Vienna: Series One Box Set

Following a successful pilot episode, the glamorous interstellar bounty hunter receives a mini-series of 3 hour-long episodes.

* Dead Drop - The first story sees Vienna's latest assassination mission taking her to a huge military starship conducting an operation against telepathic alien foes. The bulk of the story concerns her attempts to get off the ship again after it becomes crippled in battle. It's a sort of disaster movie in space, with the clock ticking down to the ship's destruction, as well as themes of alien mind-control. Unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well, and it's never really as tense as it would like. The admiral commanding the fleet feels rather flat, and it's difficult to care about any of the characters other than Vienna herself. There also seem to be a number of inconsistencies in the pl0t, particularly concerning how effective the telepathy is supposed to be. Something of a disappointment after the strength of the pilot episode. 3 stars.

* Bad Faith - The grim tone of the first story is replaced by a much more light-hearted one in the second. This is a satire on religion, poking particular fun on those modern sects that seem more interested in money than genuine spirituality. Vienna becomes embroiled in such a cult, and its schism with its founding church, as well as a plan by crustacean aliens to siphon off the faith of humans and sell it to the wealthy disenchanted. There's a murder mystery, too, although there's never much doubt about the identity of the killer. The story moves along at a good clip, and, as in the pilot episode, this time there are some decent twists as the memories and perception of some of the key characters come into question. 5 stars.

* Deathworld - In some respects, this doesn't start very promisingly, with Vienna apparently returning to her homeworld to take part in a to-the-death contest against other trained assassins. But all is very much not as it seems, as we discover in a series of flashbacks following up on the events of the previous episode. Even more so than its predecessor, this is an unreliable narrator story, making good use of the memory-altering technology introduced in the pilot episode. Significantly, we also discover Vienna's own backstory, and how and why she became a hired killer. As a result, it's much stronger than its premise initially suggests, while leaving questions unanswered, and ending on a cliffhanger that presumably leads into the second season. 5 stars.

This averages out to 4.33 stars, let down by the relative weakness of the first episode, but otherwise well worth a listen if you like twisty plots that question the perception of reality.