Am I out of love with sci-fi?

[JD]

With Lost i clearly remember the producers (Lindelof) stating that everything that happened could be explained naturally, i.e. no science fiction or "magic. Fast forward and from what i read the show went into time travel and apparently everyone who started the show actually died in the crash and it was all some kind of mass dream or hallucination or whatever.. so much for that ironclad statement.

I understand you did not watch the show so you are just basing this off of a second hand accoun, but they did not die in the crash. People have been saying that since the finale and it has been driving me crazy, because I thought if you actually paid attention it was pretty clear that that was not the case. I'm pretty sure I've seen the cast and writers explain that that wasn't the case, but still keep insisting it was what happened.

 

[FPAlpha]

May be but there was still time travel and a whole other bunch that just didn't make sense in the context of the show. As it progressed from its stellar first season (much like Battlestar Galactica) it became more and more evident that the producers and writers didn't have it all figured out that well and wrote themselves in the corner more and more until there was no good way out.

I stuck with BSG to the end and man was that a crappy end.. they sold the show with "And they have a plan" but by season 4 it was evident they didn't (didn't they also drop this line from the show at some point). As i jumped ship on Lost in season 3 i can only speak in theory as to what came after and it was a convoluted mess.. even in written summary form i couldn't make heads or tails of it so, at least for me, it was the right decision to leave the show.

Years ago i wouldn't dream of leaving a show even if it dipped somewhat in quality but as i got older my time got more valuable so i'm less and less willing to stick around with a show that has lost what first drew me to it (i was also a huge Castle fan back in the day but after they got together and Beckett's Mom murder case was solved or at least the main perpetrator revealed the show took a nosedive and i left).

You may have a different view on it but that's mine.

 

[JD]

I wasn't bothered by anything in Lost, and I followed it fine up until the end. I do agree that probably didn't have things thought out as much as they liked to claim, or changed their minds a lot as it went on. Losing Walt probably did a lot of damage to whatever they had in mind since he seemed to be a very big part of what was going on. We did get a bit of that once he started popping back up, but it probably wasn't quite what it was originally going to be.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I'm glad there are people besides me that aren't crazy about the current serialized style of storytelling. For me, there are 2 main, intertwined problems with it.
1. The individual episodes don't have any genuine payoff at the end. They only serve to build up the larger narrative, which may or may not be worth my time.
2. Serialized shows don't have the same rewatchability for me. I can watch it once and then I'm done, as opposed to my endless rewatches of stuff like Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Buffy/Angel.

Don't get me wrong. I hate the magic reset button that often plagued stand-alone shows back in the day, particularly Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and the first couple seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, & Enterprise. I like a little bit of ongoing development in the story. But there still needs to be a reward for watching through to the end of an episode.

Even at its most serialized in Season 4, Angel still managed to keep the individual episodes interesting. Even though every episode ended in a breathless cliffhanger, each episode was like a different movement in an ongoing symphony.

Compare that to Heroes (which I only managed through the first 2 seasons), where there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to when or where each episode ended beyond "We filled up this hour, now wait for the next one."

Granted, sometimes the serialized stuff works OK if it's a short, self-contained story. Agent Carter managed to create 2 fairly tense, engaging 8-part story arcs. But when it's really open-ended multi-season stuff like Game of Thrones, Orphan Black, Stargate Universe, or The Walking Dead, I just can't manage to get too engaged, regardless of how interesting I find the characters. (I did OK with Battlestar Galactica but eventually gave up because I realized that I hated almost all of the characters. I still own Season 4.5 but never took it out of the cellophane.)

Generally, what I prefer is shows where the episodes are stand-alone but there's still an over-arching development for the characters, like the majority of Buffy & Angel.

Meanwhile, maybe it's just aging, but there aren't any current SF/F shows that I'm following any more except for Doctor Who & Red Dwarf. I lost track of Orphan Black after Season 2. I tried Supernatural but couldn't muster much interest in either Sam or Dean. (It's a bad sign that I always have to pause and remember which one is Sam and which one is Dean.) Several shows are on my eventual "to watch" list like Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Daredevil, Dark Matter, The Flash, Grimm, Killjoys, Legends of Tomorrow, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Star Wars: Rebels, and Supergirl. Maybe I'll try a complete binge-watch of Game of Thrones after it's over if I can find a cheap complete series box set at Costco. But, honestly, the length of that list discourages me from even starting it. It's easier to just curl up with my old DVDs of Law & Order and classic Doctor Who.

 

[RAMA]

The most scifi and best scifi is being made right now. We couldn't have hoped to have a better variety or frequency in our lifetime. Just thinking about what we got in the 70and 80s, and even some of the 90s makes me thankful.

 

[tomalak301]

Generally, what I prefer is shows where the episodes are stand-alone but there's still an over-arching development for the characters, like the majority of Buffy & Angel.

I wish more shows took the Farscape approach. I'm finding if I binge watch something I might forget about an individual episode because it's just a minor part of a bigger puzzle. What I liked about Farscape was it was serialized but you could jump in at any point and be able to pick up the story because the characters were so good. I remember my first episode of that series was Won't Get Fooled Again. Fell in love with the series after that and wanted to see more.

I'm currently watching Arrow and i think i like it as a binge watch more than a lot of other people liked it week to week, at least the forth season. Still, I can't tell you what happened in individual episodes but I can tell you what the arc is.

 

[I am not Spock]

I don't mind serialised, as long as the individual episodes are entertaining and re watchable on their own merits . Like DS9, or Buffy , or Angel. There was a mix of myth arc episodes, and stand alones.

 

[Kor]

My favorite TV show of all time (which happens to not be sci-fi) is Mad Men. It was serialized, as the episodes occurred chronologically. But each episode had strong standalone merit. I often re-watch individual episodes.

I wish more serialized television was like that. Instead, we have stuff like Agents of SHIELD, where I pay attention to the first few minutes to see what has already happened, and then the last few minutes to get an idea of what is going to happen, but the forty minutes in between are utterly forgettable.

Kor

 

[Mudd]

I watch some skiffy shows and movies now, but I've become a casual viewer - I'm just not invested in this stuff any more. Most of it doesn't "speak" to me, and I don't believe the premises - deep space travel, for example, is no more or less plausible than vampires.

 

[NOVE9]

Oh I'd say deep space travel is more plausible than vampires. Just not for the foreseeable future.

 

[Nerys Myk]

What about space traveling vampires?

 

[Mudd]

Oh I'd say deep space travel is more plausible than vampires.

Why?

 

[Tesophius]

I still love Star Trek with a passion, as well as Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and the Stargate series, however while I can go back and watch and rewatch all these shows, I struggle to get into anything new these days.

I can't get into the serialised nature of TV these days and my type of episodic TV seems to be dying out. Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are the big things at the moment but they just leave me cold. I tried the first episode of Stranger Things and felt the same about that. I heard a podcast the other day that said Star Trek Discovery will be one long story designed to reflect the popularity of shows like GoT, Breaking Bad, etc and in all honesty, I hope that's wrong. I don't mind some sort of story arc, as long as the episodes are stand-alone.

What is there out there at the moment for someone like me that's more into episodic TV than serialised TV? One where an episode is a self-contained story (maybe with a bit of an arc) with no 'to be continued' at the end (except for the odd 2-part episode). Do they even do TV shows like that any more or should I just stick to my DVD collection?

I feel the same way. In the last year or so, I've realized that serialized shows with cliff hangers at the end of every episode are like an addiction, they're not actual good story telling. In retrospect, looking at a show like Breaking Bad which I thought I loved, only the first season featured original ideas that left you thinking, the rest of them left me craving to know how a scene is going to be resolved, forcing me to binge watch the whole thing. Later, I realized, that there was nothing to enjoy when you are aware of the resolution. Thus, I've formed an opinion, that cliffhanging story-arcs are lazy writing, invented and permeated in tv shows in substitute of new ideas. A good ending of an episode leaves you satisfied with a novel idea, something to think about and not left wondering if a character X survived the last 5 seconds of the episode.

If ST-D going to employ this cheap technique of keeping the viewer emotionally drained and left craving the resolution of the last action scene, then I'll drop after a few episodes.