Trying a new thing here at the ATH Network. We’re going to give you old news. That’s right, it’s the news you may have already encountered out in the wild, packaged into a bite-sized link collection post with the catchy title “Yesterday’s News Today.” Now, you might be asking, “Why this? Why now?” It’s a good question.
Now without further ado, let’s see what happened yesterday.
Continue reading Mario, Mutants, and a Star Wars?After initial worry about the second half of season 4, Stranger Things returns with a strong conclusion to the season finale. With the cast on various journeys to stop Vecna, it gives a powerful and entertaining demonstration to each individual character and their own roles in stopping Henry/One/Vecna.
From the very beginning of the season, we see some development between Steve and Nancy as they show sparks of their old romantic feelings for one another. As Nancy and Jonathan drift further apart, as we find out in a moment of dramatic irony that Jonathan decided to attend a different college than Nancy, unbeknownst to her. Just as the viewer becomes resigned to any hope of rekindling the flames of Steve and Nancy, we can see a definite foreshadowing of Nancy and Jonathan coming to an end and the romantic feelings between Nancy and Steve grow stronger throughout the season and Nancy jumping in to save Steve from the Upside Down. Though nothing officially happens between them, Eddie points out to Steve how Nancy did not hesitate to jump in after him. Nancy’s courageous act shows her love for Steve as well as her undeniable character development from a meek girl to a strong, independent woman.
Continue reading A Review of Stranger Things S4, Part 2
Kelly is an English teacher and a wife and mother of 2 boys who loves reading and writing. She decided to join After the Hype to share her thoughts and feelings about the latest and (no-so) greatest shows, movies, and games.
In the heavily-anticipated season 4 of Stranger Things, fans were able to see their favorite characters return (along with a few new faces). After a 3-year hiatus, the cast returns as high school students trying to make it in their new surroundings.
Millie Bobby Brown makes a sensational comeback as Eleven, now under her birth-given name, Jayne. She gives a fantastic performance as a normal girl struggling to fit in her new city and school while continuing her long-distance relationship with Mike Wheeler. The classic fish-out-of-water persona portrayed by El is seen to come to an ugly head when she hits the school bully in the face with a roller skate, thus demonstrating El’s struggle to focus her anger without her powers. Given all the change and growth of the characters, physically, El’s character has been surprisingly unchanged in terms of her innocence and mild manner until her realization of her friends’ peril. This is the truly pivotal moment in which Eleven turns from her sweet demeanor into the powerful force of good between the two worlds.
Continue reading A Review of Stranger Things S4, Part 1Kelly is an English teacher and a wife and mother of 2 boys who loves reading and writing. She decided to join After the Hype to share her thoughts and feelings about the latest and (no-so) greatest shows, movies, and games.
With the announcement on Friday 15th May of the new Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, fans are unsurprisingly in a euphoric state. A lot of fans lauded Anson Mount and Ethan Peck for their portrayals of Captain Pike and Spock in Discovery’s second season and there were campaigns for a Pike series whilst Discovery season 2 was still airing. It looks like CBS have listened to what we want and commissioned this new series and it may be more important than we realise.
Putting aside the ability for it to offer explanations for some of the canonical irregularities that more hardcore fans of Star Trek accused Discovery of there is something way more important that it can do. Captain Christopher Pike is not someone who was just plucked out of thin air for the sophomore season of Discovery, he is quite an important character in the Star Trek mythos.
Continue reading Strange New Worlds: The Most Important New Star Trek Series?
Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
Because it became clear very early on into this project that an article covering the entire Stargate Franchise would be far too long I broke it down into four parts. But I also wanted to present the full article in all it’s glory as well so here it is. What you might consider the Deluxe Edition. I hope you all enjoy it.
In October of 1994, Stargate hit the cinema screens and became a surprise hit. Critics were not kind to the Roland Emmerich-directed epic adventure, but it struck a chord with audiences with it’s stunning photography and intriguing story. It launched a franchise that has become one of the most popular Science Fiction franchises of all time. A franchise that consists of: 3 films, 3 live action series, 1 animated series and, most recently, a 10 part mini-sode series. Not to mention the various games and books that were released. But we will get to all that in time; first we need to go back to the beginning, to where it all started….The 1994 feature film.
I should probably preface this part of the article with a small statement; it may seem like I am being harsh against the feature film but that is only because of everything that came after. The film started it all and without it we wouldn’t have got SG1 or anything else, however, for me the film just doesn’t hold up in comparison to the series.
Continue reading Stepping Through the Wormhole: 25 Years of Stargate: The Complete FranchiseMatt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
In 2009 the Sci-Fi Channel re-branded itself to SyFy to shift emphasis from harder science fiction series like Battlestar Galactica and the Stargate franchise. Along with the re-branding, a new series began that had a science fiction edge- mixing supernatural elements with comedy and a quirky feel that explored history in an interesting and unique way. This was not time travel (although time travel would feature in the series at one point); it was a modern day set series about agents whose sole mission was to retrieve items that were imbued with powers. These artifacts were things that ranged from the irritating to a world-ending weapon of mass destruction-but even the lesser powered artifacts had downsides to using them.
Continue reading Endless Wonder: 10 Years of Warehouse 13Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
It’s still a couple of months away, but the hype for Star Trek: Picard is in full swing. At the 2019 Destination Star Trek, I was lucky enough to attend the Patrick Stewart talk and in that he discussed a few things to expect from the new series. For more on my experience at Destination Star Trek see my article here.
Continue reading Star Trek Picard: What Do We Know?Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
With the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis and the announcement that the new series of Stargate would be going after a younger, sexier demographic; Stargate Universe was already on a back foot before a single scene had been shot. The loyal audience of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis felt ostracized by the producers of Stargate Universe with the announcement. It didn’t help that they also decided to take the series in a darker direction, capitalizing on the success of the recent Battlestar Galactica remake which was getting high critical acclaim. Because they copied the grittier tone of Battlestar Galactica, the sense of humor was almost entirely stripped away from the series- this left the fans feeling like it wasn’t a Stargate series at all. Add to it that most of the characters in the series were seen as bland or downright unlikable, there was this feeling of disassociation from the brand that turned off many Stargate fans away from the series. The series also took too long to find its direction- many of the early episodes felt like their hook was literally just about what resource they needed to replenish this week.
Continue reading Stepping Through the Wormhole: 25 Years of Stargate: Part 4Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
With the success of Stargate SG1 the producers started to think of ideas on how to expand the Stargate universe. They started coming up with several different ideas on how to continue the franchise. The initial idea was that SG1 would end and the spin off would pick up where it left off. The SGC would have relocated to an ancient base under Antarctica and the series would have taken place in our galaxy still. When they realized that there was no way they were going to be able to wait for SG1 to finish because it kept getting renewed, they decided to run both series concurrently and move the Atlantis series to another galaxy.
Moving the series to the Pegasus Galaxy freed the producers and writers up to tell different stories and introduce new and different races and cultures that were not bound by the canon that SG1 had established. It also meant that they needed to establish a new antagonist species to the series. They didn’t want to re-tread old ground on the type of enemy they had for Atlantis– they wanted something different from the Goa’uld. The Wraith were the result. Vampiric in nature, the Wraith feed upon human beings- draining their life energy and absorbing it into themselves. This makes them incredibly resilient to damage and allows them to heal quickly (especially if they have just recently fed). It was decided that the Wraith would have a matriarchal society with Queens being the top of the chain, much like bees. They took a lot from the hierarchy of bees in designing the Wraith.
Continue reading Stepping Through the Wormhole: 25 Years of Stargate: Part 3Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
Due to the success of the original film, there was intention for Stargate to continue, the original creators of the film envisioned a trilogy of films-whilst others had a different idea. Producers Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had been working on The Outer Limits together and both of them, independently from each other, approached MGM with the same idea: a TV series based on the Stargate film. Upon realising they had the same idea, they decided to work together on the project. They spent three months studying the original film to learn the mechanics of the Stargate and came to a conclusion: there was no way that the Stargate would only go to one place. From the idea that the gate requires 6 symbols and the point of origin to establish a connection (and there are 38 symbols on the gate itself, not including the point of origin), you can deduce that there are 1,987,690,320 different permutations of gate addresses possible. That’s a lot of potential addresses to go to. So, it makes sense that there are Stargates all over the galaxy rather than just two.
Continue reading Stepping Through the Wormhole: 25 Years of Stargate: Part 2Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
