• 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!

Why is the SyFy channel getting a cooking show?

The joke is that as history Braveheart is crap!

Alternate History has been a subset of SF for as long as I can remember. I guess the science it fictionalizes is the Many Worlds Interpretation?

Oh, I got the fact that you were saying Braveheart isn't historically accurate. My post was half joke and half genuine curiosity why alternate history is considered science fiction.

Hell, practically all of alternate history books are usually in the sci-fi section of book stores and libraries, even the ones that are just "what if" tales with no involvement of aliens or time travellers. It just bothers me. A story of how Lincoln's term would have continued had he not been assassinated is not what I consider sci-fi,
Limiting SF to aliens and time travel? No thanks.

Well obviously sci-fi isn't just aliens and time travel, there's also shark and octopus hybrids. I didn't bring them up before since I've never seen Renaissance Sharktopus at the book store.

Although...
 
Oh, I got the fact that you were saying Braveheart isn't historically accurate. My post was half joke and half genuine curiosity why alternate history is considered science fiction.

Hell, practically all of alternate history books are usually in the sci-fi section of book stores and libraries, even the ones that are just "what if" tales with no involvement of aliens or time travellers. It just bothers me. A story of how Lincoln's term would have continued had he not been assassinated is not what I consider sci-fi,
Limiting SF to aliens and time travel? No thanks.

Well obviously sci-fi isn't just aliens and time travel, there's also shark and octopus hybrids. I didn't bring them up before since I've never seen Renaissance Sharktopus at the book store.

Although...
Sharktopus vs Leonardo Da Vinci...IN SPACE!!!!!!!!
 
If Syfy doesn't show a cooking show, then who will? I mean seriously, cruise around the cable channels for a while, you can NEVER find a show where people are cooking. Thank god for Syfy for giving us 30 minutes of cooking every week! The executives should be praised for their forward thinking and high levels of intelligence and creativity.


Hey, Lifetime had a vampire show for awhile. And AMC is in the zombie business these days.

Everyone's branching out . . . .
 
^For the same reason that Cartoon Network shows live-action movies and game shows, that Court TV began showing courtroom dramas and then turned into a reality-TV network, that former fine-arts channels like A&E and Bravo have turned into rerun/reality channels, that The Nashville Network turned into SpikeTV, and that countless other formerly niche cable channels have switched to more mainstream programming over the past decade or two. There is hardly anything new about this.

Commercial television networks need to make money to stay in business. You can make more money with programming that has broad appeal than you can with programming that targets only a niche audience. Therefore, non-premium cable networks that started out with niche programming have either diversified their programming or abandoned their niche focus altogether in order to stay in business. If anything, SciFi/Syfy has held onto its niche focus longer than a lot of other cable networks.

The only thing I don't understand is, if Syfy wanted to do a cooking show, why not hire Alton Brown to do it? Good Eats is practically a genre show already, full of food-science geekery, pop-culture references, cheesy MST3K-style special effects and skits, and occasional fantasy scenarios like visits from Santa and assorted historical figures.

Thank the stars that Space-The Imagination Station's not completely like that.
 
^For the same reason that Cartoon Network shows live-action movies and game shows, that Court TV began showing courtroom dramas and then turned into a reality-TV network, that former fine-arts channels like A&E and Bravo have turned into rerun/reality channels, that The Nashville Network turned into SpikeTV, and that countless other formerly niche cable channels have switched to more mainstream programming over the past decade or two. There is hardly anything new about this.

Commercial television networks need to make money to stay in business. You can make more money with programming that has broad appeal than you can with programming that targets only a niche audience. Therefore, non-premium cable networks that started out with niche programming have either diversified their programming or abandoned their niche focus altogether in order to stay in business. If anything, SciFi/Syfy has held onto its niche focus longer than a lot of other cable networks.

The only thing I don't understand is, if Syfy wanted to do a cooking show, why not hire Alton Brown to do it? Good Eats is practically a genre show already, full of food-science geekery, pop-culture references, cheesy MST3K-style special effects and skits, and occasional fantasy scenarios like visits from Santa and assorted historical figures.

Thank the stars that Space-The Imagination Station's not completely like that.
Looking over their schedule, it seems everything Syfy shows is also shown on Space (I see all of syfy's reality shows on there), so how does it make them better?
 
Frak SyFy, all the good sf/f is now being created elsewhere and judging from pilots in production, the divergence will only get greater. If I have to hunt all over the dial for decent sf/f, that's not too much of a burden.
 
If Syfy doesn't show a cooking show, then who will? I mean seriously, cruise around the cable channels for a while, you can NEVER find a show where people are cooking. Thank god for Syfy for giving us 30 minutes of cooking every week! The executives should be praised for their forward thinking and high levels of intelligence and creativity.

I wouldn't to go as far as that. I don't know who provides you your cable, but I know of three separate networks that constantly show people cooking, full time. If anybody watches South Park, you'll get what I am about to say. Too much of one thing, is a bad thing.
Also the show isn't just about cooking, its about himself, with a little cooking here and there. Your also likely to see drama. Its my opinion that we leave this braindead material with the average population who have fallen for these drama reality shows[once you put something on camera(unless its animals) its no longer reality].
Syfy quote is Imagine Greater, well freeze cooking your food doesn't require much imagination, once you learn the process its just re-doing other recipes while adding the freezing part to them.
Its funny that the qoute is imagine greater, becuase when it comes down to the shows and definitely to the movies, we can all Imagine Far greater than the executives that you put on a high scale.
 
oldBSG was very attractive visually, but the content was dumb junk, the "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" of 70s sf. Moore and his people turned that effects-laden crap into something that reasonably intelligent adults could stand to watch without sacrificing their higher cerebral functions. Moore wins.

For someone who re-wrote his own original sci-fi story(Tin Woodman, 1979)just to fit it into TNG format, I'm not all that surprised to hear you make a statement as inept and empty as that. And from what I have seen and read about Polaris' storyline, it looks and sounds like a recycled episode from that godawful Star Trek-Voyager.

But that is neither here nor there.

Ron Moore quoted in an interview that he was not a fan of old Battlestar Galactica.

And since Moore was not a fan, it makes one wonder why he even bothered with the property to begin with.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Battlestar Galactica was effects-laden crap. Yes, it was a product of the science fiction renaissance set forth by the success of Star Wars. And yes, it was riding on the success of George Lucas' Oscar-winning space opera.

Nevertheless, it was still successful in the ratings and earned a huge fan following. The only reason it lasted one season was because it was too expensive to produce.

Think about it. One Million Dollars per hour on the making of those episodes in 1978 was a huge chunk of change at that time.

Content that was dumb junk? Not really. "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" of 70s sf? Hardly. It certainly gave the old 'Ancient-Astronaut' theory set forth by Erich Von Daniken(?)a new dimension, if not a brilliant edge.

And it was a show that also dealt with humanity's ongoing
journey in life. It also dealt with themes of family. Let alone values and ethics that have unfortunately been discarded by mankind's ignorance and foolishness in the past several decades, resulting in the scary, violent, f****d up world that we are currently living in now.

Moore and his people turning what you call effects-laden crap into something that reasonably intelligent adults could stand to watch without sacrificing their higher cerebral functions? Maybe in your opinion, but to old schoolers who grew up with the original, let alone old fashioned values, Not likely.

Regretfully, it was turned into something that actress Kyra Schoen(the 1968 version of Night Of The Living Dead)once said about remakes in general.

"A cheap way to make a buck."

Ron Moore loses in that field. He may have done a decent job when writing Star Trek - First Contact, but when he remade a classic, he did a piss-poor job.

Obviously, he was influenced by another sci-fi atrocity.

That one being Galactica 1980.
 
Moore and his people turning what you call effects-laden crap into something that reasonably intelligent adults could stand to watch without sacrificing their higher cerebral functions? Maybe in your opinion, but to old schoolers who grew up with the original, let alone old fashioned values, Not likely.

.


I don't know. I watched the original when it first aired and was distinctly unimpressed. Then again, I was a "sophisticated" college student at the time and the old BSG struck me as hopelessly juvenile--and a step backwards from the stuff I grew up on, like TOS and the Twilight Zone. I actually prefered Buck Rogers which was pure, unapologetic camp--and entertaining on that level.

Give me the new version any day. In my opinion, "old-fashioned values" are no substitute for superior writing and acting.
 
Last edited:
Moore and his people turning what you call effects-laden crap into something that reasonably intelligent adults could stand to watch without sacrificing their higher cerebral functions? Maybe in your opinion, but to old schoolers who grew up with the original, let alone old fashioned values, Not likely.

Battlestar Galactica was a name associated with a campy 1970s action show. Thanks to Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica is now a name associated with quite possibly the most successful sci-fi show of the past ten years which has won a lot of rather prestigious awards and was even a topic of discussion at the United Nations.
 
If Syfy doesn't show a cooking show, then who will? I mean seriously, cruise around the cable channels for a while, you can NEVER find a show where people are cooking. Thank god for Syfy for giving us 30 minutes of cooking every week! The executives should be praised for their forward thinking and high levels of intelligence and creativity.

I don't know who provides you your cable, but I know of three separate networks that constantly show people cooking, full time.


I was being sarcastic dude, cooking shows are everywhere. My post was a (very) thinly veiled criticism of the execs at Syfy jumping on a bandwagon instead of coming up with their own creative content.
 
I didn't "grow up" with the original BSG; I was an adult when it first aired, so I had no reason to cut Larson and company any slack on just how bad a job they did. But hell, Moore was a kid when he watched it and he saw through that crap, so the notion that just because one grew up with it one couldn't see its limits is a non-starter.
 
^^ I did grow up with the original BSG and loved it. At the time it was a great action adventure with cool ships. Looking back at it some 30 + years later, it was a very silly and flawed show but still has that certain nostalga factor for me.

The one thing they did right was the moon boots and capes. Some day we'll all be wearing moon boots and capes... bank on it!
 
If Syfy doesn't show a cooking show, then who will? I mean seriously, cruise around the cable channels for a while, you can NEVER find a show where people are cooking. Thank god for Syfy for giving us 30 minutes of cooking every week! The executives should be praised for their forward thinking and high levels of intelligence and creativity.

I don't know who provides you your cable, but I know of three separate networks that constantly show people cooking, full time.


I was being sarcastic dude, cooking shows are everywhere. My post was a (very) thinly veiled criticism of the execs at Syfy jumping on a bandwagon instead of coming up with their own creative content.

Sorry, the post actaully sounded like you meant what you said.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top