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VintageSciFiGuy
Reviews
The Acolyte (2024)
This series would have been much better if I could have watched it on Disney+ at 1.5x speed.
I am not a Star Wars fan. I'm a fan of intellectually stimulating space fiction. So, I came to The Acolyte with an open mind. What I have seen so far has not attracted me to the series. This is not to denigrate some of the amazing acting work, nor to dismiss the thousands of people involved in its creation and production. I'm certainly not cancelling my Disney+ subscription. (Doctor Who is on there now!) This is a problem that modern science fiction and science fantasy shows seem to have in that things are slowed down too much, with slow response dialogue edits. A TV scriptwriter once told me that getting the most out of each scene is essential. Push it. Stretch it. Get the actors to put everything they can into making a scene last as long as possible. Add lots of pauses, too. Milk it for all its worth.
That is what has happened here. By-the-book milking of every single scene. It is, unfortunately, boring. I almost gave up on Ahsoka for the same reason. The Mandalorian is stretched in places but not as much as this. Kenobi also has slow scenes but again, they're few and far between. Further afield, the last few seasons of Westworld, the first season of 3 Body Problem, and quite a few episodes of the Expanse suffer from this extended scene problem.
As a science fantasy story for young teens it ticks the boxes. As a story that fits the current zeitgeist, it works well. For older viewers with less patience, it needs some speeding up and could probably have fit into 2 tight episodes of an hour each.
A possible way to improve season 2, if this extended scene / slow response dialogue isn't going to change anytime soon, could be to make each episode an encapsulated story, loosely linked to the others. Perhaps take a leaf out of the Babylon 5 playbook? Slow scenes but full of intense multilayered dialogue and a backstory that doesn't become completely clear until season 5.
Craig Charles: UFO Conspiracies (2022)
A cool popcorn documentary in its early days
Ancient Aliens was pretty amateurish at the beginning, too. Don't knock this one, yet. At this stage, it's great to see a new show focused on UFOs and aiming at the teen market. I love Craig Charles' work in Red Dwarf, and it's awesome he's helped put this show together, but he needs a larger crew, on location appearances, in-person interviews... etc to make this show more appealing to the general population. Still, COVID-style production means some restrictions. If he can own this like Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress own Ancient Aliens, this is going to be regular viewing for people like myself who enjoy watching any of the latest developments in UAP research, with some bonus science. Also, what Ancient Aliens failed at was it took them ages to have more women on the show. Here we have scientist / space journalist Sarah Cruddas in the first ep, straight out of the gate as a regular. How awesome! Would like to see some more science from her. Maybe even a five minute 'Let me explain that' segment going into some physics. Don't dumb it down too much. 7/10 for potential.