What do you want out of a sci-fi?
- Thread starter Vincent Law
- Start date
Planetes was cool. It would've been better though if they omitted the slapstick (like the diaper scene in the first episode). I liked Nono-chan, and
wanted to cry when she died.
I want a show that tells interesting/entertaining stories with characters I care about/enjoy watching. As for the setting other than wanting more space opera on tv I don't have any real preferences. I take that on a case by case basis. I'm more interested in getting the " interesting/entertaining stories with characters I care about/enjoy watching " part.
Yeah, steampunk is just about the coolest thing in the world, except for Captain RobauI really can't disagree with you more.
As an example, the Serenity movie, beloved on this bbs, tells us that attempting to cure antisocial behavior will turn them into monsters. Huh? How does that work, exactly? Some ignorant bigot just thinks that human nature is what it is, immutable and eternal, and unGodly attempts to suppress it will unleash the Devil in man, and writes it into a movie but this counts as a broad window into (drum roll, please
) The Human Condition? Stories with stupid speculations that repeat the same old saws are no window at all. That really is sad.
Obviously tastes will differ about steampunk. Nonetheless: Narrowly defined steampunk has stinky love for Victorian class society and English imperialism. Steampunk set in the future, like The Windup Girl, also has a stinky love for the return of class society, with uncomfortably stereotypical racial divisions added. Another steampunk of the future novel, Julian Comstock, was so cretively bankrupt that it was a pointless rewrite of Gore Vidal's Julian, done with less competence and all the themes mishandled.
) The Human Condition? Stories with stupid speculations that repeat the same old saws are no window at all. That really is sad.Obviously tastes will differ about steampunk. Nonetheless: Narrowly defined steampunk has stinky love for Victorian class society and English imperialism. Steampunk set in the future, like The Windup Girl, also has a stinky love for the return of class society, with uncomfortably stereotypical racial divisions added. Another steampunk of the future novel, Julian Comstock, was so cretively bankrupt that it was a pointless rewrite of Gore Vidal's Julian, done with less competence and all the themes mishandled.
DS9 did romance pretty poorly, true for Star Trek overall. Lost was a mixed bag, X-Files didn't really get past the UST stage. Farscape and BSG are still the ones to beat.
I wasn't thinking about written sci fi, probably because I read so few sci fi novels that seem at all interested in romance anyway. It's not really much of a priority for the genre that I've ever noticed.
Yes, Lost was a very mixed bag. I don't think I can ever fully accept Sayid and Shannon. Kate's relationship with anyone was hard to swallow because I could never see what Jack or Sawyer saw in her (and I'm not a Kate hater). However, Sun and Jin was one of the most perfect examples of a married couple I've ever seen. Claire and Charlie was almost too sweet for words and of course Desmond and Penny. Penny probably had about 2 hours of screen time total over the course of the whole series, yet after her first appearance I was rooting for her and Desmond to have some sort of happy ending.
There is indeed sf romance. The most common form is geeks in love with exotic, scary woman (allegedly not because of the different anatomy) in things like Asimov's The End of Eternity or Poul Anderson's The Corridors of Time and The Dancer From Atlantis. Many of Robert Heinlein's novels are littered with versions of his wife. Glory Road isn't one of them, but in some respects it's about what happens after the swashbuckler gets the goddess in distress. There are sf novels where love affairs are key to the plot, such as Valerie Freiereich's or some of Melissa Scott's. Ursula LeGuin's characters tend to have romantic relationships, even with spouses.
Feminist sf does treat relationships in depth. See Suzette Haden Elgin or Joanna Russ or Marge Piercy.
But there are also straightforward sf romances, not just novels with romances in them, however essential to the story. The novels of the late Kage Baker, Catherine Asaro, Justina Robson, Julie Czerneda and Sandra MacDonald, for instance.
Feminist sf does treat relationships in depth. See Suzette Haden Elgin or Joanna Russ or Marge Piercy.
But there are also straightforward sf romances, not just novels with romances in them, however essential to the story. The novels of the late Kage Baker, Catherine Asaro, Justina Robson, Julie Czerneda and Sandra MacDonald, for instance.
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I find the order in which you listed them amusing, given Tricia Helfer's popularity and her prominence on the packaging for the DVD box sets. As for Katee Sackhoff, I think that she's an excellent natural actress and imbues Starbuck with an earthy attractiveness - sometimes literally as when she's covered in grime at the end of season one and start of season two. (Well, it worked for me.)It needs to have a love-child with another show.
. To be fair, though, both BSG and B5 illustrate the fundamental problems involved in doing a saga for TV. Ratings,network issues, politics, actor availability, lack of resolve, character development itself and various other factors can make the eventual ending opf a show ptretty much unrecognisable from the one first envisaged.I think that the makeup of a truly satisfying sci-fi show closely resembles that of any good televised fiction. Drama, rivetting dialogue, good performances in all departments and a sense of fun generally do it for me. I tend to like shows that combine drama with an aspect of sitcom humour, if done well. Altering the mix somewhat in a sci-fi or superhero setting means that the writers can tell practically any story. Also, arc plots should be finite and sketched out beforehand. If the writers don't know where they're going, they shouldn't expect too many people along for the ride.
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Seems more like his mother to me. Lazarus Long has issues.
I watched a pilot for a new series of Lost in Space, made in 2004. It's out there, in all the usual places. While it was... yeah, it was terrible, it seemed to me that the concept - a family on its way somewhere ends up really lost - still has some mileage. The reason the 2004 version failed for me was making Don West barely 21, Penny a year old, and a lost son, David, taken by aliens in a space battle. The casting was a little off, which didn't help, and the episode ended left them really stuck with no hope.
But i could see ways to make it work. For a starter, there'd be no Doctor Smith - I NEVER liked his character, beyond his one liners, either a a complete blackheart or as a bumbling anti-hero. Have them finding and using alien tech. Do the whole crashlanding thing (I thought one of the coolest things in the series, when I was that age - imagine it now, done in the style of Pitch Black). Make it much more of an exploration. Make the world they land on fertile, so they can grow food, and have the ruins of ma lost civilisation. And have the world explode, as in the TV series and movie. Done in a more sensible manner, it could rock.
But definitely no Dr Smith.
So if someone were to make a new movie about going to Mars, what would be more interesting? A fairly standard mission about exploring the planet with a few hick-ups here and there? A mission which goes horribly wrong akin to the Apollo 13 movie? Or a mission where there find alien technology?
I think our problem is, many of us SciFi fanatics want arc'ed stories and good characters we can really care about (which, naturally, requires early episodes to introduce us to the universe, set the stage for the arc, and have cahracter building episodes). This naturallyslows the progression of the story down for the "Whiz-bang action and 'explosions" crowd. So, the trick is to get the universe and character building and arc stage setting accomplished as early as possible, without slowing the episodes down, as Caprica suffered from (Last 7 episodes of Caprica were mostly really good, and the show may enver have been cancelled if people enjoyed the first 11 episodes as much)
How about they accidentally get sucked into a wormhole and end up on some far-away Earth-like planet?
I had something more like Mission to Mars or Red Planet in mind, only without the plot holes and hopefully somewhat more exciting.
As an aside, I would love to see "Rendezvous with Rama" adapted to screen, either as a live action movie or miniseries, or as an anime OVA.
As an aside, I would love to see "Rendezvous with Rama" adapted to screen, either as a live action movie or miniseries, or as an anime OVA.
IIRC Morgan Freeman was actually looking into producing a movie adaption but the plans for that project had to be put on ice.
Or take the approach of The Clone Wars - start simple (Jedi vs Sith, lots of cool battle sequences, fast paced action, no time to be bored) and then over time, start to open up the story. They've done a nice job of slowly weaving in more complexity for the lead characters' personalities, more backstory for the political landscape (finally it's starting to make sense!) and more detail about the various cultures of the various major and minor worlds.
They're doing a three episode arc now that takes a minor character (Ventress) who I never thought as much more than cardboard and are expanding on her backstory, the culture of the society she comes from, and how all this (and recent plot developments) start to tie into the main story. They can afford to just leave their lead characters in the dust like that because I can see how the story they're telling does have relevance to the main story, and also, they rarely neglect the crowd-pleasing elements: terrific visuals, action, fast pace.
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