Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction if you prefer. Fantasy too. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein and other SF books. SF movies and TV shows. Fantasy stuff like Tolkien and Game of Thrones. Laser guns, space ships, and time travel. etc. Star Trek, Battlestar, Star Wars, etc.
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Interesting concept, lack luster execution.
This.
I watched it but was barely paying attention by the end of the series.
Right? It stopped being about space and multiverse travel and was just about that annoying blonde daughter for episodes.
Mummy! Where's mummy!?
it felt like when the walking dead focused on hershels farm and the missing girl and not about zombies
Lmao
This is what most of the new sci-fi is. Showrunners seem to think space is just the backdrop so they can make the story about how hard it is to be a human and have to deal with all the emotions of going into space and the risk.
Oh my family is without me even though they knew this is what I've been working for my whole life and now that I'm here, I want to abandon my life's work to go home. I better cry a lot about it.
Oh no I crashed a car and I'm 16 because I'm angry that my parent is an astronaut and I'm permanently scarred because of it. Why would they not just stop their life the moment I was born to care only about me. I better cry a lot about it.
Oh no, my spouse got the astronaut job I wanted, but now I have to pretend to be supportive. I better sleep with her best friend as a consquence because that is clearly the only way I'll get over this. I better cry a lot about this.
Oh no, My best friend is going into space. I am so happy because I have been itching to take her place and her family from her because I'm an evil bitch, but no one knows it. I wonder if her spouse will hate me when he finds out that I tanked his application to be an astronaut on purpose JUST so I could get him and his child as mine. I better cry a lot about it because I'm supposed to pretend I have a conscious.
Oh no, we're all sad about stuff because stuff is hard. We ALL better cry about it.
I want sci-fi, not cry-fi.
I agree. We seem to have had loads of sci-fi series with astronauts going off to Mars etc, where they spend an awful amount of time with the astronauts missing their kids to the detriment of the mission, plus then long episodes of their wayward children being dicks on Earth.
If you are an astronaut on a mission and have trained all your life for that mission, you don't just become an angsty millennial as soon as you are out of radio range.
Extra points if the whole crew are angsty millennials that forment mutiny when things aren't going their way.
100%! There's so much crying and weeping in new sci fi shows. The execs are scared to just do hard sci fi, led by ideas and concept. They are desperate to force 'human drama' into every situation. But it's so badly done. Characters should be expressed through the action of the story. Their decisions. I got so sick of Michael crying all the time in Discovery, i just stopped watching it. In one of the episodes, three different characters were crying! I'd say Severed, Legion, Maniac did a good job of letting the concept / idea lead the action and characters, of recent shows.
Seems like what you prefer is sci-fi without humans, or at least without drama, which has always been at the core of storytelling, whatever the genre. Take it out and you’re left with an engineering textbook.
i think you raise an interesting point here about sci-fi television in general. i think its the same problem a lot of other shows have (imo foundation, for all mankind, discovery, devs). They fail to marry character and action properly. So you have the sci fi stuff, which can be pretty cool. but then the characterisation stuff is separate and boring / annoying and filled with overly emotional / expositional dialogue.
I stopped watching ST Discovery for this reason. The ideas were great but the characters were just constantly going on about how they feel, crying. Just show us all that by the decisions they make! its the basic rule of good writing. Not to just sit around weeping. Three Body Problem almost shot itself in the foot by doing this too. The first three seasons of the expanse are exactly how it should be done. then the relaunched seasons fall into the trap.
Generally TV is scared to do hard sci fi, which usually lacks the stuff they put in trying to force human connections to badly written characters.
That or incredibly visually appealing with little to no substance pretty much sums up most of what’s on AppleTV outside of a few random gems
When Mike Ehramantraut was Facetiming his twin who was also maybe himself from another universe but also possibly his twin from another universe but then maybe it was him from this universe and he was the twin from a 4th universe but also - ya no, I dropped it lmao.
The whole dead Soviet in the wall of the ISS was cool though. I made a few "I keep hearing Russian from inside the walls" jokes that went over great so there's that.
I kind of liked it. Had a bit of a different take on the multiverse nonsense that has permeated sci-fi recently. Turns out it's terrifying for the people effected! Honestly thought it was a pretty good stand-alone season, didn't really need an S2 so no great loss.
It was very interesting conceptually and I though it was well produced. My only complaint would be the pacing through some of the middle episodes, if they wrapped the whole story in 8 hours it could have been even better I think.
Yeah that is how I feel about most streaming series. I understand the economics favors longer series, but they end up losing momentum and the storytelling suffers.
The multiverse aspect of The Peripheral was pretty great, IMHO.
If you haven't watched, it's definitely worth the time.
I liked Peripheral right up until the ending when they wrapped up the major plot in the last 15 minutes offscreen.
Yes; I wonder if studios do this because they never know how many seasons they are going to get, since canceling shows can happen faster than they are produced. Then, they are like, "Let's close this thing up. It's also a multiverse time-travel show so these events never happened or happened in some other where."
Yeah. I think the Peripheral production team must have definitely known they were getting canceled and decided to wrap things up as best they could with what resources they had left.
It was so fast I got a sense they already knew they weren't likely to get to shoot season two :-/
I have not watched that one yet. Thanks!
The Peripheral was great and yet another show that really deserved more.
I will never understand why people are so upset with the multiverse being the new trend in movies. It's a fun concept and contrary to what the internet says, it's far from being overused. I always get the impression that people who don't like the multiverse stuff, hate-watch everything that has it just so they could later complain how overused it is
I think the multi-verse has become an excuse for lazy writing. It lets stories that have already been told, get recycled infinite times (like the multiverse!). Hero fights bad guy and prevails..now hero fights bad guy, but he’s wearing a different shirt and has glasses because #multiverse #infinite-timelines.
All stories have already been told and are being recycled in new ways.
Thanks for that master yoda.
Well I'm one of those people and am happy to share a perspective.
Beyond being squarely in a "scifi/fantasy" genre, I think the stories that lean too hard into multiverse structures tend to also lose internal consistency. Or continuity maybe? Certainly the stakes for our characters are different in a story where multiverse macguffins can emerge at any time.
This kind of story really lends itself to comic books! Each issue is an artistic creation in a greater narrative universe. For my part I'm a huge Star Trek fan, which has been doing multiverse experimentation for longer than the average American has been alive.
...but I think it's clear that in modern media the multiverse is a gimmick used to construct these enormous corporatist cinematic universes. Thanos' snap isn't such a big deal when they can invoke Stan Lee and undo it.
Disagree.
Apple TV just started Dark Matter this week after finishing Constellation less than 2 months ago. With more than a dozen other multiverse shows and movies in the last couple years.
I even like the concept of multiverses, but it's starting to get old.
Constellation was intriguing but it seemed like something that should have been one season in the first place, you spent so many episodes knowing what was going on and just wanting to see them deal with it conclusively and then as it got really close to the end you realize there is just no way that they have enough time left to give it a good conclusive ending so they were heading to a second season
At that point it's just disappointing because you also feel it's unlikely that they really have enough left of any interest to actually make a good compelling second season as the last 3 or four episodes were already a stretch, and even if they had some great plans for it it's probably just going to get cancelled anyway.
So here we are, and I'm still annoyed to not see it really end.
This is the best description. They got to the big reveal by the middle of the season and just did ....nothing with it. Then they ran out of time. Frustrating
Noooooooooo, I liked the show, well this sucks.
Was considering resubbing to start this. Guess not.
Resub for For All Mankind, Silo, Severance, and Foundation. Heard great things about Slow Horses but it's not scifi and I haven't watched it.
I am enjoying Dark Matter, so far, too.
Slow Horses is great. Definitely watch it.
seconding Slow Horses, if you like spy shows it is really good
Is it like sci-fi spies? Cause I need me some sci-fi
Sugar was actually surprisingly good too.
Thanks for the reminder, that looked interesting
Stick with it. It starts a little slow, but once the reveal happens it gets really good fast. I've been loving AppleTV's scifi content lately. Can't wait for Silo season 2. And they're also adapting the Murderbot Diaries.
AppleTV has been spoiling scifi fans lately!
I’ll be back for Severance at least so I’ll check those out.
Honestly, I fucking love the foundation
I have major problems with season 1, and many of those problems continue in season 2, but every storyline got more entertaining so I am excited for season 3 and have accepted that they simply are not adapting the books in a way I feel is faithful to Psychohistory
I'm primarily a scifi watcher but gave Slow Horses a chance and so glad I did. Excellent show.
For All Mankind - the telenovela in space.
And we love it for that. When the drama is primarily about things fucking up in space it gets a little old in a "you've had three accidents this year, what kind of chickenshit operation are you running down there?!" kinda way
It’s less than great as a stand alone season. The story is definitely not over. However, as a self contained story it’s a pretty great concept and super fun to think about.
Nah, it's over. They wrapped everything up at the end of the season. Without getting into spoilers, all the characters' arcs are resolved, all the questions were answered.
I'm very critical of the show overall, but I was satisfied with the ending.
Nah I think they hedged. Henry is still stuck in the wrong universe and the dead astronaut guy woke up in his other half's body.
Bummer, I thought it was compelling.
noomi got a weird vibe where you can never tell if to root for her or not its very strange discomfort i felt seeing her in this show
She looks like Michael Jackson.
A shame, this was good scifi.
Bummer I really liked it.
Watched the whole thing and I want my 8 hours back. Show was terrible.
Agree, I want my 8 hours back. I suffered through because wife wanted to see it. It had a concept for the first couple episodes, and then the writers couldn't think of anywhere to go with it. The episode that drove me nuts was the one where most of the dialog consisted of:
"Mummy?!"
"Alice?!"
"Mummy?!"
"Alice?!"
"Mummy?!"
"Alice?!"
"Mummy?!"
"Alice?!"
yelled across a snowfield ad infinitum.
Why watch the entirety if it’s terrible?
Well can't answer for them, but for me if I start it have to finish it even if terrible. That's why usually research first before starting.
Do whatever you prefer of course but it’s no shame to give up on something you don’t like. It’s not worth losing your time.
lol I love reading comments like this. “I played this game for 800 hours, it’s certifiably terrible”
What can I say I like scifi and I was pot committed and went with the 7 2 off suit and lost.
Can I ask without you spoiling? What is the plot more about, like outerspace scifi or the unexplainable? Bc I'm not trying to watch some lame shutter island bullshit. I can watch the prestige over and over but shutter island is trash to me
I thought it was really good... A little slow at sometimes.
Just don't watch it and save yourself eight hours it was cancelled for a reason this isn't a firefly situation.
Good, last episode destroyed entire season for me all the building up only to end it with it is what it is.Think it was supposed to be miniseries anyway without second season
Most of these Apple scifi shows sound good on paper but are tedious on screen. There's a bunch of them that i started watching but stopped mid-season. I am reading reviews of Dark Matter that point in a similar direction, unfortunately.
"Mummy?"
That's too bad. I was hoping for more Lost Cosmonaut stuff, but it was fairly interesting and Noomi Rapace is always aces.
this is absurd
I made it two maybe three eps before realizing I didn't give a f about any of the characters. There just wasn't enough to make me want to find out if she was crazy, was being gaslit or something else. The stakes weren't high enough for it to matter either way.
Same. Kept waiting for them to get on with the damn plot.
So much wasted time in the space station before the disaster.
What the shit, Apple? That's a Netflix move!
Sci-fi lovers get screwed so often like this.
Yay, now please do the same with Invasion.
I love hate-watching Invasion. My theory is Apple figured out how to make a bunch of great shows by putting all the suck into one show.
I like it!
(Just like The Stone Roses Second Coming in Shaun of the Dead.)
Apple TV+ is full of long drawn out boring series. I have a free 3 months subscription and I can't find anything to watch. Every series is just people talking and talking and talking.
Constellation had great first 2-3 episodes. Then it degenerated into typical Apple filler drama that tries to tease for Season 2. Guess that didn't work.
I remember being excited a new sci fi show was going to be out on apple and then I saw the first episode and was bitterly disappointed.
They didn't do a good job with the flow of the show and story so not surprised.
Yeah well it sucked. I didn'tget past episode 2.
thank goodness.
I watched a couple episodes and seriously forgot about it until seeing this. Not that it was bad, just not engaging nor memorable.
It dragged big time.
Well that fucking sucks.
Had it's flaws but should have gotten a season 2 regardless. If garbage like Invasion can get multiple seasons, you gotta let original ideas like this get some runtime before blowing it up
Not sure there was more to this show 🤷🏽♂️
It was an interesting idea but I kind of saw through the cracks in the trailers. I'm not surprised to hear it's left the stage.
It’s a tragedy, a tragedy which will be serialised in six episodes and starring a host of famous actors the story arc describing at some length, how the protagonists feel about losing work they confidently expected would continue. They felt betrayed and reduced by the experience, their whole existence as professional actors put a risk by misogynistic decisions made by evil studio chiefs. The unexpected conclusion cannot be missed.
Good to know. Started this right before bed, so I only made it 15 minutes into it.
My wife and I loved Constellation, very sad to see it go. But it really isn’t bad as a standalone, as I don’t know where else it could go from the first season.