News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Halo on Netflix, Because Some Sci-Fi Deserves a Second Chance Plus publishing secrets and paperback trains. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 3, 2025 Screenshot: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount+ Is October spooky season? The midpoint of literary awards season? New York Comic Con season? (Really sorry to those of you who have to make the Javits trek day after day.) Is it kicking leaves and splashing in puddles season? Switching to chai season? So many possibilities. Also so many reasons to stay indoors, if you like. Here are few ways to spend your weekend (first, call your reps while it’s still Friday!). Halo: I Never Played the Game, So Ignore Me If You Want Game Accuracy, Sorry So listen. I’m not going to try to tell you that Halo was a great show. But I saw that it had recently made its way to Netflix and I have to admit: I got a little nostalgic for the cast. Pablo Schrieber is a very good Large Man Dealing With Some Shit (as he was in American Gods, though with less dealing). His soldier team is uniformly appealing, especially Kate Kennedy and Natasha Culzac. There are a lot of morally complex women in power in this series and I would watch any show that any of them starred in, including Natascha McElhone as Dr. Halsey and Shabana Azmi as Admiral Margaret Parangosky. Olive Gray, as Miranda Keyes, has some truly horrifying moments doing science. Bokeem Woodbine is in this show! A very evil vampire from The Originals is in this show! It is an absolute wonderland of character actors. And one of the most compelling among them, Yerin Ha, is about to level up with a starring role in the next season of Bridgerton. At least give Halo a try so you can say you liked her when. Like I said. It’s not great, exactly. But I was disappointed when it ended anyway (even though the second season is even messier than the first, and boy did they make some capital-C Choices). The Naming Song, Now In More Portable Format I don’t always notice when books I love come out in paperback, but when I do, I might feel compelled to tell you about them. Such is the case with Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song, which I read earlier this year, and which is still haunting me. (And not just because it has a truly wonderful cat. The word “cat” never appears in the book. But you’ll know.) The Naming Song is a novel about a world in which language was lost, and people have been trying to find it. It’s about a courier who delivers words, and it’s about flawed systems, and it’s also about really cool trains and the different ways you can tell important stories even when you don’t quite have the words. Also, if you read it, and then you want more post-apocalyptic theater, there’s been kind of a bit of that lately. And it’s all great.  (But really I want that train. You’ll see.) What Is Sales Track? Glad You Asked I gather that some people just want to read books, and prefer not to think about how the sausage gets made. But if you’re the other kind of reader—or if you’re a writer, or you work in or around publishing, or if you just have a burning need to know things—then it’s worth your time to read Tajja Isen’s latest piece at The Walrus: “The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem.” It’s an attention-grabbing title, in part probably because her topic takes some explanation. She’s exploring sales track, which is to say: the way the success or failure of an author’s previous book(s) can determine their future. Isen explains a complex, insider-y topic clearly and with examples; she talks to authors and editors about different experiences and different ways sales track shapes their work; she details just how much of publishing is, in a way, spinning stories about the stories authors have written. It’s a sweeping piece yet also personal and detailed. I would like to read a piece like this about a different part of publishing every month, honestly. Bravo. The Peripheral: Sometimes You Only Get One Season But It’s Better Than No Seasons? Thinking about Halo made me think about another adaptation that was gone too soon, which was also not perfect and yet I think about it all the time: The Peripheral. I got a little obsessed. I hadn’t read the book until the show came along, so I was watching it with very “Oh no oh no what are you DOING there” eyes—in some parts. (Why would you cast T’Nia Miller in such a flatly villainous role and then not do something interesting with her??) But as is the case with good adaptations, it also made things about the book its own, and did a lot of things right. (I was so happy to see Katie Leung.) There are cool visuals, there’s a solid relationship between Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz), and her brother Burton (Jack Reynor), and… yeah, there are some mysteries we’ll never get to see solved. But there is one season (on Prime) and for whatever reason, it has fall vibes to me. The near-future that is one of the story’s timelines has a lot of gold in it. The far-future … not so much. More cold. More creepy.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: <i>Halo</i> on Netflix, Because Some Sci-Fi Deserves a Second Chance appeared first on Reactor.