Things I Nominated
I nominated one thing in each category this year. I decided to nominate a Big Finish audio drama, so I looked back over the 2020 releases that I had actually listened to in 2020 (I range from a little behind to a lot behind with my Big Finish at the best of times) and ended up picking Torchwood Soho: Parasite, which covers shenanigans at Torchwood in the 1950s, fronted by the delightful Norton Folgate, and also featuring good old PC Andy, plucked out of time. (As it's six half-hour episodes, I nominated it under long form.) My guess is that no Big Finish release will ever be a Hugo finalist, though; even if there are a lot of Hugo nominators listening to Big Finish (which I doubt), they put out so much content, it's hard to imagine any single release getting enough nominations to make the ballot.
The only 2020 tv I watched during 2020 was Doctor Who series 12, Star Trek: Picard season 1, (some of) Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, and (some of) Star Trek: Discovery season 3. I didn't like Picard season 1 or Discovery season 3 much, and none of the episodes of Lower Decks that I saw in time spoke much to me. (I could see myself nominating "Crisis Point," but I got to it too late.)
So I ended up nominating what I thought was a pretty decent episode of a pretty dull series of Doctor Who, "Can You Hear Me?", which was probably the only episode both trying to do something interesting and almost pulling it off. It did not make the ballot, however, though a different episode did, and that one wasn't bad either.
This movie is about a group of four immortals who get in a lot of fight scenes. I fell asleep about halfway through; I don't think this is entirely the film's fault (I was very tired) but what is the film's fault is that I was at no point motivated to resume watching it.
This wasn't very to my taste. I love the Birds of Prey comics, but this isn't really a Birds of Prey film, it's a Harley Quinn film... though as my wife pointed out, it's probably the most enjoyable a Harley Quinn film could be. I did laugh couple times. I liked the performances of the actors playing both Black Canary and Huntress, so maybe I will like them better in some other, Harley-free, film. Plus... this isn't really sf&f, is it? One scene of Dinah using her sonic scream doesn't really count.
At first, this felt to me like Nolan's take on James Bond, plus some sf elements. Our protagonist travels to exotic locations, each with a suitable set piece; what stopped it from being fully Bondian is that Bond would have slept with Elizabeth Debicki's character. The central idea is pretty neat, and the story does some cool stuff with it; by the climax, though, I will admit that I was confused. Robert Pattinson was a delightful surprise, and I also thought Debicki and Kenneth Branagh did great work. It felt to me like something Steven Moffat would have done... but once I realized that, I also realized that he would have put in more jokes! And of course I have to take points off for that. This movie takes itself very seriously... and also I'm not really sure what it was about beyond the sfnal idea; it's very sterile.
I feel like I always understimate Pixar. I'm like, "oh yeah they're pretty good movies," but then I watch a Pixar film and realize they always have a heft and a design sense to them that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary animation. Things here move and live and breathe and shine. I enjoyed this a lot. I think it's not groundbreaking (it's very It's a Wonderful Life, isn't it?) but I don't know that that matters: good jokes, good performances, good score by Reznor and Ross, and great visuals. I particularly loved the way the afterlife creatures moved through the real world, and the climax with Joe and 22 plunging to Earth was glorious.
I would have vacillated a lot on where to place this, but I watched it the day ballots were due, so I didn't have the time to dither a whole lot. Give me twenty-four hours to reflect and I might have placed it on top, who knows. This is a time loop film; I must be a sucker for these things, because in 2020 and 2018, I gave top spots to a time loop story. The time loop is a genre of its own these days, and we're surely in its decadent phase (as Joanna Russ would say) and all the better for it. This is a comedy that opens with a guy already trapped in the time loop for so long he can't remember; he inadvertently brings a woman into it alongside him. You'll know some beats from other time loop stories, but it's very original in other ways and has a good emotional core. Some great laughs, but also some really strong, thoughtful character stuff.
I really debated on where to place this. It's about an Icelandic duo with middling talent trying to make it in Eurovision; Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams feature, and Pierce Brosnan plays Will Ferrell's dad. They have to overcome parental doubt, evil bankers, and Dan Stevens's obviously gay Russian in order to persevere and fulfill their childhood dreams. I had a blast watching this: it has fun music and a keen sense of the ridiculous that plays straight into my sensibilities. You have to take this movie intensely seriously and not at all seriously at the same time. I laughed a lot. But, you know, the sfnal content probably amounts to about 120 seconds of run time! Is it consistent of me to ding Birds of Prey but place this so high? So I was prepared to place it below Soul; Soul would be meaningless without its sf&fnal conceit, but Story of Fire Saga would honestly work just fine. But then I was like, "what would I be more excited to see win?" And it's not like Pixar films lack for acclaim. And though I think Soul is good, this was a blast. So here it is.
I have stalled out somewhere back in season 3 of The Expanse, but I have read all the books, and this one is adapted from book five, Nemesis Games, so I had enough context to follow. In isolation, though, it comes across as one of those episodes that's more noteworthy for what happens than how. Big events, but outside of that, there was little that grabbed me here other than the chance to see one of my less-favorite books in one of my favorite series on screen.
I am sure this is quite exciting if you've been following both The Mandalorian in particular and Star Wars on tv more broadly: we learn key information about baby Yoda, and a character from the Clone Wars cartoon appeares in live action. I've been doing none of these things, so it's all kind of wasted on me. Still, it works well enough as a piece of standalone tv, just without the bigger emotional/dramatic hook one might want. I do quite like Ludwig Göransson's score.
This is the series finale to a five-season show. It seems like the kind of show I would like very much, along the lines of some of the favorites of my youth (and adulthood): big battles of good and evil, colorful characters, angsty side-switching, epic confrontations. But watching the series finale on its own is difficult to appreciate. I feel as though I am watching something that could be quite interesting, but I don't have the ability to appreciate it.
Despite this being only my third episode of The Mandalorian, I was quickly able to grasp the mechanics of what was going on here and why I should care. Despite me knowing what the big surprise was going to be, I still got chills. I did have to pause at one point and look up who all the returning characters were at the beginning, but on the other hand, the emotion of the ending succeeded entirely on its own terms. Maybe someday I will watch this show, but I have been enjoying these dribs and drabs of it.
This wasn't the episode I nominated, but it was one of the better episodes of series 12 of Doctor Who, with some dramatic reveals, cracking direction, and sharp scenes featuring Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and the mysterious Ruth. (What brings it down for me are the weirdly shot and pointless scenes with Captain Jack; one assumes they couldn't get Barrowman on the same day as any of the rest of the cast.) This has an impact, but it's also an enjoyable and entertaining episode on top of that.
At last our long national nightmare is over. In honor of that, I give The Good Place my vote.
In all seriousness... I really liked this? My only previous episodes of The Good Place have been those five nominated as Hugo finalists, which long-time readers know I have found more miss than hit, but this seemed to me—based on that weird sampling anyway—to be a charming, effective, and occasionally moving finale. All the characters get good final moments... plus lots of great jokes (of course I was a sucker for the Radiolab one) and a cameo from Nick Offerman playing Nick Offerman teaching someone how to make a chair. This gave me the purest enjoyment of anything on this list.
Overall Thoughts
Long Form was a more interesting category than usual this year; I suspect this is down to the pandemic delaying any blockbuster originally scheduled for March 2020 or later to 2021. No Marvel movies; the closest we get to a big franchise film is Birds of Prey. This allows for some more offbeat stuff to rise to the top, which is one of the things I like about this category. Seems unlike I ever would have even heard of Palm Springs without the Hugos, much less seen it.
Short Form is tougher than normal. It usually has a few things that work reasonably well as standalones, but this year literally every finalist is a pivotal moment in an ongoing story! This makes them hard to assess as an outsider; I feel like if I'd seen any other She-Ra, for example, I might have ranked "Heart" at the top, but I'll never know. I am loathe to add more Hugo categories, but I do wonder if Short Form and Long Form need to be split yet again: I don't know what I would call the categories, but with spans of something like 0-90 minutes, 90-180, and 180+, so you get individual episodes, films, and seasons each evaluated on their own terms. Though, if all of these seasons make it into the 180+ category, will there be anything left for the 0-90 one given how serialized televised sf&f is at the moment?
I feel fairly comfortable in saying that The Good Place will take home its fourth and final Hugo. The long-form category is much less obvious to me. None of them strike me as having the "it factor" that will win over (after a number of rounds) the majority of Hugo voters. I don't think it will be The Story of Fire Saga—too weird—nor Tenet—not good enough—nor Birds of Prey—too over-the-top—nor Old Guard—too boring—nor Palm Springs—too comedic. Which I guess means Soul? Pixar films have won twice before, The Incredibles and WALL-E, though both of those seem closer to the sf fan's sensibilities. So who knows.
I might be unsure about this year, but I will go out on a limb and tell you right now that the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) is going to go to Dune.
