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Of Spies in London and Pirates in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Black Doves: Netflix Miniseries starring Keira Knightley and Ben Wishaw in the leading roles, set in London. She‘s an undercover spy who has spent the last decade as the wife of a rising Tory politician, he‘s a freelance gay assassin (used to have a steady employer), they‘re bff from her early spy days, and things go pear shaped for both of them in the week before Christmas. There are various dastardly organisations involved, and if there‘s a vibe I‘d say early Alias (the tv show, not the comic) without the Rambaldi stuff as our antiheroes go through various suspensefully executed spyfare set pieces, there‘s of course a shady older handler, Mrs. Reeds (though she owes more to Margo Martindale as Claudia in The Americans‘s first season, actually), and the emotional heart of the piece is their passionate loyalty to each other as they come through for each other in crisis after crisis. In the meantime, our antiheroine while trying to maintain her cover (and the family gained therein) also has a fridged-in-the-pilot (male) lover to avenge (shades of Sydney from Alias, as I said) while our antihero can‘t resist reconnecting to the boyfriend he had to leave after said boyfriend discovered what he does for a living, and also there are a couple of very entertaining female assassins who at various points of the plot are foes and allies.
It‘s very enjoyable if you like spy stuff, and Keira Knightley and Ben Wishaw, all of which I do; I think I may have found a new Christmas story to enjoy rewatching in future years.
Skeleton Crew, episodes 1 - 3 (so far): aka a new Star Wars show on Disney + that started three weeks ago and which I had no real urge to watch until hearing good noises. Squarely aimed at children and incredibly charming. I watched with captions on, so when in the very first scene said captions identified a character leading a bunch of pirates as „Silvo“ and a scene later we got introduced to a boy called „Wim“, I thought, hang on, is this a Treasure Island/Star Wars crossover? And the answer so far is… kinda, kinda not?
I mean, Silvo (called a couple of other names as well as the story progresses) is definitely who I assumed he might be, i.e. a Star Wars riff on Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Silver and when episode 3 actually had him cook, I might have issued a yell of delight. Also Jude Law has fun and is enjoying himself without going over the top with it. But Wim isn‘t really the equivalent of Jim Hawkins so far in terms of character - Jim‘s role is more distributed among all our of our kid heroes, and if any one of them is like his book original, character wise, I‘d say KB is, though I am aware this is a Disney show which means the Jim Hawkins its target audience and/or creators might recall best is not from the book but from Treasure Planet, who is quite different a character. Wim isn‘t like him much, either. The four kids really strike me as their own characters, and I appreciate we have two boys and two girls without stereotypical gender roles for any of them, with for example Fern (f) having the chip on the shoulder rebel thing, while Wim (m) is dreaming-of-adventure/somewhat naive type. KB (f) is the one with the cyborg implants and the good planning skills, but she‘s also kind (though not gullible, see her reaction to Silvo). Neele (m) is the „we‘re in so much trouble/what about homework?“ one but also the cute adorable one, and so forth.
There are some really clever twists to the premise/homage, for example, the idea that instead of ending up up with a treasure map courtesy of a dying pirate, the kids themselves (without knowing it at first) are the map, or rather, their home planet which to them is incredibly boring turns out to be the legendary treasure planet most of the galaxy thinks is a myth but some are looking for, which gives Silvo a reason to pretend-team up with them. And the Star Wars element is a genuinely intriguing twist, i.e. said planet is so isolated and hidden that it not only missed out the entire rise and fall of the Empire, but hails from the first Republic, i.e. not the one whose dying days we get in the prequel trilogy but the one before that, thousands, plural, of yours ago.
(Mind you, this ties into one of my nitpicks - there‘s no way such an isolated culture would be linguistically and culturally compatible with the rest of the galaxy anymore, plus for the introductory twenty minutes of the first episode showing us Wim on his way to school in an incredibly 1980Usian set up with faster tech, I groaned, come on, SW, you used to be better. But that was before later events pointed out the deliberate artificiality of the world and the fact the unseen „supervisor“ trains everyone in that seemingly 1980s with faster tech high school to become part of a money making system with purposes unknown and therefore highly suspicious, given that this story is set between the OT and the sequels and all the other stuff set in said era so far took care to show how the First Order takeover was prepared.)
Anyway, like I said, it‘s squarely aimed at children and so far strikes me as the equivalent of Star Trek: Prodigy in that despite or because of that, it avoids the trapfalls of the sequels and Picard (prioritizing nostalgia beats over interesting-in-their-own-right new characters and their stories). If you‘re more of an SW nerd than I am, you can probably recognize half a dozen ship and droid types and so forth, but all the characters so far are original (well, in that Treasure Island crossover kind of way; I‘ve decided our main droid is clearly the series‘ equivalent of Ben Gunn, i.e. hails from a pirate crew but was left stranded for eons, seems somewhat loony at first but is actually really helpful (in a clever way) to our young hero(es), and has an antagonistic relationship with Silvo) and not related to anyone from SW.
In conclusion, I‘m greatly enjoying this, and would like to thank whichever wage slave or freelancer pitched to the Mouse that the world needed not just any but the pirate story in the Star Wars universe.
It‘s very enjoyable if you like spy stuff, and Keira Knightley and Ben Wishaw, all of which I do; I think I may have found a new Christmas story to enjoy rewatching in future years.
Skeleton Crew, episodes 1 - 3 (so far): aka a new Star Wars show on Disney + that started three weeks ago and which I had no real urge to watch until hearing good noises. Squarely aimed at children and incredibly charming. I watched with captions on, so when in the very first scene said captions identified a character leading a bunch of pirates as „Silvo“ and a scene later we got introduced to a boy called „Wim“, I thought, hang on, is this a Treasure Island/Star Wars crossover? And the answer so far is… kinda, kinda not?
I mean, Silvo (called a couple of other names as well as the story progresses) is definitely who I assumed he might be, i.e. a Star Wars riff on Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Silver and when episode 3 actually had him cook, I might have issued a yell of delight. Also Jude Law has fun and is enjoying himself without going over the top with it. But Wim isn‘t really the equivalent of Jim Hawkins so far in terms of character - Jim‘s role is more distributed among all our of our kid heroes, and if any one of them is like his book original, character wise, I‘d say KB is, though I am aware this is a Disney show which means the Jim Hawkins its target audience and/or creators might recall best is not from the book but from Treasure Planet, who is quite different a character. Wim isn‘t like him much, either. The four kids really strike me as their own characters, and I appreciate we have two boys and two girls without stereotypical gender roles for any of them, with for example Fern (f) having the chip on the shoulder rebel thing, while Wim (m) is dreaming-of-adventure/somewhat naive type. KB (f) is the one with the cyborg implants and the good planning skills, but she‘s also kind (though not gullible, see her reaction to Silvo). Neele (m) is the „we‘re in so much trouble/what about homework?“ one but also the cute adorable one, and so forth.
There are some really clever twists to the premise/homage, for example, the idea that instead of ending up up with a treasure map courtesy of a dying pirate, the kids themselves (without knowing it at first) are the map, or rather, their home planet which to them is incredibly boring turns out to be the legendary treasure planet most of the galaxy thinks is a myth but some are looking for, which gives Silvo a reason to pretend-team up with them. And the Star Wars element is a genuinely intriguing twist, i.e. said planet is so isolated and hidden that it not only missed out the entire rise and fall of the Empire, but hails from the first Republic, i.e. not the one whose dying days we get in the prequel trilogy but the one before that, thousands, plural, of yours ago.
(Mind you, this ties into one of my nitpicks - there‘s no way such an isolated culture would be linguistically and culturally compatible with the rest of the galaxy anymore, plus for the introductory twenty minutes of the first episode showing us Wim on his way to school in an incredibly 1980Usian set up with faster tech, I groaned, come on, SW, you used to be better. But that was before later events pointed out the deliberate artificiality of the world and the fact the unseen „supervisor“ trains everyone in that seemingly 1980s with faster tech high school to become part of a money making system with purposes unknown and therefore highly suspicious, given that this story is set between the OT and the sequels and all the other stuff set in said era so far took care to show how the First Order takeover was prepared.)
Anyway, like I said, it‘s squarely aimed at children and so far strikes me as the equivalent of Star Trek: Prodigy in that despite or because of that, it avoids the trapfalls of the sequels and Picard (prioritizing nostalgia beats over interesting-in-their-own-right new characters and their stories). If you‘re more of an SW nerd than I am, you can probably recognize half a dozen ship and droid types and so forth, but all the characters so far are original (well, in that Treasure Island crossover kind of way; I‘ve decided our main droid is clearly the series‘ equivalent of Ben Gunn, i.e. hails from a pirate crew but was left stranded for eons, seems somewhat loony at first but is actually really helpful (in a clever way) to our young hero(es), and has an antagonistic relationship with Silvo) and not related to anyone from SW.
In conclusion, I‘m greatly enjoying this, and would like to thank whichever wage slave or freelancer pitched to the Mouse that the world needed not just any but the pirate story in the Star Wars universe.