How do you see the state of SF on TV and in Movies? (1 Viewer)

[BobO'Link]

I'll 2nd Walter's comments on Battlestar Galactica 2004. In spite of knowing how it ends, which I didn't find objectionable (and had figured out before it hit - it was the only logical way for it to end), I've found it quite enjoyable on the 2 repeats I've given it since its original airings.

Fringe was also a surprise. I did a blind buy on that one during one of those times Big Lots had tons of TV series. I didn't pay attention to the creators (I've been less than impressed with the bulk of their output) when I made the purchase or might have left it on the shelf and that would have been a shame. I've only watched the first season but found it quite interesting and satisfying.

I forgot about Better off Ted - I've only seen S1 but really enjoyed it. S2 is in the wings.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I rewatched the Battlestar Galactica reboot maybe two years ago and I felt that it held up. It has more episodes per season than a similar show would have today, but I don’t think they’d really cut story, they’d probably just call it seven seasons instead of four.

The designs of the ships and their gear are sort of mechanical enough that I think they’ll hold up in the way original Star Wars designs do - they look like old things that were built a long time ago rather than calling out a particular production period.

I guessed the ending right from the first few minutes of the first episode. Just in case everyone hasn’t seen it:

Spoiler

We’re meant to believe that the show takes place in the distant future, but the final revelation is that it was the distant past. I guessed that solely because the show didn’t throw up an onscreen chyron to give it a date, which made me immediately suspicious. But knowing that didn’t ruin anything for me; it just gave me a little side mystery to speculate on so that was fun too.

 

[jcroy]

I actually watched the first-run broadcasts of Caprica before the revived Battlestar Galactica. (IIRC, the latter part of Caprica was aired in a "burning off" marathon).

I didn't watch the revived BSG in its original first-run broadcasts. Only on dvd many years later.

There wasn't much in terms of spoilers from watching Caprica first. It didn't hint at it being in the current or near future, nor being in the distant past. Other than depicting a society that looked superficially like a then-current 2000s era.

 

[jcroy]

When I first heard about "The Expanse", initially I thought it would be my type of show. It ticks off many things on a checklist of stuff I want to see in a scifi show.

Though when I tried watching through the first season, I found this show somewhat difficult to watch. I really wanted to like this show, but found I just wasn't able to get into it. No matter how many times I forced myself to watch the episodes over and over again.


This is the epitome of a show which "looks very good on paper" on all counts from all the previews and articles about the show, but which turns out to have fallen completely flat for me. This was also the show where I came to the realization that good writing in addition to "looking very good on paper", is simply not good enough to determine whether I would like watching it. The factor which I haven't been able put my finger on (nor define precisely), is what might be called "execution".

What I'm calling "execution" might very well be something completely different.

 

[BobO'Link]

I rewatched the Battlestar Galactica reboot maybe two years ago and I felt that it held up. It has more episodes per season than a similar show would have today, but I don’t think they’d really cut story, they’d probably just call it seven seasons instead of four.

The designs of the ships and their gear are sort of mechanical enough that I think they’ll hold up in the way original Star Wars designs do - they look like old things that were built a long time ago rather than calling out a particular production period.

I guessed the ending right from the first few minutes of the first episode. Just in case everyone hasn’t seen it:

Spoiler

We’re meant to believe that the show takes place in the distant future, but the final revelation is that it was the distant past. I guessed that solely because the show didn’t throw up an onscreen chyron to give it a date, which made me immediately suspicious. But knowing that didn’t ruin anything for me; it just gave me a little side mystery to speculate on so that was fun too.

I think what upset lots of people is

Spoiler

The original series finds the missing 13th colony... on Earth. This one, again, changed what happened.

This is one of those series where having a love for the original can hurt your enjoyment. So many things are changed. I wasn't a huge fan of the original so didn't give those changes any examination/attention. I'd read about one and think "OK... so it's different. Big deal."

 

[jcroy]

This is one of those series where having a love for the original can hurt your enjoyment. So many things are changed. I wasn't a huge fan of the original so didn't give those changes any examination/attention. I'd read about one and think "OK... so it's different. Big deal."

I was a big fan of the original. Though with that being said, I was probably too young to have really understood what the show was really about. So the revived Battlestar Galactica changes were not an issue to me.

The original Battlestar Galactica is one of the first non-cartoon shows I latched onto when I was kid/preteen. So for me, my high interest is highly colored by my naive youthfulness at the time. I didn't watch any reruns, since I didn't live anywhere which had a local station which played reruns.

 

[jcroy]

In contrast hypothetically, if I had first watched the original Battlestar Galacta as an adult (and not as a kid/preteen), I probably would have thought it was cheesy scifi show which was rather unmemorable.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think what upset lots of people is

Spoiler

The original series finds the missing 13th colony... on Earth. This one, again, changed what happened.

This is one of those series where having a love for the original can hurt your enjoyment. So many things are changed. I wasn't a huge fan of the original so didn't give those changes any examination/attention. I'd read about one and think "OK... so it's different. Big deal."

Its a shame that some people can’t enjoy a new version of the story that doesn’t play out the same way as the older version.

There’s a group of Star Trek fans that will not accept the new films. In that case, the writers were very generous to the fans by creating a scenario where all of the things that happened in the Star Trek they grew up with still happened, they just happened in a different reality than the one the movies portray. I thought that was a nifty way of honoring what came before without being beholden to it, but it didn’t work for everyone and those that it didn’t work for haven’t been shy about it. I was at a convention in 2013 right when Star Trek Into Darkness came out and the convention-goers there voted it the very worst thing that ever happened anywhere in Star Trek. Is it a perfect movie? No. Is it the worst thing ever? Far from it.

What I find ironic is the lack of self awareness from that crowd. They don’t even realize that the original shows they’re so reverent of could never have been successful if they had to face the same group of nitpickers then as the remakes do today.

 

[jcroy]

Its a shame that some people can’t enjoy a new version of the story that doesn’t play out the same way as the older version.

There’s a group of Star Trek fans that will not accept the new films. In that case, the writers were very generous to the fans by creating a scenario where all of the things that happened in the Star Trek they grew up with still happened, they just happened in a different reality than the one the movies portray. I thought that was a nifty way of honoring what came before without being beholden to it, but it didn’t work for everyone and those that it didn’t work for haven’t been shy about it. I was at a convention in 2013 right when Star Trek Into Darkness came out and the convention-goers there voted it the very worst thing that ever happened anywhere in Star Trek. Is it a perfect movie? No. Is it the worst thing ever? Far from it.

What I find ironic is the lack of self awareness from that crowd. They don’t even realize that the original shows they’re so reverent of could never have been successful if they had to face the same group of nitpickers then as the remakes do today.

As I got older, I largely stopped talking about stuff like Star Trek, Star Wars, etc ... with other local friends / acquaintances, for reasons of this sort.

It seems like every time the topic of Star Trek or Star Wars came up, it would suddenly become a long session of "verbal diarrhea".

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think the rise of social media has made it easier for “gatekeepers” to gather in numbers that you didn’t see before then. By gatekeeper, I mean the kind of person who declares who is and who isn’t a “real fan” and what things are and aren’t acceptable for “real fans” to like. And I find that as I get older, I have no use for those discussions. Like something, don’t like something, it’s all good - just don’t try to police other people’s experience of it.

 

[jcroy]

I think the rise of social media has made it easier for “gatekeepers” to gather in numbers that you didn’t see before then. By gatekeeper, I mean the kind of person who declares who is and who isn’t a “real fan” and what things are and aren’t acceptable for “real fans” to like. And I find that as I get older, I have no use for those discussions. Like something, don’t like something, it’s all good - just don’t try to police other people’s experience of it.

In some niches, this was a very common thing even before the internet became popular.

Back in the day, I found this was common with folks who were heavily into punk rock music. It was basically like a "punk rock" equivalent of a fashion contest and "purity points".

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Sure, it’s always been that way. But it was just so much harder for those voices to carry in the mainstream when it would only be a couple people like that in any given location. Now with the power of the internet, they can turn into something of a mob online and disproportionately represent the fan base.

I wasn’t kidding when I said this in a Star Wars thread recently: I no longer consider myself a “Star Wars fan”. Instead, I think of myself as a guy who loves Star Wars movies. Even though the bad people are only a small portion of the total group, I don’t want to be associated with a group of people who feel that it’s okay to stalk and bully actors just because they don’t like the character those actors were hired to play.

I love “2001: A Space Odyssey” more than any other movie and have spent a significant portion of my life studying all aspects of it. And yet, I’d never dream of calling someone stupid for not liking it, or for preferring “2010”. And I’d much rather hang out with people who are similarly “live and let live”.

 

[jcroy]

I love “2001: A Space Odyssey” more than any other movie and have spent a significant portion of my life studying all aspects of it. And yet, I’d never dream of calling someone stupid for not liking it, or for preferring “2010”. And I’d much rather hang out with people who are similarly “live and let live”.

(On a tangent).

Sounds like you figured this out relatively young.

It took me a long time to come to the realization that choosing friends based solely on niche interests, was a terrible way to make friends. It wasn't until I was about age 29 or 30, that I stopped hanging around folks based solely on common niche interests. (Besides movies and music, these other niches will remain unnamed).

Nowadays I have very different criteria for acquaintances and friends, largely to eliminate all the extreme basketcases from my offline life.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think what happened in my case is that my interests growing up were so different than my peers (or at least the ones they’d admit to) that I just didn’t know anyone else who liked Star Trek or 2001 or things like that through much of my childhood. No one in my high school class saw the ‘97 Star Wars reissue or Phantom Menace in ‘99, or if they did, they acted like they didn’t.

I always imagined the people at conventions would be just like me, people who liked this stuff and didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it in person. And when I went, I found that most of those people weren’t like me. I met Nicholas Meyer (writer/director of Star Trek II) once and most of the people around me wanted to discuss minutiae like minor continuity errors. The type of question that’s like, “At 43 minutes and 17 seconds into the film, Kirk says he’s going to engineering and makes a left, but according to the Enterprise technical specs as published in a 1979 handbook, left actually leads to sickbay. Kirk knows his ship better than anyone so he must have been working on a secret mission when he said he was going to Engineering. What did Kirk secretly do in sickbay?”

Whereas the only thing I wanted to say, and was happy to have the chance to, was “Your work has had an enormously positive influence on my life and been there for me in good times and bad, and I just wanted to say thank you.”

 

[jcroy]

I always imagined the people at conventions would be just like me, people who liked this stuff and didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it in person. And when I went, I found that most of those people weren’t like me.

I made a very similar mistake when I use to attend punk rock concerts back in the day. Though it took me a very long time to realize that most of these "friends" were very different than me. They fell by the wayside when I moved to another town for college, and this new town didn't really have a punk rock scene.

In the end, I found out the hard way that I wasn't a "punk rocker" at heart. Other than listening to the music from decades ago.

 

[jcroy]

I love “2001: A Space Odyssey” more than any other movie and have spent a significant portion of my life studying all aspects of it.

In recent times, I only ever tried doing this for the first season of Mr Robot, albeit briefly. I was looking for whether there was any deeper meaning in the episodes. (They did get the technical stuff down correctly, and not just some dumb technobabble stuff).

Unfortunately I found the subsequent seasons were completely unwatchable. I couldn't figure out whether it was the main character being a paranoid schizophrenic, or something else completely off the wall.


The only other film/show which I ever put in any effort into studying in detail, was the original Total Recall. For example, such as reading the original Phillip K Dick version and the Piers Anthony novelization.

 

[Thomas Newton]

The Fly (1986)
This one is quite good. Much different but at its core the same as the 58 original. Still, there are times when it just about goes over the edge... In spite of that I liked it the first time I saw it.

Let's just say that there is a reason why Dr. McCoy doesn't like getting into transporters.

"Bones, can you do anything for him?"
"BZZZT! BZZZT! Damn it, Jim! I'm a 6-foot fly, not a Starfleet physician! BZZZT!"

 

[jcroy]

I met Nicholas Meyer (writer/director of Star Trek II) once and most of the people around me wanted to discuss minutiae like minor continuity errors. The type of question that’s like, “At 43 minutes and 17 seconds into the film, Kirk says he’s going to engineering and makes a left, but according to the Enterprise technical specs as published in a 1979 handbook, left actually leads to sickbay. Kirk knows his ship better than anyone so he must have been working on a secret mission when he said he was going to Engineering. What did Kirk secretly do in sickbay?”

I remember that book and a "blueprints" set. Somewhat amusing to read back in the day.

More generally, I imagine if there's an extremely hardcore audience for a niche, there will be somebody who will cater to that crowd. For example, such as Star Wars and Star Trek novels regardless of how lousy or good they are.

 

[jcroy]

I get the impression that if you "filed off the serial numbers" from a Star Trek or Star Wars movie, novel, short story, episode, etc ... it looks/reads like a lot like a generic "space opera" or military adventure.

 

[jcroy]

So beside just the brand name, I'm guessing the longer term appeal of Star Wars and Star Trek might have to do with the particular characters and they how clicked with viewers.

I have noticed this in some generic tv shows I've watched over the years. For example in the case of procedurals, in principle many of them were almost completely interchangeable with one another. The ones I ended up watching regularly, were the ones where I liked some of the main characters even when the episodes were lousy.

Current procedurals I still watch is stuff like NCIS, Criminal Minds, and the rebooted Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum PI despite the recent episodes being somewhat mediocre. If for no other reason than I found the characters kept my interest and/or I clicked with.

Other procedurals I didn't watch as often (or not at all), largely because I didn't click with many of the characters. For example, I never really got into shows like Bones, Castle, CSI: New York, NCIS: New Orleans, NCIS: LA, CSI after Grissom left, etc .... It was not that they were crappy shows. In hindsight, I didn't really click with the main characters, which left these shows on the dvr until they were eventually deleted unwatched.

One current show I still watch in spite of being really mediocre for many years already, is The Blacklist. I still watch it largely to see James Spader's performance. If Spader wasn't in the show, I probably would have dropped it many years ago.


Bring this back to The Expanse, I didn't latch onto any of the characters at all. I found this was also case for me with The Killjoys after season 1. Initially these two shows would have been type of shows which "looked very good on paper" and had a lot stuff which would have appealed to me a priori. Unfortunately both The Expanse and The Killjoys fell flat for me which I found to be unwatchable.

In contrast in the case of Dark Matter, I did like the characters a lot and how their true identities were gradually revealed.