give a crappy series/concept the BSG treatment

Cafe Society
41

The Enterprise, whos crew are made up mostly of conscripts( because of the huge death rate associated with space travel in unknown regions) with a selection of people who have signed on for huge bonuses explore unknown regions for resources and places to settle people from their hugely overpopulated Earth.

They come across aliens who do not even remotely resemble bi pedal mammals in any way and whos thinking processes are so totally strange that the humans cannot work out their motivations or thought processes.

They also come across "things"that might or might not be alive, might or might not be sentient.

Space battles are over in seconds with the enemy far out of sight, no beams in space and ships are not damaged but eliminated in seconds.

Conditions on board are spartan, with "hot"bunking, hard rations plus only V.R. as recreation.

Officers do not have chats about the orders that they have just given, O.R.s don’t get too forward with their higher ranks.

Their is no sentiment about killing anyone whos a threat to the ship, whether crew or alien.
They wear shapless fatigues and people die regulary.

Senior officers do not go on away missions.

Badly injured crewmen are euthed rather then having magical cures.

Anyone who has been taken over by mind control, aliens, insanity,whatever, are executed out of hand and not allowed to carry on with their jobs in the next episode.

Plus Wesley Crusher would be put out of the nearest airlock as soon as they were in space for being a nauseating, smug, smarmy little “Know it all”.

42

I’d even go a little further.

Absolutely NO chance the wild men will tolerate being in his company for more than a few seconds or communicate with him. Will not accept anything from him, not even food or drink. Why? Because in the past, the City Dwellers have used locators to track where their people are and then nuke the Wild Men once their people are clear. Because they have used nanites and locators concealed in objects and even slipped into food and drink to track the Wild Men to their villages and then come out and exterminate them.

To the Wild Men, the City Dwellers are nothing more than Terminators, hell bent on their destruction. To be feared, avoided and if at all possible, killed. NO (ZERO) amount of interaction with Buck is going to change this.

And then let’s go one step further.

Buck saves two injured Wild People (one male, one female) and brings them back to the city. The woman is conscious, the man is not. The City Dwellers are shocked and disgusted at the very idea, but at Buck’s insistence, they take the man to the medical facilities. Where they euthanize him. They patch up the woman (only minor injuries), and demand Buck release her.

Only she knows that if she is released, her own people will kill her on sight. Because they know this trick too - she’s been either equipped with a locator, or injected with nanites, or infected with one of the many diseases that are killing their people. Diseases that aren’t necessarily rampant in nature, but we find are being used as weapons by the city dwellers to exterminate the Wild Men.

At the end of the episode, the woman commits suicide, because she cannot live in the city with her enemies, and she cannot go back to her people.

And Buck is faced with the fact that his nice civilized city dwellers are actually monstrously evil, waging a war of extermination against the Wild Men. That their claims that they are besieged by the Wild Men are only an excuse for their behavior.

And NO, this won’t be reconciled over the course of the series with Buck making everybody make peace and sing Kumbaya.

43

I would say The Six Million Dollar Man, but I saw how bad an idea it was to add angst to The Bionic Woman.

44

Starman - The movie is one of my favorites and I dutfully watched the television series when it aired (for only one season), but it just wasn’t that good. The end of the season was looking better when Erin Gray showed up as the Jenny Hayden character, but then there was no season 2.

The “Fugitive” premise of the story is well-worn, but also allows for endless possibilities for various characters, settings, and story arcs. A grittier take on the series could be good–maybe not even introduce the son until after a season or two.

I agree with the sentiment of keeping Ron Moore far away from any show I’d want to watch, and, as someone posted earlier, he’s already had his hands on an aliens-on-earth show with Roswell.

45

All I can ever see now is the The Venture Bros version.

Steve Summers, former astronaut. With his gay Sasquatch lover.

Best line though. Talks about how they spent six million dollars putting him back together with bionic parts.

“Then they expected me to pay it back! You know how long that takes on a government salary?!?!”

46

I think there’d be some potential in re-imaging Logan’s Run. The movie, that is, since people recognize it; not the book, which is obscure and rather odder.

Anyway, start after Logan and Jessica have just destroyed civilization, and left thousands of people without homes, food, governance, or life skills. There’s the Sanctuary folks, who’ve discovered there is no Sanctuary for them to find and all their friends they thought had found it got turned into popsicles.

Instead of weekly adventures in a pseudo-postapocalyptic landscape (as the old series was), it’s an exploration of how these utterly unprepared people have to deal with their world being turned upside-down. Except this time – unlike BSG – there’s the opportunity to present technology a good thing.

These are people whose every need was taken care of by the computer… do they even know how to make antibiotics? They’ve never hunted, or cultivated food. Heck, they’ve never seen seasons, even. Plus they have no political structure, so they’ll have to organize that.

I’d let Logan and Jessica realize what asshats they’d been – sure, Carosel sucked, but maybe they could have stopped that and kept the microwaves and life-saving surgery?

Also, I’d update the pseudo-postapocalyptic landscape with a more “Life After People” vibe. No filming in abandoned rock quarries. Still should be relatively CGI-light, and thus more affordable.

Ironically, I think that series started out as a re-imaging of Marvel’s X-Men IP. It strayed far afield, apparently.

47

This could be awesome!

In the end, he chooses the world’s interests over America’s–but also decides that the political status quo is the best foreseeable situation, so does everything in such a way as to make everything easily propagandizable as his being a chiefly “American” superhero. And just to be sure no one does anything stupid, he explicitly, personally threatens each of the important American Powers That Be to make sure they all go along with the propaganda. Thereby forcing the country to lie to itself about itself because he personally thinks this is best for the world.

Something like that.

Anyway, something like this could make a great story.

Shit, let’s write this thing.

48

Shit!

Let’s write this thing!

49

How about Three’s Company, but airing on HBO?

Jack is NOT sleeping with the roommates (cause they’re doing each other) but IS tapping Mrs. Roper. Hijinks ensue.

50

During the late seventies, something, probably an alien intelligence, tampered with a batch of fertility drugs, making several women give birth to terrifying deformed monstrosities. Some were half animal - half human creatures; some are furry things with a constant hunger who can never be seated; some resemble beings of legend, like a very short vampire with autism…

To avoid problems, and to study them, several city blocks became a ghetto for the deformed. Only military personnel was allowed in or out. But some of the inhabitants are willing to find out the truth behind their condition, and a human who befriends them will help.

Because entrance to the ghetto is restricted and requires a code, the place was nicknamed jokingly after the* Ali Baba and the 40 thieves* story. It was known as…

Sesame Street.

51

Here was my suggestion: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10418438&postcount=73

52

C’mon, really subvert the trope:

Mr. Roper is gay, and Mrs. Roper is a drag queen. Jack is passing as straight, and will get evicted if Mr. Roper finds out otherwise.

… At least, the show’s wardrobe is now explained. :smiley:

53

Jack really IS gay and is having an affair with Mr. Roper. Therefore they have to play this game of Jack “pretending” to be gay and Mr. Roper pretending to be a homophobe, to cover the whole thing from Mrs. Roper, who is a very conservative Christian and would otherwise be totally scandalized by Jack living with two women. (She is is strangely more tolerant of his alleged gayness, but frequently claims to be praying for him to turn straight and go for one of those two beautiful women he lives with. “Of course, then I’d ask you to move out”)

54

I think Lost could use a reboot in like 20 years on laser tv or whatever we’ll have around. This way the whole plot could be tightened up and feel more complete. Although part of the reason Lost got popular in the first place was because it was riding the coattails of the reality-tv phenomenon, particularly Survivor, so maybe the premise will feel tired by then.

But remember that BSG wasn’t a simple nostalgia trip, it directly addressed the issues of its time (in fact, I would argue that future historians would do well to watch the show to help understand what the Bush II years felt like). So the Lost reboot would also have to address the dearth of females on Mars and how Santa Claus helped open Mars to Earthican society.

55

Great minds think alike!

But I think Chimera has the best plot of all.

56

Bewitched

You’re smiling already.

Do Darrin Stevens and Larry Tate and the world of McMann & Tate like Mad Men except anchored firmly in the middle 1960s. Don’t do any of it for cheap laugh-track laughs (although you still want it to have its funny moments); everything as serious drama and a romance (tinged with the ominous) as advertiser Stevens gets emotionally involved with Ms. Samantha Stevens, witch. Too bad Agnes Moorehead isn’t still around, I’d keep her for Endora!

57

Well, let’s tweek that slightly for the times;

Mr and Mrs Roper are very conservative and Christian. He owns a car dealership or an appliance store or something like that. He owns a duplex in an older, wealthier, gentrified neighborhood. He and his wife live downstairs and he rents the upstairs to two young women.

He is a frustrated politician, ever running for office and narrowly losing. He thinks he is a mover and shaker and tries to act like it. But he’s got a secret that even he can’t admit to himself. He’s gay. Or maybe just bisexual, but he doesn’t know, because he’s one of those people who buries it deep inside and considers it a personal “demon” to be driven off. Even his wife doesn’t know. (Sound like any number of Republican politicians these days?) So then too, he covers it by being openly anti-gay and proudly homophobic, just to convince himself that he really is a heterosexual woman-loving macho man.

Seeking a cheap place to live, Jack, who is gay, rents the third room from the young women. Because they are likewise very conservative and initially make homophobic comments about a previous applicant for the room, Jack has to pretend to be straight and make a solemn vow to “behave himself” with them.

But aha! The Ropers are NOT going to allow this at all! Of course, Mrs. Roper makes a comment about the only way it being allowed would be if Jack was gay, although she wouldn’t be totally comfortable with that either. So (gay) Jack has to pretend to be a straight man pretending to be a gay man, in order to get the apartment.

Over the course of the first season, he and Mr. Roper at first clash, but then Mr. Roper gives into his demons and they begin a secret affair, trying to hide it from everyone and anyone.

Of course, to make it fit, because most urban viewers wouldn’t buy that he can’t be out of the closet, it has to be set in the South. They’d buy that.

58

there are some friggin great ideas in this thread, seriously some of this should be on tv!

59

As long as they don’t end up on Fox. Aka “the preempted miniseries network.”

60

And wacky hijinks ensue when his parents come to visit, and he has to be gay pretending to be straight pretending to be gay pretending to be straight. And when Aunt Ethel from the Bay Area drops by he has to be gay pretending to be straight pretending to be gay pretending to be straight pretending to…wait, I’m confused. I’ll come in again.