Starship Fonzie

  Ever hear of the Ship of Theseus problem? It goes like this: Suppose there's this sailing ship called the Ship of Theseus, and during the course of its life, it gets worn out pieces replaced. Old gangplank boards get replaced, old hull boards, new masts, sails, etc. But someone goes and collects all the old pieces whenever the ship replaces something. Eventually, this person then re-assembles the old pieces to make another ship, just like the original, but perhaps a little bit more threadbare. Now, here's the central question: Which of these two ships is the original Ship of Theseus? The one that was re-assembled with all the original parts, or the one that had all its old parts slowly replaced with new ones? The problem could be simplified as an old joke about George Washington's hatchet. A man brandishes a hatchet and claims it's George Washington's original hatchet. Sure, the handle got rotten and had to be replaced, and then some time afterward, the rusty axe...

  Apple TV has emerged to become one of the hottest places for science fiction right now, whether it's Foundation, Silo, For All Mankind, Invasion , the reboot of Spielberg's Amazing Stories , or the Tom Hanks movie, Finch . And if all that weren't enough, there's yet one more that may prove to outweigh all the others in the long term: Severance . It is directed, of all people, by Ben Stiller, whom I haven't ever thought of as a director. In fact, I usually think of him as the Winona Ryder's boyfriend in 'Reality Bites.' Or the zany 'Zoolander.' At one point, he rebooted 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.' But I may have to rethink the man, now that I've seen his new bit of handiwork. Stiller may be the best actor-to-director crossover to grace science fiction since Ron Howard. The premise of Severance is simple, and builds slowly, but it leads to a crescendo that is impossibly good. The plot revolves around a shadowy corporation calle...