Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
I watch many excellent science fiction series, so this answer was a little surprising. A nonfiction miniseries won out over the the many works of fiction I could have selected instead!
Dogs is a Netflix miniseries that released its second season in 2021. Each episode follows the lives of different dogs as they provide companionship, work alongside their humans, or do extraordinary things.
Leland Devon Melvin is the name of the astronaut in the photo accompanying this post. His loving relationship with his two dogs was explored in-depth in one of the season two episodes as they prepared for a long and difficult hike, and it brought a tear to my eye.
It’s incredible to see just how much joy and meaning dogs bring to people’s lives. The rest of the stories in this series were also interesting for a wide variety of reasons, from the journey of a young girl who has severe epilepsy and was getting her first service dog to the tireless work of animal rescue groups who save countless lives and so much more.
This is one of those wholesome series that I think should appeal to a wide audience. There’s something for everyone in it no matter how old or young you are.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
Watching TV is one of my spouse’s favourite things to do. Over the years, I’ve cultivated the ability to (accidentally) look away from the screen at the exact moment that something important happens that is not noted in the dialogue.
I can’t tell you how many times my spouse has needed to rewind thirty seconds so I can see a mysterious shadowy figure in the background or the note written on a sheet of paper the main character is holding that are important clues for future plot twists.
If there were any way to earn a living from this ability, I’d be a millionaire at bare minimum!
Earlier this year I learned that May is Expanded Science Fiction and Fantasy Month. This challenge is a simple one. Pick any science fiction or fantasy universe and read or watch stories that were set in it but that were not part of the original canon.
To give one example, you could read Star Trek novels that were written as continuations of that universe after The Original Series first aired.
My brain hasn’t been amenable to reading serious, full-length novels recently due to some concerns I’ve had about a friend who has Covid-19, so my first post in response to this challenge will be lighthearted and a little off the beaten path. My hope is to revisit this challenge later on this month with a response that follows the rules more closely.
There are are no spoilers in these videos unless you’re 30+ years behind on Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes and determined not to know anything about what was written about that universe in the 1980s and 1990s.
For everyone else, they’re simply good, clean fun for anyone who is looking for a pick-me-up during these trying times.
If you’ve never seen Gangham Style, I recommend watching it first. This Trekkie parody of it never fails to make me smile in large part because actual Klingons would be horrified by the frivolity and silliness of it all.
If you enjoy Frozen and Star Trek: The Next Generation, this might be right up your alley. I can oddly see Captain Picard enjoying this tune so long as no one was paying too much attention to his reaction to it. It was a short, cheerful tune that used his favourite catch phrase, after all. What’s not to like about that?
Fans of Megan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” keep reading.
The Borg would have no use for this song, but I find it amusing. They’re by far the scariest villains in the Star Trek universe to me, so it’s nice to see them on screen without any chance of them assimilating anyone.
(Why do I keep figuring out if Star Trek characters would enjoy the songs about them? I have no idea!)
The Orville
I saved my best recommendation for last.
Everything else on this list was a short music video. The Orville is a TV show that lovingly parodies Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
No, it isn’t set in the Star Trek universe, but it’s easy to forget that since it was written by folks who were clearly well-versed in what the storytelling was like at this point in Star Trek history and who were fans of it.
Just like the shows it gently pokes fun at, The Orville follows an ensemble cast of characters who live and work on an exploratory vessel several hundred years in the future. The diverse crew includes officers from a wide array of planets and cultures who work in close quarters a long ways from home.
While I understand the need for recent Star Trek series and films to take darker turns in order to attract new audiences and keep up with the times, one of the things I enjoy the most about The Orville is how optimistic it is.
Life isn’t perfect there by any means, but you can generally count on things to work out well for the characters no matter what problems they face. There is a sense of hope and joy in this universe that permeates almost everything.
Sometimes these near-mandatory happy endings are included in the parody aspects of the plot, but it’s always done with good intentions. There is something comforting about this that makes me look forward to the third season even more earnestly now.
If you’re participating in the challenge, I look forward to reading about which stories or videos you’ve selected for it!
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
I narrowed down this week’s prompt from best Book/Movie/TV Couples to Best TV Couples. There are some mild spoilers for these shows in the rest of this post.
David and Patrick from Schitt’s Creek
If you haven’t started watching Schitt’s Creek yet, I highly recommend checking it out! The storyline follows a wealthy family who moves to a small town after losing all of their money.
David was the spoiled adult son of this family. Patrick’s childhood had been full of hard work and thrifty choices. That is, it was the total opposite of David’s experiences in many ways! And yet somehow these two characters complement each other beautifully.
Chidi and Eleanor from The Good Place
One of the things I love the most about Chidi and Eleanor is how similar their personalities. They both have a tendency to over-think things and spend more time brooding over their choices than actually picking one.
Chidi showed these traits immediately. Eleanor was more subtle about it, but I chuckled as soon as I realized that both of them were dealing with the same flaw (even if it wasn’t always expressed in identical ways in their lives).
Mr. and Mrs. Kim from Kim’s Convenience
Kim’s Convenience has become my favourite Canadian sitcom over the past few years. Many shows focus on the early years of a romantic relationship when everything is brand new and exciting. The cool thing about Mr. and Mrs. Kim is that they’ve been together for at least 25 years by the time the audience first meets them.
It’s wonderful to see how their relationship has matured and grown over time.
I wish this prompt had happened in January or July! I tend to watch lots of TV when the weather is freezing or unbearably hot. Spring and fall are when I cut back on shows and spend more time socializing with friends and visiting the great outdoors to soak up the mild weather. With that being said, I will follow the prompt and talk about television instead of going off on a tangent about how much I want to go wander off into the woods for an afternoon.
These are my current favourite shows for reasons I’ll explain underneath the photo of each program. If I were going to go out to dinner with any of you, I’d light up if you mentioned being fans of them as well.
The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t on this list because it won’t be out until later on this summer. Mindfulness is important to me, so I’m doing my best to wait until the first episode is out before getting excited about it.
Anne with an E
One of the things that always bothered me a little bit about L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series was how much it brushed over Anne’s difficult childhood. She mentioned some pretty serious moments of child abuse and neglect to her new foster parents, and then the plot pretty much skipped over the trauma of those experiences for her. To be fair, these weren’t things that were discussed in too much depth in children’s books back then, and people living in the 1800s also had a much murkier understanding of how adverse childhood experiences could affect someone years later.
The cool thing about season one of this remake is that it hasn’t been afraid to explore how being abused, neglected, and abandoned by multiple caregivers had a serious emotional impact on Anne. I know some fans have criticized it for being too dark, but I think it’s going to be interesting to see how this more realistic approach to her story affects the person she becomes as she grows up.
I still need to watch season two. I’m so behind on shows!
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
I love the fact that this sitcom has a diverse cast but doesn’t fall back on stereotypes in order to make their jokes or explain who their characters are. All of the main characters and even some of the secondary ones are three-dimensional individuals. They feel like real people, warts and all. It’s amazing to see how they’ve grown and changed over the years.
The running jokes are great, too. This isn’t the sort of sitcom I’d recommend watching out of order. There were things that happened in season one that are still being brought up by the characters years later.
Stranger Things
This was the show that taught me that people used to smoke everywhere and let their kids wander all over town without any supervision at all in the 1980s! Yes, I’m mostly joking there, but I was shocked by some of the cultural differences between that era and our own.
On a more serious note, I really like fantasy stories that are set in our world and feel as ordinary as possible. If not for the various supernatural stuff going on in this setting, it could have all really happened to my parents or other relatives who were teens or young adults back then. That’s quite appealing to me.
Black Mirror
I’m brand new to this show. It’s like The Twilight Zone in the sense that each episode is its own self-contained sci-fi or fantasy story. Of the few I’ve seen so far, there doesn’t seem to be crossover between any of them as far as characters or plots go.
I love the creativity of the episodes I have seen. The writers seem to take current trends and extrapolate what they might be like at a distant point in the future or in a version of earth where, say, a parent’s desire to electronically monitor her child is taken to the logical extreme.
I know I’m being vague here, but I really don’t want to give away spoilers. Let’s just say that this is a very thought-provoking program that I’m enjoying so much that I’m even willing to come home from the park early in order to watch it.
The same can be said for the rest of these shows, too. Ha!
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.
Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl This week’s topic was a page to screen freebie. I’ve decided to narrow down my focus to five books that were made into wonderful TV shows. I’ve left off a couple of the titles that I always discuss on this blog (*cough* The Handmaid’s Tale) so I could focus… Read More
Hosted by Long and Short Reviews. All of the characters I’ll be talking about this week are from TV shows. I’m starting with the oldest show and ending with the most current one. Let’s see if any of you were or are also fans of them! Lucy Lawless as Xena My family didn’t have cable… Read More
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers! I hope you all have a table full of delicious things to eat and plenty of kindred spirits to share this meal with. Today’s post will be something short and sweet. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how happy I am to see the science fiction and fantasy… Read More
Last year I blogged about the fourteen science fiction and fantasy series I was looking forward to watching during the 2017-2018 season. Wow, that was a lot of shows! Somehow I managed to continue watching almost all of them, though. Today I’m talking about the shows I’m currently watching or will be watching during the… Read More
Those of you who have been following me on Twitter these past few months have no doubt noticed my occasional tweets about the latest episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. This year I decided to combine all of my thoughts on this show into one long post instead of blogging about each episode individually. The cast… Read More