The Incomparable

Our Book Club returns with reviews of the six finalists for the Hugo Award for best science fiction/fantasy novel of the year. You’ll be thrilled by our panelists attempting to remember what happened in books they read months ago! We liked five out of the six, which is a great batting average—but oh, that sixth book. Also, we read some novellas and short stories, too! And Erika’s up for another Hugo!

A long time ago we used to be friends, but I haven’t thought of you lately at all—until you got that new series at Hulu, anyway. We’re discussing the UPN/CW classic series “Veronica Mars”, featuring Kristen Bell as a teenage noir detective trying to solve her best friend’s murder with the reluctant help of her disgraced private-investigator dad. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a watch! We discuss season one of the show in detail (including revealing who the murderer is at the end), but don’t discuss much at all about the next two seasons and don’t touch at all on the contents of the fourth season that just premiered.

Our Rocket Surgery crew returns to the current decade to discuss Tim Burton’s billion-dollar 3-D smash hit, “Alice In Wonderland.” What if everything you remember fondly from Lewis Carroll was turned into a catchphrase? Why so much eye stabbing? Who is the Jabberwocky and what has it done with the Jabberwock? What does Johnny Depp bring to his role of a mild hat enthusiast? When did Monty give up and start reading IMDB trivia? Nobody mention how big the Red Queen’s head is!

Fresh from the theater, we tackle “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” We consider the lighter side of the death and resurrection of billions of people, the unique position this Spider-Man has in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the value of various surrogate dads. We’re also surprised at how interesting Mysterio turned out to be despite the fact that he’s Mysterio.

For 4th of July week we’re going to the beach — Amity Island, to be precise. Old Movie Club takes on the original summer blockbuster, 1975’s “Jaws”, directed by some kid named Steven Spielberg. Two of our panelists have never seen it! But we all learn some important lessons about how much blood the human body contains, the ins and outs of tourism marketing, and how the most important part of the journey is the sharks we met along the way.

If we told you that there was a 1990s movie starring Martin Sheen’s brother featuring a post-apocalyptic world of skateboarding, sword-wielding Jedi dudes, would you believe us? Well, you shouldn’t, because we made it up on the spot. Concluding our trilogy of improvised “Rocket Surgery” episodes, this is “Last Dance of the Devil’s”, a film so bad that its title is mispunctuated.

Our survey of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films concludes with “The Dark Knight Rises.” It’s clear why fans of the gritty darkness of “The Dark Knight” might have been disappointed with this film, because it’s strange in many surprisingly comic-booky ways… and we kind of love it? We discuss the choice to have the film’s primary villain have his mouth covered and speak in surround sound, the competence of Selina Kyle, the steadfastness of Michael Caine’s Alfred, the heir apparent earnestness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the proximity of certain middle-eastern rendition sites to Gotham. If you miss this episode, look for us in a café in Florence and give us a nod.

Our cinematic survey of Batman rolls on with Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Nolan’s film was a huge hit and remains well loved, but how does it hold up on rewatching? Our panel found a film overflowing with ideas, sometimes to its credit and sometime to its detriment. Is this really two movies jammed together into one? Why was Rachel Dawes re-cast? Why does Batman hate dogs? Turn on your sonar vision and find out!

If you’re not watching “The Magicians”, you’re missing out. This is a TV series that started off fine, but then became spectacularly good with its third and (just completed) fourth seasons. We take some time at the beginning of the episode to try to entice new viewers to watch, and then dive into the shocking events that occur in the most recent season. After all, sometimes you’ve got to be a fish.

Climb on a dragon and join us for our traditional breakdown of the just-completed season of “Game of Thrones.” Did the story reach a satisfying conclusion? Were the character arcs consistent? Did the structure of the season satisfy us or undercut our assumptions about what the show was really about? And what is to become of the Night’s Watch? One last time, we go to Westeros.

For some reason, this seemed like a good time for our panelists to get together and draft their favorite and least favorite TV series endings of all time. We’ll wager that there are opinions you’ll disagree with and shows you’ve literally never heard of.

It’s time once again for our Book Club to tackle the six novels that made it to the Science Fiction Writers Association’s shortlist, the nominees for the Nebula Awards. All four of us read all six nominees and we discuss their merits (and occasionally demerits). The concept of being a Reverse Nemesis With a Twist is introduced. If you’re looking for a few books to add to your reading list, this episode will hit the spot.

Time to boldly go back to the earliest days of the Star Trek canon with our review of the second season of “Star Trek: Discovery”, which mixed in some Doctor Who and Star Wars sensibilities with varying results. We praise the characters, shrug at some of the mystifying plot points, and are left pondering where the series and the franchise go next. Plus there’s an enormous amount of love for Anson Mount’s Christopher Pike. Never forget: #theybuilttheset.

Part Two of our team coverage of “Avengers: Endgame!” Chip Sudderth assembles more of our Incomparable regulars and newer voices for a different angle on the movie—weaponized nostalgia, timey-wimey nonsense, delightful surprises and sour notes, and what this movie means for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

We’re in the endgame now. In this, the first of two episodes about “Avengers: Endgame,” we break down the plot of perhaps the biggest movie of all time. How does time travel work? How do we feel about the final destinations of beloved characters? Why does the Hulk need to take the stairs? Who is worthy of wielding the power of Thor? Also, Jason has a pitch for a new Captain America TV series.

We’re all out seeing “Avengers: Endgame”, so here’s something completely different to tide you over. A while ago we all were talking about how our Rocket Surgery selections are so weird and obscure that we could just make up an entire movie and nobody would be able to tell the difference. So we did that. As with episode 453, here’s a Rocket Surgery about a movie you won’t find on IMDB or YouTube, because it totally doesn’t exist. We made it up on the spot, plot point by plot point. It’s 1963’s “The Howling Horror of Dracula.”

Pop on your mind-control goggles, unpunch your nemesis, and prepare to board the world’s largest hydrofoil—it’s time for us to discuss 2018’s much-awaited Pixar sequel “Incredibles 2”. Brad Bird’s original film tops the list of favorite animated films for many of us. This film… doesn’t. In this episode we detail all the ways that both story and an unfortunate change in Pixar’s release schedule let this movie down, while trying our best to also highlight the many reasons we still find it worthy of revisiting.

We break down the “Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker” teaser trailer scene by scene, speculate about what the title means, question how to balance the closure of the classic saga without straying too far into nostalgia trips, and offer some wild speculation. Then we wrap things up with a discussion of the future of the franchise now that it’s moving (at least temporarily) to the forthcoming Disney+ streaming service.

“Paper Girls” is a comic that looks like it’s steeped in ’80s nostalgia, then makes you think it’s a modern story commenting on ’80s nostalgia, and then takes a 90-degree turn and becomes something even more interesting. This week we discuss the comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, which begins as a story about four girls delivering newspapers on a morning in 1988. The first 25 minutes or so is all spoiler-light, and then after the Spoiler Horn we jump into our discussion of the first two trade-paperback collections. (There are five volumes in all, with the sixth and final collection due this summer.)

It’s the Rocket Surgery Film Festival! In this episode, we’re watching something that proves that computer-game film adaptations were a bad idea from the very beginning! Based on a late 1970s Atari game, it’s the ill-fated “Star Raiders.” There’s a not-dashing star pilot, a sullen space princess, an annoying robot, and is that Sheriff Lobo in a tight-fitting jumpsuit? If you’re looking for a cross between “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, are you in for some disappointment. Once again, we watched the movie so you don’t have to. Correction: Due to a clerical error, none of these movies actually exist. This episode was entirely improvised.