Television | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! Enterprising Individuals – “That Which Survives”

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Darren

I am always thrilled to get a chance to talk about Star Trek with other fans, so I was thrilled at the invitation to join the wonderful Aaron Coker on Enterprising Individuals to talk about That Which Survives.

The third season of Star Trek is an interesting season of television. It is largely dismissed and overlooked by many fans, who write it off as a season in clear decline. Certainly, the season contains no shortage of terrible episodes: And the Children Shall Lead, The Way to Eden, The Paradise Syndrome, Turnabout Intruder and many more. However, there’s an interesting atmosphere that pervades the season, the sense that the third season of Star Trek is drifting through a haunted and dead universe. That Which Survives is a pure example of this, like The Tholian Web or Spectre of the Gun or All Our Yesterdays.

You can listen to the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The Original Series | Tagged: aaron coker, D. C. Fontana, death, decay, enterprise, enterprising individuals, fred freiberger, ghosts, haunting, kirk, podcast, sirens, star trek, wrong | 2 Comments »

New Escapist Video! “Star Wars: Visions Full Season Review”

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute full-season review of Star Wars: Visions, which is streaming on Disney+ right now.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: 3mr, escapist, escapist magazine, star wars, star wars: visions, the escapist, three minute review, visions | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On The Lingering Ambiguity of “The Sopranos”…

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the rapidly approaching premiere of The Many Saints of Newark, it seemed like as good a time as any to take a look back to The Sopranos.

The Sopranos remains a towering accomplishment in modern television. It is a show that ushered in what has been described as “the Golden Age of Television.” It is a show that has endured, recruiting new fans in the years since it went off the air. It is a show that is still hotly contested and debated, with fans still arguing over what particular scenes or episodes mean. This is particularly true of the show’s famous ending scene, but the truth is that The Sopranos was always deliberately ambiguous, trusting its audience to reach their own conclusions about these characters and how they operate.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: ambiguity, audiences, David Chase, ending, questions, ralphie, the sopranos, Tony, whoever did this | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 7, Episode 11 (“Closure”)

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Darren

The X-Cast is covering the seventh season of The X-Files. It’s an interesting and divisive season of the show, a season that seems to have been intended to serve as the end of the show’s run, but is now closer to the middle of the series’ run. Although the sixth season had wrapped up a lot of the mythology in Two Fathers and One Son, the seventh season still had some tidying up to do. I was thrilled to join Carl Sweeney and Chris Knowles for an episode doing some of that tidying up: Closure.

Samantha Mulder had haunted the show since the very beginning. In The Pilot and Conduit, Samantha’s mysterious disappearance was positioned as the reason for Mulder’s quest. Over the years, in episodes like Colony and End Game or Redux II, Samantha remained pivotal to the show’s central mythology. She was perhaps the biggest remaining plot thread as the show entered its seventh season. Closure is an attempt to wrap up that dangling plot thread, and to provide a satisfying answer once and for all to one of the show’s biggest remaining mysteries.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: cigarette-smoking man, conspiracy, Fox Mulder, mulder, mystery, mythology, podcast, resolution, resolved, Samantha Mulder, the x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On The Enduring Appeal of “Marvel Zombies”…

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. With the release of What If… Zombies!?, What If…? finally brought the Marvel Zombies into the larger continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Marvel Zombies are an interesting piece of Marvel Comics lore, essentially imagining a world where all the superheroes have been transformed into flesh-eating monsters. While these sorts of alternate universe stories are common enough in comic books, Marvel Zombies have endured much longer than the zombie movie revival that likely inspired them. So why did the Marvel Zombies catch on? Why do they endure? Why are audiences so compelled by them?

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: capitalism, Contagion, infection, mark millar, marvel, marvel zombies, robert kirkman, superheroes, zombies | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “A Marvelous Escape” – What If – “… Zombies!?”

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Darren

With a slew of Marvel Studios productions coming to Disney+ over the next six months, The Escapist has launched a weekly show discussing these series

This week, I join KC Nwosu and Amy Campbell to talk about the fifth episode of What If…?, streaming on Disney+.

Filed under: Podcasts!, Television | Tagged: cannibals, marvel, marvel zombie, marvel zombies, monsters, superheroes, what if | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Millennium in Comics (“Immaculate” & “Mini-Series”)

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Darren

I’ve been really honoured to be a recurring guest on The Time is Now across its coverage of Millennium, a vastly underrated and under-appreciated television series. The podcast has finished its coverage of the show, but I was thrilled to join Tony Black for a discussion of the tie-in comic books published after the show finished up.

To be fair, it seems like Millennium only really came back as an extension of IDW’s management of the larger X-Files brand, as the publisher tried to figure out if the market would support an X-Files-adjacent comic book as hype built around the franchise’s return to television. Still, the results were interesting and worth discussing on their own merits, an effort to bring Frank Black and the Millennium Group into the twenty-first century.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Comics, Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: frank black, joe harris, millennium, podcast, the time is now, tony black | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – “Chris Carter’s Harsh Realm”

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Darren

With The X-Cast moving on to coverage of the seventh season of The X-Files, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about Chris Carter’s Harsh Realm, the short-lived series that Carter launched in the wake of Millennium.

Harsh Realm is an oddity. The show was hyped as the next great American television show, developed by Chris Carter under a lucrative production deal with Fox. However, with the arrival of Doug Herzog, the network’s priorities shifted and Harsh Realm was effectively dead on arrival. The result is an interesting and disjointed run of episodes, brimming with potential that is never fully realised. In some ways, Harsh Realm is the forgotten Chris Carter television show, which offers an interesting snapshot of his sensibilities at this moment in time.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Harsh Realm, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris carter, harsh realm, podcast, teh x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “A Marvelous Escape” – What If – “… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?”

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Darren

With a slew of Marvel Studios productions coming to Disney+ over the next six months, The Escapist has launched a weekly show discussing these series

This week, I join KC Nwosu and Amy Campbell to talk about the fourth episode of What If…?, streaming on Disney+.

Filed under: Podcasts!, Television | Tagged: a marvellous escape, a marvelous escape, alternate universe, doctor strange, fridging, marvellous escape, marvelous escape, what if | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “A Marvelous Escape” – What If – “… Earth Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?”

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Darren

With a slew of Marvel Studios productions coming to Disney+ over the next six months, The Escapist has launched a weekly show discussing these series

This week, I join KC Nwosu and Amy Campbell to talk about the third episode of What If…?, streaming on Disney+.