I just rewatched Cleopatra 2525 and I'm here to tell you that it's still awesome.It's Kung-Fu Barbarella. So much wire-fighting. So much Cyberdog. Floating shape-shifting robots have chased humanity underground, occasionally attacking with T-1000s with blaster arms. Everyone has Spider-Man web-shooters, and there's an evil clown. It's got everything! But the thing that makes it work is that it's a comedy but almost every character in it fully commits to being in an action movie. They are So Very Serious.
It does, however, have a theme song that is possibly worse than Enterprise. Don't let that put you off.
It ends on an extremely frustrating cliffhanger and a final episode that seems to have stopped production halfway through. Yet Arrow gets six seasons. I would trade the entirety of Game of Thrones for one more season of Cleopatra 2525.
Here, here, watch. It looks like the whole thing is on Youtube too, but in varying quality.
Whenever I see Gina Torres on Suits (and also Firefly) I only ever see her as from Cleo.
Remember when you could choose which Sci-Fi show to watch? What is there now - Dark Matter got better but that's not saying much. The Expanse is the best show on TV but who knows when we'll see the next season. It's a desert.
The Expanse was fantastic, yes.
Timeless was great, and just got renewed for a second season.
I gave up on Dark Matter at, I think, the third time they gave them all amnesia. I have no tolerance for amnesia plots, and little for "bleep bloop I'm Lt. Cmdr. Robot" characters.
Killjoys is not terrible. When it was street-level it had a slightly Firefly-if-you-squint feel, but now that it's getting into the alien invasion plot, it's kinda boring me.
Does Blood Drive count as scifi? It's amazing either way.
There's so little to choose from I still watch Dark Matter but they just had a "time travel to the present" episode that really left a terrible taste in my mouth so there's certainly some shark-infested waters there.
Timeless is more enjoyable than I expected. I couldn't stand Killjoys. I'll give Blood Drive a try, your recommendations are usually spot on.
Wow! I guess sometimes you have to start at Lexx season 4, blow the ballast tanks and dive dive dive...
Did someone say Lexx?! singing Yo Way Yo, Home va ray...
The dead do not watch "Dark Matter".
I can't quite put my finger on why Blood Drive is awesome. I have had no luck getting anyone else to watch it.
Orphan Black is SF. So is Black Mirror. Both are among the best things on TV.
Orphan Black is finished and I kind of got bored with it after season one. Black Mirror is british so they only have, like, six episodes a season. Not enough.
The short season isn't because it's British it's because it's an anthology show. Somebody has to have a unique story idea, write it, cast it, shoot it, edit it and so on. There are no filler episodes, no monster of the week set pieces, if they have six good ideas you get six episodes - not 24, most of which you needn't actually watch.
I prefer this outcome, life is too short to watch filler.
...and this is a dynamic that only occurs with British shows, because of the economics of BBC.
Except, Brooker made this show originally for Channel 4 (which is a Public Service Broadcaster but only in the same way CBS are in the US, it runs adverts and so on unlike Auntie) and now it's a Netflix show.
If anything this dynamic feels like more part of the "quality television" trend of the venture funded cable cutting era than anything to do with our beloved broadcaster.
In fact the main thing from the Beeb I watch these days is the decidedly old school quiz show Only Connect. Only the BBC would commission a quiz show so hard the correct answers frequently have to be explained to the audience, and of course only at the BBC would it be a ratings success. But it's scarcely the wave of the future.
Cleo 2525 is a great b-series that I have been saying for years that people should watch. It's got such great silly moments, like the protagonist being sent to the future through a breast implant procedure gone wrong, and the final villain being a human-popsicle clown named after the main character of It's A Wonderful Life.
How can you not love this show?
Whoa, spoilers!
I wanted to put this on your most recent Vectrex post, but the Goodwill website has a unit and 16 games up for sale...
https://www.shopgoodwill.com/viewitem.asp?itemid=42395943
God, I loved that show. I'm now eagerly awaiting your review of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Holy shit! I thought I was the only one that watched Cleopatra 2525!
I thought the same of Lexx. The mentions here give me joy.