A new signal leads Discovery to the Beta Quadrant, and a small colony of humans descended from a group who were abducted from Earth during World War III. Many of the colonists hold a deep religious belief in the angelic being who brought them to this world, whilst a few favour the scientific method. Pike and Burnham decide to head to the surface to unravel the mystery of how they came to arrive on the planet in the first place. Continue reading
The war with the Klingons may be over, but Starfleet is concerned about a brand new phenomenon – a series of mysterious red bursts that simultaneously occurred thousands of light years apart. Discovery has been tasked with investigating them, and to that end, they have been assigned a new captain – Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise. As Pike takes the captain’s chair, Burnham finds herself both dreading and anticipating the chance to meet his science officer, her adoptive brother Spock. Continue reading
I have to admit that it can sometimes take very little to get me to buy a new book. An author with a Japanese name and some effusive praise on a London billboard was all it took to get me to invest in Hanya Yamashita’s A Little Life – I didn’t really have any clue what it was even going to be about. Of course, the book then languished on my Kindle for several years before I actually got around to reading it, but once I’d cracked its virtual cover, I was hooked. Continue reading
First things first. When it comes to Hercule Poirot, I have always considered myself a self-confessed David Suchet purist. For me, his was the quintessential portrayal of the moustachioed Belgian detective with his infamous love of precision and square crumpets. Nonetheless, Suchet’s time as Poirot had long since come to an end, and so it was that over the festive period I found myself watching a rather different adaptation of a classic Poirot story, The ABC Murders. Continue reading
Ahead of the release of Black Mirror season five comes Bandersnatch, a one-off “choose your own adventure” which offers decision points where viewers can choose which direction the story takes. The format echoes the plot of the episode itself, in which aspiring game designer Stefan is determined to make a video game adaptation of Bandersnatch, an epic sci-fi choose your own adventure book. But the further Stefan gets with the game, the shakier his grip on reality becomes. Is free will an illusion? Does he have control over anything, or is he just a puppet to the whims of an unseen viewer? Continue reading
If you’ve any interest in Star Trek at all (and if you haven’t, it’s unclear why you would pay much attention to this blog), then you’ll have heard the news – Patrick Stewart is set to return to our screens in a brand new series about TNG’s beloved captain, Jean Luc Picard. Naturally, this news was received with anticipation and delight from all corners – even I have put aside my natural “is that a cash cow I hear being milked?” reaction and allowed myself some quiet anticipation. Continue reading
The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut (YouTube)
The latest in my series of “things I decided to watch after listening to Imaginary Worlds”, The Thief and the Cobbler is also the start of a new category of viewing for me – animated films that took decades to make. Seriously, if you think Nomura is taking his time with Kingdom Hearts III, then bear in mind that this film was in production for 29 years – and even then, the final version was, much like FFXV, an hastily cut together unfinished product. Continue reading
