Enlarge / A Day octopus ( Octopus cyanea ) named Scarlet parachutes her web over a coral head while Dr. Alex Schnell observes. (credit: National Geographic/Disney/Craig Parry)

With Earth Day fast approaching once again, it's time for another new documentary from National Geographic and Disney+: Secrets of the Octopus . It's the third in what has become a series, starting with the remarkable 2021 documentary Secrets of the Whales (narrated by Sigourney Weaver) and 2023's Secrets of the Elephants (Natalie Portman as narrator). James Cameron served as producer on all three.

Secrets of the Octopus is narrated by Paul Rudd. Per the official synopsis:

Octopuses are like aliens on Earth: three hearts, blue blood and the ability to squeeze through a space the size of their eyeballs. But there is so much more to these weird and wonderful animals. Intelligent enough to use tools or transform their bodies to mimic other animals and even communicate with different species, the secrets of the octopus are more extraordinary than we ever imagined.

Each of the three episodes focuses on a specific unique feature of these fascinating creatures: "Shapeshifters," "Masterminds," and "Social Networks." The animals were filmed in their natural habitats over 200 days and all that stunning footage is accompanied by thoughtful commentary by featured scientists.  One of those scientists is Dr. Alex Schnell ,  a native Australian and self described storytelling who has worked at Macquarie University, the University of Cambridge, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, among other institutions. Her research focuses on the intelligence of marine animals, particularly cuttlefish and octopuses.

Enlarge / A young prodigal tomboy returns home from war and finds herself framed for murder in Renegade Nell . (credit: Disney+)

Award-winning British TV writer Sally Wainwright is best known for the dramatic series Happy Valley (2014–2023) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022), the latter produced jointly by BBC and HBO. Wainwright partnered with Disney+ for her latest series, the resolutely PG-13 Renegade Nell , which is a different beast altogether: a good old-fashioned, swashbuckling comic adventure with a supernatural twist, featuring a sassy cross-dressing heroine forced to turn to highway robbery to survive.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Set in 1705 during the reign of Queen Anne (Jodi May, Gentleman Jack ), the series stars Louisa Harland ( Derry Girls ) as Nell Jackson. Nell is a headstrong young woman with tomboy flair and a taste for adventure who returns home to her village of Tottenham after running off five years before to marry one Captain Jackson against her father's wishes. She's now widowed and possessed of occasional supernatural skills whenever someone threatens her, courtesy of a fairy sprite named Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed, aka Nathan from Ted Lasso ), who has been tasked to protect Nell. Nell's family thought she'd been killed on the battlefield alongside her husband, so her homecoming is a bit of a shock.

It's been a long wait for the second season of HBO's House of the Dragon , in which House Targaryen descends into civil war over the heir to the Iron Throne. It's set to premiere in June, and HBO is ramping up its marketing with a rather clever twist: not one official trailer, but two, each presenting the perspective of one side in the bloody conflict. And we get to choose which trailer we'd like to view—although if you're like us, you'll elect to watch both.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I've written previously, HBO's House of the Dragon debuted in 2022 with a solid, promising pilot episode, and the remainder of the season lived up to that initial promise. The series is set about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood , a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Galactic Republic and its Jedi masters symbolized the epitome of enlightenment and peace. Then came the inevitable downfall and outbreak of war as the Sith, who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, came to power. Star Wars: The Acolyte is a forthcoming new series on Disney+ that will explore those final days of the Republic as the seeds of its destruction were sown—and the streaming platform just dropped the first trailer.

The eight-episode series was created by Leslye Headland, who co-created Russian Doll with Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler. It's set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace . Apparently Headland rather cheekily pitched The Acolyte as " Frozen meets Kill Bill ," which is an intriguing combination. She drew on wuxia martial arts films for inspiration, much like George Lucas was originally inspired by Westerns and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa.

(Some spoilers for the prequel trilogy below.)

Amazon Prime Video has dropped the full official trailer for Fallout , the streaming platform's forthcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi series. It's based on the bestselling role-playing gaming franchise set in a satirical, 1950s-style future post-nuclear apocalypse. There's plenty for gaming fans to be pleased about, judging by the trailer, but casting national treasure Walton Goggins ( Justified ) as a gunslinging Ghoul was quite simply a stroke of genius.

The first Fallout RPG was released in 1997, followed by several sequels and spinoffs. According to the game's lore, modern civilization is destroyed in 2077 by a global nuclear war between the US and China. Survivors live in various underground vaults (fallout shelters). Each iteration of the game takes place somewhere across a post-apocalyptic US metro area and features a Vault Dweller—someone born and raised underground—as the protagonist. The first game takes place in 2161 and features a Vault Dweller from Vault 13, deep in the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller must complete various missions to save the residents of Vault 13, which takes said protagonist to in-world places like Junktown; a merchant city called the Hub; and Necropolis, filled with Ghouls, i.e., humans badly mutated by exposure to nuclear radiation.

The series was announced in July 2020, with Westworld writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it was revealed that Nolan would direct the first three episodes but that two other writers—Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner—would be the showrunners. Todd Howard, who directed several games in the franchise, is also an executive producer and has said the series is not an adaption of any particular game, but it is set within the same continuity. Per the official premise:

The countdown continues for the hotly anticipated debut of 3 Body Problem , Netflix's eight-episode sci-fi series adapted from the award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first book in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Those attending the SXSW Film & Television Festival in Austin will get to see the series' world premiere tonight. The rest of us have to wait until later this month, but in the meantime, the streaming platform has released a final trailer.

(Some spoilers for the novel below.)

The 3-Body Problem 's narrative is told in a nonlinear fashion, jumping between a young astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie, who witnesses her father being beaten to death by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and Ye's return to Tsinghua University as an established professor many years later. During the earlier timeline, Ye figures out a means of sending an interstellar message to possible extraterrestrial civilizations and receives a response from a planet called Trisolaris. (As its name implies, the planet has three suns, which wreak havoc on Trisolaris via unpredictable "chaotic periods"—hence the novel's title, which refers to a classic problem in celestial mechanics.) Despite being warned that the aliens intend to invade and conquer Earth, Ye responds to the message and invites them to do so, disillusioned by the state of the world.

It's been two years since we had new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery , which debuted back in 2017. Now Paramount+ has dropped the official trailer for the fifth and final season of the spinoff series.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As previously reported , Sonequa Martin-Green plays Michael Burnham, an orphaned human raised on the planet Vulcan by none other than Sarek (James Frain) and his human wife, Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner)—aka, Spock's (Ethan Peck) parents. So she is Spock's adoptive sister. As I've written previously , the S2 season-long arc involved the mysterious appearances of a "Red Angel" and a rogue Starfleet AI called Control that sought to wipe out all sentient life in the universe.

Enlarge / A bold jumping spider struggles to survive in New York City in A Real Bug's Life , narrated by Awkwafina. (credit: National Geographic/Jamie Thorpe)

Pixar's 1998 animated film A Bug's Life celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, and National Geographic decided to mark the occasion with a new science docuseries, A Real Bug's Life , narrated by Awkwafina. As with the Pixar film, the bugs (and adjacent creatures) are the main characters here, from cockroaches, monarch butterflies, and praying mantises to bees, spiders, and even hermit crabs. The 10 episodes tell their stories as they struggle to survive in their respective habitats, capturing entire ecosystems in the process: city streets, a farm, the rainforest, a Texas backyard, and the African savannah, for example.

The genesis for the docuseries lies in a rumored sequel to the original film. That inspired Producer Bill Markham, among others, to pitch a documentary series on a real bug's life to National Geographic. "It was the quickest commission ever," Markham told Ars. "They said yes literally over a weekend. It was such a good idea, to film bugs in an entertaining family way with Pixar sensibilities." And thanks to an advent of new technologies, plus a couple of skilled "bug wranglers," the team was able to capture the bug's-eye view of the world beautifully.

According to Director of Photography Nathan Small, long tube-like probe lenses enabled the camera crew to capture footage from inside tiny cracks and holes to better document the buggy behavior. They also made better use of macro lenses. "Before when we had macro lenses, they were all quite long and the background would be really smoooshy with everything out of focus," Small told Ars. "We tried to shoot everything from very low, very wide angles with lots of context, so you can experience the world from the point of view of the animal and see how it sits in its location, rather than just a smooshy background."

You know the premiere date for Netflix's live-action adaptation, Avatar: The Last Airbender , is drawing nigh because the streaming giant just released an official trailer featuring moments drawn from the original anime series and lots of snazzy element-bending action, plus several adorable shots of Appa. We have high hopes for this series.

As we reported previously , the original anime series was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. It was set in an Asian-inspired world where certain chosen individuals have the ability to telekinetically manipulate one of four elements (earth, air, water, and fire)—a practice known as "bending." Each generation, there is one Avatar who can bend all four elements and is thus responsible for maintaining harmony among the four elemental nations, as well as serving as a link between the physical and spirit worlds.

A 12-year-old Air Nomad boy named Aang is the current Avatar, but he hid in a state of suspended animation for a century because he was afraid of taking on that huge responsibility. Two Water Tribe siblings, Katara and Sokka, eventually revive Aang, who finds that the Fire Nation has wiped out most of the Air Nomads in his absence. Katara and Sokka join Aang, an airbender, on his quest to master bending each of the remaining three elements. Their mission is hampered by the banished Fire Nation Prince Zuko, who seeks to capture Aang to restore his honor with his father, Fire Lord Ozai, with the help of his uncle Iroh.