It seems to me after the demise of Deep Space nine and Babylon 5, there seems to be a total drought of really good Sci-Fi shows, wat has happened? Have the writers become lazy?
Please sci-fi buffs, what has happened?
Firefly was a great SF show, but Fox stabbed it in the back.
Farscape was a great SF show, but SciFi Channel stabbed it in the back.
ok ok enough of the “stabbings in the backs” nah actually continue.
I find Enterprise to be a decent show. I liked Farscape better (never watched Babylon 5 enough to form an opinion).
It’s just damned harder than it seems to make “really good Sci-Fi shows”. Think about it, how many in 50 years of TV?
yeah true, but still they could make an effort, at least…
The problem in my eyes is they are always confined by the same formula and sets.
Be it a base like Stargate sg1,or a ship like every Star Trek.
Even a show like Sliders featured a slide every week,why not stay on a world for more than one episode?
Show more continuity,have past actions come back to bite you in the butt in unexpected ways,have old allies show up in times of need.
Basically sci-fi on television needs to lose its formulaic nature.
I opened this thread assuming that you were going to be talking about a lack of good written science fiction. TV science fiction has never been very good. Go read a lot of classic science fiction and perhaps some recent science fiction too. You’re never going to find a consistently good source of science fiction on TV.
With the demise of Farscape, we are in a void of great Science Fiction.
Here’s a problem- most TV scifi is in syndication, or at least that’s where it sees the most action. Episodic nature is fairly well necessary, especially when there are rules that you need to acquaint the audience with which are different from the real world’s. Throughlines will damage the play of the series in syndication. Think of a plot-driven show like The West Wing, where there is no trial or investigation or planetary encounter to serve as a hook to hang the whole episode on. I’d bet that TWW, while great, will die if it gets to syndication because there’s too much going on that expands beyond the episode you’re watching. Successful syndicated TV has to be formulaic to a certain extent.
In this environment, you have less money and greater production expenses for costumes, effects, etc. Set changes are more expensive than normal because you can’t simply go use a church or office building, you need to create an environment from scratch.
Due to episodic and cost concerns, you’ll really only see two kinds of scifi on TV:
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The ship goes from place to place. Most action takes place on the ship. OR There is a central location like a port or main city which various characters will be drawn to.
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The show takes place in the real world, with a few changes (i.e. sliders, quantum leap, x-files, etc.) OR the show takes place in a well-explored place in the past with preexisting sets, costumes, and locations.
stolichnaya, not that I’m arguing, but trying to understand. What makes syndication bad for a plot-based show? Wouldn’t it be EASIER to understand an episode-to-episode plot if the shows are closer together?
I keep thinking that the only way to do real justice to some of the big, classic SF stories would be to make them into a series. Break the story up into a dozen parts and play one a week–a 12-hour movie!
'Course, I know nothing about TV production–I’m a computer geek by trade.
I recommend Jeremiah, a sci-fi program by the man behind Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski. It will soon be airing its second season on Showtime.
The premise is as follows: About fifteen years ago a mysterious plague killed everyone over the age of puberty and the world as we know it was destroyed. The show chronicles the survivors of the “big death” as they try to rebuild civilization.
More information can be found here: http://www.jeremiah.tv/ here
http://abyss.hubbe.net/jeremiah/ and here http://www.sho.com/jeremiah/
It has a cool premise that is different from the average sci-fi show, and like Babylon 5 it has a large story arc and good writing.
Science fiction does not have to be about a group of diverse people flying off to a new planet every week. The best recent sf movie was Being John Malkovich and I bet a lot of its audience didn’t even realize that it was science fiction.
The problem with syndication is that you’re not likely to see all of the shows, or see them in order. When a show is on once a week, a fan is likely to see every episode. But when it’s on daily, there’s likely to be a couple of days when you never get to see the show. Plus, the channels showing a syndicated show are free to re-arrannge the episodes as they see fit.
At least, that’s what I’m guessing the problem is. I hadn’t really thought about it before.
Sounds like Star Trek’s Miri. I hated that episode.
[hijack]
Ya, me too, Wendell! I was getting ready to recommend Alastair Reynolds and Revelation Space even though I’m only about half-way through it. That’s space opera that’s never likely to be made into a movie OR a tv show! It’s too complex, and too interesting for those media.
Color me a writtien s-f snob, I guess.
you can mention that too you know, I don’t mind if you want to explore the ways in which sci-fi writing has changed for the worse
Just like the man said in “The Right Stuff” , no bucks , no buck rogers.
Its cheaper to have a soap opera set in current time frame , than to have a really good , or a really bad sci/fi show that costs a ton of bread to make.
I don’t know if its stereo typing hollywood or the Tv production houses , to say that they are still controlled by people who just dont get sci/fi, or believe that the average american family would rather see an episode of dynasty (which really should have been called fantasy) or a mind bending television show like Dr who , or Blake 7.
Either that , or science fiction just does not lend itself to the Television medium , and only after a lot of money spent at present , for the film medium.
Declan
I don’t think so. In Miri wasn’t the population all kids or something like that? Jeremiah takes place years after the plague had killed off everyone over puberty and the survivors are all adults now.
Anyway this does not take place on an alien planet but on a near future earth.