SPACE: Above and Beyond - Reviews and general geekiness

Sure. If an X-Wing can be capable of interstellar travel, the Hammerhead isn't much of a stretch.

 

More like a rocket-propelled X-29.

 

Chill, BlackFire, it was just a tangent.

Others have mentioned this episode. Frankly, back then I thought the pancake thing was kind of silly, and having rewatched it I'm still not crazy about it, but yes, the final death scene was cool.

You mean Saratoga versus nuGalactica? Saratoga. They're about equal in fighter and logistical strength but Saratoga has a greater array of offensive anti-ship weapons, while nuGalactica, without her planes and Raptors, is mainly a defensive platform. The exception is her tactical nukes, which we know she has but she never actually used on screen.

 

Yes but even the Marine Corps wouldn't invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to train up a space combat pilot over quite a long time (disregarding how fast they're trained up in the pilot) only to have them serve as standard riflemen on standard missions.. it's a waste of ressources as cold as that may sound but you can find and train up a Marine far faster than to find capable people to fly fighters.

That whole thing could have been solved quite easily.. make them an experimental project.. a hybrid special force/fighter pilot for special missions that may require immediate ground action once the sky is clear. Still wouldn't be a perfect example but a better explanation than the one we didn't get.

Doesn't really matter though.. despite all the logical loopholes (and which show doesn't have a few of them) it was still an awesome show.

 

That was based on the Japanese film Lady Snowblood though.

 

Not the hybred special force. Im having flashbacks to James Brolin's Pensacola Wings of Gold.

 

the saratoga doesn't just have missile launchers and machine guns, but also has an energy cannon that runs the entire length of the ship that fires a burst every two seconds. they only show the cannon firing in the episode "sugar dirt".

 

Plese forgive me if this isnt 100% accurate, as Im recalling stuff from memory here....

A couple of posters had asked what happened to the show and why it was only given one season. Expense was certainly part of that, but the show also got pre-empted a fair bit and didnt have a fantasic slot in the schedule.

At the time, Fox had another major sci fi hit on their hands that you'll most likely have heard of: The X Files. Morgan and Wong (the S:AAB creators had been writing for that show and were responsible for some of the major stories and the way the show developed. When they jumped ship and started up S:AAB, Chris Carter (daddy of the x-files) wasnt best pleased, and by all accounts managed to pull in some favours from Fox and have the show.....disrespected.

 

That's true, the show was on- Sunday night, IIRC? It was preempted for Football a LOT.

 

Chris Carter was a believer of his own hype. He seemed to believe that human conflict with aliens would only happen the way it was depicted on X-Files. (he also reportedly hated Indepndence Day for the same reason.)

 

Over here (IIRC) it was usually aired somewhere after 11pm on a friday night. I think it also tended to miss from week to week but I did record it every time it was on.

 

I think my station carried it on Sunday (maybe Saturday) afternoon. I don't recall it being on Prime Time or later

 

The promos in the extras on the disc indicate seven pm on Sunday...the slot that killed old Galatica! (dundundun!)

 

That sounds about right, if that was Eastern Time, and the West Coast showed it at the same time (4 PM West Coast Time).

I remember watching it with a couple other syndicated or SciFI Channel shows in a 3 or 4 hour block during the afternoon (Though not necessarily on the same channel, I might've switched channels)

 

Well that's just ridiculous. There are *much* better reasons to dislike Independence Day than that!

 

I'm just saying that was his reason.

 

I'm reading through this thread since I am nearing the end of watching Space Above and Beyond, but I find myself wondering what Star Trek would be like if it were more like real life command structure:

Star Trek opens showing the bridge. A situation is discovered. A landing party is created. Rather than risk people like the Captain, Science Officer, or the Chief Medical Officers, all of which Starfleet has invested years of training and development, subordinates are chosen.

Actually I liked the episode of Star Trek Next Generation when Wesley Crusher was given the assignment to pull together a landing party. He evaluated the facts, looked at the possible people and worked from there. No command staff sent on that mission.

So in this setup you could have some repeats, but you could also have new actors and actresses get a start as the show would feature all kinds of new faces. Many short stories arced together by a common command staff that in of themselves are changed out from time to time.

On the grimier missions the Captain would be negotiating from orbit while the landing party works things out. Some landing parties might actually get completely wiped out (which we saw on Star Trek anyway.) But in some cases, people other than Kirk can show intiative and be promoted through the ranks. Disciplined, etc. A lot more lower decks in this format.

And naturally if there were meetings of high ranking people on the planet, the Captain and other high ranking persons would attend.

(Come to think of it, bring it back to Space Above and Beyond, that was the cool thing about COLONEL McQueen being grounded, to be prevented from being another Kirk).

 

LOL! Loved the spoof of the typical Friends episode title.

Well, if Col McQueen says it, I would leave that alone as well. But at least the show addressed that question directly. Funny that they turned a fan concern into a concern the crew would have voiced as well.

Never No More... just made me ache seeing her ache like that. Made me wanna say in her sadness "Pick me!!" :P

As for New BSG, I see MANY similiarities between Space and New BSG. One I like, the other I don't. The problem I have is how they are presented the context and backdrop of the story as both are presented in the same way. For Space that presentation of a world with suits and ties and bullets works since they are from the near future Earth. That same method does not work for New BSG as they were heading TO Earth

I was thinking it reminded me of Hush when I watched that episode. Amazing.

 

The problem isn't one of command structure. The problem is one of opening credits, as in the the most prominent name in the opening credits tends to get the most screen time overall in the series.

In ST:TOS, Bill Shatner was the most prominent name out of two (then three) names in the intro, so he had to get the most face time, which meant if they were landing on a planet The Shat had to be there to get the most outta what Desilu was paying him. Common Sense and "command Structure" be damned.

By the time they got onto ST:TNG, common sense had started to creep in and the creators realized "maybe we do need to keep the captain's behind on the ship," so they cast a First Officer that would be more than just a sidekick (Patrick Stewart, then Jonathan Frakes in the intro) and gave him the job of running away teams. Of course Picard indulged and beamed down himself on occasion, but not every away mission because he could still be featured prominently on the show staying on the ship. Technically, the command structure governing both shows was exactly the same. The characters were just given different roles to play.

Now, taking the trek analogy over to S:AAB, the prominent names in the credits are the names of the permanent away team. The focus of the show is the away team's exploits, not the exploits of the captain (Commodore Ross) so the captain doesn't have to land anywhere. He doesn't even have to appear in every episode. (And he doesn't.) It also isn't about the adventures of the ship in general, so the Saratoga doesn't get dunked into black holes or get shifted through time or encounter giant space amoebas. It's about the 58th squadron fighting a planet-hopping war, so the 58th squadron is who we see actually do the planet-hopping.

So the moral is: if you want the away to do away team work and you want the captain to stay on the ship, then you have to give the away team portrayers better contracts than the captain.