A Farscape music video to Tom Lehrer's "New Math"

YouTube ^

[GraceG]

[ I grew to really love Scorpius and Crais. Scorpius was a good example of end justifies means but when the end was stopping universal destruction, he sort of got a pass on means. I loved him smiling as the peace treaty was signed at the end. He won! ]

I loved Harvey and his conversations with John.

[mairdie]

I hated seeing any of the Harveys die.

[mewzilla]

2 words: Revenging Angel .

Beep beep!

[GraceG]

2 words: Revenging Angel .

Beep beep!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOc1FeJENtA

[rochester_veteran]

New Math - Power of the Air

[jeffc]

I did have trouble with the effect used for the dissolving into crystals and reforming.

Yeah, strange. I think that was supposed to be the end, you know, the SciFi way - just leave a show hanging there (Alphas, anyone?). It took fans to bring it back for the movie and a proper ending....

[Rockingham]

Good points. Hollywood level sound quality is harder to achieve than is usually appreciated. It takes not just good equipment but people with the skills and ear to edit and mix the recorded sound into a finished product that will be readily understood by the audience. With Farscape, for the first few episodes, I watched it with the captioning until I caught on.

The show's art direction probably had a greater priority in that the Jim Henson Company producers likely recognized from the start that it could help make the strangeness of the show more credible and comprehensible. The result was that Farscape and even individual episodes had a unique look and visual themes that reinforced the story lines and provided the characters with suitable props and settings.

Notably, screenwriter James Gunn admitted that Farscape influenced Guardians of the Galaxy: "The only science fiction shows that I think I ever really watched were Farscape and Star Trek: The Next Generation … Yeah, I’m sure there’s influence there. I like that show." After knocking off half a bottle of Scotch, I bet that Mr. Gunn might even admit privately that Guardians is a reimagining of Farscape's premise of a single human stranded with peculiar, morally dodgy alien companions.

[mairdie]

The DVDs don’t have captioning, which drives me nuts. I’m also hearing something wrong as it breaks for commercials but I can’t yet tell what it is I’m hearing that is bothering me. But it’s not normal. Is the sound stopping too soon compared to the video? Just not sure. But something’s not right.

The original Star Trek has such a clean look that I’m always reminded of minimalist art. This show uses large numbers of overlays and really understands how to frame a scene. Ex - when John or Zhaan talk to Moya and you see them both. Just as there’s an ear that’s missing in the audio composition, there’s an eye that is definitely there in the video composition.

I’ve never seen Guardians of the Galaxy. Should I?

[Rockingham]

The sets for Star Trek reflected its limited budget and the simple aesthetic of its most direct predecessor in the genre, Twilight Zone. More broadly, traditional science fiction envisioned a clean and bright future led by a scientific elite, and so early movie and TV productions showed that visually. Then Star Wars, Alien, and Blade Runner established realistic and dystopian science fiction themes and correspondingly dark and complicated set designs.

Notably, these movies reversed the traditional science fiction themes and visuals. Institutional power and the most sinister people, things, and places in the future were shown as bright and clean, with the heroes being grubby and marginal. Whatever else one thought of the Death Star, it was immaculate with a strong aesthetic, while Skywalker and company were dodgy people with beat up equipment.

If my memory serves me, Farscape was the first science fiction show to bring this to a TV series. Serenity later embraced the theme of the grubby looking in the future as the good side, and it now seems a visual and intellectual convention in science fiction. Hollywood may not vote that way these days, but when it comes to drawing audiences, they are on the side of the deplorables.

Guardians is simple-minded and cartoonish, but it is fun.

[mairdie]

Blakes 7 was a direct follow-on to the original Star Trek that made the Federation the bad guys and the ship of criminals the good guys. The B7 Fed emblem is our Star Fleet emblem turned 45 degrees. For the first two years, the good guys have a brilliantly wonderful ship which has good, clean lines and Star-Trek-pushed-to-its-limits lovely interior. Then the lead wanted to leave the series and they blew up the ship and put the crew onto a grubby little one and everything became dark and unpleasant. Over the next two years, Avon, the new crew leader, spends his time searching for the lost Blake and gradually goes insane, matching well with the newly dark art look. One of the things that made that show brilliant was that the actors were theater trained, many out of RADA, and movements were frequently ballet like. It was the BEST show for music videos! With other shows I fight like crazy to get or create a clip with good motion. With B7, they moved and held position. Bless their hearts!

[Rockingham]

I do not even remember </i>Blake’s 7</i>. It looks like it was the anti-Star Trek.

[mad_as_he$$]

IMHO...Yea. GotG is a great SciFi film. Interesting concept and way out there characters.

[mairdie]

Luckily, you’re talking to an obsessive. One of the reasons my website runs over 20,000 pages is because I put EVERYTHING up in the attempt to pull people into my enthusiasms, which are innumerable.

The show is absolutely BRILLIANT! I ran a letterzine for a while with a limited subscription list of the best analyzers and artists. The show is wonderfully layered and is a British Shakespearean tragedy.

http://www.iment.com/maida/tv/b7/b7characters.htm

http://www.iment.com/maida/tv/b7/b7episodeguide.htm

Try the music videos for an overall look:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYTtL1FB2XCrdxh8T1JV2vn43QOMLswZ2

In particular, give 3 a try:

Comedy Tonight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA5OaVFePbU&list=PLYTtL1FB2XCrdxh8T1JV2vn43QOMLswZ2&index=10

Mungojerry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9xo2wIw_s&list=PLYTtL1FB2XCrdxh8T1JV2vn43QOMLswZ2&index=11

Crimson and Crystal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgoRcZwYorw&list=PLYTtL1FB2XCrdxh8T1JV2vn43QOMLswZ2&index=24

[Rockingham]

I have bookmarked your references for later viewing.

[mairdie]

Wait! I’ve got another one. How could I have forgotten something so germane to our discussion. A friend gave a lecture on the difference between Blakes 7 and Star Trek and I “illo’d” it for her with video. She died many years ago and I filled in the black places where she was talking so that her work wouldn’t be forgotten. Warning: she was a feminist to the nth degree and I disagree with a good bit of what she was saying, but I loved hearing her opinions and it’s a really fast way to see the differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3xIXemMNII&index=2&list=PLYTtL1FB2XCowDP4dIVhEFq5MrHrBvmeK

Edi Bjorklund - Can Gene Roddenberry Learn Anything From Terry Nation?

Forgot: Blakes 7 is from the same people as Dr Who.

[Rockingham]

Star Trek is an easy target these days in that its politics and mores are so dated. Moreover, during the production run, success led Gene Roddenberry to let his ego get increasingly out of control, which resulted in ill-chosen plots and script details. And, as a rule, even with generous allowances for the obsolete technology and weak production values of early TV shows and movies, the old stuff rarely holds up well on a fresh viewing.

[mairdie]

I will agree that I have trouble with old shows that I remember loving. I buy vast quantities of DVDs and the older ones, the ones that excited me the most originally, tend to sit collecting dust today. -Simon & Simon, Magnum P.I., Have Gun Will Travel- Most of it to me is the formula. I get SO tired of seeing the same plot elements over and over. I wrote a spec script for Forever Knight that an agent friend got permission from my main agent to send to Parriott. Brian mailed on Tuesday and Parriott called him on Thursday. Unfortunately they were looking for a Canadian writer because of contract requirements. But the only reason I got that far was by recognizing the formula elements and copying them slavishly with an original slant.

And yet, for all the formula and idiotic Prime Directive, I still adore Star Trek. I skip the episodes that grind my teeth and sink under the clean art lines and incredible casting. I don’t care if the Gorn looks funny or the ship wobbles. And when I think of Roddenberry, I remember a con where he came out into the audience when a young man in a wheelchair asked a question and went down on one knee beside him to answer it. I remember thinking what an incredibly decent man he was. And DeForest Kelley telling about stopping NYC traffic to get everyone to help find his lost bird under parked cars. He donated charity money to no-kill shelters. Those memories mitigate some of the idiocy so that I can still watch Star Trek today and get the same joy I did originally.

[Rockingham]

Writing a credible TV script is no small feat. I saw Forever Knight on late night TV years ago during several months' run of insomnia.

Even successful TV shows usually seem to exhaust their premise after about four or five seasons and then become so repetitive as to lose their audience. Retooling usually fails, while good acting, appealing characters, good sets, new cast members and characters, and snappy dialogue can help keep a show fresh, even if only within the limits of the show. The larger demands of the medium also have to be respected, the "Save the Cat" sort of thing that drives the three act play structure.

Fundamentally though, scripted TV shows are all of various species of genre writing. The scriptwriter's talent is in understanding and then varying the recipe for the genre and the specific show. TV is a lot better these days than ever before -- and no small part of it is better scriptwriting.

[mairdie]

What loses me fastest in a show is the loss of a character that I’ve enjoyed. It’s as though a show will become unbalanced among the other characters as they try to adjust to some new characters. Forever Knight losing Schanke is a good example. Also NCIS. I religiously bought those DVDs, even holding my nose for the season with Obama in it, over husband’s strenuous objections. But they finally lost me with this last season. I understand actor and actresses wanting to move on but, as a viewer, it’s rare for a show to get better with a loss than weaker. I’m trying to think of ANY show that got better with a change of character and I’m failing. Oh, Due South. That change of partner was tough but there was still good chemistry. Best show that held up for me over seasons and even today? Get Smart. Maybe JAG.

[Rockingham]

Your point about cast changes is well-taken. X-Files withered after Duchovny quit the show and the big reveal as to the alien infiltration played out. For me, Rockford Files has held up well, as have harder edged shows like The Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, Justified, Breaking Bad and the like. If one is in the mood, a sitcom like Frasier is enjoyable.