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A comedic family adventure, a mini historical celebrity encounter, a creepy bottle episode, a big world-ending finale with callbacks to the classic series, the most unlikely of multi Doctor stories. In the end, Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials were less of a birthday celebration and more of a mini season designed to showcase everything that Doctor Who can be at its best—all while closing one chapter and opening a new one.

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s daily coverage of Echo, which debuted tonight on Disney+. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can check out our full Winter 2024 schedule here, and learn more about the site and its mission on our About page. When Marvel’s Disney+ TV show experiment first launched, the pitch was simple: Take (relatively) beloved supporting characters from Marvel’s hit movies and give them their own space to shine in a miniseries format.

As I was preparing to tackle this Feud season, I pulled books off my shelves and added ebooks to my iPad, reminding myself of the key parts of the Truman Capote story: The Stations of the Capote Cross, so to speak. Given that this season is primarily about the wreckage of the author’s social life in the 1970s, there hasn’t been much in the past five episodes about Other Voices, Other Rooms, The Grass Harp, Beat the Devil, “A Christmas Memory,” Breakfast at Tiffany’s or In Cold Blood—except in passing.

When Danielle receives a message from her husband at Happy Valley, it’s a small request: her stepson is getting married, and they want her to send a message for the nuptials. It’s an example of something she’s missing by agreeing to return to Mars against her will, and she’s initially more than happy to hit record and send them a perfectly generic set of platitudes about marriage. But then she pauses.

For All Mankind’s time jumps are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow the writers to progress the show’s central conceit of an alternate history space race into uncharted territory without needing to worry about the logistics. The show leaps from Moon Landing to Moon Base to Mars Landing to Mars Base without having to deal with the years of development in between, and it ensures that the show can cover these important milestones without having to run 12 seasons.

When you’re a show that jumps a huge stretch of time between seasons, there is a lot of “work” that needs to be done to recenter a narrative. Characters have changed, circumstances have shifted, and there’s a sense that the viewer needs to get their footing in this new reality. In the case of For All Mankind, there are two interrelated tasks within this work. The first is to blast through the alternate history details in the intervening period, both in culture at large and within the space race specifically.

I've always been naturally intrigued by the range of Freewrite portable word processors/digital keyboards from Astrohaus. They’re an American tech company in the Detroit metro, and they keep the flame burning for the the AlphaSmart brand of word processors, which had a passionate cult following. Astrohaus has developed and sold several such devices for about eight years. Though they’ve released each with a variety of SKUs, there have thus far been two primary models, their original smart typewriter and a clamshell design called the Traveler.

In recent years, a number of talented sim racers have taken the huge leap from virtual racing to the real thing. Tim Heinemann (podium finisher in DTM) and James Baldwin (British GT race winner) immediately spring to mind as strong examples. Over a decade before them, however, one British driver made the similar but then largely unprecedented step from the screen to the cockpit of a real-life race car. The 2023 film 'Gran Turismo', directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), focuses on British gamer-turned-racer Jann Mardenborough.

Welcome to Tongzhi Tuesday, a series where I’ll be reviewing queer Asian and AAPI content in whatever form that may come in, whether it be movies, TV, music, or the occasional manhua. Subjects and tone will range from comical to serious, depending on my mood. Yes, this is a veiled excuse to talk about the things I like. Want to suggest something for me to review? Leave me a comment below or email me at lindaiyupro@gmail.