>Hasn’t Barrowman been on Dr Who since his cancelling though? Wasn’t he in the last season, and teased future appearances?

Nope. He was not in the last season, and the one appearance he made in Whitaker's show happened before the bad word around him went critical.

I really do think he gives a shit, and he will not be bringing him back.

There’s too much downside and very little upside and there’s no point in gambling on odds that long when the house is already staking you way beyond prior expectations

I don't think we will, unless it's radically reimagined. Not just because Barrowman is basically persona non grata now, but because Children of Earth was basically the best ending for that show and it then got horribly botched by Miracle Day in so, so, so many ways - not least of which being that was the season of the show that cemented the idea Torchwood WAS Captain Jack Harkness, and that Torchwood couldn't really be done without him.

Had Miracle Day been a) good at all and b) led by Gwen, with no Jack anywhere in sight, it could have had a lot more promise. Granted it still probably would have fallen way short of that promise, but still. There was an opportunity there that got so blown out, and then Barrowman's real life horseshit pissed on those ashes... I don't think Torchwood really comes back. Not unless it gets completely rethought/rewritten.

Now... a standalone 8-episode Eighth Doctor miniseries starring Paul McGann? Yes, fucking please.

The relevant quote from the GQ interview that Radio Times has (poorly) excerpted here:

>I watch the Star Trek empire with vast envy: the way that's turned itself from an old archive show into something fantastic. The cast is so progressive, so good, so beautiful. And very cleverly I think Star Trek is reaching out to making something like fifty-two episodes a year. So that's your yearly show, genius. And there's a problem with the BBC, it's a public service broadcaster, so there's only so much they'll ever commit to.
>
>So I thought — with no criticism whatsoever towards the people who were running it at the time, because they were running it within the BBC's measures — it was time for the next stage for Doctor Who. I thought the streaming platforms are ready, the spin-offs are ready; I always believed in spin-offs when I was there. I did Torchwood as a spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures as a spin-off. Those spin-offs declined when I left, and I can see why. And I very much left after 2008, when the money became scarce, I think that's fair enough for the public service broadcaster that the money is spent on other things.

So, yes, he's absolutely taking the money and running with it. And it really does look like while people keep comparing it to Marvel and to Star Wars (it happens in the GQ interview proper almost immediately as well, and has already forked off into it's own grumpy fanboy "Grr DISNEEEYYY thing here in the thread, even) what Russell himself is using as a model is Star Trek for Paramount+

As someone who just so happens to like most of what's happening with Star Trek at Paramount Plus - who in fact thinks this is probably the most consistently good and inarguably POPULAR that Star Trek has been in general for decades now - this sounds like a great sign, to me.

>!(No, I dont' like everything happening with Star Trek, but then again, I never did. Star Trek - and Star Wars - are more than half absolute shite and always have been. The weird notion that these multi-decade multimedia ongoing branded properties are best judged by being always good all the time with no fuckups ever is... bizarre)!<

Even in Season 1 it was mostly divorced from the rest of the Arrowverse. The S2 confirmation was essentially exactly that: A confirmation. Up to that point it seemed pretty standalone in everything but name anyway.

S2 was a step down but still good. It definitely felt a little more scattered and seat-of-the-pants than S1, probably for all the obvious reasons (budget issues, pandemic issues, having an anti-vaxxer fucking up the production) but the core of the show was still really solid, and the characterization was still on point.

I don’t think they ever considered Rosenbaum, it’s probably not so much a conflict as it is just not a consideration. IIRC Cryer said he was the first option but there were conflicts with another show he was already contracted to.

So far as the Crisis crossover I believe Rosenbaum didn’t get looped in because he basically had a quote that production just wouldn’t meet. They did reach out but he wanted more money than they were willing to spend. Which is fine! Rosenbaum asked for his worth and when they said nah, he said fine. It’s probably nothing personal at all

Oh man, I was thinking I might check this out sometime after it dropped but the way Sepinwall's making it sound this could be better than Ted Lasso was in multiple ways.

Not least of which being, you know, Harrison Ford is in it.

LOL what?

what... about anything you're reading makes you think I'm excited?

That's a you thing, my guy. Don't know what to tell you.

Edit: lol, fuckin fandom. Evergreen insecurity

you always were an asshole, Gorman

>Xeno = Alien/Strange, Morph = Genetic variant of an animal.

I didn't say people were confused by what it meant. I said they misunderstood why Gorman was using it, or why Cameron put it in his mouth.

It's not a name for the species. It's a name to specify what a fuckin nitwit Company Man Gorman is.

And then the Fandom started talking like him

Ridley Scott basically got wine drunk every day and messed up whatever was working that day

I would watch it, but I also feel like at this point, you can kinda fill in the blanks yourself, which I'd imagine would turn the movie into kind of a box-ticking exercise focused on plot:

1. David invents the Queen (probably experiments on himself to become some weird hybrid Engineer/Android thing)

2. Walter catches up with David

3. Walter tries to stop David from destroying Earth

4. Ship crashes on LV-426 in a spectacularly weird fashion

5. Alien.

Now, does the idea of a mad scientist movie starring JUST Michael Fassbender in space sound like something worth watching? Absolutely. And it'd probably give Ridley a lot of time to put a lot of his (close approximation to) philosophizing into the movie (basically the best parts of Covenant, really) so it wouldn't just be plotty plot plot. But I don't know that there's going to be a lot to it beyond that. Or that he wouldn't fuck up the execution even if he DID have a lot more to it beyond that initially (see: Prometheus).

So what you're saying is I'm right and people hate that.

I should be used to this by now.

Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus is. Or at least it's more consistent at being what it's trying to be. Prometheus literally doesn't know what it wants to be and halfway through becomes a half-assed Blade Runner movie instead of an Alien one.

Covenant knows what it wants to be from jump and sticks to that pretty solidly. Prometheus is just a confused, frustrating mess (which makes sense once you watch the making-of documentary on the blu-ray).

I wouldn't say either of them are as good as the Alien 3 "assembly cut," which isn't a GREAT movie by any stretch, but is at least - fundamentally broken as it is, even in its best version - better at being a thematic closer to Ellen Ripley's story than either Prometheus or Covenant are at being chapters in the birth of the Alien.

edit: what in the world about those 3 paragraphs is setting people off. Jesus Christ.

I very much like Alien 3, but the version of it that made it really work as a conclusion to Ripley's story didn't come out until the DVD era. Not a fan of Resurrection, though.

Isolation is flat-out amazing at making you feel like you're in that world, absolutely. Love that game to death. I don't think the STORY in the game is all that notable, but that's not why the game works anyway, so it just needs to be good enough to get you to the next level/setpiece.

Cannot fuckin wait.

Between this and Fede Alvarez's upcoming movie (that has absolutely zero to do with any of the previous films other than there's an Alien in it) I feel like fans of this property are going to be eating really well for the first time since... what, 1991?

I know you're not supposed to be getting your hopes up (it's kind of a bad era for that, as it turns out) but goddammit... I'm getting my hopes up here.

fun fact completely beside the point, so I'll put it in spoilers: >!"Xenomorph" isn't the name of the Alien species (it doesn't have a name) since the reason Cameron used the word in the first place was much like how "unobtanium" was used in Avatar: It was just used specifically to replicate emptyheaded corporate speak and you were supposed to think the person using it was a dipshit for using it. it worked in Avatar (worked too well there, really) but for whatever reason hardcore Alien fans legitimately think "xenomorph" sounds better than just calling it an alien, and completely missed the satire!<

>The thought occurred to me while playing Death Stranding and while the game itself is divisive, it is pouring with that Hideo Kojima charm.

I knew this was going to be a Kojima thing before I clicked on it, LOL.

Here's the thing with Kojima - if he wasn't working in a medium as narratively bereft for most of it's lifespan as gaming has been, if he wasn't being provided the ample benefit of the doubt that gaming history has provided him, he'd just be Zack Snyder.

But because he's being measured against an entire medium that has, until very recently, been so stagnant and stunted from a legitimate storytelling perspective, he is afforded a sense of stature and competency that his actual storytelling doesn't deserve. Essentially - his being regarded so highly isn't really evidence of his skill as a storyteller, but a reflection of how debased large swaths of the industry remain. Imagine a storytelling landscape at which Zack Snyder is the pinnacle. That's gaming.

It shouldn't be, and given a few more years, it won't be (storytelling in games is getting very, very, very good and will continue to improve the more creatives grow up in a world where games are a primary storytelling medium) but for now? If the guy everyone points to as a visionary storyteller is that guy? Medium's got a long way to go.

Now, even if you set aside Kojima, and look at other "auteurs" in the gaming sphere - what they're doing with a game is so functionally, completely different than what films are doing in so many ways that the one-to-one comparison is pretty hard to make, much less adhere to past any point.

You can also in many cases select the stereo mix of whatever you're trying to watch (they are still made and made available on streaming platforms) or set your streambox, if you're using it, to only send stereo content to the receiver/soundbar/tv.

>A big reason for the Oscars to exist in the first place is to promote the nominated films and boost the careers of the cast and crew who made them

The Academy Awards were invented as a labor management tool.

Studio heads figured if you turned acting into a legitimate competition and could set the talent against each other in competition for recognition and awards, it would minimize their attempts to come together against their miserly, predatory labor practices.

which absolutely worked.

Later on, it became extra useful to them as an advertisement for their product (much in the same way the Game Awards are now).

The Oscars have never primarily been about properly recognizing good work in the industry, which is why they're frequently terrible at that part.

Is this the sequel to the movie about the two girls and a cup?

Jeez, even if it was just bots posting Variety, at least that's a legitimate outlet.

So many of the linkbacks people throw up as a veiled excuse to harvest rants and its attendant karma are just absolute Geek Culture trash sites that are all minimum 2 or 3 steps removed from where the story legitimately originated... which is almost always a trade paper anyway.

I can't count the number of horseshit Collider and Paste links in here that basically only exist so someone on r/television can post them for updoots. Nobody else seems to actually read them, including the people sharing them.

Right now, Showtime is basically "The Yellowjackets Channel"

Which is fine. I think they're going to fully become a brand tab on Paramount+ and nothing else within the next couple years. Same with MTV, honestly. They've already made both moves and noises that those two brands are probably going to just become part of Paramount+ entirely very soon.

they got this man looking like Doctor Who

>you don't need a Pulitzer to write those

This is like when people who stick up for shitty filmmakers bring up Citizen Kane, right?

Nobody's saying it has to be Pulitzer Prize or nothing. What I'm saying is that Collider is a junk outlet, they hire junk writers, and there's nothing worth looking at on their junk "Geek Culture" clickfarm.

It's like if you admitted you liked huffing farts, and someone else said "you maybe shouldn't do that" and then you responded by saying "We can't all fart Chanel No. 5, you know."

Like... what? Who said... Chanel? My guy stop inhaling other people's colons, that's all. And stop breathing it on other people if you can.