Movies:

“Hotel Artemis” is a more or less modern film noir with a bit of cyberpunk overlay. It’s dark and strange and well done, and we enjoyed it.

“Adrift” is two stories that happened to the same people in sequence, which are then told simultaneously intercut start to finish. The earlier story is a romance, the later story is a maritime survival tale. It’s all based pretty closely on things that happened in 1983, though there are the inevetable liberties taken. If you watch the trailers, and then look up the actual event, you be convinced that the movie takes HUGE liberties with history, but you will be wrong. We enjoyed this a great deal.

Meanwhile, on the small screen…

Back in the mid-60s, if you were a science ficiton fan, you would happily explain to anyone who would listen not only THAT “Star Trek” was a better show than “Lost in Space”, you could explain to them WHY it was a better show, in great detail. Both distinctions were lost on the Gods of the Studios (and, on the basis of ratings, on the viewing public).

Fifty years later, there is a new iteration of “Lost in Space”, and on the basis of the first two episodes, the Gods of the Studio still don’t understand the THAT. In a world where “The Expanse” has pushed the bar on reality based science fiction about as far as it can go and still have interplanetary commerce, the new “Lost in Space” uses the same level of technobabble pseudo-science that the original show used fifty years ago, though with vastly improved special effects.

Dramatically, the show does somewhat better, though it is REALLY hard to believe that this particular collection of people will manage to figure out enough of their new reality to actually survive. At the very least, the new Robot is interesting.

In the end, this new version of “Lost in Space” seems to be exactly what it claims to be: An updated version of a show that was known for bad science fiction and flaky plots. I should not be surprised, but I always hope for more.

Update: After three episodes, we are done. Laughable melodrama is only tolerable when the character interactions are FUN, and fun is distinctly lacking in this show.

Uncle Hyena