Yeah, while Space:1999 gained in high production values, it seemed to lose out in coherent story lines.
Space:1999 on Comet TV
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
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The metaphysical stuff going on produced a number of deus-ex-machina type getouts for the Alphans IIRC. Almost anything seemed like it could happen for no apparent reason. Best just to accept it as the whim of advanced aliens acting behind the scenes. New Battlestar Galactica encroached on similar territory as I think the old series did. Again best treated like Greek mythology.I thought the first season stories, while out there, were coherent.
Never watched Blakes 7. Regarding scientific plausibility, how does it compare with other series?
From what I recall, about the same level of "magic tech" as TOS -- The Liberator has some sort of inertialess hyperdrive instead of warp drive, uses a displacement device instead of transporters and laser blasters instead of phasers. However, on Blakes 7 these technologies have been created by advanced aliens and seem almost unintelligible to the human crew, who depend on the ship's AI "Zen" to keep things running. Human spacecraft use FTL but are a lot slower than The Liberator. Most of the science and technology in the show is implausible given our current level of understanding, of course, but it is consistent.
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Thank you. So, at least, they don't confuse galaxies with star systems and they acknowledge you need some kind of FTL engine to travel between stars in the span of the lifetime of whom you left behind...
As people such as Terry Nation and Chris Boucher were involved in creating the show, no, they didn't make those sorts of errors.
You know who is probably the worst offender? The original Battlestar Galactica. I believe that they did not have just any scientific adviser, but the writers never read a SciFi book in their whole life too..
It was basically Mormons in space, was it not? I quite liked that -- of course, they also turn up on The Expanse, intending to voyage between the stars. Having been to the Tabernacle in SLC, it seems quite plausible.
Yep (but as Italian kid I missed al the references to Mormonism at the time). But it was very confusing how they traveled between the stars. They never mentioned any type of FTL, but the Galactica was the only ship in the fleet able to travel at "lightspeed" (whatever it means). Even in Star Wars (which was evidently an inspiration, at least from a visual point of view), they had hyperspace.
In our reality, you only need to travel close to the speed of light to shorten the apparent duration of the journey through relativistic time dilation, of course. So perhaps they were travelling that way -- although the resultant parallax and Dopler shift effects weren't depicted AFAIR. I can never envisage what happens if you go outside your light cone from our spacetime into hyperspace -- there is no universal clock or coordinate system to establish the "now and here" from which you depart and the "now and there" in which you arrive.
Actually Terry Nation often confused galaxies and star systems. As in the early scene in Duel where Travis implies he's been lying in wait for the Liberator in a different galaxy! Still love the show, though.
Boucher should have caught that error as script editor. Mind you, B7 is by no means an exception in having a poor grasp of relative astronomical scales.
Comedians from Andromeda? I think the intent was the galaxy M31 but now I'm not so sure that the constellation of Andromeda wasn't intended - a nonsense as constellations retain recognisable shapes over only a few light years from the Sun as their component stars are usually at vastly different distances. On reflection, I realise nostalgia might have made me unconsciouslessly too forgiving of errors in the show, but, hey, I kind of get a kick out of smugly spotting errors.
Nerd.
Has anyone ever seen Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion? I don't know if it has ever been broadcast in the USA.
The series was never shown in the UK either I believe. I imported the German-language DVDs and acquired some English subtitles. There are only seven episodes in total. Various reasons have been mooted for the series' cancellation, including its seeming to be too militaristic even 21 years after WW2 ended, although it's more likely it was just too expensive to produce even given its success. Calling the hostile aliens "Frogs" didn't appear to annoy the French.
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It was the season two finale Star One. The crew of the Liberator discover a minefield at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy that is preventing an alien invasion fleet from the Andromeda galaxy from invading our own.
Ttavis, disabled the minefield allowing the aliens through and Blake and the Liberator have to hold them off until reinforcements arrive.
I discovered this on Youtube like a lot of people and it is really cool. The strangest thing about it to me is that in all respects (gogo boots, spit-curl haircuts) it looks like it should have been shot in psychadelic dayglo color and yet it's B&W. Chalk that up to european TV being behind the US in the switch to color by a good few years. Anyway, it is a fascinating time-capsule of sci-fi on the cusp of the flower-power era.
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