Cyberpunk: Edgerunners review

    CYBERPUNK 2077 is a game that I keep close to my heart but it's a bit like Night City itself in that it is a relationship that is probably toxic for both of us. She's a beautiful lady with all the pretty chrome, neon hair, and bad attitude but we've had our ups and downs. She wrecked my apartment, there were accusations of cheating, and then we hooked up again but I was already in another relationship. Harsh words were exchanged. Okay, sorry, this metaphor has wandered way off topic.

    In any case, I played Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, and PS5. I've put five hundred hours into the game and I have read a lot of the spin-off comics, played the tabletop RPG that proceeded it, and have always been a cyberpunk. Hell, I write cyberpunk fiction in general and wrote Daughter of the Cyber Dragons in anticipation of the game. However, it is a game that also disappointed me with its massive bugs, lack of promised features, and incrediby railroaded plot that didn't live up to what could have been.

    So I approached Cyberpunk: Edgerunners with trepidation. Anime and cyberpunk have a long and well-documented history with Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Cyber City Oedo 080, and Bubblegum Crisis being some of my favorite of both. I'd also heard good things about Studio Trigger, even though I wasn't familiar with any of their works. Still, I had to ask myself whether or not they'd be able to produce something truly up to snuff. Did they?

    For the most part, yes. This is going to be one of those "power metal" series. Which is to say that it's not going to be for everyone but those people that do like it, will love it to an absurd degree. It is an ultra cynical, ultra violent, hyper-stylized series that perfectly encapsulates the Earthly Inferno that is Night City, California. Those who aren't familiar with the games will not be fine but should note that Night City is basically Frank Miller's Sin City except with better technology as well as a (slightly) more respectful attitude toward women.

    The premise is David Martinez is a poor kid attending a rich kid's school due to his mother somehow making enough Eddies on the side to send him there. David doesn't want to be there, doesn't care about becoming a corpo, and swiftly earns the everlasting enmity of his peers. His bad attitude doesn't help him when a horrific accident claims the lives of his mother and he is left bankrupt by the medical expenses that weren't enough to save her.

    Not to get too deep into the series but David finds crime as a lucrative-seeming alternative to school and ends up joining a group of cyberpunks AKA Edgerunners. They're a semi-friendly group at the best of times but David is deeply in love with a beautiful mercenary-thief named Lucy. Unfortunately, David is addicted to the power he feels getting his body cybernetically upgraded and doesn't care about building a future for himself. 

    Generally, I really liked the characters with David being as close to a "canon" Street Kid V as can get without actually ruining anyone's internal canon. Well, canon and about ten years younger. Lucy also incorporates elements of Evelyn and cyberpunk female characters that make her an ideal femme fatale for the younger set. The other characters are enjoyable as well with Adam Smasher finally being treated as the terrifying monster he is in lore.

    There's quite a bit of violence and nudity in the anime, which can sometimes feel a little try-hard but the story is extremely well-told. It is a story about the economic and social pressures of a exaggerated version of America that drives people to do desperate things as well as the trauma this can inspire. It also is about the bonds of friendship and moments of humanity we forge in life.

    David is a great character and easily relatable to as he does some things that take him from "generic anime protagonist" to someone with a really fascinating arc with both tragedy as well as poignancy. Lucy and Rebecca are characters I also came to love to a ridiculous degree as well as the former reminds me a lot of my own femme fatales while the latter is like Tiny Tina from Borderlands crossed with Harley Quinn. Even smaller characters like Maine and Pilar, though make big impacts for their time onscreen, though.

    If I had to say there's one weakness to the anime, if you're not opposed to copious gore and animated fanservice, I'd say its villain is fairly weak. Giancarlo Esposito's Faraday is a smug, whiny, obnoxious twit but never really inspires much in the way of actual fear. Then again, the fact he's such an obsequious little weasel is probably the point. Our heroes cause the majority of their owb problems in the end.

    The animation is not remotely "realistic" but it is kinetic and eye-popping when on screen. Night City is beautifully realized and players of the video game will be able to spot numerous locations from the story. It is a story that can be an excellent introduction in the world of Mike Pondsmith if you haven't played the games but will not be for the faint of heart. Also, "wrong city, wrong people" if you're looking for everyone to end up rich as well as happy. 

Available on Netflix

Cowboy Bebop (2021) review

     Cowboy Bepop was one of my all-time favorite anime when I was in college. It was 1998 and I was a huge otaku with a love for anything shown on television or available to buy on VHS. It was unlike anything else I'd ever seen (Firefly wasn't out until 2002 and The Expanse wouldn't be out until 2015). It was a beautiful well-realized science fiction world taking place in the solar system in the near-future that managed to combine the used future of Star Wars, jazz, Westerns, martial arts, and Hong Kong action movies.

    The premise was two bounty hunters ("cowboys") named Spike Spiegel and Jet Black are trying to make their fortunes by bringing in high paying rewards for criminals. Unfortunately, to the point of comedy, they often end up killing their quarries instead. The two of them live together on a starship called the Bebop and gradually accumulate an oddball family with con woman Faye Valentine, data dog Ein, and master hacker Ed. Along the way, Spike's past as a former assassin for the Red Dragon Syndicate comes to haunt him.

    The live action version was something that I was interested in from the moment it was announced but wasn't sure how it would go. While a fan of John Cho (Spike), Mustafa Shakir (Jet), and Daniella Pineda (Faye), I had to remember Netflix's adaptation of Death Note. That was flat out terrible and I didn't want to experience the same level of corruption. Still, I liked the trailer for the show and didn't bother paying attention to any other build-up before deciding to binge the series when it came out. What's my opinion?

    Eh, it has its ups and downs. John Cho is excellent as Spike Spiegel but doesn't quite have the physicality for the role. Mind you, you can animate the world's greatest martial artist while getting someone able to pull it off in live action is a lot harder. Mustafa Shakir plays an older crustier Jet with a daughter rather than simply an ex-girlfriend. It was a change that was silly in places (one plot with a coveted doll falls flat) but I overall felt he was a great interpretation.  

    Faye Valentine is easily the best version, though, and I think Daniella Pineda perfectly embodied the character after an initial false start with her as a tough girl cowboy herself. Faye isn't a cowboy, she's a con woman. There's a big difference. Some fans may also be put off by the decision to make her bisexual in this adaptation but I didn't have a problem with it. As for Ein? Well, whenever Ein is not on screen, I was asking, "Where's Ein?" He should have been in every shot and that's all I am going to say on the subject. 

     There's some odd choices that I didn't quite agree with. The Red Dragon Syndicate is just made into the Syndicate and populated with primarily non-Asian actors. The problem was they keep most of the Triad motifs that make them come off as white guys who like to cosplay as Yellow Peril villains. Still, it had John Noble show up as one of the Elders and it's hard to argue with him in anything. I also think changing the conman who conned Faye by pretending to be her husband into a woman pretending to be her mother was an overall good one.

    The only part of the show that repeatedly falls flat and is just plain bad is the interpretation of Vicious (Alex Hassel) and Julia (Elena Satine). Vicious in the anime is like Sephiroth, a kind of pathetic individual who covers it up by being the most badass terrifying man who ever lived. Vicious in the live action show is more like Viserys, a guy who acts tough but is painfully obvious as a weak-minded fool. I don't dislike the interpretation of Julia in the show, she was always someone we knew Spike loved but never why, but something about her interpretation just felt inconsistent.

    The show is ridiculously colorful and entertaining with much of the anime's weird setting intact. Unfortunately, it may have gone for too faithful in its attempts to bring it to screen so that it, at times, feels like a live action cartoon. Dialing down the weirdness and grit that you can get away in an anime might have made the show land better. Ironically, they also dialed up the sleaze factor so our heroes are always in brothels or strip clubs. But Netflix gonna Netflix. Also, Ein whenever Ein isn't on screen, the other characters should be asking, "Where's Ein?" Oh and he should be angrier, grimmer, and have a time machine.

7/10

Altered Carbon (2018) review

    Altered Carbon is one of my all-time favorite cyberpunk novels and is probably one of the few which I rank up with Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and Blade Runner. It's a sci-fi noir with blackmail, sex, murder, and an antihero protagonist who verges on being completely psychotic but never quite crosses the line into villain (at least until the second or third book). So, I was incredibly exited about the announcement of a series being made by Netflix. Netflix, like HBO, is one of the few networks I know who could do a proper R-rated genre story.

    I was also excited about the cast members of Joel Kinnaman (Robocop, Suicide Squad) and James Purefoy (Rome, The Following, Solomon Kane) being among the cast. Dichen Lachmen (Agents of SHIELD), Michael Eklund (Wynonna Earp) Hayley Law (Riverdale), and Will Yun Lee (Sleeping Dogs) also add a huge benefit to the show's star power even though those are mostly things only geeks like me would like. I didn't know Martha Higareda before this show but her role as Detective Ortega makes me want to see her in anything else she does.

Nice bits from the book.

    The premise of the books and the show is the future has successfully conquered death. Sort of. There's no guarantee it's "you" who is reincarnated but your memories and personalities can be stored on discs called Stacks.  If you die without your Stack being destroyed then you can be put in a new body and some rich people have their consciousness backed up every 48 hours. Takeshi Kovacs is an anarchist-inclined criminal and former supersoldier who, after being "killed", finds himself awakened two centuries later by the absurdly rich Laurens Bancroft who puts him to solving the ultimate case: who "killed" him and make it look like a suicide.

    So, was it good? Yeah, sort of. No, let me be fair, it's really-really good. However, it's a good which isn't as good as the novel because it goes off the rails toward the end due to the fact they want to streamline the story as well as improve it in places. This isn't always a bad thing as I consider Blade Runner to be far better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Here, however, all of the changes basically seem to be designed to make the story more personal when it didn't really need to be personal at all. Its changes can be likened to changing the Maltese Falcon to having Gutman turn out to be Sam Spade's long lost brother and making sure the villains get locked up at the end. You can do it well but it's a bit contrived, to say the least. It isn't a spoiler that fans of the books will find Takeshi Kovacs much-much closer to the events of the setting than he is in the books and this is annoying single time it happens.

Martha Higareda is gorgeous and tough at once.

    For example, in the show continuity, Takeshi is an Envoy in the service of the Quellist Revolution. Quellcrist Falconer is his lover and his sister is Reileen Kawahara, who is also a member of the revolution. Quellcrist Falconcer is the inventor of sleeving technology and believes it's innately evil so that people should only have one life. If you're a fan of the book, you'll know where all of this is deeply wrong and throws a lot of later canon deeply out of whack. Particularly of note, in the third book, Takeshi is searching for the stack of his one true love and she's permanently killed in the opening seconds of the show.

    Generally, though, this is very much in the spirit of the books and is all about the class struggle and misuse of technology by the super rich. In the future, most of humanity lives in squallor and while Methuselah (those who are centuries old) engage in their most depraved fantasies. Deprived of any fear of death or judgement by the apparent immortality which Stacks provide, they have all seemingly become evil psychopaths. That's a bit blunter than the books where Laurens Bancroft is a dirty old lecher but not the monstrous deviant he is in the show but hammers on the themes of the book--which is money is a trap that all of society has fallen into.

Miriam is a bit disappointing.

    The show has a lot of excellent world-building, sets, and character development that unfolds in mostly believable ways. I bought the Takeshi Kovacs/Kristine Ortega romance better in the show than I did in the book. Indeed, so much that I want to see more of it despite how against the books themes it would be. There's a bunch of great action sequences spread throughout the story and they're both vicious as well as bloody. You really come to buy Takeshi as the most badass man alive while never completely entering the world of Arnold and Stallone.

    There's a couple of weak links in the show like Kristin Lehman who has the unenviable task of trying to portray the World's Most Beautiful and Desirable WomanTM. That's a heavy task in itself but is also coupled with the fact she's supposed to be a genius and incredibly dangerous but never rises above petty in her scenes. There's also a few unnecessary subplots which seemed designed to make us care about characters right before they're killed. The series also seems very skeptical of Sleeving technology, which is weird since the books aren't even though it is very off-kilter technology (and amounts to mental cloning writ large).

He needs to get to work on Sleeping Dogs 2, stat.

    There's copious amounts of nudity in this series, mostly but not exclusively female, and it is sometimes extremely appealing while other times not. It's a noir story with the exploitation of women as one of the themes so it's appropriate. Still, I would have preferred more use of it during the "sexy" scenes with Miriam, Kovacs, and Ortega than just thrown out randomly left and right.

    In conclusion, I very much enjoyed Altered Carbon the series but it didn't hold itself together for all ten episodes. The show is entertaining but tried too much to make it entwined with Takeshi's personal life and past when it was perfectly serviceable as a murder mystery he's roped into. In any case, I recommend it to all cyberpunk fans but note it's not perfect.

8/10

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig review

    Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a success both commercially as well as artistically. It didn't exactly elevate the medium but it was an intelligent thought provoking science-fiction series with a lot to say about both technology as well as society. Given it starred a bisexual cyborg swimsuit and trench coat wearing ninja, that's pretty impressive.

    However, the bane of all successful thought-provoking science fiction is the sequel. It can't ruin good science fiction but it tends to occupy headspace which would otherwise be full of pure joy. We can't think of The Matrix without The Matrix Revolutions, for example, and I'm visibly annoyed every time I remember The Lost Boys sequels exist.

S9 loses some of its invincibility this time around.

    GITS:SAC:2G is a season of television with very big shoes to fill. It needs to not only stand on its own but serve as a follow-up to what was generally regarded as amazing television. So, does it manage to live up to its predecessor. Yes, but there's a caveat that while I find the central plot superior to the original and more coherent, I also note there's some serious flaws with the climax of the season being a repeat of the original.

    The premise of 2nd Gig is Japan dealing with a refugee crisis from World War 3. They've let in large numbers of what I believe are meant to be Chinese and Koreans but have informally ghettoized them in a single island off the mainland. This is an unfortunately prescient piece of science fiction even as there will always be refugees and they'll almost certainly always be treated like garbage by the state they're living in.

Gouda is right. He does have a memorable face.

    The refugee crisis hits a breaking point when the Individual Eleven start appearing around society and attacking both refugees as well as those who are against them. Allegedly basing their actions on Japan's suicidal poet Yukio Mishima and his troublesome legacy, the Individual Eleven seem to have sprung up from nowhere simultaneously and are engaged in a guerilla war with no real goal or end in sight. Made during the height of the War on Terror, 2nd Gig subtly handles the frustrations of law enforcement dealing with an invisible enemy which doesn't require traditional organization to cause a breakdown in society.

    2nd Gig is always at its best when it's dealing with more human stories than the technology which makes them science-fiction. The best stories of this season are an adaptation of Taxi Driver minus the shoot-out at the end, a story of love turned into obsession, and a trial where the defense is more interested in indicting the officer than the circumstances of the case. The episodes are more tied to the main plot this time around than in the original Stand Alone Complex, though, and build up steadily to the end.

Kuze is a bit of a Gary Stu but as he's the antagonist, that's okay.

    Unlike the previous season which didn't really have a villain per se and rejected the concept with the Laughing Man (who was just a social activist turned meme), 2nd Gig has two primary antagonists. The first is Gouda, a deformed civil servant who is just shy of a Bond villain for quiet menace, and Kuze who is a cybernetic paragon equal to the Major.

    I have to say this is another area where 2nd Gig shines because both of these individuals feel like they could pose legitimate threats to Section Nine. Gouda is perhaps a little too over-the-top in his evil but the fact he is behaving in such a way out of a desire for fame is part of his backstory.

The Individual 11 - Terrorists Without a Cause.

    Unfortunately, as mentioned, events start resembling the exact same ones in the previous season with the government turning against Section Nine and them being slowly dismantled by a superior force. We also get more anti-American sentiment regarding the American Empire's attempts to take over Japan.

    This is alright, if the authors feel that way it's their prerogative, but Kuze's backstory has a great deal of similarity to certain World War 2 Imperial Japanese apologia which sours the pot a little. I could be misreading what's being said but the fact I was able to see it does make me suspicious. There's also the fact the show never really comes down and gives a strong opinion on the refugee issue, being vaguely for them when I think it might have been better to go full acceptance.

    In conclusion, 2nd Gig is an extremely intelligent and well-written season of cyberpunk sci-fi. However, it's not quite as enjoyable in some respects as the original season. It actually improves in many ways but the flaws are much deeper. Still, I recommend this to anyone who loves science-fiction and not just anime.

9/10

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex review

    Ghost in the Shell was a seminal movie of cyberpunk as well as anime as a whole but I actually think it was inferior to the subsequent two season and one movie series which debuted afterward. Neither sequel nor reboot, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was entirely its own thing which explored the setting created for the manga in a surprisingly mature way.

    It's rare for any adapted work to qualify as not just good science fiction in its medium but good science fiction but Stand Alone Complex gets high marks all across the board. Indeed, if I had to pick one anime for sharing to the world about what it can achieve I'd probably pick this one. It's that good.

Motoko remains no. 1 on my favorite anime characters list.

    This isn't to say the anime is perfect, the work being a bit on the slow side at times and having some holdovers which don't always make sense (such as the Major's clothing), but these are minor flaws in the grand scheme of things. I dare say it was also an anime which actually improved with its second season and I didn't think it was possible given I really-really loved the first.

    The premise is much the same as the first with Major Motoko Kusanagi ("Jane Excalibur" for an equivalent name) being a cyborg soldier in the service of Public Security Section Nine, which is the secret cyber-crimes and anti-terrorism division of the Japanese government. The events of the movie have not happened yet, nor probably will, but focus on Motoko interacting with questions of how technology impacts society in smaller ways.

The Major contrasts with the earthier but still smart Batou.

    While the series is episodic, it has an overarching story called "The Laughing Man" case, which deals with a super-hacker possessing a JD Salinger motiff. In a clever homage to Catcher in the Rye, The Laughing Man's actions were meant to be a stinging indictment of society's corruption but ended up so ridiculously popular the social meaning was lost completely. Indeed, it is difficult to say who the actual Laughing Man was because he spawned so many imitators, copycats, and confusion about who he was as well as what he was doing.

    Indeed, the words Stand Alone Complex is a concept forwarded by this series and maybe even originated with it about an item with no actual origin point. It's a meme which mutates to the point everyone has an image in their head of it that never really existed in the first place. For example, the phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty" never actually happened in Star Trek but everyone knows it as symbolic of Star Trek. In this case, it is a freedom fighter/criminal who is simultaneously real as well as fictional (something which has happened in RL with the nonexistent individual Ned Ludd or, less threateningly, Anonymous). Heavy stuff for an anime meant for teenagers.

The Laughing Man is as intriguing as the Major. No small feat.

    At the risk of putting down the original movie, Stand Alone Complex works in large part because it makes fun of the more exotic themes of its forebearer. The motivations for the criminals in GITS:SAC are usually money, political position, favor trading, and other venal motivations.

    They also go with sex for as far as you can do in a PG-13 rated show. Indeed, one of the central themes of the season is the Laughing Man case is tied to medical fraud which resulted in a number of premature deaths unnoticed by the public at large. It's the kind of "boring" news which makes the satire of the Laughing Man all the more biting.

    In a very real way, Stand Alone Complex is a police procedural with the focus being on the various sorts of crimes and corrupt activities which can be gotten away with using future technology. These can range from the perverse (a man blowing up rare sex dolls so he'll have the only one left) to the not-so-different-from-today (a group of organ traffickers seeking to pay off their medical bills) to the bizarre (a man who resurrects himself as a tank).

The Major's outfit is ridiculous, though.

    Section Nine is draconian in a way which is more CIA than police but that isn't far from the truth given how technology has militarized the police in the USA. Hell, there's even an episode on illegal surveillance which was first broadcast in 2002 and feels prescient today.

    Of course, there's some areas where I disagree with the show's politics. Not the least being a general anti-American sentiment prevalent through the series which seems a touch hypocritical given the show's own sometimes authoritarian bias. Still, I like plenty of hard edged spy shows and this certainly qualifies as one. The show is also not unwilling to criticize it's own authoritarian bias as we see what happens when its government's ruthless unaccountability is turned against Section Nine.

    The voice acting in the American version is every bit as good as the Japanese but I'm sorry to say the Compilation Movie of GIT:SAC replaces Motoko's voice actress of Mary McGinnis as well as the others. While a perfectly fine OVA on its own and enjoyable, I have to say I prefer the Dub version over all others in the series. Motoko Kusanagi is a fine character but all of her supporting cast are also entertaining with special focus on Batou (Richard Epcar) and Aramaki (Grant George). The only characters I don't much care for are the Tachikomas, sentient tanks which sound like little girls which are less off-putting than they sound (not that such would be difficult).

I will say I can't stand the cutesy tanks. I'm sorry, but it's true.

    I feel like I could go on all day about this show and I really could. It's an evocative three-dimensional world which is recognizable as our own but wholly changed from the one we currently live in. I don't know if I believe we'll ever have something like full-body replacement cybernetics replacing the human form but the show makes a good case it would be possible as well as desirable. It would be horrifying to have your brain hacked from the outside but the benefits would be worth it to me.

    In conclusion, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex stands at the very top of cyberpunk storyetlling as well as science fiction in general. It's not going to be remembered as one of the all time classics but it is certainly someone who should be invited to their party's. They can hang around with the Matrix and other properties of the early 21st century.

10/10

Killjoys (Season One) review

    The SyFy channel has recently done something amazing: it's started showing science fiction again. The show has never been entirely without science fiction but the Sharknados and werewolf shows have been outnumbering the Battlestar Galacticas for some time. This is changing with series like Dark Matter, The Expanse, and Killjoys. I, for one, am very intrigued as the majority of these series are taking a decidedly dark take toward the material.

    Killjoys, at the least, is probably the darkest of the lot. It is also, notably, the show with the smallest budget but manages to do a remarkable job with what little it has. The show has the interesting combination of cyberpunk tropes (all-powerful corporations, class warfare, cybernetics, environmental collapse, urban sprawl) and combining it with space travel.

The leads have great nonsexual chemistry. Which is rare in these kinds of shows.

    The premise of the series is four planets exist in a star system called, imaginatively enough, the Quad. The all-powerful Company (but not Weyland-Yutani, sadly), owns the place and has created its own little nobility on the largest world called Qresh. Its three moons have been terraformed with Arkyn being supposedly uninhabitable, Leith being the source of the Quad's food, and Westerley being an industrial hellhole where only a few areas have overpacked mining cities living day-to-day.

    Law and order, such as it is, is maintained by the RAC or Reclamation Apprehension Coalition. In Star Wars terms, it's the Bounty Hunter's Guild. The RAC agents take contracts on fugitives identified by the Company or private clients them bring them in or kill them. Only certain crimes warrant execution and only certain agents qualify for them (both called "Level Five").

It's a show about space bounty hunters. How can you not like that?

    Among the best of these bounty hunters, nicknamed Killjoys, is Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen). Dutch is as deadly as she is beautiful and teamed up with her tech-savvy partner John Jaqobis (Aaron Ashmore a.k.a. Shawn Ashmore/X-men's Iceman's twin brother). The two work well together and are enjoying their life chasing mid-level criminals when  John's brother D'avin (Luke Macfarlane) gets a kill warrant taken out on his head.

    Killjoys is a great mixture of episodic and interlinked adventures. One episode may deal with Dutch's mysterious past while another involves faulty nanotechnology. All of the episodes are remembered, referenced, and incorporated into future ones, though. Relationships change as events proceed at a lightning pace and much of the story comes to a head at the end of the very short ten episode season. This is partially due to the fact they didn't know if Killjoys would get renewed or not, it has been, but is quite the change from the usual sedate pace of most science fiction series.

The Quad is an amazing setting.

    The breakout character of the series is Dutch as Hannah John-Kamen is just plain amazing to watch on screen. Not only is she gorgeous but her acting skills, character, and ability to handle herself in action scenes all work wonderfully well. Any science fiction series would be lucky to have a character like her and as played well by her. Really, she should be a character as well-loved as Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck but it doesn't have nearly that audience.

    I'm also a big fan of Aaron Ashmore's John as he's the perfect genius comic relief. He's a loyal, decent, pragmatic, and extremely cynical man living in a society where the latter is necessary to survive. He's also a figure overshadowed by Dutch in combat situations and comfortable with that. He's likable enough that you could easily see him in a relationship with multiple characters on the show but not Dutch herself, which is rare enough in these sorts of stories.

    D'avin Jaquobis is a hit-and-miss character in an otherwise near-perfect show, budget or no budget. Luke Macfarlane is actually quite a good actor, definitely upper journeyman level, but never really brings anything to the table on the level of his cast mates. The fact he's a generically handsome male lead and shipped with Dutch is one of the few missteps as their surrogate family dynamic is much-much better than a romantic one.

Doctor Simms is a great character. Tragic, sexy, flawed, and fun.

    The world-building for the show shows immense attention to detail as we learn the setting's geopolitics, it's religious traditions, and the various ways life completely sucks for the inhabitants. Seriously, this world is a pit and the wealthy sections are every bit as hellish in their own way as the people they're oppressing's homes. If I were to describe how this world works then I would say Killjoys is very much a sci-fi setting as someone like Joe Abecrombie would create.

    I'm also a fan of the world's supporting cast. There's numerous recurring characters that play roles both great and small in the setting. My favorite of this is Doctor Pawter Simms who is a jack (basically space-meth) addicted doctor who, nevertheless, is one of the most compassionate and decent people on the moon. She's also sad, lonely, emotionally immature, and vaguely crazy--which fits with the fact she's a drug addict operating under a varying artificial high at nearly all points of our contact with her.

Another Dutch picture because, why not?

    The layers of conspiracy and politics in the show are good too. Too often, shows throw in twists and conspiracies which are made up as they go along. Instead, the show has a number of major mysteries which it slowly and carefully reveals the truths of step by step. All of them are preestablished and have definitive answers which we start to find out along the way. The mysteries don't "cheat" and the politics are believable, if incredibly brutal.

    The real seller for how good this series is for me? How incredibly bleak the world is. Every level of society is corrupt, oppressive, and self-destructive. There's good people but they're individually powerless against the system and even the resistance is probably going to do more harm than good. I love dystopian science-fiction and this combines it with very personal stories about how screwed up things are.

The nobility of the Quad are a bunch of rich landowners pretending to be royals--which is how the real-life Post-Roman nobility began.

    For example, one episode deals with a religious cult that exists for the purposes of providing surrogate mothers as a holy duty to the Ruling Families of the Quad. It's very obvious they're being raised an indoctrinated as servants to the nobility who just want to avoid the trouble of pregnancy. Another episode takes place in a lawless badland which has been rendered a warlord-ruled anarchy solely so it can serve as an example to the other communities, even to the point it can never be allowed to get better. One episode deals with a torture ship which, by the character's reactions, is nothing particularly noteworthy in the setting.

    Other details which underscore what sort of place the Quad is are the fact there''s acid rain so bad that being left out in it is a reform of horrific execution and we get to see some people melt in it. The fact these dark setting elements get contrasted with the causal corruption, decadence, and beauty of the ruling families help bring them to life. Even the royalty of the setting don't get off easy as we see their scheming, murder, and eugenics. Dutch, for example, grew up in non-Quad Royalty and lived in a harem where she was selected to be trained as a professional assassin from childhood.

This image makes sense in context.

    In conclusion, Killjoys isn't without it's flaws. I've mentioned the cheap budget which means the CGI isn't great, everything looks like a factory or rock quarry because they were filmed in both, and things are a little too saturated in order to cover up the constraints. Despite this, though, it's probably my favorite new series of 2015. I heartily recommend it to any sci-fi fans who enjoy their futures crappy with people acting like bastards but looking damn good doing it.

10/10

The Expanse (Season One) review

    The Expanse is probably the best science fiction program on television right now. For once, I'm not saying this because it's one of the few science fiction programs on today. There's a surprising now out there and available, especially if you count superhero shows. No, The Expanse is one of the best science fiction programs out there today because it's good.

    Really good.

Evolution works in mysterious ways.

    While not quite up there with George R.R. Martin's work, this is one of the few stories I would say has been adapted in the same ball park. The Expanse is a tightly-written plot with lots of great world-building, subtle or otherwise, which all comes together in a fascinating collection of character vignettes working toward a common goal. If not for the amazingly frustrating ending to the first season, I would give this a eleven out of ten.

    Unfortunately, I have to give it a ten out of ten because the first season feels like the mid-season finale. It is, however, intelligent science fiction and futurism which deserves all the viewers it is. So, if you want my short-short review, The Expanse is a series you should go onto your Xbox or Playstation or computer to order the season for now. You won't regret it. It's the best thing SyFy has done since Battlestar Galactica.

    The premise is it's 200 years in the future and a hard-science view of the world is being predicted. There's no hyperdrive but humanity has space travel capable of causal travel between Earth and the asteroids around Jupiter. Those human beings who were born, live, and die in space are called Belters. They are cheap laborers who have been exported from Earth and, over the past few generations, have suffered numerous deformities due to the lack of gravity as well as treatments to counteract its effects. Belters are vitally necessary to maintain the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by Earth's 30 billion inhabitants as well as the ongoing terra-forming project maintained by Mars.

Imagine the most realistic space series set in the future you can and then add the T-Virus from Resident Evil.

    A Cold War situation exists between Mars and Earth over who should control the Belt even as there's a substantial movement within the later to seek independence. Belters are culturally, as well as physically, unique as they're a hodge-podge of Earth's unwanted which have all mixed together into a unique Creole-esque culture. The situation is tense but manageable until a group begins transporting a mysterious organic compound with unusual properties. An ice trawler comes to investigate it when they receive a distress signal, only to have events spiral out of control once its discovered its owners reveal they'll do anything to protect it's contents. The careful balance of power is disrupted irrevocably and everyone sets course for war as a result.

    One thing I appreciated about the show right off the bat is it manages to explain the politics in a way which is both simple but also allows numerous more complex variations. There's Earth which is the rich but overcrowded world, Mars which is the powerful but dependent world, and the Belt which is the poor collection of settlements needed by everyone else. Earth and Mars both depend on the resources mined by the Belt but they don't give the workers there any respect since they exist solely to keep the lights running. It's a wonderfully good metaphor for the Third World nations as exploited by the First and Second.

Ah, the zero-g spot. Where no man or woman has gone before.

    The majority of the plot centers around James "Jim" Holden (Steven Strait) who is the executive officer on the ice hauler Canterbury. About the only person who can qualify as Lawful Good in a dystopian post-cyberpunk future, he really runs his head up into the wall every time he tries to do the right thing. He's accompanied by three other members of the Canterbury crew, including an ex-terrorist (Dominique Tipper), an ex-Martian military pilot (Cas Anvar), and a human wrecking crew who could give Jayne Cobb lessons for criminal practicality (Wes Chatham). Watching them stumble around the conspiracy is always entertaining even as they can't agree what genre they're playing in.

    The secondary plot of the series is handled by Detective Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) who is a Earth-obsessed Belter working as a dirty cop on a space station. Uninterested in anything but his paycheck, he becomes inspired by a young woman (Florence Faivre) who abandoned her family's fortune to work to build a better society. Joe runs afoul of his fellow Belters who consider him a race-traitor and becomes more obsessed with his quarry the more he devotes himself to the conspiracy she's wrapped herself up in.

I love Naomi and Amos. They're two characters. Sadly, Holden is the star.

    Finally, Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Chrisjen Avasarala, the Deputy Undersecretary of Earth's government and 3rd most powerful person in the solar system. Chrisjen has devoted her life to trying to root out Belter terrorism but the conspiracy's attempts to start a war between Mars and Earth forces her to re-evaluate her long-held prejudices. Shohreh does an amazing job creating her character and carries every seen she's in, making them easily able to stand alongside the Game of Thrones cast.

     Part of what makes The Expanse so good is we do get an impression of the world from multiple perspectives, social-classes, and attitudes. There's also quite a bit going on in the background which doesn't necessarily relate to the main plot. For example, the Church of Latter Day Saints (I'm serious) is building a generation ship to a new star system because they want to be at the forefront of space exploration. It doesn't have anything to do with the main plot, so far, but it underscores how petty and foolish the conflicts among humans are even as they tear apart what should have been a unifying frontier.

Thomas Jayne's character would have fit right in the 1940s. Unfortunately, he's a couple of centuries late.

    The world-building is amazing as I've said but what I like most about it is that it's both plausible as well as dark. This is a used future akin to the original Star Wars but it's also an overpopulated, corrupt, seedy future which makes it all the more interesting. Part of what made Firefly so entertaining to me was the show was unapologetic about how the Outer Planets inhabitants had to be vicious as well as cruel in order to survive. This is the same way for Belters and watching this collide with Holden's misplaced idealism is never not funny. Albeit, by the end, I was really hoping he'd get eaten by a protomolecule crystal.

    The show isn't afraid to kill off cast members either and several times I was genuinely stunned to find out the stories of characters I'd been following ended in premature death. Almost no one is safe in the show and while I'm sure book readers have a good idea where all of this is going, I'm keeping myself unspoiled as I experience the twists and turns on-screen. This helps contribute to the dark and cold atmosphere which is one of the things I love in my sci-fi. Too many shows are afraid to kill anyone of consequence and this detracts from the realism.

Hands down my favorite character. A great actress even when she's not playing a Quarian Admiral.

    Fans of hard science fiction will love the hell out of this series even as the aforementioned protomolecule will annoy them. I really would have enjoyed this series more if they had just made it a straight-up hard sci-fi series about politics in space with a noir aesthetic. That's not what the Expanse novels are about, though, so there's nothing to do about that. Still, I love the fact they use magnetic boots on the show. I love magnetic boots.

    Unfortunately, the show does have one major flaw that I've already mentioned. It is only ten episodes long, undoubtedly due to the budget required for all of the special effects, which ends not in any meaningful plot resolution but a series of cliffhangers that don't even seem fully resolved themselves. It feels like the show needed at least two or three more episodes to even get to a proper cliffhanger ending. Instead, the show feels like it's setting up for a cliffhanger ending only to stop. Which is unfortunate and about the only complaint I can bring up against the series that was, otherwise, again, Syfy's best offering in years.

Ah, space. It's the best place to kill people horribly by a variety of terrifying ways.

     Visually, the storytelling is excellent as well. While we don't get to see much in the way of prosthetics, the show does its best to make all of the Belter cast pale and recruited from tall as well as thin-looking individuals. They're a massively multicultural collection of individuals as well, including a surprisingly large amount of the cast being biracial. Little tidbits about how the world is no longer a Western Caucasian male-dominated power-block are present all throughout. The use of the Belter language is also great, too, helping to highlight how things have changed.

    The special effects are excellent and remind me of Battlestar Galactica's reboot during its heyday. We get to see plenty of space battles and little things like objects floating in the air all of the time. Some of these special effects are cheap like floating objects just being partially held off-screen but their omnipresence helps immerse the viewer in the world. The one special effect which doesn't work at all is anything related to the protomolecule which, sadly, feels like it belongs in another series.

    In conclusion, I recommend The Expanse to anyone who is a science fiction fan and looking for a new intelligent offering. The plot has a delightful series of twists and turns, numerous interesting characters, and a delightfully grim take on the future. The sudden end to the season is irritating but I chalk that up to Syfy not being sure whether or not it would catch on. Thankfully, it's been renewed for a second season.

10/10

Mr. Robot Season 1 review

    Mr. Robot is probably the best show on television right now.

    For me, at least.

    Part of this is the politics. Mr. Robot is a series which taps into the cultural zeitgeist of anger against the rich, Anonymous, hacker culture, the Enron scandals, computer surveillance, the financial crisis of 2007/2008, and a bunch of other things which had a powerful effect on my beliefs. It's the same reason I have such a huge fondness for the V for Vendetta movie. I'm aware, of course, this is a television show criticizing the 1% presented to the 99% by the 1%. A work created by the networks for mass consumption about the dangers of mass consumption of network-generated material.

    But I don't care. It's awesome.

Elliot is like Neo but there's no exit from the Matrix.

    The premise is Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) is a socially maladjusted young man with severe social anxiety (and possibly deeper mental issues) who works at a corporate computer security firm by day and serves as a cyber-vigilante by night.

    He is floating through life, pining for his coworker Angela (Portia Doubleday), and achieving nothing of consequence (though the victims of the child-pornography ring he shuts down in the opener may disagree).

    That's when he's contacted by the mysterious Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) who brings him to meet an Anonymous-inspired group of hackers called Fsociety (f***society). Fsociety wants to orchestrate the world's greatest act of computer sabotage against E Corp (renamed "Evil Corp" by Elliot's neuroses-ridden mind). They want to wipe the entirety of their electronic records and thus erase all of the billions of dollars of debt they've assembled.

    Elliot is both intrigued and frightened by the prospect of this cyberterrorism against the world's most corrupt institution. Season One deals with this plot, Elliot's own personal issues, as well as the troubles of an E Corp executive named Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) who is perhaps the one man smart enough at E Corp to stop Elliot.

Angela is simply stunned at the banality of evil on display.

    I'm particularly fond of Tyrell as a character. At first glance he appears to be a caricature of a corrupt executive: doing things like beating up homeless men to let off steam and seducing anyone who will give him the slightest advantage in the boardroom.

    Instead, though, Tyrell is a much more nuanced character who is desperate to please his wife as well as a bundle of neuroses trying to live up to the sociopathic environment which he is an ill-fit for. He wants to succeed at all costs but the costs are a lot heavier than he expected.

    A lesser series would frame Fsociety as a plucky group of heroes doing episodic sabotage against Evil Corp while Tyrell works to root them out. You know what, I probably would have watched that series too but this is so much better. Mr. Robot is, fundamentally, a story about human relationships and ethics in the modern world.

    Elliot wants to do something good with his life and make the world a better place but he deals with the complicated reality nothing is ever so black and white. Even E Corp, which is a representation of everything wrong with American capitalism, is still something which provides millions of jobs as well as the livelihoods of countless citizens. Fsociety's plan is not too dissimilar to Project: Mayhem in Fight Club, a movie the show references in ways both small and profound, but who is really at fault for America's debt problem? The people who provide credit card debt's many traps or the people spending like crazy? Both, obviously.

Elliot and Darlene's relationship is awesomely screwed up.

    The same way a drug dealer is a predator on the drug addict. One may have more cuplability than the other but they couldn't exist without the other. This example is even referenced in the show with Elliot trying to help his pretty neighbor and occasional sex partner, Shayla Nico (Frankie Law), extirpate herself from an abusive relationship with her gangster boyfriend. Shayla is addicted to drugs and it is easy to see how her suffering is used to get her owner what he wants. How that story ends gives hints, I believe, to what is in the works for E Corp and Fsociety.

No, no allusions to Enron here at all.

    The show's acting is tremendous and every one of the major characters is given a way to shine in ways both profound and human. While Elliot struggles with both madness as well as his conflicting feelings about Fsociety as well as E Corp, we have stories like Angela discovering the corporation is responsible for her mother's death.

    Angela must make a choice whether to try to pursue a lawsuit against them, potentially ruining her coworkers' business as well as getting them all fired, or decide their financial security is worth more than justice.

    I love and loathe all the characters because everyone is human. Mr. Robot is a visionary who sees much of what is wrong with America but a fanatical zealot who isn't what he seems. Darlene (Carly Chaikin), a co-conspirator at Fsociety, is far too familiar with Elliot and sees none of the ambiguities he does about the cyberactivists/terrorists. Angela desperately wants justice for her family but, more than anything, wants to matter the same way E Corp executives do just by existing. There's not a single character on this show who isn't multifaceted, save perhaps E Corp's CEO, and we haven't seen enough of him to know if he really is the soulless avatar of capitalism he appears to be.

    I even love the symbolism of the E Corp logo being the Enron symbol inverted. Hell, E Corp may BE Enron. Just an Enron which managed to figure out a way to survive their house of cards tumbling down. That's hardly the only use of symbolism in the series, though, with seemingly every episode of the series rife with hidden meanings and allusions. Given some of the revelations which occur during the first season, you will want to run back and re-watch it from the beginning as everything takes on new meaning and contexts with the various discoveries. They even use the Monopoly Man's face as a substitute for Anonymous' use of Guy Fawkes masks.

Portia is a master of these 'deer in the headlights' looks.

    The show wouldn't work, though, without the amazing performance of Rami Malek and his ability to give the haunted yet emotionally stunted Elliot so many depths. Elliot isn't just introverted, he's arguably a full-on psychopath but his ability to empathize with other human beings keeps him from being easily given that label.

    Elliot is a troubled young man and you can never be certain whether he's doing things because he wants to do the right thing or he's simply being swept away in the moment by his immature emotional development. Certain revelations answer some of these questions but also raise more the season finale only promising further exploration of his psyche. Viewers will feel like they've gone down the proverbial rabbit hole by the time they're done with just the first episode, let alone after ten with our quite-possibly-insane protagonist.

    Watch this show. Watch it online, buy the DVDs when they come out, or catch it in re-runs, you will not regret it. This is the best cyberpunk work not set in the future I've ever seen and one of the crowning examples of the genre's values.

11/10