With Fall officially here, and Spooky Season drawing nigh, it's easy to overlook sci-fi in the race to consume mass qualities of horror. But September is actually great for science fiction TV this year, with some huge projects launching, ready to take us into dark dystopias, sinkholes leading to sinister subterranean realms, and epic galactic empires on the verge of collapse.
Let's take a quick look at four new shows, and one returning favorite, for an informal showcase of September's love of sci-fi. We've got the righteous return of Doom Patrol, Star Wars as seen through awesome lens of anime, a new series based on an Isaac Asimov classic, and more!
Foundation
Where: Apple TV+
When: Weekly episodes
Based on the first book(-ish) in Isaac Asimov's landmark Foundation series, which began in 1951, and adapted for the screen by David S. Goyer (Blade, The Dark Knight) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Snowpiercer), this new eye-popping Apple series stars Lee Pace, Jared Harris, Lou Llobell, and Alfred Enoch in the story of a massive galactic regime, which rules over hundreds of planets, having to come to terms with possible societal destruction.
When a scientist (Harris) develops a foolproof analytic system that can predict the behaviors and trends of civilizations, he's faced with brutal opposition from those who wish him silenced. With a story that spans over a thousand years, Foundation just might be the most ambitious book-to-TV adaptation since Game of Thrones. Foundation premiered with the first two episodes on September 24 (read our review here).
Y: The Last Man
Where: FX on Hulu
When: Weekly episodes
Based on the acclaimed comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man, after over a decade in development, has finally reached TV.
When one man, a slacker "escape artist" named Yorick, mysteriously survives a plague that wipes out every creature on Earth with a Y chromosome, he becomes precious cargo — and a delicate secret for his congresswomen mother, who is now the acting President of the United States.
Ben Schnetzer, Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Olivia Thirlby and Amber Tamblyn star in a unique apocalypse fable that's (mostly) free of men, where women are now both humanity's only hope and civilization's greatest threat. Read our review of the first three Y: The Last Man episodes here.
Star Wars Visions
Where: Disney+
When: All nine episodes available now
Star Wars: Visions is an animated anthology series featuring original short films from various Japanese anime studios that present a different cultural perspective to Star Wars.
Featuring the voices (in the American dub) of Shang-Chi's Simu Liu, George Takei, David Harbour, Kyle Chandler, Alison Brie, Lucy Liu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neil Patrick Harris, and more, Star Wars Visions features sweeping landscapes and dazzling lightsaber duels.
Rising from its humble beginnings as a DC Universe series, Doom Patrol is now fully an HBO Max joint. Season 3 premiered on September 23 with three episodes, and one episode per week is dropping after that.
An argument can be made that Marvel's WandaVision or Loki are the top envelope-pushers in the superhero game, but those who watch Doom Patrol know that this show is truly the most bonkers superhero TV show out there. One that, like WandaVision, is also a complex and poignant character-driven exploration of grief and trauma.
With Season 2's original finale, "Possibilities Patrol," now acting as the Season 3 opener (production was severely delayed due to Covid-19), Doom Patrol picks up exactly where the story left off, as the team must contend with the apocalyptic entity known as The Candlemaker. You can read our review of the first three Season 3 episodes of Doom Patrol here.
La Brea
Where: NBC (streaming next day on Peacock)
When: September 28 (weekly episodes)
File this one under "fingers crossed." NBC's new adventure series, La Brea — starring Justified's Natalie Zea, Merlin's Eoin Macken, and Chicago P.D.'s Jon Seda — starts with a massive sinkhole opening in the middle of Los Angeles, pulling hundreds of people and buildings into its depths. Those who fall in find themselves in a mysterious and dangerous primeval land, where they have no choice but to band together to survive.
What sci-fi TV are you watching these days? Let's discuss this Golden Age of genre television in the comments!
When Sony releases a television, it's usually an immediate competitor for best in whatever price segment it sits in. The A80J is a high-end OLED display that is the more approachable of Sony’s OLED lineup in terms of price and competes right up next to the LG C1 as one of the best 4K TVs for gaming. And while LG comes in just slightly less expensive, the A80J makes several strong arguments that it should be considered the superior choice side-by-side.
Since the actual quality of the OLED panel is going to be negligibly different, if at all, Sony instead competes on its software and design. But is that worth the extra $200 when you’re already spending more than $2,000?
Sony A80J – Design and Build
Like most modern OLED televisions, the actual display of the Sony is stunningly thin. The bezels are near invisible, and Sony created a stand that sits the A80J just barely above my media console. Sony chose this particular design philosophy to bring as much emphasis on the display itself and make the other parts of the television fade into the background.
When watching the A80J, I can attest that while I like the innovation of some stands on competitor displays – like the dramatic swoop found on the Vizio OLED – forcing my eye to just enjoy what’s on display with no distractions does make sense. Stands can look cool, but that’s not why I buy a television.
The downside of this philosophy is that the feet of the A80J are so close to the platform on which it sits that there is no room to include any kind of cable management. Because the display is so low set, you probably won’t notice the cables unless you are intentionally looking for them, but they are there and they can be seen. If I’m going to ding other display manufacturers for not addressing cable management, I have to hold Sony to that same standard.
Of course, if you plan to wall-mount the television none of this matters and the A80J will just melt into your wall, blending in almost seamlessly.
The A80J is loaded with connectivity options. Digitally, it supports WiFi, Apple Airplay 2, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. Physically it offers a composite video input, a digital audio input, and an ethernet port. It also packs four total HDMI ports, two of which are the latest 2.1 standard and one of those is designated for eARC (which is the port I used to connect my HDMI audio device). There are also two USB ports.
The HDMI 2.1 ports support up to 120Hz in 4K HDR and are compatible with variable refresh rate (VRR), but there is a catch: like all Sony displays right now, VRR is only promised for an undefined “future” firmware update and is not currently enabled. If you’re planning to game with a PlayStation 5, this isn't a big deal since the PS5 doesn’t support VRR yet either. But if you’re using an Xbox, it certainly bears consideration.
Sony A80J – Remote
Moving on to the remote control, let’s address the elephant in the room: it’s huge. It’s obnoxiously large and a lot of it is taken up with buttons you will likely never touch. Unlike Vizio, Samsung, or TCL, Sony continues to create remotes that offer buyers the ability to control just about everything, and as such have a button to do just about anything. The company still includes the number pad, for example, and there is a giant blank space at the bottom that is likely included as a grip which expands the height of the controller even further.
It’s easily twice as large as any other remote I’ve held since the last Sony remote I used. Still, it has a lot of options on it, which some people might appreciate. Me? I wish it was a quarter as big.
Sony A80J – Software and UI
The Sony A80J is powered by Google TV and it works perfectly. For years I detested using Google’s previous operating system – Android TV – on any display, but Sony’s processor plus the updated Google TV is a snappy experience that exhibits no lag and is an overall lovely experience.
Google TV on the A80J works like it does on any other television. There's a wide selection of apps you can install at setup, or later at any time. Every app I could ask for is available and they all work flawlessly.
Sony A80J – Picture Quality
The Sony A80J uses an OLED display, which means that each pixel of the television can be controlled individually and even turned off entirely. That means that blacks can be true black, which makes for stunning picture quality when contrasted against any pixels that are lit.
Rich blacks and beautiful colors are rendered beautifully on this display, and support for various HDR formats including Dolby Vision means streamed content from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Sony’s own Bravia Core looks spectacular. Bravia Core, which has a good but somewhat limited selection of movies, is a movie streaming service from Sony that offers a bitrate of up to 80 Mbps, much higher than any of the other streaming platforms. If your internet can handle that kind of data throughput, picture quality through Bravia Core is outstanding and near Blu-Ray quality.
OLED displays of this size are all theoretically capable of the same quality, but Sony ups the ante with some of the best – if not the best – picture processing available on the market.
When watching lower bitrate content from streaming providers like Disney+, banding and artifact “blocking” can sometimes be visible in scenes. For example, during the desert scenes from the first season of The Mandalorian, the bright sky can appear to have lines on it as there isn’t enough data to create a smooth transition among those graduated colors.
That is, if you’re not watching on a Sony. The A80J software can interpret that lower quality data stream and smooth it out, removing those gradients and making for a smooth, pristine sky.
It makes most streams look better, but it is not a cure-all. Particularly old shows can still suffer from pixels blocking together. For example, when streaming Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was produced in the 1990s, no amount of software was able to smooth out some of those scenes where there just isn’t enough data for a clean picture, even for the A80J.
The one knock on this display is a problem with all OLED displays: brightness. Overall, the television is noticeably less bright than LCD-style televisions like the Hisense U7G or Mini LED televisions like the TCL 6-Series. The A80J is certainly capable of hitting some very bright peaks, but it is rare to see – as the brighter the object on screen, the more likely it is to experience permanent burn-in.
Speaking of which, a lot of the trepidation folks have when faced with buying an OLED comes from that burn-in fear, but most average consumers won’t have to worry about it. I’ve used OLED displays as my daily drivers for years now and never had an issue. Only if you plan to play a video game with a persistent, unchanging HUD or have a news network with a ticker always showing for eight to 10 hours a day every day for months will the problem start to rear itself. Under normal use cases, software in the television keeps a careful eye on the display’s status to assure that none of the pixels get too worked out and burn in.
Sony A80J – Gaming Performance
Thanks to HDMI 2.1 and the extremely fast response time of OLED displays along with auto-low latency mode (ALLM) that kicks in when tuned to Game mode, the Sony A80J is a gaming dream. HDR games look especially fantastic and playing the few games that can operate at 4K HDR at 120 frames per second results in a top-tier display experience for consoles on a modern television.
As far as performance is concerned, I had no issues at all playing a host of games on the PS5: Apex Legends, Destiny 2, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Risk of Rain 2 all looked and played great. The majority of those games can’t exceed 60 frames per second in 4K but the visual experience sparkles nonetheless. A Plague Tale in particular looks remarkable.
Destiny 2 is a truly fantastic experience. The PvE portions of the game look absolutely fantastic and really let you sit back and enjoy the work the developers put into the atmosphere of the game. In PvP activities, the 120 frames per second kicks in for a buttery smooth competitive experience.
One knock right now is that, as mentioned, the A80J doesn’t currently support VRR and Sony has not provided any indication of when it might come, though it does promise that a future firmware update will bring it to all of its compatible televisions. This is no doubt frustrating, especially for Xbox owners or even PC players who thought about using this television as a monitor.
One last thing to note about OLEDs is that when something is black on screen – like a cave or a hole – it’s black. While this kind of contrast looks exceptional for movies and TV, it’s less great for gaming, especially competitive. While you can adjust the contrast to be less black and choose not to use HDR, it’s still something to consider. Mixed with this TV’s medium-tier brightness, it can be a challenge at times, especially when gaming during the day or in a brightly lit room. It’s possible to completely miss an opponent hiding in a dark corner in Apex Legends because the TV just can’t come out of black and into the gray very easily. For single person adventures, this is less of a big deal.
Sony A80J – Audio Quality
Audio quality of this television is better than many other thin displays on the market, but it’s still not one I would recommend for those who like quality sound. Audio sounds like it is coming directly at you from the screen – because it is: Sony uses a technology that plays sound through the display itself. With certain Sony soundbar systems, the display can even be used as a center channel in a multi-speaker system.
But alone, sound out of the A80J is really lacking on the low end, which makes a lot of audio sound hollow and without depth. So while yes, it’s better than you might find in a lot of other competitive options, I still don’t think it’s something to rely on. Get a sound bar or better yet, a true sound system. A great display like this deserves that kind of quality audio.
Sony A80J – The Competition
Those in the market for the A80J will no doubt be looking at the LG C1 and the Vizio OLED H1. Sony will likely win on pure picture quality against both when displaying low bitrate content because of its superior processing, and the implementation of Google TV is more approachable than LG’s webOS and less buggy than Vizio’s overall experience, even though Smartcast at its core is still pretty great. But folks using these televisions mainly for gaming might not care about these benefits, and I don’t blame them. If you run your entire entertainment system off your PlayStation, for example, the gap in performance between these televisions closes. I can’t speak more highly to Sony’s picture quality than I already have, but it’s going to be up to you to decide if what Sony does better than the competition is worth the slightly premium price the A80J asks of you.
Square Enix has announced that Marvel’s Avengers is coming to Xbox Game Pass this week.
Revealed in an Xbox Wire post, Marvel’s Avengers will be added to Xbox Game Pass on September 30. It will be available across PC, console, and cloud.
The Xbox Game Pass version will be the complete package of all Marvel’s Avengers content so far, including Kate Bishop, Hawkeye, and the brand new Black Panther: War for Wakanda expansion.
The game's arrival on Game Pass will come just in time for the Quad XP event, which runs from September 30 to October 4, in celebration of the game’s one-year anniversary.
Earlier this year, Square Enix launched its looter shooter Outriders on Game Pass, and surpassed 3.5 million unique players in its first month. While it’s unclear how many of those players were on Xbox and Game Pass specifically, it may be that Square has realised the value that the subscription service can offer for this kind of game, and thus added Avengers to the roster.
When I got my first look at WizKids’ latest premium figure, the five-headed evil Dragon Queen Tiamat, I couldn’t help but chuckle at what appeared to be an absurdly large figure – the early 3D rendering showed it positively dwarfing a 12oz soda can. What I wasn’t expecting was for it to (a) actually dwarf said coke can and (b) be one of the most impressive centerpiece miniatures I’ve seen in a long time.
WizKids recently joked that “it pushes things by calling this a mini,” and it weren’t kidding. The "mini" truly lives up to its Gargantuan size rating; weighing more than five pounds, the base it stands on alone is eight inches across (that’s 40 feet in tabletop D&D rules), which is twice the recommended size for a “Gargantuan” creature. The tallest of its five heads stands roughly eight inches tall, and its wingspan boosts its height to just over 14”an impressive 28” across at its farthest point. If I were a player in a Tyranny of Dragons campaign (the most recent official D&D adventure module prominently featuring Tiamat), I would likely have a minor heart attack if my Dungeon Master thwonk’ed this behemoth down on the table.
The detail work on each of the heads is gorgeous, both in their molding and the manual paint job. The demonic orange glow around the eyes of the red and blue dragon heads is a particularly nice bit of detail, though each head – as well as the finer work around the bony spurs and claws on each limb – looks great in its own right.
What’s slightly disappointing about this otherwise exceptional model is that the push-fit (sometimes called “friction-fit”) joints – in this case where the wings and tail attach to the body – don’t line up 100%, at least on the item we received. The tail has a ≈1mm gap between sections, though there’s some detail work on the underside of the joint that helps blend the pieces together. There are also some visible mold lines across its torso that weren’t sanded down before painting, though they’re practically imperceptible without very close inspection.
The wing joints, however, are a bit harder to overlook, since although the front of the wing (what would be Tiamat’s “shoulder”) fits snugly and looks great from the front and side, the back of the wings don’t fully lock into place. They’re secure and in no danger of falling off, but the gap between the torso (particularly on the right wing) is fairly noticeable. We attempted to brute force it into place on advice from the manufacturer, but all that did was poke a hole in my wrist – it was nothing serious, but be forewarned: this Dragon Queen is spiky!
All that said, though, when you take a step back to more than a foot away – which we can reasonably expect players at the tabletop or folks admiring it on a shelf likely will be – the piece as a whole is impressive enough to overshadow its flaws. Whether it’s a fearsome new collectible to add to your display or – if you can manage to keep her hidden from your players – the Gargantuan Tiamat will make for a spectacular reveal during your final battle.
It’s a damp, cold evening in October 2019, and I’m in the real-life Q Branch garage, also known as a warehouse in Pinewood Studios. I’m one of about a dozen journalists being shown James Bond’s classic Aston Martin DB5, which has been newly upgraded for its next mission. I’m standing right in front of the iconic car as No Time To Die’s SFX supervisor, Chris Corbould, activates its most impressive new gadget.
Both of the DB5’s bulbous headlamps sink into the engine bay, sliding aside to reveal twin rotary mini-guns. The ordnance slides forward, pausing only to click into place before spinning up to a speed that makes the six individual barrels disappear into a blurr. Small jets of flame erupt from the muzzles while the guns buzz like furious hornets. A stream of brass shells eject from the air intakes on the wings of the car, which sounds akin to coins spilling from an overstuffed bank vault as they scatter over the floor.
“A bit more spectacular, I think you’ll agree,” says Corbould.
It’s a stunt that should have me and everyone else in the room diving for cover, especially considering we weren't told that this is what the DB5 can do now. But, despite the odd buzzing noise (which will be enhanced in the Foley studio for the actual film) the prop guns elicit a smile of approval from many of the reporters standing in the car’s firing arc. They are definitely a fun replacement for the .30 calibre Browning machine-guns that used to hide behind the DB5’s indicator bulbs.
The DB5’s new kit is deemed exciting enough to be the included in almost every one of No Time To Die’s many trailers (an unfortunate result of the film’s constantly shifting release date). The scene sees Bond spinning the car in circles around a square in Matera, Italy, gunning down enemies as he strafes. Not seen in the trailers is the thick smoke screen that belches from the exhausts, the new LCD programmable license plates, or the bomb dispenser hiding beneath the rear bumper.
Corbould demonstrates the bomb hatch for us, which somewhat pathetically drops half a dozen plastic naval mine-like explosives onto the concrete floor. “Going at 60 miles-per-hour they fly all over the place,” he promises. “An unfortunate Jaguar XF runs over a few of these and they all explode, which puts the car on its side and sends it into a building.”
This particular gadget-laden DB5 is one of 10 used on No Time To Die. Two are original models from “way back when”, while a further eight were built for the film in collaboration with Aston Martin. Two of these are stunt vehicles equipped with ‘pods’ atop the roofs, from which professional drivers can sit and control the vehicles while actors take the wheel inside. Another two are gadget cars fitted with Q Branch gizmos, while the final four are used for battle damage scenes.
“We made these bullet hits in the screen by firing pellets at them with Daniel Craig inside,” says Corbould, pointing to a DB5 with dozens of bullet holes in the windows. “There’s a great shot of him inside and the windows are literally rupturing around him.”
The DB5 may be the centrepiece of No Time To Die’s garage, but it’s not the only Aston Martin in the film. While in London, Bond drives an Aston Martin V8. Chosen by director Cary Joji Fukunaga, this green 1980s classic is practically identical to the one driven by Bond in 1987’s The Living Daylights. Corbould gives no indication as to if it would be equipped with hubcap lasers and a self-destruct system, but it does sport the same registration plate as the one Timothy Dalton drove 34 years ago.
Finally, there are two modern Aston Martins; the Valhalla (which is unfortunately not parked in the Pinewood garage) and the DBS Superleggera. Rather than driven by Bond, the ultra-modern DBS is the personal car of MI6’s new agent, Lashana Lynch’s Nomi.
“Bond is picked up in this by another 00 agent,” says Corbould. “He’s a bit miffed that this agent has this fantastic car. So there’s a bit of backwards and forwards dialogue about it.”
While Fukunaga chose the vintage V8, the DBS was Craig’s choice, despite the car not belonging to Bond. “I think we needed a very modern car,” says Corbould. “Aston Martin very kindly put forward the DBS which Daniel really liked, so he had a big say in it coming on the scene.”
In direct opposition to these British supercars, No Time To Die’s second big chase sequence uses a much more humble vehicle. “It’s a totally off-road sequence that starts in Norway,” Corbould reveals. “Bond is in an old Toyota Land Cruiser, which is the car of the other person he’s with at the time.” Considering what else was revealed to us at Pinewood, it seems logical to conclude that this old Toyota belongs to Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann, who lived in Norway as a child.
“And all of a sudden we have two of these Land Rover SVRs on his tail,” describes Corbould. “So he tries to escape, but obviously these are very fast compared to an old Toyota Land Cruiser. But he manages to run them off the road.”
“Shortly after that he thinks he’s got away, but three of these things appear very spectacularly,” says Courbould, pointing to a trio of brand new Land Rover Defenders. During production the Defender was itself in development, which meant for a lot of secretive back-and-forth meetings with Jaguar Land Rover. Espionage is certainly not what you expect from a 4×4, but Bond will always inject a little excitement into dealings.
