I finished Dark Skies TV series, now starting Space Above And Beyond
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
I do but when a show concept is especially stupid even to a non-expert it tends to cloud my enjoyment a little.
I still rate it as one of the best Sci Fi shows ever though despite that flaw.
They did the same thing with Inferno Squad in Star Wars: Battlefront II, they were a special forces squad who also flew starfighters. I think that was just for gameplay reasons, because they wanted you to be able to go back and forth between ground based first person shooter gameplay and starfighter combat.
If it's baked into the story/game i'm ok with it.
With Space 2063 they didn't even make the effort and it would have been easy to do. They spend half the pilot training them as aviators, they could have expanded them and be shown to also train in ground combat and make specific mention as this being a special project by the Marine Corps to have a hybrid warfare unit.
But enough of that, it is what it is. Space 2063 still stands out as one hell of a show and probably the first show that could do simple action episodes as well as good and thoughtful character drama.
I really choked up in the finale when the team was ripped apart, that's always a good sign when a show makes you care about the characters.
She came across a little bit like Seven despite it being a different show. I think she was still doing Voyager when she joined Dark Skies.
Really, I thought it was pre Voyager?
I love SAAB, the last episode still hurts
You don't have to get very analytical to realize that top guns and grunts -- or top guns and special forces -- are separate groups with separate skill sets. You don't see cop shows where the main characters spend half their time working as beat cops and the other half as ER doctors.
I watched the show during its original run but haven't seen it since. At the time, the whole pilots or grunts thing annoyed me, but I also thought a couple of characters were woefully miscast and the show was trying to do too much too fast. I bought the first novelization at the time but still haven't gotten around to reading it.
As for comparing it to new Galactica, I don't think S:AAB ever got near the heights Galactica briefly reached, but it never sank to Galactica's depths, either.
I watched the show during its original run but haven't seen it since. At the time, the whole pilots or grunts thing annoyed me, but I also thought a couple of characters were woefully miscast and the show was trying to do too much too fast. I bought the first novelization at the time but still haven't gotten around to reading it.
As for comparing it to new Galactica, I don't think S:AAB ever got near the heights Galactica briefly reached, but it never sank to Galactica's depths, either.
She was cast as Seven right after DARK SKIES was canceled. (It ended in May of 1997... season 4 of VOY began in September of 1997.)
Oh ok well maybe the mannerisms came from Dark Skies because there were a lot of times I thought she was doing 7 playing Juliet
It's quite possible she was cast because of how she portrayed Juliet.
I know Jeri Taylor herself asked her a couple times before Jeri Ryan agreed to play Seven... maybe she caught an episode of DARK SKIES with Juliet and the light bulb in her head turned on.
Dark Skies was an OK show for its time but already felt a little too derivative to stick out (with The X-Files juggernaut and the UFO craze being a thing in the mid to late 1990s), but what made it memorable or aged it better was the convincing 1960s setting when rewatching it decades later.
I actually watched Space Above and Beyond as a kid when it first aired, so I didn't quite understand all of it. But watching it again, I can see the X-Files influence all over it with the Secret Conspiracies and stuff.
As much as the show wants to blame the Human Businesses for concealing the aliens' presence....the aliens still come off as very violent and not terribly reasonable.
As much as the show wants to blame the Human Businesses for concealing the aliens' presence....the aliens still come off as very violent and not terribly reasonable.
Can you blame them?
Stupid humans knew that was their planet but decided to land there and cokonize it anyway.
The pilot/grunt thing was actually addressed in an episode IIRC - I guess the writers heard about the fan fuss and decided to put a comment in the show. There was an ep where McQueen lined the Wild Cards up and said something like "I've been hearing complaints about pilots being sent on ground missions. You are Marines! Every Marine is a rifleman first, and you will do whatever you're needed to do!"
Not surprising there is some influence of THE X-FILES in SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND... it was created by Glen Morgan and James Wong (and they were the head writers), who wrote a lot of season 1 and 2 episodes of THE X-FILES. (They returned to it for season 4 after their show was canceled. It's also why you'll see several of the leads from SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND in season 4 episodes of THE X-FILES they wrote.)
Yes, that's what I should have clarified. I KNEW the X-Files creators made the show so I could see the whole "Conspiracies everywhere" atmosphere.
Sure, but their reaction wasn't to show up and explain things more properly or see if there was a misunderstanding...it was to destroy the colonies and indiscriminately kill folks and only capture a few...then start an all out war and head right for Earth.
Then in the last episode when the Ambassador (probably not a trained Diplomat, just a Military Officer) decides the most diplomatic thing to do when the Aerotech guy makes him angry is to...jump out of his chamber and murder the guy on the spot.
There is ONE thing I'll defend them on: The Alien Ambassador didn't secretly bomb the peace talks in the last episode. If you pay attention, it was all a horrible accident and not a secret alien plan
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Chris Carter created THE X-FILES, not Morgan and Wong. (They were writer/producers, though, and did write multiple very memorable episodes.)
That's... still wrong. Pilots are officers. They outrank pretty much anyone else on those ground missions. Looking at wikipedia, the regulars are either captains or lieutenants. Who's giving them orders?