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Sci-Fi on tv...what has gone wrong?

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    #32
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Yes, but all stuff about cops and med shows was equally true 10 years ago and 20 years ago (eg ER has/had been on the air for nearly 20 years now and we had stuff like St.Elsewhere before that), so why has sci-fi only ground to a halt in more recent times?

    My own suspicion is that the makers of TV shows realise that Sci-fi fans are at the vanguard of stuff like technology (and therefore download piracy etc) and that as a result their particular demographic has more or less disappeared off the tv radar. They used to be there 10 years ago but developments in broadband etc means they're all but gone, and not coming back. So why make tv shows for people who are no longer even watching TV?


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    #33
    Richard Dower
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,634 ✭✭✭✭Richard Dower


    ^ ALL tv shows are subjected to piracy!...Spartacus, DVD screeners for ALL 13 eps. exist. So i don't think it's that....i thought you were hinting at the fact sci-fi fans are at the vanguard of technology and in such they are more hyper critical of sci-fi and analyse every aspect of a show.

    As such plots and storylines get more scrutinised then other shows, ergo sci-fi provokes more of a reaction, and sci-fi fans are more likely to scream and moan about a show then their non sci-fi counterparts.


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    #34
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Obviously everything is subject to piracy but my point is that sci-fi even more so. You get 1000 fans of some cookie-cutter copshow and 1000 fans of some scifi show and ask how many of each (honestly) watched the latest ep via a pirated download I'd bet the sci-fi show would have a *much* higher percentage.

    Aside from real point but I don't agree either that sci-fi fans are more critical viewers. For the most part they don't want innovation either and it's relatively easy to write for them imho and most of the shows they watch are utter garbage. Otherwise stuff like Star Trek wouldn't have lasted as long as it did.


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    #35
    Hank_Jones
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,783 ✭✭✭Hank_Jones


    bonerm wrote: »
    Obviously everything is subject to piracy but my point is that sci-fi even more so. You get 1000 fans of some cookie-cutter copshow and 1000 fans of some scifi show and ask how many of each (honestly) watched the latest ep via a pirated download I'd bet the sci-fi show would have a *much* higher percentage.

    Aside from real point but I don't agree either that sci-fi fans are more critical viewers. For the most part they don't want innovation either and it's relatively easy to write for them imho and most of the shows they watch are utter garbage. Otherwise stuff like Star Trek wouldn't have lasted as long as it did.

    I agree with what you are saying regarding downloads.

    Are you calling Star Trek utter garbage though?
    That's what it sounds like..


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    #36
    Richard Dower
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,634 ✭✭✭✭Richard Dower


    ^ LOL...i picked up on that but kept schtum! :-)


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    #37
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Hank_Jones wrote: »
    I agree with what you are saying regarding downloads.

    Are you calling Star Trek utter garbage though?
    That's what it sounds like..

    I guess I am. I used to think it was great but even at the time it seemed to me that everything after TNG felt a bit "safe" like nothing truely surprising, mature or innovative was ever going to happen in it. Even on reviews TNG doesn't hold up for me personally and just feels a bit like a show that's going thru the motions. I think TV viewers expectations have risen sharply over the past 10 years and stuff like Star Trek just doesn't hold water anymore.


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    #38
    Richard Dower
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,634 ✭✭✭✭Richard Dower


    I bet you think Kirk is better then Picard...right?

    :-)


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    #39
    L31mr0d
    Registered Users Posts: 8,067 ✭✭✭L31mr0d


    bonerm wrote: »
    Star Trek just doesn't hold water anymore.

    Completely disagree. TNG covers more topics on philosophy, morality, race, religion and science than any show that has preceded and succeeded it. The majority of the episodes are pointed examinations of parts of the human psyche and the varying schools of thought on them.


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    #40
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Richard Dower wrote: »
    I bet you think Kirk is better then Picard...right?

    :-)

    Nope, I leave that important debate to you guys. :)


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    #41
    Hank_Jones
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,783 ✭✭✭Hank_Jones


    Are you referring to the effects?

    Or do you think the characters don't hold up?

    Personally I think that TNG is clearly not going to hold up fantastically well, it began 23 years ago and effects have moved a long way since then.
    Plus I think that characters were more wholesome then, so they seem a lot different to the edgier kind of characters that we are used to now.

    Personally I thought that Voyager was a great show, as was Deep Space Nine. I really don't see how you can call Star Trek garbage (Enterprise not inculded of course).


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    #42
    TonyD79
    Registered Users Posts: 1,080 ✭✭✭TonyD79


    BSG was great scfi. As for character development Caprica has attracted criticism for not enough Scfi and too much character development.Stargate Universe has the potential for greatness imo but then again its all about opinion.
    They gave a whole season to Flash Gordon yet only half a season to Journeyman which I thought was excellent and on par with Quantum Leap.


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    #43
    eamon234
    Registered Users Posts: 1,924 ✭✭✭eamon234


    It's weird I never liked the Stargate spinoffs (although I met Amanda Tapping once and she was lovely:) - loved the movie (probably the only decent thing Emmerich has done), but I really like SGU it's completely different to the others it's grittier, the ensemble cast is excellent and I like the fact that they're strangely marooned on a ship yet get short bursts away from it from time to time. The power plays going on in the background make for some interesting sub plots. So far it's worked really well for me and fills the sci-fi void left by BSG for now.

    Caprica I can take or leave really it seems a bit too focused on teens yet the subject matter is probably a bit too adult for teens to handle. I can see where they're going with it but I'm not sure if it's my bag. I also hate the way that every time someone makes a movie or a show about future societies they always seem to think that dressing them in forties and fifties style clothes is the only way to so it - Brazil, Bladerunner, Dark City the list goes on.

    I can't watch any of the old trek stuff anymore it just looks too bad and it's just way too cheesy. It was great at the time, mainly because there was shag all else on, but now it just looks dated and there are some eps on TNG which are downright awful. (two words: five lights)

    I've seen some reruns of X-Files and they seem to stand the test of time a little better but Fringe is more interesting with better characters and a good story arc.

    Lost is one of the finest and most original shows ever made and I'm really enjoying the final season but at least they knew when enough was enough.

    Flash Forward is it's poor cousin and I find the cast really annoying they overplay every scene and are constantly posing and pouting the premise is good and apparently the rest of the season is excellent so I'll wait and see.


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    #44
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    eamon234 wrote: »
    I can't watch any of the old trek stuff anymore it just looks too bad and it's just way too cheesy. It was great at the time, mainly because there was shag all else on, but now it just looks dated and there are some eps on TNG which are downright awful. (two words: five lights)

    Actually that example pretty much sums up my main issue with Star Trek. It's completely derivative. The piece that Eamon refers to was considered on of the more dramatic sequences for Picard in the series but what it is is essentially just a blatant rip-off of a sequence from the book Nineteen Eighty Four. Someone her earlier regailed us with the virtues of the show it's philosophy, morality etc but deep down every single aspect of the show is just watered-down ideas taken from somewhere else and repackaged & presented for the lowest common denomonator viewship. Go to the source if that's what you're after.


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    #45
    icdg
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 11,587 Mod ✭✭✭✭icdg


    No mention of Doctor Who's current popularity. It really has taken sci-fi mainstream in the UK.

    As far as US sci-fi is concerned, its rise and fall seems to depend on the state of Star Trek at any particular time. Star Trek suffered from being on TV far, far, too long and after 18 straight years on TV (for 7 of those years in two simultanious incarnations) it had gotten too stale. Enterprise was supposed to be a shake-up, but despite being set before Star Trek, it firmly belonged to the TNG era production team who had been running the show for 14 years at that stage and quite frankly had begun repeating their plotlines and the characters had gotten too bland.

    I don't really like the current trend in US Sci-Fi for "dark" sci fi - Battlestar Galactica (2000s), Caprica, and Stargate Universe all firmly belong to this - I prefer my sci-fi with a happy ending as Star Trek and the earlier incarnations of Stargate gave us. (Having said that I loved Babylon 5, at least up to mid-way through Season 4).


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    #46
    Pepe LeFrits
    Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 15,001 ✭✭✭✭Pepe LeFrits


    Space operas started to reach saturation point with the viewers in the nineties. Garbage like Star Trek Voyager contributed to sci-fi becoming somewhat tainted and difficult to market and make a success of.

    With regards to comparisons of the two decades, the nineties didn't have the Battlestar Galactica re-make. The end.

    I'm really enjoying Universe though so I hope it gets a proper run. It's the first space opera in, well, possibly ever, that does a decent job of capturing the sense of wonder that you'd think would come with space travel. Thanks to the general tone of the show and some glossy, intelligently used visuals of space, it almost feels like they are half way across the universe at times, and not in some cheap hollywood parking lot. Galactica, for all its brilliance, never really captured a sense of how lost in the depths of space they were (although it captured how lost they were, mentally).

    Caprica is pretty good too but I imagine it'll get canned before too long. It's too high brow to succeed.


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    #47
    iguana
    Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 12,915 Mod ✭✭✭✭iguana


    Hank_Jones wrote: »
    Yeah, who was doing the casting for that?

    Ok, so we'll take the lead from another quite popular science fiction show and make him the lead for a Star Trek show. It's clearly got win written all over it.

    An actor my husband knows made the shortlist to play Captain Archer but after his final callback they told him they liked him but they were after someone more "Scott Bakula-esque." A month later they announced they'd signed Scott Bakula, he was who they always wanted.


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    #48
    bonerm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    iguana wrote: »
    An actor my husband knows made the shortlist to play Captain Archer but after his final callback they told him they liked him but they were after someone more "Scott Bakula-esque." A month later they announced they'd signed Scott Bakula, he was who they always wanted.

    Kinda weird seeing Capt.Archer wasn't really that Bakula-esque himself, or at least he isn't that similar to the Dr. Sam Beckett role he played in Quantum Leap imho. If anything Archer felt like the personification of Republican party foriegn policy.


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    #49
    Richard Dower
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,634 ✭✭✭✭Richard Dower


    Bakula had a recognised face in Sci-Fi so it was more about getting someone who could sell the show, that stupid dog as well.....waterboarding dog or whatever breed it's called.


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