NEXT on Fox

[Barry Wallis]

I started watching NEXT on Fox due to the brief discussion on SN. It's the best tech show since Mr. Robot. I have very few complaints (one is that the code snippet at the end of the credits isn't updated each week and still says File #1 even on the third episode).

 

[danlock]

Star Trek: The Next Generation used the same intro for every single episode for seven seasons. The same planets, the same music, the same Enterprise-D flyby and then initiation of Warp Drive and fade to black prior to the first commercials. If you think about it, it's hard to believe what TV shows get away with. /s

Movies with much larger budgets per minute of screen time make even more flagrant errors in their display of code and expect us to suspend our disbelief. Maybe they go by an unwritten rule which says something like, "If we can fool most of the people, that's good enough. Think of all those popular shows in the past that were successful and only the geekiest of the geeks, a number so small it's irrelevant as far as we're concerned, will complain about any inaccuracies or mistakes."

They might not realize that the number of people who will spot the errors or things like that grows significantly larger every year, and that those of us who are the geeks notice regardless.

I haven't watched NEXT, but the credits are probably similar to most TV shows... a canned intro which was possibly not created by the same person(s) who created the show. You'd think they'd be able to alter something more easily for each episode given the huge increase in video technology since even a few years ago, but maybe it's not that important to them or to the plot, or maybe the File #1 isn't an indicator of the episode number but something more general... or something I haven't considered. What if it remains for season one and, if NEXT is renewed for a second season, it reads "File #2" in season two... or after a certain number of episodes changes to indicate that those episodes were related somehow? Hmm... It might be a new way of doing TV serials, where a connected plotline is followed for a few episodes and then another starts. That would be kinda cool.

At any rate, despite not having seen it myself, I know what internal anguish (or mere frustration) things like that can cause and I can empathize.

 

[PHolder]

Star Trek: The Next Generation used the same intro for every single episode for seven seasons

Actually, when it originally aired, they edited it for the start of season, I'm going to go with three. If you look really close at the later ones, you can see the join because the star field doesn't line up where they did the edit.

 

[Barry Wallis]

or maybe the File #1 isn't an indicator of the episode number but something more general

The name of each episode is File #n.

 

[Steve]

I just watched the first 3 episodes of “Next”. It's a nice procedural concept, but I'm a bit worried that it will now devolve into a constant weekly chase where our electronics turn against us. <Yawn>

 

[Barry Wallis]

One thing that made me chuckle is that the personal assistant is called Iliza.

 

[danlock]

 

[Barry Wallis]

@danlock: Exactly

 

[Barry Wallis]

Episode 4 is now on Hulu!

 

[Mervyn Haynes]

Got it, thanks

 

[Steve]

Barry... We started watching it, too. And we watched several episodes. (The last was the bots and the guy in the life-support wheelchair.) But it seemed as though the series was going to quickly devolve into a repetitive procedural with pretty much the same thing happening over and over. Has that not happened?

 

[Barry Wallis]

While I think it's more than a procedural, the sci-fi / AI content is less than I was hoping for (let's face it Mr. Robot set a rather high bar). I still think of it as Collosus: The Forbin Project for the 21st century.