SPACE: Above and Beyond - Reviews and general geekiness

[Doctor Clu]

I still think of this show. To me this was a reboot of Battlestar Galactica done right.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Holy resurrected thread, Batman!!

Just finished a re-watch of this series and had forgotten how much I enjoyed it despite its flaws. First episode I ever saw was 'River of Stars'- the X-mas episode. My wife had taped a few on VHS and sent them to me in Iceland when I was deployed to Keflavik back in '95.

This show is the greatest and the worst at the same time, but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. The hardest thing watching it nowadays is to remember that it came in the pre-9/11 world, which meant that as an audience we had a totally different mindset back then.

To paraphrase Churchill, 'never in the history of human television has so much cheese and over-the-top acting worked so well on so many levels.'

Like for many people, "Never No More" and "The Angriest Angel" are my two favorite episodes of the series. "...and when I get back, I'm going to drink a bottle of scotch like it's Chiggy Von Richtofen's blood, and celebrate his death."

If ever a series was ripe for a reboot with modern fx and slightly better writing, this would be the one. Of course, finding another T.C. McQueen or Commodore Ross would be pretty hard. But perhaps not impossible.

"You guys seen any action?"
"We're the 58th." -Nuff said.

Wild Cards- Expect No Mercy.

SEMPER FIDELIS!

 

[Jedi Marso]

I'm glad to see the show had so many fans. Thanks for joining in the thread!

A few people mentioned "Who Monitors The Birds?" as being a favorite ep. It is absolutely one of my favorites. There is actually some dialogue, but most of it is in flashbacks Cooper is having while he's trying to get out of Chig territory. This ep is truly his story, and it plays out like a classic Twilight Zone story, especially in scenes where he's in the In Vitro Facility where he was born. The visuals, the background music, the situation all combine to scream out "You're traveling through another dimension..."

Especially "Dead Shane Vansen" throwing herself all over Coop while he's evading Chigs. That was classic.

The first time I saw that episode, the scenes with 'dead Vansen' were a little confusing to me, but I eventually grasped what they were going for. Recently read a review of this episode that was actually more an article and treatise on the series itself, and found this tidbit relating to the 'visitations' Coop experienced on the planet. Most interesting to me (and slightly chilling, truth be told) was the last part about Dale Dye.

The concept originally came from reading William Manchester’s Goodbye Darkness,” says Morgan, “but then you do some research, and you find it’s actually a common kind of phenomenon among soldiers, a vision that combines that eroticism with death.”

“In Manchester’s book, the vision he saw was so horrid, but it was dressed like a New England prep school girl,” adds Morgan, who decided along with Wong that Hawkes’ death-vision should appear to him as Shane.

“There’s just a whole other level for Cooper by having Shane there,” says Wong.

…

But once Cloke arrived on the location as the unearthly Whore of Death, Morgan and Wong discovered their creation had perhaps more relevance than they first realized.

Says Morgan, “Dale Dye, who played Jack Colquitt, the guy who goes on the mission with Cooper, came up to Kristen after she was all made up, and he looked at her and said, ‘I’ve seen you before – when I was in Vietnam.'”

 

[Jedi Marso]

One other tidbit from the finale I always forget about-

In the last scene, West comes into the bunkroom and lays down in Wang's rack. When Hawkes comes in, he lays down in Vansen's. After all they've been through, it's like they're one entity at that point. West is Wang, Wang is West, Hawkes is Vansen, and so on. The loss of Wang, Damphouse, and Vansen makes them feel like they've lost themselves- the lives that mean more to them than their own.