Yeah, just like that show from the Sixties. What was it called... Oh, yeah! Star Trek.
Firefly to Air on The Science Channel
- Thread starter Warp Coil
- Start date
Star Trek has three seasons, not 13 episodes.
It also had more than one movie made.
While I get your point, Smackdown airs in what has long been the traditional night and slot for new programming on the channel.
"Firefly" does that 'no sound in space' thing. Maybe they felt that bit of scientific accuracy was enough. 
I actually think it would be cool if Science Channel showed some sci-fi stuff, but had trivia tracks running along the bottom with education facts about space or technology or something.
I actually think it would be cool if Science Channel showed some sci-fi stuff, but had trivia tracks running along the bottom with education facts about space or technology or something.
Am I smelling a seventeen-thousandth re-airing of TNG on the horizon?
You know, that's a cool idea. Annotated science fiction. "Pop-up video" notes correcting the science errors and such.
Reminds me of the book I'm reading now, The Science Fictional Solar System. It's a 1979 collection of mostly older stories about the bodies of the Solar System, stories that were as accurate as possible when they were published but had been based on science subsequently found to be erroneous (although editor Isaac Asimov seems to have cheated, since his own story in the anthology is from 1970 and was still pretty accurate at the time of publication). E.g. a story assuming Mercury always kept one face to the Sun, a story assuming Venus was an inhabited desert world, a story assuming Jupiter had a surface, etc. Each story is preceded with an introduction by Asimov discussing the real science as it was known in 1979. (Might be cool to have a new version of such an anthology to reflect further progress in the ensuing three decades.)
You can smell Space in Canada from the U.S?
(we had Encounter @ Farpoint last week).
It's ironic in the way that a Sci-fi channel gets away from Sci-fi, only to have Sci-fi airing on a science channel. I wonder if that means Firefly will appear on Canada's version of the science channel too, but I doubt it. We tend to have stricter broadcasting requirements. Would especially be ironic if a spinoff channel from the science channel were created to air sci-fi.
And yeah, I don't think the Space channel has ever stopped showing all incarnations of Trek.
And yeah, I don't think the Space channel has ever stopped showing all incarnations of Trek.
It's just part of the longtime trend for niche cable stations to diversify beyond their niche. Court TV became a "reality"-show channel, The Nashville Network became SpikeTV, Arts & Entertainment ended up as just A&E and did biographies and reruns, Bravo went from a fine-arts channel to a rerun/reality channel, etc.
Makes ya wonder why they bothered to be niche channels in the first place.
I don't mind sci fi encroaching elsewhere in compensation for Skiffy's allergy to sci fi especially the type in space. They'd rather show fluff and emo vampires and ghosts.
Reminds me of the time these were all showing the same nite:
Braveheart on Skiffy, belongs on History
Modern Marvels on History, belongs on Discovery
Some bs "documentary" about dragons on Discovery, belongs on Skiffy
Get your acts together, people!
I don't mind sci fi encroaching elsewhere in compensation for Skiffy's allergy to sci fi especially the type in space. They'd rather show fluff and emo vampires and ghosts.
Reminds me of the time these were all showing the same nite:
Braveheart on Skiffy, belongs on History
Modern Marvels on History, belongs on Discovery
Some bs "documentary" about dragons on Discovery, belongs on Skiffy
Get your acts together, people!
Oh, I know what you mean. Unfortunately though, it makes the reason for specialty channels moot when anything can be found anywhere without regard to the nature of the channel, which then dilutes the whole broadcasting spectrum.
Btw, Bravo here in Canada still is pretty much the same channel it was when it started. It's actually closer to how A&E was in the beginning.
Space isn't showing Enterprise anymore. And they weren't showing DS9 from 2004-2008.
Enterprise got punted for Stargate (Which is shown as much as Star Trek - possibly more).
The Star Treks are shows twice a day. The Stargates are each shown three times a day. Which makes sense, as Canadian shows, the Stargates help Space meet their CanCon requirements.
I definitely think that it is an interesting, and unexpected, move for the Science Channel to expand its viewership by airing a scripted sci-fi series on what has up until now been a documentary, educational, non-fiction network. Even more surprising is that they choose Firefly, of all series, to air. I enjoyed the series, but what exactly is so scientific about it? Something like Star Trek would certainly seem more appropriate. My only guess is that the licensing fee to air the series was incredibly cheap. The Science Channel isn't exactly known for forking out large sums of money for syndication rights.
I was having a discussion about it with some co-workers today. We're oddly curious to see how the ratings are, and if it will prompt the network to consider more sci-fi, scripted programming in the future. It's entirely possible that Firefly will do no better than a repeat of How Its Made, in which case this would be a failed experiment for them.
Discovery has done something like this before, though. Back in 2004 or 2005, Discovery Health aired the old series Chicago Hope.
I was having a discussion about it with some co-workers today. We're oddly curious to see how the ratings are, and if it will prompt the network to consider more sci-fi, scripted programming in the future. It's entirely possible that Firefly will do no better than a repeat of How Its Made, in which case this would be a failed experiment for them.
Discovery has done something like this before, though. Back in 2004 or 2005, Discovery Health aired the old series Chicago Hope.
I wish this was real.Jeff O'Connor said:
Heck I wish Firefly well on Science Channel so we can get reruns of stuff like Farscape, B5, and DS9, to renew interest in these shows so they aren't as forgotten like they are now.
The things that bug me about channels going mainstream is that it makes traditional TV rather irrelevant when someone can go online to watch what they want, when they want, with fewer or no commercials, cable TV is really digging their own grave with this stuff.
Well, I mean, they've always been showing some Trek, in whatever form. Had no idea it wasn't showing Enterprise anymore though, but that's no big loss. Point is, they've always been showing some Trek.
You can't take the sky from me...
Good ol' reliable Nathan Fillion was doing an interview with EW recently, as I learned in that other thread; he's one hell of a guy, talking about how if he won the lottery he'd make the show himself and distribute it over the Internet.
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