Essentially.
How many scenes in Alien are there anyways that make it a film in space, and not a film aboard a submarine?
good excuse for a film to be in space?
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How many scenes in Alien are there anyways that make it a film in space, and not a film aboard a submarine?
Heck, Alien is essentially a haunted-house movie anyway. You don't even need a ship.
But then, that's the answer to the original question. Why set a film in space instead of on Earth? Because there are only a few basic stories, and when we create new tales, we're creating new variations on those basic formulae by varying the characters, the details, the setting, and so forth. The basic dynamics of human interaction, the basics of narrative structure, are all pretty universal, but the interest comes from how they manifest in different contexts, what new synergies you get when you put the ingredients together in a different mix. It's like asking, why make a cake chocolate instead of vanilla, if they're both just cakes? The answer is that it's the variation that makes it interesting. The recipe, or the story formula, is the starting point, not the limit.
Okay, and now I've made myself want cake and I don't have any.
But then, that's the answer to the original question. Why set a film in space instead of on Earth? Because there are only a few basic stories, and when we create new tales, we're creating new variations on those basic formulae by varying the characters, the details, the setting, and so forth. The basic dynamics of human interaction, the basics of narrative structure, are all pretty universal, but the interest comes from how they manifest in different contexts, what new synergies you get when you put the ingredients together in a different mix. It's like asking, why make a cake chocolate instead of vanilla, if they're both just cakes? The answer is that it's the variation that makes it interesting. The recipe, or the story formula, is the starting point, not the limit.
Okay, and now I've made myself want cake and I don't have any.
The cake is a lie anyway.
Otherwise it wouldn't be called Star Wars, or be in a galaxy far far away.
The Jedi-Sith Saga*
A New Hope
A long time ago, on a far away sea...
It is a period of civil war. Rebel ships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil World Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an enormous armored floating fortress with enough power to destroy an entire island. Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her ship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….
The Empire Strikes Back**
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them througout the world. Evading the dreaded Imperial Fleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote sub-artic island of Hoth. The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of spy-golams into the far reaches of the world...
The Return of the Jedi***Luke Skywalker has returned to his home of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. Little does Luke know that the WORLD EMPIRE has secretly begun construction on a new enomous armored floating fortress even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star.
When completed, this ultimate weapon will spell certain doom for the small band of rebels struggling to restore freedom to the world...
The Phantom Menace
Turmoil has engulfed the World Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying archipelagos is in dispute.
Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small island of Naboo.
While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice, to settle the conflict....
Attack of the Dopplegangers
There is unrest in the World Senate. Several dozen island groups have declared their intentions to leave the Republic.
This Seperatist movement, led by the mysterious Count Dooku, has made it difficult for the limited number of Jedi Knights to maintain peace and order in the known world.
Senator Amidala, the former Queen of Naboo, is returning to the Senate to vote on the critical issue of creating an ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC to assist the overwhelmed Jedi...
Revenge of the Sith
War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. In a stunning move, the fiendish hybrid-golam leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the World Senate.
As the Separatist Golam Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor...
*Not called the Jedi-Sith Saga until the release of the Prequal Trilogy.
**Originally known as A New Hope: The Empire Strikes Back
***Originally known as A New Hope: The Return of the Jedi
The Jedi-Sith Saga*
A New Hope
A long time ago, on a far away sea...
It is a period of civil war. Rebel ships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil World Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an enormous armored floating fortress with enough power to destroy an entire island. Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her ship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….
The Empire Strikes Back**
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them througout the world. Evading the dreaded Imperial Fleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote sub-artic island of Hoth. The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of spy-golams into the far reaches of the world...
The Return of the Jedi***Luke Skywalker has returned to his home of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. Little does Luke know that the WORLD EMPIRE has secretly begun construction on a new enomous armored floating fortress even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star.
When completed, this ultimate weapon will spell certain doom for the small band of rebels struggling to restore freedom to the world...
The Phantom Menace
Turmoil has engulfed the World Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying archipelagos is in dispute.
Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small island of Naboo.
While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice, to settle the conflict....
Attack of the Dopplegangers
There is unrest in the World Senate. Several dozen island groups have declared their intentions to leave the Republic.
This Seperatist movement, led by the mysterious Count Dooku, has made it difficult for the limited number of Jedi Knights to maintain peace and order in the known world.
Senator Amidala, the former Queen of Naboo, is returning to the Senate to vote on the critical issue of creating an ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC to assist the overwhelmed Jedi...
Revenge of the Sith
War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. In a stunning move, the fiendish hybrid-golam leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the World Senate.
As the Separatist Golam Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor...
*Not called the Jedi-Sith Saga until the release of the Prequal Trilogy.
**Originally known as A New Hope: The Empire Strikes Back
***Originally known as A New Hope: The Return of the Jedi
Well, there's no shortage of candidates. Lots of movies and TV shows just take familiar plots and redo them... in space! Alien is a haunted house movie in space. Outland is High Noon in space. Star Wars is a fairy tale/sword-and-sorcery epic/WWII dogfight movie in space. Battlestar Galactica (the original, or at least its pilot) was the Book of Mormon in space. Sometimes it's even literal, like Robinson Crusoe on Mars or Gilligan's Planet (yes, there was an actual cartoon of that name). There's plenty of prose science fiction where the alien or outer-space setting is utterly crucial to the narrative -- for instance, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, a generational epic about the colonization and terraforming of Mars (or it would be generational if they didn't figure out life prolongation in the first book), or Ringworld, which is about the exploration of a megastructure millions of times larger than Earth, or Tau Zero, which is about a starship crew stuck at relativistic speed and having to cope with the severe time dilation and its conseqeunces. There's no shortage of SF stories that could only exist in an outer-space or alien-world setting. But film and TV SF tend to be more mainstream, and often written and produced by people who aren't career SF storytellers, so there's more of a tendency there just to take a familiar type of story premise and dress it up with spaceships and ray guns.
galactica reminds me the biblical story of the 12 tribes that escaped the egyptians... their long long journey to the promise land... planet earth
anyway, i see that you agree with me in general.
so - the original question was -
do you know about a good "excuse" for a story to be set in space?
do you know about a film or a tv show like that?
or the answer is just - no?
Oh, for Pete's sake, didn't you even read what you quoted? I gave you several examples of famous SF novels that couldn't be anywhere but space. And there are certainly some films and shows that qualify as well -- just pay attention with an open mind and you're bound to find some. Really, it's an illogical and unfair question for the reasons I've been spelling out throughout the thread. In fact, I disagree with you on a fundamental level. While it's true that film and TV SF are often just familiar story types transposed into space, there is nothing wrong with that. As I've explained, it's no worse than the difference between making a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake. It's about finding fresh angles on common tropes, and it's a basic part of creativity. There doesn't need to be an "excuse" for a murder mystery to be set on a cruise ship instead of in a mansion, or for a historical romance to be set in Reformation-era Paris instead of 1920s New York City. It's not something that needs to be excused or justified. It's just part of what makes stories not be carbon copies of each other.
Zero-gravity art - specifically, dance. It really couldn't be done anyplace else.
I don't really think it'll ever happen now, but once upon a time Jeanne Robinson, formerly a modern dancer of some reknown, co-auther of the Stardance Trilogy with her husband Spider, was working hard to bring their books to the big screen. David Gerrold helped with the script and the team even went up on the 'vomit comet' and managed a small amount of choreography.
Sadly, Jeanne died of biliary cancer a couple of years ago but I really hope that some day her dream might come true.
Art would be a good reason, I think.
Jan
I don't really think it'll ever happen now, but once upon a time Jeanne Robinson, formerly a modern dancer of some reknown, co-auther of the Stardance Trilogy with her husband Spider, was working hard to bring their books to the big screen. David Gerrold helped with the script and the team even went up on the 'vomit comet' and managed a small amount of choreography.
Sadly, Jeanne died of biliary cancer a couple of years ago but I really hope that some day her dream might come true.
Art would be a good reason, I think.
Jan
I think we have this argumment backwards, we should be discussing why there is any need NOT to set stories in space, because any story that could work on Earth could potentially work in space too, and would be necessarily more interesting simply by virtue of being set in space.
Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, Leprechaun, all these franchises have shown us that when one has truly run out of ideas, all you need to do is take your previously earthbound story and dump it on a spaceship. BAM. Instant franchise reinvigoration.
I think this approach could work well with Bourne & Die Hard, and if Mel Gibson truly wants to redeem himself in my eyes, he should consider moving his Lethal Weapon franchise to a spaceship also. Although Get The Gringo was actually OK, but it could have been done in a space prison.
Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, Leprechaun, all these franchises have shown us that when one has truly run out of ideas, all you need to do is take your previously earthbound story and dump it on a spaceship. BAM. Instant franchise reinvigoration.
I think this approach could work well with Bourne & Die Hard, and if Mel Gibson truly wants to redeem himself in my eyes, he should consider moving his Lethal Weapon franchise to a spaceship also. Although Get The Gringo was actually OK, but it could have been done in a space prison.
If you're out of ideas for Indiana Jones, introduce flying saucers.
you saw "Lockout"?
its just another "jail break" film. its just that the jail is in space... big f*&ing deal
Then you obviously have no understanding of how creativity or story structure actually works.
I've decided that more things need to justify their settings.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy really doesn't need to be set in London. You can do a spy movie about a mole in an intelligence service just fine out of New York.
Psycho doesn't need to be set in the Southwest. There are plenty of motels in the rest of the country. Especially in New York.
Then there's Casablanca. How arrogant and uncreative, to set it in the actual city of Casablanca. It doesn't need to be set there. You could do a story about freedom fighters escaping an unjust government in any other big city. You could do it in New York.
And, really, what's with this nonsense of setting And Then There Were None on a private island? What hogwash. Just put it all in a large penthouse whose entrance is mysteriously locked. Put the penthouse in New York.
Black Swan? I mean, sure, it's set in New York, but it's not like it has to be set in a theatre. It could be about any young girl trying to get a promotion.
The Artist? Same thing! No reason for it to have to be set in Hollywood. They were making movies in New York back then.
District 9? I mean, seriously, it's so ridiculous, the thought that aliens would land in Johannesburg. Obviously they didn't justify that setting. It needs to be in New York.
Milk? I mean, sure, the real guy was in San Francisco, but that's hardly justification enough. We've seen plenty of "underdog becomes a leader of an ignored community" stories. It's just the same old lady in a new dress. There's no real justification for setting it in San Francisco -- put it in New York.
The Departed and Mystic River are both set in Massachusetts? And The Sopranos is set in New Jersey? How absurd! Everyone knows gangster stories are supposed to be set in New York.
* * *
See how quickly the idea of having to justify a setting outside of some arbitrary default becomes absurd?
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy really doesn't need to be set in London. You can do a spy movie about a mole in an intelligence service just fine out of New York.
Psycho doesn't need to be set in the Southwest. There are plenty of motels in the rest of the country. Especially in New York.
Then there's Casablanca. How arrogant and uncreative, to set it in the actual city of Casablanca. It doesn't need to be set there. You could do a story about freedom fighters escaping an unjust government in any other big city. You could do it in New York.
And, really, what's with this nonsense of setting And Then There Were None on a private island? What hogwash. Just put it all in a large penthouse whose entrance is mysteriously locked. Put the penthouse in New York.
Black Swan? I mean, sure, it's set in New York, but it's not like it has to be set in a theatre. It could be about any young girl trying to get a promotion.
The Artist? Same thing! No reason for it to have to be set in Hollywood. They were making movies in New York back then.
District 9? I mean, seriously, it's so ridiculous, the thought that aliens would land in Johannesburg. Obviously they didn't justify that setting. It needs to be in New York.
Milk? I mean, sure, the real guy was in San Francisco, but that's hardly justification enough. We've seen plenty of "underdog becomes a leader of an ignored community" stories. It's just the same old lady in a new dress. There's no real justification for setting it in San Francisco -- put it in New York.
The Departed and Mystic River are both set in Massachusetts? And The Sopranos is set in New Jersey? How absurd! Everyone knows gangster stories are supposed to be set in New York.
* * *
See how quickly the idea of having to justify a setting outside of some arbitrary default becomes absurd?
you saw "Lockout"?
its just another "jail break" film. its just that the jail is in space... big f*&ing deal
Yes but imagine if it hadn't been set in space, that was pretty much the only good thing about it.
What's our excuse for posting on this BBS instead of some other one?
you saw "Lockout"?
its just another "jail break" film. its just that the jail is in space... big f*&ing deal
Okay, I have to ask, do you have something against stories being set in space?
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