The first episode I recently watched was The Doomsday Machine, which I remember from decades ago. The music is reminiscent of the Jaws theme.
Next, I watched Devil in the Dark, a decent episode, though not perfect.
Last night, I revisited All Our Yesterdays, an episode I recall from at least 50 years ago. It features a Middle Ages-like inquisitor character who closely resembles one from an episode of Stargate SG-1.
Recently, I watched Journey to Babel, which was surprisingly good. The abundance of aliens made it feel more like Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don't remember seeing this one before.
Sometime in the last couple of years, I watched The Galileo Seven, which is good.
While living in Utah, I caught The Return of the Archons and enjoyed it.
In the late 1980s, I watched Balance of Terror because it is regarded as the best Star Trek episode.
I can't recommend Babylon 5 enough. The first season is just barely okay, but then the series takes off. It has a five-year story arc that was compressed down to four years because they thought it was going to be canceled. Surprisingly, the show was renewed for a fifth season, so they had to follow new storylines that were just okay.
Unlike Star Trek, Babylon 5 has a vibrant story that takes 4+ years to tell. Things hinted at in season 1 come to fruition 2 to 3 years later. I have seen the series at least three times.
I have similar feelings about Star Trek Deep Space 9. The problem is that it is mostly episodic with the grand story arc not starting till the end of season 2. Then the grand story doesn't get full attention until seasons 5 and 6.
However, what I love about Deep Space 9 is the terrific set of characters, which are more interesting overall than the Babylon 5 characters.
I think that the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica surpasses both these shows. It has a grittiness that makes it very compelling along with great characters and a great story.
I feel the same way about LOST which might be the greatest TV show ever.
The 2004 reboot of Doctor Who started out a little silly, but became incredibly epic around the year 2010. However, it has been mostly on a steady decline ever since. The recent reboot of the series has been interesting, but borderline. I hope they do something good with it.
The Star Wars animated shows on Disney+ are well worth watching. These started with The Clone Wars series and ended with the amazing The Bad Batch series, which I watched four times The animation style initially in 2008 looked more primitive but slowly evolved into something incredible.
I like all the Star Wars live-action TV shows, more than most people, but the only ones that have universal acclaim are Andor and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Both of these are incredible.
Diana Muldaur played three different characters on Star Trek. Right now I am watching an episode of the original series, Return to Tomorrow, where she is referred to as a young woman. She was 29.5 when the episode aired. I remember seeing this episode a very long time ago.
Twenty years later when she played in the second season of Star Trek The Next Generation, she was 50. Her character, Doctor Pulaski, was interesting but the character had mixed reactions from the fans. She was not invited back for the third season.
She stopped acting in 1993. But she has come out of retirement to play in an upcoming film called Finding Hannah. She is 86.
I grew up watching Bill Mumy, so I can't help but be a fan. In addition to the campy Lost in Space, he played in one of the best and scariest Twilight Zone episodes, It's a Good Life. Forty years later, he made a sequel episode, It's Still a Good Life, on the revived Twilight Zone series.
However, fans will remember him most for playing Lennier on Babylon 5.
This Star Wars character, whom you may have never heard of, is beloved by millions of fans. This is due to her long arc of character development, which has spanned over a decade.
For the most part, Star Wars fans have been disappointed with everything Disney has done with the franchise since acquiring it from George Lucas, except for the Andor series, which was on another level. I, however, differ in that I've enjoyed most of Disney's Star Wars offerings, though certainly not all of them.
When Disney announced they were creating a Star Wars kids' series that would combine elements of The Goonies and Lost in Space, almost no one was optimistic. Many expected it to be just as disappointing as the previous failed series. However, now that people have seen Skeleton Crew, the consensus is that it's knocking it out of the park. After a slow start, each episode has been better than the last, and it feels like what Star Wars should be.
@john2001plus 26 minutes ago Everyone loves Andor, but I was also blown away by The Mandalorian Season 2.
I've watched The Bad Batch series 4 times. The series as a whole is fantastic.
I enjoyed Kenobi quite a bit. Even Ahsoka and The Book of Boba Fett were enjoyable, with a few flaws. All three are passable entertainment and underrated.
I am very much in the minority thinking that The Acolyte was entertaining for the first six episodes, but the last couple of episodes were a big disappointment.
This was the deal I was waiting for. However, the fine print tells me that I am ineligible because I was a member within the last month. I click on "Get this deal" and it doesn't give it to me.
I don't like the ads, but I like saving money.
Disney+ has a ton of content, but I've seen most of it. I'm especially fond of the Star Wars shows, but there are also Marvel, Pixar, and National Geographic.
I allowed to expire Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and a two week promotional subscription to Prime.
I'm waiting to see what deals I can get on Black Friday. I don't want to load up on streaming services that I rarely watch, but a couple would be nice.
I would like to get Max again. If they offered me another three month discount like they did before I would take it.
If Amazon were to offer a year of Prime at half off I would take it. Any discount on Prime might be worth it because of the free shipping that goes with it.
Netflix did not offer any discounts in recent years, but if they did offer a discount I would consider making it my main streaming service.
Disney+ and Hulu don't have enough new material which I want to watch to make it worth the full price. However, I got them so ridiculously cheap (with commercials) last Black Friday that it was a good deal. It was $3 a month for the pair.
Last night just before my Hulu subscription expired, I got half way through Alien Romulus. This is an interesting movie. What I saw is not as scary as the originals, but more of a sci-Fi drama.
The ideal sequel trilogy would have been one of Luke, Han, and Leia, but we needed that thirty years ago before the actors got too old. Disney was stuck where they couldn't continue the story right after Return of The Jedi, so they tried to go down a path of discarding the old characters and introducing new ones. The decision to discard the old characters seems like a bad one because the fans wanted the old characters. With current technology, it is not too late to have a story that takes place after Return of the Jedi.
No offense to anyone, but Star Wars fans appear to be very hard to please. If a new movie or show is not exactly what they want or expect, they will claim it is bad when it might be entertaining. We saw that with the prequel trilogy where right away people claimed that Episode 1 was terrible. However, I loved the entire prequel trilogy. George Lucas tried to make every movie different, but this turned off some people who claimed, "Not my Star Wars."
The Last Jedi is a dilemma for most people. It has some bad dialogue. It has a couple of bad scenes. It could have been a better film. However, I will swear to my dying breath that it is an entertaining movie because I found it entertaining. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Would I have preferred something a little different? Yes, but I don't see it as my story to tell. People are upset by how the movie handled Luke, but I was open to a story about Luke that was different from what I expected. Had the movie gone exactly the way we expected it could have been boring.
There is a difference between a movie or show being entertaining and great. We want Star Wars to be great. However, it isn't always great, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad. I like watching shows about Star Wars and I enjoyed most of the TV series even if they were far from the greatness that we wanted them to be. In particular, I liked Kenobi quite a bit.
I have a big problem with The Rise of Skywalker. Bringing back Palpatine undermines Darth Vader's sacrifice. The movie has other issues. It is a weaker film than The Last Jedi. It is a disappointing conclusion to the trilogy. However, I did enjoy watching it and I might enjoy watching it again. But I hold movies to a higher standard than I do TV shows. It could have been much better.
I have a concern that the Star Wars story is too limited in scope to keep making more movies and shows. According to George Lucas, Star Wars is a soap opera about the Skywalker family. That story has already been told. Anything that follows is either going be be repeating the same story, or too different for the fans to embrace. I think that we both would like to see a new set of characters set in a different period. The Acolyte tried to do this but was mediocre at best.
At first, I didn't realize that the host of this online show is Michael Rosenbaum, who very brilliantly played Lex Luthor on the TV series Smallville.
Tom Welling was great on the show as a teenage Clack Kent. Although he was glad to have a job, he talks like it was overwhelming, working long hours for ten months each season. He did not have fun on the show.
Tom Welling doesn't come across as interesting as the character he played.
This prompted me to rewatch the first episode of Smallville. Twenty-two years ago, I thought the series was brilliant. Although it is still good, it is a bit dated. The show is very teenage-friendly, which has less appeal to me now than it did 22 years ago.
Smallville started on the WB network right after Buffy the Vampire Slayer left the network. The first couple of seasons of Smallville seem very similar to the first couple of seasons of Buffy with many Monster of the Week episodes.
BTW, Buffy the Vampire Slayer started as a mid-season replacement show, and the first season was not that great. However, it got really good mid-way into season 2. As the series progressed, there were a few extremely brilliant episodes. Joss Whedon did a few experimental episodes to great effect, like making one of the shows a musical, and another episode with almost no dialogue.
