A big thanks goes to Visualops for the Banner!!
Posted on 10/25/2009 1:46:46 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Weekly Sci-Fi Thread (10/25/09)
Mon:
8/7 -- Heroes -- NBC
Thurs:
8/7 -- Flashforward -- ABC
9/8 -- Fringe -- Fox
Fri:
9/8 -- Dollhouse -- Fox
9/8 -- Stargate Universe -- SyFy
10/9 -- Sanctuary -- SyFy
Also there are variety of scifi shows on www.fancast.com
Flash Forward is good as are Sanctuary and Fringe.
Presuming that your question is not about who we think could get us off the deserted planet and who we’d rather be spending time with... the lighting on the show is far too poor for me to tell if any of the men are really attractive! In all their efforts to make the fanboys happy, the show’s producers kind of forgot about the fangirls =( but they’ve been using semi-realistic science, which I really missed in Atlantis.
Still haven’t seen Flashforward, but I’m probably going to get around to it in the next few days, thanks to the swine flu that’s keeping me out of classes until Tuesday at least...
DVR set...haven't seen it since original airdate
Had a big crush on Jane Badler. Wonder where she disappeared to?
‘The Prisoner’ starts in three weeks.
Thanks
It was the 80’s! LOL!!!
” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000826/ “ . She acts on occasion. Did nothing from 2003 to 2007, one film in 2008, working on one now.
I have just started watching syfy lately because other tv is not entertaining.
Except for Dexter.
So yes please add me to the syfy ping list for now, esp. since you have the program listings posted.
Does he have a split personality?
Why would they leave him in command?
There is a shot of all these women standing there, and I swear, all of them look like they just got out of a wind tunnel. Big, back-combed hair brushed away from the face. The first time I noticed this was a few years ago, I happened upon this movie, hadn't seen it for years and that scene, and that hair, just cracked me up.
What were we thinking?
It was the style.
My favorite looks for women was from the '70s. This site has plenty of examples of what I am talking about. (you might want to turn off your speakers as the music is annoying)
And the fact that it's apparently filmed in the dark doesn't help either. Half the time I don't know what the heck's going on.
An Ancient communication device.
They use this thing that looks like a hockey puck and it transfers conscioius across galaxies when other communications are out of range.
On the general topic.....
I hated the increasingly tongue’n’cheek tone of the Stargate franchise.
I like SGU much better, closer to the movie and the early years of the series.
I like SGU and consider the Christianity was well handled but the one silly thing about the episode was that unless they were going to go to a planet to just die later,they really needed at least 9 of the 17 to be women of childbearing age and willing to have children, though that would have put the writers in an uncomfortable place with the lesbian character who wouldn’t specify her age. Seriously, unless they have children, all they were going to do was put off the inevitable and 3-4 women (as I remember it), including one who is lesbian and may be past childbearing age, just aren’t enough to keep a viable population going, not to mention the social conflicts it would produce. That said, Lt. Tamara Johansen was a great pick but the pouty and otherwise useless Senator’s daughter in her early 20s also should have been on board. Asking the characters to “pair up” might have created some interesting drama but that could have raised uncomfortable questions for the writers, too.
Sounds more like real life than a stream of perfect officers.
“I’m not even sure what branch of the military is being represented, but to have the senior officer (Colonel) always blubbering about his ex?-wife who whines because he’s gone all the time, and his second-in-command (Scott) either crying or having sex with anything in a skirt is totally uninteresting “
I find it more interesting than finding an increasingly superior race of enemies that the perfect officers happen to defeat just in nick of time to save Earth. Again. And again. And again.
“And I just wish Dr. Rush would fly out of an airlock. Maybe he’s a villain or maybe he’s a hero, but I really don’t care anymore. Honestly. “
That you can’t figure out the plot line from now till the end of the show nine years later is part of what makes it interesting.
“And the fact that it’s apparently filmed in the dark doesn’t help either.”
Oh, yes I prefer I-store I-Apple I-macsyfy look much better.
“Half the time I don’t know what the heck’s going on. “
The show is not for everyone. It does require a minimum IQ.
I would prefer that they didn’t have the alien communication device. There is enough opportunity for drama with the ensemble cast that they have without wasting time on drama on Earth, too, and it undermines the isolation of the characters. I agree that the new show is closer to the original, which is great, though they still have a Mary Sue character or two (specifically Eli), which is another trend that still alive but I’d like to see less of. My main concern right now is that The Think That’s Going to Kill Us of the week may get old pretty quickly.
I’ve been watching Star Gate Atlantis on DVD. (Walmart had them for $15.) Never got into the original SG-1 that much and haven’t seen SGU. I just like the Atlantis series for some reason. Can’t explain why.
That’s what I hear, no dollhouse until Dec. That means no Summer Glau until Dec. That stinks! Somebody please post a gratuitous Summer pic.
Unfortunately, that's the way a lot of young people are believe the rest of the world is. Unlike the generations of writers who produced the original Star Trek and other television from the 1950s through the 1980s, many of whom served in the military during WW2, Korea, or Vietnam, many younger college graduates and writers have no military experience nor do they know anyone who has, so they write about what they imagine the military is like. The other part of the problem is that it's common writing advice that drama comes from conflict and character flaws and many writers have taken that advice too far by creating entire ensemble casts of whiners, losers, and self-important narcissists.
LOL! Your rebuttal was interesting until this point. Challenging someone's intelligence always demonstrates you're losing the argument.
And, no matter how sophisticated or nuanced you think SGU is, or how "above" the ordinary person's intellect, I find it whiney, slow, dull, and peopled with a bunch of characters I wouldn't bother to shove out of the way of an oncoming bus. It is nice to have at least one character to relate to in a show, and that's totally missing in this mess.
I set up a scheduled recording of “Flash Forward” and watched a few episodes. By the middle of the fourth episode I realized that I couldn’t care less about any of the characters.
big bump!!
Not a split personality.
Special communications stones. They can communicate with Earth even though they have no clue which direction it is in.
The ship going into the star on purpose was robbery of the audience.
Thanks! Cameron still rocks!
I will say I did do an SG double-take there when I saw the Senator's daughter...
We need to have a Summer Glau thread
woof.
Not even the cast reciting The Lord’s Prayer could have saved SGU for me. I couldn’t get past the pilot. Worst. Pilot. Ever.
I actually found that kinda interesting and considered it a likely explanation for the trajectory and thought the effects were pretty nifty. I'll give them a pass on that and it seems to follow the "trust the ship, it knows what it's doing" theme that's been developing. The bigger cop-out was that they wasted time on the lame "Uh oh, you can't catch the ship" bit that didn't really add anything when they could have used that time for some character development. At the very least, they could have had wonder boy Eli visibly consider that if the shuttle doesn't get back, he has a shot at cheesecake girl.
It’s gotten a bit better since the pilot and I suspect it will improve as they figure out what they want to do with the characters and prune ideas that don’t add anything.
Thats true it is alien technology and far advanced than we can imagine.
I was under the impression that they were going to the planet just to die later (even if they had children, they’d still eventually die), or by some incredible chance find a ‘local’ stargate and integrate into some civilisation they found, given that there wasn’t a need to continue the human race or anything like that.
Also, I don’t know if there were 9 women on that entire ship, and I’d guess only Chloe and the young Air Force girl (Vanessa?) and maybe the medic would be likely to be fertile enough for those purposes. That is, if they weren’t on some birth-control option like the depo shot (hey, if you were in space and didn’t know when you might have to run to another planet at a moment’s notice or leave stuff behind, that’s what I’d do considering the alternative) in the first place.
“Oh, yes I prefer I-store I-Apple I-macsyfy look much better.”
‘Properly lit’ does not mean ‘Apple designed the set’. ‘Properly lit’ means that you don’t notice the lighting - think of shows like Firefly or SG-1. Because our eyes automatically adjust to light we can still see detail in all but the darkest situations, but lose color perception in darkness. So, if you film a scene in proper lighting and apply a grey or blue-grey filter the viewer’s brain interprets it as ‘dark’ but none of the image quality is lost. There’s a much more detailed explanation in some of the behind-the-scenes stuff in the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies if you care to find it.
‘FlashForward’ has been better than I had expected even as East Coast/West Coast intrigues are starting to rear their ugly heads. There’s definitely a terror cell/hit squad going after the FBI’s L.A. Office and it will be fun seeing how each agent’s future pans out.
‘Fringe’ is just getting better and better with each episode as Olivia remembers more and more of her visit to alternate Manhattan.
‘Dollhouse’ is starting to pull out all the stops by not focusing on Eliza Dushku’s Echo and providing more back stories to secondary characters, Sierra, Topher and Victor. A very smart move, but I doubt it will keep the suis at FOX from axing the show after this season.
‘Sanctuary’ seems to be finding its stride. Haven’t seen ‘SG:U’ since the franchise should have called it quits after ‘Stargate: Atlantis’.
Was never a huge gan of the original ‘V’ and I don’t believe that having ‘Firefly’’s Inara in Jane Balder’s role is going to create a hit.
Jack.
“I don’t believe that having ‘Firefly’’s Inara in Jane Balder’s role is going to create a hit.”
Firefly. A show that should have never been cancelled.
That's rather pointless and depressing, though it certainly fits in with the narcissism point earlier in the thread. It makes sense of their behavior in the show but I consider it silly. Isn't there anyone on that ship thinking beyond themselves and the next day or two? The only one character who raised "gender" seemed more interested in improving her odds and possibly some sort of affirmative action than anything else. Heck, now that I really think about it (I've only thought about this from an individual character perspective), it's also quite depressing that none of the men chose to stand aside and give women their slot or a better shot at a slot. The chivalry of the Titanic days are clearly dead. Congratulations, feminists, men are now happy to push women aside so they can live, instead.
Also, I don't know if there were 9 women on that entire ship, and I'd guess only Chloe and the young Air Force girl (Vanessa?) and maybe the medic would be likely to be fertile enough for those purposes.
The medic is in her 20s. There are plenty of other young women there, as seen in the various scenes around the ship including the praying scene and including one young woman who was actually picked by the lottery. There are quite a few more than 9 young women in their 20s or early 30s on that ship.
That is, if they weren't on some birth-control option like the depo shot (hey, if you were in space and didn't know when you might have to run to another planet at a moment's notice or leave stuff behind, that's what I'd do considering the alternative) in the first place.
Depo-Provera shots last for three months. Implants could last for a few years, as can an IUD, but both can be easily removed by a medic. Of course the women should be asked if they want to have children in that sort of environment and they should certainly be allowed to opt out if they don't want to go along. Women (and men) who can't have children could maybe have a shot via lottery at the odd spot, but I'd be curious how they'd justify their inclusion beyond "Me! Me! Me!" narcissism.
I saw it more as a positive attitude, that they wouldn’t give up as long as there was even the tiniest shred of hope left. Also, if you look at Chloe’s reaction to the pilot saying she should get a seat because of her father’s position, I don’t think she’d have any better reaction to someone telling her she should get a seat because of her gender. At the same time, although it would have been the chivalrous thing for the men (aside from the pilot, and maybe farm boy) to stand aside, once the ship landed it would have been quite useful to have men on the planet itself. So, since the attempt to make some kind of settlement on the planet would function best with both genders, IMO the only fair way to go would have been to make it completely gender-neutral.
I don’t think reproduction would have been a goal for several reasons. First of all, I and many other women would probably rather die in a star than die from complications with childbirth on a desolate planet with a minimum of medical supplies. Second of all, that brings up the rather awkward point that after a couple generations, the family tree wouldn’t have any branches... even with 8 men and 8 women for maximum genetic diversity that probably wouldn’t be enough.
Also the planet was somewhat “habitable” but not ideal..
There is one character that is interesting, it's the ship, Destiny itself...
That said, I first must admit that I don't "like" this series, either conceptually or in its implementation. However, this episode was an improvement and if it continues to improve it might be watchable, particularly since the PTB's at "Sciffy" have made certain that fans of more traditional "hard" science fiction simply have no other choices. I will probably continue watching simply because there isn't anything else to choose from.
That forced lack of choice is the real issue that I believe fans will desert and cause the SyFy franchise to eventually dwindle away into the forgettable memory-hole along with most of the other superficial pablum characteristic of most other cable programming.
What SyFy execs have tried to spin as a "re-branding" of the network is ironically probably going to result in the simple dissolution or disintegration of a once recognizable brand with a committed fan base into an incoherent hodgepodge of soapy sci-fi/fantasy dramas, contrived reality scare-fests, CGI monster B-flicks, and wrestling. The only things missing are a syfy cooking show and a syfy shopping program... /g
Which is why I suggested a roughly even split in my original suggestion.
So, since the attempt to make some kind of settlement on the planet would function best with both genders, IMO the only fair way to go would have been to make it completely gender-neutral.
The settlement would not function very well with 13-14 guys and 3-4 women, one of whom is a lesbian, either, unless they are all completely, uh, "gender neutral" and just don't think about or have sex.
First of all, I and many other women would probably rather die in a star than die from complications with childbirth on a desolate planet with a minimum of medical supplies.
So are you expecting celibacy, because unless one of those supply boxes contains condoms or birth control pills, a pregnancy is certainly likely? As for dying from the complications of childbirth, much of that gets mitigated by basic surgical tools and antibiotics, which the team hopefully has, or even simple infections and injuries can quickly become deadly. And let's not forget that there are plenty of other nasty and brutish ways to die in such circumstances, including everyone getting old and slowly less able to take care of themselves.
Second of all, that brings up the rather awkward point that after a couple generations, the family tree wouldn’t have any branches... even with 8 men and 8 women for maximum genetic diversity that probably wouldn’t be enough.
You can keep the family trees apart pretty well with 8 men and 8 women, even if they stay reasonably monogamous, as long as they all have quite a few children. That's not to say that there wouldn't be genetic issues at all, just that they wouldn't necessarily grind everything to a halt.
I understand your point that not every woman would want to have a half-dozen or more children and possibly die doing it, and that again leads back to the narcissism point. What's survival all about? Individually living a few more days?
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