When you're pluralizing in English, you're allowed follow English's rules, even if the word is a loan word. Just because a bunch of uptight grammarians in the 17th century thought something was a good idea doesn't make it so forever.
I actually got into Days of our Lives because of the demonic possession story line. I mean, even then I think I knew it was stupid but it was also fun. I watched for many years after the demons had disappeared.
And thank you for putting Passions in the right context. Craziest fucking show ever. I loved every horribly written poorly acted minute of it.
TOS was shot on 35mm film the same as TNG, and it's more than good enough for an HD restoration. As evidence, see almost every single Blu-ray movie available.
That's kind of the point. You can be told false details and you will integrate them into your memories even if they were never there in the first place.
First of all, when somebody says "is this the next [whatever]" try not to take it so literally. This show is actually not going to be about a Firefly-class ship named Serenity. Just like when people were saying "Is Heroes the next Lost?" they didn't mean that it was a mystery show set on an island. The fact that you think this is some sort of insightful critique of this show is so confusing to me.
If you can name an American network that puts out more original science fiction, I will rescind my comments. SyFy does more for science fiction today than any other channel. They also put out crap you don't have to watch. That's like hating the studio that made Twilight, and all movies made by the studio, because they made Twilight.
What have they actually cancelled? Stargate? 10 seasons in. Stargate: Atlantis? 5 seasons in. Stargate: Universe. Yeah, they cancelled it after one season. And everybody was panning it basically until the writing was on the wall and then everybody starting trashing SyFy for killing such a great show. Caprica? Same deal. Eureka? 5 seasons and they gave it an extra episode to finish its story off. Farscape? 4 seasons in. Shows need ratings at least commensurate with their expenses and science fiction shows often get more expensive as they get older because the cast gets raises and the world gets expanded. When a show is good, I lament its cancellation, but they can't be continually produced as audiences dwindle.
I seriously don't even understand where the SyFy hate comes from given all the great science fiction they've produced and aired over the years. I would love it if somebody would reply with a substantive argument against SyFy, something that didn't rely on the audience already hating SyFy, something that provides evidence for SyFy's disdain for science fiction. I would love to see that, but I've never seen anything but snark and assumptive trashing.
There were numerous episodes where Sam asked the question "who controls my leaps?" and God was thrown out as a viable candidate almost every time. It was a thing.
OK, yes, Sam being in control of his leaps doesn't preclude Al being God (though there is that line where Sam asks him is he's God and he says he's not) but either way, you don't need the Haunted House episode to make any of that work thematically.
The point of the finale is that Al wasn't God, that Sam was doing the leaping, that's why before he disappeared (i.e. leaped off to continue helping people without ties to his original timeline) he leapt to Al's wife and gave her the hope that Al was still alive so she wouldn't remarry. The ending of the show was all about how Sam was in control of his destiny and his leaps, not some external force.
That said, you wouldn't need the Haunted House episode to set that up either way, because the show had always played with the idea of God controlling Sam's leaps. And the episode was so campy and out of touch with the humanity the show embodied at its best. And the plot really made no sense. And there's some other stuff, I think. I marathoned the entire series a year or so ago, and I remember thinking the Haunted House episode was the real low of the low, for a lot of different reasons.
Again. We cannot forget that SyFy hates science fiction and would never do anything with the genre again. Let's all trash this show before ever seeing a frame because otherwise people might watch and SyFy might get decent ratings and keep producing original science fiction shows.
(The last time I did this, some people didn't get it, so I'm going to state clearly here: this is what's called sarcasm. Bashing all things SyFy is ridiculous and claiming they hate science fiction is absurd.)
I still contend that Quantum Leap's finale was written sometime around season 2 or 3 and then slotted in when the show was finally cancelled. Trust me, all the motifs explored in the final episode (along with all the familiar faces and plot lines that pop up) are set up in the first and second seasons. I think it's a brilliant finale that redeems the series despite a tragically bad run in the later seasons (the haunted house episode, anyone?).
No, the bill explicitly includes American citizens but Obama said that his Administration would never use that aspect of it. Basically, asking for power for total strangers to wield at some point.
Again, regarding Tom Riker. Science needs only one piece of evidence to defeat a law. If things start falling up, gravity is wrong. And even then, science is not what we're talking about, we're talking about human rights and their legal rights. The rule of law is that once precedent is established, it's there for good. Thomas Riker is precedent. All these things you're bringing up have no connection to the core of my argument.
I have read a ridiculous amount of text from JMS about Babylon 5, and I never claimed that he came in to pitch it without preparation, so I'd appreciate it if you don't put words in my mouth.
So now you're talking about the Landscape of television... for some reason? I honestly don't know why this came up. Babylon 5 wouldn't be made today? That's probably true. What does that have to do with anything? I'm talking about an extreme example in order to demonstrate that your expectations are not met by any show in history. The timing of the pitch really has nothing to do with it.
Either way, Babylon 5's original plan is NOT what ended up happening, for various reasons. And I've read the original series bible, and it's not as detailed as you think it is.
And even if Babylon 5 was as thoroughly fleshed out as you'd like to believe, you're still claiming this other show is coming out without having much behind the scene thinking going on with ZERO evidence for that.
And now you're claiming that because the creator of this show has had the idea for a long time it's a) out-of-date and/or b) thematically inconsistent if it ever changed in any way throughout its development. Which is a nice way of "winning" no matter what happened in reality.
So I guess what it comes down to is you're assuming that the creator hasn't thought it through, and that the studio is not asking any challenging questions during these pitch sessions for some undefined reason. I see no reason for either of those positions to be held.
So no. I have no plans on changing my position that doesn't needlessly discount a show before I've seen a single frame.
Yes, but enforcing natural or organic or free range or any of those things will result in not enough food. And I don't know the damage feeding growth hormone to children has, but I kind of doubt you do either. Scientists do safety studies on these sorts of things. And I'm not even saying we should continue with the food industry we currently have, but the two choices seem to be go back to an older style which can't produce as much food, or use smarter safer tactics that can meet demand. And even if Western Civilization is full of wasteful gluttons, that's a problem that will only get worse as more of the world industrializes, and the demand for food will only increase as population grows so that's kind of a non sequitur.
I don't really find those arguments holding much weight. Mostly because they some from people who want to turn back the clock on society when that's not sustainable given our current population.
The food industry might be horrible, but the solution isn't giving up on industrialization. Developing lab-grown meats solves the problems we have with factory farming. Building more advanced precisely targeted GMO crops solves a lot of the problems with earlier forms, and avoiding the sorts of needlessly universal tactics you described above is also a good idea.
We have two solutions: get better at making food, or starve 80% of the world. I'd go with the former.
Just like Bart Simpson was born in the late 70's?
Regarding JMS' planning prior to pitching: yes, but when Babylon 5 was announced and a press release summarized it, none of those nuances were visible. In fact, for most of the first season of that show, people had trouble seeing the long game underneath the episodic structure. My point isn't that this stuff shouldn't be thought about it's that there's no way to know if it's not been thought about based on what we have available to us. And for the record, I've read that the creator of this show, Michael MacDonald, had the original idea in the late 90's so he's probably worked out a lot of details over the years. Either way, it seems like you're questioning the processes behind the show before you know enough about it to have earned that right.
And regarding Thomas Riker, it doesn't matter if he feels psychologically the same person (though that's not really at all what I've taken from the two episodes featuring that character) he's still a different person with all the rights that entails. Nobody once questioned his freedom, and to argue that holographic life forms can be restrained in that way is hypocritical.
The issue there isn't really about genetically modified foods so much as it's about the abuse of IP law in relation to them. Adjust the IP laws to be more sensible and things look a lot better.
I don't know why you're assuming that the a pilot would have a season of stories figured out before being pitched. JMS pitched Babylon 5 without having it all figured out, and it ended up changing from what he ultimately plotted out for the series, and he didn't have details of what he'd do with individual episodes, only general arcs. Babylon 5 is arguably the most pre-planned and successful pre-planned series ever made.
And there is literally nothing to say that the show won't explore the countless ways that Mechanicals could be exploited so assuming they haven't thought enough about it or that they won't explore any of those based on such limited information is absurd.
Also, most robots that follow Asimov's laws are built with them hardcoded so there's no way for them t be "broken". (And before you mention it, I've always found the weird excuses the books gave for how robots break the three laws were never particularly convincing. And there's nothing saying that they'll never explore those stories, anyways).
Oh, and claiming the Doctor from Voyager can't be a person because he's easily copyable, is very wrong. If you need an obvious counterexample from the same universe, look at Thomas Riker. People are ultimately biological machines and can be duplicated without too much trouble given the right level of technology.
I'm surprised there was no option for "Everybody on Spartacus" given the gratuitous nudity and beefcakery that show exhibits.
I'm guessing this was indeed a while back since she left the project over creative differences at least a month ago.
