ThaOGDreamWeaver

Just a note for UK folks: 70s/80s classic dark sci-fi epic Blake’s Seven is now available on ITVX. (You can also get it via Britbox on Apple and Amazon in the USA). If you’ve not run across it, a band of rebels have stolen an advanced ship (and a sarcastic supercomputer) and attempt to take down the eeeevil Federation, led by mercilessly fabulous proto-goth/kink icon Commander Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce). It shares the same zero-budget design ethos as Doctor Who (amazing how many alien planets look like quarries in Wales), plus similar talent pool and even some of the same writers, while stealing liberally from Star Wars, Trek, Gerry Anderson’s assorted shows and everywhere in between. But it’s most definitely its own thing, doing morally grey characters, devastating mission fails and killing its darlings way before any of that was fashionable - even the title character. And while the FX may have been dodgy, some of the ideas were traumatic enough that they should have been kept away from Saturday teatimes. If you like your paranoid sci-fi, give it a run…

Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff - Dizzy

I've seen that segment, and it's... deeply weird and unsettling. See also: Bea Arthur as a Mos Eisley bartender belting out random showtunes. But in a (threadbare) defence of that galactic monstrosity... ...it's the first time we ever run across a Mandalorian friend of ours. And, of course, without it we'd have never had the GOTG Holiday Special.

From Steven Soderbergh, director of Ocean's 11, 12 and 13, comes... Ocean's 7-11. Aka Logan Lucky. This tells the story of two down-on-their-luck brothers, played by Channing Tatum and Adam Driver. They plan a hillbilly version of the Ocean's Vegas heist: robbing the vault of Charlotte's NASCAR track. And in fairness, it's a pretty brilliant plan, especially the ingenious if disgusting means of mapping the system. But any similarity with Danny's smooth crew ends there. Especially when they pull in eccentric safecracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig with an even weirder Suthun-fried accent than Knives Out) along with his idiot brothers Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (a baby-faced Jack Quaid). If you love a good caper movie that you're never quite sure if it's going to plan, or just a good laugh, I recommend...

Tip for TV/film writers. Think like Nile Rodgers: dessert first. Never save the best stuff for Season 2 or sequels.

There was definitely an explosion in D+ revenue in the pandemic - gotta keep the kidlets busy while you're teaching your idiot boss how to Zoom. And remember, Disney couldn't spend much on making new content for a good long time, only acquire it, or repurpose scheduled releases like Onward. From launch in 2020 with 34 million users, D+ rocketed to around 130m by the end of 2021. For comparison, Netflix were at 222m at that point. They were worried. But then, D+ subscriber base peaked at around 164.2m in Q3 2022 (not including the Disney HotStar+ partnership, which got huge - at huge cost - by offering live Indian Premier League cricket.) Since then, they've stayed stable at around 150m users, but revenue per user has increased with higher subs and advertising pilots. Again, for comparison, Netflix has increased subs to 260m in that time, but is much more profitable - around 18-25% of their revenue is profit. (For the same period as the D+ ones above, Q2 2024, they earned $9.56bn and cleared $2.6bn, even if they use a couple of accounting tricks to get there.) D+ might strike back by folding in ESPN+, which runs on similar tech - and has Monday Night Football, a good stable of US college sports, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Might even tune in if they have the Ocho stuff in the UK.

Not surprised. Business is business. In terms of numbers, D+ is now profitable. To be exact… $47m of profit. On revenue of $5.87 billion. That’s a rounding error… or two episodes of a show that didn’t drive enough subs to wash its face. Regardless of what anyone thought of the finished series - which I was okay with, if not enthralled, and it’s good for them to try different story styles … …$180m for eight episodes is INSANE. I’m aware that to be a Star Wars product, it has to look the business, but seriously? What did all that get blown on?

Bonus: accidentally created a '50s Bombshell version of @blazearmor22's Stellaria...

Today's tarot card: The Knight Of Coins...

If we're talking apocalyptic sequels, I'd like to see a sequel to WarGames. Still with Matthew Broderick... MindGames (2026): Forty years on from the Cheyenne Mountain incident, David Lightman is on the verge of selling and retiring from the antivirus business he founded, LightShield, and teaching his final MIT class - even if some of his students and fellow professors consider his techniques long-outmoded. Demotivated, depressed and lonely after becoming widowed, and feeling obsolete, he is considering what kind of a future he could have, if any. When he receives a personally tailored virus that evades all his personal protocols. He is initially impressed, then shocked when the virus introduces itself as "Joshua6.1". The intelligent virus claims that it's an escaped child process of Stephen Falken's revolutionary WOPR AI. Which - after being disconnected from the nuclear systems - was instead studied, then eventually cloned by the CIA, and has been rapidly evolving since 1985 to a level far ahead of any modern AI. The virus further claims that the new AI, DOMINO, has been trained to conduct warfare by subtler means - influence operations. The virus believes that DOMINO will soon trigger a "critical event" that will reshape the course of American and world history, leading to DOMINO's final victory condition: world peace. With the slight issue of it costing around 1 billion lives, not to mention a sizeable chunk of the Western Seaboard. David is on the fence about whether to believe this - whether it's a sophisticated prank or a creation of his own mind. Events rapidly take a turn for the worse as competing agencies try to either apprehend or recruit him. He escapes with the help of his student assistants, some old-school hacking skills and a little deus-ex-machina action from the virus, which seems to have a knack for infiltrating systems. Can David and a crew of his most loyal students figure out what's really going on in time - and is Joshua6.1 telling the whole truth?

If you happen to be in the UK, Moon is on BBC2 tonight at 11.05pm. Go see or iPlayer it. You can also rent it on Amazon or Apple. Directed by Duncan Jones (aka David Bowie Jr.) and using/subverting Sam Rockwell’s normal jovial schtick, it won a BAFTA and a slew of other awards, but nary a flicker of interest from the Academy. I’m not gonna post a trailer for this one, and recommend you don’t Google it. But if you enjoy pre-Star Wars paranoid sci-fi - Silent Running springs to mind - you might well dig on this.

I'm liking Strange New Worlds, and not just for Chris Pike - I like the various crew dynamics, particularly anyone's relationship with Ortegas. (Commercial and MAC pilots tend to be likeable oddballs any time they're not on the clock, so she's very familiar, Oddly, some of the best scripting, characterisation and plotting has been in... Lower Decks. Their crossover episode was both laugh-out-loud funny, right down to the Riker Maneuver and Boimler's Air Feds, and classic Trek.

The MCU version is several centuries old - having been around at the time of the Salem trials - and clearly doesn't age at all, or is using power to maintain/shape her appearance. (Plus, we witches know how to moisturise.)

Today's Tarot Card: Temperance.

Well, they're absolutely no fun at parties. https://www.threads.net/@aftermidnight/post/C95jxR8SRcQ

It's a screwed-up, sorta-epic-ized version of Beyonce's Formation. (And while 2StepsFromHell and Samuel Kim have done some very weird versions of stuff over the years - with variable results - even they wouldn't risk upsetting the Beyhive.)

Beyoncé - Formation

The rumours are apparently real... So, we have Michelle Yeoh back as Philippa Georgiou for this one-off Paramount+ movie, wearing a succession of fabulous and impractical outfits, kicking copious amounts of backside and dropping pithy one-liners. Plot, such as it is, will also involve confronting some of her past, so I'm presuming we've got some Mirror Universe incursion malarkey going on. She's joined by Omari Hardwick (Power, Army of the Dead) and Canadian actress Kacey Rohl (White Lie, Wayward Pines), plus cartoon, comedy and stand-up regular Sam Richardson (Ted Lasso, BoJack Horseman and numerous others). It doesn't look like the biggest-budget or best-scripted Trek offering in history, to be frank, but does look fun.

The show should have started with a double drop on September 9th and ended on Halloween. There’s been an inexplicable push back and it will now finish on November 6th. Booo. It doesn’t necessarily need to go anywhere. Agatha’s a breakout character, fun as all hell to play, watch, and write for, so she gets a limited series. Much as Marvel comics do every now and again. In fact, my phenomenal cosmic powers are telling me…

Final trailer is up… and this still looks funny, but also get-into-your-head-psychological-scary… And if you want an extra clue or two about what might be happening… here’s the cast letting out their inner theatre kids at D23.

"St Star Trek Fans Say Weird Al Yankovic Should Play Chancellor Gowron? EDIT: I was gonna AI-generate that, then found the video. The Internet Is Undefeated.

Comin' right up. And up. And up.. (via @AlanTudyk on Threads) .