Alan Rapp

Star Trek – Balance of Terror

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  • Title: Star Trek – Balance of Terror
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Star Trek - Balance of Terror television review

Today’s Throwback Thursday post takes us boldly back to where no man had gone before and the original five-year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise. While vitally important for introducing the most underutilized of Star Trek‘s alien races, Balance of Terror is one of those episodes that isn’t helped by the passage of time as it creates some continuity problems that aren’t as easily resolved in the far more expanded current Star Trek universe. That said, taken by itself the episode works well (even if one bridge officer’s prejudices are handled with all the subtlety of a Michael Bay explosion). When attack along the Neutral Zone outposts are reported, the Enterprise is sent to investigate and the discover a cloaked Romulan ship with a wily captain who nearly out-maneuvers Kirk (William Shatner).

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The Gifted – eMergence

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  • Title: The Gifted – eMergence
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The Gifted - eMergence television review

Although I enjoyed The Gifted, I was feeling a bit of super-hero TV fatigue and eventually fell off from the show’s slow building First Season which was heavy on world building and weak on payoff. The Second Season premiere beings with Reeva Payge (Grace Byers) consolidating her power within the Inner Circle and preparing for an important birth. As for our heroes, they continue to save what mutants they can from the increasingly vicious and murderous Sentinel Services while Caitlin (Amy Acker) and Eclipse (Sean Teale) continue to search for answers about the whereabouts of their missing loved ones. The premiere resets the stage for the season with our heroes, what was once the Hellfire Club, and Sentinel Services all with distinct motivations and agendas. Despite Payge’s murderous spree to open the episode, she still comes off better than the human soldiers killing unarmed men, women, and children in their own homes.

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Magnum P.I. – I Saw the Sun Rise

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Magnum P.I. (2018) – I Saw the Sun Rise
  • wiki: link

Magnum P.I. - I Saw the Sun Rise

On hearing the news, and seeing clips of CBS’ plans to reboot Magnum, P.I. all I could think was that this was the worst idea in network television since the The CW rebooted Charlie’s Angels with Minka Kelly in 2011 (a show so historically bad, even the Internet has done its best to forget its existence). The new Magnum P.I. attempts to hold to the formula of the original but also makes several small changes (including the new, grammatically incorrect, spelling of the show’s title). Set in present day, Jay Hernandez is cast as the new Thomas Sullivan Magnum who works as a private eye while also providing security to the estates of published author Robin Masters. Unlike the original, in which Masters was never seen (or even proved to be a real person), Thomas and the author are old friends due to the writer spending time with Magnum during his time as a Naval Officer in landlocked country of Afghanistan.

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The Big Bang Theory – The Conjugal Configuration

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Big Bang Theory – The Conjugal Configuration
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The Big Bang Theory - The Conjugal Configuration TV review

The Big Bang Theory kicks off its final season by offering us looks at Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) as newlyweds at Legoland (which sadly gets far less screentime than the pair’s discussion of early marital issues), Raj‘s (Kunal Nayyar) making a public ass of himself (seriously… can they think of nothing better to do with this character after a dozen years), Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) just sort of watching the trainwreck of their friend unfold, and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Penny (Kaley Cuoco) have more “cute” fights when Leonard compares the pair to Amy’s parents. A bit underwhelming for a season premiere, but about what you would expect with the show dusting off old relationship tropes (wait, Sheldon is bad a relationships? Shocker!) and reusing them (yet again).

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