Orphan Black (2013 - 2024)

WATCH-THROUGH NOTES, SOME SPOILERS:

I'm tempted again to give Orphan Black another go. I've only ever made it a couple of episodes in before.

S1 - I'm enjoying Orphan Black. It's a little schlocky and there are some rum contrivances, but the intrigue is good, Maslany is great, and the supporting characters are all cool as well. Felix still quite annoying but not insurmountable. Just moved onto S2. The 'next episode on's now happen immediately after the last scene instead of giving you a second or two of credits, so it's already worse than S1.

Enjoying S2, though it has definitely slowed down. Instead of introducing new elements it's just giving out a little more info about existing elements. It really needs a Dharma or a Jacob. Currently hoping that Kira turns out to be psychic and that's the new thing. It's still good, though, and one thing I really like about it is how it keeps secondary characters in the mix, giving them interesting ways to stick around but letting them fade into the background for a bit if they need to. You never get the feeling that someone's just being given stuff to do because they're a series regular.

Finished. It did dip a bit after S1 but it really picked up again in S3 by adding in a bunch of new stuff (new sestras! boy clones! weird bug implants!) It did still stumble occasionally (they especially struggled to find stuff to do for the soccer mom clone but I guess couldn't bring themselves to just shuffle her out of focus, and they didn't do anything with the Kira psychic link thing which I called early on) but I felt that it made up for any weak spots with its strengths (intrigue, good writing, good action, and the amazing Maslany).

Also, just amazing how throughout the show every time there was a scene with two clones in it I'd forget that it was one actor playing all of them and then when the next scene started I'd suddenly go 'hang on, that was all one actor and they were all hugging each other and handing stuff to each other, how the fuck?'

Sadly, the final season (5) really crashed. They spent a load of time on that boring-ass island, the revealed big bad was a Slightly Older Than Natural Guy who then turns out to actually just be some rando pretending to be that, which is even less interesting, and they got really lazy with the writing. Like, the amount of people who flipped from good to bad and vice versa over and over thanks to single lines of dialogue was just stupid. I did really like the ending, though - I was hoping for a big Endgame style finale where the 10 or so established clones show up and use their skillsets and stuff, so at first I was disappointed that it boiled down to Sarah, Helena and Art with an assist from Scott and Hell Wizard, even though they did get to do some cool stuff. But then they spent the last twenty minutes of the episode getting all the main clones together to help Sarah deal with her depression and it was just so much more powerful, I was relieved they were smart enough not to go with my cheesy idea!

So, overall, worth watching even though it has its weaknesses.

I also gave the spin-off series a go, which is set thirty years or so in the future, and it's terrible. Really badly-written, weak intrigue. They get a couple of the supporting actors from the main show to turn up for a few scenes each with grey paint in their hair to say "hi, the main characters are too busy to help right now, so they sent me along!", it's so tacky. And it has that issue with legacy sequels where they have to undo the happy ending of the original, in this case at the expense of the original characterisations (granted I haven't watched to the end, but it just feels so unconvincing that Kira would grow up and decide that it's actually fine to make clones and get involved with shadowy corporations just like all those people who tortured her as a kid and killed members of her family).

There was also a sequel audio series with Tatiana Maslany but I won't bother with that. Oh, and a limited series 'side story' comic that they did halfway through the show, that I probably would have read at the correct point if I'd known about it, but I only heard about it after the show so I can't be bothered now.

I could watch an entire spin-off show of Helena beating people up and eating messily then saying stuff in broken English with a Russian accent, though, they should do that.