Seriously, if you haven’t seen The Mandalorian, look away now. This article also contains spoilers for Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Return of the Sith, and The Last Jedi. In case you didn’t read the standfirst: this article contains spoilers about The Mandalorian, and also all of Star Wars. The pictures are all … Read more
After waiting almost two years for the return of the 80s sci-fi/horror Netflix hit Stranger Things, Alice Webb-Liddall binged the third season on Monday night, and still sobbing from the finale, reviewed the laughter, violence, and heartbreaking sadness. Who would have thought that there was a place with more rats than Titirangi. Luckily for the … Read more
The Passage comes with a best-selling novel pedigree – but will the show last long enough to make good on it? Sam Brooks reviews the new show which premiered on TVNZ last night. “I’m the girl from nowhere. The one no one will miss. I’m Amy Bellafonte. This is how the world ends.” Everything good and … Read more
Today, Auckland band Carnivorous Plant Society release their new album The New King. To celebrate, bandleader Finn Scholes has drawn us a comic, a “science fiction story about a man who realises his life is not what it seems,” that you can read while listening to the album. The Spinoff’s music content is brought to you … Read more
New Zealand fantasy writer Steffi Green interviews Charlie Jane Anders, author of the smash-hit novel All The Birds in the Sky, ahead of her appearances this weekend at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Like all literary genres, fantasy and science fiction are replete with common tropes. We love stories of sword-fights and space trekking … Read more
It’s been touted as the new Black Mirror, but there’s a lot more to blockbuster anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. Here’s our crash course ahead of the premiere episodes, arriving exclusively on Lightbox next Wednesday. This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent … Read more
Aaron Yap plumbs the depths of The Expanse, a sci-fi space opera that’s drawn comparisons to some of television’s greatest. It’s weird to think that the Syfy channel once spawned Battlestar Galactica, one of, if not the finest science fiction series of the modern television era. Today, the very mention of Syfy is cause for … Read more
Dark clouds gather into FX mattes and suddenly all the adults and electricity disappears. This is the setting for The Cul De Sac, TVNZ’s new young adult series. The first episode played on Sunday night and José Barbosa reckons it shows promise. Dark, grim promise. “It’s the apocalypse” says bespectacled neighbour played by former Shortland Street star KJ … Read more
For Monitor this week, Aaron Yap looks at Humans, AMC’s new elegant sci fi drama that examines the not-so-distant role of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives. Artificial intelligence has long been one of the most commonly explored subjects of all science fiction. From the spookily prescient writings of Isaac Asimov and H.G Wells to … Read more
Aaron Yap watches the first two seasons of sci-fi series Orphan Black, and hopes for just as many fast-paced, character-driven clone thrills from the lead roles in the third season. When Orphan Black debuted on BBC America in 2013, it seemed to come out of nowhere. A bolt of fresh, femme-powered lightning into a television market … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored feature where we mine the extensive Lightbox catalogue for cool shows you might like to watch. This week – it’s superhero central. Superheroes are everywhere at the moment. The new Avengers movie has flown into cinemas, one of the X Men has come out as gay and here at home … Read more