Nightflyers

:

Season 1
  • Network: SyFy
  • Series Premiere Date: Dec 2, 2018
User Score
5.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 78 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 78
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 78
  3. Negative: 28 out of 78
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User Reviews

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  1. Fred12
    Feb 2, 2019
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is one of the most unlogic and most foreseeable "horror" series I watched until now. Well to be honest, almost all horror movies are artificial, but this is a especially construed series, where - seriously - they embarked a psychopathic telepath onboard their billion $ space station who is able to manipulate feelings and thinkings of the crew members at will. Nonetheless, they are going on a trip to obviously meet aliens and make the first contact with probably that psychopath (I couldn't go on watching this cra* more than 2 episodes, so I am not sure what they finally want to do as nothing is getting explained whatsoever).

    In every episode, you can see **** happening to the crew, like a crew member commiting suicide due to influence to that telepath, and know what? Everything goes on just as usual as if that would be the most usual thing in the world. They not even think of getting rid of him and apperently the crew doctor is defending this special "kind" as if she was his mother. The whole thing becomes even more unlogical, as the complete technological gadgets and stuff are apperently made so "safe" to be sure that a crew member is being killed when using them (example: A crew member who is relaxing in an oxigen tank surrounded by water and an oxigen mask is suffocating after a "failure" of oxygen, and is not able to open the tank from the inside - yeah of course ;) )

    This complete unlogical stuff is obviously made up to keep the suspension up but it just gets annoying because its so thrown in your face and obvious **** that it hurts. I recommend reading a book about cooking radishes or couscous because that is more exciting after all...    … Expand
  2. Nobilis1984
    Dec 27, 2018
    3
    Explanation: The series is based on a 4 hour audio book/book.
    That's why you can't expect much. I'm halfway through half of this and it's just mediocre.
    That you really make a series out of it amazes me.
    Therefore you can really save this series
  3. thebaggins
    Feb 1, 2019
    3
    How did they fit so many stupid people on that ship? Budget looks good. Actors are doing an ok job, but this crap is so unbelievable it's impossible to watch.
  4. Elthor
    Dec 15, 2018
    3
    A series is fundamentally flawed when you know more about the plot from the two sentence plot summary on Imdb for the 1987 film (or the blurb on the back cover of the book) than in the first 3 episodes.
    Glacial.
    Edit: Having seen the whole season, I want my time back.
  5. Bradfordro
    Dec 18, 2018
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It's so boring and not very well written. Let me explain.

    The 1st episode starts off great but then it goes downhill by giving you the elution to the fact that every character has been killed and then without warning or any info they will throw you right into the past in order for you to have a connection with these characters who will all be dead at the end of the show or season.    … Expand
  6. amrrahmy
    Dec 5, 2018
    0
    The original story might have been great with overarching themes and filled with internal struggles, but this adaptation fails on every level to deliver any semblance of competent storytelling. The direction, choices in editing and cinematography, and stiff 'acting' from the entire cast renders this a dumpster fire.
  7. jmmh
    Dec 7, 2018
    0
    The big failure here is clearly the writing. Writers can get away with being lazy and ridiculous in pure horror movies. Think Friday the 13th and all its sequels. Dude in hockey mask kills people who do stupid things. The premise is already lazy so unskilled writers can get away with poor work.

    Fans of sci-fi, on the other hand, have much higher expectations. They notice when    The big failure here is clearly the writing. Writers can get away with being lazy and ridiculous in pure horror movies. Think Friday the 13th and all its sequels. Dude in hockey mask kills people who do stupid things. The premise is already lazy so unskilled writers can get away with poor work.

    Fans of sci-fi, on the other hand, have much higher expectations. They notice when things don't make sense or are unbelievable and they don't like it. They also expect the characters to act in reasonably intelligent and realistic ways. In sci-fi great writing can make up for low budgets and terrible effects (think old-school Doctor Who). But no amount of money, pretty visuals and high production values can make up for poor writing. This is where Nightflyers fails spectacularly, its writers are clearly incapable.

    What did the series get right? The ship itself is pretty cool. If you watch the preview featurette it shows that a great deal of effort and money was spent building the space ship sets and they look great. The powers that be should fire the show runners, the directors and especially the writing staff. Keep the set designers/builders and effect staff. Then give the existing sets over to some creative, intelligent sci-fi writers & directors to do something interesting with.

    Below are some examples (anything mentioned is learned early on or isn't of consequence)

    Alien space craft is close enough to Earth to be detectable and easily reachable using an old, existing spaceship. Governments don't care. Corporations don't care. The only people who do care are a rag-tag bunch of renegade (supposedly) science types. Seriously? In reality governments and corporations would be racing to get there first and the world's best and brightest would want to participate.

    Turns out the Nightflyer is (guessing) 30-40 years old. Its a one-off custom ship built decades ago by an individual to live on. Its crewed by a bunch of casual people with no special skills who thought they were signing up for a colonization mission. Yet this is the best ship available to make first contact with aliens?

    Way back in 1897 H. G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds which ends with all the martians being killed by natural pathogens on Earth. Yet 120 years later the writers on Nightflyers have no clue at all about such stuff. At one point the research team get something biological on board which they think is alien. The thing ends up bleeding and oozing all over the place. The research team never thinks or cares about any form of containment or protection. They hang out all around it wearing their casual clothes and even touch it with their bare hands. They cut and rip into it with large quantities of blood pouring out onto the floor. At one point a crew member is seen using tongs to hold a chunk of flesh dripping blood about six inches in front of his gaping mouth. Even doctors working on people (with less gore) wear gloves and face masks. These are supposedly skilled scientists with biological expertise? This is an unknown thing from and alien source and they never even consider pathogens.

    The ship has this fancy memory room which shoots lasers into a person’s eyes while they remember things. There is no effort to explain it at all or why it exists. The person using it just seems to hang out and think about old memories. Everyone loves using it. Turns out the only thing it seems to do is feed this information to a boogie man that then uses the knowledge to scare and torment the people. And, of course, the things people choose to remember in there are the exact things a boogie man would want to know. Its just a pointless thing so they lazy writers can set up scares.

    In sci-fi gravity during space travel is handled in three ways. There is no gravity and ships are built so that their thrust simulates gravity when the engines are firing (The Expanse). Large ships have big sections that rotate to create down-force to simulate gravity (The Martian). Mankind has mastered artificial gravity and people can just walk around ships without concern (Star Trek). The Nightflyer has HUGE sections that spin, clearly for generating down-force to simulate gravity. But in some scenes the ship clearly has artificial gravity because crew just walk around like normal in the non-spinning sections. Sci-fi writers should have a clue about such things.

    Melantha was genetically engineered. At one point only Melantha can fix something because of radiation that she can tollerate for 3 minutes but would kill anyone else. The hazard is just the location, not the problem. She struggles and claws her way across the room to the problem. At 3 minutes she just fixes the problem then passes out on the floor. Suddenly a normal human crew member walks in, strolls across the room casually and saves her.

    It is truly a pathetic effort; The whole series is chock full of lazy, uneducated writing.    … Expand
  8. ShaMana
    Dec 13, 2018
    2
    An incredibly boring show. Pacing is all over the place. It doesn't seem to be able to decide what genre is it. Not worth the time.
  9. Otacon_
    Feb 10, 2019
    2
    Started out as a compelling scifi show. I was intrigued, I thought yes, this is starting out interesting! (allthough I kind of immediately hated the opening scene, because that's where we're going to end up eventually.. still, I wanted to believe..)

    Then... it just went to complete unlogical chaotich-sub-plot-twists-GARBAGE. Why are we even focusing on anything else then the first    Started out as a compelling scifi show. I was intrigued, I thought yes, this is starting out interesting! (allthough I kind of immediately hated the opening scene, because that's where we're going to end up eventually.. still, I wanted to believe..)

    Then... it just went to complete unlogical chaotich-sub-plot-twists-GARBAGE.
    Why are we even focusing on anything else then the first actual contact with alien life!?
    What was aaaalll thisssss buuuuuuuul******t unimportant chaos surrounding the main freagin goal. Was the psychic kid and his first set goal not enough here ? All the chaos on board was so extremely unnecessary and useless.    … Expand
  10. badtactic
    Mar 12, 2019
    1
    As a fan of films like Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997), and more recent flicks like Life (2017) - I had hopes for this series. This hope was bolstered by George R.R. Martin's posit that horror and science fiction belong together - which, of course, has been well established long before the original novella of this book was first drafted.

    Unfortunately the series is a jarring,    As a fan of films like Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997), and more recent flicks like Life (2017) - I had hopes for this series. This hope was bolstered by George R.R. Martin's posit that horror and science fiction belong together - which, of course, has been well established long before the original novella of this book was first drafted.

    Unfortunately the series is a jarring, frenetic, poorly directed hop through inordinately long time periods and rather grotesque mishaps on the ship that the crew tends to view as completely normal.

    Honestly I really want to like this type of show - but the execution and some of the performances of the actors lower the overall quality of the series to such a state that it's painful to get through each episode. I'd argue the only saving grace is that the intro credit score is quite good.

    That being said I am fighting a lifelong habit of completionism - meaning that I have to finish this series, but tonight when I complete the final episode of the series I will rejoice that i don't have to return to the long, sparse, blood spattered hallways of the Nightflyer.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

32
#32 Most Discussed TV Season of 2018

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
47

Mixed or average reviews - based on 14 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 14
  3. Negative: 1 out of 14
  1. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Matt Zoller Seitz
    Dec 3, 2018
    40
    Unfortunately, the show never alchemizes these touchstones into a fresh, distinctive aesthetic. And when projects like this aren’t capable of knocking you out with style, they’d better have vivid characters and a riveting story to fall back on, and that’s not the case here, either.
    Read full review
  2. Reason.com
    Reviewed by: Glenn Garvin
    Nov 30, 2018
    20
    The constant, clumsy back-and-forth story line is not [Buhler]'s only annoying affectation. He's also larded Nightflyer with references to other, better, works, from Star Trek to The Shining, probably intended in homage but really serving just to remind you how much better all of them were. And the abundant gore, no doubt a confused nod to Martin's original premise that horror and sci-fi can coexist in the same vehicle, serves no purpose at all. [Buhler] may think he's speaking in some advanced new artistic argot, but really, it's just a lot of outer-space jabberwocky.
    Read full review
  3. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Alex McLevy
    Nov 30, 2018
    58
    There’s a sense all of this has been done before, and showrunner Jeff Buhler doesn’t quite know how to make it feel new again. It’s a testament to the pulpy dramatics of the source material that Nightflyers remains enjoyable to watch despite these weaknesses.
    Read full review
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