No Formal Training

The Witcher TV show, season 1, beware, here be Spoilers.   So I’ve finally managed to give the show a watch from start to finish. Twice for the purposes of this review. I’ll be clear about a couple of things upfront first off. I’ve not read the books and I’ve only played the second and third games, and loved them both. But I’m not about to compare this show to the games, and even if I had read the books, I wouldn’t be comparing the two either.   But as a fan of the games, as a fan of the fantasy genre, I was looking forward to this show. I liked Game of Thrones, I wasn’t in love with it like other genre fans weas, or even people who weren’t fans of the genre who seemed to flock to it. And I wasn’t in love with it like fans of the books and short stories they were based on were.   I liked it. It was good overall, turned some heads with it subversion of the genres typical troopes, kept managing to find some way to surprise viewers and looked truly beautiful, even w...

Star Trek Picard Episode 2 Maps And Legends review Spoilers ahead, so beware.   The episode opens with the events of the attack on Mars being revealed to us, a small crew of humans working at Utopia Planitia are turned on by the synthetic F-8, who is clearly hacked by some external agency before likewise hacking the fleet yards systems, lowering shields and making the planet defence system fail to live up to its job.   In so doing F-8 actually shows a high degree of speed, accuracy and strength, although it’s impossible to tell if it compares to Data’s, F-8 quickly overpowers the crew, two security guards and hacks the systems in less than a minute, before turning a mining tool on himself to destroy his positronic net, most likely to cover up his hacked.   Picard and his Romulans friends are reviewing the footage of the attack that killed Dahj and can find no trace of her or any Romulans in it. Laris speculates that this is the work not of the Tal Shiar,...