Tag Archives: 2016-17

Series premiere: Timeless – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 3 2016

I confess up front — I’m a complete sucker for time travel shows. Within Star Trek, Quantum Leap, anything really. If time travel is involved, I’m probably watching. What do I want? Time travel! When do I want it? Irrelevant!

So when I saw there was a new time travel show called Timeless, I was good to go before the screen even filled in the first pixel. Which is not to say I’m not nervous…you can really end up with bad shows about time travel. (Time Bandits, I’m talking to you!).

And if you see Abigail Spencer in the trailers as the lead “historian” (they always want a historian), you might think, “Hey, she looks like the chick from Sliders!” And she kind of does. But Spencer always sparkles. She was fantastic on Suits as Scotty, even with the limited role for her. I liked her when she guested on How I Met Your Mother, The Glades and Castle (I really liked her on Castle). I even vaguely remember her from Angela’s Eyes back in the day, and that’s saying something. So despite her fish out of water, bopping around time, wide-eyed innocent doe role, I was excited to see her in a full show.

Her sidekick in crime time is played by Matt Lanter. He seems familiar to me, but the only thing I’ve really seen him in is the original Heroes, but that’s not where I remember him from. I think they’ve just got him done up as generic soldier boy #27 and so he looks like other actors. Good, not awesome.

And they need a techie, with the chance to make him black and give them some plot points for time travel (or as his character puts it, there is no point in American history that is going to be good for him as a black man). Again, good, but not awesome.

And the story for the pilot is kind of weak. ** spoiler alert ** Terrorist steals time machine, goes back to Hindenburg, and stops it from exploding. Sort of. Actually he wants a bunch of industrialists to get on board for the outbound flight and then he intends to bomb it. So it will still explode, just not in the original way. The team goes back to stop it, bungles it initially, and the Hindenburg lands safely. When it goes to take off again, they have to stop the bomb. Which they don’t do very well, but they do save almost all the passengers.

The show has established the basic ground rules:

  • Super genius invented machine, it’s a prototype;
  • It uses gravitational power to force time to fold back on itself momentarily to allow the machine to cross between times;
  • You cannot go back in time to any point you have already lived through, for fear of “doubling” yourself;
  • Ergo, you can’t do the same time event more than once either.
  • Change one thing, butterflies ripple throughout history.

It’s the last one that is the cool part here. Frequently, the focus in time shows (Star Trek, Time Cop) is entirely on “I stopped things from changing and therefore everything back home is the same”. And when the team returns semi-successful, some small things have changed, but it looks relatively the same. Put a checkmark in the win column for now.

Until Spencer’s character, Lucy, gets home to her house and finds out that her Mom isn’t dying of cancer anymore (good), Lucy’s engaged to someone (who?), and oh yeah, her sister doesn’t exist (oops).

It will be interesting to see if they “correct” those anomalies, or they accumulate more and more anomalies towards almost an alternate timeline. One that only the time-traveling three will know is different.

Weak episode, but it’s time travel. I’m still in.

Season premiere: Elementary – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 2 2016

Elementary kicked off its fifth season without the detritus of the previous season hanging over it. In previous seasons, there’s often some big kerfuffle to recover from — invasion of privacy, moving out, relapse, beating someone, etc. Some trauma that provoked change at the start of the next season. Now don’t get me wrong — Morland taking over a big criminal enterprise at the end of season 4 wasn’t small, but it wasn’t affecting Sherlock and Watson as directly as previous season finales.

Season 5 starts with a bomber setting off bombs around a neighbourhood of NYC, similar to bombings that went off six years before. The Bensonhurst Bomber has returned, and is targeting Flushing. It doesn’t take much to find a suspect — Sherlock chases someone from the crime scene, the guy leaves some prints, but he’s cool as a cucumber. But Sherlock is convinced, even when he has an alibi for a new bomb. They zero in on an accomplice, put 2 and 2 together, round it off to 5, and crack the case. Nothing extravagant, and the deductions are a bit basic for them.

The only real “new” element is that Joan is feeling a little out of sorts that she’s missing the social / psychological perk of helping people the way she used to as a doctor or sober companion; now that she’s in the punishment business, she feels there is something missing from her life. The episode ends with her finding a possibility — as a mentor / reintegration companion for someone newly released from prison. It may mean she gets her own Baker Street Irregular, but for now, she has someone to help.

Okay episode, not the strongest, but still pretty good. Now, what’s going on with Morland?????

Series premiere: Colony – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 2 2016

Colony is an interesting premise — aliens have invaded earth, taken over everything partly through more advanced technology, and now life is continuing under occupation.

Episode 1 introduced how many people are coping — some are collaborating and doing just fine. Others are struggling just not to be noticed by the aliens and sent to a factory to work (never to return). The main couple for the show are stressed out — their son was in a different part of California when the aliens took over and they haven’t been able to find him. The husband works with some smugglers to try and infiltrate the next zone over, gets captured, and now is given a choice.

Work for the aliens and maybe see his son, or get dead. As a former police agent who specialized in finding people, the aliens want his skills put to use finding resistance fighters. ** Spoiler alert ** At the end of the episode, you find out that the wife is part of the resistance.

Interesting premise, but the gritty nature of the filming (a little Blair-Witch-ish at times) makes it tough to watch. Plus, you feel a bit like you came in halfway through the story — you don’t know anything about the aliens.

It remains to be seen if later episodes make it “Star Trek the First Encounter” or “WWII, life in occupied Paris” with an updated location.

Series premiere: Luke Cage – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 2 2016

Luke Cage’s story picks up five months after Jessica Jones’ battle with Kilgrave, and he’s hiding out as a fugitive, working as floor sweeper by day and dishwasher by night, all for cash under the table. Staying low, flying under the radar. Hiding.

And mostly he doesn’t want to get involved in people’s troubles. Or in their lives at all. He just wants to be left alone. But forces around him get him involved in ways he doesn’t foresee. A hookup with a bar fly that turns out to be someone else. A kid with a gun who he tries to counsel but ultimately lets him run away.

All leading up at the end of the first episode to a decision that he doesn’t want to let life flow by him with no wake. So he pushes back with some punks hassling restaurant owners for protection. And the protector of the streets is born. He won’t do it for money, he’ll only do it so someone has their back.

Great first episode, but I’ve already watched Ep2 and I’m a little disappointed. It sure doesn’t take long for him to get re-involved in life, and I would have liked to see him struggle more (like Batman or Spiderman canon) to stay neutral. I don’t care for most of the supporting characters, but the main guy is great.

Season premiere: Quantico – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 2 2016

Quantico had its premiere last weekend, and I was struggling to decide if I want to watch it this season or not. Don’t get me wrong, I think the premise is great. If the 22-episode arc from last season was boiled down to ten episodes, I would think, “Awesome!”. But it isn’t/wasn’t. It is 22 episodes. Of spin, and counter-spin, and just when you thought we were getting somewhere, they reset and started the spins all over again. Was it this student? That one? Pretty much all you could be sure of was if they suspected someone one week, they weren’t the real one.

At the end of the season, with everything wrapped up, Alex Parrish is all cleared — and trying to figure out where to go next. She’s tagged by the CIA for an op — infiltrate the CIA and run on op on the inside. In the season opener, you find out that it is about a year later, she’s been to the Farm (CIA’s equivalent of Quantico), run an op, and now everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

It’s the same format as last year — an event is happening in present time, with flashbacks to the training to figure out what lead to the current set of events. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, or at least some of them. Miranda, Shelby, Ryan, and Nimah are all involved either in the past or the future, most in both.

And that’s the problem. It is “same time next year”, and while I liked Season 1, I didn’t like how slow it was to get to the actual plot. Pretty sure I can already elminate at least one suspect since the CIA thinks it’s him from the start. And pretty sure I know who will be involved somehow. But the rest will take 22 episodes to figure out, and I’d rather be watching some of the other cases they’ve worked on in the last year instead of another grand conspiracy slowly doled out in bite-sized chunks.