The Day of the Jackal (2024) Review
Eddie Redmayne plays a charming assassin and Lashana Lynch the MI6 officer hunting him in this ten-episode reimagining of Forsyth's novel. A great first episode and good action, a saggy middle. It's a 7.
Tag: Television
Television is where long-form storytelling lives now, for better and occasionally much worse. This tag collects reviews and essays on TV: series worth study, storytelling at episodic scale, and what the medium teaches writers.
1960sGene Roddenberry Day: The Pilot Who Pitched the Stars
Gene Roddenberry was born on August 19, 1921, in El Paso, Texas. He flew bombers, survived an airliner crash, wrote speeches for the Los Angeles police chief, and then sold NBC a western set in space. The show he built…
1990sStar Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) Review
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine rates 10 and above on the rewatch scale and is the best series the franchise has produced. It is also the most underrated rating in Trek history. A station instead of a ship, a military…
2010sStar Trek: Discovery (2017-2024) Review
Star Trek: Discovery rates minus 10 on the rewatch scale. Every episode across five seasons rates a 1 or less. It had fifty years of lore, a guaranteed audience and an unlimited budget, and it is a pile of shit…
2000sStar Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) Review
Star Trek: Enterprise rates 4 for its first two seasons and 8 for its last two. A completely mixed bag that spent two years not knowing what it was, committed to a serialized arc in season three, became the show…
2020sStar Trek: Lower Decks (2020-2024) Review
Star Trek: Lower Decks rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mediocre, and a good try. A genuinely clever premise, the most stable production in modern Star Trek, and a show whose comic style and comic content are…
2020sStar Trek: Picard (2020-2023) Review
Star Trek: Picard rates 1 for its first two seasons and at most a 5 for its third. Awful from front to back. The first two have nothing in them worth defending, and the third, which almost everybody else rates…
2020sStar Trek: Prodigy (2021-2024) Review
Star Trek: Prodigy carries no rating here because I have not watched it, and barely knew it existed. That turns out to be the point. Its second season holds a perfect hundred percent with critics and ninety-six with audiences, and…
2020sStar Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022-) Review
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds carries no rating here because I have not watched it. This page is an honest survey of what other people think, and the short version is that it is the best reviewed modern Star Trek,…
2020sStar Trek: Starfleet Academy (2026) Review
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy rates minus ten thousand on the rewatch scale. It is the worst thing I have ever watched, film or television, and that includes Battlefield Earth. Pure garbage. Horseshit. Something written by small children with crayons on…
1970sStar Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974) Review
Star Trek: The Animated Series rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Twenty-two episodes, atrocious Filmation animation, and writing good enough that it holds up anyway. The first Star Trek to win an Emmy, for an episode from…
1980sStar Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) Review
Star Trek: The Next Generation rates 6 to 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A hundred and seventy-six episodes with a ceiling higher than almost any television of its era and a floor that includes the most embarrassing…