Another Life

Another Life is a Netflix Original TV series, released in July 2019. It stars Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame) as Niko Breckenridge...and she's about the only well-known actor in this show. The series has been heavily criticised for its badly researched science, the inclusion of badly envisioned plots and ideas, and for being pretty directionless at times.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The title has nothing to do with anything in the show. There's nothing that links it to having 'another life', to the act of living, and it seems to be tacked on for the sake of having a memorable title.
 * 2) The show features really bad science, such as a bacterial infection that somehow makes your nervous system (yes, your entire nervous system. Like, all the nerve tissue. All of it) pull itself out of the back of your neck, and try and crawl away down the hallway. Or a ship managing to detect a planet with 'Solid Oxygen', but not notice the fact that a moon was about to slam into the volcanic planet. The presence of 'solid oxygen' is also just bizarre, as this is a volcanically active planet (indicating the environment is- y'know- hot), and oxygen freezes at very, very low temperatures. Oxygen is a gas at room temperature. Why the hell did the writers think it'd be solid on a volcanically active planet?
 * 3) The writing is full of plot holes. For example, the signal that the crew is trying to find the source of turns out to be coming from a random planet that was previously invaded by a ultra-powerful alien race who created the artefacts that send the signal. The signal from Earth is being sent here, along with other signals, to one of the artefacts featured in the show. However, this isn't even a inhabited planet (with the exception of a bird-alien and his (we can only assume it's a he, given it's an alien sapient computer. This isn't even one of the evil aliens, just a random one), nor is it this evil alien empire's homeworld. It's just a planet they exterminated the inhabitants of with strange implants they put in people's heads.
 * 4) The penultimate episode involves the entire crew getting high off hallucinogenic alien sunflowers, partying like horny teenagers (which isn't too far behind the ages of most of the characters: the entire crew is- for really dumb reasons involving a few celebrities dying at 27- under the age of 27), and somehow traversing what was stated to be 'many months of travel' in the course of a episode. Possibly because the writers realised they had nearly run out of episodes in their first season, and needed to get the plot moving. Oh, and the ship's sentient AI gets emo because Niko won't love him. And then nearly kills the crew. Because a crewmember with one of the evil implants in their head turned him off. Yeah. There's a holographic AI/ship's captain romance subplot.
 * 5) The show sometimes uses technobabble worse than that of mh:awfulmovies:After Earth. Which is saying something.
 * 6) The number of Deus Ex machinas that somehow solve the 'problem of the week' is so great that something completely out-of-nowhere happens at least once every episode.
 * 7) Somehow the entire starship can be disabled by a alien bug chewing through a random wire in the shuttlebay, causing a fire. Then everything just fails, and the ship's nearly destroyed. Because of one wire.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The show at least looks pretty, and takes advantage of Netflix's cash to make all the sets look pretty nice.
 * 2) Katee Sackhoff is always a amazing actor, and she's only let down in Another Life by horrible scripts and terrible plots. It's refreshing to see her star in another big-budget TV show on a regular basis following her last 'Major' role in 2004's Battlestar Galactica as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. She's mainly been relegated to guest appearances and low-budget flicks since BSG wrapped up in 2005.
 * 3) The show's promotional poster, while misleading, is admittedly good to look at.
 * 4) The music is pretty decent, although it's outshined by many other scores on sci-fi TV at the moment.
 * 5) At least it's not Star Trek: Discovery bad.

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