Tag: SF

Stranger Things Final Season (Netflix, 2025)

Note: This will have spoilers for the final season

Since the five seasons took nine years to unfold, it’s really something that this season incorporates flashbacks, or at least flashes, of the first seasons. You can really see how the cast has literally grown up together.

By the nature of the three-part release schedule we had to have two big cliffhangers before the finale, but it was a nice compromise between an-episode-a-week and we’ll-force-you-to-binge-so you-aren’t-spoiled.

Was this season perfect? Not by a mile, but it did resolve most of the things hanging over Hawkins.  Rather than a D&D fantasy the story ends up being more of an SF Horror movie like The Thing.

We learn that Vecna/Henry didn’t initially choose the evil path, but he did embrace it.  His death gave Joyce her moment in the finale.

We are given an ending that didn’t kill any main characters. It’s sad that Elle/Jane doesn’t get to stay with her friends and father but I choose to believe that was the extent of her self-sacrifice.

It was nice to see the next generation taking over the basement at the end; I appreciated having a dénouement that wasn’t rushed with the little glimpses of how the kids would continue to grow.  I wouldn’t have minded a little more with the older teens. I thought the restaurant scene with Hopper and Joyce was going to be the long awaited date with Robin and Vickie and that was the only part that semi-disappointed me.

I will be curious to see what the Duffer Brothers come up with next for Netflix!

The Dirk Gently Graphic Novels (IDW, 2016-2017)

After hearing the Douglas Adams audiobook earlier in the year, I was again interested in the ancillary Dirk Gently stories published by IDW starting in 2016.  These were tie-ins and publicity to the BBC America series that ran for two seasons.  I had collected most of the stories as individual issues but not all of them, so I was delighted to receive the three volumes collecting three separate story arcs: “A Spoon Too Short,” “The Interconnectedness of All Kings,” and “The Salmon of Doubt.”

If you’ve never read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency or The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, the original novels by Douglas Adams, start with those. The comics play in that world but are not adaptations.

I am more of a Hitchhiker’s Guide fan, but as an adult I have come to appreciate the absurd, and Adams did well with Dirk Gently. Arvind Ethan David has acquitted himself honorably with the characters and tone of the original.  In particular, the Salmon of Doubt intertwines the TV version of Dirk Gently somewhat and I find myself wanting to go revist the 18 episodes of the show.  (In researching I found a 2010 version done on the BBC that was just four episodes that is on BritBox. More to watch!)

Back to the comics: these collections are good, filled with the variant covers of individual issues and a couple of actors introducing the volumes.  I’m not a huge fan of the artwork but it’s not bad.

 

Starship Troopers 25th Anniversary Edition [4K] (2022)

I’ve owned almost every edition of Starship Troopers that’s been released since 1997.  I just got the 25th Anniversary Steelbook case edition as I only recently bought a 4K television.

Apparently the scan to 4K was done from the original print in 2017 for the 20th Anniversary and this new anniversary edition has a latest kind of Dolby soundtrack.  All I know is: it looks absolutely gorgeous.  The sound was good enough that it unfortunately bothered the dog and I had to keep lowering it.

I admit I have not rewatched this film in many years.  It’s a ‘third-rail’ for fans of Robert A. Heinlein and it deviates from Heinlein’s plot and world-building in several significant ways.  I think that it’s a very good “B-movie” as long as you forget about Heinlein’s source material while watching.  The CGI/special effects are better than I remembered.

There’s always much talk about director Paul Verhoeven’s intent with the film, but there are really two views within the film.  The first is  the close telling of the characters. Watching this is the closest you get to Heinlein’s source, even though there are many deviations.  The second view is the one that I think many people misread.  The FedNet broadcasts/Menu choices are a filtered/propaganda view that reads like a fascist society trying to control its population.  Sadly, by not having the Powered Armor of the MI, Verhoeven doomed the movie to overwhelmingly be about a bunch of amazingly stupid military tactics that don’t make any sense and I think that weights the propaganda side more than it should.

It’s OK to enjoy this amazing-looking edition. Just go and read Heinlein’s book, too.