Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
This miniseries adapts the Gaiman/Pratchett novel of 1990-- which I've never read. This doesn't make me want to. I found it slow-moving and the humor belabored. David Tennant and Michael Sheen are good, but man does this take its time to spell out the obvious again and again, and take a variety of sidetracks that go nowhere. The whole thing is peppered with notifications of an urgent countdown, but you never once feel anything urgent is happening. The villains brought it down considerably I felt. (What a waste of Anna Maxwell Martin.)
To be honest, my memory of this is pretty vague at this point, but I seem to recall that it's Yet Another Solidly Enjoyable Variation on the Marvel Formula. Good jokes, an overly rushed moral dilemma, a surprise inversion, some decent character moments. Probably less interesting than Good Omens in some ways, but it's also considerably less long.
I really enjoyed Get Out; I found this about a tenth as interesting. It seemed more of a straight horror film; unlike Get Out, where the sfnal explanation at the end makes every little element suddenly cohere brilliantly, the explanation in Us seems hugely nonsensical. I don't think it wants to be taken seriously as sf, which is fine, but horror doesn't do much for me, and this is an sf/f award, after all. I am probably more likely to want to watch Captain Marvel again, but I did feel this is trying to do something interesting in a way Captain Marvel is not, even if I have no idea what that actually is.
I liked this more than Infinity War. For all its hugeness, it's more streamlined and more focused, deftly drawing together the character themes of much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far, especially for Iron Man and Captain America. It's like four movies in one (finding Thanos, living in the postapocalypse, time-travel hijinx, and a big battle), and three of them were pretty good. I didn't see much of it coming, and I appreciate that. I'm not sure the time travel logic holds up even by the standards of these things, though, and the final battle, as always with these things, does kind of go on and on.
I have heard many valid criticisms of this film... but suffice it to say I fundamentally enjoyed this movie for providing me what I have wanted since the end of The Force Awakens. I do think that there are some weird missteps (I think it could be the same film if Rey wasn't a Palpatine, and what does Finn keep trying to tell Rey? I thought that it was going to be him and Poe being an item), and the climax heavily depending on Rey tying into the Jedi legacy feels like a deliberate eff-you to The Last Jedi (I wasn't a big fan of Episode VIII, but at least try to make these movies go together, guys). But it had some good group adventuring, some great character moments, lots of feelings, and a great end for General Hux. I didn't want much else.
Despite providing feedback on a paper about this for a colleague, I didn't know much about it beyond that it concerned a woman trapped in a time loop. I found it highly enjoyable: eight thirty-minute episodes turns out to be a great length for a self-contained story, and it had me laughing uproariously at times while also coming to feel for these people. I'm a sucker for a good time loop story, and this is an excellent one, while also being a great, oddly uplifting character study. (I'm not sure why there's going to be a second season, though; it seems perfect as is.) If all streaming sf shows were like this, maybe I would actually watch tv more. Moreso than anything else on this particular ballot, it seems like the kind of thing the Hugos should be rewarding: not just competent genre stuff, but interesting genre stuff.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
Once again, a Doctor Who episode makes the ballot seemingly because Doctor Who fans deem that a Doctor Who episode must always make the ballot. This was the only Doctor Who episode broadcast in 2019, so here it is. Well, it also wasn't very good, exemplifying a lot of the issues that plague the current incarnation of the show: terrible sledgehammered character work, unfunny jokes, unearned emotional moments, a glut of characters who only stand around and utter interchangeable dialogue, little sense of threat. The current era has produced some worthy stuff, admittedly, but this is it at its worst.
Like The Expanse (see below), this is an installment in a serialized show I haven't been watching. Watchmen the tv show is (as I understand it) actually a sequel to the comic book, not a retelling or adaptation. I was able to follow the main thrust of events with my knowledge of the comic and couple memory jogs from Wikipedia. Like the other Watchmen finalist (also see below), it's mostly flashbacks, which helps too. However, I found this one less effective. Technically it's very well put together, but from a writing standpoint, I didn't find much to interest me here: it's a love story told nonsequentially and, I felt, quite ponderously, as though we were meant to be impressed by it. I'm sure the context of the show adds more, but on its own it was weak. When I finished, one of my first thoughts was that if Steven Moffat had written it, it would have had more jokes.
I stalled out with The Expanse back at 3x03; this isn't the show's fault but that of my own busy life. Still, I was able to follow this because I've read up through book five of the novels. This closes out the fourth season, adapting the fourth book. I'm not sure why this episode in particular was a finalist, as it wasn't very great on its own: clearly the climax actually happened previously in the season, as this was primarily devoted to wrapping up some loose ends and setting up season 5. (Also clearly there were some major deviations from the source material!) But this was a fundamentally successful piece of television, so I rated it above Doctor Who.
Like "Cibola Burn," this seems to have been nominated on the basis of being the end of a satisfying conclusion to a serialized narrative that I haven't actually experienced. Unlike "Cibola Burn," I could kind of see why: even if you haven't seen any of the other episodes, you can work out who these people are and what they're doing and what their relationships are. I found it moderately entertaining though parts of it seemed oddly paced. When it was over, I was like, "That was it?" I wonder if watching all eight episodes would remedy or exacerbate that problem. Great soundtrack.
It's been twelve episodes since the last episode of The Good Place that I saw, and I have no idea what the context is now (they're not in Australia anymore), but since this one is mostly a series of flashbacks about the character of Chidi, it was pretty easy to follow the main idea of it. It's fun, with some good jokes that I actually laughed at (Chidi's grad school advisor chewing him out for turning in a 3,000-page paper is great), and a cute central point well made.
This episode clearly fits into a larger tapestry, but stands on its own, delving into the history of the comic's Hooded Justice, the first superhero in Watchmen's alternate twentieth-century history. There are some surprising but effective reveals about Hooded Justice's backstory, and some great sequences. It's occasionally obvious, but it has a sense of style and sound, and revealed to me an aspect of American history I was shamefully ignorant of. (Fun fact: co-writer Cord Jefferson is also a writer on The Good Place. Not two shows I would have thought go together!)
Best Graphic Story or Comic
It's not this book's fault per se, but there was really no way I could enjoy reading the last six issues of a 45-issue comic book series on their own. I tried at first to work out who all the characters were from the chart in the front, but there were too many of them in too many guises and it wasn't really helping me enjoy it. To their credit, the publisher did provide all eight preceding volumes for free in the voting packet, but I didn't have the time to actually read all of them. Maybe someday! I didn't actually give this a sixth place vote, but just didn't vote for it at all, though in a functional sense, that has the same outcome in ranked choice voting (I think).
I thought I would like this more than I did; one of the cover blurbs is by Tillie Walden, whose On a Sunbeam got my vote last year, but this tale of a witch falling in love with a werewolf while they both try to find themselves largely left me cold. I felt like the fact that the two characters had met before was meant to do too much heavy lifting (they were friends in junior high, and they get back together after high school) and some other key elements were more told than shown as well. The dialogue and panel transitions were occasionally awkward, though a lot of the actual art was cute. I struggled to rank it among the mid-range finalists, but I think there's a fundamental assuredness to Monstress that this lacks.
This is the volume of Monstress I've enjoyed the most since the first one, even if I'm still not very into the comic. I find the main character uninteresting, the politics confusing, and the mythos beyond me. But the art is nice and I like the fox girl, and this one largely made sense to me in a way that volumes 2-3 did not.
I often have trouble ranking my mid-range finalists. What was better: this or Monstress? It's hard for me to have an opinion because I neither loved nor hated them, and which one is more meh than the other? But LaGuardia is a standalone work that I fundamentally enjoyed even if it's not particularly award-worthy, while The Chosen is an installment in a series I do not fundamentally enjoy even if it has its moments. Plus Monstress has won three times before, so maybe in pushing it down my ballot I can stop it from winning yet again!
This is the first volume of a new series about a group of kids who in the 1990s are sucked into an RPG world for two years; it picks up 25 years later when they're pulled in again as adults. I think that description makes it sound kind of dull, but it does some genuinely interesting stuff with the form and function of the fantasy RPG in the space of six issues (though I wonder if I would realize that without Gillen's essays in the back telling me what he's trying to do). The art by Stephanie Hans isn't really my jam: like a lot of painterly comic art, it looks nice but struggles to communicate the fluidity of motion I would argue is essential for good comics. I think it's trying and largely succeeding to do something interesting, though, and the series had enough potential that I would continue to read it, so it slots in easily below the strength of Paper Girls, but above the mediocrity of everything else.
My ranking here isn't really about volume 6, as I don't really remember what specifically happens in it (I read it some eight months ago now!), and more about the Paper Girls series as a whole. The Hugos introduced me to it when volume 1 was a finalist in 2017, and though volumes 3 and 4 were finalists in subsequent years, it has always lost to the Monstress juggernaut. This is its last chance, and it's a series I enjoyed and highly recommend. Good local Ohio color, great character moments, and fun sf inanity, even if I didn't fully understand it. I'd be happy if it finally won.
Overall Thoughts
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) was less interesting than it's been in some other years, with three franchise films I'd already seen among the finalists-- that said, Russian Doll was a delightful discovery. Short form seemed a little meh this year, though really the whole category was rigged against me, as five out of six finalists were installments in arc-driven tv show that I don't actually watch! Admittedly, though, the one finalist that came from a show I do watch and the one finalist from a non-arc show, ended up at the bottom of my ballot. My guesses: Good Omens for long form and Good Place for short form.
This was a less interesting year for Best Graphic Story, too. This category suffers from a lot of repeat finalists: this is the fourth straight year for Paper Girls and Monstress, and the second for Nnedi Okorafor (who I don't think is a very noteworthy comics writer, tbh). It is pretty surprising that this is Kieron Gillen's first year on the ballot; he seems like the kind of writer who would be on it a lot, like Brian K. Vaughan, for whom this is an eleventh showing in a category of twelve years' standing! Will Monstress win yet again? I feel like probably, but I don't know why.
I feel like there must be better stuff in sf/f film, tv, and comics than we usually get here... just don't ask me what it is or where to find it!
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