WYSBW: Nightflyers
Ivan & Red return to the George R.R. Martinverse to watch a NEW television program by the ASOIAF scribe himself, Syfy’s Nightflyers. Technically an adaptation of the universally panned 1987 film, there is, uhm, a LOT about this episode that needs discussing.
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I had just finished binge-watching “Origin.” Now comes “Nightflyers.” WTF. So, TWO sci-fi series are released within months of each other that: involve a ensemble cast, isolated on a spaceship, with an alien roaming the ship killing at will, towards an uncertain destination.
And, sadly, neither of them is really worth the effort.
“Nightflyers” lost me for multiple reasons: 1) for this unique, Earth-saving mission, they cant find a single “L-1” telekinetic who is neither a hate-filled moral delinquent nor an (apparent) high school dropout? 2) just what impression is this going to make as a first contact with an alien race, with this psychotic as Humanity’s ambassador? 3) gretchen mol keeps defending her L-1 -- even while it is demonstrably killing people. 4) soldiers know what this L-1 can do, yet they nevertheless keep charging it head-on, with entirely predicable results 5) the captain on this vastly expensive ship is allowed to be “eccentric”: he never appears in person and he uses his surveillance camera to spy on naked female crew in their room? what company, even in 2098, allows his anti-social behavior? and what crew allows his creeping? Hes not Captain Nemo nor Jabba the Hutt; he’s an employee of Eris Corporation flying a ship that he himself does not own.
It’s just a mismash of genres. The world-building is nowhere near complete. And it reprises the tiresome trope of both “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant”, where they have a trillion-dollar mission, then crew it with people who hate, or are incompetent at, their jobs. The people in “Nightflyers” are on a mission to save the Earth: they should have the same steely resolve of the crewmembers in “Interstellar.”
DONT MISS this (or any BGASPU) podcast. But, lets keep it real: DONT WATCH Nightflyers.