Movies in General

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Not surprising since Fringe is filmed in Vancouver, Canada. As we have seen before Stargate Universe also displayed Type 97s as recently as the last episode.

I'm so sad they're cancelling that show :'(
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Stargate Universe might've gotten better but they just spent too much time with the pretentious interaction between characters. That's called a sci-fi show with a low budget.
 

Player 0

Junior Member
^What are your thoughts then on sci-fi shows that do that as the main draw, such as in BSG, or the various Star Treks, admittedly always hated anything Stargate related.
 

Obi Wan Russell

Jedi Master
VIP Professional
^What are your thoughts then on sci-fi shows that do that as the main draw, such as in BSG, or the various Star Treks, admittedly always hated anything Stargate related.

BSG was THE best show of the 21st century. Bar none. No arguments will be entered into, on pain of me sending a squad of Cylon Centurions round to 'persuade' you!

In BSG, the whole show was about The Human Race, and whether or not we as a species deserve to survive, therefore it is a central part of the premise that humanity be explored. The spaceships and battles were, in context, peripheral to the story, though nonetheless important.

Quite fond of the Stargate franchise myself, and had high hopes for SGU. Star Trek was a little too 'clean and tidy' for my taste, but I'll watch it anyway. It mainly suffered in storytelling terms because at the end of each episode the 'reset' button had to be pressed and all the main cast safe and sound. They were never in real peril when threatened. Babylon 5 rewrote the book on thata and Star Trek learned the lesson, making later seasons of DS9, Voyager and the whole run of Enterprise better for it.
 

Player 0

Junior Member
Star Trek was a little too 'clean and tidy' for my taste, but I'll watch it anyway. It mainly suffered in storytelling terms because at the end of each episode the 'reset' button had to be pressed and all the main cast safe and sound. They were never in real peril when threatened. Babylon 5 rewrote the book on thata and Star Trek learned the lesson, making later seasons of DS9, Voyager and the whole run of Enterprise better for it.

Gotta disagree with you there, B5's similarities with DS9 is coincidental until proven otherwise, TNG was episodic and so was TOS, but they were still well written for the most part giving us some excellent characters and stories. DS9 further built on this, headed by the likes of Ronald D Moore who rose to fame on TNG and would later go on to helm BSG, the stories weren't clean for the most part, breaking a lot of trek cliches and story formula in favour of realpolitik and military fiction, emphasizing and improving on some of the best aspects of Trek. Voyager and Enterprise were pretty much shit honestly, with the exception of ENT's fourth season and the stories that features Tuvok to expand universe canon, there were nothing redeemable about these pathetic excuses for Trek shows which killed off the franchise.

I refuse to recognize the reboot since you could just retitle generic sci-fi action flick by Michael Bay wannabe and it still would have as much to do with Star Trek, which is to say nothing.
 

Obi Wan Russell

Jedi Master
VIP Professional
Paramount was offered Babylon 5 a year or more before they announced plans for DS9; the premise's of both shows are startlingly similar. DS9's first couple of years were still as 'safe' as other trek shows, featuring the dreaded reset button in the scripts. Only after B5 started making waves did DS9 re think it's plotlines and pulled it's socks up. RDM worked on DS9 and Voyager and expressed disatifaction with the whole 'reset' concept, something he carried forward to BSG, a series which has to be seen in the correct order (unlike most trek episodes which can be viewed in any order regardless).

Voyager still had reset buttonitis for most of it's run, no matter how many battles and damage the ship took, the next week it was as fresh as the day it left the builder's yard. Enterprise dared to be different, certainly different from TOS so gets credit for that. Season four was the best as you say, had it continued it could have been remembered as great even.

RDM has said that BSG owes a lot to the preceding trak series, as his time on them taught him what NOT to do with a Sci Fi series. NO technobabble, NO reset button, It's about the Characters, who have to grow to be believable, and the story should have a beginning, middle and end. Though not always in that order...
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
I like Sci-Fi.. but I never liked the new BSG.. Too much unnecessary foul language and sexuality. And the crew is not very military in its behavior.. As for SG and B5.. I just don't like those genre.

I do like the Star Trek series except for ST Generations... My favorite is Deep Space nine with Avery Brooks.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
^What are your thoughts then on sci-fi shows that do that as the main draw, such as in BSG, or the various Star Treks, admittedly always hated anything Stargate related.

I hate them. Let me be clear, it's great when they do it right. If you ever dabbled in screenwriting like in film school, you are taught that the only thing you write about is story and character in the context that it affects the story. Stargate Universe I call pretentious because I could care less about those characters and their personal problems because it had nothing to do with the anything else especially the overall main story the vast majority of the time. The happenings in their personal lives were the stories in the episodes. That's why I know the show had a very limited budget and yes they were trying to follow the new BSG model which I didn't like too except for the special effects space battle parts.

I wouldn't put all those shows in the same category. Given the nature of television shows, it allows for more character development and interaction than movies. Stargate Universe was a mess. Who was the antagonist? The blue aliens that all of the sudden disappeared and now these drones thingys? Yeah the show was canceled earlier than anticipated so they probably couldn't do anything more. But from the beginning, the show just kept concentrating on the boring problems in the lives of these unlikable characters and that's what killed this show. They call it sci-fi for a reason. Another show a couple years ago that tried to ride the BSG fomula was a summer series on ABC TV called Defying Gravity. Now this show is probably the worst sci-fi show ever. Why? Because some idiot television executive thought they could mixed two diametrically opposed audiences to get as many viewers as possible. The female-oriented love story crowd and sci-fi geeks. It was Grey's Anatomy in space. So basically you had the character interactive love story dynamics of Grey's Anatomy set in space. And the space part was as empty as space. Normally I'll watch a "bad" TV show hoping it will get better like Stargate Universe but this show was completely unwatchable.
 

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
Paramount was offered Babylon 5 a year or more before they announced plans for DS9; the premise's of both shows are startlingly similar. DS9's first couple of years were still as 'safe' as other trek shows, featuring the dreaded reset button in the scripts. Only after B5 started making waves did DS9 re think it's plotlines and pulled it's socks up. RDM worked on DS9 and Voyager and expressed disatifaction with the whole 'reset' concept, something he carried forward to BSG, a series which has to be seen in the correct order (unlike most trek episodes which can be viewed in any order regardless).

Voyager still had reset buttonitis for most of it's run, no matter how many battles and damage the ship took, the next week it was as fresh as the day it left the builder's yard. Enterprise dared to be different, certainly different from TOS so gets credit for that. Season four was the best as you say, had it continued it could have been remembered as great even.

RDM has said that BSG owes a lot to the preceding trak series, as his time on them taught him what NOT to do with a Sci Fi series. NO technobabble, NO reset button, It's about the Characters, who have to grow to be believable, and the story should have a beginning, middle and end. Though not always in that order...

I only liked the original BSG with Lorne Greene. All the later series as well as SG, Babylon 5 never appealed
I didn't mind "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" for a bit of light weight stuff as an alternative to" Doctor Who "or "Lost in Space" . For the life of me I can't recall Twiki saying " Its freezing my ball bearings off" like the writer in Wiki suggested. or that some of the props were the same as BSG. I must see if I can get hold of some past episodes or the original film.

Has anyone seen "Source Code". That one's sorta science fictiony huh?
 
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Player 0

Junior Member
Paramount was offered Babylon 5 a year or more before they announced plans for DS9; the premise's of both shows are startlingly similar. DS9's first couple of years were still as 'safe' as other trek shows, featuring the dreaded reset button in the scripts. Only after B5 started making waves did DS9 re think it's plotlines and pulled it's socks up. RDM worked on DS9 and Voyager and expressed disatifaction with the whole 'reset' concept, something he carried forward to BSG, a series which has to be seen in the correct order (unlike most trek episodes which can be viewed in any order regardless).

Voyager still had reset buttonitis for most of it's run, no matter how many battles and damage the ship took, the next week it was as fresh as the day it left the builder's yard. Enterprise dared to be different, certainly different from TOS so gets credit for that. Season four was the best as you say, had it continued it could have been remembered as great even.

RDM has said that BSG owes a lot to the preceding trak series, as his time on them taught him what NOT to do with a Sci Fi series. NO technobabble, NO reset button, It's about the Characters, who have to grow to be believable, and the story should have a beginning, middle and end. Though not always in that order...

Dude what you just said about DS9 you can say about every Trek show; TNG, VOY and ENT never came into their own until their third seasons.

I never said VOY was a good show, aspects of it were good, in particular when character arcs were done right, as in Tuvok's who gave us greater richness and insights into Vulcans who weren't seen since TOS, beyond that most of VOY is still largely mediocre. ENT only started to get good in the third season when Manny Coto came onto the writer's crew, and even then didn't truly feel like a Trek show until the fourth season when we actually did see story arcs that connected to the greater mythos.

And? I never said it wasn't, BSG is a much refined sci-fi more so than Star Trek, but to its credit the over reliance on techno-babble and reset buttons only came about in VOY and late TNG when the writers ran out of imagination, DS9 wasn't as bad and maintained a sizeable cast of interesting characters and there wasn't really much of a reset button there.
 
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