Are Sci-Fi fans the most judgemental/critical?

Richard Dower

Falling Skies is getting a pasting, not just here but across the board, IMDB, critics, bloggers, forums etc.
It raises the question, are Sci-Fi/genre fans that much more demanding?....are they more intelligent and demand better scripting etc.?

Perhaps the expectations are higher, most other types of shows can get away with things but it seems Sci-Fi is either great or shiite, there seems no middle ground.

Tbh i do find myself really paying close attention to Sci-Fi shows, it's like i'm looking for flaws, or i'm Sci-Fi savvy and see the past cliches and scripting errors.

What do you think?

[edit - have i made a thread about this before ]

Biggins

As a sci-fi fan, I have to say I'm no more critical to that type of show, than to others.
I treat them all with the same air of expectancy, criticism of their flaws and praise of their good points.

As some are Sci-Fi - these means that we are talking partial science - and todays science is more exact and the common person understands more so how things might work and why, its not unexpected that in this theme of shows alone, one finds that Sci-Fi is possibly open to more analysis than just general drama shows that could be based more so on entire fiction - not have a possible background in science, present or coming future.

stevenmu

In a way yes, but I don't think it's specific to just sci-fi fans. I'd bet that most of the same people who criticise Falling Skies loved shows like The Wire or Sopranos.

There's a lot of people who look for something engaging in a show, they want it to be clever, intelligent, thought provoking and involving. Some of these people won't like sci-fi but I'd guess most will.

Most of all these people want something more than the mindless drivel like 2 and a half men or glee that's churned out for the brain dead masses. But most studios/production companies etc are afraid to be bold and rather than risk doing something original they dumb everything down and add in the same tired cliches in an attempt to appeal to the masses.

This happens with all genres, but becomes especially pronounced with sci-fi because generally the masses will ignore something just because it's sci-fi anyway. So rather than give sci-fi lovers something they'll truely love and get an extremely loyal albeit slightly small following, they water it down to try and appeal to the masses who won't bother watching anyway, and so just dissapoint everyone.

With regard to Falling Skies specifically, so far it has been pretty dull, very predictable and cliched. Clearly this is to get the show to have as broad an appeal as possible, but so far it's not really appealing to anyone, sci-fi fans don't like that it's watered down bog standard drama with aliens superglued in, the masses don't like that it's sci-fi.

I'm hopefull that they've just started out gentle to try and not scare too many normal people away and get them hooked, and that they'll then ramp up over the back half of the season.

(for some reason I'm not sure of yet most sci-fi shows have a crappy first half to the season and then get better after the mid season)

The Black Oil

I'm not sure sci-fi fans are more critical, but when it's bad it can be particularly so. Perhaps sci-fi hasn't always been served that well in terms of quality (though what genre has?), so people may have higher expectations.

I don't know if the genre matters all that much, if you've decent dialogue with poorly drawn characters or the idea is interesting but poorly executed people will be critical. I'm not too fussed about some of the scientific parts of Fringe and am generally critical if it's a bit dull rather than if it's not technically accurate or such.

ScumLord

It's all the same lately. It's all Star wars or almost like lord of the rings in space, most civilisations act no better than medieval human empires and kingships which is just absurd, backwards lazy writing.

Nothings tried to develop the concept of humans in space meeting unique and strange lifeforms since star trek, it's all evil aliens, war, explosions. It's like everything these days their too interested in making the most money to ever come close to making anything worth watching.

Venom

I think its more to do with the small amount of Sci-Fi shows that are made compared to say sheer amount cop shows, dramas or reality rubbish that TV seems to be overflowing with.

The Black Oil is bang on the money in that if you made a cop show that had major elements of the genre wrong such as gun types, arrest procedure or vehicle types that highlight lazy research or writing it would stand out a mile and be savaged by the viewers. Sadly for the majority of Sci-Fi shows lazy writing and lack of the most basic research seem to be the usual norm

Conor108

Bring back SGU

HivemindXX

Venom wrote: »

Sadly for the majority of Sci-Fi shows lazy writing and lack of the most basic research seem to be the usual norm

A lot of the time science fiction is about social commentary and exploring things other than what version of the iPhone we'll be using in 50 years. Which doesn't stop someone on the internet savaging you because the scene dressers used the wrong type of computer hardware in the background of a scene.

don ramo

Conor108 wrote: »

Bring back SGU

bring back SG-1;)

i think most sci-fi shows try to hard, think of the leap from star trek to BSG, theres a masive difference, star trek was episodic and a bit fluffy and BSG while being a lot less episodic was pure hardcore sci-fi, a lot of shows have tried to copy that, thinking playing to the same tone will make another hugh hit, but even as successfull as BSG was it still only drew about 5-7 million viewers in live ratings (i stand open to correction on this), which networks will never acept these days, hell id say SYFY:rolleyes: probably wouldnt accept it now that there such a big channel,

even look at fringe, probably the best sci-fi show still going, and even that is struggling for numbers, these show appeal to sci-fi fans mainly, and the general casual viewer will accept them but only to a certain level, the casual viewers probably got turned off with all the universe jumping last season and the ratings showed that,

i still think the ratings systems sucks balls, and all these downloaded versions should be released by the networks with advertising hardcoded into the files, silent ads, taking up a corner of the screen, and only release the ad free version on dvd 4 or 5 months after the season ends, people will have to go to a lot of trouble removing the hardcoded ads, and at that will only have a blank corner if they so, as the ad wouldnt be cutting out anything, imaging how much advertisers would pay if you could prove there ad is getting to 20 million people+ a week, ive read that some episodes were downloaded 30 million times and that will only increase,