Wallfacer

The mission to send Will's probe into space is actioned, and Saul is offered a huge responsibility.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but boy was this a disappointing end to the series, I know it is what it is, but this lacked tension, lacked excitement, after so much promise and build up, it just limped over the finish line.

I quite liked the ambiguity of it, it's so complex and layered, that it was never going to be all nicely tied up like some whodunnit, it was always going to be a mystery unanswered, but they didn't answer anything at all, this felt like a middle episode, not a finale.

I'll try and explain my disappointment, compared to much of what I've seen in recent times, it was very good, compared to mid series episodes, it just wasn't in the same league, it felt like they took their eye off the game just for a moment.

Still no news of a second series, I hope there is a second series, because this deserves a quality conclusion, please don't let this excellent series end with this.

Good, but should have been great.

6/10.

Wow, I haven't seen a show go off the rails and land so badly since, well since game of thrones I guess. I wonder if anyone involved in this show was linked to that. They seem to manage to have condensed the disappointment and feeling of betrayl down from an 8 year arc into a single 8 episode season, so I guess that's some sort of progress.

I'm tempted to read the books now and see if the original material is as directionless as this series ended up being. I had a quick look at the plot synopsis and it looks like the failure for this can be laid directly on the show runners shoulders. They have changed quite a lot of what actually happens in the story.

Such a promising start, and we really do need a smart and thought provoking series to engage us, but this was both mind numbing and thought provoking at the same time, and the ratio between the 2 veered strongly toward the mind numbing as each episode passed and then pretty much gave up on the thought provoking when it got obsessed with nano fibers, and it was all downhill from there.

WTF was going on with the brain in a box attached to some tent ropes which came unfastened as the ship passed only the 3rd acceleration point of hundreds. What was the point of all that??? What was he going to do when he got there?

Here we have yet another series that comes out of the gate with a bang and delivers a solid 5 episodes before completely falling flat for the remainder. I am not familiar with the books, so I am ignorant as to whether this follows closely to the books at all, but it really doesn't matter because it lost all momentum for these last few episodes

The first 5 would get a 9/10 from me. There was a properly mysterious foe, intriguing characters, and solid plot progression. It all felt like it was building to something big. Then it all fell apart. Plot holes developed all over the place, and the momentum was killed to spend 3 filler episodes on melodrama. It's almost like they ran out of money, but had to turn in 8 episodes, so they just threw something together with very little coherence and entirely inconsistent with what came before. It almost felt like two different shows

People turned on each other all over the place for weird reasons, all the plot build up was stopped in it's tracks, and we were given very little explanation for why any of it was happening. It felt like it was moving too slow and too fast at the same time. Most of the screen time was spent on boring conversations that didn't really add much, and then it would skip ahead in the story glossing over everything in between

I am sadly getting GOT season 8 vibes where things just happen that are out of character with very little build up to explain any of it. I hope they can bounce back for season 2, but if they are already wheel spinning this early I have concerns.

I've never read the source material, but I was intrigued when I learned that this adaptation would be Benioff and Weiss' follow up to "Game of Thrones". I enjoyed it, though even in this apparently simplified version, I can see why it hasn't quite caught on quite like "G. O. T" did.

A group of friends, who were training as physicists but have subsequently diversified into different fields are drawn into the response of humanity to an invasion by an alien race, one that is announced, but won't take place for 400 years. The aliens currently have vastly superior technology and are capable of monitoring Earths response, even down to private conversations. There are also a covert group of humans eager to welcome the San-Ti to Earth and are carrying out their instructions in preparation.

I understand that there are many changes made from the source novel, both to change the Chinese characters into more of a worldwide structure and to simplify some of the science and theories that's utilised. It's still got quite a high concept though. Alien invasions are not a new story, but preparing to fight one in four centuries is, and the other ideas, like that the enemy knows anything that's spoken about, making planning almost impossible, are new too. It's not exactly an action-packed series, though there are a few murders and one very memorable set piece around the middle of the story, and I wonder if that might have been a contributing factor to the show not quite becoming a phenomenon. The idea that this one small friend group could be quite so integral to the defence of the world is a bit of a stretch, but also it's another conceit that makes the show accessible, the interactions between the characters provides an emotional centre to what is a show ultimately about rationalism.

It's actually quite a British production at heart. Both in the central characters and in especially in the (slightly odd) guest stars that feature in the video game segments; Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Phil Wang, Naoko Mori and the actor Kevin Eldon. As always, Benedict Wong is the MVP and brilliantly steals every scene he's in.

It's a shame that it's not done well enough to allow Benioff and Weiss to make all the seasons they had planned, but a return to conclude the story (if that is indeed what's happening) is welcome news, I'll certainly be back.

Considering it's no guarantee whether Netflix will renew this series for a second season, I was kinda hoping for a better finale than this.

Auggie's storyline is bewildering, and humanity's future continues to remain bleak. However, it is abundantly clear that the hope stemming from humanity's "non-zero" chance of survival has resulted in impressive technological accomplishments in only a short timespan, meriting the fears the Santi have for humanity, despite the massive technological gap between the two intelligent species.

While I did not mind many questions being left unanswered (this is after all science fiction), I do wished the writers relied a little less on "our lord works in mysterious ways" for the inconsistencies of the scope of the Santi's abilities.

Overall, while I would not consider this to be the best sci-fi series I've seen, it still is miles ahead of the countless other mediocre Netflix shows that are still in production, and I hope we get to see a second season.