I hated it, thought it was crap.

Good episodes were a bit hit and miss but it had potential

I never really gave it much of a chance if I'm honest, but it doesn't surprise me it was scrapped.

First couple of episodes were good but it quickly went off the boil. I bailed out of that one too. The problem with modern sci-fi, in my opinion, is the obsession with gritty realism. It is over-confining where stories can go and making everything tedious. I shouldn't be able to predict the next 24 episodes of a new series after watching the pilot, but I can.

I didn't mind SGU, though we did eventually just start calling it 'My Two Colonels'.

I don't mind gritty realism in sci-fi - The re-spun BSG demonstrated that it can work well - but what I really hate is the way that shows just develop into essentially a soap opera that concentrates too much on the people involved, and how they feel, and what motivates them blah blah blah.

Most people who watch Sci-fi want to see Aliens and spacecraft and that sort of thing. Nobody wants to tune in to see that in a dystopian future of alien invasion parents will still argue about their kids, best friends will sleep with wives, people will get pregnant blah blah blah, people want to see the action and the antagonists to the plot. Sure, an amount of human realism is required to make it genuine, but I want to see people running and hiding from zombies, not people arguing about whether Carl should stay indoors or have a gun.

For me the ultimate embodiment of this was the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. I really couldn't have given a flying frak about Tom Cruise's dysfunctional family, yet that was all we got for nearly 3 hours. Oh, and Dakota Fanning screaming. I wanted to see Martian fighting machines kicking human arse, not a partial glimpse on a TV screen allegedly taken by a reporter. This film was a great disappointment to me, and yet seems to have spawned a whole load of TV shows where it's much more important to focus on the human element than on the Alien. Like Signs. Jeez. I'll never get that hour and a half back.

Looks like I have ranted a bit....


S

+1 - writing like

"Hey Jack, remember when Dad caught us smoking and made us finish the whole carton?"
"Do I? Boy, that really toughened us up so we can deal with whatever crap we've got coming to us in this episode."

I find really predictable and tedious. And the constant references to who's pregnant and who'd getting dumped, like you say, are an attempt to normalise the extraordinary situation so 1) people can connect to it without thinking about it much, and 2) to create a quick DIY juxtaposition to the next scene with aliens, or whatever.

And finally - WOTW remake was an abomination!

Exactly how I feel.

Watched the first episode of Revolution last night (started in the US on Monday). I'm not sure about it yet. Typical US series - family/personal dramas, unfeasible plots etc. They have not had electricity, toiletries and advanced medicine for 15 years, yet all the women are smoking hot and have perfect hair and teeth.

It has potential but we'll see.

I saw that advertised while in the US last week. It looked pretty good from the trailer, but I will become bored if it's another load of personal dramas I suspect.

I'll torrent that for the weekend.


S

Give it a go. Not scifi, but the new series of Boss has started. I'm 2 episodes in and it's good.

There's an unfortunate thread taken up by most writers, SF included, that the setting and concept of any story is secondary to the 'exploration of human dynamics within that scenario'. In other words they'll write a fantastical setting, but only so they can explore what a human will do with it.

Personally I think that humans being human is kind of the background noise of the story. Of course they are, you'd expect it, it's not the aimpoint - and doing it well shouldn't get any plaudits, not when real life is around to copy.

IMHO SF should be about ideas, preferably not warmed over and rehashed ones either. If you don't have that, you don't have anything.

As far as Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds is concerned - we know it was a bad rehash, because we have the original. In the original you take Victorian Englishmen, busy subjugating the natives in far off lands with mechanised warfare and instead show them themselves getting subjugated at home - and do it through the eyes of a solitary reporter. That turns into Joe Schmo from Bum*****, New Jersey, with kids in tow, wandering aimlessly. Not only were the ideas old and stale, so was the setup. Even the message got lost, which is a pity considering what the US are busy doing.

It's not as if there aren't good SF stories that they could be turning into film. Hell, if you want to do an invasion story have Stross's Festival turn up and set about uplifting humanity for fun and entertainment whilst building the equivalent of a telephone exchange.

Give me big, interesting, new ideas - oh, and kill the cute kid.

Oh thanks for that, just watched a youtube trailer. Looks decent enough to download.

This is what I don't understand about all these accursed re-makes. There are fantastic Sci-Fi stories out there in book form that would translate into great cinematographic works, yet we just have directors rehashing stories that have already been told - and already told well (see Robocop and Total Recall).

My favourite set of books are the Starhammer Trilogy by Christopher Rowley. I would say they were pretty much written to be made into films - great plots, good ideas, and plenty of opportunity to demonstrate some directorial independence. Yet we are going to have to sit through stacks of pointless remakes before anybody starts looking at anything new.


S

Potential good show "Last Resort" I think. About nuclear submarine going rogue and becoming its own nuclear nation. Around soon I think. Looked at Revolution and first thought was Amazulu's observation - perfect hair and teeth without power. The writing looked passé and tedious as well.

I'm still oscillating between angry and disappointed that SciFi have declined to pick up Blood and Chrome - the trailer looks awesome, and it seems to be taking SciFi back to where it should be - not all of these drivelous human relationship angles.


S