Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!
This week, I watched one of my favorite series of science fiction novels be adapted into a TV drama by Netflix - Altered Carbon - and while the adaptation wasn't bad, and the show was entertaining as pure popcorn - it was soooooooooo 2010s in one respect. They absolutely could not resist adding to a beautifully plausible book, unlikely personal contrivance. Characters that are not related in the books are now siblings, just for extra feels, when the book knew where to draw the line to maintain a natural feel. Characters that plausibly exist as different personalities, are now rolled into one, where they are distinct for good reason in the novels. Someone going into it blind is still gonna enjoy it, its the best cyberpunk series we have perhaps ever had on TV, but when every dime-a-dozen genre show from the Arrow-verse to random ABC or SyFy's stuff foists unlikely contrivance into plots, it makes you really wonder whether writing rooms are somehow horribly pressed for time that they can't think of a more likely reason for something.
It's funny you mention that. I just watched Altered Carbon last week, and did love it, but have never read the books. I did read The Expanse before seeing the series, however. The one thing they really changed which works much, much worse than the books was the decision to have the Roci crew begin as near strangers who distrust each other and are always getting into fights, rather than a team that works together like a family (where the conflict comes from the outside - other than Naomi/Holden relationship drama). Again, this seems to be basically praying to the alter of "Modern TV" where the characters need to have interpersonal drama in order for things to be interesting.
The thing about STD that's most similar to Stargate Universe is that the Stargate producers set out to produce a more sophisticated drama than SG had represented up to that time - something like nuBSG. Like STD, they lacked staff with the writing skills or talent to know how to approach it.
It's funny you mention that. I just watched Altered Carbon last week, and did love it, but have never read the books. I did read The Expanse before seeing the series, however. The one thing they really changed which works much, much worse than the books was the decision to have the Roci crew begin as near strangers who distrust each other and are always getting into fights, rather than a team that works together like a family (where the conflict comes from the outside - other than Naomi/Holden relationship drama). Again, this seems to be basically praying to the alter of "Modern TV" where the characters need to have interpersonal drama in order for things to be interesting.
In the show, Reileen Kawahara, who is not related to Takeshi Kovacs in the books, is now his sister. The protagonist now happens to be related to a meth with a criminal empire. How many of us in real life can identify with the situation that their lost sister is Pablo Escobar? It makes what is a very natural antagonist, a criminal from outside his immediate personal sphere, into a contrived reason for family drama.
I wanted to read The Expanse before the show started, but didn't get chance.
If you asked readers what, in general, were the most critically acclaimed hard-science sci-fi book series of the last 18 years, people would probably list something like the Revelation Space series, the Altered Carbon series, and The Expanse series. We have gotten two adaptations out of three, which is amazing to me, considering there was five years in the 2010s when there wasn't a single space opera on TV, but none so far have been science fiction's Game of Thrones moment. I hope Denis Villeneuve's Dune turns out to be everything for Dune, that Blade Runner 2049 was for Blade Runner. I hear Imperial Radtch talked about with similar enthusiasm to The Expanse a few years ago, but don't know if it's hype.
We are getting John Scalzi's Old Man's War next from Netflix, and maybe Asimov's Foundation and Robinson's Red Mars at some point from channels like Starz, but the latter two projects have shed promising producers, such as Jonathan Nolan, who was attached to Foundation. People have occasionally touted Culture or Hyperion adaptations too, either in film or TV too.
We are getting John Scalzi's Old Man's War next from Netflix, and maybe Asimov's Foundation and Robinson's Red Mars at some point from channels like Starz, but the latter two projects have shed promising producers, such as Jonathan Nolan, who was attached to Foundation. People have occasionally touted Culture or Hyperion adaptations too, either in film or TV too.
I hope Mars is never made into a TV series. It would be awful. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of those writers who is all about tone, not action, with long bursts of descriptive prose, and these intimate dialogues between two characters which somehow manage to work. What his work tends to be missing is anything resembling a plotline. And in the case of the Mars series, so much of it is built around an anti-capitalist message which by nature would be extremely watered down by a studio. The resulting show would basically be a shallow reflection of the literary work.
I've felt for awhile though that Tad Willam's Otherland (his semi-cyberpunk sci-fi series from the late 1990s/early 2000s) would be an amazing prestige sci-fi drama for TV. It checks all the right boxes, from family conflict to female POC protagonist. I don't think the visuals would really be out of the realm of TV budgets either.
