Nightflyers - General Discussion

[green]

Episode 10: "All That We Have Found." 

Well I found I wasted 10 hours of my life on total drek.  Please tell me this series was NOT renewed.

[Mateony]

Space Burials sponsored by Honey Baked Hams!

[qtpye]

Okay, the asshat that had no problem abandoning his family for this dumbass mission is the only one who might get a happy ending. He was really also the least compelling character. It ain’t GRRM without a little bit of incest. Speaking of GRRM, the low ratings and critical pans of this series must hurt after the almost Universal appreciation of Game of Thrones.

[shrewd.buddha]

Episode 7, after an eight month time jump from the end of episode 6: The Nightflyer must have a great stylist, because everyone looks exactly the same - no one's hair looks longer or shorter. The Bee Lady is eight months pregnant, however. 

I suppose I am not surprised that the show just ignored whatever happened to the The Lost Ship of Crazy Cannibal Women.
Were they left to die - or continue to survive however they had been doing? Is the Lost Ship still following the Aliens, too? 
Did anybody send a message to Earth about having found the ship - or setting up some plan to get it back to Earth? 
That seemed like a huge plot point to just drop...

It seems as if the main focus of the writing and production is to create a horror  show. All those pesky logic issues are just glossed over or ignored. 

Edited December 14, 2018 by shrewd.buddha

[xaxat]

Is it incest if your brother is a robot?

Mel was the only character I liked. She was the only person with any common sense.

I don't know how much of this is in the original book, but this show borrowed from a lot of movies.

Event Horizon

2001 (Rogue AI controlling the ship)

The Shining (The only thing missing was "Here's Johnny!)

Sunshine (long lost sister ship appears out of nowhere)

Daybreakers (harvesting bag grown humans)

Silent Running (the Nightflyer's structure was basically the Valley Forge with inverted domes)

I wonder if Syfy's "Let's release this kind of like a Netflix binge" strategy was to burn off a show they felt would fail or if it's something they will be doing more. 

[xaxat]

I actually laughed at the shot where Rowan and his ax were revealed to be standing behind Agatha. 

I don't think that was the intended reaction.

[shrewd.buddha]

Episode 8: Rebirth: I thought the actors did a very good job. Again, the bonus material after the episode shows that the actors, directors, and everyone involved appear to be enthusiastic and giving it their best shot. 

I suppose the problem is that, overall, the show is sort of a mess. And while the actors are good, the characters they play are also a mess. 
Rowan, the xenobiologist, goes from scientist, to love-sick baby daddy, to insane axe killer,  illogically deciding who is to blame for Bee Lady's death. It would be different if his insanity was the result of the telepaths or the Aliens, but that does not appear to be the case. 

Episode 9: We finally get back to the opening scene from Episode 1. And it feels as if the producers put that scene there - out of context - because they did not have enough confidence in the show to grab people's attention. I was not eagerly anticipating Psychiatrist Lady's death - - she was one of the few  characters I sympathized with. 
And while Rowan did not, in fact, kill her (Agatha) - and maybe did not 'kill' the android? Captain Roy - he sure as hell killed the woman crew-member in the hallway on the way to the bridge...

And the android Captain Roy... WtF? Everyone just ignored that reveal from the contamination purge? D'Branin, Agatha, Rowan, and the ship's crew went on as normal? How did he manage to fool the telephaths? 

And when the ship hit the fan Volcryn(?) - - there was just too much: 

• My Mother the Ship's Crystal Consciousness using Second-in-command to sabotage the ship.
• Lommie has been 'missing' and no one bothers to look for her?
• Lommie is still locked and lost in the Matrix.
• Rowan is an insane axe-murderer roaming the ship
• No one questions the orders of Captain Voyeur Android - with instant regrown eyeballs.
• D'Branin and his Memory Chamber Dead Daughter Dreamland - which is so vague - he thinks he is communicating with the Aliens, then, his actual daughter from a different time/space..?

But, we are about to finish watching the whole thing - - so we have been entertained /distracted for this long. 

Edited December 16, 2018 by shrewd.buddha

[Tachi Rocinante]

GRRM proves once again that he is good at world-building and setup but can't finish worth a damn.

If the lead gets to time-travel to an alternate universe, I'm guessing the others will get there eventually.

[Tachi Rocinante]

On 12/12/2018 at 7:25 PM, Mateony said:

The man-milking maids, the mold baby, the complete off-the-railsness of it all. I don't know whether I love it or hate it. 

South Park did it better.

[fauntleroy]

Got a new sound system so sat through these last few episodes. Reached for the mute on several occasions as the sound track of unceasing screeching dissonance (the worst kind of dissonance!) attempting to be scary (?) but isn't, just initiates headache. Nor does gore, especially gratuitous gore (the worst kind of gore!).

D'Branin a self-absorbed dipshit from the 'nothing is more important than FAMILEEE' tribe. Rowan decides to become an axe-murderer as you do, as a grieving parent. Everybody else staggering around holding their heads in agony (because they don't have mute button) until they die in various unpleasant ways. The horror genre is lame, relies on people acting irrationally and is redundant - one 'OMG get it out of  my head!' after another. And throws in subplots that lead nowhere eg what did that crew of man-milking women have to do with anything. Nothing, except because HORRIBLE.

I quit reading Game of Thrones at the end of Vol 1 because he betrayed his main character. Because he could! To upset convention! Now this funfest.

The crew should just drive the ship to the destination to let the scientists do their mission. Which as I recall was to communicate w the Volcryn in an attempt to save humanity. Which becomes an afterthought since the real priority is fifty shades of 'OMG my head!!!' - splat! So procrastinated til the season finale apparently. I'll watch it, mute at the ready to see how it ends I guess.

Great sci-fi thanks George!

[xaxat]

A deep space mission into something called the "Void" while attempting to make first contact with aliens with off the chart psychic powers seems like the perfect place to start a family.

[shrewd.buddha]

Well, that was both disappointing and unsatisfying for a season finale.  (Will there be another season? The extra, end credits scenes refer to it as a season.)

On 12/16/2018 at 7:57 AM, fauntleroy said:

The crew should just drive the ship to the destination to let the scientists do their mission.

There are way, way too many things happening at the same time. And yet, after the axe murder of the captain and a big chunk of the ship being destroyed and the ship entering the Volcryn 'space' - we start the episode with Agatha (psychiatrist) having been prepared for burial in space and D'Branin taking time to mope around.

Mel and the other characters just seem to wander around the ship, checking on the captain, talking to Rowan and so on. There does not seem to be a sense of urgency.
Then, Rowan just shakes off his axe-murdering-insanity and becomes a normal team member again. If his insanity was the result of the Aliens or Telepaths, the show did not make that clear. 

And the Black Mold from the dead baby... Was there a point to that? Was it caused by the Aliens or the Crazy AI Mom in the ship's crystal matrix? 

Augustine, the 2nd in command, sabotages the ship, kills the Burning Man crew member, and sets the ship to self-destruct. But when Crazy Mom rejects him, all is forgiven and he back to his normal duties. 

At the end, D'Branin is "somewhere" with no resolution, Lommie appears to be sacrificing herself, and all the crew are hunkered down in the mess hall. Was that *all* the crew? Really? 

This show manages to have too much story and too little plot at the same time. I cannot say that I am excited at the prospect of more.. 
Are there plans for more?

Edited December 18, 2018 by shrewd.buddha

[qtpye]

3 hours ago, shrewd.buddha said:

Well, that was both disappointing and unsatisfying for a season finale.  (Will there be another season? The extra, end credits scenes refer to it as a season.)

There are way, way too many things happening at the same time. And yet, after the axe murder of the captain and a big chunk of the ship being destroyed and the ship entering the Volcryn 'space' - we start the episode with Agatha (psychiatrist) having been prepared for burial in space and D'Branin taking time to mope around.

Mel and the other characters just seem to wander around the ship, checking on the captain, talking to Rowan and so on. There does not seem to be a sense of urgency.
Then Rowan just shakes off his axe-murdering-insanity and become a normal team member again. If his insanity was the result of the Aliens or Telepaths, the show did not make that clear. 

And the Black Mold from the dead baby... Was there a point to that? Was it caused by the Aliens or the Crazy AI Mom in the ship's crystal matrix? 

Augustine, the 2nd in command, sabotages the ship, kills the Burning Man crew member, and sets the ship to self-destruct. But when Crazy Mom rejects him, all is forgiven and he back to his normal duties. 

At the end, D'Branin is "somewhere" with no resolution, Lommie appears to be sacrificing herself, and all the crew are hunkered down in the mess hall. Was that *all* the crew? Really? 

This show manages to have too much story and too little plot at the same time. I cannot say that I am excited at the prospect of more.. 
Are there plans for more?

It was almost like the writers lost interest in the show to make anything close to a coherent finale. It was almost like they said “fuck it there’s no way this mess get renewed “

[Chaos Theory]

See below

Edited December 20, 2018 by Chaos Theory

[Chaos Theory]

On 12/14/2018 at 2:56 PM, xaxat said:

 

I wonder if Syfy's "Let's release this kind of like a Netflix binge" strategy was to burn off a show they felt would fail or if it's something they will be doing more. 

They did this for the last two seasons of 12 Monkeys. Not sure why.  I think they wanted to end the show and it had a fan base but not a big enough one to put it on a weekly.   12 Monkeys was one of the best time travel stories I have watched.  And it was funny

 

Well it’s official.  RR Martin isn’t my guy.   I might have found something I hate more then Game of Thrones.  At least GoT throws in the occasional moment of unimaginable suffering this is just dull.  

[jaigurudeva]

On 12/15/2018 at 5:52 AM, shrewd.buddha said:

And the android Captain Roy... WtF? Everyone just ignored that reveal from the contamination purge? D'Branin, Agatha, Rowan, and the ship's crew went on as normal? How did he manage to fool the telephaths? 

I wondered about this, too! Why were Mel and Rowan at all surprised that Roy had a robot hand/neck? Roy literally just walked out of a decontaminated room declared void of living organisms with gleaming robot eyes, but then it's only after he's axed to pieces they're like, "What are you??"

[jaigurudeva]

Great, an ending that wasn't. No answers as to who/what the Volcryn is, why Cynthia seemed to know of (and was so afraid of) the Volcryn, why the Volcryn turned babies into dust and drove people bananas but in the end only brought D'Branin to an alternate dimension to be with his family. I guess they forgot that the whole point was to glean some knowledge from the eldritch space monster and save Earth. Everyone else dies and/or gets sucked into the space monster's colon and go to their own alternate dimension(s?). At least two people get away with murder and the rest are somehow more maladjusted than before their space odyssey. Earth is still doomed. The end.

[Sentient Meat]

This show has some really nice ideas and decent actors and production values... but the characters are so poorly written that I just don't care what happens to any of them.

Everyone only cares about their own agenda... even the supposedly more sensitive ones.

I suppose the Beekeeper was somewhat likeable but she was as thinly written as a groupie out of Almost Famous.

The actor who plays Thale does his moody, brooding act decently, but he doesn't show much of a sweet, sensitive side that might make one empathize with him more.  You can tell the actor has it in him to portray him that way... but the writers chose not do much more than present a damaged soul.

Rowan is a repulsive character... I didn't like him even before he started his Jack Nicholson in the Shining routine

Karl is supposed to be a tragic, obsessed Ahab like genius... but he just comes across as a selfish prick.

Mel is okay but she comes across as cold like her perfectly Gattaca constructed persona is supposed to be.  Ditto for Roy

Lommie is just pathetic to me... she kind of got cool for awhile but now she's back where she started controlled by the mother.

Auggie reminds me of Ash from Alien.  He's not an android but you always knew he was going to fuck everyone over.

I suppose I'll finish but after I got hooked by the first couple episodes... I kind of regret watching it.

Won't watch another season unless someone else takes over.

[Sentient Meat]

This isn't the cool kind of WTF you get from watching Chris Nolan's movies or the first Matrix.

This is if they took the Matrix and stretched it out for two pointless segments and then tacked the ending of Dallas onto the end.

Too bad, because it had potential.

[AngelKitty]

I still have the last three episodes on my DVR, mocking me: watch or delete, watch or delete, watch or delete...

[Terrafamilia]

On 12/12/2018 at 6:25 PM, Mateony said:

The man-milking maids, the mold baby, the complete off-the-railsness of it all. I don't know whether I love it or hate it. 

 

On 12/15/2018 at 11:48 AM, Tachi Rocinante said:

South Park did it better.

Heh, I was thinking of Blood Drive.

[Tachi Rocinante]

On 12/26/2018 at 9:02 PM, Terrafamilia said:

Heh, I was thinking of Blood Drive.

Also good.  I really liked that show. Colin Cunningham was a blast.

[Terrafamilia]

So much went awry with this show I don't know where to start. So, a nowhere near exhaustive list, in no particular order:

Memo to Agatha: when dictating a warning to others to not attempt a rescue it is helpful to give some indication as to why, such as, “The Volcryn mind rays are too powerful for the human brain to retain its sanity.” See, that wouldn’t have taken that much time. Of course, doing it that way would mean they couldn’t front-load the scene and retain the suspense and mystery of such a shock opening. Maybe that would have been for the best.

I spent way too much time in the first episode trying to figure out the gravity situation. The domes were obviously utilizing centripetal force simulated gravity so I at first assumed Earthlings didn’t have synthetic gravity in this universe and any other apparent gravity on the ship was due to it being under acceleration but the evidence pointed away from that and that they had flip the switch on and off gravity. Then why do a ring of domes without it? This just adds to the mechanical complexity of the ship.

Why were they going on this mission in the first place? To get “answers”. Answers - to things, and stuff. It was never well explained why they thought they needed extraterrestrial assistance to fix their earthly problems. Then, when he was high on his daughter memory crack, Karl started talking about what could be done with the colossal Volcryn teke power if they could get a hold of it. How did he expect to do that exactly? That’s the sort of thing Dr. Doom would try.

They pointed out early on how the alteration in the Volcryn’s position would result in the mission time being extended by many months and how this was a big deal. Then they had the cannibal milkmaids episode wherein the Nightflyer matched the flight of the derelict ship. For a ship that had been under thrust for months to get into interstellar space to match the speed of a ship that had been on an unpowered ballistic trajectory for many years it would require a huge expenditure of energy and fuel. Not just in slowing down but in cranking it back up to cruising speed afterwards. Not only would this extend the mission time it might adversely impact the chances of making it back home, yet no mention of this was made.

While it is nice that they locked ax-crazy Rowan away in his quarters, apparently such house arrest doesn’t prevent anyone from dropping by and letting him out whenever they feel like it.

I liked Thale but I had to resort to the closed captioning to figure out half of what he said.

It took me awhile to recognize that Auggie was played by the same guy who was Mayakovsky on The Magicians.

I had originally considered the possibility that the captain was a brain in a jar. I guess I was partially correct.

The ending included something I have grown to despise; accompanying the emotional climax or denouement with a meaningful! song. I first noticed this used on an episode of Bones and since then it has slowly become more and more prevalent and less and less effective. I think Legacies (Vampire Diaries spinoff) has done it on Every. Single. Episode. Ugh.

In my headcanon the reason the situation on Earth was so bad was that the eldritch abomination that is the Volcryn had been bathing it with their bad juju mind rays for years. Once society had collapsed and humanity had been sufficiently softened up they would swoop in and Volcrynoform the planet. (I kept waiting for them to mention why they were called the “Volcryn”. Was that the name of the astronomer who first detected them?)

In the behind-the-scenes videos the creators were going on about doing stuff that hadn't been seen before. Riiiiiight. If they hadn't been so derivative and by-the-numbers they could have had something here.

[weyrbunny]

I liked Event Horizon back in the day, so I thought, “yeah, sure, why not?” when I came across Nightflyers. Wrong, wrong decision. It’s just terrible, from start to finish. So erratic… and so incoherent by the end it made Helix look well-written. (Helix is also terrible.). I should’ve heeded the bad reviews.

I actually sensed that this was going to suck until the end when Thale tried to burn a guy alive, and D’Branin responded with, “Oh, but he didn’t try to murder that guy with psychic powers, just with fire, so it’s OK.” Why I was even surprised later when the guy he tried to burn alive hung out with Thale? Why was I even still watching, is the better question.

On 12/23/2018 at 2:41 AM, Sentient Meat said:

Rowan is a repulsive character... I didn't like him even before he started his Jack Nicholson in the Shining routine

Rowan was my favorite character for the first half, because he was the (somewhat) voice of reason. Simply because he kept contradicting that flake, D’Branin. Sample exchange:

          D’Branin: “The aliens are talking to ME!!!”

          Rowan: “There’s zero evidence of that.”

They were both right, I guess. But by the time Rowan became Jack Torrance for an episode and a half, then instantly got better, yeah, he was just as insufferable as the rest of it.

Hard pass on season 2, not that it’ll get one. I'm going to look up this shit's writers and creators next, so that I can identify their work later and skip it.

[Terrafamilia]

3 hours ago, weyrbunny said:

So erratic… and so incoherent by the end it made Helix look well-written. (Helix is also terrible.).

Heh, at least there was some fun to be had in watching Helix.

[Unusual Suspect]

Hoo boy, that was just bad. I ended up hating everyone but Agatha, Thale and Mel ... and even then was less than impressed with their intelligence.

[Tyro49]

At the end, how could they not tell us what became of the rest of the crew??

[MrPissyPuppy]

Cancelled per Deadline. 

Quote

Nightflyers had been conceived as an ongoing series but I hear that following its freshman season run, Syfy brass concluded that it was better off as a one-off limited series. The options on the cast were let to expire, and one of the stars, David Ajala, was just cast as a lead in the CBS pilot Under the Bridge.

[weyrbunny]

Quote

...Syfy brass concluded that it was better off as a one-off limited series.

I've never said this about the Syfy channel in the history of ever... but that was the correct conclusion.

[Paloma]

On 12/10/2018 at 7:48 PM, green said:

In other news 2093 doesn't look like a year I'd want to live through.

It's January 2021 now and I needed a new treadmill show, so I started watching this. Got 10 minutes into it before realizing I watched the whole series a couple of years ago. I'm not going to keep watching but decided to read some comments here, and I had to laugh when I saw your comment. You didn't have to wait until 2093 to have a year (or 2 years) that you didn't want to live through, and it sounds like the 2093 plague was not much worse than the one we've been dealing with. So much for my hope of escapism via sci-fi shows.