Magical Mondays: All Alien Planets Are the Same

I love space. I am absolutely obsessed with outer space, exoplanets, and various other things that I don’t fully understand because I don’t science for a living or even go to school to learn how to science. But as someone who reads every science journal I can get my hands on about space and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, I think I’ve reached the point where I have at least a rudimentary understanding of things like gravity. Since I find science super fun, I’ve always been interested in exploring it through a fictional medium where I can vicariously travel to different planets and meet alien life. Stargate, Star Wars, Star Ocean, the new Star Trek movies—why do so many titles have Star in them?—and even Dark Matter and Jupiter Ascending are all right up my alley.

(via darkmatter wiki)

But one of the things that has always annoyed me about these stories is the lack of variety on the planets they go to visit. This is significantly less true for Star Wars and Star Trek, which feature a wide array of alien life and habitats, but in the end, the only way I can conclude that physics works the way it does in too many of these stories is because of magical plot convenience.

Sleepy Hollow: “Delaware” Review

Sleepy Hollow continues to spin off the rails in this second-to-last episode. The writers seem to be throwing plot points at the wall, hoping something will stick hard enough to win them a renewal order, but the events of “Delaware” left me mostly confused and annoyed. Spoilers after the jump.

Sleepy Hollow: “Dawn’s Early Light” Review

The last time I wrote a review for Sleepy Hollow was for its “Dark Mirror” episode. In that review, I admitted to not having watched the previous two episodes before writing it. I did this in order to test whether it would actually matter or not if I skipped two full episodes. It didn’t. After all, Sleepy Hollow has dedicated its third season to switching back and forth between not having a plot and not having a plot that makes sense.

Now that we have finally reached its third-to-last episode, “Dawn’s Early Light”, it should come as no surprise to you that once again I skipped two full episodes. This time, though, I can say that it did matter. Important things actually happened in the previous episodes that I missed—such as the Hidden One finding out that Pandora betrayed him. I think I might actually be proud of Sleepy Hollow for doing something.

Sleepy Hollow: “Incommunicado” Review

This week’s episode was interesting, in that we finally got some plot development, but in such a surreal and odd way that I don’t know if it was necessarily better than the plotless episodes. It’s also an excuse for me to use the word antepenultimate, as there are only two more episodes left in the season after this.

Spoilers after the jump!

Sleepy Hollow: “Into the Wild” Review

This week on Sleepy Hollow: Abbie tells off a mansplainer, Joe is Mr. Moneybags, and the Hidden One and Pandora are… around. Spoilers after the jump!

Sleepy Hollow: “Dark Mirror” Review

I have a confession to make: I have not watched the previous two Sleepy Hollow episodes. Thankfully, I wasn’t completely blind going into “Dark Mirror”, as I looked at both Luce’s and Saika’s posts on “Kindred Spirits” and “Sins of the Father”. I did know that without watching them that “Dark Mirror” would be harder to understand in terms of character development. If there’s one thing Sleepy Hollow has almost always excelled at, it’s the relationships between its main characters. The show is first and foremost character driven.

That said, though, being character driven is no excuse for lack of plot, which is something Season 3 has been struggling with since it first aired. I understand that the plot did progress somewhat in the past two episodes, but not by much. Pandora and the Hidden One have been unimpressive from the start. Their motivations haven’t been explained all that well, and other than summoning random and typically culturally appropriative monsters every week, they haven’t been doing all that much either.

As such, I decided to test a theory: I could skip two full episodes and the plot would still make perfect sense to me.

I was right.

Sleepy Hollow: “Incident at Stone Manor” Review

For all of Sleepy Hollow’s plot-sleepiness, there’s one thing that’s always worked in its favor: the bond between its two Witnesses. “Incident at Stone Manor” delivers on this in spades. The plot continued to not move along, and yet I found this episode extremely enjoyable. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts, and beware of spoilers!

Sleepy Hollow: “Novus Ordo Seclorum” Review

Time for the fall finale! That came awfully fast; it feels like the new season just started. This week’s episode was full of suspense and badassery, although I won’t lie and say I wasn’t confused at times.

Spoilers after the jump!

Sleepy Hollow: “This Red Lady from Caribee” Review

Well, I said in my last review that I hoped we would get some plot progress in this episode, and we did! We got a little bit of progress. That’s better than nothing, right? Spoilers for all of it after the jump.

Sleepy Hollow: “The Sisters Mills” Review

Well, Sleepy Hollow is still continuing to improve itself from last season and I am more than happy with the results. Once again, Pandora is back and accompanied by another scary monster for our witnesses to face off against. All the while, Abbie struggles with telling Jenny about their father, and Ichabod procrastinates studying for his exams in order to become a citizen and instead plays some video games. All that gets put on hold, however, when they learn about Pandora’s latest monster and team up with Jenny and Joe to kill it.