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I have been a science fiction fan ever since my older sister caught me trying to write a book report on a non-fiction book about Mars and took it away and put Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein in my hands. Now, in the era of streaming, the streaming wars, and the dominance of geek culture with so many SF movies and shows the question can be posed: which is the best service to subscribe to for science fiction?

To me, the answer is pretty plain: Apple TV.

While Paramount+ boasts pretty much the entire Star trek Franchise from the original series to the newest iterations, it’s really no deeper than Trek.

Apple TV has an impressive catalog of original and interesting SF. (In addition to even more beyond genre fiction such as Slow Horses and Bad Sisters.)

Here is a partial list of the SF you can find on Apple’s streaming service. I have bolded the ones that I have watched and as you can see the unwatched outnumber the viewed.

1. For All Mankind
2. Silo 
3. Foundation 
4. Severance 
5. Dark Matter
6. Invasion
7. See
8. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters 
9. Hello Tomorrow!
10. Constellation
11. Amazing Stories
12. Brain
13. Sunny
14. The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
15. Circuit Breakers
16. Murderbot
17. Pluribus

Of the six shows that I watched, and I watched at least the entire first season for all of them, only one did not work for me and left me cold and uninterested in continuing, Silo. While it had a cast that I enjoyed and an intriguing concept there were world building issues that I simply could not get past to suspend my disbelief. The underground world of the show is simply not run with the absolute need to recycle everything, most of all biological material, that such a system would demand. All the other programs have worked at levels from simply enjoyable to shows that I love. Foundation, while diverging significantly from the source materials, source materials I found too dry to hold my interest, has been forking fantastic. Murderbot hewed much closer to the novels and managed to capture the inner monolog that is so essential to the property’s comedic tone. It took me a little longer to get into Severance. The split nature of the characters, I suspect, created an emotional distance, but once past that and especially once the big reveal of season one was deployed, I was hooked. Monarch was just monstrously fun and I cannot wait to see where Gilligan takes Pluribus.

I initially enrolled with Apple TV because a package deal with Apple music, storage, and TV cost less than the satellite radio services in my car, but now you can have my Apple TV when you pry the remote from my cold frozen fingers.

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I am only 3 episodes into Pluribus and it is possible that these questions bouncing around my skull have been addressed in some manner later in the series. If that’s the case, then I am looking forward to Vince Gilligan’s take on the matter but if not, I am deeply curious how it all shakes out.

Apple TV

In Pluribus a global event has melded nearly every human into a single consciousness sharing all of their thoughts, skills, experiences, and emotions as one. The protagonist of the show, Carol, along with roughly a dozen others, is for some reason immune and is decidedly not pleased with the new love and harmony of a world at peace with itself. Carol’s reasons are intense and understandable, but are not the subject of my ponderings.

Each individual of the new human collective presents as a serene, happy individual with a unified goal of making Carol happy in whatever way possible, all while espousing the utter contentment of their new states of existence, hoping that they can eventually bring Carol into this magnificent joining.

So, peace on Earth and perfect brotherhood for all of humanity, right?

I hate to break it to people, but humanity can be a right nasty bastard.

Pluribus’ thought experiment creates a unified human mind that would also include all the horrible experiences people around the globe have suffered; everyone is both the victim and victimizer. What exactly is that like? To be both a sexual assault victim and your assailant? To be both war criminal and war crime victim? What does it mean now that all of humanity has the direct emotional and psychological experiences of every serial killer on the planet?

I wonder if the series will get anywhere near these questions. It sort of reminds me of Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and his quest to fully understand humans, but how can you fully understand if you aren’t engaging with the terrible darkness humans are so easily capable of?