Tag Archives: James Hiroyuki Liao

Peacemaker: Season 2 – TV Review

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TL;DR – A very oddball second season filled with genuine earnest moments, topped off by a profoundly rushed ending.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the HBO Max subscription that viewed this series

Post-Credit Scene – There are end-credit scenes in each episode.

Top Trio mural.

Peacemaker Introduction –

Back in 2022, one of the oddest moments in the modern comic era happened: in the midst of all of its serious problems, as the DC Studio was falling apart, film after film, they decided to put out a TV series around one of the less-liked characters from the Suicide Squad films. What made it even odder is that it kind of worked, with a level of charm that managed to undercut its many issues. Well, it may have helped get James Gunn the job in the big chair and changed the direction of a multi-billion-dollar media empire, but after a cameo in Superman, it is time to dive back into Peacemaker.  

So, to set the scene, in the time since the end of the first season of Peacemaker, things have not quite worked out for many of our characters. Many of them had been blocked and couldn’t get work anymore, and Chris Smith/Peacemaker (John Cena) is still working through the trauma of having to kill his very racist and unpleasant father, Auggie (Robert Patrick). But what happens when you are at your lowest and temptation strikes? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Star Trek: Section 31 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There are some interesting ideas here and some fun action sequences, but it is held back by serious pacing issues that occurred when they crunched this into a movie.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this film.

A Section 31 communicator.

Star Trek: Section 31 Review –

Well, if there is one series of Star Trek that always seemed to get brushed aside, it was Deep Space Nine, and while a lot of people have come around on it in recent years, even the other Star Trek production teams at the time didn’t truly understand it, which meant that up until maybe Lower Decks, we have never seen the impact of the show on the broader universe. Well, almost never. Because there was one part of the show that nearly everyone since has picked up and run with: Section 31. Which would be great if that was not the one bit of Deep Space Nine that I didn’t like. Well, if Star Trek is going to dabble in making movies again, and they are going to use Section 31 as the base, then headlining it with Michelle Yeoh absolutely should be the best way to start it off.   

So, to set the scene, Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) was the Terran Emperor of the Mirror Universe, brought into our Universe before being sent far into the future. There, she was unable to live, and she was sent back to a time that would be more stable for her by The Guardian of Forever [sometime in the early 2300s]. Here, Georgiou has been living under the guise of Madame du Franc at the space station Baraam. But there is an alien selling a bioweapon Godsend, and a Section 31 team led by Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick) was sent into to neutralise Georgiou and take out the weapons dealer. But of course, it all goes wrong.  

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Orphan Black: Echoes – Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is an interesting spin on the original, that works well within the framework that was set, even if it does not quite get the tone right in places.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

A hand appears out of red fluiid.

Orphan Black: Echoes Review –

Back in the day, I was fascinated by this small show out of Canada that took a science fiction concept, in this case, cloning, and took it to the extreme with some of the best acting and weird worlds of subterfuge, rebellion, and secret organisations. During Orphan Black’s five-season run, I was transfixed with each new clone and turn in this world, so you better believe I was excited to find out we were coming back to this universe.

So to set the scene, a woman, Lucy (Krysten Ritter), wakes up with no memory of her past life, with only a therapist (Keeley Hawes) to tell her that she has had a procedure and some of the subtlety of her long-term member might not have worked. After being sedated, the woman is not just going to sit around and breaks out when she finds the house is a fake hidden in a warehouse. But worse still is the room full of body parts, a suspension chamber full of red liquid, and an unfinished artefact of a human. Can they print humans now? And who was the woman they scanned to make this body? Am I the only one who has been printed? We will be looking at the series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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