The first episode of the BBC/HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman.

Synopsis: Orphan Lyra Belacqua's world is turned upside-down by her long-absent uncle's return from the north, while the glamorous Mrs Coulter visits Jordan College with a proposition.

Trailer
Title Sequence

I just watched the first episode and it's amazing how they got everything right! The fight choreographies capture the nuance of Geralt's dance, mixing magic with strength in a compelling and original way. They clearly took a lot of inspiration from the game, and in this case that is not a bad thing. The music is subtle and authentic, and the production is beautiful in all aspects: Netflix clearly spared no expenses. Henry Cavill is a superb Geralt. His voice is a lot like in the game: seasoned, dry and petulant. The story is extremely faithful to the book, and the small deviations only enhance the narrative. Unlike the first book, which is entirely episode, this show starts a lot more epic and serialized. A demand of the media. As a fan of the universe, I'm impressed. It is very rare to encounter an adaptation that respects the source material while having a life of its own.

The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.

Previous:

• S01E01+2
• S01E03
• S01E04

So this is probably one of the meatier episodes of the ones that we've seen so far, with the experiment taking a hit, Bad Janet being a free agent, and Brent being impossible to deal with. What do you all think?

So I've been putting in topics for each episode of The Good Place for a couple weeks, and it's been a little slow but reasonable amounts of activity. But for week to week shows in the future, would it be more appropriate to have one big thread made for the season premiere and bump that on a weekly basis and enforce marking posts when a particular episode happened, so we can better track discussion and continue threads of discussion across weeks, or would that just kinda be a mess?

Now that the show is available on the NBC, Hulu and your store of choice, what did you all think about this season premiere of the Good Place? Did we want to do a thread for each episode or just one at the beginning and one at the end?

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2 - Arkangel

Worried about her daughter’s safety, single mom Marie signs up for a cutting-edge device that monitors the girl’s whereabouts -- and much more.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Spoilers for all seasons of both The Orville and Star Trek: Discovery.

The Orville isn't bad, but it's not the worthy successor to pre-Abrams Star Trek that a lot of people on /r/startrek—and increasingly on /r/DaystromInstitute—make it out to be, and honestly I struggle to understand how people are even reaching that conclusion.

I should start, I suppose, with what I like about this show. First, I like the characters—with two exceptions, I'll get to that later. Dr. Finn, in particular, is a delight: Penny Johnson Jerald is a very talented actress and it's really great to see her in a role where the rest of the cast draws on her character's wisdom. She plays it well. The rest of the bridge crew is great, too: Gordon, LaMarr, and Bortas are all lots of fun, and Jessica Szohr is a great addition for season 2: Halston Sage didn't quite have the skill to pull her character off.

The show looks great. Union vessels are distinct from Federation vessels and they're not just ISO Human Standard Spaceships either, which is commendable. Kaylon spheres are neat play on Borg cubes, and my only real complaint in this regard is that Moclan and Krill vessels look oddly similar. The engine effects, the depiction of celestial objects, the overall Union aesthetic, it's all very pleasing to the eye.

The worldbuilding is great. This is the one place that I think I would even go as far to say The Orville has a clear edge over Star Trek. Trek has built up loads of cruft over the years and sometimes struggles to keep it all together. For example, The Orville has swept away the inconsistent depiction of enlisted personnel that Trek fouls up seemingly very chance it gets by just depicting officers, which makes sense for a highly automated vessel. I fundamentally "buy" the Planetary Union as a human-centric interstellar polity in the same way I buy the UFP. (My one complaint in this department is that there does not appear to be any bureaucratic distinction between the Union government and the Union fleet, i.e. it lacks the distinction between The Federation and Starfleet. That seems like an oddity I hope they correct in season 3.) McFarlane is a nerd, he's fastidious about detail, and you just know he's has to have pages upon pages of worldbuilding details which helps him keep it consistent. It shows.

But the show falls flat on its face in two key ways which, unfortunately, appear to be baked into the concept.

Shortfall one: I just can't seem to warm up to either Mercer or Grayson, which for obvious reasons is a huge problem, because the show is now on record as indicating that their romantic relationship is The Key To Saving The Galaxy™. The Orville is an episodic throwback, but if it has a "main arc," that main arc is Ed & Kelly's relationship, and it just feels awkward and out of place.

I don't really dislike Grayson, but I can't find anything to really like about her either. She's just kinda there, and her story never diverges from Mercer's. Which brings me to Mercer... which... just... ugh. Never in my life have I seen a more egregious case of a show creator playing out his fantasy on camera. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen someone make a statement which boils down to "I don't like Discovery because Burnham is a Mary Sue, and that's why I prefer The Orville" as if Mercer is not the most blatant case of a Marty Stu to ever grace network television and get renewed for a second season. I mean, come on. He's the perfect captain, he always makes the right call, yet for some reason the show keeps trying to sell us on the notion that he's damaged goods and out-of-favor with the Admiralty. It's not believable, and it irks me endlessly that anyone would lob this criticism at Discovery when The Orville is an order of magnitude more guilty of this conceit.

And that brings me to the elephant in the room: the direct Star Trek comparison. I seem to recall Season 1 having a novel episode here and there, even if they were snoozefests. Season 1 also bothered to draw from other sources of inspiration, even if those sources were Trek-adjacent shows like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone. But on the other hand, some episodes from season 1 were straight rips from old Trek. "If the Stars Should Appear"? Straight remake of "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." "Mad Idolatry"? Straight remake of "Blink of an Eye."

And Season 2? Season 2 doubled down on the Trek remake approach. No other sources, no novel concepts: almost every episode is a remake of a previous episode of Star Trek. Sometimes The Orville at least bothered to remix a pair of episodes, and sometimes a lot of the details got changed, but with one exception, every episode was a Trek episode remake.

The degree to which a given The Orville episode is a remake of the Trek episode I've listed varies. "Home" is only similar if you look at the broad strokes: the officer on loan from the scientifically advanced Earth ally goes home where her family disparages her for spending all that time with humans. The home invasion plot from that episode was original, but it was also kinda weird and contrived. The flipside of this constant borrowing from Trek is that when The Orville does go off the beaten path, it's inevitably flat out boring. "Ja'loja" was an utterly forgettable episode because it largely focused on Ed & Kelly relationship drama.

And even if we look at "Ja'loja," there's a bit of "Amok Time" in there with the whole "returning to the desert homeworld" for the Moclan urination ceremony. Sometimes it's bits and pieces into a blender, but other times it's a basically a straight rip, like it is with "All the World Is Birthday Cake" and "Blood of Patriots." Perhaps the most blatant "homage" was introducing a surgically altered Klingon Krill to infiltrate the hero ship, right down to the name and rank of the infiltrator!

I know, everything's a remix, and I know, it's a fine line between "ripoff" and "homage," but the problem with this level of "borrowing" is that when you've seen every episode of Star Trek as many times as I have, each episode of The Orville just becomes an exercise in "I wonder which Star Trek episode this will be," and once you figure it out, it just saps all the urgency and tension out of the viewing experience. It gets boring.

I didn't get bored with Discovery. I mean, sure, Discovery has its problems. In many ways its problems are the inverse of The Orville's strengths: I struggle to care all that much about any of the characters, the show is rife with dark sets and quick shots which just isn't that visually appealing, and the worldbuilding is at times really difficult to reconcile with established Trek lore. (The Spore drive is classified? That's why we never see it again? Ummm... OK, then.) And the story, while chaotic and poorly paced & planned due to constant showrunner turmoil, is at the very least interesting and novel.

The perfect Star Trek would be a synthesis of these two shows, but apart, each show pretty much breaks even when you take the strengths and weaknesses on the merits. Which brings me to my title: I cannot for the life of me get into the mindset of the fans who see this as the True Trek of our time. It's just remakes of old Trek, and while the visuals have been updated for 2019, the stories have not.

The bottom line is that while it's great that we have two Trek-style shows on the air at the same time for the first time since the 90's, neither show is great, or even good. They're both just OK, and the huge disparity between how they've been received doesn't make much sense to me.

Wanted to start a discussion for us GoT fans and give our thoughts on how the first episode played out and what we expect to come. Please delete if unnecessary/unwanted. This is a spoiler zone so you've been warned

Personally, I really enjoyed Bandersnatch as a one-off. Having the ability to choose what happens and trying to piece together the story by watching multiple endings.

But honestly, the story fell quite flat and it wouldn't have been a very entertaining episode had it not been for the gimmick. But what do you guys think?

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Black Mirror Season 2 Episode 1 - Be Right Back

After learning about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased, a lonely, grieving Martha reconnects with her late lover.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Holy shit. Now that is what I call cinema. Somebody give Jonah Hill an Oscar already. The amount of times I felt a deep connection to his character is reaching uncomfortable. The only thing that felt like “too much” was Snorri, but luckily that didn't last long. Emma Stone was so human in this. Rome Kanda and Justin Theroux have amazing comedic moments.

Fucking 10/10. Absolute recommendation.

What did you think of this week's episode of 'Doctor Who'?

Previous discussions:

• Doctor Who S11E06 'The Demons of the Punjab'

• Doctor Who S11E05 'The Tsuranga Conundrum'

• Doctor Who S11E04 'Arachnids in the UK'

• Doctor Who S11E03 'Rosa'

• Doctor Who S11E02 'The Ghost Monument'

• Doctor Who S11E01 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth'

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 6 - Black Museum

On a dusty stretch of highway, a traveler stumbles across a museum that boasts rare criminal artifacts -- and a disturbing main attraction.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 5 - Metalhead

At an abandoned warehouse, scavengers searching for supplies encounter a ruthless foe and flee for their lives through a bleak wasteland.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Sorry for being late with this one!

What did you think of this week's episode of 'Doctor Who'?

Previous discussions:

• Doctor Who S11E05 'The Tsuranga Conundrum'

• Doctor Who S11E04 'Arachnids in the UK'

• Doctor Who S11E01 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth'

• Doctor Who S11E02 'The Ghost Monument'

• Doctor Who S11E03 'Rosa'

What did you think of this week's episode of 'Doctor Who'?

Previous discussions:

• Doctor Who S11E04 'Arachnids in the UK'

• Doctor Who S11E01 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth'

• Doctor Who S11E02 'The Ghost Monument'

• Doctor Who S11E03 'Rosa'

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 4 - Crocodile

Paired up by a dating program that puts an expiration date on all relationships, Frank and Amy soon begin to question the system's logic.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

So I've just finished watching the new season. I had low expectations going in, given how the writers had to cut out their main character at the eleventh hour, but I still can't help but feel disappointed.

Soo many plot threads left open. No repercussions for any of the shit that went down over the last 5 years. The good journalist ends up dead, Claire Underwood commits murder literally in the oval office while secret service is right outside the door and then... nothing. That's it. That's what we get for series a finale. I mean, what?

I've also been quite pissed off how they tried to turn Claire into a feminist icon. Claire is a monster. She is at least as bad as Frank. She wanted to literally start a nuclear war to deflect attention away from herself.

Don't get me wrong, having a feminist message is ok. It's good. It's even timely. But not with Claire fucking Underwood for fucks sake! In the first episode where that female soldier asks her if she even has a plan so that more soldiers won't end up dead, Claire snarks at her with "you wouldn't ask me that if I was a man". Really? This fresh recruit, this soldier who you will be sending to her death is asking you - someone who never held any public office before - whether you have a plan and your response is fuck patriarchy?

How about that scene where she fires her entire cabinet and fills it with an all-female cast? Forget about real life, it's not even realistic in the show's world. Remember how hard Frank had to fight, how many people he had to cross, bribe and even murder just to replace a single seat in earlier seasons? Where was the senate? Did everyone else just roll over; how come nobody fought her on this? It felt like the writers really, really wanted to play out their deepest, guilty-pleasure Hillary 2016 fantasies out on the show and the script suffered for it.

If they just left things at the last season's finale where Claire looked into the camera with "my turn!" it would have been a much more powerful moment, certainly better than this disorganized, directionless mess we got.

So yeah, that's where I'm at. How about you?

I started Dear White People with a skepticism towards their intent. I thought the name of the show was an indication that it would be another example of media exploiting identity politics. I began watching with that expectation and held that perspective for quite a while afterwards.

The characters and story itself immediately engaged me. I was compelled by virtually every person and their experiences. The students of Armstrong-Parker are unique, passionate, ambitious and intelligent. As a natural result of this perspective it was easy for me to want to entertain their ideas and arguments.

This experience was at odds with another: The students extended very little thought and charity towards any opposing ideas or experiences of people outside of their ideology and social group. I felt uneasy that these characters who I liked and respected were making so many failures in upholding their intellectual integrity.

After a long period of confused enjoyment I realized that my issue was a false assumption. My initial expectation felt like it was being reinforce continuously so I never thought to reconsider the shows intent. After some reflection I think the actual intent is demonstrating the deeper problems of identity politics through the “good” characters exhibiting real human flaws. The racial issues are, of course, important and I’m glad to have engaged them but the true value is in the subtleties of how people interact with each other on these issues.

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 3 - Crocodile

Architect Mia scrambles to keep a dark secret under wraps, while insurance investigator Shazia harvests people's memories of a nearby accident scene.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Prompted by the comment just left by @Adams on the first post, I thought I'd make a topic for the next episode!

So what did people think? For those of you who weren't particularly into the first episode, did this one work better for you? (If not, no hard feelings, I'm just curious why/why not~)

I'll stick my thoughts in a comment again.

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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 1 - USS Callister

Capt. Robert Daly presides over his crew with wisdom and courage. But a new recruit will soon discover nothing on this spaceship is what it seems.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

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Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 6 - Hated in the Nation

The death of a journalist at the centre of a social media firestorm leads a veteran detective and her tech-savvy apprentice to a chilling discovery.

Black Mirror Netflix link

Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!

If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• How does the title relate to the episode itself?
• Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
• Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

Please rate the episode here!

Has anyone else seen this show? It came out last October. I just saw it about a month ago, probably a little less. It has got to be one of the best thing I've seen all year. Top 3.

I love the entire theme, the atmosphere, how everything is done. The direction is incredible. And the actors are ridiculously good.

In the show the two main characters will narrate their thoughts as they are happening in the moment. There is brilliant joke where Alyssa is narrating her thoughts and she thinks something along the lines of, "If This were a movie we would probably be American." Because the show is set in Britain and she is thinking to herself, what if this is all a movie.

The show is a dark comedy. And it's just got this incredible motif for lack of a better word. Has anyone else seen it? What are your thoughts? I really like Alyssa's character. Just how she is so empathetic, and she thinks far enough into everything to weigh both sides in a way not a lot of people would do. She basically givea the benefit of the doubt and weighs both sides more than she should.