scifi tv

The best science fiction television from every decade.

Rewatching... Doctor Who: The Evil Of The Daleks - Part 2
Saturday 27 May 1967 "You seem to be well acquainted with the creatures." Best incidental music so far! There hasn't been a score like this before. We've had lots of specially composed music of course, as well as stock library music, or no music at all. Or as with The Moonbase, ambient sounds doing the same job. The first story had some creepy piano tinkling, there was some marvellously ominous music in the first Dalek one, re-used in Troughton's debut. The Savages had some great orchestral music but as with most of the previous stories it seemed sparse overall. This one has a proper 'full' score by Dudley Simpson with small orchestra as well as Radiophonic synthesiser. Something we will become used to...
By Nick Brown9 years ago in Futurism
Doctor Who: The Pyramid At The End Of The World Review
Warning: Potential spoilers ahead for the episode. Science Fiction often is a way for us to see our world through different eyes. As classics like The Twilight Zone or the original series of Star Trek have shown, there is something about the genre that allows us to remove ourselves slightly and see the world we live in in a different context. Doctor Who has also shown itself capable of this both in its original run and with its current 21st century incarnation. The Pyramid At The End Of The World, aired on the 27th of May, was to prove that once again with an episode that combined the genre and the show's most recent story arcs with the world we live in now.
By Matthew Kresal9 years ago in Futurism
Review of Twin Peaks: The Return 1.3-4
The second installment of Twin Peaks: The Return -- aka episodes 3 and 4 -- continued tonight in the unmitigated gonzo, steampunk, B-movie style to which we became accustomed last week.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Review of Twin Peaks: The Return 1.1-2
Twin Peaks was back -- hence also known as Twin Peaks: The Return -- Sunday night with the two first episodes of some new seasons on Showtime. I enjoyed it. But -- well, it's a strange and tough narrative to enjoy.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Review of 12 Monkeys 3.8-10
The concluding three episodes of the penultimate season 3 of 12 Monkeys on the SyFy Channel last night -- soon to be rebranded in all caps -- was as good as the first seven, which is to say, superb indeed, and you can put that in all caps any time.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Review of 12 Monkeys 3.5-7
A superb, punching, philosophic triad of episodes 3.5-7 of 12 Monkeys last night, with Jennifer's most memorable line coming in 1953, "a thing for Asimov". This has almost nothing to do with the story, but it's meta-beautiful, since Asimov's The End of Eternity -- from around three years in the future, in 1956 - has always been, to my mind, at least, since the day I first read it back in 1959, the best single time travel novel ever written.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Review of 12 Monkeys 3.1-4
12 Monkeys returned Friday night with the first four episodes of its third season, and they were superb indeed -- in fact, I'd say the best episodes in the series so far.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Review of Frequency Epilogue
Frequency -- the CW time-travel series, based on one of the best time-travel movies of all time -- was unceremoniously cancelled a few weeks ago. Truthfully, the series had a lot of flaws, and probably deserved to be cancelled, but I was sorry to see it go, anyway. Part of that was, as you should know from reading my reviews here, I really like time travel. Part of that was, well, there was more Frequency story to tell.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones - Part 6
Saturday 13 May 1967 There was an article in the paper yesterday describing how a man had written to Gatwick airport because he was worried about flying in case he got miniaturised. Perhaps it was tongue in cheek, but it suggests that this story must have made more of an impression on the public than I'd imagined.
By Nick Brown9 years ago in Futurism
Who Are the Steely-Eyed Men of Sci-Fi?. Top Story - May 2017.
The term steely-eyed missile man is a complementary term rooted in NASA's Apollo history when flight controller John Aaron's quick thinking saved the Apollo 12 mission from disaster. It refers to an engineer or astronaut who quickly devises an ingenious solution to a tough problem while under extreme pressure.
By David Latchman9 years ago in Futurism
Review of Oasis
I caught the pilot for Oasis last month on Amazon Prime. It definitely has possibilities. The set-up is something we've seen and read many times before -- an Earth in bad shape just a few decades into the future has apparently discovered faster-than-light travel, and is setting up a colony on some habitable world out there in the galaxy. Also familiar is the discovery that this new world isn't such a nice place, either, and in fact has something very strange and likely deadly about it.
By Paul Levinson9 years ago in Futurism
The Seventh Obsession
"The Forbidden Romance" Darkness and light. What would happen if the two of them became one? Here in the realm of the shadow, beings of unknown forms and sizes are everywhere. Here, the inhabitants can smell weakness and among Death, there are worse things. What means existence to demons means termination to mortals. In the underworld, like in the world of the living, power is everything. You are strongest not because of your size or your roar but in the moment of opportunity when you strike and defend against those who dared to trod on what was sacred. A demon can only have what is sacred, it matters not what it is, his eyes, the horns, the weapon that is a part of him as much as his dark soul. There is nothing more precious than that. That was the truth of it for Elionist and there were no other truths. How wrong he was.
By Longpunch9 years ago in Futurism