Would You Watch A New TV Space Opera With Bad CGI?
- Thread starter Mr Light
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That's the way I tend to go with evaluating a show. I suppose that the CGI or rather overall special effects could be so bad as to be distracting. Yet it's the story content that keeps me most involved in liking a show. While I don't know the economics of computer generated effects these days, they are so widely in use as to be practically indistinguishable from effects sans CGI. That leads us to other factors that make the difference.
If a show cannot keep me engrossed with good characters and stories.... I won't last as a viewer.
I'd just as soon have no aliens (Firefly) than have the aliens look human. I suppose it can work to make them all look human (One of my favorite movies is The Day The Earth Stood Still), but unless the writing is that good, it will take me out of the story. Like I said earlier, I'd much rather have a space-based sci-fi show that takes advantage of all the advancements in the television medium rather than have a half assed one.
I suspect the salaries are the most expensive aspect.
I care more about Character-Driven Stories than CGI so yes.
Long ago, I realised that, with rare exceptions, hard S-F is largely incompatible with the TV and movie media, so the only way I can get my fix is through the literary medium. If you want good CGI, you've just got to make your imagination conjure it up for you.
Yeah I'd watch it if it had good writing. And Nathan Fillion
That really depends on a lot of factors. Tom Hanks got his start on a guest spot of The Love Boat, probably not paid well at all. And now he's Tom Hanks. Take a look at Lost, a massive cast made almost entirely out of former guest actors and many who's work had dried up recently. They were also paid relatively little for the first season, it's not like these people were in high demand. But it was like lightning being captured in a bottle. I don't care if you don't like Lost. You have to admit the cast was very well put together.
What I'm saying is that you don't have to spend a lot of money to have a talented cast. Yes, it's very risky to play by that logic. You're a lot more likely to get SGU than Lost, but still possible.
Well, by "bad" do we mean poorly done or do we mean unrealistic? Those are two different questions. The current audience, for the most part, considers shows like the original Star Trek, Outer Limits and Twilight Zone to have bad special effects, but that's not the case. They are unrealistic, but they look great. They may no longer be state of the art, but they have artistry and atmosphere. Photorealistic SFX have a tendency to lack that spark. When I look at a van Gogh or Monet or Picasso, I don't think that they're crap because they don't look real; neither do I think that of Trek, OL or TZ. What matters to me is if they look good, not real.
I think, ironically, that the rapid improvements in special effects over the past few years have been to the detriment of the audience imagination, contributing to the advent of stuff like nuBSG that tries so desperately hard to be mainstream. Coincidentally, I recently came across an old interview with Darwyn Cooke in which he makes the same point about comics, saying that artists like Neal Adams and Alex Ross-- as great as they are-- inadvertently have contributed to the trend that brough the comics medium to its current sad state.
So would I watch a Space Opera that had primitive or unrealistic special effects? Maybe something done in the style of TOS or the original Lost In Space or Forbidden Planet? Or maybe something a bit surreal, like Pushing Daisies? Or something that represented somebody's unique vision, maybe derived from the style of Virgil Finlay or Jack Kirby? You bet your bippy.
I think, ironically, that the rapid improvements in special effects over the past few years have been to the detriment of the audience imagination, contributing to the advent of stuff like nuBSG that tries so desperately hard to be mainstream. Coincidentally, I recently came across an old interview with Darwyn Cooke in which he makes the same point about comics, saying that artists like Neal Adams and Alex Ross-- as great as they are-- inadvertently have contributed to the trend that brough the comics medium to its current sad state.
So would I watch a Space Opera that had primitive or unrealistic special effects? Maybe something done in the style of TOS or the original Lost In Space or Forbidden Planet? Or maybe something a bit surreal, like Pushing Daisies? Or something that represented somebody's unique vision, maybe derived from the style of Virgil Finlay or Jack Kirby? You bet your bippy.
Very probably not. Not because of the bad CGI, but because I'm unlikely to watch a new space opera TV show in any circumstance. If there was such a show with fantastic writing and acting with, say, Reboot-level CGI, I might give it a go, but it'd have to have some really interesting hook/story to it. Ergo, I voted the first option.
People keep mentioning that but the V spaceship scenes don't bother me at all.
The interiors can be cringeworthy, and I'm not even looking for such things. The greenscreen in the Rome scenes was awful, wrong lighting, but someone in that thread actually explained why, and it came down to the budget and time constraints of TV, which is the tradeoff - if we want space opera on TV, that's the price.
I'd rather have that than nothing. But there's no reason why we need to tolerate the bad writing. Good writing can't cost that much more or any more. The writing on cable is better than broadcast (at least on the shows I watch) but they don't have bigger budgets on cable.
For makeup, how about a show where the aliens are truly alien - non humanoid - and created solely through CGI? Wouldn't that be cheaper?
There could also be human looking aliens (shapeshifters, or Medusan-type aliens who "wear" human suits) and human looking robots for variety. I could easily do without the halfway-aliens who are just humans with different color skin or funny foreheads.
First off, define "bad CGI". The problem with shows relying on CG is that unlike model work it becomes dated very quickly with a few exceptions. I've already heard Trek Remastered's CG called dated and cheesy, and it's only a few years old. So I'm afraid any special effects, no exceptions, are doomed to be trashed by viewers of tomorrow and I don't think we'll ever get out of that problem.
For that reason anyone who watches a TV show or a movie for special effects alone doesn't care less what is put in front of them unless it looks shiny at the moment.
As for the rest of us, if the story and characters are good and sound, I'm sure we'll watch it. For a time. I chose the "I'll try it" option because these days most SF series get cancelled long before they have a chance to develop, so I'm more likely to take the somewhat fatalistic view of "I love the show, but it's dead" almost from the get-go. V and The Cape are recent examples (though the latter isn't a "space opera" of course). Frankly I don't even have confidence of the Star Wars series if it's ever made surviving past a single season unless Lucas is able to negotiate a two-season guarantee like Steven Spielberg managed with Amazing Stories back in the 80s.
Alex
For that reason anyone who watches a TV show or a movie for special effects alone doesn't care less what is put in front of them unless it looks shiny at the moment.
As for the rest of us, if the story and characters are good and sound, I'm sure we'll watch it. For a time. I chose the "I'll try it" option because these days most SF series get cancelled long before they have a chance to develop, so I'm more likely to take the somewhat fatalistic view of "I love the show, but it's dead" almost from the get-go. V and The Cape are recent examples (though the latter isn't a "space opera" of course). Frankly I don't even have confidence of the Star Wars series if it's ever made surviving past a single season unless Lucas is able to negotiate a two-season guarantee like Steven Spielberg managed with Amazing Stories back in the 80s.
Alex
I think I'd prefer model work to CGI for establishing shots -- there's nothing quite like a bit of old kit bash, as others have said. It'd be fine for a Honor Harrington adaptation where the ships are thousands of klicks apart. Real energy weapon beams would be invisible in a vacuum. Missiles would generally move too quickly for the eye to track. The impeller wedge could be simulated by optical effects.
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Space Opera and anything with outerspace just has to have high definition CGI work in 1080p for television. Some Networks may transmit at 720p HD but when a show is sold on Blu-ray it has to be 1080p if on a network it has to look as good as ENT. ENT ended in 2005 and it is not too much to ask that a network TV show in 2012 look as good as a show from 7 years earlier.
A cable show should look as good as nuBSG.
Of course if I'm going to watch a show every week it has to have good plot and story and be engaging.
A cable show should look as good as nuBSG.
Of course if I'm going to watch a show every week it has to have good plot and story and be engaging.
I pretty much view tv and movies as a vehicle for the writing. I appreciate good acting, scenery and CGI, etcetera, but bad CGI would never stop me from watching a show. Just gimme some more good tv! 
ETA I put "I'd try it," because I'd give the show a chance to be good, just like one with really good CGI, and if it wasn't good, I wouldn't watch it (again, just like one with really good CGI).
ETA I put "I'd try it," because I'd give the show a chance to be good, just like one with really good CGI, and if it wasn't good, I wouldn't watch it (again, just like one with really good CGI).
I tried watching some TNG season one a few days ago and I was amazed with how good the CGI was in the 80s...
Oh.
Models.
Wow.
Mindfart.
Oh.
Models.
Wow.
Mindfart.
I grew up on TOS and old Doctor Who, so FX have never been that big a deal for me, but I'm actually quite puzzled by what qualifies as 'good' cgi.
Seen plenty of shows and movies where I thought the cgi work was just fine, only to read later that lots of people thought it was crap or fake looking. I'd really like to know what most fans basis of comparison is.
Seen plenty of shows and movies where I thought the cgi work was just fine, only to read later that lots of people thought it was crap or fake looking. I'd really like to know what most fans basis of comparison is.
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We've changed.
Babylon 5 used to be awesome.
Now it looks like Tron 1.
Hell, even the actors look the same.
Babylon 5 used to be awesome.
Now it looks like Tron 1.
Hell, even the actors look the same.
I've been watching tv since the early '70's so I've seen plenty of bad special effects and sat through all 5 seasons of crapola like Andromeda with it's lousy effects so no problem watching it for me.
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