If you like Ronald D Moore's other work (a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Battlestar Galactica reboot) there's a good chance you'll like For All Mankind. In my mind it's the Star Trek prequel show we should have had.
Apple TV+ started rather slow, but the quality of the shows is just insane, and not just when it comes to scifi. So far, the only show that I didn't like from TV+ was Hello Tomorrow, which had a lot of style and potential, but just never went anywhere.
@fishos Thanks and I agree. I think the parallel with Fallout was a double edged sword. Creating a was for the style, abs also setting expectations that weren’t quite met in the story.
I felt like that expectation was there for me for the first episode or two, but then you could see how it was doing its own thing and building its own world. It felt familiar to step into and then was a comfortable transition to the rest of the world you all created.
Thank you for your work; it's cool to talk to someone who worked on it. Can you say if you know how likely the show is to continue on? I haven't heard anything about a season 2, but I'm hoping.
@fishos Thanks. I don’t know anything about next season. All I know is that given the current ongoing strikes with the Writers and Actors unions, it is very unlikely to be filmed this year, if at all.
Oof, I'm sorry, but perhaps it was a matter of expectations. I feel that the problem that I had with the show was that it started off on the premise of some Fallout-style retro futurism, with what I guess one could call "dangerous techno optimism" of the 50's and 60's.
However, beyond the first episode where the woman gets killed by the automated postal car, this never really gets explored much further than some occasional background elements. The story could just as well have been set in the actual 50's and it wouldn't have changed much.
Now normally, I don't generally have issues with character driven stories where the setting comes secondary (e.g. Ted Lasso is a character driven comedy set on the backdrop of football), but in this case it was the setting that actually interested me to begin with.
It's a shame, because all the individual pieces, from acting, to scenery and atmosphere were great, it's just that the show never clicked with me in the end, because it wasn't what I thought it would be.
My only problem with picking up Apple TV for scifi is that all these shows are in their infancy. Most are only 1 season, and that hardly feels like enough motivation to start the show knowing there could just never be a second season. Netflix burned me with good shows getting cancelled and I can't motivate myself to start something with less than 2 seasons.
The only reason I haven’t watched the Expanse yet, is because I know there is no ending (yet). I’m done with watching shows that just stop due to some management decision. If the confirm the ending is in the works, then I will start watching
To be fair the books end leaving you wanting more too! The show has an ending that's good, it's just ... Missing decades of content that's in the books!
The show is definitely worth watching and was incredibly enjoyable, fwiw.
@Ronno Watch it.
The show ends in a completely logical place and wraps up that entire timeline near perfectly. It doesn’t feel like anything’s missing.
The next three books are set 30 years later in another system. Same crew, wildly different everything else. That’s why they chose not to film them. It wasn’t just ‘ended early’
Ehhhh, they left several loose threads dangling in the wind...
There is a whole book about the planet with the fauna that brings organic tissue back to life. They just shut the door and called it a day.
Also, they barely touched the storyline of mass being lost with gate use.
@McBinary
the resurrection fauna planet is in the +30 year timeline. The books didn't explore the mass loss much more than the show did (other than explaining how they gathered the data), but it was used as the core mechanic of the grand finale - exactly as it was in Babylon's Ashes.
I am loving Foundation. I'm really glad Apple TV has taken the chance to do series like these. My wife also really likes Loot, which is supposed to air their second season sometime this summer.
Our next series will be Ted Lasso. I'm looking forward to watching it.
IMO Foundation should be more accurately called Foundation and Empire (also the title of Asimov's second book). The Empire storylines have generally been compelling. The Foundation storylines not so much. I hope that they address that imbalance in the second season. (And not by making the Empire stuff worse!)
They would have to pick up the pace a lot.
It might be a few seasons before they get there at this pace. The entire first season happens in the first few chapters of book 1...
Yeah, but it's a very loose adaptation of the novels and they're spending a lot of time on Trantor. The stuff they've done with Cleon is the most interesting part of the show.
Personally I'm looking forward to what they do with the Mule and Arkady (who was my favourite character in the trilogy when I was a kid). Assuming that the show makes it that far.
I wanted to like Silo. The production was amazing, the cast was excellent, and the concept is very cool. But the storytelling didn’t grab me. The twist in season 1 was telegraphed way too early and a bit clumsily, which left the rest of the season feeling flat for me.
Yes. In E2 or E3 (I forget exactly which episode) there’s an attempted misdirection, a “leading you up the garden path” moment, that was so obvious that for a moment I couldn’t believe the script writers had done it. Then you realise that there’s no way they’d ruin the rest of the season by actually revealing everything at that point, so therefore the opposite of what they’re implying must be true. Which then kinda ruined the rest of the season for me. From that point on, virtually everything in the rest of the season was predictable, including the ending.
It would have been much better if the “garden path” moment had been left out entirely. It had no bearing on the plot itself and none of the characters paid it any heed; it was purely for the viewer.
I have only recently subscribed to Apple + and have been blown away by the quality of shows, especially sci-fi shows. Silo in particular is top notch and will keep me subscribed.
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