Science Fiction & Fantasy > B Science Fiction & Fantasy > T

Advantages: Believable, good acting and direction
Disadvantages: Limited due to simple plot

...the viewer. The 2000 film Pitch Black is one such film. The fear of darkness and of creatures unseen combines brilliantly with the fear that the only guy capable of helping you is also the one most likely to kill you. Read on..... The Plot The plotline of a spaceship crash landing on another planet is a much followed one. It is prevalent in many films. This comes with a twist, as it has a passenger who is the most dangerous criminal known, being ...
...plane crash landing, the survivors form a motley crew of families, the criminal: serial killer Riddick, and the man who's been chasing him, Johns. The planet is seemingly sun drenched, but when the sun goes down and the darkness comes, scary happenings start. Strange flying creatures start hunting the survivors, and they need to reach safety on the planet. Sightless due to the darkness, they need a miracle, and it just so happens that Riddick has ... Read review

Advantages: Episode 6 is brilliant - real edge of the seat stuff
Disadvantages: The other episodes don't live up to Countrycide

...a lot to the dvd. I would say they are less enjoyable than the TV version (Torchwood Declassified/ Doctor Who Confidential.) If you enjoyed Doctor Who and/ or the first episodes of Torchwood you will enjoy this, it's cheesy, silly and unbelievable in places but this adds to it's appeal! ... Read review

Advantages: Really good compelling TV
Disadvantages: Cheesy, gets a little "geeky" at points!

Torchwood is the Doctor Who spin off for grown ups. This DVD shows the first 5 episodes of the first seriess, and a few special features. If you like Doctor Who and/or the X-Files, you will probably enjoy this. It is extremely cheesy in places but hugely watchable despite (or maybe because of) this. The character development during these episodes is good, Jack remains fairly enegmatic but I would say that is part of his appeal! If you are a Doctor ...
...the Doctor, as that is where Captain Jack first appears. When you reach the end of this series (it was originally released split on to 3 DVDs) you will be in the same point in the character's lives as the end of the 2nd series of Doctor Who. Confused? It doesn't matter a great deal, either series stands alone brilliantly and the introduction of charcaters between the two is done so it does not matter if you do not know them before. I watched this ... Read review

Advantages: special effects, characters, storyline
Disadvantages: none

...begins the spectacle that is Pitch Black. The beginning of the film still leaves me breathless, the visuals used when showing the ship spiralling out of control towards the planets surface as various compartments of the ship were being jettisoned are fantastic, the camera shaking violently, the speakers pushing out oodles of atmospheric noise to put us right in the middle of the crashing ship. You are willing the people on board to survive what ...
...often lost on film makers. Pitch Black is really the film that launched Vin Diesel's career (even though he was in Saving Private Ryan, who remembers him for that?), and for me it is still his best outing. And what a first outing it is. Riddick is one mean hombre, a murderer who is being taken back to the slam after escaping, he is brutal, he is tough and he is dangerous but as we see in the film he is not totally devoid of humanity, but even then ... Read review

Advantages: Launch into the show's finest plot arcs, experimenting with genres.
Disadvantages: Division of the cast has inevitable repercussions.

...behind the Jim Henson Company's Farscape always enjoyed putting the characters through hell, from John Crichton's first tumble down a wormhole dumping him in a distant corner of the universe to his increasingly problematic relationship with Aeryn Sun. It's with the sixth episode of season three, a deceptively simple zombie horror adventure entitled 'Eat Me,' that this relationship takes a very drastic fork, while the separation of Moya's crew in ...
...portion of the season. Farscape was never comfortable inside the boundaries of predictable television, simultaneously a reason for its creative genius and its ultimate cancellation for encouraging its own obscurity, and the splitting ('twinning') of protagonist John Crichton, without a convenient death before the end credits to return the status quo, is one of the iconic moments of the entire series. Even without this perfect ending, the episode ... Read review