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You have to hit till the blood runs clear: Sci-fi television.
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I kinda enjoy bionic woman, but mainly because it reminds me of a lot of shows I like more. It has plenty of potential to be great, but I doubt it will happen. Decent cast. Decent characters. Good sources for conflict and shit in the plot. Dialog isn't even horrible.
I think it's going to go pretty much nowhere, but I could be wrong, so I keep watching.
Yeah, that first 3/4 season is like ripping off your own fingernails with a tweezers. Sometimes I think it's better to just watch the metaplot ones and then go back after you love the show to watch the others for little continuity bits.
EDIT: My apologies, the intro movies are "In the Beginning," which was filmed after the third season, I think, and then "The Gathering," which was the TV pilot that was released before the series proper started.
"In the Beginning" is the metaplot heavy one.
Space Above and Beyond - Great show but cancelled so it ends very poorly. Angriest Angel is one of the most memorable episodes of any series I've watched.
I now abandon everything and leave to protect this country.
To preserve our eternal and just cause, I now go forth.
My body will collapse like a falling cherry blossom
but my soul will live and protect this land forever.
Farewell. I am a glorious wild cherry blossom.
I shall return to my mother's place and bloom."
Lexx - I'll admit I actually bought this. Has about 4 seasons. Idiot captain and crew of misfits cruise the stars in a superweapon looking for poonani. It's not deep but it has: barely clothed girls, assassins, extremely crude sight gags, great one-liners. Some episodes have their moments.
G vs E (Good vs Evil) - Why did you get cancelled?? Slight religious theme. Successfully incorporated 70's camp. Hilarious recurring role by the secretary of defense himself, Deacon Jones.
First Wave - An attempt to cash in on the popularity of Nostradamus. As awful as the actual premise was, as bad as the plot holes were, I empathized wayyy too much with Crazy Eddie.
Alien Nation - Great, I thought some episodes were better than the movie with James Caan. Only lasted one season.
I did enjoy the subtle nods to the books, and the original film- like when the group is running through the grass fields, and Glitch trips- and Kane goes to help him up. Awesome. Or when leaving the dead truck, Kane grabs an axe.
The end seemed rather abrupt, though. It needed about 5-10 more minutes of resolution for the other main characters.
And who names their kid "DG" anyways? Why not just Dorothy? Too direct?
I'm going to go on believing that, unless they show her birth certificate or something.
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The alternative is way too retarded.
Again, more fantasy than sci-fi. Also uses the same plot as Brimstone, but adding ridiculous wrestling mentality.
That plot, I hope, will manage more than one season in the new show, Reaper. Also not sci-fi.
I mean, don't get me wrong. The station did host MST3K at one point, and I did enjoy farscape now and then.
What, seriously? Explain that one.
I still think watching "In The Beginning" before the start of Season 2 is a bad ide. It spoils so much stuff. Plus, And The Sky Full Of Stars is a great episode, especially when your not sure what actually happened.
It's actually the first episode of B5 I ever saw.
Interestingly enough, the rumors about Sinclaire's departure included disputes between the actor and Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi). I don't know how much of that was true, and how much was manufactured to cover for the fact that Michael O'Hare has the acting presence of a recently rendered batch of pork fat.
But sure, fine, Sinclaire might be a better fist-fighter than Sheridan, possibly even better in a Starfury, but Sheridan was motherfucking Star-Killer. He was easily ten times more badass from his backstory alone, much less his in-show actions.
Well, the great thing about B5 is not what happens, it's how they happen. I mean, the first episode of the series tells us that G'Kar is going to kill Londo; the thing we don't know is the context (which is incredibly awesome).
I personally think that you can watch "In the Beginning" and not be truly spoiled, because Babylon 5 isn't really about shocking twists the way a lot of shows these days are: it's about how legends are made, and how children learn to stand on their own.
I didn't. I just thought calling her Dorothy would have been more to the point. Or even just "Dee". How many parents give their kids the full name of a relative as a first name?
Meh. I still enjoyed it.
So I should watch that before I watch the series? Also, I'm starting to appreciate the little things--like I can stand Sinclair a bit more after he upgraded the hairdo. He still gives this creepy Michael Landon lookalike vibe.
Edit: so it's debatable. Also I'm getting spoiler fear in this thread.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
And the O'neill knock off...when O'neill did questionable stuff I kinda bought that he was doing it for the greater good. Whassisface I just get the impression he's holding back the DARKKKKKKKKKKKNESSS INSIDDDDDDDDDE.
futurama, nuff said :winky:
If you listen to commentaries Glassner and Wright talk about that and say that they realized that the 1-2-3 thing going on with the zats didn't work and just phased it out.
Sheppard? Are you high when you watch Atlantis?
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I lose sleep if someone doesn't like one of my favourite shows, but at least know what you're talking about.
Its about the third time (including last weeks nanite one) that I've noticed him doing something incredibly questionable and not particularly for the greater good and he just shrugs it off but its pretty obviously meant to be eating away at him.
It is debatable. It depends on how much you value the shock of revelation compared to the journey to get to an inevitable conclusion. Those raised on shock-tastic twist shows like 24 or Lost might not want to watch "In the Beginning" first, but those who are narrative structure wonks may want to watch it so they can appreciate how it all comes together.
I've had friends be introduced by both methods, and all of them love the show either way.
In the end, it comes down to "Who are you?" and "What do you want?"
Or was that "Who do you serve?" and "Who do you trust?"
One of those, anyway
Actually, they did meet before, only briefly though in the A Call to Arms movie. It was the movie to set up the Crusade show. I really liked it. It's nice when Tony Todd doesn't have to play a bad guy. I still think of Gary Cole as "the captain from Crusade" and not "the annoying boss from Office Space" and it baffles some people. I really wish that show would have kept going. There are some really great things going on in the episodes we were able to see.
PSN : Bolthorn
Good catch. It's been years since I've seen that, but I found myself wondering if they'd met somehow through Crusade.
And yeah, Ted Turner royally buttfucked Crusade. We needed more of that. Son of a bitch must pay.
Well, it may be the best line in the entire series, so you're forgiven.
Everybody under the age of 15 loves Batman Beyond.
I loved Buffy with a passion. I wasn't much for the movie, but I watched the series right up from the first episode so I missed very little up until it's last season.
And then there's Angel, which was awesome from the get go. While the later seasons got pretty weird, they also had some very wonderful moments.
How can you not love this?
I'm well over 15 and I really liked Batman Beyond and, in fact, all of the Timmverse cartoons. In fact, I consider Batman: The Animated Series to be the definative Batman prior to Batman Begins.
Batman Beyond was fairly solid sci-fi with gene splicing, power suit technology, and other fun stuff. I liked Old Bruce Wayne... he was cranky and had a big dog! Return of the Joker was chilling.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex sets the bar for realistic science fiction cartoon TV programming, though I'm not sure if we're counting anime (seems like an unfair advantage...).
Don't see why not. The thread's about Sci-fi TV, not American Sci-Fi TV.
OMg, I'd forgotten about that show. The black cripple guy with the super suit right?
Why he gotta be crippled? Is the man afraid of a strong black man as a super-hero?
Clearly.
Ghost in the shell was good enough to warrant going deeper into that field
Trigun is good, too, but it's begun to show it's age. You might also try Evangelion and/or RahXehPhon if you're don't mind anime with giant robots that focus more on the troubles of the characters as opposed to the giant robot fighitng.
If you want Giant Robot (which is inherently sci-fi) you might try Big O which is pretty cool if not a bit strange.
Elfin Lied is a pretty bizzare, but unique, series. It contains a lot of violence and frontal nudity so bear that in mind.
Look for a movie titled memories. It's three short films directed by different people, first one is fucking amazing.
Elfen Lied is an incredible anime... completely aside from the (largely asexual) nudity, the series pulls absolutely no punches when it comes to violence, and even main characters lose limbs or are killed in spectacular ways.
Speaking of brutal sci-fi, there's always GANTZ. Absolutely amazing dark storytelling with visceral violence and sex. I'll warn you, though: the way it's set up, just about everyone you see on your screen will die violently, killed by aliens, other humans, or GANTZ itself. Show made two seasons before running out of characters... though I believe the manga continues.
Finally, Afro Samurai is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy (though I'd say more sci fi), and it's kinda a jumble of plot points, but the animation is good, the fights are slick, and Samuel L. Jackson does the voiceover work. It's a short series, only four or five episodes.
we already have an anime thread.
The amount of good sci-fi/fantasy anime is kinda a long list.
Gonzo is good at drawing stuff, when they have a budget. Jackson's character says maybe 100 words through out the series. Everything but the fighting and artwork is garbage, so it's good there isn't much else too it.
A lot of anime use a sci-fi setting without it effecting the story much. Afro Samurai is kinda an example of this. It doesn't really matter how fancy the guns are, or how a given character gets powered up, it's just diffrent character art. You could keep all the other story elements and just redraw it modern or historic and it still works.
Battle Angel(or whatever it is cool to call it these days), GitS, Texhnolyze, Ergo Proxie and the like, deal more with how people relate to technology. It is more than just a setting. It is integral to the story.
I'd say that "spectacular ways" is an exaguration. Once you've seen the opening scene for the first episode, you've seen pretty much all of the ways people die throughout the entire series. The show opens with a woman who effortlessly deflects bullets, rips off heads and limbs, tears people to shreds. But beyond that scene, very little else is done. Seeing someone get their head and/or limbs ripped off only stays so interesting after the 10th time.