Monday, December 28, 2015

What we know about X-Files Season 10 because of this behind-the-scenes video


If you want to go in totally without any spoilers or hints, um, like, why are you here? Because I'm too excited and I wanna talk about this video!

Last chance to avoid whatever spoilers these might be!

Okay. OH MY GIDDY GODDESS OF FANDOMS, you guys, this show is actually a real thing that is actually happening and I can hardly believe our luck. This was the first show that totally ate my brain, the first one where I watched almost every single episode live, the first ship I had anyone to flail with about, and it's influenced me in SO MANY WAYS. From when I started dying my hair, to when I decided to tell stories as a living. It's big.

And it looks like they know exactly how big it is. And they're staying true.

Here's what we can learn from the video:

  • "Getting the band back together"
  • "Those familiar crossbeams of light coming out of the darkness, and that soundtrack"
  • "The first and the sixth would be mythology episodes, and the ones in the middle would be stand-alones" + "Of those standalones, there's gonna be one that's funnier than the others"
  • "The through-line is them confronting their age and confronting their life choices"
  • NOTE: Somehow, the lunatic Chris Carter still things "Mulder and Scully had a platonic relationship for nine years, even though we suggest they had a child together" (and we all know they kissed after that scene they showed there)
  • "I'm always happy to see you" "And I'm always happy to find a reason"
  • "Back in the day, I used to do stairs AND in three-inch heels!"
  • Gillian-giggles-outtakes!
  • How dull has Skinner's life been for 13 years since Mulder and Scully left?
  • Baby William is a thing! He's gonna matter!
  • "The government's secreting of information concerning extraterrestrials MIGHT come into play" -- CHRIS CARTER YOU UTTER TROLL
  • "The series isn't going to be good if it's just a victory lap; it has to be original and fresh"
  • 1950s FLYING SAUCER
  • "A lot of killing, and the ripping apart of people"
  • "It was two lines in a script, and it ended up taking us nine hours to shoot it."
  • Reyes!
  • "As your friend and as a physician, you are on dangerous ground here"--not quite "let me through, I'm a medical doctor", but close!
  • "Mulder, the internet is not good for you."
  • "We've never been in more danger" "Then do something about it"
  • Look at this whole new set of young agents (including a readhead and a tall guy with expressive eyebrows...)
  • THE LONE GUNMEN

What did you see? What do you think? Are you as blinded by feels as I am? Share in the comments or come talk to me on Twitter!

Professional Fangirl will, of course, be talking about this show. Don't you worry!

Happy Birthday Stan Lee!


I was going to put a list here of all the characters invented or co-invented by Stan Lee, but it's CRAZY how many there actually are--look at this page on Wikipedia!

Suffice it to say, he's at least partially responsible for a large chunk of what we love about Marvel nowadays, and a lot of the stuff that's being rebooted and brought back into the movies. It wouldn't be what it is today without him at the helm!

Yay Stan Lee!


Saturday, December 26, 2015

Sami on The Husbands of River Song - The 2015 Doctor Who Christmas Special


The Doctor Who Christmas Special airs every year on Christmas, even on BBCAm!

I'm...not sure how to take this year's special.

It sort of made me miss the specials of old, where they were tethered to the Earth and there was actual Christmas involved, and they'd set up some crazy hook at the end of the last episode of the season and it somehow turns out to be fine when the special comes around.

This year, the Doctor gets mistaken for a regular doctor, and finds himself in the middle of one of River's plots, and it all goes pear shaped, repeatedly. Like, all of it. She's married to a dictator who is dying and needs healing, but she really just wants the diamond that's trapped inside his head, but maybe she actually wants to liberate the jewel for the people? And she's also married to her partner in crime. And she also is still married to the Doctor, but here at almost the end of her life--the journal he gave her is almost full--she seems to honestly think that even though she's actually in love with him, she has no hope that he's in love with her, and she knows she can't actually count on him?

Like.

There were some awesome moments. River is always fun when she's talking, and Alex Kingston handles the whiplashing switches between fast-talking plan-making and deep emotional truth well, as always. The Doctor gets to be the one who "does it right" when he supposedly first sees the inside of the Tardis. We finally get the Singing Towers and River finally gets her own sonic. And that outfit-changing spray was pretty neat. The brief reversal of who's the Doctor and who's the Companion was fun. And the Tardis trying to cheer up the Doctor with holographic antlers was probably my favorite part of the whole episode*!

But...

I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this episode? That River is a terrible person when the Doctor isn't around? That the Doctor is a terrible person for neglecting his wife? That they'll never work together but they always keep trying? That River's life started out crazy and ends sad no matter how many directions we come at it?

I don't buy that River Song, created to know everything about the Doctor, wouldn't have figured out who Twelve is when he was specifically telling her who he was. If she doesn't, she's an idiot, and she's never been an idiot. I also don't buy that late-life River is only good when the Doctor is looking at her, and his very presence changes her from a sociopathic thief to an actual archaeologist. Those were sort of important plot points, so the whole episode gets a little squishy when I can't believe those two parts.

I like that River was never really husband-shamed, and mostly they didn't seem to care that they were all her husbands so much as they were upset that she was keeping things from them. And I liked that the Doctor and River were together again for another adventure. It's nice that she got a life with him for a while before that trip to the Library when we know she dies before he knows who she is, and we know she comes back as the Doctor Who equivalent of a Force Ghost in that one Eleven episode, but knowing that sort of saddens the happiness of her last days. And it leaves the whole story sort of emotionally up in the air. Usually, River Song stories are ambiguous but cool; this one was ambiguous and a little unsettling, and did a lot of work to bring what we know of her personality and her purpose into doubt without being all that concerned with pinning anything down. If this is her last story, which it feels like it's meant to be, and especially coming after the previous drawing-out with Eleven of her story, it just feels...emotionally un-closed.

And so I keep turning it around in my head. Trying to make it fit. The airing I saw came on right after the rerun of the 50th anniversary special, which was so good and hit so many right notes, and I think that made the weird notes The Husband of River Song hit feel even weirder. What was the purpose of this story? What was the point it was trying to make?

If I figure it out, I'll write up another post on it.

What did you guys think of it? Did I miss some vital chord that made it all make sense? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

*Shame it was in the first three minutes of screen time.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Tweet by Nicole on Twitter

I'm having a really sucky week and this is my fav thing I've seen in AGES!

Nicole (@Trincynna)
@kiddle FOUND IT!!! (Only about a day late....) #12Monkeys pic.twitter.com/BKEhNVxV8N

Download the Twitter app


Sent from my iPhone

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Tweet by Space Corps on Twitter

Space Corps (@YourSpaceCorps)
Hey! Wanna Be an Astronaut? ow.ly/Wgb7q

How amazing would it be if they were looking for actual normal-people astronauts--and if it actually happened??


Sent from my iPhone

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Here's what the Professional Fangirls are saying about The Magicians!


Featuring, mostly, Kiddle, Danyi, and Sami!

Sami on The Magicians 1.1


This was a preview showing of the pilot; the actual premier is in January 2016!

This is another really good pilot for the revitalized Syfy! Let's hope it continues good like The Expanse, and doesn't go off into everyone-must-die lala land like Childhood's End!

We meet Quinn. He's getting ready for a graduate school interview, but he's stressed and neurotic and feels out of place and alone. He ran away for the weekend to a mental hospital before he had to face the interview, and didn't even tell his best friend Jules. He's also obsessed with a series of children's books about a magical place called Fillory, and she tells him he needs to get past that and stop hiding from the world.

Turns out, the interview is for a magic school*, and that he and Jules both are there to take the test. He passes the really weird written that keeps changing, and goes on to the prove-you-have-magic stage where he makes cards fly around and controls them; she fails and gets send home, her memory wiped and no explanation of what made her fail or why. But the guy who does it tells her ahead of time that he's going to wipe her memory and she gouges a big scratch in her arm, which keeps enough of the memory in her mind that when she wakes up, she can figure it out.

Meanwhile, Quinn starts school. His room mate Penny is a mind-reader, and takes up with a girl who has be best wardrobe. His guides to the school are sassy and wild, and Quinn makes friends with a pure-blooded blonde who promises to help him with his glasses if he helps her figure out what's going on with some mysterious thing that's happening--3rd years are disappearing, Quinn wakes up from a warning dream of Fillory with a strange mark burned into his hand, something happened to someone close to her and she wants to know what, etc. 

The four of them try a summoning spell, think it failed, and actually accidentally brought The Beast, the magical world's biggest enemy back into the world, where he promptly kills their teacher and their Dean while holding the whole class frozen but aware, watching but unable to do anything about what they're seeing. Except Quinn moves just a little and The Beast takes notice of him.

And meanwhile, Jules wants to try her test again and prove that she can do this, but Quinn can't or won't help her out, and she gets headhunted by some other group that seems to scoop up angry, lost people who don't work for the school--people like her, who feels like she can't live a normal life now that she knows all this stuff is real and hidden and locked away from her.

BAM, hooked.

The story is heavily influenced by Harry Potter, it seems--if Harry had missed his letter until he was ready for grad school and had spent all that time being told there was something wrong with him. But there's also shades of all sorts of other things. Fillory is like Narnia, maybe with a little Wonderland mixed in. There's a magic clock that reminds me of that going-through-the-clock-to-the-lair scene is Last Unicorn. It's much more surreal than Harry Potter--more like UnLunDun by China Mieville**, or like something from a Neil Gaiman book. The hand-motions they make to use magic, and the way it's shown before it attacks looks a lot like Full Metal Alchmist or Legend of Korra or something along those lines. The city scenes are gritty and ultra-realistic and with the magic in there, remind me of Dresden Files. And it's all knitted together really neatly and interestingly. 

It's a really neat amalgam of a whole host of fantasy and urban fantasy influences, and they're all treated like an homage and a commentary, not like ripping off. It's right up my alley. And it's visually very interesting, with people doing magic all over the place, and a villain made of moths in a suit, and the difference between the city-light and the school-light.

I can't wait until the show actually starts at the end of January!

What did you guys think? What influences did you pick up on? How are you liking this new Renaissance of Syfy shows? Share in the comments or come talk to me on Twitter!


  •  None! This is the pilot!

*A school filmed at the same place as the X-Men's mansion and also located in upstate New York, so I'm really just expecting Professor X to show up at any moment.
**One of my fav books--go read it! It takes the whole fated-hero thing and flips it sideways in a really interesting way.

Sami on Childhood's End 1.3


Childhood's End was a three-night special event starting on Monday 12-14-15 and closing on Wednesday 12-16-15.

It's been a whole night, and I'm still salty about this miniseries, and since everyone seems to agree that it's pretty close to the book, I'm now salty about the book, too.

I like Arthur C Clarke as a person, and I like most of what I've read from him. I think he had amazingly good ideas and really wanted to do well for the world, and move us into the future. But this story? This is fatalistic and pessimistic, and the second and third parts didn't feel, tonally, like the first. I really liked the first. I feel really let down by the rest.

So. Jennifer-the-demon-queen is now several years old, and she's controlling all the Children of the Corn, everyone born since the aliens survived, apparently. Karellan shows up and tells everyone that there will be no more children--to the point where a woman who was already pregnant wakes up suddenly and finds that her baby has disappeared from inside her body, and she's the only one in the story who has a problem with that. He also says the children don't belong to us anymore, and we're to just peacefully live out the rest of our days because humanity is obsolete.

I have so many problems with that.

And then the kids all go all Rapture-imagery and literally float up into the sky. Out of the whole world, only one parent holds onto their kid and so only one kid stays, Jennifer's older brother Tom. But he doesn't stay long, he doesn't help a single person understand what's going on or make sense of it, and then he flies off into the sky, too.

So now the world has no kids, and everyone loses hope, and the only person in the world trying to do anything about it is Milo--and he makes a dumb choice to go to the hellish homeworld, even though it'll take a hundred years to get there and back, almost, since they're traveling at near-light-speed, and by the time he gets home he's the last human on earth. There's only minutes left to live. The aliens let him have Rachel back, but she's frozen and she shatters all grossly, and there's no debate or anything about why they thought that would be a good idea. He goes home and watches as the world is dismantled by a still-child-shaped Jennifer who is consuming the world...for whatever reason. 

They say she's a direct line to the Overmind that controls creation, that all the kids are now god. They say nothing about why Humans were used as breeding stock to make more god if there was already god, why they couldn't have uplifted the whole species, or why, now, the conduit needs to destroy the world. It just happens. The story ends with none of the motivations clarified.

Meanwhile, they also let Ricky die without ever saying why he had to, though he did finally reject the ghost of his first wife and choose his second who was still alive, for whatever that even meant in the end.

And the last thing the aliens do is preserve Milo's memory of music as a testament to Earth...after it's been destroyed and he's died and everything but those animals they took home is gone. 

Seriously, guys, cold comfort at best.

How was any of this helping the humans to evolve? Why did no one really question what was going on, even in the end? Why was death and suicide the only answer? Why did the aliens not even try to explain anything, why did no one ask them to, and why did neither side spend much time trying to understand the other? Why did the only people who wanted answers get portrayed as wrong and probably evil, and were given only angry and flimsy motivations, and then were never seen again after the first episode?

The whole thing turned out so fatalistically pointless, that I'm glad it was only three nights, because damn. And this is considered Great Scifi. No thanks.

I will say that it was gorgeously done; the ships and the aliens and everything else were all fantastic. The worldbuilding was detailed and neat looking. But scifi abhors a Utopia, and it was all lies and no one even cared, so why should I?

What did you guys think? Am I missing some vital detail that will reframe the whole thing? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!



None. I'm just really annoyed and disappointed.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Sami on Limitless 1.11


Limitless airs at 10pm on CBS Tuesday nights.

After a weird several-week break, Limitless came back for one episodes--the Fall Finale! And it was one of the ones that plays with story structure and storytelling, and gave a large part of the spotlight to everyone other than Brian.

Mike and Ike start out the episode. They're going to the dispensary every morning to get the pill they give to Brian, and every morning they argue over whether this is a permanent thing or a temporary thing, whether they can look forward to something else if they do well here, or if this is all they've got. And then, one morning, they walk in on a robbery that ends in Mike getting shot.

It sets off a string of events.

The team (mostly Brian) tracks down the robbers, and Rebecca and Casey go to catch them, but she's been trying to break up with Casey while he's been planning a weekend away without really listening to her feelings or noting her hesitance on the subject. She finally breaks up with him by text--but the text doesn't go through until they're in a meeting and he's sitting right across from her. A meeting where they're discussing what happened to 80 pills that went missing sometime between the dispensary's last inventory and the count of what was seized.

Because Casey was broadsided by the breakup, he gets reckless--he and his team go out for a night on the town and it turns out they're the ones that stole the pills, because all four of them take them and go do whatever they always wanted to do...which results in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's old boyfriend killing his teammate for sleeping with his wife.

Casey decides to blame the dead guy for stealing the drugs and get rid of the body so that they can say he disappeared with them.

Brian figures it out, though, which puts Casey in a corner. He kidnaps Brian and Rebecca, and Brian has to talk him out of it, because even on NZT, Casey is a mess right now and not thinking straight. He also, however, warns Boyle, so that when the SWAT guys are trying to use him and Rebecca to get out and tear-bombing the office, Boyle is prepared with a mask, and takes Casey out.

Boy Boyle had been dealing with caring for his sick grandmother when his mom was away, and when they're cleaning up after the case, he finds a dropped NZT pill--and pockets it--after talking about how when you're on the drug, you can figure out other ways to do things that you never would have thought of before.

And through the whole thing, Brian was learning that he can't think of Mike and Ike as nobodies--that one of them almost died for him (sort of), and deserved to be respected as the actual trained agent he is.

It was a tense and kind of sad episode. The goofiness was toned down by most of the episode not being in Brian's exclusive point of view, but it was really nice seeing what happens to the others when Brian isn't around--and seeing how they feel about things away from what Brian picks up on. The episode as a whole made the point that all of these characters do, actually, have their own lives and their own concerns outside of work, and it was a really good character-building episode.

It was also quietly setting stuff up for the second half of the season*. Brian has realized that these are real people that he works with every day, and will hopefully treat them better going forward**. Rebecca had a traumatic experience--breaking up with someone who doesn't think anything is wrong is bad enough, but to them have him wind up dead by your friend is above and beyond. How will she handle it?*** Boyle is having a hard time with his mom and his grandma, and is looking for a way out or a new solution, and taking the NZT can't be the best way to do it...but he's probably going to do it anyway. Mike and Ike have issues with their job to work out. And the team is now without their SWAT contingent, and will have to break in a new team; will they let them know what's really going on with their secret mission?

And the fact that this is the first time we've really seen other people we know on the drug and all this happened brings up issues with the drug itself. Casey, who always seemed mellow and affable before, got all cold and calculating; was that because of the breakup, or the drug? And Buffy's ex killed a dude because he figured out with perfect clarity what was going on and couldn't control himself during the confrontation--was that the drug, or would he always have gone that far? If this is the drug, does that mean that Brian is just that much intrinsically nicer a person, that he hasn't gone so far? Especially since he did let those guys kill each other when he was kidnapped in the woods, and even encouraged it, without any mental problems from it, these are scary questions to apply to our favorite crime-solving goof.

What does long-time use of NZT do to someone's personality and their moral compass?

What did you guys think of Limitless's fall finale? Any guesses on what'll happen in the second half of the season? Share in the comments below, or come talk to me on Twitter!


*Which we have because the back episodes were picked up! Whoo!
**But hopefully won't "grow up" so much that he becomes too serious or gets boring!
***And did she break up with him in part because she's getting sweet on Brian, or is that wishful thinking?

Sami on The Expanse 1.2


The Expanse airs at 10pm on Syfy Tuesday nights.

If the second episode of Childhood's End was annoying, the second of The Expanse sort of made up for it by being awesome. I wish this had been the two-hour one, and the other had been one hour!

Ep2 picks up where Ep1 left off: with everyone screwed.

The rescue ship that now needs rescuing immediately gets hit by the shrapnel left by their ship being exploded, which was awesome because that facet of reality almost never happens in scifi. They manage to barely pilot out of it, but they lose their comms and a lot of their air. Everyone has a different idea of what they should do, and no one particularly likes each other. Naomi-the-awesome takes charge, which pits her against James-the-distraught (his girlfriend died on the ship that exploded), and everyone else just wants out.

They manage to get themselves together long enough to get their emergency beacon back online, thought they can't agree on who should send the distress call or what it should say. The also manage to all not suffocate, even though two of them almost did.

And then they manage to be rescued and boarded by Martian marines who take them custody--even though it was the Martians who attacked them to begin with.

Meanwhile, Miller, who is a cop and not a gumshoe despite having all the hallmarks of being a private investigator, is still looking for the lost heiress. He finds where she's been staying in the poor part of the station, hacks her doorlocks* and accesses her files, and finds that she's been denying her dad's goals and intentions for her. She's got a scar that she could have had removed. She's living like a normal person when she could be living like a princess. She's doing what she thinks is right when her dad is doing something probably shady that she disagrees with. Miller's impressed.**

His partner is less impressed, but he's also new and inexperienced and mostly out of the loop on this case. And possibly dating a hooker? That scene happened kind of fast.

Along the way, they discover that someone has been stealing water from the rich parts of town and leaving the perfect green gardens there to turn brown. They're selling it off to people who need it more, but in irresponsible ways, and they're only there because the gang that controlled that area mysteriously pulled up stakes and left a power vacuum.***

And back on earth, the diplomat finds out that her captive Belter is only part of the story she's trying to figure out, and then when she's shipping him off to holding on the moon, he uses the g-force to pointedly and publicly commit suicide, so she can't get any more info out of him.

All of which is to say, things are heating up quickly, and I really want to read these books now.

The show continues to be well-done and tense, even in the quiet parts. People take time to talk things out without it getting boring, and something is always happening to each of them, so that the story is always complicating up. And Syfy seems to be really getting behind this show--they've released the next two episodes online for those who can't wait for weekly viewing, and to keep up the buzz during this awkward-for-TV time between seasons.

Here's my hope: Mars isn't a one-dimensional faceless enemy, but something neater and more complex, which greys up the morality of both the Belters and the Earthers. They're the only ones we haven't seen any first-hand story from, and it would be cool if we get their lives and views the same way as we've gotten the other two.

And this show is addicting. It feels something like Dark Matter, but more High Scifi and less Criminals In Space. It's delightfully complex without being annoyingly lacking in answers, so far, and it's really great to watch.

Bring it, next episodes!

What did you guys think? Are you loving it as much as I am? Comment below, or come talk to me on Twitter!


*These phone-things are so neat.
**Must not ship two people who have never met, must not ship two people who have never met, must not ship two people who have never met...
***Also, they waste a lot of water in their fight and no one tries to clean it up, which is distressing. Since the smashed ship was bringing their water supplies in, and they're aware that it's missing, you'd think they'd be more careful even in their rebellion against the water-rations.

Sami on Childhood's End 1.2


Childhood's End is a three-part mini series airing between Dec 14-16 2015. This was part 2.

Guys, the show about lost me this episode. I love me some scifi, but I really really dislike when scifi gets itself into a philosophical debate with religion--there is literally no way to win, no way to prove either side, and it winds up being a bunch of jerks being jerks at each other.

That's what happened this ep.

There's another time-jump, and now it's several more years in the future. Milo is a scientist in a world where science, as they keep saying, is dying*, and he's not giving up inquiry. The newspaper people are gone, replaced by a groundskeeper who happens to have a wife about to give birth to a demon-baby named Jennifer of all things, and a rich guy who has been collecting up animal samples for an Overlord zoo that is of course not at all creepy, despite being totally creepy. The girl who was leading the youth-faith group before is now an adult councilor (also a dying breed, as they keep telling us), brought in because Jennifer-the-demon's big brother keeps having night terrors and screaming fits and tossing people across the room with telekinesis.

And here's where it loses me.

A kid telling stories of visiting a hell-like place and developing weird force-like powers is not enough of a concern for a family also having a demon baby that took them by surprise because the dad was sleeping on the couch the night it was conceived. He's a little like "um, what's going on?", but he's not really seeming scared or disturbed, and he's not doing research or looking for others with the same problem, or seeking advice other than sometimes talking to Jones and sometimes kicking her out of his house. And the mom is not concerned at all, and spends the whole middle of the episode being totally fine with two creepy demon kids.

Even after Jones's bent-up cross (that almost strangled her on it's own) seems to fend off the alien pod as if they really were the actual demons they look like they are.

Meanwhile, Ricky-the-farmer, who was fired from being the liaison, is dying of some terrible unknown disease, and the aliens aren't doing anything to save him, despite all he did for them. He's also still having encounters with his dead first wife, despite it being like almost twenty years since she first showed up, and that was already five years after she died and he was engaged to someone else. Ellie isn't having any of this, but she doesn't seem able to do much about it, and her whole story is hinged around her wanting kids like everyone else has, and them not being able to. Which brings back Karellan.

See, he made Ricky sterile specifically so they wouldn't have kids, because he knows what's coming next, and he didn't want his only human friend to suffer whatever that is...but he doesn't tell them what it is, nor did he ever warn them or do anything about it other than sterilizing the dude. Which is enough to convince Jones, who has made friends with Ellie, that he needs to die.

She shoots him, and she's totally not fried by a pod like the guy who shot Milo was, and he's not healed by one like Milo was; it takes Ricky giving Karellan his only cure to save him, and Jones jumps off a building because she's lost her faith--even though she has wrestled her life with the meaning of her mother doing the same thing, and it's dumb.

But back at the totally-not-creepy-why-do-you-keep-saying-that Animal Collection Place, a new room with a Ouija board device builds itself in minutes, and the mother of Jennifer-the-demon-baby uses it to communicate with someone by way of the most obvious tower of light ever. That allows Milo to decipher a letter he'd been missing and decode something vague that leads him to studying demonology texts**, and he figures out where the Overlord homeworld is.

That stuff was kind of cool, but there was still that icky mingling of science and religion with no clear stance on either.

This whole chapter felt...diverted. There were no free-the-earth things, and there had been no resolution to that story in Part 1. There was less than no indication of what any of this demon-baby stuff was. Karellan seemed to be playing both sides of the things happening, but neither side was clear enough to tell what was meant to be happening, and he wasn't around enough to make it clear that he even had a plan.

And...Okay, you know when all the way through Lost, we were told that it wasn't supernatural, no matter what it looked like, that there was a scientific explanation, and then at the end it actually WAS supernatural and there was no science? It's feeling like that. It's like it was set up like an alien invasion, when really it was Rosemary's Baby, and no matter how cool it looked, it's a disappointment because that's not the story they said they were telling.

There's still a third part, and so there's two more hours to bring it back around to where the story makes sense--where people are acting like people and not prop devices, where the aliens are actually aliens and not arguments with god given faces, and where there's a point to this wandering middle. I'm hoping it comes back. I really liked part one, and I didn't like part two, like, almost at all. I want to like part three--that's the one that will decide whether the whole six hours were worth it, so it's got to be good!

What did you guys think of it? Am I missing something? Share in the comments, or come talk to us on Twitter!


*I don't like that idea. I don't believe that just because we met an advanced species, all the scientists in the world will just go "whelp, I guess I'm unneeded now" and go become gardeners or something, and never even try to catch up. The aliens will know stuff they don't, so the logical and scientific thing to do would be to fill in the gaps, answer the questions you've been chasing, and then pick up where the aliens left off and keep going. The show is unclean about whether that's what happened or whether the Overlords actively shut down the whole process, but it's acting like it's the first one despite one half-assed mention of the second, and it's dumb. We have a scientist main character; SHOW science being systematically shut down the way you showed war and inequality being shut down!
**Not even looked at scientifically. Ugh,

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Sami on The Expanse 1.1


The Expanse aired at 10pm on SyFy Monday night.

Something like six months ago, Hank told us 12 Monkeys fans on Twitter that SyFy was making a new space opera, and I was immediately intrigued. Then Danyi saw the first ep at NYCC and said it was amazing.

It wasn't oversold--it IS amazing. It's so cool, you guys.

In the 23rd century, Earth and Mars are colonized and not super friendly at each other, and both are dependent on the resources dug out of the asteroids in the Belt--which means they treat the Belters like crap and the Belters are getting tired of it. Dissent is brewing and people are standing on soapboxes trying to gather support.

Meanwhile, the down-on-his-luck space-gumshoe hired to find a missing rich girl doesn't much care about it, and she's lost somewhere creepy and full of secrets with what looks like a devouring purple star inside a ship.

Also meanwhile, a mining ship is coming toward Ceres station and stops to answer a distress call that goes super wrong when they find out that the whole crew is missing and the power core is off, so the transmission was a lie--and a trap. A Martian ship attacks and destroys their home ship, leaving them only a shuttle that's not in great repair, and the derelict they were investigating.

Back on Earth, a diplomat is interrogating a Belter who literally can't even stand up under Earth's gravity, and it letting that gravity torture him without having to lift a finger.

It's a literally explosive start to an awesome new series.

They've put a lot of detail and effort into building a futuristic world that looks real and lived-in--which seems to be a new standard for the channel, in light of Dark Matter and Killjoys and 12 Monkeys. The ships look great*. The moral and ethical issues raised already are very scifi and seem to be being handled in a good and powerful way. The space shots are amazing. There's a lot of characters, which gives the story a lot of scope for action, different points of view, multiple sides of the plot.

And the details! The comm guy wears headphones. The PI's phone is cracked. There's neat housing that looks like it was once nice and is now a slum. There's a lot of diversity. The ship has dirt on it because the XO misses land. People complain about the lack of light--which is literally the first time I've seen that ever on a dimply-lit show. And the range of tech between the upper and lower looks like a real spread you'd actually see in a situation where not everyone has the same access to funds.

It's a really good set up. I can't wait to see what happens next.

What did you guys think of it? Are you onboard** for the space opera? Share in the comments or come talk to us on Twitter!


NOTES:
*#SamiWantsASpaceship again
**See what I did there?

Sami on Childhood's End 1.1


Childhood's End is a three-part miniseries that started Monday Dec 14 at 8pm on Syfy.

It looks like Syfy has remembered that they're actually supposed to be the go-to channel for science fiction and other speculative TV, and they've kicked it off with a really awesome night of new programming. First up was Pt 1 of Childhood's end.

At the very beginning, they mentioned how the book this story was based on influenced a lot of SF that came after it, and they seem to have decided to give back by visually echoing a lot of that scifi that came after. There's the ships-coming-through-the-clouds like in Independence Day. There's a Monolith-looking thing like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, there's the farmhouse from Signs (and probably also any number of other movies). And it's all really well done--the effects are stunning!

Here's how it went:

In 2016, everything sucks. And then huge alien ships come down and hover over world capitals and tell us--through the images of our dead loved ones, which is not creepy at all--that they're not invading, they're fixing. Everything that's wrong will now be right, and everything they declare wrong--war, pollution, violence, illness, etc--is all over, full stop, no question. The militaries are shut down. Diseases are cured in one fell swoop. Saudi Arabia's oil pipeline is closed and refitted to carry much more vital water into irrigation systems being set up in the desert. The world's navies are refitted to take all the wasted food from the developed world to hungry people in the developing world.

All very neat and tidy.

But the aliens won't let anyone see what they look like. And people in power don't like turning over that power. And some people just don't trust anything ever.

There's a group that wants to free the world. (and creates propaganda videos the show plays like regular commercials, which makes the drastic number of actual commercials in these two hours a little easier to look at)

There's a news magnate that "would rather see the world go down the toilet under our control than flourish under theirs".

There's Ricky-the-farmer who is meant to be the intermediary between the Overlords (not at all intimidating) and the humans, even though he's just one guy and no one really believes him. The aliens won't give him a lot of actual information and keep taking his dead wife's image to talk to him, which upsets his now-almost-wife.

There's a very religious girl who talks against the aliens because when her mom saw the ships she decided that means there's no god and committed suicide. There's a lot of religious discussion in the middle of the show.

And there's a kid in a wheelchair who is a genius, but who is also really poor, with a druggie single mother and a bunch of poverty and violence around him. A drug dealer shoots him for sticking up for his mom, and the aliens heal him--which sets off the free-the-Earth people because they also kill the drug dealer because their stance on violence is there won't be any or else.

Then, fifteen years later, when everything is green and clean and people don't need to work for a living because a living is provided, when everyone is wearing the scifi-standard taupe to show that everyone is equal*, the Overlords decide that humans are ready to see what they look like.

So of course they look like the devil.

All in all, the show is pretty awesome. It's made from an old story, so there's a lot of talking and not a lot of action for big chunks of the show, and people are sort of idealized--there's a sudden and complete end of wars as soon as the aliens show up, rather than panicked riots and people shooting at the sky for the first act. There would likely have been more sex and violence if this was a newer story. But there's also a lot of really cool ideas, and it's visually very neat. If Syfy is setting the bar here for the quality and content of their new shows, they have chosen a good miniseries to do it. This is actual scifi, classic and basically optimistic, even with the underlying uncertainty that these aliens showing up out of nowhere bring with them.

I haven't read the book. I'm watching live with no idea how the story goes, and so far, I'm intrigued and impressed, and both happy and excited to see what happens in part two.

How about you guys? Have you read the book? What do you think of it, whether you have or not? Tell us in the comments, or come talk to me and the girls on Twitter!


NOTES:
*I hate the idea that the future has no color. Like, ugh. What a terrible fate, visually, sartorially, and decorationally.

What the Professional Fangirls have to say about Childhood's End and The Expanse


Childhood's End:



The Expanse:


Look for other talks from individual Fangirls as we all process the wonder and remember how to use our words!

Sunday, November 29, 2015

New Year, new Professional Fangirl!

After the new year gets settled in, we're adding eight new contributors and expanding what we cover and what we talk about! And we're also going to start selling ad space on the sidebar, so if you have a geek-friendly product or business, drop us a line!

We're going to post intros sometime in January, and update the About Us page so you can get to know our writers. I'm going to start doing monthly Letters From The Editor. We're going to talk about SO MUCH MORE STUFF than I can do on my own! It's gonna be so great, you guys.

Stay tuned!

Friday, November 6, 2015

Geeky TV commentary - Bones 11.6, Sleepy Hollow 3.6, Elementary 4.1


Bones airs at 8pm on Fox Thursday nights.

So many guest stars this season! The latest was right here in the cold open, with Impractical Jokers Murr and Sal as street sweepers who find the body by street-sweeping over it and getting their whole truck all grossed up. And then Murr tastes it, thinking it's a prank. That's a nice meta-injoke, but it's also really gross.

The body turns out to be a senator. One that Hodgins actually liked enough to stop voting side parties for. He seemed to actually be, like, the only good guy in Senate, since the mysterious monthly pay outs turned out to be to help a daughter he'd just reconnected with, no an affair like they thought. It was the wife that was having an affair. A wife that would suddenly be a Senator because of some old law that widows of Senators take over when one dies because they're likely to be similar, politically. And it was his aid (or whoever that guy who used to be on Sleepy Hollow was) who killed him.

All very tidy. Because it's not the case that matters on this show anymore.

What matters is the people, as I probably say every week.

Bones got to turn her bluntness up to 11 to take on their political suspects so that she could be rude and ask personal questions and booth could get a read on her, and she took to it gleefully. It was kind of obnoxious, but it also showed exactly why they're such a good team: she antagonizes and cuts right to the truth, and Booth reads the social cues and emotional reactions, and together they can build a clear picture of what's going on.

And when he wasn't with Bones, Booth was with Aubrey, who was sort of their lovechild this ep--savvy and agent-y, but also not taking any guff from anyone involve and being less diplomatic than Booth. It was great. Aubrey was also checking out Squintern Jessica-from-the-commune's background, and found out about some questionable protests, and some drugs and rock'n'roll in her past. He was inclined to take it seriously, but she was arguing that pasts make us who we are and she's not who she was then anymore than he's who he was when his dad was arrested. It was very well done--talking on multiple layers, feeling out what could be a new 'ship*, all sorts of meaningful eyeballs.

Aubrey came in on a bad episode so that it was crazy-obvious that he was meant to fill a hole in the cast when Sweets died**, but he's done a good job of becoming an endearing, tough, honest, individual character! And he humanizes Jessica nicely. The two of them might even be good enough together to handle a spinoff or a continuation, if the main cast decides to leave at any point. An ER-style hand-off wouldn't have worked a few years ago, but now the Squinterns are all known characters and it would be nice to see them taking over the lab and carrying on the Jeffersonian's good name if the original cast gets tired of it. Bones: The Next Generation, all trained by Bones and Booth and Angela, Hodgins, and Cam.***

And we got Caroline this week! Any week with Caroline busting chops and calling Booth pretty is a good week, and she upped the ante by flirting with Aubrey, too, and it was wonderful.

Meanwhile, Bones and Booth were arguing over whether or not to get a TV for the bedroom, because Booth wanted to watch things snuggled up in bed, and Bones didn't want to give up sex--since statistics say that a TV in the bedroom makes for less sex for couples, and she loves statistics. They eventually do get one, after agreeing that it's an experiment to see whether they fit the odds or beat them, and it's adorable.

It still feels sometimes like Bones is coasting, but if they are, they're coasting at a good clip, on a good tone, and it's still fun and charming and full of quirk, just like we all love.


Sleepy Hollow airs at 9pm on Fox Thursday nights.

Pandora's plot is finally getting somewhere...but we have no idea where, and it sort of just highlighted how bad Abbie and Crane have been about following up with anything at all this season. She sent a wasp-woman from Trinidadian folklore to make people paranoid and dead, and then she harvested all those flowers to open a door in the tree and literally just walk out on them, and it was like ??????.

It was great to get a monster that came from something other than Revolutionary America (though it did, actually, tie back to that needlessly), even if she did look like a Power Rangers villain and didn't have much more story to herself than, say, a streetlamp. Maybe an evil streetlamp. But it was so easy to find where she was and to put the pieces together that it just made Team Witness look like selfish idiots for not ever wondering where Pandora was hiding out, or what she was doing, or what any of what she was doing meant. And even with the pieces together--six kinds of fear to open a door--we still have no idea what she's doing. Like, at all. Or why.

Ugh.

The hope that the beginning of the season brought that it would be better is starting to wear off as Jenny is still underused (though this week, she does get to do a little A-plot usefulness, and might be getting a story of her own now), as they announce that they're "not actively pursuing Ichabbie" and yet Abbie is also being denied actively pursing or being pursued by anyone else, and these flabby treatments of the plot lines they are actively pursuing. Combined with how Fox didn't even update the character shots for the bumps between commercials and didn't even mention that this show still existed until two weeks before it came back, feels like it's been abandoned. Which feels like this will be the last season. Which then, in light of all the lameness going on around the edges, feels like everyone has given up. If you're going out and you know it, make it good, and don't put off the storylines the fans have been wanting--especially when you were talking about them as a possibility before the season aired. If you're not giving up, act like it, and get your act together.

Anyway.

Jenny and Joe had to give up on tracking down Corbin's past, because of that case that the FBI has that we've seen literally nothing of, and Joe won't let it go. He trades the Shard of Anubis for info, and his dad's old criminal buddy says a bunch of bad-sounding things about money and crime and doesn't explain any of them. But Jenny had her boy's back, and they get the Shard back--except the guy had taken the real shard out of the big rock, and it sank into Jenny's hand, and she didn't think to mention that to anyone--like, say, her partner in this mission, or her sister, or the resident eidetic king of books. It gave her nightmares and made her glow, and that could be really interesting, but at this point, who knows.

Crane goes on a date with Zoe that proves they have no chemistry despite hitting up the same webpages, which really just makes it look like Zoe is stalking him or something. She's so not weirded out by his weirdness, never has anything to say against him, finds the same how-to-date webpages out of all the pages on the web...It's suspicious. And yet, Crane goes out with her again.

And Abbie has no joy left in her life. All she does is get annoyed, make sad faces when no one is looking, and not get to have a love interest of her own. Which might be fine if she got to talk about why, or explain herself to the boss who might still like her (though he doesn't treat her very well and also is not doing anything about it himself, so who cares if he's cute), or anything, but she's not doing any of that. She's a blank wall, not letting anyone in, not letting anything out, and it looks like she doesn't even want to be there--so why is she? The first episode had her choosing Witnessing over running away, but lately, she's just chasing down monsters but not following up, not trying to piece stuff together between cases, not even hanging out with her sister.

And if Abbie isn't happy, when do we get to get a plot for her about it?

Also, why wasn't Grace Dixon the new contact in the past? She's got the journal she passed down to Abbie, she was already there so she didn't need to be created new for this season that already has new characters, she proves that Abbie is equally as tied into whatever happens then that affects here, and she has actually met Abbie--literally almost the only person from the past who can say that. Oversight? Prejudice? More fumbling? It's an annoying choice.

And it's annoying being so annoyed by a show I like and used to love, that's so much better than it was, and still making dumb choices.


Elementary airs at 10pm on CBS Thursday nights.

Elementary is back! And there was only a small jump between the end of the season and the start of this one, story-wise. 

Sherlock fell off the wagon, but has gotten clean again since then, and doesn't intend to get back into a drugged out stupor. He feels appropriately bad about it. But more than that, he feels bad about how almost kicking that guy to death might have messed up Joan's life, since if he's gone from the NYPD consultancy, she is too. 

He tries to get her to take the credit for the case they're working, and she refuses--all that matters to her is the partnership, because she took the job to work with him, not the cops. So if she goes down with him, he wants to cushion that, too, and tries to get them both a job working for the feds instead of the cops****. Really, his concern for her is the heart of this episode, and it's moving enough that when he finds out he's not going to jail for the beating, she hugs him and he doesn't make her stop (though he also doesn't return it). Is this the season where they'll be allowed to drift toward something non-professional? Something where they admit that they care about each other more than once a season?

They're trying to prove that Bloom, who was horrible to them last season and killed himself right in front of Sherlock this episode, didn't kill his wife by proving that he's telling the truth about the two women he did kill and therefore telling the truth that he didn't kill the wife, too. Tracking the wife leads to another woman who disappeared, and a plot to get revenge for the death of her whole family during a failed attempt to smuggle themselves out of South America through Mexico. They find the guy responsible for that--who was also responsible for her death when she found him and confronted him about it. 

And that led to the option to work outside the city, though it was half joking, and who knows if that's what they'll do.

What made this a great episode was the caring between all the characters. Gregson brought them food and came to check on Joan, and separately on Sherlock. Bell helped Joan clean up their stuff from the precinct when they officially lost their job there, and it was very sweet when he said he'd miss her. Joan was trying to get through to Mr Holmes when he said he was finally going to come talk to them in person and never showed, because she cares about Sherlock and didn't want to be treated like that for it. Sherlock tried to shield Joan and Gregson from his fallout.

And Mr Holmes finally did show up, whether that's because he cares or not still remains to be seen.

All in all, a good start to the season, with lots of feels and somehow still some humor, and a good case.


What did you think of today's shows? Comment below, or come talk to me on Twitter!


Bones

Sleepy Hollow

Elementary




*One of the few left, now that almost everyone is paired off.
**They should have introduced him a few episodes before, let him interact, been a separate person before Sweets died, but whatevs, too late now.
***This is one of my hobbyhorses. Shows don't have to end when the main characters want to leave, but so far, really, only ER has done it right--introducing people and letting viewers get used to them before the old people leave. SG1 almost did it, trading O'Niell for Cameron and Vala, who were both great but only had a few years. X-Files tried, and Doggett and Reyes were good, but they came in too late and the show was already closing shop.
****Which would be so great, because then I can pretend that he'd be able to meet other fancy assets, like Jane from Blindspot at Brian from Limitless, even though they're both on a different channel. Ooh, or they could guest star Jane and Lisbon! Or Team Scorpion! They're all government contractors on CBS!