After ‘Terra Nova’s Cancellation Does TV Sci-Fi Have 2 B FX heavy?

[MacLeod]

I know most people here don't watch Being Erica, but I feel that the show is the perfect example of how to do a science fiction show in this time and age. The show's premise of using time travel as a therapy tool is ingenious. The time travel aspects appeal to men while women are attracted to the lead character's life and friends. Toss in a believeable four season long arc where the lead character grows from a bumbling Bridget Jones-ish English-lit failure into a confident woman running her successful book publishing business... perfection.

Too many sci-fi shows focus on the special effects and cool looking tech rather than the characters and their stories. That's why so many science fiction shows have failed. I'm glad that a show like Being Erica can show a different (and successful!) way of doing sci-fi.

"Being Erica" is a decent little show. But isn't it Canadian not American. So it would appear that Sci-Fi TV isn't broken, perhaps just the US model of it might be broken. I'm sure Sci-Fi based shows flourish around the world but perhaps this is where budget is more limited they have to focus on other aspects than the latest CGI effect.

 

[Sheep]

I vote for less effects heavy sci-fi.

Special effects have actually gotten worse and less realistic in the past 5 years as more and more shows depend on poorly produced CG as a crutch for shitty writing. Cases in point, V and Terra Nova, both of which have effects so awful they destroy your suspension of disbelief. It's amazing that shows with hugely lower budgets like Farscape and the modern Star Trek series never had this problem (exempting early seasons of TNG just due to sheer age)...oh yeah, they had decent writers.

 

[lennier1]

It's amazing that shows with hugely lower budgets like Farscape and the modern Star Trek series never had this problem (exempting early seasons of TNG just due to sheer age)...oh yeah, they had decent writers.

Maybe if you exclude turds like the third season of Akiraprise, where they were blowing up tons of shit on a weekly basis and the VFX sequences they used as a crutch became so bad (time trade-offs due to the amount of needed filler sequences) that many video game cutscenes from 5+ years before looked better than that.

[edit]As for good modern science fiction shows without heavy use of VFX, does anyone remember a show from New Zealand called "This Is Not My Life"?[/edit]