Star Trek: Discovery Proves That TV Is the Best Final Frontier of All

BETWEEN 1967 AND 2005, 684 hour-long episodes of live-action Star Trek and 22 half-hour episodes of the animated series aired on TV. Allowing for commercial breaks, that gives us 521 hours of Star Trek, give or take. Add in the 13 movies, from 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek Beyond in 2016, and you wind up with more than 48 full days of Star Trek—not counting books and comics, which, if you want to argue about canonicity and amount of content, my DMs are open. (Not really.)

Alien: Covenant Proves ‘Franchise Fatigue’ Really Means ‘Boring Movies’

Alien: Covenant is a decent film about android consciousness and ancient secrets wherein Michael Fassbender proves he can play an excellent android. But it has one big problem: In order to earn the “Alien” name, director Ridley Scott was forced to rehash a lot of moments from his 1979 sci-fi classic. Nobody needs this. Not really. Not even Scott, who seems much more interested in making connections to his 2012 prequel Prometheus than in filming another slobbering xenomorph. The result is a movie where the biggest money shots feel largely obligatory—just killers and filler, nothing more.

The Maligned Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me Is Better—and More Important—Than You Know

WHEN DAVID LYNCH’S neo-noir movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me premiered 25 years ago at Cannes, the audience, famously, booed. That’s not unheard of, but the reaction probably had less to do with the film than its television predecessor: By 1992, Twin Peaks had gone from critical darling to drag. To many, Fire Walk with Me played like a glorified TV movie. Instead of continuing the creepy, off-kilter vibe of Twin Peaks or attempting to answer its many mysteries, detractors said, Lynch jettisoned the show’s goofy charm in favor of a tale of domestic horror.

FX’s Taboo Is Basically Bizarro World Jane Austen

THE FX SHOW Taboo, a gritty historical drama starring Tom Hardy, is set in London during the Regency era, a period best known today as a popular setting for romance novels. Fantasy author Carrie Vaughn says that historical angle is what first attracted her to the show.
“It’s set in the same time period as Jane Austen stories are,” Vaughn says in Episode 256 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I love the idea of this mirror universe Jane Austen. All of these characters could be in a Jane Austen story, except the mood would be very, very different.”