Beacon 23 (MGM+, 2023)

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shevek
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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.
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VegaTaxeca
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Thanks for the info. :thumbup:

I might have a look, if it shown here on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Regarding Lena Headey, I mostly remember her from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (with Summer Glau as the terminator).

She was also in St. Trinian's, a movie with lots of beautiful young women. And you could almost consider it a comic film, since all the
St. Trinian's movies (there are seven of them) are based on the cartoons by Ronald Searle.
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shevek
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VegaTaxeca wrote:
5 months ago
Thanks for the info. :thumbup:

I might have a look, if it shown here on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Regarding Lena Headey, I mostly remember her from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (with Summer Glau as the terminator).

She was also in St. Trinian's, a movie with lots of beautiful young women. And you could almost consider it a comic film, since all the
St. Trinian's movies (there are seven of them) are based on the cartoons by Ronald Searle.
Hey! I had never heard of St Trinian's (the cartoons or the movies) so I checked out the 2007 movie.
What a gem! Nothing deep to write home about, but you're right - probably the largest group of beautiful women in any movie I've seen recently.
Standouts for me were definitely Gemma Arterton as Kelly (she had that Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction look) and Amara Karan as Peaches (I always love to discover new South Asian beauties).

With all the different subplots (the quiz show, the heist, the 'new girl', etc.), the only thing I noticed is that there was a missed-opportunity
with Lena Headey's character Miss Dickinson, a very prim and buttoned-up English teacher whose character doesn't develop. I mean, she proclaims her admiration for the hot blonde girl Chelsea backstage at the quiz show, and even calls her "very sexy" and then *does nothing about it*. We didn't have to see a lesbian kiss - I would have just been happy if Lena Headey had just taken off her glasses, let down her hair, unbuttoned her blouse, and looked desirable for her crush, implying that they took it further offscreen. Simple things like that!

But I digress. Definitely back to Beacon 23!
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shevek
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I guess I forgot to mention - the writer for this series is the same one who did Silo.

Episode 3 has:

- Lesbian lovemaking (Aster's lover and business partner comes aboard the station.)
- Even more murder

The answer to "how fast can we get lesbians on a show" has been answered: within 3 episodes.

And something quite surprising:

Deliberate, in-depth mentions of playing the gambling game Dabo and the winning of "credits".

Dabo is a Ferengi game which is canon in Star Trek (although the rules have never been established) even to the extent of their casinos having "dabo girls" cameo'd by many beautiful actresses.
And of course, the Federation doesn't have money per se but it does have a currency called "credits" which allows citizens access to the power grid.

So, is Beacon 23 actually somehow set in the Paramount Star Trek universe? If not, how do they get away with mentioning that?
Dogfish
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shevek wrote:
5 months ago
VegaTaxeca wrote:
5 months ago
Thanks for the info. :thumbup:

I might have a look, if it shown here on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Regarding Lena Headey, I mostly remember her from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (with Summer Glau as the terminator).

She was also in St. Trinian's, a movie with lots of beautiful young women. And you could almost consider it a comic film, since all the
St. Trinian's movies (there are seven of them) are based on the cartoons by Ronald Searle.
Hey! I had never heard of St Trinian's (the cartoons or the movies) so I checked out the 2007 movie.
What a gem! Nothing deep to write home about, but you're right - probably the largest group of beautiful women in any movie I've seen recently.
Standouts for me were definitely Gemma Arterton as Kelly (she had that Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction look) and Amara Karan as Peaches (I always love to discover new South Asian beauties).

With all the different subplots (the quiz show, the heist, the 'new girl', etc.), the only thing I noticed is that there was a missed-opportunity
with Lena Headey's character Miss Dickinson, a very prim and buttoned-up English teacher whose character doesn't develop. I mean, she proclaims her admiration for the hot blonde girl Chelsea backstage at the quiz show, and even calls her "very sexy" and then *does nothing about it*. We didn't have to see a lesbian kiss - I would have just been happy if Lena Headey had just taken off her glasses, let down her hair, unbuttoned her blouse, and looked desirable for her crush, implying that they took it further offscreen. Simple things like that!

But I digress. Definitely back to Beacon 23!
The original St Trinian's movies, in their historical context, are really odd. Like, what in the name of Operation Yewtree was going on there? Worth looking at as an historical oddity. Not terrible movies per se, but very much the kind of thing you wouldn't think anybody would make today, and then somebody did.
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