Guys, he is entitled to his opinion-no matter how unpopular. Some of you are just egging it on. One does not become a idiot when they disagree with you. Thats just as bad as his fanaticism.
(And yes, the comparison to me is not lost )
Besides, on reflection, I could point out that Star Wars wasn't >that< great or even original a movie as far as story. It was the culture surrounding it that has made it survive. Does that make you an idiot if you disagree with me as a star wars fan?
When you come down to it, its not that bad of a show compared to some of the excuses for sci-fi that have been put out. Its just very dull to me personally.
jzero: In the behind-the-scenes documentary of the original starwars trilogy, they showed the before and after footage of the scene where Alec leaves the gang in the death star control room in Ep4. The guy in the chewie suit has an english accent and says "That old guy's mad" and Ford says "You said it chewie." heh. The post-editing shot had the growl in it.. which explains the reality of it on set, but leaves a gaping hole in plot continuity for viewers to spackle as they please.
nose: Failing to account for one's own input into why others responded in the way they did may lead to an inaccurate perception of events.
others asking about a better show: Babylon 5. (Bruce Boxleitner of Tron, Andreas Katsulas, Jerry Doyle) The original 5 seasons were mapped out as a coherent story instead of the basic formulaic "getting into trouble / getting out of trouble" episodic content. I hear the NASA guys have flown some B5 hats up in the shuttle, autographed them and gave them to the actors, and told the actors that their show was THE space show. It was good enough for pilfermount to fish the story outline that JMS shopped around trying to get B5 off the ground in the late 80's out of their filing cabinet and use it as a guide for DS9. Joe's style of incorporating psychological insights that offer hope and inspiration had me absorbing perspectives and ideals I can use, not just forgettable condescending quips.
In contrast, I saw the "replicator Sam" stargate show the other night and was left with the same feeling I had at the end of HL2. ie. fun rollercoaster ride followed by rolling credits. Understandably, that's what passes for entertainment these days, but as others have said, it could be so much more.
ps. are we aware that tubboy means fatso in the asiatic region?
tubboy: [edit] looked it up. ah.. classic demonstration of the fact that the second shortest route between two points is a well-aimed trajectory. [/edit] Since you're into that sort of thing, check this out for Cutting Edge.
Hi Scott .. I was referring to the quality of headology and character interaction. On reflection of the specifically fictional plot vehicles that you've highlighted, these kind of shows are always going to contain far fetched subject matter mixed in with the shakespearian mimicry. I didn't knock Trek, in fact I was inspired by the TNG series through my teenage years, but after re-viewing B5 in the last few months it is apparent at least to me that sincere thought was put into obeying the laws of physics, rotating hulls for gravity on the larger vehicles, orientation alignment thrusters for the fighters, seat belts, the perversity of politics, the trickiness of faith, the understanding that if we choose to deny each other the right to speak at all we might as well not be here. It's not like I'm taking this stuff overly seriously, it's only a tv show, that's all I meant with my suggestion and you're quite welcome to take it, leave it, or tubgirl at it.
That aside, what's coming up in this genre anyway? War of the Worlds, Greg Bear's "Forge of God" and "Anvil of Stars" (picked up by WB, Forge will be similar to WOTW but with a gravely unfortunate ending, and it will be primarily a setup for Anvil, which will rock the house. great book. Hope they don't pull an I Robot/Hardwired bait and switch with the script..) Transformers is in the works, and apparently there's a B5 movie on the drawing board. .. anything else going on in sci-fi we might like to know about?
serenity, the movie based on the most redickerous show out, firefly.
i just don't ge thow they can have absolutely NO alien life AT ALL. not even a bloody alien microbe. and wtf is up with having forcefields for windows and space ships and then wandering around with a damn six-gun on their belts and steam trains?
btw, the rotating hulls for AG was only done on earth ships in B5, the white stars and the narn, centauri and mimbari all had AG like trek.
Most of they guys I work with say the same thing, but one common thing I find in all of there stories is that they only watch a few eps and that generalizes there opinion. I used to sorta feel the same way. My biggest thing was Kurt rus or Spader was not in it.
One week I think I was watching like, one of the 5th season eps and actually liked the effects in the show. So, I did something I had never done before. I bought the 1st season on DVD. Heh, the first 3 eps were very stupid. One planet is Gangus Kaun and the next is ROME ville prime or what ever. I did not pay much attention at first but my roomy told me to pay attention to the story. Pretty decent I think. Just enough sci fi to keep it fantacy with enough humore and acting ability to keep it in relative comparison to our own world as it is now.
My question is, Ruz, did you watch it once or a few times or what? What rubbed you the wrong way? Theres not much family stuff in Stargate. Just team work. Can u be more specific?
Look at me, heh, I am trying to convert someone and this is a thread about the bad things of Stargate. I feel like a fanatical Stargate Preacher....lol. Believe in stargate or go to HELL...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...:P .....Creeeee.
I loved the movie. James Spader is an excellent actor. Can't wait to watch his new "the practice" spinoff. Terrific character.
This show is lame. In fact, most shows on TV are lame. I'd rather read an excellent sci-fi novel with a creative plotline...than watch a cheesy lifeless space sitcom designed to milk the original film for profit.
Please don't post anymore threads about your obsession. There are SG1 forums all over the net for you to infest.
I admit. I have pushed this topic too far. I Apologize and will stop creating NEW threads regarding Stargate. Guess this is not the best place to express my Sci fi interests. Sorry to cuase so much pain over this:P
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Fabool: Yeah, pity Farscape got cancelled. Didn't they record and release a "final" episode after it was canned, to tie up all the loose ends with the story they couldn't finish? I haven't seen it, but it was a decent series... Much more interesting characters than Stargate SG1, and the storylines had more of a flow and direction.
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Farscape concluded with a two part, four-hour miniseries back in October, entitled Peacekeeper War. I'd have preferred a full season, but it was a good conclusion and wrapped the series well (though anything would have been better than the fourth season cliffhanger).
As it happens, Ben Browder (Crichton) will be starring in SG-1 next season, presumably taking the main role as Richard Dean Anderson cuts back his involvement. Claudia Black (Aeryn) will also be in several SG-1 episodes as a guest star, so Farscape's two leads will be working together again in the show that got their series cancelled. Strange but true.
Anderson is awsome. The show is produced by him, so, if he is awsome, then I would imagin(since his awsomeness is meaning his work) then Stargate is awsome too.
Quote: I haven't seen so much pussy since a justin timberlake concert. Grow the fuck up. Tubboy is stupid, Stargate sucks. Now let us move on with our lives.
Is this a thread about Stargate?
I have to admit I read Sundance badmouthing B5 and display his usual opposite opinion to what I consider good cinema and tv and couldnt resist chiming in to heat things up.
B5 was great, one of the best Scifi shows bar none. First season budget was awful, Claudia whats her name should have been told she wasn't funny and the experimental episodes should have been stopped before teh 2nd season and I wish the studios had not pissed around with the funding so much so JMS could have planned out the 5 seasons more smoothly rather than having to wrap it up in season 4 then tack on a last season.
The 2nd season of B5 bar none was one of the most incredible seasons of any long running show I've seen on tv and it won enough awards to prove the point that I'm not the only one that thought so.
Typically I've noticed only sad trekkies idealise Gene's work so much that they have to stamp on B5 before they are forced to confront the truth that Trek turned into utter trite.
I think B5's strength was its long running story arc and while it had too much religion in it for my tastes I enjoyed the whole 'coming of the shadows' suspense as it was an incredible build up at the time.
Likewise, I enjoyed the same qualities in Farscape and it replaced B5's heavy handed religious overtones with some good old heavy handed kinky latex and leather fetish themes.
Farscape fell down for me due to the same curse of experimental episodes and I expect thats why it was canned as too many loyal viewers probably felt the same way as I and switched off on those eps.
As best I know, we have Patrick Macgoogan's Prrisoner series to thank for shows like B5 and Farscape and Stargate that continue to dare to have a long running arc as well as episodic stories.
I haven't seen an awful lot of Stargate but I've liked what I've seen and enjoyed the movie and can't understand why people in general like to bash the underdogs who challenge the stale cliched repition of the established cash cow franchises such as Star Trek.
But we're all entitled to our opinions aren't we?
And, we can't ALL be right everytime so once you concede that I am obviously ALWAYS right, sooner or later you must admit that you are probably wrong )
To follow what Ror said, and trying to avoid spoilers...
In the second half of season 3, with the two-part 'War Without End' episodes, it becomes indisputably clear that Babylon 5 is the best plotted science fiction series anyone has ever crafted. In a given Star Trek series, each episode is largely a one-off, a throw-away. At the end of the episode, the wrong things are put right, nothing changes, and the events of that episode have no lasting effect. Occasionally, there will be a reference to previous episodes, or a theme running through parts of a season, but a general lack of forethought is evident. The two episodes I mentioned from B5, as the Shadow War is gearing up, were literally planned from the beginning, more than three years in advance. An episode from the late first season was made entirely to set this up, and the payoff in the War Without End episodes... realizing not only what had happened but that Straczynski had planned it from the beginning had me yelling "I DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT" at my television screen.
The series ended limply, as Ror mentioned, and there wereplenty of weak spots with the effects and various story elements, but no television series has ever totally owned me the way that B5 did the moment we found out the truth of War Without End.
On the other series we're discussing:
I generally like Stargate, though it suffers too much from small budgetitis - too many offworld episodes look like pleasantly forested British Columbia to really inspire me. Still, when it's good, SG1 is very good. Alas, like Star Trek, very little ever really changes.
FarScape is the best sci-fi show of the last five years or so, but again I agree with Ror (he's always right, you know) that things got a bit too experimental. There was also an awful lot of cast shuffling, with new regulars in and out each season. That's better than Star Trek's Metamucil-like regularity, but it also made following along rather difficult. But the thing that I feel really killed FarScape was Sci-Fi's poor handling of the show. When it was their only original show worth a damn, it thrived. When they bought SG1 from Showtime, bumped it into FarScape's slot and cut the FarScape budget, the end was obviously nigh. Viewership wasn't as good as SG1's, profitabiltiy fell and *poof* there went season five (the same fate that B5 narrowly avoided, but fifth year uncertainty hurt that series as well). Still, when FarScape was on its game, it was one of the best, and funniest, shows on television. There was a third season episode called Scratch & Sniff that was so hilarious at times I was crying from laughing so hard.
Verm: I often felt the same awe towards JMS's 'big plan' when considering the foresight.
Lines like ' Theres a storm coming, a dark and terrible storm' from the technomage way back in season1, or the pilots ' there is a hole in your mind' slowly being revealed in its whole throughout the years.
I still shiver when I play the shadow ship and shadow creature SFX and I don't think theres been a scifi serial villain to equal the Shadows.
With Farscape, it was Scorpius that made the show for me and the whole 'Buck rogers on cocaine' sort of vibe, the brom inspired ( or ripped at times) art and design, the simple truth that when stuck in a spaceship for a long time people are going to try to have sex with each other to pass the time.... I miss it.
I really enjoyed the extra 2 feature length episodes recently released on the scifi channel, I felt I was owed those episodes!
deep space nine was much better than any other trek series and babylon 5 was a decent concept ruined by shit treatment by the money-men but also had some seriously shit stuff in it.
Deep space Nine Had an awsome cast and good writing crew, and, DS9 could have gone on for another 3 seasons just like Stargate has, but, NOOOOOOO, 7 years is it. They just have to stick to that stupid tradition. Enterprise is just now starting to get good. Lets hope they keep that running longer.
Hey guys, did Farscape take place in the future or present day?
Grind: it is good to see Spader on the job again. he has a heck of a stage presence.
sundance: I like the fact that Joe has said he could have gone after Paramount about DS9 but since he was already at work with B5 he decided that he wouldn't be the disparaging party and face the contempt of the trek audience, and did his best to out-write them and let the fans appreciate both.
ror: "..while it had too much religion in it for my tastes"
agreed, but I attribute that to Joe's effort to tap a larger target audience by using a device that was easily accessible, like the way iD used the notion of Hell in Doom 3, it explains enough without having to elaborate on a set of alternate rules like, say, Terry Pratchett does with his Discworld books. Funny thing about playing the religious card is once you open that can of worms you have to follow through and give it a chance to speak its piece and not simply deride the cause and attack those who live by it, because that would not be marketable/profitable. (Which is actually what I alluded to in my previous post - one of G'Kar's quoteables being "Our fates are caught like a reflection in a mirror, if we deny the other, we deny ourselves; we will both cease to exist.")
My grandmother is a devout sunday school teacher and you could imagine the concerned faces at our christmas get together when one of my cousins who is yet to fully understand tact and had recently seen a few discovery channel shows about quantum mechanics and recombinant DNA experiments tried to explain the evolutionary implications of half a simian helix hooking up with 98% of half a human helix in a solution .. it didn't matter what was said, it all boiled down to "God made us just as we are, so let's discuss something else." At that stage I nearly forgot my manners and almost asked - what happens when aliens do turn up and the religious factions of our society ask "Are you our God?" .. what are they going to say? no? .. and what of the ramifications?
Aside from that I think Joe handled it subtly enough, and left a great opportunity open for jokes like garibaldi saying "a thousand years! it's all here in the book" *tap-tap-tap* - "Please.. don't thump the book of G'Quon, it's disrespectful."
speaking of garibaldi, did you guys know about the dig at trek's expendable security guards? .. third bullet here.
While we're at it, anyone here seen Jeremiah? it has little to do with sci-fi, more like an adaptation of the aftermath of stephen king's The Stand. Peter DeLuise is handling production occasionally and looks like they're filming on the same cheyenne set as Stargate as well as using Rainmaker for the digital stuff. JMS handled half the script writing (on the plot shows, you can definitely tell from the personality / verbosity that it's one of his scripts) but he only intended to get the show off the ground and get back to work on other projects (spider man comics / B5:The memory of shadows movie), and Sam Egan appears to be handling the fillers, which are not as good. At least they told JMS it would go straight to cable and the characters were free to swear and jump around naked.
I don't have much to say about farscape that hasn't already been said, other than the fact that another of the shows that hooked me in my early teen years was an aussie production called Spellbinder (first season) of which the production/writing team were the ones who were later hired to do the writing etc for farscape, so I had a rough idea of the level of perversity of thought we were in for. okey dokey, that's more than enough from me at this point..
Hahaha Tone, I never realised Garibaldi's name was a joke of that magnitude... I always thought it referred to the biscuit.
Ror: Yeah, the Shadows were damn cool. I remember being pretty scared of them when I was ... 12? How long ago was B5 on TV?
ST: DS9 was damn boring until they got to the Dominion Wars parts. The first boatload of episodes were all about diplomacy and managing racism on a multi-racial space station. A bit of a yawn-fest. I'm glad they stopped it, I doubt they could have come up with a better way to finish the series than what they did.
Tone: I understood why JMS put the religion in, I just dislike it intensely because you can sit with a stopwatch and wait until pretty much every american production turns into a story about god.
The trend of pandering to the bible belt majority of simpletons is what ruins a large part of american culture for me as its a stoneage philosophy and ruins my enjoyment of a film.
If you are liberated enough from Church and State to have realised that logic beats faith every time, watching otherwise quality storys devolve into mistaking the purpose of religion as something more than allegory and metaphor really feels like an insult to my intelligence.
(Note, if you are religious and offended by my views, please just turn the other cheek as I am addressing Tone who seems to have some similar ability to myself to use reason rather than faith to guide his life and as we all know, logic and faith can never agree)
Anyway, now that I've unburdened myself...
No, I've not seen Jeremiah, I don't actually have TV anymore, I just have a huge widescreen tv and dvd player for watching films and I periodically collect TV dvd's such as the sopranos or similar quality programs that enough people have recommended to me that I take a gamble.
I hate tv in Britain in general so once I moved to the states I just agreed with my wife that we wouldn't even waste our money for the first few years until we'd had the chance to judge what the culture here is like objectively without the fox propoganda making us more alarmist than we need to be.
Did you ever see American Gothic btw? Another promising show that bit the dust after season one because america can't handle an unsympathetic lead ( just look what they are doing to John Constantine because of this ).
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Did you ever see American Gothic btw? Another promising show that bit the dust after season one because america can't handle an unsympathetic lead ( just look what they are doing to John Constantine because of this ).
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I don't agree with that. Well, Hellblazer will likely blow, but that's because DC has apparently decided they like to fuck their own intellectual properties up the ass (Catwoman, the last Batman, etc). However, there are plenty of popular shows in which the main characters aren't sympathetic. I don't think anybody really feels for Tony Soprano when he's murdering his friend or cheating on his wife. Vic Mackey of The Shield is a corrupt and occasionally murderous police officer, but not only is the show is well received, actor Michale Chiklis has won an Emmy for playing that role. Heck, even the four characters from Seinfeld are not particularly redeemable - that was the whole point of the final episode, how shallow and pathetic the four are. I think you can go back over the last few decades and find tons of great examples - no one sympathized with J.R. Ewing on Dallas even after he was shot, and yet that show was the most popular drama in America! Certainly the trend isn't for unsympathetic characters, but there are multiple smash hits that run contrary to that trend.
Replies
(And yes, the comparison to me is not lost
Besides, on reflection, I could point out that Star Wars wasn't >that< great or even original a movie as far as story. It was the culture surrounding it that has made it survive. Does that make you an idiot if you disagree with me as a star wars fan?
When you come down to it, its not that bad of a show compared to some of the excuses for sci-fi that have been put out. Its just very dull to me personally.
_Shimmer this is the only forum i know of that hates stargate for the most part.
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But if you only had google skills ...
TV in general - meh
*gets ready for New Years eve party*
jzero: In the behind-the-scenes documentary of the original starwars trilogy, they showed the before and after footage of the scene where Alec leaves the gang in the death star control room in Ep4. The guy in the chewie suit has an english accent and says "That old guy's mad" and Ford says "You said it chewie." heh. The post-editing shot had the growl in it.. which explains the reality of it on set, but leaves a gaping hole in plot continuity for viewers to spackle as they please.
nose: Failing to account for one's own input into why others responded in the way they did may lead to an inaccurate perception of events.
others asking about a better show: Babylon 5. (Bruce Boxleitner of Tron, Andreas Katsulas, Jerry Doyle) The original 5 seasons were mapped out as a coherent story instead of the basic formulaic "getting into trouble / getting out of trouble" episodic content. I hear the NASA guys have flown some B5 hats up in the shuttle, autographed them and gave them to the actors, and told the actors that their show was THE space show. It was good enough for pilfermount to fish the story outline that JMS shopped around trying to get B5 off the ground in the late 80's out of their filing cabinet and use it as a guide for DS9. Joe's style of incorporating psychological insights that offer hope and inspiration had me absorbing perspectives and ideals I can use, not just forgettable condescending quips.
In contrast, I saw the "replicator Sam" stargate show the other night and was left with the same feeling I had at the end of HL2. ie. fun rollercoaster ride followed by rolling credits. Understandably, that's what passes for entertainment these days, but as others have said, it could be so much more.
ps. are we aware that tubboy means fatso in the asiatic region?
ps. About u'r perception of Replicator Sam. Oh HELL YEAH! I am so with you there on that. And to top it off, she will be back.
babylon 5 was utter wank! all that old ones bullshit, all that telepaths BS, all that vorlon crap. 'get the hell out of my galaxy!' shit!
the only decent stuff was the FX and trek hired that guy to do DS9 and voyager fx.
Hi Scott .. I was referring to the quality of headology and character interaction. On reflection of the specifically fictional plot vehicles that you've highlighted, these kind of shows are always going to contain far fetched subject matter mixed in with the shakespearian mimicry. I didn't knock Trek, in fact I was inspired by the TNG series through my teenage years, but after re-viewing B5 in the last few months it is apparent at least to me that sincere thought was put into obeying the laws of physics, rotating hulls for gravity on the larger vehicles, orientation alignment thrusters for the fighters, seat belts, the perversity of politics, the trickiness of faith, the understanding that if we choose to deny each other the right to speak at all we might as well not be here. It's not like I'm taking this stuff overly seriously, it's only a tv show, that's all I meant with my suggestion and you're quite welcome to take it, leave it, or tubgirl at it.
That aside, what's coming up in this genre anyway? War of the Worlds, Greg Bear's "Forge of God" and "Anvil of Stars" (picked up by WB, Forge will be similar to WOTW but with a gravely unfortunate ending, and it will be primarily a setup for Anvil, which will rock the house. great book. Hope they don't pull an I Robot/Hardwired bait and switch with the script..) Transformers is in the works, and apparently there's a B5 movie on the drawing board. .. anything else going on in sci-fi we might like to know about?
i just don't ge thow they can have absolutely NO alien life AT ALL. not even a bloody alien microbe. and wtf is up with having forcefields for windows and space ships and then wandering around with a damn six-gun on their belts and steam trains?
btw, the rotating hulls for AG was only done on earth ships in B5, the white stars and the narn, centauri and mimbari all had AG like trek.
ooo, ooo, fantastic 4 movie!!!
I liked the early episodes of lexx,like the gigashadow, mantrid etc.
One week I think I was watching like, one of the 5th season eps and actually liked the effects in the show. So, I did something I had never done before. I bought the 1st season on DVD. Heh, the first 3 eps were very stupid. One planet is Gangus Kaun and the next is ROME ville prime or what ever. I did not pay much attention at first but my roomy told me to pay attention to the story. Pretty decent I think. Just enough sci fi to keep it fantacy with enough humore and acting ability to keep it in relative comparison to our own world as it is now.
My question is, Ruz, did you watch it once or a few times or what? What rubbed you the wrong way? Theres not much family stuff in Stargate. Just team work. Can u be more specific?
Look at me, heh, I am trying to convert someone and this is a thread about the bad things of Stargate. I feel like a fanatical Stargate Preacher....lol. Believe in stargate or go to HELL...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...:P .....Creeeee.
I am such a nerd.
This show is lame. In fact, most shows on TV are lame. I'd rather read an excellent sci-fi novel with a creative plotline...than watch a cheesy lifeless space sitcom designed to milk the original film for profit.
Please don't post anymore threads about your obsession. There are SG1 forums all over the net for you to infest.
Whereever tubboy goes, shit follows.
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Ipse dixit. For the record, you've already followed up to this Tubboy thread three times.
Fabool: Yeah, pity Farscape got cancelled. Didn't they record and release a "final" episode after it was canned, to tie up all the loose ends with the story they couldn't finish? I haven't seen it, but it was a decent series... Much more interesting characters than Stargate SG1, and the storylines had more of a flow and direction.
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Farscape concluded with a two part, four-hour miniseries back in October, entitled Peacekeeper War. I'd have preferred a full season, but it was a good conclusion and wrapped the series well (though anything would have been better than the fourth season cliffhanger).
As it happens, Ben Browder (Crichton) will be starring in SG-1 next season, presumably taking the main role as Richard Dean Anderson cuts back his involvement. Claudia Black (Aeryn) will also be in several SG-1 episodes as a guest star, so Farscape's two leads will be working together again in the show that got their series cancelled. Strange but true.
SG-1.... not so much.
You went to a Justin Timberlake Concert?
BEASTMASTER ROOOLZ!!!!!!
I have to admit I read Sundance badmouthing B5 and display his usual opposite opinion to what I consider good cinema and tv and couldnt resist chiming in to heat things up.
B5 was great, one of the best Scifi shows bar none. First season budget was awful, Claudia whats her name should have been told she wasn't funny and the experimental episodes should have been stopped before teh 2nd season and I wish the studios had not pissed around with the funding so much so JMS could have planned out the 5 seasons more smoothly rather than having to wrap it up in season 4 then tack on a last season.
The 2nd season of B5 bar none was one of the most incredible seasons of any long running show I've seen on tv and it won enough awards to prove the point that I'm not the only one that thought so.
Typically I've noticed only sad trekkies idealise Gene's work so much that they have to stamp on B5 before they are forced to confront the truth that Trek turned into utter trite.
I think B5's strength was its long running story arc and while it had too much religion in it for my tastes I enjoyed the whole 'coming of the shadows' suspense as it was an incredible build up at the time.
Likewise, I enjoyed the same qualities in Farscape and it replaced B5's heavy handed religious overtones with some good old heavy handed kinky latex and leather fetish themes.
Farscape fell down for me due to the same curse of experimental episodes and I expect thats why it was canned as too many loyal viewers probably felt the same way as I and switched off on those eps.
As best I know, we have Patrick Macgoogan's Prrisoner series to thank for shows like B5 and Farscape and Stargate that continue to dare to have a long running arc as well as episodic stories.
I haven't seen an awful lot of Stargate but I've liked what I've seen and enjoyed the movie and can't understand why people in general like to bash the underdogs who challenge the stale cliched repition of the established cash cow franchises such as Star Trek.
But we're all entitled to our opinions aren't we?
And, we can't ALL be right everytime so once you concede that I am obviously ALWAYS right, sooner or later you must admit that you are probably wrong
heh aye, anyway, back to work.
In the second half of season 3, with the two-part 'War Without End' episodes, it becomes indisputably clear that Babylon 5 is the best plotted science fiction series anyone has ever crafted. In a given Star Trek series, each episode is largely a one-off, a throw-away. At the end of the episode, the wrong things are put right, nothing changes, and the events of that episode have no lasting effect. Occasionally, there will be a reference to previous episodes, or a theme running through parts of a season, but a general lack of forethought is evident. The two episodes I mentioned from B5, as the Shadow War is gearing up, were literally planned from the beginning, more than three years in advance. An episode from the late first season was made entirely to set this up, and the payoff in the War Without End episodes... realizing not only what had happened but that Straczynski had planned it from the beginning had me yelling "I DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT" at my television screen.
The series ended limply, as Ror mentioned, and there wereplenty of weak spots with the effects and various story elements, but no television series has ever totally owned me the way that B5 did the moment we found out the truth of War Without End.
On the other series we're discussing:
I generally like Stargate, though it suffers too much from small budgetitis - too many offworld episodes look like pleasantly forested British Columbia to really inspire me. Still, when it's good, SG1 is very good. Alas, like Star Trek, very little ever really changes.
FarScape is the best sci-fi show of the last five years or so, but again I agree with Ror (he's always right, you know) that things got a bit too experimental. There was also an awful lot of cast shuffling, with new regulars in and out each season. That's better than Star Trek's Metamucil-like regularity, but it also made following along rather difficult. But the thing that I feel really killed FarScape was Sci-Fi's poor handling of the show. When it was their only original show worth a damn, it thrived. When they bought SG1 from Showtime, bumped it into FarScape's slot and cut the FarScape budget, the end was obviously nigh. Viewership wasn't as good as SG1's, profitabiltiy fell and *poof* there went season five (the same fate that B5 narrowly avoided, but fifth year uncertainty hurt that series as well). Still, when FarScape was on its game, it was one of the best, and funniest, shows on television. There was a third season episode called Scratch & Sniff that was so hilarious at times I was crying from laughing so hard.
Lines like ' Theres a storm coming, a dark and terrible storm' from the technomage way back in season1, or the pilots ' there is a hole in your mind' slowly being revealed in its whole throughout the years.
I still shiver when I play the shadow ship and shadow creature SFX and I don't think theres been a scifi serial villain to equal the Shadows.
With Farscape, it was Scorpius that made the show for me and the whole 'Buck rogers on cocaine' sort of vibe, the brom inspired ( or ripped at times) art and design, the simple truth that when stuck in a spaceship for a long time people are going to try to have sex with each other to pass the time.... I miss it.
I really enjoyed the extra 2 feature length episodes recently released on the scifi channel, I felt I was owed those episodes!
The Scarran beat the hell out of our Skaarj!
and don't talk to me about muppets in space
Hey guys, did Farscape take place in the future or present day?
sundance: I like the fact that Joe has said he could have gone after Paramount about DS9 but since he was already at work with B5 he decided that he wouldn't be the disparaging party and face the contempt of the trek audience, and did his best to out-write them and let the fans appreciate both.
ror: "..while it had too much religion in it for my tastes"
agreed, but I attribute that to Joe's effort to tap a larger target audience by using a device that was easily accessible, like the way iD used the notion of Hell in Doom 3, it explains enough without having to elaborate on a set of alternate rules like, say, Terry Pratchett does with his Discworld books. Funny thing about playing the religious card is once you open that can of worms you have to follow through and give it a chance to speak its piece and not simply deride the cause and attack those who live by it, because that would not be marketable/profitable. (Which is actually what I alluded to in my previous post - one of G'Kar's quoteables being "Our fates are caught like a reflection in a mirror, if we deny the other, we deny ourselves; we will both cease to exist.")
My grandmother is a devout sunday school teacher and you could imagine the concerned faces at our christmas get together when one of my cousins who is yet to fully understand tact and had recently seen a few discovery channel shows about quantum mechanics and recombinant DNA experiments tried to explain the evolutionary implications of half a simian helix hooking up with 98% of half a human helix in a solution .. it didn't matter what was said, it all boiled down to "God made us just as we are, so let's discuss something else." At that stage I nearly forgot my manners and almost asked - what happens when aliens do turn up and the religious factions of our society ask "Are you our God?" .. what are they going to say? no? .. and what of the ramifications?
Aside from that I think Joe handled it subtly enough, and left a great opportunity open for jokes like garibaldi saying "a thousand years! it's all here in the book" *tap-tap-tap* - "Please.. don't thump the book of G'Quon, it's disrespectful."
speaking of garibaldi, did you guys know about the dig at trek's expendable security guards? .. third bullet here.
While we're at it, anyone here seen Jeremiah? it has little to do with sci-fi, more like an adaptation of the aftermath of stephen king's The Stand. Peter DeLuise is handling production occasionally and looks like they're filming on the same cheyenne set as Stargate as well as using Rainmaker for the digital stuff. JMS handled half the script writing (on the plot shows, you can definitely tell from the personality / verbosity that it's one of his scripts) but he only intended to get the show off the ground and get back to work on other projects (spider man comics / B5:The memory of shadows movie), and Sam Egan appears to be handling the fillers, which are not as good. At least they told JMS it would go straight to cable and the characters were free to swear and jump around naked.
I don't have much to say about farscape that hasn't already been said, other than the fact that another of the shows that hooked me in my early teen years was an aussie production called Spellbinder (first season) of which the production/writing team were the ones who were later hired to do the writing etc for farscape, so I had a rough idea of the level of perversity of thought we were in for. okey dokey, that's more than enough from me at this point..
Ror: Yeah, the Shadows were damn cool. I remember being pretty scared of them when I was ... 12? How long ago was B5 on TV?
ST: DS9 was damn boring until they got to the Dominion Wars parts. The first boatload of episodes were all about diplomacy and managing racism on a multi-racial space station. A bit of a yawn-fest. I'm glad they stopped it, I doubt they could have come up with a better way to finish the series than what they did.
The trend of pandering to the bible belt majority of simpletons is what ruins a large part of american culture for me as its a stoneage philosophy and ruins my enjoyment of a film.
If you are liberated enough from Church and State to have realised that logic beats faith every time, watching otherwise quality storys devolve into mistaking the purpose of religion as something more than allegory and metaphor really feels like an insult to my intelligence.
(Note, if you are religious and offended by my views, please just turn the other cheek as I am addressing Tone who seems to have some similar ability to myself to use reason rather than faith to guide his life and as we all know, logic and faith can never agree)
Anyway, now that I've unburdened myself...
No, I've not seen Jeremiah, I don't actually have TV anymore, I just have a huge widescreen tv and dvd player for watching films and I periodically collect TV dvd's such as the sopranos or similar quality programs that enough people have recommended to me that I take a gamble.
I hate tv in Britain in general so once I moved to the states I just agreed with my wife that we wouldn't even waste our money for the first few years until we'd had the chance to judge what the culture here is like objectively without the fox propoganda making us more alarmist than we need to be.
Did you ever see American Gothic btw? Another promising show that bit the dust after season one because america can't handle an unsympathetic lead ( just look what they are doing to John Constantine because of this ).
I think in the UK it was shown as two series instead one one.
Did you ever see American Gothic btw? Another promising show that bit the dust after season one because america can't handle an unsympathetic lead ( just look what they are doing to John Constantine because of this ).
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I don't agree with that. Well, Hellblazer will likely blow, but that's because DC has apparently decided they like to fuck their own intellectual properties up the ass (Catwoman, the last Batman, etc). However, there are plenty of popular shows in which the main characters aren't sympathetic. I don't think anybody really feels for Tony Soprano when he's murdering his friend or cheating on his wife. Vic Mackey of The Shield is a corrupt and occasionally murderous police officer, but not only is the show is well received, actor Michale Chiklis has won an Emmy for playing that role. Heck, even the four characters from Seinfeld are not particularly redeemable - that was the whole point of the final episode, how shallow and pathetic the four are. I think you can go back over the last few decades and find tons of great examples - no one sympathized with J.R. Ewing on Dallas even after he was shot, and yet that show was the most popular drama in America! Certainly the trend isn't for unsympathetic characters, but there are multiple smash hits that run contrary to that trend.