Posted on 07/27/2006 6:49:43 PM PDT by marc costanzo
The essay below was originally written in the early Spring of 2001:
With the passing away of LEXX ends an intriguing albeit tawdry experiment in Sci-fantasy. One that breaks with conventions, or should I say cliches of TV sci-fi of the 90's . The politically correct pabulum, the multicultural indoctrination, the BladeRunner motifs, and not the least; the steroid mutated superbabes that can punch the lights out of men, but never get punched back in return !?
How about creating a new sci-fi anthology with none of the puerile baggage of Rod Serling, Rockne Obannon, Michael J. Stracinsky, etc .. It is time to end their reign of un-American cynicism and fatalism !
BTTT.
They should probably call it the "genre channel" but most folks wouldn't get it. Sci-fi, fantasy and horror have always been connected at the hips and always will be. The line between them is very thin, just look at the original Twilight Zone (most re-dos have been pretty ignorable), primarily it's a horror show with almost every story revolving in some way around fear, but many episodes are built around sci-fi concepts (and I'm pretty sure there's a couple with fantasy elements though I can't think of any off the top of my head) that just happen to be kind of scary. It's the same reason why most "sci-fi" conventions are actually sci-fi/ fantasy/ horror conventions, and some of the more interesting discussions at those conventions involve trying to actually define the lines between the genres.
Depending how you look at it. Although it backs onto the Copper Wall Mountains, Harrington House is actually on the shore of the Tannermann Ocean.
Harrison would probably insist they speak Esperanto and thus make the show completely unwatchable.
Read Orson Scott Card. I haven't been disappointed in any of his books. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are great and can be read simultaneously--well, you know what I mean.
That's why I cringe every time I hear SCIFI is "adapting" a classic novel. They butchered "Riverworld," too.
I hated Riverworld, BTW. Some of the concepts were interesting but the characters...ech.
Actually Scanner Darkly is freaking awesome. Hands down THE most accurate translation of a PKD story to movie. Just don't have anything scheduled too soon after you see it because getting out of that theater is a lot like coming off a serious drug trip and driving is not your friend for a good half hour afterwards.
Hey, I read some of Cook's books, pretty amusing, too.
Read the first three books in order, they are all good. There are some good stories in 22 or so books, and there are some that bring to mind Reagan's explanation for why some of his early movies weren't good. "They didn't want it good, the wanted it Tuesday."
They need to stop dumbing things down. Right now, most of the sci-fi on the Sci-Fi channel is written by 20-somethings for 12 year olds. Blech...
Challenge the public. They may surprise you.
Although mainly space-opera, Star Trek had asopirations of, and occasionally achieved Science Fiction. Lost on Space never aimaed to be and was never more than skiffy.<<
Not entirely true, LOST IN SPACE's first seven episodes were more like real science fiction .
Same with Star Trek, the first few episodes of the first season were the best - after that, it became all messagey(as in Lefty)
Shawn had a bunch of fairly lightweight roles, but some of his earlier work shows that he can be serious.
When I read the last few Ringworld books, Wu's attitude and the way he complained about being constantly manipulated by Puppeteers or Pak or whoever made me think of Shawn.
He's compact, and has features that could be made to look multiracial, as Wu was. He can act comptent and cool, he played a good lawyer in some movie I have forgotten.
As for the three women being airhead enough, that depends on how it's written and how directed, and on your own interpretation of what Teela should be like. I would not think of any of the actresses as airheads, their careers suggest a degree of intelligence. I did not read Teela so much as an airhead, but as someone who never really had much control of her life- since it was driven so hard by luck, any choice she made was toward a goal she was not aware of.
Although casting imaginary movies is fun, I think that the actual choices would be a disappointment just because that's the way Hollywood does things.
I didn't know that, thanks- I don't watch a lot of tube.
Interesting, I think I am somewhere below the second tier !
But he was also key in finally dealing with the Moties.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.