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What do you want out of a sci-fi?

Really, all I saw in Jeri Ryan was an attempt to replace Kes with somebody who the viewers liked more (in example, huge tits). At least they didn't go the traditional anime route and have only one token male character.
 
Yes. She was the least important character. They could have dispensed with the character and actress altogether.

And did, in Serenity, to no one's chagrin.

Debatable. The Mal/Inara relationship was one of my favorite things from the series, and I missed it terribly in the movie. Inara had several deleted scenes, which I wish had been left in the final film.

Mal/Inara was a bad idea. Here you have an interesting rogue cowboy captain type and they frak it all up by making him uptight about her profession and too repressed to even be honest about it. Nice way to de-cool a cool character.

But if Mal is cool with Inara being a whore, then there's no tension in the relationship and it's a bore. Just another in a long line of botched sci fi romances. Sci fi writers just can't write romance without making one or both characters look bad.
 
Really, all I saw in Jeri Ryan was an attempt to replace Kes with somebody who the viewers liked more (in example, huge tits). At least they didn't go the traditional anime route and have only one token male character.
Imagine...
Exec. Officer Kira
Yeoman Rand
Sec. Officer Yar
Dr. Crusher
Nurse Ogawa
Nurse Kes
Counselor Troi
Counselor Tigan
Sci. Officer J. Dax
Sci. Officer Seven of Nine
Chief Engineer Torres
Comm. Officer Sato
Conn Officer Ro
Admiral Janeway
and...
Captain Kirk (or Riker) :rolleyes:
 
And did, in Serenity, to no one's chagrin.

Debatable. The Mal/Inara relationship was one of my favorite things from the series, and I missed it terribly in the movie. Inara had several deleted scenes, which I wish had been left in the final film.

Mal/Inara was a bad idea. Here you have an interesting rogue cowboy captain type and they frak it all up by making him uptight about her profession and too repressed to even be honest about it. Nice way to de-cool a cool character.

But if Mal is cool with Inara being a whore, then there's no tension in the relationship and it's a bore. Just another in a long line of botched sci fi romances. Sci fi writers just can't write romance without making one or both characters look bad.

I really can't disagree with you more.
 
Sci fi writers just can't write romance without making one or both characters look bad.
I really can't disagree with you more.
You think there are romances that are well writtenby SF writers?

One reason I ask is that EE 'Doc' Smith, when it came to some lovey-dovey scenes, got his wife to write them. They weren't much chop either.

Are there examples you can think of? Maybe - maybe - Case and Molly in Neuromancer, but that was a book too.
 
John and Aeryn from "Farscape," possibly the best romance I've ever seen in any genre.

Adama and Roslin from nuBSG.
 
John and Aeryn from "Farscape," possibly the best romance I've ever seen in any genre.

Adama and Roslin from nuBSG.

Also Lost, X-Files, Fringe. Though maybe we're only talking about futuristic shows.

I thought DS9 did romance pretty well. Not as well as Farscape, granted.
 
Sci fi writers just can't write romance without making one or both characters look bad.
I really can't disagree with you more.
You think there are romances that are well writtenby SF writers?

One reason I ask is that EE 'Doc' Smith, when it came to some lovey-dovey scenes, got his wife to write them. They weren't much chop either.

Are there examples you can think of? Maybe - maybe - Case and Molly in Neuromancer, but that was a book too.

The Tale of the Adopted Daughter by Robert Heinlein springs to mind.... (From Time Enough For Love)
 
Fair enough, to all who replied. I suppose romance is so scarce IRL I don't think much about it. Or indeed of it.

Yes, I'm old, bitter and cynical.
 
I like a lot of varried forms of the genre, space operas, space westerns, sci-fi war drama, near-Earth hard sci-fi, time/dimensional travel, supernatural powers, etc. The only thing I really ask out sci-fi is a good story.
 
For those who would want to see a hard sci-fi, have you by chance seen Planetes? I haven't seen it yet myself, but it looks like it could be good.
 
What I find most entertaining in science fiction is a story that uses insightful speculation to cast a fresh perspective on the world or society or the human mind or any combination thereof, whether their origins, their present or the future. The perspective can be simply a sensational what if? Or it can be closely reasoned meditation on difficult questions.

But I'm not too discriminating. I can enjoy the same old sf tropes if they just throw me a few bones: a fresh twist or a tightly written plot or characters who can pass for real people.

As I grow more jaded, illiteracy, verbal or scientific, gets harder and harder to take, though.

Steampunk stinks like week old fish, being just about as fresh.

Military sf has no perspective or emotion, beyond sexual excitement over weapon specs and killing.

Printed melodrama (absurd characters who emote non-stop; undergo the most absurd chan; have the most incredible importance or coolness or otherwise act out the standard fantasies; the triumphant affirmation of the mindlessly conventional, or the flip side, the wallowing in the tragic impossiblity of human happiness or decency) tends to be illiterate and poorly plotted. It also tend to grossly bungle the use of sf tropes, commonly contradicting not just all knowledge of the physical universe and real society but contradicting itself, so the reader/viewer has to selectively shut down the mind. However, I completely lack all esthetic standards, so I can enjoy some of this stuff, if (big word, sorry to use it,) it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Science fiction of my kind is in a serious decline. I attribute this to the decay of civilization, of course.
 
What I find most entertaining in science fiction is a story that uses insightful speculation to cast a fresh perspective on the world or society or the human mind or any combination thereof, whether their origins, their present or the future. The perspective can be simply a sensational what if? Or it can be closely reasoned meditation on difficult questions.

But I'm not too discriminating. I can enjoy the same old sf tropes if they just throw me a few bones: a fresh twist or a tightly written plot or characters who can pass for real people.

As I grow more jaded, illiteracy, verbal or scientific, gets harder and harder to take, though.

Steampunk stinks like week old fish, being just about as fresh.

Military sf has no perspective or emotion, beyond sexual excitement over weapon specs and killing.

Printed melodrama (absurd characters who emote non-stop; undergo the most absurd chan; have the most incredible importance or coolness or otherwise act out the standard fantasies; the triumphant affirmation of the mindlessly conventional, or the flip side, the wallowing in the tragic impossiblity of human happiness or decency) tends to be illiterate and poorly plotted. It also tend to grossly bungle the use of sf tropes, commonly contradicting not just all knowledge of the physical universe and real society but contradicting itself, so the reader/viewer has to selectively shut down the mind. However, I completely lack all esthetic standards, so I can enjoy some of this stuff, if (big word, sorry to use it,) it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Science fiction of my kind is in a serious decline. I attribute this to the decay of civilization, of course.

So, basically, you just want to watch nuBSG reruns over and over? :techman:
 
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