Doctor Who- this might be the last straw even for me.

[TinselAngel]

For fucks sake

Juno Dawson as a writer.

I think Apple and Prime might be your choices.

It's also on DVD if you still have a player.

It’s not on Amazon Prime video. The first series, and the first episode of series 3 were free when I last looked, but for the rest of the series you had to subscribe to a different streaming service. Maybe it was Apple, I don’t recall. Or Paramount? I do still have a DVD player, so I might see it that way.

It's been ages since I watched Dune so I'll have to give it another watch with your critique in mind.

I think that when I watched it I was just so relieved that it didn't go off the rails as much as David Lynch's film (although Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck storming into battle carrying a small lapdog is epic lol).

Yes, I know Paramount had it in North America.

I recommend https://www.justwatch.com/uk which is a good way of finding out where to watch something.

(Paramount btw)

Th Lynch movie had some real issues. I felt though that it at least attempted to retain some of the ambiguities in the book, and the political maneuverings.

Structurally I think the biggest issue with the new films is the almost total lack of the Guild, which drives so much of the plot, albeit behind the scenes. You get a sense of the Bene Gesserit's machinations, but not the Spacing Guild. The end of the second movie in some ways seems strange, and I think it's because in the book, it's the Guild that requires acquiescence to Paul's demands, because they see through their prescience that he could, and would destroy the spice. It's a real existential threat to the whole society and the Guild in particular.

But they did some bizarre things with Jessica - making her vomit! and appear nervous all the time - a trained Bene Gesserit? - they destroyed Stilgar's character by making him a bufoon, and pandered to the audience in making the distinction between Fremen "fundamentalists" and the rest, and generally making their society fall in line with modern attitudes. Which I find weird because it's not like the Fremen as written were in line with modern attitudes when the books were came out - they were a harsh, alien culture. And they, of course, turned Chani into a girlboss, because what she was wasn't enough, apparently, and the audience are too dumb to understand why anyone would accept political marriages are a thing.

Anyway - I could rant on for a long time, as it's my favorite book series, so I'll stop there!

Oh god, the STD Klingon makeover was horrendous!!! So much sympathy for the actors trying to act and say lines in Klingon with that all that makeup, those teeth and the wire uniforms. Bad idea that shouldn't have got anywhere!

I had the same visceral dislike of Picard S1-2 (wee Icheb is one of my favourite Voyager characters) but S3 was produced and written by Terry Matalas who, unlike Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsmith, was a writer on previous Trek series so he did a better job (he reunited the TNG crew) and made it feel less like all the other NuTrek.

I LOVE The Orville - Seth MacFarlane has recreated the vibe of Trek so much more than any of the NuTrek films and series.

I'm with you re Doctor Who, my favourite Doctors are Pertwee, Baker and Davison.

I really enjoyed Eureka - it was pleasant and relaxing to watch and I really want the Sheriff's smart house lol

Among my favourite (relatively) modern scifi & genre telly has been:

• Orphan Black
• Killjoys
• Continuum
• Supernatural
• The Expanse
• The Boys
• Motherland Fort Salem
• Halo
• Humans
• Lost in Space (2018)
• S1 of Wynona Earp is good but the rest of the series are patchy
• S1 of Hanna
• Haven
• Grimm
• Better than Us (Russian show aka Лучше, чем люди)
• Kyle XY
• See
• Raised by Wolves
• Van Helsing
• Nikita (2010)
• Jessica Jones
• Constantine (2014)

Oldies but goodies include:

• Dark Angel (2000)
• Space Above and Beyond (1995)
• Ultraviolet (1998)
• Stargate SG-1 (1997)
• Stargate Atlantis (2004)
• Babylon 5 (1994)

I haven't seen the second Dune film yet but I have heard other people making the same points you did, which is why I think I haven't watched it yet 😊 I LOVE Herbert's Dune novels so much and I don't think much at all should be changed for filming them.

I also quite enjoyed the recent Dune Prophecy series, although I had to stop myself pointing out all the errors and retcons to my OH who isn't as big a fan of Dune. The cast were great and the sets/visuals were great too - the script was very modern telly in that it was very exposition-laden and the Bene Gesserit weren't like the highly trained and intelligent Sisterhood of Herbert's novels but I just told myself that this is set 10,000 years earlier.

Although, a thing that's common with scriptwriters today, as with NuTrek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Rings of Power, and Dune Prophecy is the writers make their characters do important things or make important discoveries first, well before the canonical first happenings of important events or achievements, and that really annoys me. It feels like stolen laurels and, as a previous poster pointed out, it makes their characters cuckoos in the nest.

I like the Lynch Dune. It's operatic and alien and its own culture. It's in the same class as Kubrik's The Shining - a different vision to the author's but a complete thing in its own right.

I’d like to see that last series, but it wasn’t available on Amazon Prime when I had a trial of it. I can’t remember which streaming service I’d need to subscribe to in order to see it.
We saw it on Prime so I don't know what others it might be on @Zita60

What a great thread!

I also gave up on DW a while back for similar reasons to others (disappointing female doctor, poor stories, right side of history narrative). I pop back occasionally to check and then back away again.

I actually really liked the first 2 seasons of Star Trek Discovery. The diversity of the characters seemed to work with the storylines. But somehow season 3 onwards felt artificial and shoehorned. As if the rules of diversity had taken over without any substance to work on.

Oh Picard. I'm glad they made it but some of it was terrible. The only thing I can't forgive them for was the series with Picard's mother.

SPOILER

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What I thought was a moving storyline about domestic violence and gaslighting ended up as "beware the mad mother". For personal reasons this left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

@CuriousAlien spoiler space! I am nostalgic for the internet of 25 years ago!

@CrossPurposes Thank you for the information about Justwatch. I've been looking for something like to tell me where I can see various programmes on streaming services.

No problem.

Have any Trek fans been brave enough to watch Section 31?

That's how I feel about it too.

Yes ....fell asleep- such a shame.
Oh well Orville 4 will be out at some point.

Watched it last night with the DH. We had heard it wasn’t good and thought we’d watch it and have fun nitpicking but we were not prepared for the levels of bad it contained.

It’s so bad it doesn’t even make a good hatewatch - it’s too boring for that.

I don’t know what they were going for but Section 31 looks awful and ruins the Trek timeline in multiple different ways for both the Prime and Mirror Universe.

Michelle Yeoh can’t save the material and while she gives a competent performance it’s not one of her best and the director manages to somehow make it seem like she doesn’t know how to do martial arts in the fighting scenes 🤷‍♀️

And there’s a character with an offensively bad attempt at an Irish accent, which has happened before in Trek (thank god for Miles O’Brien), but this attempt is the worst one I’ve ever heard.

Section 31 is so bad that it makes the two recent Doctor Who Christmas specials seem better than they were 🙀

Thinking of other things I've enjoyed, Marvel generally, not just Jessica Jones - Peggy Carter is great. I gather it has gone off the boil now, too. Heroes. Agents of Shield. And Fringe, with a splendidly ambiguous Leonard Nimoy, and Anna Torv and Blair Brown.

But mostly now if I want teams of people working together I go to US cop shows - all the JAG/NCIS quasi military stuff, and others. Castle even has some actors familiar from Sci Fi shows. Actually so does NCIS with Scott Bakula as Dwayne Pride. I haven't lived with a TV since I was 13, and love having DVDs and a laptop and chance to catch with decades of cultural deprivation.

And I streamed Netflix for while so I got Stranger Things.

@Brefugee I have a sneaking suspicion I am visitor from the internet of 25 years ago ;p

I've been revisiting Alias, which I haven't watched in years. One thing I really like about it is that it doesn't fall into the Marvel trap of having a slightly built woman easily beat up half a dozen men, each of them twice her size.

Jennifer Garner does the action girl stuff really well, and IIRC did a lot of her own stunts, but she usually succeeds by resourcefulness and collaboration, not to mention sexist men underestimating her, and is pretty worn down at the end of a mission. It's a much more believable way of writing a female lead.

Yes, agree.

Though it did stretch credibility at times - Syd not noticing her best friend had been replaced, and the mother reappearing, and the stuff with the sister (was there stuff with a sister or am I hallucinating?) and the sexy underwear on the plane.

But better than putting claws on Klingons.

And it had a good playlist.

There's definitely all sorts of weird shit going on with the scripting, but that comes with the territory when it's a JJ Abrams show.

Mostly I'm just there for the performances. Ron Rifkin playing Sloane is one of the best villains I can think of.

I just don't understand why they can't get good writers?