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 !
UFO and Space:1999 may be cheesy but they had great stories.
>>UFO and Space:1999 may be cheesy but they had great stories.<<
Yes and no, it was a mixed bag !
I liked the episode of UFO , called: MINDBENDER .
That crystaline rock that drove people made with their worst fears and weaknesses . .
A similar concept was used in an episode of that Canadian TV series(loosely based on an American idea(like all things Canadian it seems in this genre) TOTAL RECALL 2070, which came out in 1999 .
This 'Brancuzzi Stone, brought back from Mars makes people see their worst nightmares . .
"Firefly" had such potential -- it could have been "Original Star-Trek" big. The fact that Joss Whedon and the Browncoats (fans) practically WILLED the movie "Serenity" into existence was an amazing feat.
I agree with both halves of that statement.
Wow. Talk about a blast from the past!
Those two books were, along with Heinlein and Asimov, among the first sci-fi I read when I was a kid that went beyond Star Trek tie-in novels.
The science in the "Collide" novels is a little hokey - the mechanics of Alpha smashing the Earth and heading out to deep space while leaving Beta in a somewhat stable orbit around Sol are nigh impossible.
But hey, they were written in the 1930's, so I cut them some slack.
They were fairly early-on for me too -- though at the time Star Trek in any form was years in the future. I only vaguely remember "After Worlds Collide"; I seem to recall they tried to set up a communist/socialist system that fell apart... but after so many decades it is hard to remember. (Was it intended as a reprise of the original colonists here?)
That would be Horace Bury - native of Levant, failed usurper beyond the Trans-Coalsack, shipping magnate, snake-in-the-grass.
I liked the second-to-last season of LEXX the best, when the redhead who played Xev was all lips, hips, and dead-sexy. The crackhead-looking Xev from the last season, not so much.
I second that!
Even when they'd do something cool, like laying waste to Cardassia, it would be followed up by existential hand-wringing and "Did we really do the right thing?" touchy-feely BS.
I finally read that a few years back. I thought it was a great book that could use a little updating. And I told my brother that he should suggest to a friend of his that has co-written and co-produced stuff in Hollywood that he should look into it.
Then, about a week later, I saw an ad for "Deep Impact". Ah, well. Looks like someone already had that idea a long time before me.
Re: Lucifer's Hammer
I have seen SO many ripoffs of that book! Always the tsunamis, always the earthquakes, always the survivors trying to piece together the remnants of civilzation against the cannibal hordes...
It's a pity that originality is so hard to find these days.
Check out SM Stirling's "Domination of the Draka" books.
I think that was done on "The Outer Limits".
I liked that show. Every once in a while I'd catch an episode and recognize the story from something I'd read in a short story anthology.
Ye GADS! Not Phillip K Dick! I've tried reading his stuff, but it left a bad taste in my literary mouth.
OMG LMAO! You win, LRS!
Jerry Doyle's radio show rules. He speaks the truth.
He has a radio show? Where is it broadcast?
That sounds like the Space: 1999 episode/Season 2 episode "All that Glisteners".
<<
Huh ?
Sounds like the title of the episode where they land on a planet that has a living mound of rock that sucks out the water out of everything !
Or, they land on a planet that has a life force in the form of a destructive light .
Bad acting all around doomed that series !
>>The science in the "Collide" novels is a little hokey - the mechanics of Alpha smashing the Earth and heading out to deep space while leaving Beta in a somewhat stable orbit around Sol are nigh impossible.<<
In the 1950's(Nifty Nifties), the movie version of 'When World's Collide', the planets were Zyra(the new home planet) and Bellus, the giant primary planet . .
In the book they used atomic engines, in the film they used chemical rockets to propel their spaceplane . .
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