The Ringer-Verse - Ringer-Verse Recommends: September 2026

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

"We do not know when it will be safe to go outside. We only know that day is not this day." That's what Ben Lindbergh says to himself when he's working from home, but not when he's in studio to discuss 'Silo' and other recent nerd-culture releases! On this month's Recommends, Ben brings on Alex Kirshner to make the case for 'Silo' as a series worth sticking with, discuss the explosive end of Season 3, and look ahead to the final season. Then Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps join to talk 'Dark Matter' Season 2, share their all-time tier lists of Apple TV sci-fi series, break down 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 4, assess the state of 'Star Trek' as the franchise turns 60, and cover Korean sci-fi epic 'Hope' and, briefly, 'Practical Magic 2.' Finally, Ben recommends 'Lego Star Wars: The Mandalorian' and other Disney+ kids' content and muses about the rapid rise and fall of 'The Mandalorian' and live-action 'Star Wars' and MCU streaming series.(00:00) Intro(03:09) Alex joins the show(16:27) 'Silo' spoilers(39:20) Scott and Keith join the show(40:08) Talking 'Dark Matter'(53:00) The Apple TV tier list(72:03) ‘Strange New Worlds’(81:52) The state of ‘Star Trek’(89:02) 'Hope'Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Alex Kirshner, Scott Tobias, and Keith PhippsSenior Producer: Steve AhlmanAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Uber Eats. You can get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Sorry, you can't get a beach deliver, but you can get a peach. A canoe, no. Shampoo, yes. A rocket? No way. Chocolate, yes way. It's everything you need, including $10 off your first grocery order with code,

anything 30, 30. Get almost, almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now. Order a minimum of $30 required, valid on grocery, convenience, retail, specialty foods, or flower delivery orders only, Terms and conditions apply. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor at the Ringer, host of Buttonmash, and of course, doing

double duty as host slash MC of Ringerverse recommends. This is our monthly roundup of all things nerd culture that we haven't had a chance to cover in depth on the Ringerverse or House of Our. This is our edition for September 2026. And it's been a busy month. We've had lanterns coverage. We've had Resident Evil. We've had an enormous number of video games, and that onslaught continues on button mesh.

And so, as always, a number of excellent releases have fallen through the cracks and we'll be covering as many of them as possible. Now, last month in one segment I had Adam Naiman on, and the theme was Dogs in Danger, as we talked about the end of Oak Street and the dog stars and Coyote v. Acme. that will not be the theme this month. I considered covering Brad Pitt's new dog in danger movie, Heart of the Beast, which looks very much like the dog stars. But no, we're not doing that. It's not nerd culture. No dogs in danger, as far as I'm aware, really, on this episode.

However, we do have a lot to get to. So one theme will be Apple TV sci-fi. And as usual, we have a cornucopia of Apple TV sci-fi series. And we're going to get into a bunch of them, Silo Season 3, which had a very big, finish this month. We'll talk about Silo as a whole. We'll start in very accessible territory and then we'll move

into spoiler territory toward the end. I will be talking to Alex Kirshner, a palomine and a podcaster and writer about Silo. It's a favorite of his. Then I will be bringing on two other guests, Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps who write and podcast together very often. And we will talk about Dark Matter.

We'll also give our tier list of Apple TV sci-fi projects, just what's in our S-tier, what's in our A-tier, what are the shows that we've watched and we've liked, or we haven't watched? And what do we think of Apple TV as a whole, which has a whole lot of huge critical darlings, not as many mainstream hits? We will also get into Star Trek, Strange New World, season four, the penultimate season, and we'll assess the state of Star Trek at the 60th anniversary of the franchise. We'll also talk about Hope, the big budget South Korean sci-fi flick, which is a

a monster alien movie, a little knob to practical magic too at the end of that second segment. But we have a trio of occasional ringer freelancers here, Alex, Scott, and Keith, who will help me out here. As always, I solicit your nominations and recommendations for next month. You can email us your comments or your suggestions for other properties to cover in October and beyond at ringerverse recommends at gmail.com. I'll be back at the end of the episode to remind you of that address and also give you a bonus recommendation. of my own for this month. But right now, let's talk silo, followed by Dark Matter, Star Trek, hope, and more. All right, with me now is the esteemed Alex Kirshner, my former podcast on a beloved

podcast that is no longer with us, sadly, hang up and listen, where we got to talk about sports, but rarely did we get to talk about Apple TV sci-fi series or Silo specifically. And so that's what we are here to do today. You probably have, Red. Alex, somewhere. He's all over the internet, including the ringer, but also Slate, the athletic, SB Nation regularly. And of course, he is a college football expert, and you can hear him on the Split Zone Duo podcast. Alex, welcome. I'm glad to give you a platform for your silo takes that have been pent up for so long. Two most exciting moments of my career in podcasting. Number one, being told that I would be hosting a weekly sports podcast at Slate with the co-host of

Effectively Wild, my favorite baseball podcast. And number two, getting a text from the same, telling me that I had the opportunity to talk about Silo, a show that I love, and that I understand from Reddit has seemingly hundreds of thousands of fans, but that I have yet to encounter a fellow fan from in real life. So this is exciting. I was having the same issue. I mean, this is not like one of those network shows that's one of the most popular shows in the country, but no one you know maybe depending on which bubble you're in has ever watched it.

This is not like tracker or something. It's still, it's Apple TV. It's an ostensibly sort of prestige, semi-prestige sci-fi series. And it has a sizable audience by Apple TV standards. It makes the Nielsen rankings, et cetera. But I wanted to talk about season three on this episode, and I was just scouring all the possibilities and ringer colleagues and other people I know. Do you watch Silo?

Anyone watch Salo? I'm like knocking on doors. Anyone, will you talk to me about Silo? And everyone either was like, oh, I watch a few episodes. I fell off in season one. I, you know, they lost me in season two or something. And then, like, Manna from Heaven, I see that you posted your New York Times top 10 TV shows of the century. And lo and behold, Silo was one of them. And I think you were probably the only person I saw on my timeline who included Silo

in their top 10 shows of the century. And I thought, ah, my solution. Alex can come talk to me about silo. So make the case for Silo, if not as one of the 10 best TV shows, of the century, though by all means, make that case if you can. But as a show that you recommend and that people should check out or come back to if they fell off at some point. Let me pitch you on this. It's shot extremely dark. It looks like they're underground, but in such a way that it actually fits the plot of the show. Can I sell you on that? There's not a ton of that. It's not the best pitch. It's super dark and sometimes I can't actually see what's happening on screen, but it makes sense because it's subterranean.

I mean, yeah. I have that issue sometimes where I'm like, is it supposed to be that dark? And usually I don't have that issue, you know, when there were Game of Thrones episodes that no one could see. My TV was fine. And I was like, this is a skill issue. Your brightness is off or something. But in silo, there are scenes where I'm like squinting and peering.

And, you know, there's like a whole extended stretch of season two where Juliet is in another silo, silo 17, not her silo, silo, silo, 18. and there are no lights in there, really? And so it should be pitch black, and it kind of is, which is tough for a viewer, but thematically makes sense. In a relatively spoiler-conscious way, my pitch about Silo is that the world building in this show is just way more interesting than you would think it would be when you get the idea of underground society.

You would think there's only so much that can really go on underground because it's challenging for mammals to survive down there. But I think that silo is a really interesting encapsulation of the way that we humans order societies and the way that we try to control information that is passed among us and the way that social hierarchies form. and on top of that, sort of bolted on top of all of that, it's just a really interesting mystery about why did these people find themselves in at least 18, at least 18 giant metal tubes underground, and why are they there and can they ever get out? It's a really interesting caper that is set in a world that has a lot to say about the actual above-ground world that we, and have it together. Yeah.

Now, I think one of the things that initially I wasn't fully sold and I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. But it's one of those I know too much or I've seen too much. Now, I haven't actually read the series that Silo is based on. So none of that is spoiled for me

and it's a fairly faithful adaptation from what I understand. But I've just seen so many shows like this. I mean, post-apocalyptic shows, survival shows, sometimes literally in silos. You know, it's like, Now, maybe this is on me because I'm watching Fallout and I'm watching Paradise and then I'm watching Silo.

And there's a lot of overlap and a lot of commonalities. And I don't know if this is just I'm getting old and I've seen too much sci-fi. It's just almost every time I watch a show. I'm like, oh, right, this is like this show, right? This is maybe there are only, I don't know, eight premises for sci-fi series and then you kind of riff on them. And so I don't know if you've seen those shows, but if you're watching Paradise and Fallout and Silo all together, It almost blends together because it's like some of the same big questions about what happened to society and everything's going wrong and we're trying to survive and we're coming up with some, you know, subterranean. We're preppers for a doomsday that actually arrives.

There's a lot there that if you just now watch Silo having seen some other shows, you'll say, yeah, this feels familiar. I think would differentiate Silo from other apocalypse of shows that I have watched. And I'm just going to use The Last of Us as the example because this is the one that's fresh. in my head that I've been watching in its HBO Max run for the last few years. The difference with Silo, I think, is that there is a more prescribed form of chaos that is developing this world. Typically in a post-apocalyptic thing, some awful chaos has befallen the world. And as a result of that, humans are at each other's throats in different ways. And not only do, you have to fear the Great Beyond, but you often have to fear your fellow man who is

fighting with you for food or for shelter or for weapons or what have you. What I think is really interesting about Silo's premise, and I don't think that this really gives much a way beyond the premise of Trailer 1, is that there's a really big, not just what happened mystery here, but what is controlling it? Like, what is God? What is this thing that we're all in? And something like The Last of Us is pretty clear what we're all in. We're in a hellscape caused by a fungal infection that enveloped the world and it became the Lord of the Flies.

What I like about Silo is that, you know, like you, Ben, I love rules. I love a format. I mean, I've seen you prepare podcast notes before. And Silo has rules. Silo has governing principles. The pact that governs this little subterranean, big subterranean world. world. And it asks questions from the jump about where does this come from? Why are we doing this that I think are a bit different than what we would usually see in a world is over catastrophic show

or movie? Yeah. And I find that it's kind of, you know, prestige adjacent, but also feels a little bit distinct from that. I mean, you know, some incredible cast members, obviously Rebecca Ferguson stars as Juliet. Tim Robbins is here as the head of IT, which is a pretty important position in Silo world. Common is also in this cast. There are some, you know, some recognizable names and people you've seen and faces you know.

And, you know, actors with real pedigree, the writing is not always the strongest in terms of dialogue and also some, you know, plot points that kind of just they're there and then they're not, and then you think, wait, what happened to that? And I guess they just sort of dropped that. And sometimes there's a little bit of like, wait, why does this happen? Is this possible? Although I will find that over the course of the series, the number of times that I've thought, wait, this doesn't make sense. Why would they do it this way? Why don't they just do that? At some point, it is usually explained. I'm not going to say they've thought of everything and they address every possible nitpick. But once you get to the end of season three, which is where we are,

season three ended earlier this month, the curtain is pulled back enough that a lot of the questions that I had along the way or some of the skepticism was sort of settled to my satisfaction, which is refreshing. I appreciated that too because this is a show that I suspect has struggled to gain the same rabid following, or at least, not rabid following, but I think it's struggled to gain the same numbers and following as like a severance because it really, really takes a while to even get what you're looking at. And we don't like it when TV writers are up their own colones about being mysterious. I feared that in season three, they were going to keep with that. And we were going to still be left wondering, not only were a lot of things

resolved in season three, but also, God bless the producers of this show, speaking of a way that's very different from Severance, which is in the same Apple TV sci-fi family, they already shot season for the final season. I've seen the trailer for it. I know when it's coming out. Next July, right? And so you don't have to worry, you know, if you were to go through and meander your way through silo for, I don't know, a month or two or three or four or eight to get through it,

you don't have to worry in the severance way about the indefinite delayed gratification because it's coming. You can already see the trailer for it. Deeply refreshing. I understand this used to be how they made TV. but it isn't really anymore, and it's nice to see. Yeah, and we know that there is source material and that there is an end to the story, which I don't know and have avoided looking up,

and people have generally been pretty considerate about not spoiling. I guess it helps that, again, this isn't the most popular show, though it's semi-popular, at least by Apple TV standards. And so I have faith that this is going somewhere and that it's all going to be resolved in a pretty timely fashion, and we won't have to wait. And that's all good. You know, some of the, along the way, there's some meandering and there's some, you know, we're stuck in this setting for a long time. That's part of the problem, I guess, and it's hard to get around it, at least for the first couple seasons, especially.

You are just stuck in silos, you know, and the silo looks like a silo, and it's very much drab, monotonous scenery, which is appropriate. They're stuck in a silo. It's pretty utilitarian. but it's not exactly a feast for the eyes. There's just a lot of, you know, cement and a lot of small, rounded rooms and a staircase that they're traipsing up and down. And so if you're expecting visual variety or a feast for your eyes or the sort of thing that you get from Pluribus or even Severance or, you know, some other Apple TV sci-fi series, you're not really going to get that here. I mean, it looks more or less convincing. I wouldn't say it looks low budget or anything.

It's just the same sets recycled. Yeah, I remember reading that there was one particular silo episode that cost tens of millions of dollars to make. There was a number floating around, and we never know these things for sure. That was a $40 million silo episode. And the thought did cross my mind, $40 million on what? Yeah. Maybe to build the silo set in the first place, but then you get a lot of use out of that. I don't know.

but they have succeeded in building a really convincing world, probably in part because they haven't had to be too adventurous in the set design. It really does all look pretty similar. And you have to put up with a bit of a delay until you understand what is going on. But I found that particularly in season three, this is a great pitch, obviously. You know, watch 16 hours or 20 hours of TV or whatever before you get to it. as they start to unravel the mystery, I have found it to be severance level gripping as they have unspooled it for me and fed it to me like a little baby piecemeal. It took a while, but I am lapping it up as it goes, and I'm looking forward to season four as much as I've looked forward to a new season of anything in a while.

Yeah. And let's stray into spoiler territory here. Just be warned to everyone. And if you're planning to watch this and you haven't checked it out, you may want to skip ahead slightly. We'll timestamp the episode description. But if you know you're not going to watch or if you are watching or if you were watching and decided not to keep watching and you don't mind hearing a little bit about what happened, then listen on. Season three, the end of season three specifically has been extremely well received. And that kind of broke containment in a way where Silo felt like the show that some people were watching maybe, but maybe with. episode 9 and 10, the last couple episodes of season three, there was real buzz about Silo for the first time since season one. I mean, those episodes, like the finale of season three is a 9.6 user rating on IMDB right now.

That is like a really acclaimed episode because they really did reveal a lot, things that we had been waiting three seasons. And there's still some mysteries and there's still intrigue and there's a big confrontation that's set up for season four. There's plenty more material. but this really did deliver. They made us wait. They did kind of hem and ha and string us along a little bit, but ultimately they got there. And I felt like my time had been worth it

once they lifted the lid. Yeah. In the penultimate episode of season three, where they started to do the revealing that they really carried out more in the finale, there's a maybe five to seven minute stretch of this episode where two of the, main characters from the before times are about to be dragged into the silos unwittingly.

And you start to recognize that this is happening in this pregnant period of a handful of minutes before it actually happens. Literally. Helen, one of the main characters, is pregnant. Yes. With Daniel's child. And you see what's happening. And there's not a lot of mystery that things are going to be okay. K or whatnot, but it just knocks me on my ass, really. It knocks me backward. It hits you in the

chest, is what I meant to say. And, you know, as we sort of start to get the payoff in the finale of season three, where it turns out that there is one central node of the silo system that has people puppet mastering the rest of these silos, and in some cases mass murder. And in some cases, mass murdering members of certain silos and trying to control communication between the different silos so that they don't know that there are other silos. It just becomes really haunting but also satisfying because you start to understand the board that you've been seeing. We come to understand that there are, in fact, many more than 18 silos. I believe it's around 50. I didn't go back and check the number, but it's a lot of silos. And I think some of the acting performances here are

just excellent. Like so, so good. It's hard to even pick a favorite one. Yeah. I do feel for poor Tim Robbins, who has to croak all season long because he has been burned in a fire, and so he is talking like this all season long.

And he actually does croak, spoiler, in the finale. So he's put out of his misery, but he has to perform the entire season in that voice. So kudos to him. Ben, you visit Los Angeles a lot. Wringer's got a big staff footprint out there. Sometimes. Sometimes.

I live there. I've been away for a little bit. But earlier in the season, I was walking across the street in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. And Ashley Zuckerman, who is the very good Australian actor, I believe is Australian, who plays Daniel, one of these protagonists. actually, I think he's born in Santa Monica, California. Anyway, has an accent. Always plays some sort of congressional staffer of some sort in every show.

He does. He's so good at that in succession, too. But he gracefully observes traffic laws and stops for me as I'm crossing at a crosswalk. And there's like a code in Los Angeles. I've only lived there for a little while that you're not supposed to make a fuss, make a scene with screen talent from Hollywood. And I observed that, but I did do a little double take. And I wanted to stop and put my hands up in the crosswalk and ask if he could pull over to discuss his performance in this season.

He was that good in this thing. I didn't do it. Don't worry. I observed the code. But the number of good performances here, I mean, we didn't even talk about Rebecca Ferguson. People apparently hate Commons performance. Yes, I've gathered that. As Gibbs is kind of an enforcer in this show.

I personally think he's good. But I just think that's because the character has taken on his aura, which is to say very short-spoken, doesn't have a ton to say, gives off sort of an emotionally hurt vibe about him. I think it works great with the character. Yeah. Alexandria Riley, who plays Camille, who sort of is the heel for much of this season and then has a face turn.

She's, you know, you love to hate her for much of the season, which is her job. She's quite magnetic. Zuckerman, by the way, born in Santa Monica, but moved to Melbourne, or Melbourne, Australia. So you were right both times, I guess, yes. But, yeah, I mean, there's some, I guess it's just like this seems like it should be a homogenous society, even though everyone came from different places originally. That was hundreds of years ago, and they've all been born and raised and contained.

And so why does it seem like they're still from different places in the world? I wonder that sometimes about Rebecca Ferguson's accent. I think she does a great job, but you compare her season three accent to her season one accent. She's not really bothering to do sort of a standard American accent anymore. And you kind of wonder, like, you know, she's switching around and it's like, how did she get that accent when, I mean, her father is Ian Glenn in the show. So I don't know where he got his accent. You know, some of that stuff is probably better not to think about why people sound the way they do. But on the whole, I think it's a good cast.

I do find that, you know, I'm interested in the big picture stuff. and a lot of the character stuff, but less so in the love interests, and they do stick a fair amount of that in, and it always feels awkward to me, not that I don't want these characters to find love, but it's just like they're shipping Juliet and Lucas, and it's like, where did that come from?

And then, like, Juliet's bestie Shirley and Knox, who was, like, Juliet's mentor, and there's just no chemistry there. And, like, Juliet and Shirley never even really read as straight to me, so I was just kind of confused by the whole thing. Like I thought maybe they would be together, but they're actually best friends. That whole aspect of the show I'm not that into.

And there were some frustrating aspects. So the beginning of season three, I guess very end of season two, there is this flashback separate timeline. And they do merge finally at the end of season three, which is very exciting because they've been separated on screen and by centuries. And I found that that was a welcome exit from the silo

because we've been stuck in the silo for two seasons. Now to go back to before whatever happened happened and to be out in the open air, that was like a nice respite because, you know, you feel like the characters in the silo who are looking at these hand-me-down magazine pages and pictures of trees and hearing about birds. And then to actually get outside was a really nice refreshing change of pace. The downside of that, though, was that we were following these characters in the past as they're kind of piecing together what's happening and there's some sort of disaster impending.

Meanwhile, they kind of have to just tread water in the silo, waiting for that to catch up. So there's this whole storyline where Juliet has amnesia and she has to remember everything. And so that kind of puts everything on hold. And we know more than she knows. And it's that drags on for a bit. And it kind of just killed the momentum. And then sometimes, you know, you'd get like the cutting. Some episodes, I think, works well.

You just have like half in the silo, half in the past. Sometimes it's cutting back and forth and it's just a little bit disjointed. ultimately I think it pays off and I was happy to have the past timeline and that actually felt more gripping to me but that was a little bit of impediment from what I understand the book that that's based on is actually pretty divisive

and people didn't love that and their romance and that character and everything but I thought they made some changes in the show and that works for me like I like the Daniel and Helen relationship and their sort of you know thriller story which now is overlapping and you know from what we saw of the season four

trailer, there's going to be more of those characters and it'll all come together and be worth the way. But it definitely, you can feel kind of the, you know, we're juggling plot lines for the beginning of this season especially. I think the central tension of the show that the Daniel and Helen storyline fits into pretty well, exemplifies pretty well, is the crushing burden of human pain and what is it worth to try to prevent people from feeling pain? And that materializes in different ways. It literally in the creation of the silos, like, should we just throw people underground and see how it goes

because we could have seeds to replant humanity in the event of some apocalyptic event happening? But also the amnesia, the memory drugs that, the memory lost drugs that some of these characters take, are initially conceived, we learn in the third season,

by a mad scientist sort of doctor whose baby daughter died in his arms. I wouldn't want to our own. remember that. Would I? I'd like to be unburdened from that. And he starts experimenting on combat troops who have been through major ordeals. Can I spare you from your post-traumatic stress? And, you know, I think the show is sometimes a little bit heavy-handed and like the answer is pretty obvious. I mean, God, no, we shouldn't try to shelter human beings from the worst pain because to do that also means sheltering them from everything else that it means to be human. But,

But that's, I think, the moral, philosophical premise of the show at a root level. And when it merges, I think it's going to drive us forward. It seems to me that in season four, that is the thing they're setting up. Is Daniel, who becomes, has his memory wiped and gets turned to the side of the puppet masters, he seems to be starting to remember just a little bit about who he was. and does he want to get back in touch with that pain so that he can actually remember what the whole point of this was at the beginning? And is that going to help the rebels in Silo 18 in their fight against the evildoers of Silo 1? Yeah.

It all does work in that way. But you're not wrong. It took a while. Yeah. It feels like it has momentum now that everyone is remembering things or has remembered things and we've learned along with them. I was getting pretty frustrated with Shirley, Juliet's friend for a while there, because she was like, really angry at Juliet for no perceptible reason

Juliet lost her memory and didn't remember surely she wasn't like trying to slight her but she was for some reason perpetually angry about that and refusing to help her and that frustrated me and felt kind of contrived but yeah now I think they've set everything up to

really fall into place here with one more season to go and we haven't read ahead we know nothing about what's coming just any theories you want to get out there It is very much like Fallout now because after the season three finale, you have to wonder, okay, did the people who constructed the silos engineer the disaster, which we learn seems to be nukes? Evidently, we've been wondering all along what exactly is the apocalypse that happens here.

Because when they first build the silos, Pair Stenson, who is, you know, the Elon Musk trillionaire figure who is engineering this whole thing, he just seems to feel like, well, we'll need these silos for something, you know, maybe it'll be nukes. Maybe it'll be nanotech. Who knows? Something will go wrong. And then in the season three finale, the bombs drop and everyone gets into this silo. And I assume, you know, similar to Fallout, where the question is always who dropped the bombs and why. And, you know, there are people who have a financial interest in the construction of the Fallout shelters in Fallout.

And here it seems like it can't be a coincidence, right, that on the big day of the unveiling when they're bringing in all these people, that that's when the bombs dropped and they're trying to separate Daniel and Helen. I assume that they're like accelerationists. They've hastened this. They're like, hey, humanity is circling the drain. We might as well just cut to the chase and restart. And so there's this ideologically driven, like, ostensibly good intentions. We have to help humanity, but we have to help humanity by killing untold number of people to hopefully engineer the peaceful reality we want to see and get humanity out of this cycle of violence.

So I don't know. Any theories, any thoughts? Like, obviously we're going to be seeing Colin Hanks as Stenson in season four. He shows up in the trailer for that, and Helen will be there as well. I am convinced that what happens outside, what is often called the poison, is a creation by Silo 1, by the puppet Masters. I am not 100% sure if that is nanotech or if there's something akin to a Simpsons movie-style bubble. or they had, where they just pipe in? Yeah.

Or the gassing that was, the gas that was the compound that was dispensed from the drones we saw when Daniel, you know, isolated the outbreak from Silo 17 by slaughtering thousands and thousands of people, which was a really effective scene, right? Because you have his sister who's brainwashed who still retains some semblance of humanity and refuses to go along with the order. And then he's like, you know, switching to heat vision and cutting off the audio so that these thousands of people he's mowing down or ordering to be mown down are just blobs, you know, and not people.

Yeah. It was completely chilling. Very well acted by him. And if you look ahead to the season four trailer, which is already out because they already filmed it, you can see because he's asked by Juliet, who are you? And he says with tears in his eyes, I don't know. Yeah. They've drawn a nice.

little circle for us that is almost complete. And I have a feeling that it is coming towards an identity crisis for Daniel, but I don't know if that means that he is ultimately going to side with the good guys and try to fix this or not. This is an Apple TV sci-fi thing. It kind of reminds me of Mr. Milchick in Severance, where they spent an entire season laying the groundwork for this guy to switch to be with the inies and help them bust out. of the severed floor of Lumen Industries. And then as of what we've seen so far, sorry, here I am adding more spoilers.

He hasn't done that. He's remained on the side of his captors who have put him in a different kind of cult. So I don't know. Like, are they actually going to turn Daniel? Are they going to help the rebels figure out their future, get self-determination? It's a great mystery.

Yeah. And it's interesting also that these shows that are kind of questioning or critiquing the technocrats and the techno-utopians who are, governing everything about our lives these days and possibly engineering some sort of apocalypse. I mean, there's clearly, you know, there's AI overtones to all of this. Of course, this is coming from Prime Video and Apple, you know, a couple of giant tech companies, but nonetheless, okay, they're funding these shows for whatever reason.

But, you know, there is kind of an implied, these emperors have no clothes, you know, do these people know what they're doing, right? Because they engineered these miraculous silos and built them in three years. And here they are. and they're still functioning centuries later. But what's the plan? Do they have any idea what they're doing? Is this just eugenics or some sort of, you know, misguided, okay, ostensibly we have enlightened goals,

but actually what we're doing is, you know, a genocide, basically, you're trying to bring about our version of the future. And I thought one of the telling aspects at the end here, so it turns out there's this computer, or so it seems, who's giving orders to the head of IT in each silent. and seems to be some advanced AI of the kind that's been introduced in Paradise lately, or so they assume. And then Tim Robbins kind of cracks the code and realizes, no, this doesn't seem like an AI. This seems like a person with some sort of voice masking technology.

And then we find out that that's right. It's Victor and, you know, Daniel and these people are play acting as some advanced AI. They might not actually know what they're doing here. They're just, you know, fumbling their way forward. And it turns out there's this revealing line where Daniel finds out about the pact, this sort of constitution for the silo, and, you know, thinks it's this impressive undertaking. And Victor's just like AI wrote it and we just made some edits, you know. And I don't know what version of AI this is, but, you know, that leads you to think that,

you know, even though they have like cryogenic freezing technology here and they're pretty advanced, they may have no idea what they're doing. Maybe they have AI psychosis and, you know, they think they're doing the best for humanity and, well, clearly they're the baddies on some level, right? So I guess that's the implied critique of everyone's who's, you know, effective altruism. We need to colonize Mars. We need to safeguard humanity. Meanwhile, at what cost and what other problems are you ignoring? And are you high on ketamine at all time?

Right. Exactly that. Yeah. It evokes the Nazi high command who were all zooted out of their minds a lot of the time during the war. and in some cases, literally in bunkers, I don't think that we're supposed to think that these people are that competent. But what I think is impressive by the author of the books,

which I have not read and have tried pretty well to avoid spoilers from, but from Hugh Howie who wrote the books, I think the first book came out in 2011, at which point, I think to most people, Elon Musk was still kind of curious, ah, that's an interesting guy, scientific mind. He had not yet devolved into gutter racism or whatever you would call what he's doing now

with his political career. A widely admired bipartisan figure at that point. But the brains behind this thing originally, like the rich guy, Per Stenson, who as you mentioned is the Elon Stand-in, is a character who, if the show or if the underlying source material were written today, I think I would say, okay, we get it.

This is a little bit too, he's just Elon Musk. Let's give him a little bit more. texture. But if the source material is in line with what they've made out of it here, it's almost, it's almost in the VEEP category of you just predicted the future really well with what our politics and business would become. You just, you had Elon Musk pegged 12, 13 years before he became what he became. So kudos to you, Hugh Howie, author of the books. Yeah, yeah, sort of like the boys also, I guess, although I find that a bit too heavy-handed and a little less before those things actually happened.

But in some cases, reality has mirrored that unreality. Okay, well, we have recommended Silo, which according to some, is one of the 10 best TV series of the century. That was a sincere take, was that one of those? You know, you construct a list and you have to have some, you know, a little unorthodox to get people talking, or was that, are you standing by that take? I'm not standing by it.

It was a recency bias thing done a week or two after I had watched the show. So no. But I think this is the case anytime you would make a list like this. I think I'd make a different week next week than this week. Anytime I did a list like this. And I just don't think it would be the same every week. I think this is so much about what you're feeling in the moment. And I think right now at this political moment, I think it's a pretty appreciate commentary.

So right now I might like it more than I would like it in the future. But I do love this show, and I think of it very fondly in a similar way to how I think of for All Mankind, another Apple sci-fi show that I know you like to. Yep. In a way that's a little bit similar to Severance, though Severance has kind of gone mainstream, so now we have to pretend that we don't like it in the same way in order to keep street-cred. I still like it, yeah. I've never lost my love of severance.

So, yeah. I'm very fond of it, and I think it's a good story that has. a unique take on the post-apocalyptic thing. And I maybe wouldn't recommend it first for you if you are trying to get it over with quick and quickly enjoy what you're watching. But if you want a bit of a project that will leave you unspooling mystery, this is a good one. All right. We recommend it. Catch up if you haven't yet. And you'll be ready to join us in watching season four next year. It won't be a long wait. I also recommend all Alex Kirshner content, remind people where they can find it.

Thank you very much, Ben. Great to be with you. If you're a college football fan, obviously the Ringer has a tremendous college football show as well, Ringer Tailgate, but the more the merrier, I co-host Split Zone Duo with Richard Johnson of CBS Sports. We have a great time doing national college football. And you can find me writing all over. I hope that I will be back sometime with the Ringer.

I usually pitch the editors at the Ringer who do a great job whenever there is some sufficiently embarrassing Pittsburgh sports phenomenon. Some sad pirate story. You're the go-to pirates correspondent for the ringer. Unfortunately, the pirates went 82 and 80 this year. And what can you write about an 82-win team? There's not much to say. If they were in the AL West, they would have won the division. So, you know, that's right. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Alex. Enjoy your October. I will. Yes, I recommend the MLB playoffs as well while we're here. And I recommend sticking around for the next segment when we will continue. to talk about Apple TV, sci-fi.

We'll get into Dark Matter. We'll get into all the other shows, and that streaming service, writ large, will also talk some Star Trek and hope and more. All right, I am joined now by a longtime dynamic duo of pop culture coverage, formerly of The Dissolve and currently of the Reveal of Film Newsletter and the Next Picture Show podcast,

Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps. Hello, Scott, welcome. Oh, thank you for someone. so much. Thanks for having me. Hello. Hi, Keith. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for us.

You both are used to talking in tandem, so this works out well. So, Scott, we're going to start with you, and we'll talk about a show that you've been recapping for Vulture, and then we will work in Keith, and we'll talk about Apple TV writ large. And then we'll talk about a show that Keith's been recapping for Vulture, Star Trek, Strange, New Worlds, and we'll wrap up with a little bit of movie talk and some hope discussion. So Dark Matter, this is a little lower profile than Silo or some of the other bigger hits of Apple TV. But it's a show that I think we've both enjoyed. And for those who haven't seen it, do you want to just sort of quick give the logline the summary of Dark Matter?

Oh, I don't want to try. Yeah. Well, there's Jason 1 and there's Jason 2 and there's Jason 2. Yeah. How do I do that without getting way, way ahead of myself? So, okay, so Dark Matter stars, sorry, Dark Matter stars Joel Edgerton as Jason Desson, who exists in multiple worlds, but let's, again, let me rewind that again. So there is something called the box in this box, which one of the Jason Dessons has created, allows for interdimensional travel, along the same timeline, but in different realities.

And the Jason who created this box, who we call Jason number two, has, when the series begins, he travels back to the world of Jason number one, who is the same guy, but in a different reality. And the Jason of this reality is a humble science teacher with a wife named Daniela, played by Jennifer Connolly and a son named Charlie, and he's a normal guy. But Jason 2, who has invented the box, has entered the world of Jason 1 and decides to basically take over his life and jettisons Jason 1 off into the box into some separate reality from which Jason number 1 has to climb his way back.

And so that's kind of where the show starts and then gets much more complicated from there as different iterations of different characters from different worlds. Combined and separate and, you know, duplicate. And it's something where I think you, it's not a show I think you can really, that you really just want to start, you know, in the middle of a season.

You really just have to be on board from the start in order to kind of, you know, keep your head above water. Valiant attempt to summarize a very convoluted show. So the end of season one, which wrapped up a couple years ago. It was, in a way, a happy ending, a qualified happy ending, though there was a lot of uncertainty. The original Jason, seemingly, although it's tough to tell, reunites with his family and has to go back into the box to find a new world because there's been a big pile-up of Jason's who came from many different realities.

And, of course, they all want to reunite with the same family, which they think of as their family as well. there are Jason on Jason violent incidents and they just have to piece out of this world and hopefully find peace in another world and that could have been it. That could have been the end, right? Because this is based on the book of the same name by Blake Crouch

and there's no sequel to the book. And Blake Crouch writes the show, show runs the show as well. And so they could have just said, okay, we adapted the book, story over. They set off into a new universe and hopefully live happily ever after.

Instead, the show gets renewed for season two, and now we're in uncharted territory, which is, I think, somewhat unusual for someone who wrote the original that a series is adapted from to not only helm the adaptation, but then continue forward in the show beyond where that person wrote the thing, right?

It's not unusual to have the Game of Thrones, oops, we used up all the source material, and now we're sort of laying track as we go. but for the original person to do it and essentially make a sequel to the novel, but as a season of television. So that was both exciting and also I was worried about what this would look like and did we really need more and would this feel kind of tacked on. And I've been pleasantly surprised by season two. So what were your thoughts coming into it? Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's a series overall that has gotten better as it's gone along. I'll confess to being a little bored by the first few episodes of the series when it premiered. I think it needed to kind of get its legs. And if it has a flaw to me, it just doesn't have much pop in terms of the dialogue and the characters. There's not a lot of like color there. You know, it's almost like a, it reminds me of like a Charlie Kaufman premise, but without Charlie Kaufman wit. Yeah. You know, so it's kind of like, you know, so you appreciate the sort of the architecture,

architecture of a of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a synecy New York type of thing. And then, but then, uh, the characters are not that, um, lively. But I think that chaos has been the show's friend and that as, um, it's added dimensions and as it's duplicated jasons, as many jasons of, uh, as the jasonpocalypse has happened. I, you know, it has found all sorts of interesting very, variations and been able to spin them in a really compelling episodes, particularly in the second season. So I think it has improved. And, you know, kudos to like Crouch for kind of, you know, building on this idea. Yeah. And we've been inundated with multiverse stories in every franchise and interconnected universe. And so there is some multiverse fatigue, I think. But this show really tries to play out the logical implications of the multiverse and what effects this would actually have. As I watch it, I find that if I were in these many Jason's shoes, and there are some science

fiction stories to this effect where you sort of just lose your will to live because what's the point, right? There's an infinite number of Jason Desens or Ben Lindbergs and what makes you special. And so, you know, they're constantly, I think even the show probably simplifies it a little bit just for comprehensibility purposes because there's an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of Jasons and they would just be everywhere, right? All at once, you know? And so I think I, if I were in their position, I feel like I would just kind of succumb to just some existential, you know, what am I even doing this for, right?

What makes me special? There's an infinite other number of bends. What keeps me going? And I guess the concede is just, it's true love, right? It's the original Jason and the original family, and we've got to get back to them. But there's always this question about, well, is it the original Jason? Right? Which I think this second season has played with in an interesting way.

Because at the end of the first season, supposedly, according to Crouch, it's the original Jason. We've been following all along through all these many universes, find his way back. But from our perspective, we don't know that necessarily. And Daniela, his wife and their kid, they have no way of knowing. that really. It's just that he happens to be the first Jason that they encounter, right? It's all the same Jason ultimately, and she just sort of has to pick one. And so I'm constantly wondering, is this the protagonist that we were actually with in season one? Is this the same guy? And then I've been wondering, well, don't they think that too? And they do. They come up with a whole system of,

we got matching tattoos. We have passwords, right? And, you know, they've really explored all the implications of that in an interesting way. Yeah, I mean, I think they've also just, you know, kind of cover the tragedy of it as well about about all of these Jasons who have a claim on this life and in care for Danielle and care for their son. And, and when they're denied that life, when they're not the original Jason is, it's, you know, it becomes chaotic and violent and also, and also, sad. And it's something that I think the show has grappled with quite well. I mean, there's a, you're talking about, you know, Jason, you know, the despair of being one of these Jasons. And I think there, you know, there's, there's kind of a very special episode that happened,

the fifth episode of this current, current season that just took a break. As we're speaking. Yeah. Yeah. Most recent, it takes a break from the overall plot to really deal with the dilemma of one of these other jasons who are just like, okay, what am I now if I'm not Jason number one and I'm just existing in this world with all these other jasons like, you know, do I throw myself off a building or do I try to figure out some place in the multiverse that I can be? And it becomes this lovely little, you know, self-contained episode. But I think largely speaking, the thing that I really admire about the show is how is the implication that that who we are is context dependent right i mean you know in the sense that we have we can we have jason number one who is a family man and a

teacher um in something that we can consider a hero and we have jason number two who uh is the guy is the ambitious uh scientist who is responsible for this terrible mess and and and And we can consider him an imposter and a villain, but they are the same guy. You know, they are the same guy who, who, who just, you know, gone off on different forks in the road. And you can see them also kind of converging here as the season goes on, where, where Jason number one, the humble teacher is starting to learn more about, you know, the life he left behind. And it's just so, so the way that these characters kind of shift back and forth psychologically. in addition to kind of shifting back and forth from one world to the next,

I think is giving this show a lot of room to maneuver. Yeah, they've become more willing to make the characters encounter each other despite the long odds against that in season one. Now that they've, in season two, they have to find their way to each other so that we can develop those stories and see those relationships progress. It's killing me as a recapper, though.

I'm just like barely hanging on here. I feel sympathy for you, it's true. Yeah, but I love that. that because, you know, they've kind of reckoned with the PTSD. These characters must be feeling like the trauma of season one where there's no time to process anything. But, you know, Daniela had who she thought was her husband, masquerading as her husband, was really an imposter, a stranger who was sharing her home, sharing her bed, right? There was no time to think about that until the second season. She's had to defend herself and kill other Jasons who

were not, quote, unquote, her Jason. And obviously, that's taken a toll on her, too. And so how could this not fracture the relationship between the original Jason and Daniela? So they've really explored all of that in season two. They've also gotten a little bit into the nitty gritty of things that I was wondering in season one. Like, how do they pay for things, you know, when they go to the universe? It's like, well, we pay cash. And I guess it's a universe where they have the same currency. And also they go to a pawn shop and they pawn stuff.

Or there's a hotel that they can pay in cash at every universe. Like they've actually answered some of those questions now that. there's a second season and some more time to play with. So I'm into it. We're halfway through season two and it can be kind of a slow meditative somber show at times, but there's been a little more humor in season two and just some of the deeper philosophical stuff. And, you know, I just, I was thinking if there's an infinite number of universes, you could never really know if you had arrived at the right universe because there'd be an infinite number of them that was indistinguishable from your universe except for one little thing was different, right? And so there's all this

uncertainty that I guess you just have to put aside in order to keep living and move forward. But yeah, episode five of season two was a really nice standalone one-off departure. And now we'll just head into the second season and see what happens from here. But it has more than kept my interest in attention. And I like the cast and I like the characters. And so, you know, even though the scenery can be a bit monotonous, not quite as much as silo. So that's, at least we get some weird sci-fi multiversal worlds to keep us interested. So I guess the question is where this fits in the grand scheme of Apple TV sci-fi. And here's where we can bring Keith back into the discussion here.

And we can talk about the larger spectrum in our tier list. We've come up with our tier list of Apple TV sci-fi series. and a friend of the show, Matt James, whipped up a few graphics for us. And this is just the shows that we've seen, shows and movies that we've seen on Apple TV. Because I don't know that there is a streaming service that is more associated with a single genre than Apple TV and sci-fi. Not that there aren't other good shows on the streaming service, but sci-fi is clearly the specialty. And it seems like Apple just has a predilection for that and has really cornered the market more or less. So, you know, Keith, do you want to run through what you have seen,

what you haven't seen, and just what you appreciate about the Apple TV approach to sci-fi? I can, but my head's still swimming from dark matter, which I haven't seen it, and trying to figure out what you guys are talking about. It's definitely on the list of things I want to watch now. But in terms of like, do you want like my S-tier, it's A, B, C? Yeah, we'll put them up on the screen, but for our, for our audio-only listeners, you can run through them. And, you know, caveat that there are things each of us haven't seen. There are things that none of us has seen, as deep as the catalog is. I think none of us has seen C or Constellation or Invasion or Sugar, which takes a sci-fi turn,

or The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray or Amazing Stories or Hello Tomorrow or extrapolations. These are all Apple Tudence series that I'm not making up. They're all real, but we haven't seen them, so apologies. But yeah, what have you seen and how would you rank them? I mean, the two I have at the top are Pluribus and Severin, which I think are both really great shows top to bottom, really thought-provoking. I guess Pluribus has the advantage of only having one season

and not having to develop those ideas, and Severus took a long time to come back. I think the show came back in a way that was really built on what the first season had built as well, whereas Pluribus is just, I can't wait for that one to come back. And I fully expect that will continue. The problem is, I mean, going the distance is a hard one, though, because I think for all mankind is my A tier.

And that's basically because it has two great seasons. And then I really have problems with that happens after that to the point where I've abandoned it. I will never abandon it. But, yes, I have lowered it slightly in my estimation. So Monarch legacy of Monsters is in my B tier, which is a spinoff of the monster verse movies, the Godzilla Kong movies. And it's actually my favorite iteration of that world, in part because it kind of has like a lot of strange ideas and timeline bending.

Matt Fraction, the comic book writer, is one of the main people behind it. I see his influence on it a lot. And then I think foundation, if I'd stuck with it, might go a little higher. I maybe need to revisit at some point. I really admired what it was doing, but I never really felt anything about any of the characters, which is a problem for me. And Sunny is a show. I remember liking. I reviewed it for a TV guide. But asking anything about it, I know it involves Rashida Jones and a smiling, smiling robot. And I found the robot character pretty compelling.

And beyond that, it has not stuck with me. And apparently is not returning for any future seasons. So that's where we are. Yes. I mildly enjoyed Sunny as well, but found it fairly forgettable. and probably not even the best Apple TV sci-fi show about a robot. So, Scott, give us your list. Yeah, so I feel now somewhat I have for All Mankind in the STR, I think I sort of put it there because it was,

those first two seasons are as good as they are, and it felt like kind of the gateway into the Apple TV sci-fi universe in terms of its, you know, ambition. It's thought-provoking nature. I mean, I still have a lot of affection for it, but maybe I should, maybe I should downgrade it with the rest of you because it's, because it hasn't quite done as well. I've only downgraded it to a tier, by the way. You're right. I mean, I think that's a proper spot.

I can see it. I understand these, these tiers are immovable, but maybe, maybe that's a little, little ambitious. I also have pleuribus as a S-tier show. That was another one that I recapped for Vulture. And I just love it. I think it's philosophically rich, funny. I love Vince Gilligan's, you know, aesthetic as a television director is very filmic, which is appealing to me as a sort of movie guy.

It has that kind of better call-s-all like meticulousness to it. And I think it also, you don't know where it's going. And I think it doesn't know where it's going, which I think it was something that became a feature of breaking bad from about season three on. It was just like, okay, and I think Yulgin has said this. Let's write ourselves into a corner and then write ourselves out of it rather than really kind of plot it too closely. And I think it has that kind of spontaneity to it and adventurousness to it. And I have no idea where it's going.

And I feel like they don't have any idea what's going, which is exciting. And Severance kind of gets up in the A tier above. dark matter and silo for me because I think it um because it has that color that I said was sort of lacking from from dark matter it gives you yeah it gives you all of the the um puzzle box twistiness of those shows uh but then it give you get so much character and comedy and you know functions as sort of a weird workplace comedy so well um that that I think it kind of belongs there ahead of uh dark matter and silo and the only one I really have checked out I mean I can't believe I haven't seen foundation for one because another kind of flagship show for the network.

But I did check out Dr. Brain, which I don't think, I don't know if either, one of you gave that one a look, but because I just have a very, I love Kim J. Woon is the filmmaker behind it. He is a Korean genre director who did films like The Good, the Bad, the Weird. And I saw The Devil and a lot of films that I really admire, a lot of strange, hard edge. Korean genre films. And this is his attempt to bring that aesthetic to Apple TV and didn't quite pan out as I'd hoped. But that's kind of warm out.

I have some catching up to do. Yeah, a lot of overlap there. I have severance alone in my S-tier, S-for-severence, I guess. I just find it so engrossing. It is a mystery box show, but I feel like they know what's in the box, and they will actually. they do unravel the mystery a little bit.

I feel like they know where it's going. They're taking their sweet time getting there, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. And, you know, just great design and imagery and cast and premise and everything. I love that it's an original, so no one knows any more than anyone else. And then my A tier, I mean, not all shows in the same tier are created equal, but pluribus is probably a close second for me to severance. For All Mankind, we've talked about.

I've devoted more time to that show on previous episodes of this pod with Catherine Van Aeronk when we talked about For All Mankind and also Star City, which you guys have not checked out yet, right? No. I can't believe that For All Mankind got a spinoff that is a prequel set in the USSR. It's just, I don't know who's watching this other than me and Chris and Andy on the watch. And Catherine, just, you know, not a huge audience here, I don't think, but I'm glad to be in it. It's a really good show. it's often comp to the Americans. So it's a spinoff of fam,

but you don't actually need to have seen fam proper, though it helps a little bit. And it's all about intrigue and the space race and spycraft and human drama. Foundation I love. It can be a bit impenadjable for sure. I mean, I love Asimov in the original series, which is not all that much like the TV show.

But it is just you can see the money in every second on screen. It is a beautifully shot. and designed and costumed and acted show. And because there are big time jumps and new cast members in each season, sometimes it takes a while to get rolling. And then the back half of each season really picks up steam and finds its stride. So that's been covered on previous episodes of Ringiverse Recommend as well. It's like really hard sci-fi, you know, tons of time passing, lots of big picture concepts,

lots of Lee Pace shirtless. I mean, there's something for everyone in the show. So I do recommend it even if it's not the easiest watch at all times. And then, yeah, my B tier, I have silo, dark matter, murder bot, which is a fun, clever, funny show, Monarch, and then Sunny in my C tier. And, you know, this is a lot for one streaming service and not the most prolific streaming service. And I think probably a lot of people are checking out Apple TV this month because Ted Lasso has been airing. Season four is almost over. That's by far Apple TV's.

most popular show, and weirdly not one I watch anymore. I am among the contingent who watched it initially and then fell off in second season or thereabouts. But, you know, that's a big crossover, breakout mainstream success. Slow Horses is back, smaller audience, but a favorite of many people. I could go down the list and just name many Apple TV series that I love that are not super popular. Now, obviously, Widows Bay, which we're not including in sci-fi, and Apple TV doesn't classify it as sci-fi either, supernatural horror great show platonic the studio shrinking slow horses hijack maximum pleasure guaranteed masters of the air bad sisters prehistoric planet mythic quest side quest these are all real shows and shows that i have very much enjoyed and i run into this barrier when i talk about apple tv because

it's a very prestige centric network and i'm reeling off recommendations here but in terms of market share. It is a very small show. It's got a very small sliver of the viewing audience. And yet, it's getting a disproportionate amount of the hardware. Obviously, the Emmys were very big for Apple TV this year. 28 Emmys for Apple TV led the field. Half of those from Widows Bay, a good chunk from Pluribus as well. So how do you guys think of this network where it's just got a really deep catalog of good shows that people like us, you know, pop culture critics, we like these shows and cover these shows and recommend these shows. But from a mainstream perspective, Ted Lasso aside and, you know, silo and a couple others, right, your friends and neighbors. And, you know, there are a few

others that have kind of broken out to an extent. But a hit for Apple TV is not the same as a hit for Netflix or Prime Video or even some of the mid-tier streamers. So what are your thoughts on Apple TV as a whole? Well, I would say that they're playing the long game. I think they have no choice but to play the long game because, you know, unlike other streamers, which had, you know, some sort of catalog to start with in a way. I mean, obviously, you know, Netflix was a, you know, DVD, my mail service that developed into something else. So people were on the line that way.

And then all of these studio-created platforms can kind of lean on their catalogs. I mean, what does Disney Plus even do? But lean on their catalog every month. They barely release anything. And Apple TV doesn't have really that luxury. So it really has to be this like grinded out, you know, mentality. But at the same time, it's Apple. And they have so they have endless amounts of money to keep throwing at it to populate this platform and then get people to a point, this tipping point to where it's like they just keep putting out good shows.

They keep justifying my subscription dollars. And I think that seems to be the strategy. to just keep putting out really good shows that eventually you have enough phenomena like Widows Bay or the morning show or all, you know, anything, all of these things that are winning Emmys and eventually maybe you get to a tipping point where there's just enough material out there that is on the platform and that is coming to the platform that people will sort of glom on to. So that seems to be the approach. And, I mean, you know, from a critics perspective, great, bringing on.

I mean, the quality level is so much higher than other platforms in terms of original shows. I think also there's a certain amount of trial and error that's happened. Like when they first debut, there's just put out a lot of stuff, a lot of different types of stuff. If you go on, if you are, you know, if you're, the critics have access to their screening platform, which is one of the better ones out there. Just getting stuff on there, but it's just overwhelming. No one cares. Inside baseball, but incredible streaming site. But also there's an overwhelming, too.

It's a tour of like, oh, wait. Oh, yeah, that was a show. That was it. They brought back amazing stories. They did this, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's one of the few screener sites that has like really great quality on the screeners, too, which I appreciate it. But does not bias my critical evaluation of the shows. Of course, it just makes it a little. more pleasurable to watch them. Yeah, I mean, you know, presumed innocent is another show that kind of broke out to a certain extent. It's, you know, anytime an Apple TV show makes the Nielsen ratings for, you know, the top 10 ranked shows in a week, it's somewhat unusual. I mean, I think Widows Bay may have made it once at the end of its run. I mean, this is what we see.

Silo was actually a staple there, so that has kind of crossed over. I was think of this because I'm not an Apple person. Generally, I'm not in the Apple tech ecosystem in any way. I'm an Android guy. I'm, if anything, anti-Apple, but for this one streaming service, this one prong of the Apple Empire, I'm all in. And, you know, I feel like in some way this programming is almost for me and for me personally in ways that makes me question, you're greenlighting that? All right. I mean, I'll watch it. I don't know. Do you expect to watch that other than me, but I'm in.

Neuromancer is coming in January. that's going to be the next big Apple TV sci-fi show and sci-fi adaptation. So hopefully that will do well. Maybe that'll bring people in. One thing I wonder, though, you know, so Apple TV, I mean, these are big budget shows, huge name casts, right? They've got to be burning through money. I mean, there have been estimates that Apple TV is losing billions of dollars. And who cares? Apple has trillions of dollars, right? So I see it as, you know, sort of like a donation to me and my programming interests if Apple wants to just, splurge on these shows. The counter to that, I subscribe to the entertainment strategy guy, streaming newsletter, a former streaming executive who writes about streaming strategy and streaming rankings and ratings. And so his take on Apple TV is that it's actually bad for the industry. So let me get your thoughts on this. This is what he has written many times, but I'll quote from one recent newsletter, this sort of deficit financed spending isn't a boon for Hollywood. It's unsustainable and unhealthy for the town at large. It raises prices for

everyone else. And if Apple ever decides that it's tired of probably losing billions of dollars in Hollywood, that will be terrible. But if they were sustainably producing shows that made money, we wouldn't have to worry about this. So the idea is they've got so much cash to splash around that it then ties up actors. It raises prices. It makes actors unavailable or talent unavailable to other shows or then, you know, other people are priced out of other networks or streamers, price range, that interpretation. Whereas I've seen it just as, hey, Apple wants to burn billions of bucks. Fine. You know, at least someone's making money like the industry is contracting and shrinking and if someone is still propping it up, great. But that contention is actually, this might have

some deleterious effects. It might make it harder for everyone else. So do you buy that? Do you see any wisdom in that? Well, this might be a little blinker. because I, you know, obviously I should care about what happens to the industry, but just as a viewer, I don't care. Give me the good shows, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's like a 10 episode Cape Fear with Hoppy or Bardem.

All right. Go, yeah. I mean, I think it's, it feels like it's just kind of that Silicon Valley disruption model of just like, of just pouring money into something at a great loss. and then eventually, you know, dot, dot, dot, profit at the end of it. So I don't know what that ends up looking like. But, you know, as I was saying before about Apple TV strategy, they just don't, they don't have another way of doing it.

They don't have a catalog they can lean on. So if they want to be in this arena, they kind of have to be doing it this way. I mean, I get, you know, they could potentially be less aggressive and put out fewer shows and, you know, have, be losing less money. but I think the idea, the short term, is to keep kind of populating the platform to raise the user base and then maybe make adjustments from there. That would be my thought about where they're doing. As far as it fits into a larger ecosystem of streaming and of Hollywood, that is pretty much out of my area of expertise. They've gotten a little less willing, I think, to fund things indefinitely and just keep green lighting,

sequels to seasons that seemingly no one is watching. The bottom hasn't fallen out of it yet, and hopefully it won't. It does seem like a little bit of an underpants gnomes. Where does the profit come from? Maybe they don't need a profit, and it's all for prestige, and they keep racking up Emmys, and that's enough for them. And if we like the shows, then we're happy. I guess the danger is if at some point they do decide to cut costs and some more profit-minded executive comes in and says, wait, how many people are watching these? Because even though they've built up quite a library, and even though they have a lot of hardware and awards to show for it, they haven't really gained that much in terms of market share, subscriptions, viewership, seemingly

on the whole. So I don't know that there's an upward trajectory there, but I will be patronizing Apple TV for as long as possible. So keep it coming. I'm looking forward to the rest of Dark Matter Season 2 and to Neuromancer in January, which I'm sure we'll cover here. So I want to ask Keith about Star Trek. Let's talk about Strange New Worlds. Season four just wrapped up the penultimate season, the last full season, sadly. This is a show that I've covered on the Ring ofverse, on Ring ofverse recommends. I've been watching from the start.

Loved the show from the start. And we can tie this into the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, which was on September 8th as well. But give me your take on season four of Strange New Worlds, which much like season. Season three has been pretty polarizing, I would say. Yeah, for sure. And like, season three, I don't think I even realized it was polarizing until the end of it. I can kind of keep my head down and do what I do in terms of writing about it. I've also loved the show from the start.

Season four, I kind of understand more why it's polarizing because they took a lot of big, big swings with conceptual episodes. There was essentially a horror movie episode in a way that, like, it's grim in a way Star Trek has never been grim. before, there was a black and white episode. It was kind of like simultaneously like noir slash Casablanca homage. There was an episode where everyone turned into Muppets with Jim, well, not officially, you can't call them Muppets, but their Jim Hinson studios created puppets. And like the thing is, I think they mostly work. The one that threw me was the penultimate episode this season, which was a return to like

this fairy tale universe. It was also kind of homage to Terry Pratchett's Discworld. and I thought it was just way too cutesy and kind of sold out the storyline that had all season about one of the characters, Lon, kind of like feeling like,

you know, like her dark side was taking her over and essentially she's kind of culminated and like, don't worry, be happy. Just look at the bright side of things and that resolves the whole problem.

And that's also one of my favorite characters in the show. It was very much, I have a dark side and a light side. And I'm both and I have to make it work somehow. Yeah, it was, that was an anticlimactic end to that.

season-long arc and also one of the ones where it felt like they were a little high on their own supply. Generally, I'm willing to go with them on these excursions, but that one didn't quite come together. Yeah, for sure. And like, I do almost think, though, I think it's a good season. I've enjoyed what they've tried. I think in terms of stands out, I thought Cases Sherriss Gar-Skuro, the Black and White episode was really quite good. But looking back, I think my two best episodes for like the two most normal episodes. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, off hour, which was like, well, you could say it's basically a 70s disaster film,

but it felt more like traditionally trek. And then the season finale, I thought, was really good, too, which is like this kind of like this time-bending thing involving O'Hura, the character of O'Hura. I liked episode eight also, Orders of Magnitude, which was kind of a Kirkcentric, but also self-contained, fairly normal, just about, you know, command decisions and and drama. on the bridge. So it almost feels like, though, that those are the exception in this show over the past couple seasons, you know, whereas maybe the balance is a bit off. When Joshua Rivera was on this show to talk about season three, I think our consensus, we really like the show, but just too many

bits, you know, just rain it in a little bit. Obviously, Star Trek, going back to the beginning, has always had these genre exercises and excursions and here's a Star Trek take on this or that. But it you know, didn't feel like that was the show. And then the quote unquote normal sci-fi-ish episodes, those feel now like, oh, this is a novelty almost that we're not doing something weird and a one-off. And so it does feel just a little bit skewed toward the other thing. And we mentioned this on the previous pod is that it was one thing when you had 26 episodes of Next Generation or the original series. And then, okay, we sprinkle in five or six weird. ones off the beaten path. That was nice for novelty and variety. Here we have 10 episodes. And so if probably more than half of them are doing a bit of some sort, then it becomes kind of overwhelming.

And you long for that Star Trek center, or at least I do. Yeah, for sure. I get that. I was going to make that point, too, about like, when you have a longer season, you can, you can have, like, you know, a whole, like, data is a gunslinger or whatever. Whatever kind of episodes. But, I mean, I just, the first two seasons generate, you know, generated so much goodwill for me. And like, these characters, I really, I really enjoy these characters and the performances. And I thought it was, it's been such a nice melding of what a classic Trek sensibility with a contemporary TV style in a way that I think the other live action series they've had up till now have struggled. And I thought, like, this is the one that got it right. and unfortunately it's you know the end is in sight for it and basically this whole era of Star Trek seemingly

yeah and I want to ask about that I think you know so much of the appeal of a Star Trek show is just the cast right your your space family your home away from home and the first couple seasons of the show I just totally imprinted on and bonded with all these characters you know sometimes the the love interest and the shipping doesn't always work for me and I'm not that interested in particular pairings. But, you know, and then there's the whole, well, we know that this is ostensibly leading to the original series. And so there are certain characters who have to be in place or not in place.

And so there's this kind of awkward shoehorning Kirk into the show, even though he's not yet part of the crew of the Enterprise. He shows up a lot. He shows up a lot. You know, confusingly, he's always around. And, you know, it took me a while to warm to that. portrayal of Kirk. And I just, because I was so invested in this cast that all the reminders that, hey, this is building up to the original series. I love the original series, but I'm happy for this

to be its own thing. I want Captain Pike's show. I want Laan, right? I want all these people. I want Dr. Embanga. And so I don't really want to be thinking so much as, huh, I wonder when they're introducing McCoy or, you know, oh boy, I wonder what happens to Laan because we know she's not on the original series. Like, you know, I'm happy just putting that out of my mind really. And there's been less Pike as time has gone on. And I don't know if that's just because Hanson-Anson is busy. He's doing other things. He wasn't available as much. But often he's almost a bit player in these episodes. You know, there was a longer arc and time travel, which was alluded to finally in the finale of season four, but has pretty much fallen by the wayside about how he

knows what's coming for Pike, which if you've seen the original series is nothing good, they've kind of just drop that and he just flits in and out. And often he's just kind of, he's doing comedy and mugging for the camera, which Anson Mountain is great at, but I feel like we're lacking Captain Pike. And I'm not going to complain about getting more Laan and more O'Hura, because I think they're fantastic, but it does feel like Pike is almost a guest star on, you know, what was originally sort of an ensemble series, but one that, yeah, revolved around him. I suspect the fifth season, which is only six episodes long, we'll kind of return to that if I had to guess as well. But yeah, it did seem like what we know is coming for Pike if you, you know, it's more in

the depiction and more in the answer amounts portrayal of the character than actually anything that's text in the show. Yeah, the finale is, it's not unlike dark matter, I guess, in that you have O'Hura 1 and Herodoo, too, although it's not actually a multiverse situation. It's a temporal anomaly, a classic Star Trek gambit. But, you know, it kind of calls back to some classic episodes and yesterday's enterprise from TNG or All Good Things, the finale, where you get the crew playing cards with each other, which is also a part of this. I just find that the charisma of the cast and these characters just carries this series. And even when the writing is lacking, even when you have these

kind of flights of fancy that maybe don't really lead anywhere or, you know, seem a little off in the sense that, well, is this really in service of the story and the character development or did they just kind of want to do a weird one where there were puppets or whatever? You know, sometimes there's at least some development and it's tied back to the larger narrative of the show, but sometimes that's not quite as well implemented, I think. I also found that. I also found that, you know, not that I'm expecting rigorous science from Star Trek necessarily, but at least give me enough techno babble to make it sound good. There were some episodes in this season, especially, where I'm thinking, I'm not sure that checks out. You know, the premiere especially,

which involves a time travel scenario with our solar system and inhabited Mars and dinosaurs. And then the finale also where you have Uhura just sort of jumping into a black hole. And there's a space baby, which, okay, Star Trek gets weird sometimes, and they're having fun with that and everything. But I don't know, there's some level of hard sci-fi grounding with Star Trek that I feel like they've just sort of thrown to the winds. That was a strange one, too, because I felt like the time travel stuff was really well plotted out. And it is like, and then you had to go into a black hole and give birth to a space baby,

which never to be no sense to me whatsoever. But at that point, I was kind of invested to the point. It's kind of like the series itself. It's like you're invested enough by that point. You can kind of forgive its flaws. Right. That's the thing. I'm willing to go with them, and it's six episodes left, and I'm sorry to see it go.

And so maybe we can just talk a little bit about the state of Star Trek because 60th anniversary, and there were really no new announcements. I mean, nothing to tease in terms of new shows, new movies. And, you know, Scott, you can maybe touch on the film franchise, which has been moribund for a decade now since Star Trek beyond and has gone. and has gone through several iterations of talented people and, you know, Tarantino and Matt Shackman and everyone's going to do their Star Trek movie and then no one actually did their Star Trek movie. There is yet another version in the works now seemingly, right?

And this is coming from the makers of Game Night and Dungeons of Dragons Honor Among Thieves and the writers of Spider-Man Homecoming, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daly. This is a new time period, new characters. They have described it as, and I'll quote this is daily. I would say it's really kind of a look at the institution of Starfleet

and any institution as a whole that has existed for a long time and what that does. I think the portrayal of Starfleet and the people that work within it have always been generally idealized versions of what the future could be. And while this script isn't a cynical or nihistic take on it, I think it does acknowledge that there are some bad apples in every institution that can have a strong voice and can really make an impact on that institution and everything it stands for.

Goldstein said two movies we cite as comps for what we're hoping to do are training day. and Crimson Tide. So, Training Day and Crimson Tide meets Star Trek, evidently. Do you think this movie will get made? Will a movie ever get made again? Will Star Trek return to the big screen? That's tough. I mean, I like those guys, and that's an interesting take,

and I kind of hope this one does get made. I think it's more likely to get made than it would a couple years ago, though, because with Skydance coming in and the whole Paramount Warner Brothers merger, everything's kind of in flux, but it seems like this era of television is basically being drawn to a close, Alice Kurtzman's contract runs, who's kind of overseeing the whole, the larger operation. His contracts up at the end of 2026. Who knows? But Akiva Goldsman, who was running Strangney World, is no longer there. So like the hope we might have had of a Kirk-led sequel series,

I think is not, that's not going to happen. But the idea is to focus on movies instead. So, you know, to focus on movies, you have to actually, I think it's making a movie. I think that's kind of a key part of focusing on movies, right? Yeah. Scott, do you think there's a future for Star Trek? Well, I almost kind of want to hit you all with this, this interesting bit of trivia. Did you realize that there's a new film from these same filmmakers on Apple TV? On Apple TV, May Day, right?

That's right. Yeah. Maybe I just saw it and reviewed it. I just want to make sure the world knows about it because. Do you recommend it? No, I don't. Okay. And I strongly recommend, I love Game Night.

And I quite like Dungeons and Dragons. So I theoretically on board with those two. but they cannot survive Ryan Reynolds. Yeah. I don't think. But I think my level of investment in Star Trek as an entity is probably a little bit weaker than the two of you. But I'm curious to see what they do with it. And I really don't think it's anything that Paramount would want to let just go.

Really? Um, it's just, it's just, there's just too much history there. And it's a, it's a, you know, it's just, it's a need of reinvention and how that happens and where that happens is, I guess, uh, you know, an ongoing question now that, now that so much is coming to an end. Right. It's a foundational show for Paramount. I mean, Paramount Plus is sort of the Star Trek and Taylor Sheridan, and not necessarily in that order app. And I get plenty of use out of it for that reason. But I do wonder just where is it in the hierarchy in the IP pecking order now? if you're absorbing Warner Brothers Discovery into Paramount Skydance, and suddenly you have DC and you have Harry Potter and you have, you know, on and on and on, where does Star Trek fit in? And this whole new trek, as some people term it era, it's been quite confounding because there's been a lot to love for me,

you know, as a longtime Star Trek lover, Trekkie trekker, as some people prefer. Sometimes within the same series, there are very high highs and very low low. right? I really enjoyed discovery at the start, and then by the end, I just couldn't anymore, right? But we got... It was exhausting by the end, yeah. Yeah, you know, and massive time jump, right? And just, yeah, it lost me. Of course, we got Strange New Worlds as a spinoff from that. Or Picard, right? Picard started week, I thought, and then finished strong. In fact, Picard season two was about the worst season of television I have watched to completion. And then season three, it was all worthwhile because they finally just said, all right, this is a legacy show. We're getting the gang back together, and it's a next generation reunion. And it was really well done, I thought.

So, you know, I loved lower decks on the animated side. Prodigy had a lot of fans and, you know, a younger audience. So it's tough because all that's contracting now, where you have one more half season essentially of Strange New Worlds. You have one more season of Starfleet Academy, a show that I grew to like, actually, but, you know, clearly didn't resonate, didn't really find an audience. And that's that.

there is nothing else on the horizon live action-wise or really at all. And so, you know, there was hope that, yes, there would be year one, which would be a spin-off of a spinoff following Strange New Worlds into the original series timeline. And then there was the idea that there would be a Picard spin-off, another spin-off of a spin-off legacy, which would continue to follow those characters. Seems like that's not happening. So I don't know what Juice Star Trek has at that point. Did they make too much?

I didn't even mention Section 31, which I probably, the less said the better, that is just one of the worst pieces of TV movie making I have ever seen. So I don't know where they go. And I guess they'll have someone new in charge and it'll be new corporate leadership and it'll be a new era, but it's a reset. And so, you know, we've gone through all these areas of Star Trek where there were many shows on at the same time. There were no shows on for years at a time. maybe we're just heading back to a fallow period again. But, you know, I hope that Star Trek will live long and prosper somehow. So I'm pulling for it.

Yeah, to me also, Star Trek is a TV franchise that occasionally produces movies. And I think it would be, and I'd love to have, you know, if they could just do one good show. Yeah. That would be fine. We can just start with one and then, you know, see where it goes from there. Yeah. And now that we're moving back to the, you know, the pit model of, hey, hey, why don't we make procedurals and let's actually have some inventory and let's get shows out every year.

Maybe we could do that with Star Trek. Maybe we just go back to Monster of the Week, sci-fi dilemma of the week, and it's 16 episodes or something. And it's just, you know, the continuing adventures and journeys and we're going boldly. And, I mean, I'd be into that, right? You know, I applaud that Discovery sort of moved Star Trek into the more serialized realm. But also, I like just standalone one-off Star Trek. So give me more of that as long as it's well done. Let's just wrap up with a quick take from you, Scott, on hope.

We hope that there's hope for Star Trek, but also hope, which is a big budget by South Korean standards, maybe by any standards, sci-fi monster movie that came out this month in North America. It'll be on video demand next month, mid-October. And this is, it's written, directed, co-produced by Nahang Jim. It is just a giant, you know, two hours, 40 minutes, just no-holds-barred, CGI, aliens, monsters. Generally was warmly received. You were a bit more tepid on it?

I was. I mean, it's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. And there are sections of the movie and scenes from the movie that are really exhilarating and fun. There's a lot of stuff that it's way. way, way too long. There's this expectation, strange expectation that were to anticipate it to

continue. There's kind of a, it's kind of, it sort of ends with a question mark. Yes, very much. It sets up a franchise or a sequel of some sort. Yeah. Absolutely. But the thing is, it's a bit of a disappointment for me because I, you know, the other film that I've seen, uh, from this director is a film called The Whaling. That was like a, it was a horror film that he had made. It has a certain, you know, there are certain elements of hope that that that the that which it has in common you know in terms of you know they they both have this sort of Korean genre thing where uh they like to mix and match tones very freely uh which I really like um the so you get a lot of horror you get comedy you've get you have a lot of different elements competing at once and mushing at once and it's great and

fun and and you know they're both kind of set in these small villages where you have you know, let's say common heroes trying to, trying to figure out a really big problem. But I just, I didn't find that hope held together nearly as well as the whaling did. And it only really worked in fits and starts. And I can't kind of can't really jive with the look of the film. Because of that, you have the CGI, which is very pronounced CGI, to the point where it's like,

this isn't AI slop. I know it's not AI slop, but it almost has that kind of quality to it, to where it doesn't even try to look like something that isn't digital. It's extremely digital. And then the environment, it takes place, and particularly at the beginning when you're in this village

that's being rampaged by these creatures or by one creature, really at the beginning. It's very video gamey in terms of the, in terms of the camera work and sort of the aesthetic of it, which is kind of disconcerting, but also feels new in its way. There's a lot here to grapple with, I think. Yeah, I meant to mention, by the way, Strange New World is a really well-shot show.

I've had that quibble with this New Trek era, too, where it's sort of J.J. Abrams' light look, but Star Trek, Stranger World's always shot and lit really nicely. Hope, I thought, was, you know, the first 40 minutes, first hour or so was top-notch. I was very invested in it. And this premiered at Cannes, right, and it got a pretty good, perception it can. And I was on board as I was watching this at first because they do that thing where they hide the monster, right? And the monster is always scarier and more intriguing when you can't see

it. And it's just roaring in the background and people are reacting to it and it's around a corner. And then when it's revealed, the reveal never really lives up to what your imagination supplied, especially when the CGI is as shoddy as it is here. Except it does. It is so strikingly gigantic and also unkillable. Yes. So those two things, those two things, I mean, it definitely, the monster has a distinctive look to it, I will say. Yeah, or looks, I guess, because there are a few different versions. Ultimately, I mean, the film that really reminds me of the most that I think it resembles the most is the Bong Joon Ho film The Host. Yes. Because you have there two similar types of characters against a similar sort of metaphorical dilemma.

of these these monsters kind of represent some larger cultural forces at play. I think it's not a mistake. I think that Hope is a movie that takes place close to the demilitarized zone. So I think thematically there's something important there as hosts more sort of an eco-horror movie. But it's not a great, it's not a comparison that holds up again that well for Hope because Bong Joon Ho does so well. with comedy and tragedy and also the meshing of sort of daytime CGI effects, I think are so beautifully integrated into the host and look so great. I mean, maybe there are different aesthetic purposes. I mean, I think there's something, the unrealness of hopes seems deliberate. I don't think

there's as much of an attempt to kind of integrate it to the kind of more grounded world of of the human characters, but it does sort of stand out in a way that isn't terribly flattering to hope. Yeah, I do enjoy, we follow the incompetent cowardly, but, you know, nonetheless presses on police chief, who's kind of a good foil and audience surrogate, and, you know, there's some fun, like, toilet humor amid the monster scenes, and as you said, there are some deeper themes. I mean, monster movies are always about something, right? Godzilla is about fears of nuclear fallout or whatever, and here,

maybe we have, you know, fears of invasion from North Korea. You know, this is not Kim Jong-un. This is maybe something even worse and non-human. And I think also there are a couple surprising sort of strange cameos that I guess I won't spoil, but some recognizable names and faces. Some sequences are really well shot. I love there's a great car chase scene or a couple and a horse chase scene, which were quite compelling. It's kind of, it becomes a mashup of predator and aliens and avatar and everything is just kind of it's jumbled up and there's a little too much lore eventually. I find that in, you know, alien movies, I like the aliens to be alien. I don't want to know too much about them or, you know, it's like with a quiet place. I appreciate that we don't

generally learn that much about them. They just show up. They wreak havoc. They're unkillable. They're terrifying. I don't need to know the lore. I don't need to know where they came from or why they came in some ways it's enhanced if I don't. And so when some of these monsters, get anthropomorphized or humanized or alienized. You know, they start talking. We get to know their names. We get to know why they're here and what they're doing. And a lot of that, you know, it gets, I guess, a little lost in the sauce where I just

kind of like the bare bones monster movie set up of something is stocking us and we are stocking it. Yeah. I mean, there's, I think there is a point where hope becomes about a world-building exercise. You mentioned Avatar. I mean, Avatar is certainly a good. comparison at a certain point when perspective starts to shift and you get to know these, these, you know, alien creatures a little bit more and, you know, maybe sympathize with their

plight. And, you know, again, I mean, there's potentially room for that. It just doesn't, it doesn't necessarily work in the context of this movie. And in the way the movie is structured leads you to this place to where they become the most important thing. And they're the ones that are going to lead you to what I assume will be a sequel at some point because it's like, because, you know, you get to the end of this, you know, two and a half hour plus movie and, and you're like, oh, we're being set up for something else. So like, we've only just, we've somehow only just watched half a movie. Yeah. Yeah. Even though it's, we've invested 156 minutes. Well, I enjoyed it. I'd give it a qualified recommendation. Watch it to prep for Godzilla minus zero in

November. It does overstay its welcome a little bit, and I don't want to overstay our welcome in this segment. So I will just ask you in passing and imparting, practical magic two, thumbs up, thumbs down. I'm going to give it a little bit. It's a mild thumbs down, but I think it's one of those with, if you have an affection for the first one, and you're particularly interested in that, in the Bullock Kidman comic duo, which I think is still, I think they still got it. Um, uh, there There's some mildly amusing moments, but it is quite strained. Yeah, it's part of the trend of legacy sequels where we're just exhuming decades-old franchises, not exclusively Tom Cruise featuring ones either.

I mean, this isn't the only fantasy witch one that we have brought back from the 90s, right? This is, I guess Practical Magic 2 is no hocus pocus two, the 2022 sequel to the 1993 original. This is the 2026 sequel to the 1998 original. there's a there's a there's a hocus pocus three coming i don't know if there would be a practical magic three you know i i i was uh i was in my 20s throughout the the 90s and and there have been so many movies uh that caught on with us maybe a slightly younger generation like just a generation

before it was just like what you like that yeah i think it was rewrote you were into that i think it's rerun on disney channel or somewhere like like you know i had nauseam you know when we weren't watching it And that's kind of what happened. Occult formed. Yeah. I'm always surprised by like some of the films that I sort of dismissed at the time that found, you know, a passion audience. And I guess practical magic is kind of one of those movies. A rewatchable, maybe.

Yeah, I guess. Okay. Well, the Ring of Verse does not recommend it then, evidently. I haven't seen it to be clear, but I will defer to you, Scott, and also the critical consensus. Okay. Let everyone know where they can find you. both together and individually, where can people read you and also hear you? Yeah, well, you can find us primarily at The Reveal, which is the newsletter, the two of us,

write together. That's the reveal.com. It's a primary passion for both of us. We've been writing together since the late 90s. And I think you get quite a bit of bang for your subscription dollar, I'd like to say, a very good community there as well. As far as my other work, You can find me at the New York Times, Vulture, Guardian, and other fine publications. Yeah, I'll double that. You should, The Regal.com, you should check it out. We also, we publish quite a bit, too. Like you said, a lot of bang for your buck.

We also, two of the co-host of The Next Picture Show as a podcast where Scott and me and Genevue Koski and Tasha Roberts. I forgot about the podcast. Yeah, yeah. And all veterans of the dissolve, the film publication that we worked at. And if you want to hear me talk about Harrison Ford movies, I co-host a podcast called Ford Focus with Mike Ryan. And that's also available where podcasts are sold or downloader or whatever. Yeah.

Okay. Harrison Ford, Joel Edgerton, this has been a big Mallory Rubin recommendations episodes, too. Now Has Watch Dark Matter, at least season one. Maybe she'll catch up at some point. Scott, Keith, thanks so much for joining me. Pleasure to read and listen to you and also to speak to you today. Okay, thanks as always for sticking around if you have, and I will leave you with one more recommendation. Of course, we always stick the timestamps in the show notes here so you can hop around and listen to what you want, though we hope you'll be on board for the full ride.

I just want to leave you with one mini recommendation. You know I'm a Star Wars guy, even in these lean times for the Star Wars franchise. And so I will shout out Lego Star Wars, The Mandalorian, which came to Disney Plus the same day that the Mandalorian and Grogu did. I cannot give a wholehearted, full-throated recommendation for the Mando movie. However, I did enjoy the Lego Star Wars streaming episode here. And, you know, it seems to me that we are sort of at a turning point, or maybe an end point, when it comes to the expansion, the proliferation of projects in the MCU, in the Star Wars universe on Disney Plus. Sort of a similar conversation to the one we just had about Star Trek, where we had this whole wealth of shows.

And now we have had them dwindle down. to a couple, sort of in the same boat when it comes to Disney Plus. As was mentioned on the past segment, not releasing a whole lot. However, we do have this new Mando Lego Star Wars streaming special. We have Vision Quest, which is coming later this month and will be covered on the Ring ofverse. You know, Wonder Man, season two was greenlit and then unordered. Daredevil Born Again is ending after season three. That's pretty much it for MCU streaming series, live action at least.

Vision Quest seems like it'll probably be one and done. there's nothing else on the horizon. And as for Star Wars live action, we've got Assoca 2, Assoca Season 2 coming early next year. That's it too. Nothing else announced, even though there's still some animated projects. So we're kind of winding down here,

and it all really launched with the Mandalorian back in 2019 when it seemed like the sky was the limit, and suddenly we had this huge number of shows, maybe too many. Maybe there was a quality issue, quality control issue, but now we have gone all the way back to almost nothing. And, you know, there's been so few spinoffs from the Mandalorian. Obviously, we had the movie, which sort of started life as season four of the show, a season four that we might never get.

There's never been a Mandalorian video game. Seems like a lost opportunity. There was at one point a Mandalorian video game in the works, at least inspired by the show. That got canceled. A spinoff novel got canceled. This spinoff comic book was just an adaptation of the show. So it does seem like the Mandalorian, which was so popular and so beloved in the first two seasons, kind of died. on the vine, and the Mandalorian and Grogu didn't help.

If you want to remember the good times, though, for about the length of one Mandalorian episode, you can put on Lego Star Wars, the Mandalorian. And if you've seen any Lego Star Wars specials before, you know what to expect. Irreverent, fourth wall breaking, Easter egg and callback heavy send-up of something we love, you know, done with a lot of affection for the thing. And the concede is essentially that this is a recap of the Mandalorian and everything we've seen so far with a little bit of extra adventure shoehorned in. A lot of the original cast reprises their roles, not Pedro Pescal, notably, not surprisingly. They can barely get him to show up on the

set of the Mandalorian and Grogu. So, you know, he doesn't do the voice here, but a lot of people do. Shout out to Amy Sedaris, who's doing narration as Pellimato and really carrying a heavy load here. It really just reminds you of how much fun the Mandalorian was, especially in the first two seasons. And I will say that they do sort of skip over season three here. There's not a ton of of time devoted to that, which fair. Actually, they devote as much time to the Mandalorian parts of the book of Boba Fett than they do to season three. So if you just want to remember the good days of the Mandalorian and have some fun, maybe with

your kids, then check out the Lego Star Wars Mandalorian special. While I'm on the subject of kids and Disney Plus, I've gotten my daughter hooked on the Young Jedi Adventurers show. So that's kind of her gateway to Star Wars. And also, Spidey and his amazing friends, season five just wrapped up this month. And I might not need to recommend that because it's one of the most popular kids shows in the world.

But boy, do they know what they're doing at Disney Plus because they have hooked a whole new generation here with Spidey and also with Young Jedi Adventures? And, you know, they're not really for adults, but if you have to watch something with your kids and you like these properties, they're a decent time too. So, you know, it's a way to sort of,

I'm always wrestling with parents. how do I sort of pass along my loves of these properties without being too heavy-handed and driving my daughter away? This is the way to do it, I think. Start with the kid stuff. And if she organically likes it and wants to continue and watch other stuff with me, then great. My scheme seems to be working so far. So we have given you a lot to watch and a lot to think about. I thank you for watching this show. You can, of course, send your recommendations to ringaverse recommends at gmail.com. by the way, no Caradoon in this Mando special. It's kind of conspicuous what is left out.

But very little will be left out of the Ringerverse in October. Of course, we have the end of lanterns coming up. We have Vision Quest. We have New York Comic Con. We have Clayface. We have still an enormous number of video games coming up. Later this week on Buttmash, we'll be covering a big trifecta Star Wars Galactic Racer, as well as the new Ace Combat game and the new Gears of War game.

So tune in to all of that. Next month on Ring of Verse Recommends, we will probably be covering the new Avatar show, Seven Havens. We'll probably be doing a Stephen King Corner because we've got a new book, The Completion of the Tallysman trilogy, other worlds than these,

and also a new Carrie show. Maybe Dexter Resurrection, season two, although we might leave that for November. But let us know what you want us to cover right into Ringervverse Recommends at gmail.com. We will talk to you soon, and until next time, we hope that you will recommend the Ringerverse.

Thank you.