What would be your idea of a perfect science fiction series?

[Quantum]

Colony Wars

Here is the plot synopsis.

It is several hundred years in the future and the human race has used up most of the Earth's resources. Things start to go down hill becasue of this issue. However when all seemed lost a Earth like planet was found many lights years away. A colonization mission is dispatced and after an extend trip they colonization ship arrives in orbit of the planet only to see an alien colonization ship that has arrived at the planet for the same reasons the humans arrived for. After brief battle both ships are heavly damaged and both have a semi-controlled crash landing in the same general location on the planet. Now both parties much fight off each other while trying to survive on an alien world with limited supplies and infrastructure.

Is a combination of Beast Wars: Tranformers and Earth 2, and maybe even some Avatar.

I would also consider telling the story from the aliens point of view.

 

[Fist McStrongpunch]

-bizarre aliens
-some military
-pirates/thieves
-epicness
-psionics/magic?
-bizarre tech
-no technobabble
-no hard science
-crazy off-the-wall shit
-titties
-dude named Glitch with a robot brain

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'd like to see a series set in the far future that involved a Galactic civilization, something along the lines of Niven's Known Space or Asimov's Foundation (except with aliens) or de Camp's Krishna series, or something like that. Something with exotic aliens and colorful civilizations and futuristic concepts. Something that feels alive, like real Science Fiction; a complete antidote to the deadly dullness of the factory basement sets and gray costuming and repulsive characters of contemporary nuBSG-style shows and movies.

It should have a format somewhat like Star Trek, involving characters that have some excuse to move around in this Universe and encounter all the various aspects of it. It should also be episodic, or have short 2-3 episode arcs, so we can have stories specific to the area or planet or civilization central to the story. It should also have stories that involve real SF concepts and not just war and politics.

 

[Deckerd]

I like the idea of a distant civilization with a pair of investigators, trying to ascertain if humans really exist or not.

 

[Whitepaper]

Well to start.

It would be set in a universe where there has been a great war for 500 years between the humans and their colonies + alien powers.

The story is about the 3 most powerful forces deciding to end the constant warring between themselves and the numerous smaller powers. (there is actually 5 powerful and about equal races & factions)

There are numerous human like and tastefully created alien races with no puppet type aliens and not very star wars type.

The story is about the 3 forces forming a peacekeeping entity that starts interfering into conflicts and negotiating treaties.

Spaceships and fleet battles are the cream of the show there will be numerous designs and awesome looking ships. There is going to also be the academy just created for the peacekeeping alliance.

The two great factions that are not in the alliance are a source of unstability and discord among the universe and a constant threat to the peacekeeping force. However these two factions are not allied with each other and are actually hostile against the other.

So basicly what we have here is colonization and war all mixed into the birth of an peacekeeping entity in a unstable universe that has been in war almost constantly before.

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

My idea of a perfect science fiction series?

Space: 1999 series 1.

 

[captcalhoun]

Dave Danger: Space Pilot

set in 2031, Earth is about to launch it's first mission to Venus when aliens suddenly emerge from Venus and launch an assault on Earth. Dave Danger, a hot-shot RAF pilot participates in the battle to defend Britain. Meanwhile, America is getting its ass handed to it. The EU, Russia, China and Japan have to combine their force with the Canadians to launch a counter assault on the alien foothold in the central US. Once the aliens are defeated (we never learn why they attacked), mankind begins back-engineering their tech and begins colonising space. Dave becomes a lead pilot in the new UN Space Defence Force and we follow him and his sidekicks Axel 'Ace' Munroe of the USAF and Sarah 'Blondie' Campbell his RAF wingmate as they do battle with myterious aliens from Alpha Centauri, killer robots built to help defend Earth that go wrong, a mercenary pilot with a hidden agenda, a species of cat-like aliens, evil space lizards and insect-men whilst humanity spreads out into the stars.

the series ends with the cat-people, humans and a race of bird-people forming an alliance to work together against alien threats.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

nuBSG is awfully close to perfect, for me.

nuBSG with a good, solid, motivation for the Cylons that isn't tacked on and ridiculous, and some more thought put into all the hand-waving religious stuff, would be, well maybe not perfect, but a big improvement on what we got.

I'd like to see some series that really pushes the boundaries of what the audience will accept as a "relatable" alien species. How not to do it: the prawns in District 9 (what an entirely over-rated movie).

They may look alien, but in their gender and social makeup, they're downright Speilbergian. We have the "single father" striving to protect his "son." How original. The alien-ness is completely in how they look, not how they act - it's all just window-dressing.

How about really coming up with an alien species that doesn't map to human notions of gender or parenting? How about a genderless species that, like a lot of Earth species, survives by having a lot of offspring rather than worrying about the fate of any single one? The prawn parent could be guarding a whole herd of baby prawns. If one or a dozen gets killed, who cares? The parent is only interested in the survival of most of them, and will sacrifice a few for the survival of the group.

Instead of being a sop to the audience's sensibilities, that scenario would challenge those sensibilities. The audience might be "horrified" that the prawn parent won't safeguard all its offspring, but that's the point: it's doing what is right for its own species, and to hell with what the audience thinks!

Ah, frak it. I'm probably expecting too much of people again. They just want their dumbed-down, safe entertainment.

 

[O'Dib]

Wow, and to think that Enterprise did something like this. Remember Archer's insect babies? Classic.

 

[startrekwatcher]

LOST, B5, TNG really are as close to perfect as I think I'll find when it comes to science fiction dramas.

LOST demonstrated near perfect execution of a series-spanning arc where almost every episode focused on the core material and didn't just touch on it ever so often and therefore treating the viewer to a lot of filler. It is tightly written, heavily serialized, has intriguing mysteries, has great cliffhangers, ambitious epic storytelling, interesting adversaries and balances character and plot expertly.

TNG was nice in that you had a weekly adventure with a nice mix of all sorts of story types ranging from high-concept plot-driven to character dramas to political dramas. I also liked the cheerful outlook it had and was a nice comfortable Saturday show you could watch with your family.

B5--again heaily serialized like LOST with some interesting aliens and story ideas.

 

[Jetfire]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Cheerleaders.

A group of 4 high school cheer leaders get infected when their car goes of the road into a ravine with some sort of strange radioactive material...they soon find out they each posses a unique ability...they have a hard time controlling their powers...after witnessing something the school janitor, an elderly Asian man decides to help then by teaching the ninjutsu...which they seem to almost master by the end of the second episode.

I am not sure what special abilities they would have...maybe controling the 4 elements...earth, wind, water and fire.

The girls live the life of all american teenage girls during the day...but at night become mutant ninja vigilantes.

 

[T'Girl]

Laying aside the main story, I've thought for some time that the Star Wars universe, the background universe, was very interesting place. Not the politics or the Jedi (actual the Jedi are interesting) but the concept of a million planets, each with their own culture and story. The wide diversity of aliens.

A sci-fi military telling of the Romulan war, more nuBSG than Star Trek (plus some Star Blazers). I keep thinking of a brief line by Spock that Earth never saw their allies.

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I think one of the biggest problems with some otherwise good series (DS9, SG-1) is that the villians are idiots. When you place Our Heroes up against a stronger foe, really the only way the good guys can win is by luck, deus ex machina, or because the Villians Are Just Plain Dumb (TM).

Any 'perfect' series must have smart villians. Villians who have read and taken to heart the Evil Overlord List. And I'm not against letting the bad guys win in the end. Or in the middle! DS9 could have been fantastic if the Dominion had swept in and wiped out the Federation. TNG would have had so much more energy if the Borg had won in BoBW.

If the Mayor of Sunnydale had just remembered "#34: I will not turn into a snake. It never helps"...well, things would be different, wouldn't they?

 

[D Man]

If Lost had eventually ended up being set in space, it would be the most perfect scifi series of all time. As it is, it still basically does hold that title for me, but really...they should have gone to space.

 

[Skywalker]

Something Fireflyesque, except set in the Star Wars universe, maybe in the Dark Times between Episodes III and IV.

 

[Kegg]

Farscape cranked up by a factor of ten and with Philip K. Dick as showrunner; give them a big wad of cash and let them make whatever the heck comes to mind.

It'd be the best series ever, a total disaster, or something.

They may look alien, but in their gender and social makeup, they're downright Speilbergian. We have the "single father" striving to protect his "son." How original. The alien-ness is completely in how they look, not how they act - it's all just window-dressing.

That's required, though. The film is already pushing the visual boundary in giving us hideous alien creatures to relate to - it struck me watching the movie that even the body language of the prawns is very human - Christopher at one point expresses frustration by banging at the door in a very human fashion.

Give us things that don't look human, look ugly, and which don't even act in ways that are similar to us socially, and audience response might be harder to engender.

Laying aside the main story, I've thought for some time that the Star Wars universe, the background universe, was very interesting place.

Wait, what? Really?

Not the politics or the Jedi (actual the Jedi are interesting) but the concept of a million planets, each with their own culture and story. The wide diversity of aliens.

That sounds very interesting, but I have no idea how to square it with Star Wars, where such diversity scarcely exists and it's all surface sheen, as it were. Star Wars is one of the classic and most popular space opera universes, and I love it dearly, but it doesn't have a patent on the 'millions of planets with individual cultures' stuff, and a lot of the story militates against such complexity.

 

[Myasishchev]

nuBSG is awfully close to perfect, for me.

nuBSG with a good, solid, motivation for the Cylons that isn't tacked on and ridiculous, and some more thought put into all the hand-waving religious stuff, would be, well maybe not perfect, but a big improvement on what we got.

Indeed. BSG written by smarter people, who actually gave a shit about the science-fictional issues they raised, instead of abandoning them, and who had--I hate to say it--a plan, would probably be pretty close to perfect.

I'd like to see some series that really pushes the boundaries of what the audience will accept as a "relatable" alien species. How not to do it: the prawns in District 9 (what an entirely over-rated movie).

They may look alien, but in their gender and social makeup, they're downright Speilbergian. We have the "single father" striving to protect his "son." How original. The alien-ness is completely in how they look, not how they act - it's all just window-dressing.

Agree. The prawns even had human mannerisms. Which is something that bugs me--so much of human body language is arbitrary, that it shouldn't be mapped onto an alien species even if convergent evolution wound up making them hairless apes.

How about really coming up with an alien species that doesn't map to human notions of gender or parenting? How about a genderless species that, like a lot of Earth species, survives by having a lot of offspring rather than worrying about the fate of any single one? The prawn parent could be guarding a whole herd of baby prawns. If one or a dozen gets killed, who cares? The parent is only interested in the survival of most of them, and will sacrifice a few for the survival of the group.

Interesting notion, though I wonder how likely it is that an r-strategist is to become an social, sapient apex predator, let alone create a civilization. Caring for offspring, and particularly the transfer of knowledge down generations, is what permits us to do things that surpass by millions of times the capabilities of any individual human being. Of course, the human brain is designed to care about its children, facilitating this process; I suppose the hypothetical aliens could start giving a crap about their children at some later point, when only a few (and perhaps the "best") are left.

Instead of being a sop to the audience's sensibilities, that scenario would challenge those sensibilities. The audience might be "horrified" that the prawn parent won't safeguard all its offspring, but that's the point: it's doing what is right for its own species, and to hell with what the audience thinks!

Ah, frak it. I'm probably expecting too much of people again. They just want their dumbed-down, safe entertainment.

It's not like humans don't do that. The whole point of abortion is to safeguard real offspring by getting rid of potential ones, or to safeguard the physical and economic well-being of the potential parents, which would tend to increase the fitness of any later offspring.

Of course, abortion analogues on TV isn't something you see very often. I'll grant BSG the courage to at least bring it up, although outlawing abortion before finding a suitable home is actually really, really stupid, and would very likely result in a growing population with inadequate medical care that shortly outruns a static food supply. Then again, like I said, the writers of BSG weren't very thoughtful, so their, and their characters', analysis never got further than "human race is dying!" versus "individual freedom!"

 

[stj]

^^^Tempting as it is, assuming the writers are just plain stupid is not an argument. Outlawing abortion is not a very courageous thing to do at all, whereas compulsory abortion really is, in TV writing terms at least. Individual rights versus the necessities for survival is the safe, politically correct drama, even if it required ignoring the logic of the hypothetical situation. All that stuff is just dismissed as technobabble.

My idea of the perfect SF series would be an anthology series, either dramatizing stories by authors like John Varley, Terry Bisson, Connie Willis, Greg Egan and such, or even taking a chance on their original screen plays. But dipping into older authors like Fredric Brown, Robert Sheckley, Lewis Padgett/Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore, Stanley Weinbaum, Cordwainer Smith strikes me as okay, too.

But, despite the vivid memories of anothology series like Twilight Zone and the drama anthologies of the Fifties (aka The Golden Age of Television Drama,) most everyone makes series.

In that case, the series I'd like would be set on an Earth radically changed climactically (massive oceanic pollution, deforestation, desertification, sea level rise, global warming,) but partially stabilized economically by advances in technology (very cheap solar cells, artificial photosynthesis, engineering oceanic currents.)

Politically and economically the US has fallen on hard times, except that it has weapons of mass destruction in orbit and in the asteroid belt, the ability to move asteroids for mining the same tech needed to wipe out humanity by tossing a Chicxulub size rock down on our heads. Space habitats and asteroid miners and Moon and Mars colonies are all technotyrannies controlled by whoever turns the oxygen on or off, but they spout Libertarian Party rhetoric constantly.

The lower classes in the US have widely converted to a new school of Sunni Islam, in opposition to human genetic engineering and the designer hallucinogens the Christians use to see God/Jesus/Mary/the saint of your choice. Artificial Intelligences play the role of political and economic powerbrokers.

The personae would be a lower class US family; a Korean family that services an AI; an asteroid miner family with (dysfunctional, with nukes, that's drama); a Chinese environmental engineer trying to keep the Atlantic Conveyor conveying; a Brazilian genetic engineer on a project to create artifical photosynthesis; a Mexican priest conflicted over feeding drugs to his flock; an upper class Hindu family trying to engineer an avatar of Vishnu. Perhaps fewer, perhaps less.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

They may look alien, but in their gender and social makeup, they're downright Speilbergian. We have the "single father" striving to protect his "son." How original. The alien-ness is completely in how they look, not how they act - it's all just window-dressing.

How about really coming up with an alien species that doesn't map to human notions of gender or parenting? How about a genderless species that, like a lot of Earth species, survives by having a lot of offspring rather than worrying about the fate of any single one? The prawn parent could be guarding a whole herd of baby prawns. If one or a dozen gets killed, who cares? The parent is only interested in the survival of most of them, and will sacrifice a few for the survival of the group.

Instead of being a sop to the audience's sensibilities, that scenario would challenge those sensibilities. The audience might be "horrified" that the prawn parent won't safeguard all its offspring, but that's the point: it's doing what is right for its own species, and to hell with what the audience thinks!

Ah, frak it. I'm probably expecting too much of people again. They just want their dumbed-down, safe entertainment.

While such a species would be very interesting to me on a sci-fi basis, there's very little you can do with it on a story basis other than make it the villain.

In D9 the story is set up to try to make the alien species sympathetic to the audience, and to create stakes for the audience to worry about.

If an alien species doesn't care if its offspring lives or dies, but just drops them off like tadpoles - well, there's not much reason for me to care about them either, now is there? If they don't care, why should I? If they see no stakes, why should I?

I don't think it's necessarily "dumbing it down" to give the aliens an emotional life that is accessible to the audience. Because if you don't, why should the audience be interested in your story?

If you go far enough afield, and create an alien species that shares no emotional frame of reference with humanity but is still a potential competitor for humanity - well, there's no story to tell there but Bug Hunt. Because if you take away the humanish characteristics of the prawns, they're just Alien and you need Ripley to kill them. Or they're the bugs from Starship Troopers, where even though you can kind of deduce their point of view, you still really don't give a damn. And that's not the story they wanted to tell in D9.

 

[Mojochi]

Blade Runner