Years ago I watched The Science Fiction Channel all the time. It had some great stuff. Now I don’t watch it at all. Once Farscape went off the air, I never found anything worth watching. Their in-house movies are rubbish, and most of their other movies I’ve already seen, can see elsewhere, own on DVD, or am not interested. Films I’d like to see don’t seem to make it into their schedule. And unlike Canada’s equivalent channel, they censor the films. Crossing Over? Please. :rolleyes: Stargate was barely watchable as a feature. The couple of episodes of the series I’ve seen were enough to convince me not to watch the series. In the past year or two, I’ve found SciFi Channel to be a big yawn.
I tried to contact them once about one of their shows. I got a letter back that said, in effect, “Thank you for contacting SciFi Channel. We get lots of e-mail, so we don’t read any of it.”
Sliders…didn’t they pick up Sliders after it was cancelled by another channel?
MST3K…didn’t they pick that up after it was cancelled by another channel?
I watched Sliders when it was new. After the first show I thought to myself, “Good show. But how are they going to keep it going? It’ll be the same show every week: They slide, they are in danger in some strange society, they slide out at the last minute. It’s going to get dull.” And it did. The only reason I watched was because I thought the girl was cute. I stopped watching after the first season.
Yep. And they screwed around with them both. Of course, a lot of the blame for Sliders’ demise can be heaped on Jerry O’Connell’s shoulders for hiring his crappy acting brother. Adding Kari Wuhrer just put the final nail in the coffin.
They bit off more than they could chew with MST3K: a two-hour show with a rabid following who wouldn’t accept anything that would interfere with their favorite show.
That’s funny, I’ve really been enjoying the SciFi Channel’s in-house movies of late – they seem to have captured the spirit of “adventure film with a dash of the unknown” that SF films used to have back in the 50s. I though Eon was really good, enjoyed Dinocroc and a host of other SF Channel movies I’ve watched lately.
And as Otto points out, SciFi Channel DIDN’T kill MST3K, they extended its life by a couple of years. Not as long as I’d like, and I think they were dog-stupid to cancel it, but they’ve cancelled shows very much more quickly.
MST3K films are not mentally challenging as a general rule, but frankly I consider reaching the level of quality of fifties B-movies to be quite an acheivement, considering the unutterable crap that is churned out elsewhere.
It used to be that visiting my folks in Florida meant (besides all the good things about being with my family), that I could watch Dark Shadows on SciFi. Last november, I couldn’t find Dark Shadows.
I liked the SciFi Channel when they stuck to showing the old stuff that nobody else would touch - forgotten low budget sci-fi movies from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, old shows like “Dark Shadows,” “Amazing Stories,” and the one about the teenage superhero. I also loved their first generation of really great, bad original programming, like “Mysteries from beyond the dominion”, which had all the panache of a late-night public access TV show.
I occasionally watch it for tripping the rift, which is better then most of the other shows out there right now(more amusing then funny, but that’s a couple steps up from Friends or Everybody loves Raymond, IMO). Occasionally they show good Sci-fi movies, and some of their series are pretty good. I rather liked Battlestar Galactica 2003 and both Dune mini-series, though I avoid their original movies like the plague.
Okay, I watched “Terminal Invasion” because it starred Bruce Campbell, but still admit it was a shitty movie.
I don’t watch much on this channel besides Stargate anymore. It’s so sad and pathetic. Boa vs. Python? Really, now, how can these people sleep at night?
Dr. Franklin Ruehl’s Mysteries from Beyond the Dominion was the greatest show ever. I was pretty young when Sci-Fi started (11 or 12) and that show caught me in a child-like “It’s SO real” and a skeptical teenager “This is bunk!” frame of mind. One episode where they were talking about the Winchester Mystery House they were talking about the mediums Mrs. Winchester would consult and they put a picture up of Nathan Bedford Forest (Confederate war hero and founder of the KKK). I laughed my arse off.
Sci-Fi Buzz was an awesome magazine show dedicated to genre stuff from TV to movies to books to comics to art. It’s where I discovered Harlan Ellison when he’d do weekly commentaries.
In 99 or 2000 they did some original series’ that were fairly decent for cable. I remember a show about a Weekly World News-style reporter where the world was as crazy and supernatural as the paper makes it out to be.
“On top of a pile of money, with many beatiful women”
Actually, I’d be surprised if it did so well. I have a fondness for B-movies. The problem is that Sci-fi Original movies aren’t even B quality. There’re usually C grade or lower. They aren’t even entertaining to mock.
Sci-fi Original movies are for the most part, the new hollywood squares. If you’re in one, 99% of the time it means your career is over.
