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Post by Jeremy on Apr 18, 2017 17:29:35 GMT -8
I haven't watched Farscape S4, either. I mean, I watched the first 3-4 episodes and quickly grew restless. I may try to finish the series someday, but heck knows when that someday will be.
Still, it's a pretty fun (albeit uneven) sci-fi series, with decent character work.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 18, 2017 18:10:08 GMT -8
As far as general sci-fi recommendations go: if you want something along the lines of Deep Space Nine, watch Babylon 5. If you want something like Firefly, watch Dark Matter. Those aren't one-to-one comparisons, but they're in the ballpark.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Apr 18, 2017 19:19:35 GMT -8
As far as general sci-fi recommendations go: if you want something along the lines of Deep Space Nine, watch Babylon 5. If you want something like Firefly, watch Dark Matter. Those aren't one-to-one comparisons, but they're in the ballpark. I don't know about that. The dialogue and acting on B5 is just painful at times, whereas on Deep Space Nine it was mostly crisp and sharp. There were even some episodes (mainly the Garak ones) where you could have fooled me into thinking Whedon himself wrote the dialogue. But B5 is filled with episodes like "Signs and Portents", in which almost every line is a speech. They definitely share some similarities, but B5 is more heavily serialized, and does a magnificent job of building a tangible, compelling universe from scratch, while DS9 is better at rich character stories and is stronger on an episode by episode basis. But it's also no slouch in world-building either, making it the stronger show by far. If you do watch it Bean, strap yourself in for some really weak stuff, and some freaking amazing stuff.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 18, 2017 22:22:54 GMT -8
I'd say that's a fair assessment of Babylon 5, in absolute terms at least. It doesn't have the warmth of Star Trek, but it's really good at world-building and serialized plotting, and it's similar enough that it's the next logical show to try out if you liked TNG and DS9. The first season isn't real great, but then neither are the early seasons of TNG and DS9.
It's easy to miss nowadays, but the true brilliance of Babylon 5 comes from the context it was released in. Babylon 5 was one of the earliest TV shows to have any kind of serialized narrative, and it was definitely the first one of its size and scope. It was also very forward-thinking in that even though it was originally aired in a 4:3 aspect ratio, it was filmed in widescreen in anticipation of future home video releases on widescreen televisions, even though the technology for such a thing wasn't common until the next decade. There's some controversy as to whether this actually panned out adequately and whether it's better to watch in widescreen or not, but the fact that the attempt was made at all is interesting.
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Post by bean32 on Apr 30, 2017 8:15:41 GMT -8
I'd personally recommend Farscape (Bosc will back me up). Yes, I will. With the reservation I never watched the show's fourth season. And that it's kind of silly. I usually recommend it to people suffering from Firefly withdrawal (which is sort of like encouraging someone to get over their marijuana addiction by trying heroin) but it's a fantastic piece of science fiction with some genuinely touching episodes, a really good ensemble cast, and genuinely alien-looking aliens. It also has a fantastic romance between the male and female leads, which I certainly would not have expected going in, but John and Aeryn are a really fascinating couple, especially from a feminist perspective (!?!?) Its weakness is being incredibly hit-or-miss; for instance, the first five episodes of the show's second season contain the two worst episodes of the entire show followed by two of the best episodes of science fiction I've ever seen. And there's not a clear path through the show where you watch just the standalones or just the arc episodes because the quality fluctuates so rapidly. Even the show's worst episodes are stylish, though, so you could watch all 88 and not feel like you wasted your time. I've had a few people recommend this to me. I loved Firefly. This has been the most compelling sell I've had on the show. I can tolerate inconsistency in shows. I love Buffy, Star Trek...great shows with some pretty awful episodes.
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Post by Zarnium on May 18, 2017 5:35:10 GMT -8
New Star Trek: Discovery trailer!
It looks... I don't know what it looks like. This is the kind of trailer that tells you practically nothing about the show, so there's not much to really learn from it. I will say that apparently it's a prequel set ten years before TOS, which is not something I'm real thrilled about. I don't like prequels in general, and setting one even closer to an existing show than Enterprise did opens it up to even more aesthetic and tone disparities that could've been avoided if it had just been set, like, 100 years after Voyager ended or something. Still, I won't knock till I've seen it! I'm hopeful that this will be at least decent, and it's unlikely it'll be worse than the lower 50% of sub-par "classic" Star Trek. Now, let's see what the comments have to say!
Oh...
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Post by Jeremy on May 18, 2017 6:55:15 GMT -8
Setting the show as an immediate prequel to TOS feels like a bad idea. Fans will be looking for continuity errors (a la Enterprise). I can't wait to hear all the arguments about Klingon foreheads... Anyway, comments like those don't sound very Star Trek-ky. TV has become a lot more diverse in the last few years, so naturally a new series in the Trek franchise (which has pushed for diversity since the '60s) will obviously reflect that. In semi-related news, Fox just released a trailer for its upcoming TV series The Orville. The show seems to be a Star Trek send-up in the vein of Galaxy Quest. Though I'm not a great fan of Seth MacFarlane, and I don't expect a sci-fi dramedy on Fox to last very long, the trailer was still mildly amusing.
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Post by Zarnium on May 18, 2017 7:45:38 GMT -8
Setting the show as an immediate prequel to TOS feels like a bad idea. Fans will be looking for continuity errors (a la Enterprise). I can't wait to hear all the arguments about Klingon foreheads... I still have not seen Enterprise, but one thing that always bugged me about it conceptually (and with most prequels) is that it features a lot of elements that aren't present in the chronologically later installments, even though they logically should be. Things like the Denobulan race and the Xindi War should probably be mentioned at least a couple times in the "future," right? But they aren't, because they didn't exist when the older shows were being written. There's also the fact that the Enterprise ship interiors, uniforms, etc. look completely different and more advanced in Enterprise than they do in TOS, even though TOS takes place later. These inconsistencies can be handwaved somewhat by the fact that Enterprise and TOS take place 200 years apart, but Discovery won't even have that excuse. Yes, I find these comments particularly odd since each incarnation of Star Trek has always been ahead of the curve in regards to diverse casting compared to its contemporaries, and you'd think that anyone accustomed to the old shows wouldn't be bothered by the casting choices in this one. On the other hand, Star Trek has always attracted negative attention precisely because of its progressive decisions, so I guess this sort of reaction is nothing new. Hopefully, this won't become another Ghostbusters debacle where it gets hijacked by ten different opposing ideological groups, making it nigh impossible to discuss the actual show in public. Maybe I'm worried over nothing... but, well, it's happened before, and it seems to be happening more often these days. Generalized science fiction comedy can be really good on TV, a la Futurama or Rick and Morty, but I'm not so sure that a TV show that specifically parodies one franchise will have much steam. Like, remember the Spaceballs TV show? No? Exactly.
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Post by ThirdMan on May 18, 2017 13:26:18 GMT -8
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Post by Jeremy on May 18, 2017 13:51:15 GMT -8
Oh, I doubt this will be a retread of the Ghostbusters mess. The Force Awakens got some backlash when the first trailer premiered for featuring a black Stormtrooper, but did most people pay attention? Nope.
Franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek have massive fanbases; there will always be a few trolls in the bunch. The important thing is not to let them take over the conversation.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on May 18, 2017 17:21:10 GMT -8
It looks like the JJ Abrams films. Hopefully that's an aesthetic choice, and it actually feels like a real Star Trek show. It's just a trailer of course, The Last Airbender movie looked awesome, but nothing in it impressed me. Still holding out hope, but it's been such a mess behind-the-scenes.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Jul 22, 2017 20:32:40 GMT -8
The SD Comic Con trailer for Discovery was much better than the first trailer. Overall I'm still very skeptical about it, but maybe it'll actually be good? That'd be really nice.
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Post by Jay on Jul 25, 2017 15:14:58 GMT -8
As a very very casual follower of Star Trek, I watched the latest trailer for Discovery and was... mostly confused. I mean, I think I get where this falls in terms of continuity, going back to when the Klingons were the big threat, but I also had the impression that this series was going to be less focused on warfare and more on the politics and exploration aspect of things, which left me wondering why most of the trailer was Sonequa Martin-Green in action poses, followed by explosives, and drifting through space, and being told that her faux pas had destroyed the galaxy. Maybe I don't actually know what I thought I knew about Discovery.
But it has James Frain and Hollywood A-Lister Doug Jones, and I may tune in for that reason alone. I'm also curious if Martin-Green can act because lord knows she did not have a lot to work with on The Walking Dead.
Also, to Zarnium's point about comments, I just recently scrolled through an announcement via Steam on Civ VI where they announced one of the new civilizations added would be the Nubians. I thought "wow this is exciting I mean nobody really pays attention to them and sort of relegates them to being awkward imitators of Egypt but then that source material is biased because Egyptian history almost never mentions their shortcomings or losses but I wonder if there have been newer discoveries in that area I'll ask my archaeology nerd friend" and then I read the comments and I wanted to die.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Jul 25, 2017 21:20:17 GMT -8
As a very very casual follower of Star Trek, I watched the latest trailer for Discovery and was... mostly confused. I mean, I think I get where this falls in terms of continuity, going back to when the Klingons were the big threat, but I also had the impression that this series was going to be less focused on warfare and more on the politics and exploration aspect of things, which left me wondering why most of the trailer was Sonequa Martin-Green in action poses, followed by explosives, and drifting through space, and being told that her faux pas had destroyed the galaxy. Maybe I don't actually know what I thought I knew about Discovery. But it has James Frain and Hollywood A-Lister Doug Jones, and I may tune in for that reason alone. I'm also curious if Martin-Green can act because lord knows she did not have a lot to work with on The Walking Dead. It's really, really weird. The creators are claiming it's its own thing........but then why set it right before the original series, ensuring you can't make any major shakeups without disrupting continuity?
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 26, 2017 3:37:57 GMT -8
I thought the trailer looked pretty cool, but no, it doesn't really tell you what Discovery is going to be about.
In any case, I expect it's going to have its work cut out, Next Generation-style, trying to appeal to longtime fans while also establishing itself as it own thing for new viewers.
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