Media Diary

Intro

Welcome to my media diary! Ongoing reads, watches or plays will be listed on this page. Quick thoughts or longer form writing can be found in my monthly pages in the archive. I read a lot of books and comics, watch a lot of movies and TV, and play a lot of games. I'm sure you'll get an idea for my taste very quickly. Enjoy!

Ongoing TV Watches

Ongoing Games

Ongoing Reads

Finished in September

Rehearsal S1

The clip from Fielder's documentary on Elizabeth Holmes was doing the rounds, so I decided to finally pop this on to kill 30 mins and instead binged the whole season. Holy shit. Incredible. The weirdness of the premise and situations is topped only by the subjects Fielder finds to put in them. Need to ponder this more and will probably write something more complete after season 2, or the rewatch of season 1 I'm probably going to do with my friend Veronika tonight. I purposefully ignored the chatter when this first came out, but I'm so excited to dive into all of it, and to see the miracle over the Mojave for myself.

Rehearsal S2

The first season was fun, but I didn't take the method of rehearsal as much more than a gag. An exaggeration with some merit. Season 2 has convinced me otherwise.

Nathan's suggestion to give the pilots roles prior to their flight was a touch too far for me at first, but when he talked about the ridiculousness of it and how it created a moment of bonding precisely because it was so ridiculous, I was sold. A big part of that is because I know pilots, and I know them well. While I think people watching this season will likely be exposed to a lot of this for the first time, I wasn't. I've been exposed to it since birth. My dad was a pilot, and all my dad's friends were pilots. I've seen the clash of egos, I've seen the feathers being strained to remain unruffled. I never made the link to air crashes though, so this season was the piecing together of a puzzle that's been floating in my mind for decades now.

Fielder focuses a lot on the timidity of the first officer, but something he leaves more implied is the ego of the captain. Like Fielder posits at the end of the season, you are flying hundreds of people in a marvel of machinery that takes a lot of flight hours, lesson time and dilligence to even get to touch the controls of. The people who do this best are the ones with ego. I think this lack of ego and abundance of self-doubt is why it took so long for Fielder to get to his first solo. And this ego in a captain is a bulwark against the corrections of a first officer. 99% of that time, that ego is what flies the plane safely. 1% of the time, it's the thing that crashes it. Cpt. All-Ears is a secondary character to FO Blunt in this season, but I think both are equally important roles. I don't think Fielder doesn't know this, I think he does a great job balancing both but chose one character to build up through rehearsals for the sake of the show.

And what a show. I think Fielder so excellently balances the comedy and the seriousness of the topic, maybe only falling short in convincing lawmakers to do a formal hearing. I think he finds some great characters in the pilots and actors he finds, this time being less just plain weird compared to last season in favour of a real earnest awkwardness among many of them (except for the Einstein lady lmao). While the first season sets up the premise of rehearsals so well, this season proves their worth. I also relate extremely well to Fielder's autistic tendencies while refusing to seek an actual diagnosis. It's all the trend to claim to have autism these days, so I will back this up by saying it's my neurodivergent friends that have pointed out my tendencies, and I still maintain they are tendencies more than autism itself...but still, I track Fielder's logic 100% if with a touch less social awkwardness. And I think that's part of what made me love this season so much, I continued to see myself reflected in Fielder's line of thinking and it was made even better by the fact he was diving deeply into an area I feel very well acquainted with.

Truly the one thing I wished I could do the most right now is talk to my Dad about this. I'm doing my best to not make every other post a "I miss my dead dad" special, but this one gets an exception. I saw so much of my dad in these pilots, but I also realised how much of my dad's personality counter-acted the atmosphere of captains and first officers presented here. He was social, he was disarming, he was willing to admit mistakes, and he was always willing to hear someone out no matter what they had to say. This season made me realise that my Dad wasn't just a good dad, he was a great captain.

Finished in August

Stargate SG-1 S10 & Stargate Atlantis S3

This one has been a long time coming. I started this series with a friend group back in uni in April of 2020. My friend, Morgan, had been a fan of the series when we went to high school together. He started a rewatch because there was nothing better to do, and we decided to do it as a group (with a shared Google spreadsheet to help us keep pace with one another). Well, some of us binge faster than others, and after the first few seasons of SG-1 we were in total disarray. We still kept it up and kept occasional tabs on each other's progress, particularly my friend Aaron and I. I really lost steam on it, SG-1 kind of devolves into a shell of itself with many of the main characters having come and gone and sometimes come back again. They dynamic I really loved had disappeared. As the series goes on, Atlantis becomes a concurrent series that frequently has plots cross over. Atlantis started rough for me, the characters didn't totally mesh for me, but 3 seasons in I think it's better found it's footing. In some ways it retreads the early seasons of SG-1 with some extra flair in its setting of being a galaxy removed from Earth's stargate. Somewhere along the way I just stopped both these seasons and I finally decided to come back and finish them off before I fully commit to my Star Trek watch (now that I'm about to start Voyager alongside continuing DS9).

The muddled watch does make it a bit disorienting to critique. I like Mitchell in SG-1 as a replacement for O'Neill, but my issue is that he is almost identical to Sheppard over in Atlantis. Both are the military pilots leading the missions who love adventure and shooting from the hip. I genuinely found myself mixing up their backgrounds and finding I couldn't tell these white boys apart. Of the two, Sheppard has a bit more charisma and is a bit more fun to watch (although Mitchell does deliver some banger lines with a very straight face). Then we have the tech dork of the resepective team, Carter of SG-1 and Rodney over in Atlantis. Amanda Tapping who plays Carter seems like she wants to just go home lol. She's a functional character, but it feels like the joy has been sucked out of the show for her. Rodney on the other hand is my favourite character of the lot. He's such a piece of work and always saying the wrong thing, while also having the know how to back up his super-ego. I do also get a kick out of an explicitly Canadian character being a prick (although half the cast are played by Canadians pretending to be American). Teal'c over in SG-1 continues to be Teal'c, whereas Atlantis' muscle clad alien is now Ronan played by a relatively skinny looking Jason Mamoa. I feel like they never figured what to do with Teal'c, which is tragic since episodes about his hijinks outside the base in early SG-1 are some of my fav. Ronon has a bit more spark than Teal'c, but is pretty minimally used over in Atlantis. Jackson over at SG-1 seems just as tired as Carter, but I think Michael Shanks has a really great understated charisma playing him, and he bounces off really well against Vala when the script lets him stop being a dick to her. I think these two are the bright spark of the show for me, and bring a fun conflict driven friendship that has the echo of the early seasons. Vala is the main source of brightness in SG-1's 10th season, and I could watch a lot more of her. I know Vala and Mitchell's actors, Claudia Black and Ben Browder, are refugees from Farscape's cancellation and I would be various to see more of them in that show. Then we have Teyla in Atlantis I guess. She's fine. She does her job, she has some lore to drop from time to time, but she's mainly the required early 2000s sci fi eye candy. I'd love to find out more about her and see her get some depth, but I'm not holding my breath.

Beyond that I guess there's the overarching plots. I appreciate that Atlantis mostly keeps it simple with isolated episodes and the Wraith occasionally making an appearance. SG-1 instead focuses on the Ori(?) who are an incredibly bland big bad who take up a bulk of the episodes. After killing the G'ould I feel like this show never quite figured out how to make a compelling enemy faction to worry about. It stumbled through it all and wrapped up the plotline in the follow up film Ark of Truth (2002), so it's fine. It's done.

The completionist in me is going to wrap up the series eventually, but it's hard to be compelled to do it. It's middling 2000s sci fi, which I'll always gladly lap up, but I still have some good sci fi to get through first. Whatmore, I'm out of touch with every friend I started these series with. It's a mix of reasons, much like the show it's because some friendships soured, some just fizzled out and felt like lumbering versions of what they used to be. I think I'll still shoot a text off to one of my friends to reconnect and see what they thought of it, but for the most part finishing SG-1 feels like finally closing the chapter on a part of my personal life that I've long left behind.

The Bear S5

I thought season 4 was the last season as I watched it, and after this I sort of wish it was. Season 5 is by all means as well made as the rest of the series, but I feel by this point its content has run its course and the story has been told. The conflict is minimal, and sometimes feels like it's there for the sake of being there, but ultimately this season does work well as a little epilogue to say goodbye to the characters I've spent the last few years with. It'll be a part of my rewatches, and I can't really complain about anything in particular, it's simply that the rolling boil of the first few seasons has eased into a simmer, and it's time to switch the stove off.

House of the Dragon S3

A fantastic season that continues to feature all the politicking and conniving that makes this franchise great, with an amazing setup to a fantastic and flame filled tragedy of a finale. After Rhaenyra sat the throne in the first few episodes, I wasn't sure where this season would be headed, but the show proves that trying to keep a kingdom together that's coming apart at the seams is just as interesting as the civil war that preceded it (and is still far from over, despite the hopes of the Blacks now in King's Landing). I love that every decision by every character is made with such strongly written motivation that you can see every side of this conflict, external or internal, and find a way to have at least a sliver of yourself rooting for them even if you think they are just awful as a human being. I was suprised to see Instagram users in the comment sections of HotD posts complaining, specifically saying words like "filler," and I truly believe a large chunk of the internet using audience has completely lost the ability to watch TV especially after similar comments about the finale season of The Boys. I know this isn't the popular opinion given the review scores of either show, but the fun part of Game of Thrones was once hopping online to see thoughts and opinions. I'm sure there's still so many great corners of the internet to do so, but unfortunately I think we are in an era of the internet where the majority of the internet is toxic or engagement-baiting in a way that it never was before. Next season I'll just stick to talking about it with friends and avoid reading things typed up by knuckdragging hands.

Bulletstorm

When I started playing this I immiediately was reminded of "Duty Calls," the viral CoD parody game from 2011, only to also remember that it was promotion for this game. In many ways this game is an expansion of that concept, instead looking at what makes CoD good and dropping all the rest. This game is a high-octane run & gun thrill fest that trims the fat of the CoD games of the era, and as an avid CoD campaign freak I loved it. The humour is extremely 2010, the dudes are big and brawny, the game is a lot of Unreal concrete dripped in a piss filter, but I think Bulletstorm is a great accumulation of all those things to send off the era. Lots of mindless fun, and very funny if you love randomly stringed together expletives (and have the stomach for lines laced with a pinch of oblivious bigotry). I enjoyed my time with it, but it is of its era and not something I could recommend to everyone. If you're looking for a time capsule of 2011, both for the good parts and the extremely flawed, Bulletstorm will deliver in the distant future year of 2026.

Finished in July

Buffy S5 & Angel S2

I think this may be the turning point of me liking Angel as a series more than I like Buffy. I haven't read much online about either series so I am truly in the dark about general sentiment, so I have no idea how controversial of a take that is. I'm still very much enjoying both, and I loved the introduction of Dawn in this season of Buffy.
The thing that has always worked best, the character interactions, is still working, although I don't think it's firing on all cylinders. Xander as always is a nuisance, but Anya tempers it since she is absolutely the standout of the new additions. Tara on the other hand seems to pull Willow to the side of the series and both end up quite uninteresting. Tara didn't really get much to do until "The Body" and even that only lasted so long before they just lobotomised her for the last few episodes. Buffy got an incredible amount of character work done with the addition of Dawn, a delightful new troublesome teen who is an annoying little sister in a believable way. Buffy navigating being the slayer, fighting an unkillable enemy in Glory, and eventually also needing to transition from older sister to guardian after the passing of her mother is all great stuff. But in the midst of all that there's Spike. Spike is now hopelessly in love with Buffy for some reason, in my opinion an excuse to somehow keep him docile and distance him from being a villain. But he is wholly uninteresting as a goody and I think needs that darker streak to be far more prominent, and the scoobies need to stop seeing him as a joke. Even with the chip which prevents him from hurting humans, he is a threat and he has been a monster for his whole vampiric career. I'm all for reform of villainy, but the show has clearly set up over these 5 seasons that vampires are soulless husks inhabited by evil demons with little margin for good with the exception of Angel, the vampire with a soul. If Spike is truly to be reformed in this show, that lore needs to be somewhat undone OR a stronger reason for his turn in motivation needs to be established. I love still having him around but it feels like he's leashed and not allowed to go off and do anything too interesting. At the very least he's more preferable to Riley, who was interesting in the previous season as a foil to Buffy but in this season became such a whimpering fool desperate for Buffy's "true love" that it was on the brink of being exhausting. However I do think the show staged Riley's exit at the perfect time, and I do think it worked well to test and twist Buffy's character development.

This is in stark contrast to Angel, where the core cast of Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, and Angel all complement and push each other perfectly. Angel's brooding arc could have been annoying, but I think it was used so well to explore his history with other vampires and show what he is capable of, even with a soul, all the meanwhile the rest of the gang shows that they are capable without Angel. His return and the new status quo of him having to make all of this up to them is a much more interesting dynamic than the start of the season (especially whenever Lorne gets involved!). Wesley shows himself to be capable in not just hitting the books, but some dashing heroics and occasionally getting the girl. Coredelia shows so much soul in how the visions pain her but she sees it as worth it to help people. Gunn is maybe the weakest of the main cast, but even he has the tension of working with Angel and making sure his old crew are staying alive without him at his core. All of this is carried into the ongoing mystery of Wolfram & Hart and the everpresent seediness of LA (for my money a far more interesting setting for demons than the Hellmouth of Sunnydale). This combo works so well that for the last 4 episodes they can be thrown into another dimension and still make every scene a delight. Lorne is also a fantastic addition to all of this in that he is the most demonic of any of them, yet also enjoys humanity the most. And as the episodes go on, his chemistry with Angel is great as Angel begins to perk up and get rid of his brooding stare (genuinely some of the funniest lines and acting come from David Boreanaz which is crazy to compare to the beginning of the season). All this to say Angel is great.

I do think Buffy has set itself up for an intersting season 6 with the death of Buffy (we'll see how long that lasts), which I'm hoping will work for the characters just like Angel's brooding sabbatical did for his crew, but we'll see. Buffy has fought the apocalypse 6 times over (according to Giles' count), so season 6 needs to mix it up more than season 5 did. I am still seated for whatever that is and excited to see the scoobies again, but I'm glad I have Angel to fall back on if it doesn't hit the mark (famous last words?).

Still Wakes The Deep

This was a frustrating game to play. While it's presented well, I think it ultimately fails as a horror game. The issue is that with razor-thin gameplay, the seams of the tapestry are really easy to spot. Suddenly I'm not scared of escaping the monster because I if I hold sprint, I'll make it to the door at the end of the hallway in this set-piece. This game is that moment stretched out over and over. The most compelling part of the gameplay is throwing a wrench to distract a monster while you scoot in the other direction. The setting of a Scottish derrick in the North Sea is fun and adds a lot of character, but the Lovecraftian inspiration with a tablespoon of The Thing tossed in feels more than overdone, so every monster and effect looks stunning but I've seen it a million times before. I am compelled by the backstory and personality of the main character, but for the most part he acts simply as a protagonist to react to the situation around him, a situation he finds far more frightening than I, the player, who's been to this rodeo a dozen times before. I think the story is good enough, but with so little gameplay to underpin it, it's not enough to support the game by itself. I found myself constantly yearning for this game to let me explore the derrick at my own pace in search of supplies like a survival horror, or at least give me some choice so that I feared making the wrong one. Instead this is a linear sequence of scares, a play-acted haunted house where you know the performers can't hurt you (as long as you keep walking forward). I was hoping for a lot more from this game, but it fails partly on it's own merits and partly because I've just played this setting to death.

Finished in June

Star Trek TNG S7 & DS9 S2

The final season of TNG was a really heartfelt send off for me for reasons mentioned in my June 16th blog post on it. Just like X-Files, this is a show I've muddled my way through since high school, so saying goodbye to these characters after 10+ years does punch me in the gut somewhat. I'm excited to see more of them in the films, some of which I have seen and some of which I have not, but I'm also excited for how much more Trek there is. DS9 is very picking of TNG's slack and so far is my preferred series out of the two, and I'm excited to meet the crew of Voyager (like meeting a family member you vaguely remember from your youth). I don't have a lot to say about the seasons in particular, while there are overarching plots, to me it's nice to just sink into this world that always has something new, weird, and horny around the corner.

The Archive

April & May (and a bit of June) 2026

March 2026