Beacon 23 (MGM+, 2023)
Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2023 8:11 pm
Sci-fi thriller series just starting to come out with an initial 8-episode run.
I've watched the first two episodes.
Some may be interested because it stars Lena Headey, who is famous for playing Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones,
and also (much more obscurely) played the superheroine 'Ultra' in the aborted TV pilot based on the sexy Luna Bros comic, back around 2006.
The other main star, Stephan James, is a black Canadian actor I've never heard of (and yes, he looks a lot like Ice Cube from the side, but he really doesn't from the front).
The action all takes place on a very limited setting: a 'beacon' or lighthouse in space (I didn't realize those were needed in the 23rd century, nor that it would be necessary to station a human inside them). It's a remote galactic outpost but it's not packed with characters the way Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine would be, so the cast is limited only to the two people on the station, and a bunch of pirate invaders who are trying to steal stuff from it. At least so far.
Lena is Aster, a rep supposedly from the Intergalactic Space Agency (ISA) but I'm beginning to think she might be a thief or a prospector or both,
because her main goal is to retrieve a bag of glowing rocks made of an unknown, very valuable element (unobtainium, I guess).
Meanwhile, Stephan is Halan, who pretends to run the station, but I think is actually a military man who went AWOL and has some kind of PTSD hallucinations possibly caused by 'gravity waves'.
Because of the limited set, you can almost play a drinking game: Drink whenever someone opens or closes a hatch, opens or closes an airlock, or runs up or down a flight of spiral steps. Because that happens a lot.
Nothing really sexy here, unless you think Lena Headey is still hot. There is one moment of decent peril so far, from Episode 1, where Halan chokes Aster into unconsciousness. But then, Aster becomes boss bitch when she traps Halan in an airlock, so the tables are turned. But they're both trying to get off the station - Halan to escape the authorities (I think) and Aster to cash in on the glowing rocks.
The 'natural diversity' of the cast (short-haired black female as an AI; muscular Russian lesbian with shaved head; violent Turkish pirate, etc.)
reminds me a lot of the Expanse. In fact, the young man in the show looks an awful lot like Filip, the biracial son of Marco Inaros and Naomi Nagata from the Expanse. Either that's a big coincidence, or a lot of sci-fi shows cast the same way these days. Murderous psychopaths hunting each other around the station also makes me think of that classic 1981 sci-fi thriller Outland, set on a moon on Jupiter. Remember that one?
Anyway, so far it's been a suspenseful ride, if you count people chasing each other in and out of rooms and up and down spiral staircases. I'm intrigued to see how the gravity waves might play into the plot, and also, given that ships are going FTL in this universe, how often other characters arrive at the station over the next six episodes.
Anyone else catch this yet? The only reason I knew about it is because I saw an advertisment on IMDB while I was looking up an actress.
I've watched the first two episodes.
Some may be interested because it stars Lena Headey, who is famous for playing Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones,
and also (much more obscurely) played the superheroine 'Ultra' in the aborted TV pilot based on the sexy Luna Bros comic, back around 2006.
The other main star, Stephan James, is a black Canadian actor I've never heard of (and yes, he looks a lot like Ice Cube from the side, but he really doesn't from the front).
The action all takes place on a very limited setting: a 'beacon' or lighthouse in space (I didn't realize those were needed in the 23rd century, nor that it would be necessary to station a human inside them). It's a remote galactic outpost but it's not packed with characters the way Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine would be, so the cast is limited only to the two people on the station, and a bunch of pirate invaders who are trying to steal stuff from it. At least so far.
Lena is Aster, a rep supposedly from the Intergalactic Space Agency (ISA) but I'm beginning to think she might be a thief or a prospector or both,
because her main goal is to retrieve a bag of glowing rocks made of an unknown, very valuable element (unobtainium, I guess).
Meanwhile, Stephan is Halan, who pretends to run the station, but I think is actually a military man who went AWOL and has some kind of PTSD hallucinations possibly caused by 'gravity waves'.
Because of the limited set, you can almost play a drinking game: Drink whenever someone opens or closes a hatch, opens or closes an airlock, or runs up or down a flight of spiral steps. Because that happens a lot.
Nothing really sexy here, unless you think Lena Headey is still hot. There is one moment of decent peril so far, from Episode 1, where Halan chokes Aster into unconsciousness. But then, Aster becomes boss bitch when she traps Halan in an airlock, so the tables are turned. But they're both trying to get off the station - Halan to escape the authorities (I think) and Aster to cash in on the glowing rocks.
The 'natural diversity' of the cast (short-haired black female as an AI; muscular Russian lesbian with shaved head; violent Turkish pirate, etc.)
reminds me a lot of the Expanse. In fact, the young man in the show looks an awful lot like Filip, the biracial son of Marco Inaros and Naomi Nagata from the Expanse. Either that's a big coincidence, or a lot of sci-fi shows cast the same way these days. Murderous psychopaths hunting each other around the station also makes me think of that classic 1981 sci-fi thriller Outland, set on a moon on Jupiter. Remember that one?
Anyway, so far it's been a suspenseful ride, if you count people chasing each other in and out of rooms and up and down spiral staircases. I'm intrigued to see how the gravity waves might play into the plot, and also, given that ships are going FTL in this universe, how often other characters arrive at the station over the next six episodes.
Anyone else catch this yet? The only reason I knew about it is because I saw an advertisment on IMDB while I was looking up an actress.