Well. movie makers and novelists at least try to tap social resonances. Tv doesn't try to do cutting edge and push the envelop. At least not the sly-fi channel who draws from the same people and the same ideas recycled yet they say they are dedicated to doing the next great space opera when they won't deal with anyone they don't know or not represented by ICM or such. It sounds very corrupt from the top to the bottom. A good house cleaning by like Arnold Shwartzenegger or Charles Bronson would help get rid of the evil uber menches hiding underneath their desks doling out mediocrity and making tons of money dolling out pig slop to the masses.
Earth vs Space based SCI FI V (aka why Space 2099 might succeed)
- Thread starter Mutara Nebula 1967
- Start date
TV pushes the envelope if it has a paying audience that wants the enveloped pushed.
For HBO, pushing the envelope is part of their competitive advantage. For CBS, not so much.
For HBO, pushing the envelope is part of their competitive advantage. For CBS, not so much.
I want to see a noir, Chandler-style detective in 19th century steam-punk New York with a ragamuffin soot-faced teen-aged female sidekick.
I want to see ANYTHING in space. 
Seriously. ANYTHING. An all-tribble singing and dancing musical extavaganza. Test Patterns of Alpha Centauri. Desperate Wookies. ANYTHING.
Seriously. ANYTHING. An all-tribble singing and dancing musical extavaganza. Test Patterns of Alpha Centauri. Desperate Wookies. ANYTHING.
'ANYTHING in SPACE' never made it past the pilot, cancelled before it had a chance. *sniff*
Because they pitched it to FOX! 
I want to see ANYTHING in space.
Seriously. ANYTHING. An all-tribble singing and dancing musical extavaganza. Test Patterns of Alpha Centauri. Desperate Wookies. ANYTHING.
Pigs in Space?
It's up to Sy-Fy right now, they only bought the idea it's got a long ways to go before it can become a series.
Ugh, SyFy has greenlit so much now (and nothing as interesting sounding as RHW's proposed series) that I figure it's dead.
If one examines trends in popular culture, I think a problem might be that we're in the "age of magic". Popular television series with a fantasy element veer towards the supernatural and things based on fear, paranoia, and magical escapism.
This is particularly bad in the west and in North America. One could pin it on a lot of things, such as a general loss of optimism for the future and awareness of "science" as an actual thing, rather a focus on technology - and only the technology most comfortably familiar to everyday, suburban American life. Computers. Cell phones. The Internet.
The upshot is that I actually do think audiences for television today have a hard time suspending disbelief when it comes to science fiction. People have lived with perpetual war, economic ruin, and a world seemingly overrun by hatred of everyone at everything for a decade now.
It's a time when an optimistic form of science fiction might actually do a lot of people some real good, but they're not primed to be willing to even consider the message.
Hell, the highest earning and arguably most viewed science fiction film of the last decade, Avatar, was an incredibly negative deconstruction of humanity and humanity's future, basically ending with an "abandon all hope, and literally abandon humanity itself."
What the solution to this is, I honestly don't know. In a sense, Star Trek itself might have been our hope for mainstream sci-fi on television if the franchise hadn't been mismanaged and killed off (for television).
Perhaps an actual Star Trek series is the best bet at restarting space-based TV sci-fi.
This is particularly bad in the west and in North America. One could pin it on a lot of things, such as a general loss of optimism for the future and awareness of "science" as an actual thing, rather a focus on technology - and only the technology most comfortably familiar to everyday, suburban American life. Computers. Cell phones. The Internet.
The upshot is that I actually do think audiences for television today have a hard time suspending disbelief when it comes to science fiction. People have lived with perpetual war, economic ruin, and a world seemingly overrun by hatred of everyone at everything for a decade now.
It's a time when an optimistic form of science fiction might actually do a lot of people some real good, but they're not primed to be willing to even consider the message.
Hell, the highest earning and arguably most viewed science fiction film of the last decade, Avatar, was an incredibly negative deconstruction of humanity and humanity's future, basically ending with an "abandon all hope, and literally abandon humanity itself."
What the solution to this is, I honestly don't know. In a sense, Star Trek itself might have been our hope for mainstream sci-fi on television if the franchise hadn't been mismanaged and killed off (for television).
Perhaps an actual Star Trek series is the best bet at restarting space-based TV sci-fi.
Yet The Walking Dead is sci fi, and just got 9M viewers for its season finale (which would be decent numbers even on broadcast and is jaw-dropping for cable).
I think there's demand for both sci fi and fantasy out there. Whether it's one or the other doesn't matter long as the story has the things people look for in any story: compelling characters who make us root for them to survive and succeed, even when the odds are heavily against them, and a story that isn't rendered dull and annoying by being shoehorned into some tired formula (ie, cop show or conspiracy).
That describes both Once Upon a Time and The Walking Dead, which otherwise are very divergent shows to say the least.
Take TWD's approach - a small group of relatable characters battling some terrifying threat - and you could make it space opera by setting it on an alien world overrun by horrible critters. Or you could make it fantasy by setting it in a Middle Earth-type milieu overrun by horrible Orcs. It's a very malleable basic format (not formula) that could be applied to any number of things. AMC is even trying to convince us that Mad Men is basically just TWD, transported to a 1960s ad agency. (The trouble there is, with Mad Men's characters, I'm rooting for the zombies.)
I think there's demand for both sci fi and fantasy out there. Whether it's one or the other doesn't matter long as the story has the things people look for in any story: compelling characters who make us root for them to survive and succeed, even when the odds are heavily against them, and a story that isn't rendered dull and annoying by being shoehorned into some tired formula (ie, cop show or conspiracy).
That describes both Once Upon a Time and The Walking Dead, which otherwise are very divergent shows to say the least.
Take TWD's approach - a small group of relatable characters battling some terrifying threat - and you could make it space opera by setting it on an alien world overrun by horrible critters. Or you could make it fantasy by setting it in a Middle Earth-type milieu overrun by horrible Orcs. It's a very malleable basic format (not formula) that could be applied to any number of things. AMC is even trying to convince us that Mad Men is basically just TWD, transported to a 1960s ad agency. (The trouble there is, with Mad Men's characters, I'm rooting for the zombies.)
If that's the case, then Space 2099 won't work. Ron Moore's whole point in making New Galactica was that he thought he could do it better, and he maintained that arrogance all the way though.
The fact that he was completely wrong is a subject for another debate.
That said, I hope the people making 2099 do respect what came before and keep the daddy issues and family angst out of it. God knows we've had more than enough of that garbage on TV the last few years. And who the hell cares if the story is scientifically implausible? That didn't stop the original from being made. Just tell the story and be done with it.
nuBSG lasted four seasons, spawned one spinoff with another still possibly on its way. nuBSG was anything but a failure.
I hope the RHW thing makes it, as well.
I have a lot of respect for what he tried to do with Andromeda, and would like to see what else he's got.
I'm fairly wary of 2099, but I did like the original in its day (well, the first season in its day) so I'd probably watch the pilot when that comes around. The issue for me really is whether or not it is good, independent of any relationship it connects itself to the first show with.
Ah yes. What you'd want is, I guess, a character driven series about humanity after a deadly apocalypse with music by Bear McCreary... only it's also a space opera.
Ah yes. What you'd want is, I guess, a character driven series about humanity after a deadly apocalypse with music by Bear McCreary... only it's also a space opera.
Likewise. Hopefully post-Andromeda RHW will be better at tailoring his development of an epic space opera setting to the doubtless not very generous budget he'd get (i.e. perhaps not have a race of insectoids if you know they'd end up looking like the Than).
Probably. However, let's hope just as much that he's working for a studio that isn't as self-defeatingly stingy and cheap as Tribune. The problem with Andromeda wasn't just that his sights were set too high but that theirs were set far too low. Andromeda wasn't the only show their stinginess ruined; see also Earth: Final Conflict, BeastMaster, etc.
Nah, that's crazy talk. That would never work.