 17, 2023 16:38:04 GMT
An unpretentious, well-thought little show. I think it deserves more attention, but it will probably just get sweep away with the tide of massive content production this era is fostering. I read a second season is on post-production. I enjoy it quite a bit. Very theatrical, minimalistic; the small cast and the tight story serves it purpose well. Science fiction tend to be grandiose in scale, because, you know, the Universe, the Big Questions; but sometimes these grant scopes are better served narratively when you laser-focused on particularities. It is not perfect, characters development suffers on the small scale, but you end up with a little puzzle and the mind cherished it. 7 out 10.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Dec 17, 2023 16:48:06 GMT
I also like how they use some science fiction tropes. For example, nano blades and dark matter detector. They blend AND emanate organically from the story being told.
SPOILERS
On episode 2 or 3, a bounty hunter is killed with a nano blade and from the acting you get that the thug died not only from bleeding out but specially because one imagine that the blade released some kind of nanites that precipitated maybe a cellular collapse on the victim. Good, speculative use of a trope.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Dec 17, 2023 18:05:27 GMT
SPOILERS SPOILERS
B23 also have these fleeting, lyrical moments that in my book set the show apart. I think that with Beacon 23 the writers and creatives set themselves the task to reflect about the nature of AI, what it means to be sentient, what's the importance of remaining human. At one point when Barth, the AI on the beacon, is trying to express the feeling of missing someone he/they/it says "How can absence be experienced when you have memories to recall?" This is a poetical way to say that Barth is sentient. Because the felling of absence is what makes you human, among other things.
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Dec 18, 2023 15:50:44 GMT
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Mar 31, 2024 22:42:58 GMT
For those that don't know, S2 begins Sunday, April 7th.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Apr 2, 2024 19:42:03 GMT
Everyone should watch this show. Small, unpretentious, witty, scifi entertainment. And I. S. Behr is one of the producers who occasionally writes some of the episodes.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Sept 1, 2024 17:31:14 GMT
I don't understand why this show is not getting more attention. (I mean, I kind of do, it is not super big and it doesn't have "big" names attached to it. But still I wonder about the subtleties of visibility on this current age of saturation. So much content and yet so little focus, a paradox.)
SPOILERS
In my opinion this show set out to merge two scifi subgenres: First contact and artificial intelligence. Occasionally it get lost in its own web and when it tries to expand its plot to incorporate more political aspect the result meanders off. What is different from other current more grandiose, operatic kind of today science fiction (like Foundation and For All Mankind) is that it's strength is on it's minimalism. When you want to explore big ideas the minimalist approach is best, I think; think "Waiting fro Godot" kind of thing, it might sound contradictory but is not. Deep down this show is philosophical but it succeed because the story is not preachy or too technobabbly; and yet the technobabble is awesome, that whole sequence of Iris explaining the science behind the appearance of the pocket universe was really good stuff.
I was annoyed by the characterization of Aleph on the first few episodes; I don't think it was the actor performance, but there might be something annoying there. It was more like, why come with this AI ideation, this hubristic douche, a sort of mashed-up of Musk and Ray Kurtzweil? I guess it serves the plot forcing us to consider that an all-powerful AI might end up being like a reflection of the worse of all, I kind of get it; also is very difficult to come up with a nuanced, original AI representation; still, Aleph was not very satisfying, like an overgrown brat with faulty emotional tools. I think that as our society grows to become more increasingly dependent of AI, our artist and thinkers will fine-tuned our AI representations. While not an AI but an android with advanced software, Michael Fassbender portrayal of David on "Prometheus" and "Covenant" is closer to what I think should be the portrayal of a self-aware synthetic intelligence. Such great acting! The other-than-humaness of it, a sort of cold empathy, a tactical commiseration.
The end of the season (or series? will there be more?) seem kind of rushed and the first contact was rather anticlimactic. But I really like the resolution! Having Harmony transformed into a sort of vessel for human/AI hybrid, a kind of "new" entity and that through that new being is communication now possible with the alien being seems in my opinion an optimal, stimulating resolution. I guess it was in her name right from the start. So it was like a Singularity event, the human/AI merge triggers a sort of threshold that opens up the possibility of communicating with the advanced alien lifeform. I like the sound of that, that is what science fiction does.
We deserve another season of trippy speculations about how the alien and enhanced Harmony would engage, but I doubt there's going to be another one.
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Sept 6, 2024 21:51:32 GMT
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Post by Garak Nephew on Sept 7, 2024 20:19:36 GMT
I am not surprised. Streaming services are designed for volume, and quality suffers. When the amount of content is so staggering, customers have no time to focus their attention on one object, so content creators dismissed their product more easily.
It was a good show, a good premise. But wallet-wise is good because MGM is not getting my money. I literally gave them about two months of subscriptions. I waited for the whole seasons to drop, subscribed and then cancelled after a month.
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