Anyone miss how scifi shows used to be?

Radiation

Radiation

Radiation

Soldato
Joined
12 Oct 2003
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It's a poor time for scifi in general, not much on tv and what little we have is quite different to how things used to be, it's mostly silly or unbelievable stuff, fringe is the only decent one i can think of and while we've had some good ones in more recent times like battlestar galactica i miss stuff like star trek and stargate, do you think we'll ever see another proper series of shows again like these two?

It would be great if star trek returned but i doubt it would be like tng, ds9 and voyager, stargate is probably gone for good so i don't know what else there is to look forward to, we may get another proper show of some sort but it seems like things have moved towards light scifi entertainment and fantasy shows now. :(
 
Stargate was a bit crap tbh, pretty shallow sci fi, sort of like a soap at times.

BSG was immense though, and of course it's a shame that Firefly didn't stay around.

Really it's tricky with sci-fi, they're big budget and often don't seem to get the viewers that other cheaper shows get. It needs someone to take a chance.

I love Fringe though.
 
Shamikebab said:
Stargate was a bit crap tbh, pretty shallow sci fi, sort of like a soap at times.

BSG was immense though, and of course it's a shame that Firefly didn't stay around.

Really it's tricky with sci-fi, they're big budget and often don't seem to get the viewers that other cheaper shows get. It needs someone to take a chance.

I love Fringe though.
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Stargate wasn't perfect but it was far from crap, if you don't like that kind of scifi you're probably missing the point of the thread, stuff like star trek and stargate may seem slightly dated now but thats the kind of stuff i miss, shows with a large fan following that have a lot of depth to their universe.

As great as fringe and bsg are they're a different kind of scifi, one offs that are more action/drama oriented, the rest of what we get is mostly silly or unbelievable which seems to appeal more to the mainstream sadly, we probably won't get more like we used to.
 
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Shamikebab said:
....so hang on you're saying Stargate isn't silly or unbelievable :confused:
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Well there's what i consider proper scifi and silly scifi, obviously none are perfect, they all have their far fetched stuff at times, but a silly scifi is something like doctor who or eureaka and warhouse 13, those also enter into fantasy more often than not, shows like stargate and star trek at least try to stay within the realms of reason, even if their science and technology is a bit much at times, it's still believable within their universe, where as those silly shows i mention don't even care to make sense at all.
 
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No, old scifi sucks.
The whole one episode, one story sucks.
Get more BSG type scifi where its a long and continued storyline, where pretty much every episode continues said storyline.
 
IronWarrior said:
Yeah, they never make good Sci-Fi these days without nuking it later.

Caprica is well missed as well as the new V... Also BBC's Outcasts. :(
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I dunno I felt the new V was terrible - bad acting, bad directing and a ruined (but could have been so awesome) story :(
 
Glaucus said:
No, old scifi sucks.
The whole one episode, one story sucks.
Get more BSG type scifi where its a long and continued storyline, where pretty much every episode continues said storyline.
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More often than not sci-fi shows based entirely around a single story arc fail because past the first episode it's hard to get into it, and since it's hard to hype a lot of people about sci-fi then a lot of people are going to miss the first episode. Also, in trying to progress the story arc throughout a series you'll inevitably get pointless, slow, drawn out episodes that are just filler. Plus they're rather limited in terms of lifespan - either you complete the arc in one series and then people ask 'well where do we go from here', and it sort of loses it's attraction because you already know they're going to get through it (just look at Heroes). Or you draw the arc out across lots of series, in which case it just becomes incredibly hard to follow even if you have been watching since day one.

I think some of the later Star Trek's were getting close to the right mix, with the Xindi/Dominion War stuff. The problem there being that you need to make sure that your 'off arc' episodes are well written, or else you may as well not have them and just make it a two/three episode series (seems to have been a few of those recently). Which is probably the main problem with Doctor Who at the minute.
 
We need a Babylon 5 reboot with Straczynski in charge, that would be epic and I really do use that word in it's correct way, it would be EPIC!!!

Any sci-fi fan who hasn't watched S1-4 of B5 should be ashamed of themselves.
 
Shamikebab said:
Really it's tricky with sci-fi, they're big budget
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I don't see budget as being the reason sci-fi has died. There are eaasy ways for producers to get the feel of space and science without it costing fortunes. Look at Sanctuary, or the new show Once upon a time. Much of that is done with pure green screen, and then CGI is created to fill the space. They surely could do this with sci-fi without loosing the feel, thus keeping costs down.
Surely if budget were a concern, shows like Burn Notice and Fringe would be in trouble because every episode has explosions and stunts which must cost money. Closing down a city block for a few hours must cost more than getting a geek to CGI a few spaceships.

I believe the problem with modern sci-fi is to do with number of characters and age. Stargate Universe suffered from having way too many characters in every episode, so keeping up with what goes on is difficult. Plus many of them were young, and thus you end up with teen angst. Compare that to SG1, you had 4 main cast plus a few extras, plus they were all 30yo+, so no teen angst.

Jongo said:
Blood and Chrome was meant to be aired a couple of days ago according to Wiki but it doesn't seem to have been aired :/ .
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I thought they'd cancelled that as a TV show and were going to release them as webisodes.
 
Not pure sci-go but I miss X-Files, up there with BSG as one of my favourites of all time. One of the rare shows that struck a perfect balance between "monster of the week" episode and a continual story arc.
 
No1newts said:
Not pure sci-go but I miss X-Files, up there with BSG as one of my favourites of all time. One of the rare shows that struck a perfect balance between "monster of the week" episode and a continual story arc.
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It did that until about the end of season 3, when it just got mired in the long arc stuff.
 
There are so many possibilities for a good sci fi show. What i would realy like to see is a tv show like the movie aliens. Where they are on a space ship and then crash on a planet and find aliens. That would be very popular and the possibilities are endless and with todays special fx it would not cost that much to do. Not as much as you might think. With all the green screens and computer fx it is a lot cheaper than the past where they had to use big sets and huge casts.

Instead we have to put up with reality tv and crappest tv shows that i could never have imagined could exist.

They made falling skies that i am still hoping there is a second season for, but that was pretty lame and more of a family drama with a bit of aliens in it. They should make some gritty sci fi tv series, would be popular.
 
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