Nightflyers: Season One

December 15, 2018 1:08 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

A science fiction horror series on Syfy based on a story by GRRM.

I wasn't sure if anybody else was interested in talking about this, but wanted to leave a space for it.

posted by mordax (11 comments total)

I've been watching it.. It's interesting enough. I'm not entirely sure how a kid like Thale becomes such a street thug (his dialect, comportment, etc..) when he spend his entire life locked up underneath a mountain tho. The future is weird I guess.
posted by some loser at 1:05 PM on December 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Heh, good point. In the press of everything else that was wrong with this, I missed that entirely.
posted by mordax at 3:19 PM on December 15, 2018

ooh, I finished this today. I have issues. But one question, does George RR Martin have any sisters? and if so how do they feel about his writing?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 5:05 AM on December 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

and what was the purpose of the finding-a-lost-ship-that-runs-on-seed interlude? If they needed to use a horrible extractor machine to get the maximum yield, why does she wipe the excess off on her sleeve?

why does the memory machine show Cynthia a vision of Augie smashing her?

Does Roy sleep every night in a bed that's in direct view of a creepily-lit portrait of his mother?

help
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah I feel like there was way too many "cool ideas for a book/show" that never really got fleshed out, explained, or even explored in any detail. They could have cut out about half of them and just focused on exploring the most interesting ones, in detail, and to some kind of conclusion. I feel like I've had some half-baked, pipe-dream type show ideas that at the time I thought "cool idea, but not enough depth to really run with" that would have made more compelling watching than this mess did.
posted by some loser at 3:08 PM on December 17, 2018

Ep 2, my eyerolls are getting dramatic

I appreciate the direct 2001 nods, up to casting a guy who resembles Stanley.

I understand the show descends via license from the '87 film, which was among my most profoundly disappointing SF fan experiences. So I might be a tad skeptical.
posted by mwhybark at 8:48 PM on December 17, 2018

underneath a mountain tho

Kid's a big fan of Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders
posted by mwhybark at 8:51 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

and fuxake, the original written versions of this are legit amazing. Again, slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch
posted by mwhybark at 8:53 PM on December 17, 2018

I always ponder... if in some future we're the aliens, and we encounter a space probe from another species which—by the law of sci-fi tropes—we're obligated to send back a fucked-up version of, what should we do to it? It's really something which should become a major focus of SETI.
posted by XMLicious at 5:25 PM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thale was not born under the mountain, his powers awoke as the other L-1's did, when he was a child. Speech patterns would be pretty well established and no one would bother changing them because the future would be all woke to the idea that everybody's dialect is cool, yeah. Being able to drive people to murder, suicide, or just convincing them that they are dead so down they drop, not so cool. Imagine dealing with a thirteen year-old who could kill you with their mind.

This all obviously part of an, at least, three season closed loop series. The volcryn in the series is the result of the crew learning to use the teke to move through time to create/become the volcryn and thus humanity can save itself as a Neon Genesis like Space-Time Instrumentality only as a jellyfish the size Saturn instead of being in the mind of Shinji Ikari.

The first season only seems like a mess. Think of it as the reverse of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. It starts looking like a mess and builds around the established ideas to end up with a coherent story instead of leaving us all scratching our heads. The homage bits are fun but they also hint at the idea that this is trying to go past the point where stories like 2001 end. It may all fall to shit but I am actually looking forward to the next season. We probably won't get it but I think that we could actually have damn fun head trip series if we do.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 6:47 AM on December 23, 2018

Well, this is a delightfully bonkers tv show. I'm only through episode 4, but about three times in each episode (maybe not that much) I get a 'wow, golly, they threw that in there. Cool.' moment. I'm digging it, even if it is a little more horror-y than I want in my escapist sic-fi fantasy stuff.

Makes me wonder if the source material is worth finding? G.R.Martin is not generally my idea of a good time.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:35 AM on February 13, 2019