4.8 Future Imperfect Suddenly, Riker wakes up in sickbay. Beverly Crusher welcomes him back to consciousness and reveals that it’s 16 years in the future. He’s the Captain of the Enterprise and when he was on the surface of the planet he picked up a virus which, after recently becoming active, has wiped out 16 years of his memories. Including his tromboning abilities. As he acclimatises to a weird new future where everyone has slightly different hair and perfect skin (except Worf, who’s been completely messed up after 16 years of losing every fistfight he gets into) he’s surprised to see Picard and Troi arrive on a Romulan vessel....

1.18 Home Soil The Enterprise arrives at Velara III to check on the progress of a terraforming colony (if you can call four people a colony) and are surprised to find that the leader, Kurt Mandl, is far from pleased to see them. Troi helpfully informs everyone of this fact about nine times in the first ten minutes, just in case you missed it, although she once again declines to explain how her empathic abilities work over videophone....

2.10 The Dauphin Anyway, Picard welcomes on board Salia, the future leader of the war-torn planet Daled IV, and her aging, over-protective guardian Anya. While touring the ship, the delegation bumps into Wesley Crusher, who is doing the important business of carrying a single magnet around. Salia recognises the magnet from the textbooks she’s read (yep, honestly) and because of the excessively sheltered life she’s led, falls immediately in love with Wesley, who is similarly head over heels....

1.17 When The Bough Breaks Troi suddently senses the presence of… something — feelings, or whatever — which turns out to be the planet Aldea. Because apparently, she’s so sensitive she can detect an entire civilisation (of about nine people) from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. Aldea decloaks, not because Troi’s blown their cover with her super-powered sense of vague unease, but because they’ve decided to break their silence!...

1.1 Pilot We begin, as most stories do, at the beginning. Scully has a meeting with a few upper management fellows at the FBI, including one unnerving and quiet man, smoking in the corner. She is assigned to the X-Files in order to bring a scientific mind to a series of unexplained cases currently being researched by a brilliant but wayward agent. As she goes to meet her new partner, Scully is all business with no visible snark, despite what she is walking into....

2.8 House Of The Devil In previous reviews, I’ve trotted out the old adage that Riverdale wants to have its cake and eat it too. Indeed, this is perhaps the only cliche that the series has wholeheartedly embraced instead of upending expectations as has become its norm over the past 21 episodes. One minute we have a character criticizing the male gaze mere minutes before the camera lingers on another key player – a teenager in the show’s universe – stripping down for an impromptu pole dance during a downbeat performance of a Tears for Fears cover....

Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) is pulling marketing duties for online casinos to help pay for his Masters’ degree in finance at Princeton University. With a tuition fee repayment looming, he goes all in and loses, gambling on a site called Midnight Black. Aside from seeming immediately dated and old-hat, it’s tempting to think that Runner Runner might have been made as some kind of tax thing. The film even inadvertently put that idea in my head by having Block live in Costa Rica, far away from American jurisdiction and financial administration....

It’s nice how Sailor Moon honestly depicts the immaturity and wild fantasies of their target audience without poking too much fun at them. For two 8th Grade girls to genuinely think they can start a successful career as a pop duo just because they want to is not that farfetched. Neither is the fact that a fight broke the project up less than five minutes into it. The rehearsal scene with Usagi and Naru is definitely one of the instances where the dub suffers, as the dub theme song is specifically about Sailor Moon, whereas the original theme song was merely a love song that, while thematically linked to the premise, could be about anyone....

In the show’s opening scene, all of Frank’s offspring gather with him to officially say goodbye to the long dead Aunt Ginger. Standing next to them, on a surprisingly sullen day for late summer Chicago (it’s the first day of school, thus putting us in early September), is the equally grieving Gallagher clan sired by Uncle Patrick. If you recall from the previous episode, Uncle Patrick is the distant relation who swindled them out of the deed to their home when he got his forged will for Aunt Ginger to the notary first....

Sherlockjust dropped a major twist at the end of “The Lying Detective,” revealing that Sherlock and Mycroft have a sister named Eurus. With only one episode left in Sherlockseason 4, here are all of the questions we need answered before this detective drama goes on another one of its seemingly interminable hiatuses… Sherlockwas not very clear on who or what “Sherrinford” exactly is (but we got another post-it note with the name written down on Mycroft’s desk)....

Cards on the table: I’ve had grumbles in the past about some of the work of Illumination Entertainment to date, and in particular, its continued struggle to find narratives to marry up to its quite excellent work in creating characters, and in on-screen comedy. As much as I chuckle through the Despicable Me movies, when it came to something like The Secret Life Of Pets, I felt the concept was great, but the story wasn’t....

There’s no messing about in London when we begin, as we pick up with Jacob and Cassie in Wales where they’ve gone to visit her dad and brother. The last time we saw the Ainsworth family they were so blissfully happy that they forgot to notice their daughter was imploding in front of their eyes, but here it’s Cassie who has to compensate for her father’s fractured state. Poor little Ruben has been coping with an emotionally absent father since his mother passed away, and all Cassie can do is get frustrated with her dad for checking out....

The final episode of the current lineup spends more time than is necessary wondering where Fred’s got to – not realising that the official website proudly declared Fred wormfood the previous week. Of course, Freddy boy is so dense, it probably took him a week to realise the curve of his skull was pointing inwards. Effy is still in hospital and there’s a moment of “LOLCRAZYPEOPLE” that will have your jaw hanging in disbelief....

Son of Batman, the latest DC Universe animated movie from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is the story of, well…exactly what you’d expect from that title, really. Based on the Grant Morrison/Andy Kubert story, “Batman and Son” (which sounds like a thoroughly amusing sitcom), Son of Batman takes some necessary liberties with the source material, piles on the violence, and makes some story and character choices that may annoy some viewers....

But the more I think about it, the more doubts I have. Why would Marks kill Bobby? He was there when Jax stopped at nothing to get revenge on Pope for Opie (and Tig’s daughter). He knew the whole hot mess with Lin’s gang was a result of Jax’s insatiable desire for vengeance. So why kill Bobby? Why not leave Bobby maimed? At any rate, while I was deeply amused by this episode’s opening sex montage, I was less moved by the pro forma character development....

4.7 Fruit For The Crows We’re seven episodes into this series of Sons Of Anarchy already, and it was at this point last year that I was starting to really doubt the direction that it was going in. Thankfully, I couldn’t be happier with the show this season, as it has certainly had a lot of strong episodes so far, and the narrative feels far more cohesive than the last series....

One of my favorite things about Space Dandy is that it’s more than willing to switch up its entire mission statement for the sake of an episode. Someone could be watching this show because they love to see bounty hunters at work tracking down their prey (although I highly doubt this), and in an episode like this, where none of that is even mentioned and instead sees the gang forming a rock group, they might get a little frustrated....

By Jupiter’s cock, the prequel series is really upping the stakes in terms of excitement, intrigue and sex. What was initially considered ‘filler’ until the second season rolled around has, in only two episodes, raised the level of betrayal and duplicity in ancient Capua and given us new characters that we are already caring about. The second episode, called Missio, sees almost every character given a task of some kind that, for better or worse, will affect their standing at Batiatus’ ludos....

This review contains spoilers. 7. Sacramentum With the series now exhibiting all the fire of its predecessors (and in the case of the arena’s destruction, that’s literal fire) the story is barrelling along at an increasingly rapid pace. The reshuffled cast have found their groove, the writers have nailed down the characters, and the choreographers are coming up with more and more inventive endings for the various lumps of meat in the cast....

This review contains spoilers. SS-GB might be billed as an alt-history thriller, but we’re really watching a circus act: Sam Riley’s Superintendent Douglas Archer is a high wire walker, his every step risking a perilous fall to an almost certain death. Resistance to the left of him, Nazis to the right, here he is, stuck in the middle with you. Episode two left Archer at a low ebb. We didn’t see just a flicker of emotion from the usually stony-faced detective in that last scene but a total collapse, and understandably so....