is the golden age of space sci-fi coming to an end ?

posted on February 28th, 2011, 7:27 pm

yeah the movie was great

posted on March 16th, 2011, 10:37 pm

For me the beginning of the end was when Voyager tamed the Borg too easily. Because the Borg "lost their teeth" it makes anything else trivial.
It gives a sense of "oh yeah, they're in trouble with some aliens. Raise hyper shields and turn on your invincible personal shields (yes, they should have killed off a main character or two in Voyager to make the journey home look less assured. I'm looking at you Harry). Fire transphasic torp...sorted."

The last nail in the coffin was either the failure of Nemesis to do well critically and financially (procluding the end of trek as we know (knew?) it) or the cancellation of SG Atlantis. That show was great, the Wraith were a compelling enemy but again they were beaten too easily. I think the flaw from my point of view is that the fate of characters is all too inevitable. When they come out on top of a difficult situation relatively unscathed, it damages the realism of the show and whatever antagonists are defeated are left neutered. In Atlantis the Wraith should have won at the end of the 1st season.  The start of the second series should be about a failed expedition recovering and preparing for another stab at the pegasus galaxy, eventually defeating the Wraith in the creative ways they did later on in the show.

posted on March 16th, 2011, 10:49 pm

they should have killed off a main character or two in Voyager to make the journey home look less assured. I'm looking at you Harry

Technically, they did kill Harry off for real in one episode, even if they did keep the status quo by replacing him with a seperate duplicate. Along with Naomi Wildman.

posted on March 16th, 2011, 11:40 pm

Technically, they did kill Harry off for real in one episode, even if they did keep the status quo by replacing him with a seperate duplicate. Along with Naomi Wildman.

see thats where SGU did what voyager should have. in voyager we were promised a difficult mission with conflict, the sorta stuff you might get in a more real life setting. instead we got the starship lollipop where everyone was chummy and the maquis all wore their matching starfleet pyjamas like good little boys and girls and the ship was fixed by the hard work and dedication of a brilliant engineering team industrial strength reset button each week.

in sgu people died a lot, and there was some emotional connection between audience and character, i actually felt emotions when riley died, that was an awesome episode. and the ship started broken, and didnt get fixed every episode. and there was believable conflict. SGU deserves at least as many years as voyager. each episode i cant wait for the next, and they dont even use cheesy cliffhangers to get that effect.

posted on March 18th, 2011, 7:15 pm

Hmm. I've only watched the first SGU season so far(2nd season starts soon in Germany). I didn't like it. I need at least one character I can identify with and a bit humor. The problem of battlestar galactica was that I just didn't care whether they died or not because all of them were bastards, in no way better than the Cylons, on the contrary.
In SGU it's similar. Besides the computerfreak there is noone that would make me turn on TV again. On the other hand Mackay, the doctors - well the whole Atlantis crew was sympathic.

posted on March 18th, 2011, 8:20 pm

i think rush was funny in his dark way. the sort of funny nobody in the room would laugh at when he says it, but would chuckle when alone later.

i connected with the sgu characters more than atlantis because they were more believable, with flaws, and werent perfect at everything. thats why people like o'brien and mckay, as they are not perfect, they are more like normal people. i connected with the atlantis people too, just to a lesser degree.

whether you like or dislike a character, if you are feeling emotions about them, then the storytelling is doing its job. they may leave a bad taste in the mouth (like rush being cold and young being violent) but you think about them and have emotions.

what i liked about sgu is that it had lots of people who appeared regularly, like riley, who arent main characters, but you still get to connect with them. and they were allowed to kill them off. cant kill off main characters, they have contracts it allows for the realism of death, but allows for that death to cause emotion. i dont care about random redshirts getting iced in trek, as we never even learn their names most times.