io9 
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San Francisco, 10:03 AM
Sun Dec 6
13 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/31/09
*slaps hand on the table* Sold. I'll be there for the premier.
08/30/09
Star Trek: Countdown was very close to the line. It was a good comic, and made the movie much more logical; but without having read the comic, I would have seen Nero as a flat, two-dimensional villain whose motivations are not properly explained. As far as I'm concerned that's a huge flaw. If you can't tell the complete story without making fans search for the rest of the information, something's wrong.
08/30/09
08/30/09
08/30/09
We accept you! We accept you! We accept you!
One of us!
08/31/09
08/26/09
Unfortunately, the writing seemed aimed at an audience dumber than the core sci-fi audience. They would beat one single idea to death for an hour ("Stay with the Dead" is almost unwatchable), whereas any of the Star Trek franchise episodes tend to have multiple twists and Firefly was always tossing out hints of arc even at its most procedural. For this reason, S:AB does not hold up well today.
08/25/09
Gotta join the love for Earth 2 though - that show had some great human drama (and some cheese as well). Plus, it's probably the only TV SF with no FTL.
08/26/09
there haven't been many, but I can think of a handful of shows where space travel was confined to LS or slower. (without cheating and resorting to warp speed, wormholes, transporters, or tesseracts)
The Firefly universe is generally considered to be sub-light speed, though it was never specifically addressed during the television run. Subsequent publications have indicated that the galaxy they inhabit just happens to be extremely dense, with multiple star-systems in close proximity, but it's one of those "suspension of disbelief" things either way you look at it.
Red Dwarf had a light speed cap (for the first couple of seasons at any rate) where the journey back to Earth would take 3 million years. Of course, they managed to find new and interesting ways around that barrier on an almost weekly basis.
There was also the short-lived Sci-Fi channel adaptation of Deepwater Black, where the entire crew consists of cryogenically frozen clones, who are woken up early to deal with a crisis.
I'm sure there have been others, but that's the best I can do at 1AM in the morning. :)
08/25/09
B5 (on again, off again)
SeaQuest (before it jumped the shark)
Earth2: I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers it.
Missing from list: Star Trek: Deep Space 9. This was pre-Dominion War, and my young mind thought DS9 was boring! It proved me wrong later, though.
I'll have to give SAAB another try...
08/25/09
Sad that shows like this can't remain long enough while others go on forever. Like Stargate, which was/is just mostly stupid and irritating (and I really liked the original movie).
One thing that is certain about shows like this and with Firefly as another example, that had even less episodes to speak of, they can at least remain somewhat pure for what they were at the time, like reading a good book that stays in your memories despite there having never been more. Perhaps like having read the Hobbit and never getting the Lord of the Rings. Except in that case with a man like JRR Tolkien, you had an impressive story teller. More, was just as good if not better.
08/25/09
08/25/09
08/25/09
What's really stuck with me after all these years is their choice of music. Rather than use some modern techno or over-stylized classical music, they would use songs like "Crazy" by Patsy Kline. Its a very haunting song when played against the empty blackness of space.
08/25/09
08/25/09
A lively assortment of crash survivors, all of whom experience gratuitous flashbacks and are never quite what they appear, find themselves scattered over a decidedly un-deserted natural paradise, completely cut off from the rest of civilization, and filled with all manner of batshit-crazy humans, unusual fauna, intricate conspiracies, metaphysical self-discovery, and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey confusion. Plus, every episode results in two new questions for every one it answers.
08/25/09
Holy Shit, I was thinking the same thing. Check it out:
- Terry O'Quinn plays a mysterious figure.
- A group of travelers crash their craft into an unknown region.
- Mysterious healing powers - the little boy who couldn't walk is healed, a broken leg of another survivor is healed by a creature's salivia
- They are at odds with a mysterious organization that wants to tap into the power of the island, er, planet
- There are unauthorized medical experiments done on the survivors by the doctor on behalf of the mysterious organization
- Clancy Brown is also on the show.
- There are "Others." People who didn't crash with them but live there already that don't readily reveal themselves.
- They're stranded. Short on supplies.
- The show has (some) flashbacks
- There are extras who never a say word during the entire show's run
- Strange creatures
- One of the crash survivors is really an "other" and works for the mysterious organization. She later betrays the organization and joins the survivors.
- There's a wise black shaman type guy amongst the survivors
- The survivors discover that the planet may have its own interests and desires
08/25/09
Tell me the secret of the island, um, I mean planet.
08/25/09
08/25/09
08/25/09
Like Firefly. Or Terminator:SCC.
08/25/09
08/25/09
08/25/09
From cost angle, a pilot costs a lot more to train than an infantry. The marine corps has a lot of infantries but few pilots.
From specialty perspective, this is also foolish. An infantry is a master in the art of ground warfare. A pilot has his area of expertise, in space and atmosphere. Attempt to do both, you'll get a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none.
The series could have been greatly improved by employing two sets of characters, like in Law&Order Criminal Intent - one episode focuses on an infantry squad and the next on the spacefighter squadron.
I enjoyed it, but the one ridiculousness above made me unable to enjoy it fully.
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/25/09
08/25/09