TV Review – Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome (2012)

While there is no doubt that Ron Moore’s rebooted Battlestar Galactica was a massive hit with both fans and critics the same can’t be said about its subsequent incarnations as Caprica tanked in the ratings while the prequel Blood and Chrome never even received a season order as its pilot was unceremoniously dumped onto the Internet to premiere as a series of webisodes.  It is actually a somewhat startling series of events since, at one point, it seemed as if the reboot would be able to spawn myriad spin-offs much like Star Trek did not so long ago but as it stands today, this incarnation of Galactica is officially dead and buried.

TV Review – Game of Thrones Season 2 (2012)

Game of Thrones thankfully avoids a sophomore slump managing to successful build upon the foundation so lovingly crafted in the first season.  Nevertheless, Season 2 feels very much like the middle chapters of a very long book, intent on focusing even more on character interaction while slowly building tension till the final few episodes and, as a result, the pace feels decidedly more sedate even though there are literally a ton of twists and turns hurled at viewers in every single episode.

TV Review – Game of Thrones Season 1 (2011)

It’s taken me ages to get around to writing this review and though the show will soon be entering its fourth year I’ve finally finished penning my thoughts on the season that started it all.  Game of Thrones has oft been described as being, “that medieval HBO show that’s like The Sopranos,” which is rather an insult to both series as though it does share some similarities, the fact remains that the two shows are incredibly different.

TV Review – Perception Season 1 (2012)

Perception is a classic textbook case of a show in its first season going through tough growing pains with a wildly vacillating level of quality and more than a few road bumps that almost torpedo it in the early going that make the first quarter of the season rife with narratives that often feel far too gimmicky and convenient almost as if the writers continuously found themselves forced into corners and grasping madly at straws. However, as I always say in regards to television series, it is nigh impossible and even ludicrous to judge new shows on only a few episodes as critics are often forced to as the medium itself allows for much longer character and narrative arcs to slowly reveal themselves whereas a film usually has a much faster cadence.

TV Review – Star Trek TNG: The Next Level (2012)

After a successful transfer of the original series to Blu-Ray which not only drew rave reviews from long time fans but also critics who were floored by the pristine transfer was there any question that CBS was not going to proceed to do the same quality work on subsequent Star Trek series?  At first glance one would think that transferring Star Trek The Next Generation to Blu-Ray would be an infinitely easier process merely because the show is much newer than the original series yet in reality the issues in doing so are remarkably different and just as steep.

TV Review – Virtuality (2009)

Originally meant to be Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor’s follow-up television science fiction series to the just concluded reimagined Battlestar Galactica, Virtuality instead ended up not being picked up by the Fox network that decided to shelve the idea of turning it into a series therefore leaving this two hour pilot suspended in limbo making fans wonder just exactly what went wrong.  Instead, Fox has decided to just televise the two hour pilot as a TV movie with minimal advertising on the wasteland that is known as the Friday night prime time period. You don’t really need more information to discern that Fox had lost all appetite for the show and had basically dumped it out there for all to see without any fanfare.

TV Review – Gossip Girl Season 1

I have always been more enamored by movies than I have been with television series. This is not a new admission as my friends have known this for years nor is it based on some sort of elitist mentality that somehow puts cinematic fare on a pedestal while relegating TV programs to the scrap heap. It is just merely a desire of mine to digest a narrative that has closure within a relatively terse two hour time span as compared to a serial that is broadcast over many months. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate an intricately woven story that weaves its magic over a longer period of time but just an observation of mine that what usually occurs to sustain such a show are a series of increasingly fantastical plot devices coupled with a copious amount of filler material that is so often undesirable.