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Warning, spoilers ahead. Really enjoying the new US TV season featuring a whole raft of new sci-fi shows and season two returns of other favourites. First, we can’t go past mentioning the excellent Battlestar Galactica, easily the best sci-fi in years. Season 2 is panning out very nicely with lots of political intrigue, plots and plenty of Cylon spies in the fleet. The most recent episode (2×10) was the first of a two parter where the colonial fleet comes across the previously thought to be destroyed Battlestar Pegasus where the Admiral seems to have gone a little screwy. I seem to recall a Pegasus related story in the original series, but I can’t remember how it panned out. Excellent show anyway, I can’t recommend BSG more highly, even if West Wing is more your thing to sci-fi, you’ll still like it.

I’ve been a little late getting into The 4400, the first season was only 5 episodes, but after rushing through it last week in time for Sky One starting into season 2, I’m well into it. The premise of The 4400 is good: 4,400 supposedly alien abductees return with a variety of special powers all aimed at a specific purpose, which turns out to be saving the human race from extinction in the future. It turns out they were taken into the future by humans not aliens and then seeded back into the time-line to perform various tasks with their powers, positions, destiny etc. This leaves room for lots of different stories with 4,400 characters to choose from. I did feel the underlying mystery of the show was revealed to early, but I guess they had to do that to get a second season through otherwise it just looks like another Lost or X-Files where you have to invest a lot of time to see where the multi-season story arcs are going (usually nowhere).

Bones is the new David Boreanz (Angel from Buffy and Angel) series, its basically a rip on CSI and Mulder and Scully, the premise, he an FBI agent and she a expert in analysing skeletons, will get tired very quickly, I couldn’t even make it through the pilot. Especially when they bought out the 3D holo imager and apparently reconstructed the person from the bones.. Just lame.

Supernatural is a sort of Buffy, but with two blokes, seems the story is going build around these two fighting evil with long arc of looking for their missing father who also fights evil. Certainly a slick show, it has potential although it could drag and is more aimed at your teen Smallville audience, definitely not for me.

Threshold has potential, although sometimes its a bit cheesy in execution. The premise looks to be an unseen extra terrestrial entity attempting to colonise Earth by rewriting human DNA in its own image. Basically an X-Files without the hidden conspiracies and the FBI replaced with Homeland Security, the new big bad powerful domestic agency appearing in all the US shows since the FBI dropped from prominence recently thanks to Bush driven security paranoia. Interestingly Brannon Bragga (ex Star Trek producer) is behind this and the cast includes Brent Spiner (Data) reprising his mad scientist role from ID4 or Dr Noonien Soong (take your pic).

Lost Season 2 kicked off nicely with them going down the hatch that dominated Locke for a lot of the last season. My theory is that Desmond, the bloke in the hatch is a victim of the numbers like the other bloke and locked himself down there to both study the numbers and also to protect others from circumming to their curse.

Is it wrong to be intrigued by the UK Buffy rip-off Hex? I’ve only seen one episode, weak script although I need sometime to get into the Hex universe I’d say, but a hot cast with lots of sexual undertones, just what you want in a Brit supernatural drama.

Still a few other genre shows to look at including Ghost Whisperer. Its quite amazing how many X-Filesish show have emerged this season, is the resurgence driven by the success of Lost? Or a sudden trend in trying to grab back the massive X-Files, Buffy and Trek audiences of years past.

Doctor Who is great!

Posted on 26 Mar 2005 in Science Fiction

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Just watched the first episode of the new series on BBC1. It’s a little cheesy, but that’s part of fun right? Good stuff. Sure it might not be the next Buffy, but it’ll do. Christopher Eccleston was definitely the right choice as the Doctor. Good to see lots of London in the first episode too!

Battlestar Galactica continues.. while the rest flounder

Posted on 25 Feb 2005 in Science Fiction

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Good news from Ron Moore’s Blog: “So it’s official: we’re doing a second season.” BSG will have to make up for the disappointment of all the other genre shows, Enterprise has been cancelled unfortunately, Lost is getting bloody boring, Point Pleasant isn’t really pulling me in, and Sea of Souls is dull. Doctor Who is getting very close to release, I hope that’ll be good. For a while there it looked like the TV execs were really getting sci-fi, but things seem to be going bad again with poorly planned or rushed story arcs, and in the case of Lost, a fantastic build up in the first few episodes that has gone absolultely no where by episode 15.

http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/archives/2005/02/index.html#a000020