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Mysterious Islands (2024)
Amateur hour
Though the content of this series is of interest, the production is clearly amateur hour. Each hour episode presents stories of about 5 different mysterious places, usually islands. Unfortunately, rather than being presented by a single subject matter expert, each story is presented by a crew of the same random people with vague titles like "historian" that are clearly just reading a script. I don't know if they have each of the approximately 5 presenters read the entire script then cut and edit them together into each story, of if each person just reads a few lines, but the resulting production looks very amaterish.
Many presenters have the annoying habit of talking with their hands, and none know how to make eye contact with the camera - they are all looking off to the side. Who exactly are they telling their story to? They aren't being interviewed by someone off camera, which would justify the side glances, they are just reading a script.
Since these presenters aren't subject matter experts in the stories they are reporting, they'll also frequently mispronounce words, usually locations, or technical terms. It's as if they just get sat down cold before a TelePrompTer to record their lines a single time, and even the crew doesn't know or care when they make a mistake. So a word mispronounced by one presenter is usually pronounced differently, and correctly, by the others.
The production would be greatly improved by presenting each segment using someone that has actually researched the subject and who knows how to make eye contact when telling the story.
Mission: Impossible: A Game of Chess (1968)
Messily complicated!
Just an overly complicated plot devised by the writers of Mission: Impossible.
Apparently, the IMF has some kind of device that can cause a safe's time lock to run fast, which will allow them to recover stolen gold. Why complicate things by introducing a chess grandmaster who also wants to steal the gold? The chess adversary aspect was entirely superfluous, except for the fact that the grandmasters minions had surreptitiously ascertained the safe's combination, a simple task that could have easily been accomplished by the IMF. Why not just have the IMF obtain the combination themselves, knock out everyone in the hotel with gas or something, then use their device to advance the time lock and recover the gold, without anyone being the wiser? I think one could write a captivating Mission: Impossible episode along that simplified scheme.
Aside from the ridiculous idea that the IMF somehow knows beforehand that stolen gold will be transported to and secured in a particular soft target - a hotel safe rather than a bank vault - the story is further complicated by having a crooked chess grandmaster who also sees an opportunity to steal the gold from the hotel safe - which the IMF also knows beforehand.
Now the IMF needs a chess computer that "can't be beaten," use it help an unknown chess player defeat the grandmaster in a competition at the hotel, making the grandmaster suspicious so that he'll come to the IMF chess player's hotel room and "discover" the computer. Then, while demonstrating the computer, just casually mention to him (falsely) that it "messes with watches," causing them to run fast. Coincidentally, the hotel is installing a time lock on their safe to make it more secure before the gold arrives. So now the chess master realizes that he can team up with IMF and their "chess computer" in order to steal the gold because he wasn't counting on a time lock on the hotel safe. Again, somehow the IMF knew beforehand that the hotel would be installing a time lock that would cause the chess master to need to work with the IMF.
In summary, in this episode we learn that the IMF: has foreign intelligence to ascertain exactly how stolen gold will be transported, has a device that can make a safe's time lock run fast, has a computer chess program that can't be beaten, and can temporarily disable everyone in a hotel, yet they can't figure out the easiest piece of the mission - how to obtain a safe's combination - which is shown to be simple, yet acquiring that combination is the sole reason for including the chess grandmaster subplot.