Swamp Thing (1991)
This is the kind of series I watched as a kid on TV with overwhelming glee. These days there’s not so enthusiasm for that kind of entertainment left. Taking elements from the comic series but remixing it too look and feel a bit like Captain Planet, one of these worst animation series to ever have grazed television screens. Gone is the brooding and dark atmosphere of the comic, instead we get a Swamp Thing with a cheerful attitude, annoying sidekicks, a seriously dumbed down Arcane as a megalomaniac villain and his evil and stupid henchmen. All in all it’s quite dumb, the dialog is wooden and ridiculous, the characters are cardboard and the plots can be summarized in one-liners. Basically Arcane is trying to become immortal through various means and Swamp Thing has to stop him in every episode. Thankfully they only made five.
Eureka S2 (2007)
Not much has changed with season two of Eureka. The same basic structure, with a bit more emphasis on developing a bigger story arc about the ongoing events around the artifact and due to last season’s finish Henry’s obsession with Kim’s death. The rest is the same old same old. Carter has to solve a mystery involving superscience every week. I think Eureka, despite not a show I would really call good, has become something of a guilty pleasure for me. I find most bits involving science annoying, but I like the characters and the show entertains me. I just wish someone would make an Eureka-like show involving real science.
Reaper S1 (2007-2008)
I think part of why I enjoy Reaper so much is that does what I wanted from Dead Like Me, but didn’t got. Dead Like Me was about a girl that got herself killed and ended up as a grim reaper, escorting souls to their afterlife. I thought the show had so much possibilities, but as it went on, the supernatural aspect became downplayed more and more, as if the makers were embarrassed of those aspects. It became a mildly entertaining slice-of-life show that meandered aimlessly around until it was cut down. There were so many chances to build on the idea of the grim reapers, to built a complex and interesting mythology. Never happened.
Reaper on the other hand completely embraces its supernatural elements. The show is about a guy whose soul has been sold to the devil by his parents and who has to work for him as reaper, bringing back escaped souls. There are demons everywhere, the devil is a regular character and the souls that escape from hell are quite fantastic too.
I like the show because it takes one concept and explores it from every angle, building an ever more complex mythology in the process. It doesn’t try to be something else than what it is, which is light and fun entertainment most of the time. But when it needs to be it, can be quite serious, without losing all the elements that make it fun too. It’s one of those rare shows that can do both, comedy and drama, well, sometimes at the same time, by using its supernatural elements to the fullest instead of forgetting them.
Rating: 5/5
Eureka S1 (2006)
Eureka is about a small, secret town that is stuffed full of brilliant scientists who work at building at better tomorrow. While this is a neat concept, its also the main reason that on one level Eureka is a completely failure. There is so much you could do with such a high concept, but since obviously no one making this series cares about real science or has a clue what science actually is, all we get is comic book science and a show that follows a monster of the week formula, which monster substituted by some technological gizmo.
First and foremost, science and technology is used interchangeable. In reality they are not. Second, nothing made in Eureka seems partially useful for bettering the world. A show that would have dealt with some more realistic advances like future data storage devices or brain-driven prosthetics or a realistic depiction of nanotech (not the magic dust that turned up in one episode) could have been fascinating and still left room for interesting stories.
And yet, it’s still fun to watch. It’s not the show I wanted it to be, there was potential for it to be much more. But I like most of the characters and following them dealing with magic-science gizmos can be fun to watch.
Rating: 4/5
Doctor Who S4 (2008)
Like the other three seasons of the latest Doctor Who series, season 4 follows the same formula. A new companion (with the exception of season 2), some episodes in the past, some in the future, some dealing with threats in the present time. There are some hints seeded for future seasons as well as the big finish, that awaits the end of each season. Most of the time Doctor Who is completely over the top, campy, loud, ridiculous, even childish. This is a science fiction series whose science works like magic, whose technobubble is bullshit to even the most dense of its viewers. The historical episodes are pain-inducing to everyone who takes his history seriously, the future episodes are a thinly veiled present-day reality stuffed full with SF-gadgets that can hardly conceal that most visited futures don’t make a lick of sense. Despite all this, each and every season so far has successfully sucked me in and each time when the finale came around I sat there, watching like an awestruck kid. Its pompous, full of comic book science, but man can it be fun.
Rating: 4/5
The Lone Gunmen (2001)
created by Chris Carter
A short-lived spin-off from the X-Files that never managed the balancing act between its silly and serious impulses. In the end it felt like a farce, and while there were some interesting storylines, the stupid jokes and really stupid plots elements got in the way of the more serious parts. There are some series than manage that mix, but TLG obviously couldn’t. Kinda sad, a serious treatment of the Lone Gunmen could have been interesting.
Rating: 2/5
Kindred: The Embraced (1996)
created by John Leekley and Mark Rein-Hagen
Kindred: The Embrace is a reminder, a least to me, how much taste can change. When I first watched it nearly ten years ago, I thought I was quite well done. The second time around I had a hard time finishing it. It takes the already inherent pretentious elements of the Vampire: The Masquerade setting and cranks them up to soap opera levels. The acting is so overdone, the dialog so awful it makes watching this painful. The only explanation how I ever perceived this as good was that there’s a time when your mind is conditioned to view the world and your place in it in a way that resonates with everything pretentious and über-dramatized. Brooding, dark characters that bear the pain of the whole word on their shoulders. Tragic and sad loves stories and all that crap. Most people were that teenager at one time or another. Most people thankfully outgrow that phase. Not that we get smarter or such. There are enough idiocies for grown-ups to believe in or apply to.
Rating: 1/5
Profit (1996)
created by David Greenwalt and John McNamara
Most of the time you hear the term anti-hero, it used mostly to describe someone who uses questionable methods in fighting the good fight. Which in Jim Profit’s case could actually apply, if you define the good fight as helping Gracen & Gracen, the company Profit is working for. Profit is a one season TV series who saw the titular hero use every method to achieve his goals, which were: advance in G&G, preserve himself, preserve G&G.
Profit isn’t just a mean bastard, he’s a monster through and through. Like other, similar fictional constructs of the brilliant monster type, part of the appeal is his absolute determination. Even when it looks like all his plans are undone, when he’s in the worst possible situation, he never once thinks about failure, never doubts himself. Every good guy in the show is undone by some personal obsession, but Profit never even feels emotions like hate or the need for revenge. His obsession isn’t personal, not concentrated on people but on some abstract concept. He’s fully solution- and future-oriented. Thus his insanity makes him the most sane when it comes to dealing with other people, and it also makes him the best possible employee for Gracen & Gracen. Just not a very good member of the human race.
I wonder how the show would have ended if it hadn’t been prematurely cut down. Would they’ve gone for the moralistic ending with Jim Profit failing in the end, or even worse slowly rehabilitated him by making him a good guy? Or would they have shown him climbing higher and higher until all his dreams were realized, showing the usefulness of not having a consciousness.
All in all, it’s not the profound show some people might think it is, after what I’ve said. What it is, is being one of the rare examples of a story with a really despicable main character, that is entertaining on every step of the way.
Rating: 5/5
UFO (1970-1971)
created by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson
An old SF show that tried to mix drama with science fiction. The core idea is similar to later series that sport an alien invasion and a government conspiracy (see X-Files, Dark Skies, Threshold). While some concepts were surely groundbreaking for its time, like the attempt to include serious elements, it never really works. There’s always a disconnect that makes you feel like watching two different shows, one is a sci-fi gadget show seemingly aimed at a younger audience and another one that has drama plots and only incidental also aliens. Add to the mix some really stupid plot decisions and plots holes concerning the bigger concept, a glacial pace and rather simple and predictable plots, and you’ll have a show that’s interesting from a historical perspective, but not very interesting to watch in itself.
Rating: 2/5
Dark Skies (1996-1997)
created by Bryce Zabel
I seem to have taken a liking to TV series that get killed after their first season, but maybe it’s just that I remember them more fondly than series that I once liked until they atrophied by stretching them out past their normal lifetime. Point in case are the X-Files, which was probably the major reason for Dark Skies taking off in the first place. Imagine a series where the conspiracy isn’t just made up as the series goes along, but were there’s a plan from the start, a big concept. Everything is connected, everything makes sense. It’s like the alien conspiracy elements of the X-Files distilled down until nothing else remains and then mixed with a heavy dose of US history. We even had a Mulder (John Loengard) and a Smoking Man (Frank Bach), but not far into the series they left their templates behind and developed a character all of their own.
The strange relationship between those two was one faszinating aspect of the show, among many others, like the devastating effects that secrecy has on everyone involved, especially those that uphold the secrecy. Unlike the later, similar series Threshold, the usefulness and justification for secrecy is questioned much more thoroughly (even if at times in a rather subtle way) and shown to be the reason for the biggest failure of the conspiracy. Because of that Dark Skies was much more political than other, similar series, not just because of the inclusion of all that history stuff.
Again, not unlike the later Threshold, it gives some kind of closure in the last episode of the first season, but I really would have liked to see how everything played out. At least they made one excellent season.
Rating: 5/5
