The latest Terminator movie, Dark Fate, struggles to give satisfying emotional arcs to its large cast of characters. Writer Sara Lynn Michener says it doesn't help that a large chunk of the movie is wasted on a bombastic action sequence set aboard an exploding cargo plane. "I think there's this idea with, especially, male directors where they get really excited about trying to top what's been done before, but do it even bigger and better and more Michael Bay-ish," Michener says in Episode 386 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Are we really doing that in 2019? Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley agrees that the cargo plane sequence was silly, and stands in sharp contrast to the sense of realism captured in the franchise's best installments, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The new Netflix series Love, Death & Robots has a brilliant premise--take science fiction stories and adapt them into an anthology of animated shorts. Science fiction author Tom Gerencer loved seeing so much variety in such quick succession. "I just couldn't stop wanting to watch the next one, and I couldn't stop being amazed that the next one seemed even better than the one before, and that there were so many of them," Gerencer says in Episode 356 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "Totally inventive ideas, and the visuals on them were gorgeous and stunning." The show is at its best when it focuses on serious, thoughtful science fiction by top authors such as Peter F. Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds.