Star Wars Rebels came back for a 2 part season premiere, and then...went on hiatus again for a few months. For reasons?
( spoilerish )Hey, remember when this was the light, cute kids show about space!jedi!Robin Hood family, and GrimDark theories seemed entirely out of place for it? Yeah, me too.
Killjoys is a new SyFy series about a bounty hunter named Dutch whose Dark And Tragic Backstory appears to be the intergalactic version of MCU's The Red Room, complete with Rob Stewart. Her partner, Johnny, gets both of them in trouble when he sees a kill order for his brother , D'Avin, and uses Dutch's clearance to try to save them. And Stuff Happens. There's also an intergalactic war going on that bounty hunters are neutral in, and everyone but Johnny having Deep Dark Secrets. I liked the show in general (the pilot is exposition heavy, but that's to be expected) and really liked both Dutch and Johnny, but I couldn't care less about D'Avin and his Deep Dark Secrets, and am annoyed that the pilot seems to want me to ship him with Dutch. At least Dutch (played by a biracial actress) is set up as the central protagonist, with the brothers as her support. I really could have done without the rape threats in the opening scene, though.
Dark Matter is another new space opera show, this one a Canadian show also showing on SyFy. Six people wake up from stasis with amnesia, finding themselves on route to a mining planet, along with a large cache of weapons. They name themselves One-Six, in the order they woke up in, and try to figure out what's going on. It's very, very tropey, but I'm ok with that. Like
Killjoys, this appears to be a "corporations rule the universe, Our Protagonists must choose a side" show.* There are a lot of familiar faces, particularly Zoie Palmer, Roger Cross and Anthony Lemke. Rob Stewart (non-evil version) also guest stars in the first two episodes, and Torri Higginston is in the second. Hopefully, her character is meant to be recurring, and they didn't cast her for one measly scene. The cast is pretty diverse and largely good, though I really wish they weren't acting like One (the obligatory Idealist) was so charismatic and inspiring. I mean, nothing against the character or actor, but roger Cross, Anthony Lemke, and the actress playing Two all have more charisma and screen presence in their pinkies than he does in his whole body. Though, mind you, I have yet to see Lemke play a character that anyone should look to for inspiration.
For now, though, Two is set up as the leader, and I hope it stays that way.
( spoilers )I'm a bit leery about
Dark Matter, as it's by the SGA folks, and I had a contentious relationship with that show in the two seasons I watched, and didn't like much of what I heard about the rest, but Jay Firestone is also involved, and that's usually a plus.
*That said, the shows are pretty different, despite appealing to largely the same audiences.
Killjoys is a very very SyFy show, kinda campy and all about buddy space bounty hunters adventures, with a side of Dark And Angsty Pasts. And an Ashmore twin. (You can tell the Ashmore twins apart by whether or not they're in a SyFy or CW show, or a SciFi movie. Unless they guest star in the same episode of a show.)
Dark Matter is a more Serious Business (but not too much) show more focused on mysteries and identity.
The Astronaut Wives Club is not set in space, but is about the wives of some of the first Americans to go into space. The first episode focus primarily on Louise Sheppard, wife of Alan Shepard, and it was...ok? There was just too much going on for a 42 minute episode, and Louise's characterization relied pretty heavily on internalized misogyny. Like a lot of US shows set in the early/mid-20th century in recent years, it has a "wants to be the next
Mad Men" feel to it. (And for my money, MM only worked the first few seasons.) I'll watch more people it was enjoyable enough, and in hopes that it'll improve.
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