Silver Spiral Archives (with Meilo Thench)

Galactic Broadcasts: What I'm Watching

I took some time the other night to catch up with some of my banked-up broadcasts on the GIN. Among which I am currently watching the Impostor game show, Asteroid Base, and the latest Hock Snodar big-budget disaster, Ragna: Origins. I also plugged into a number of local and feeds to see what else was going on. All of this was on a research-trip for a massive new article I have been tasked to write, so I had some time to relax on the Starliner between some of my smaller articles.

I've been a fan of Impostor since it started airing a few years ago. It's a simple concept: a group of contestants are placed on a "ship" and tasked with small jobs to maintain the operation of the craft (obviously not really) while one crew member is the "impostor" who sneaks around, disrupting the tasks and aiming to disable the other contestants. It's a pretty cutthroat concept, especially when it comes to the winnings: the crew splits the money based on the remaining number of crewmembers when the imposter is finally found, whereas the impostor is rewarded based on the number of crewmembers he disables. I'm sure I don't need to explain how the process works, we all know about the vests contestants wear to simulate "death." It's a fun show, I'd love to write an entire article on the development of it.

Asteroid Base is something specially made from the more terrestrial among us. It's always fascinating to think about how a large portion of the galaxy, maybe up to 20%, lives nearly entirely in space on bases or ships. It's a lifestyle I doubt I could live, but it still fascinates me, and Asteroid Base has picked up a lot of viewers like me. The show is relatively new, and it's odd it's taken so long for a show like it to pop up on the GIN. The basic concept is that it documents the day-to-day lives of a crew aboard an asteroid base that serves as a formacyte refinery and stop-over. This is just one of the hundreds of thousands of these sorts of bases throughout the known regions. This asteroid, C-87, isn't even a particularly major asteroid and has been in service for decades. The novelty of seeing the day-to-day lives of the spacers, however, and the friction of their personalities proves compelling. I kind of wish something like that was attempted with a larger station. Maybe one day.

Ragna: Origins is a mess. Hock Snuder is a stylish director and producer but lacks substance in his work. It is especially bad when he attempts to create a deeper meaning through such transparent allusions and symbology to social and religious structures. His attempt at retelling the rise to power of Ragna Two-Horns, legendary Blassnaught hero, is emblematic of his worst excesses. Action scenes drive the story and Ragna's characterization is paper-thin. He seems more concerned with the creation of an image than giving us anything close to a nuanced or vying-for-accurate portrayal of one of galactic history's most famous figures. At this point, I am watching it purely for the visuals and the wonderful score by Ih, the famous Cyclopasian musician. If you want a more accurate portrayal of Ragna, stay away from this and stream Warrior/Queen, a feature doc that follows Ragna during he final days as she looks back on her life.

I still have another couple of days of transport before I get to my next assignment, so expect a couple of other articles about my viewing choices. I don't have much else to do at the moment.