Raised by Wolves Is Original Sci-Fi at Its Most Polarizing (2020)
rogerebert.com
rogerebert.com
There was this other series called Murderbot which had some similarities in the setting of the story. It was not that great compared to the 1st season of Raised by Wolves, but it was consistent throughout the whole series (so far) in quality, and it is much more satisfying.
Anyways if you like scifi and haven't checked out The Expanse yet, that is a masterpiece.
Also, remember to support your local library.
Dune (the first 3 books) Vinge’s Deepness series Dark Forest (3 Body Problem…)
Also, both the "Children of Time" and "Shadows of the Apt" series by Adrian Tchaikovsky are excellent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Tchaikovsky#Bibliograph...
I would call the novels well executed, enjoyable and very readable action adventures, using well-worn tropes. There is nothing ground-breaking in them. It's not what's currently at the edges of the genre in the written form - It's not Greg Egan, it aint Ted Chiang or Adrian Tchaikovsky. M. John Harrison does not make an appearance. It's not even Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds or Iain M. Banks.
The TV show however, is quite something, it is one of the flagship sci-fi TV series. And it does indicate that written and visual sci-fi might be different stages of development , with the TV version lagging by decades.
Have you read / listened to The Sun Eater Series?
The series was cancelled after 2 seasons, so many plot lines were left unresolved.
(obviously my personal opinion eh?)
For a really nerdy-oriented SF series try Three Body i.e. the 2023 Tencent version of The Three Body Problem. Again in my opinion the 2024 Netflix version, was one of the boringest things I've ever watched. I'm pretty sure if that had been my introduction to the Rememberance of Earth Past series I would have been left distinctly unimpressed.
For an example of what I mean by "nerdy-oriented", avoiding spoilers there's a scene where some of the characters are observing a certain celestial phenomenon. In the Netflix series they are sitting outside looking at something that should not be visible by naked eye. In the Tencent series they're sitting in a proper scientific station, i.e. a big room lined with PC workstations and side-rooms with bigger machines and printers, and they're starting endlessly at a single red line on a monitor while munching on junk food.
Another thing: a certain Chinese army base in the 1960's is decorated with picture-perfect, period hardware, big mainframes that a character is shown physically disassembling to service. In the Netflix series... honestly, I don't even remember. The attention to detail that only a proper nerd would notice is, to me, something genuinely new, like I've never see anyone go to all that trouble before to make sure a certain demographic won't scrunch up their face and go "that's not how computers looked in the '60s".
I should also say that there is certainly quite a bit of overacting (or over-directing) in the early episodes but they get over it later.
There's also a 6h fan edit, https://disembiggened.com.
My goto for showing the difference between the Netflix and Tencent shows is the Shi speech about bugs. It's an important moment, but the Tencent version does a much better job of conveying that.
Eventually the whole protomolecule thing settles down, and afterwards you have essentially politics and genocide in space, which can be good but almost feels like a different genre.
As someone who loves the book, I think the show is a 10/10 for capturing the feeling. Though if you where expecting as more serious scifi I can see why you think it's of inferior quality.
As someone who read all the books (fun vacation pop read), I think gendering the murderbot was a significant loss.
I also think going with an Eddie Redmayne (https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.... or https://starschanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/eddie-re...) or (given wardrobe) even an Asia Argento (https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/MfT7Q... or https://todaymix.ru/uploads/posts/2020-01/azija-ardzhento-59...) could have worked to maintain the conceit.
It's hard to have no gender reveal for 7 books, but it makes the introspection so much more interesting.
Interesting observation made by Nick on www.rogerebert.com
I've had trouble watching some of his work to their end, there was just so much WTF and random stuff.
His name on a project is for me a signal to carefully check some reviews before committing.
If the first season had been reduced by half and followed up with some answers, it would have been fantastic. The second season was frustrating because it kept adding new mysteries and conflicts rather than filling out the world building and backstory. It was well made enough that it could have gotten somewhere, but it was apparent that the second season had a lower budget, and I was not surprised to see it get canceled in the midst of the HBO cost cutting. (I've been waiting for an interview with Aaron Guzikowski where someone asks him what the ending would have been if they'd have time to tell the whole story. Sadly, no such interview seems to have happened, and Guzikowski hasn't done anything since that show.)
While mystery shows are intriguing, it's gotten a bit much. I feel we need to get back to stories where we don't go several seasons waiting for a real answer and resolution, while constantly under the threat of cancellation.
What I would have settled for was a decent Space opera.
What I got was a Shaggy God Story, a wild hallucinated fever dream, a wooly, baggy technicolour Biblical riff, that promised a lot but made little actual sense. I slogged through season 1, and then gave it up.
As for the show, I have mixed feelings. They just kept jumping the shark time and time again so at some point it got sort of normalized.
Did end on a hell of a cliffhanger though.
on S2: a total disaster.
I say this as a big fan of horror and sci-fi and Alien* in particular.
https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbywolves/comments/18510kf/whe...
The problem with the modern data driven approach to TV production is that it optimizes for the shows that are just good enough to get people to keep their subscriptions, and the truly visionary stuff gets cancelled.
The best shows always take a while to build up popularity because they’re so new that people aren’t willing to give them a chance at first. Breaking Bad and Mad Men didn’t become popular until season 2 or 3. TV execs have no vision anymore, it’s all run by hill climbing algorithms that look for the nearest maximum now.
The golden age of TV is behind us now. It’s just yet another example of enshittification.