Sectorgame

karajorma wrote:

Top Gun wrote:Then again, I greatly enjoyed Voyager, so YMMV.

And the mystery of why you don't like BSG is solved. You have no taste.

...did I ever say I didn't like BSG? I've never so much as seen BSG.

(Well, except a few episodes of the original. Which was loltastically cheesy.)

Edit: Haa...I see what happened here.

DS9 had some nice characters, Garek the tailor comes to mind.

Hunter wrote:DS9 had some nice characters, Garek the tailor comes to mind.

Garek really knew his business.

Topgun wrote:I love how much I can confuse people.
any voyager sucked too.
TNG was the only good star trek.

and the best sci-fi ever was Babylon 5.

Hmm. IMO Babylon 5 had it's head far too up it's own arse to be 'best' (1st time I saw it, rather confusing, 2nd time much better and clever, 3rd time simply trying too hard to be clever), and good Star Trek is an oxymoron (a series more or less hamstrung by its creators naive idealism).

That said, the amount of realistically grounded, relevant (as in using the setting to reflect reality or philosophy rather than as an excuse for simpleton-pleasing explosions and spaceships) tv sci-fi isn't exactly huge. Modern BSG is one of the few - maybe only - series I can think of that even tried to use its setting to convey a (otherwise impossible) metaphor or allegory of humanity (or human nature etc etc), yet surely that sort of thing is the basis of much of the great science fiction literature.

Weirdly, TV sci-fi tends to operate in stricter boundaries of behaviour than non sci-fi drama, when the very nature of it should allow it to be far wider. Say what you like about the BSg occupation arc, but how many other TV series have tackled suicide bombing from the 'other' side?

aldo wrote:...and good Star Trek is an oxymoron (a series more or less hamstrung by its creators naive idealism).

Strangely enough, I think this quality is the very reason I like Star Trek in most of its incarnations so much. I have nothing at all against "grittier" series like BSG, and indeed, I often find such forms of entertainment to be very engaging, but at the same time...real life itself is gritty and ugly enough as-is. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes, you need something that presents the crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, humanity manages to get its act together somewhere down the road and creates a future that's genuinely worth living in. And don't forget that the original Star Trek series tackled what were, for its time, some very hot-button issues. Having an on-screen interracial kiss during the late 1960s was nothing to sneeze at.

Top Gun wrote:

aldo wrote:...and good Star Trek is an oxymoron (a series more or less hamstrung by its creators naive idealism).

Strangely enough, I think this quality is the very reason I like Star Trek in most of its incarnations so much. I have nothing at all against "grittier" series like BSG, and indeed, I often find such forms of entertainment to be very engaging, but at the same time...real life itself is gritty and ugly enough as-is. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes, you need something that presents the crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, humanity manages to get its act together somewhere down the road and creates a future that's genuinely worth living in. And don't forget that the original Star Trek series tackled what were, for its time, some very hot-button issues. Having an on-screen interracial kiss during the late 1960s was nothing to sneeze at.

That's a fair point, and one I'd forgotten. However, the misstep I think Star Trek makes, based more on the 90s than the 60s, is that it makes a presumption that things have become ok, that the human condition has been 'fixed' etc, and it means all the dicussion takes place on the outside.

Take, umm, replicators. You have a device that can synthesize - bar plot restrictions - anything. Material shortages are (or should be) a thing of the past, and the potential impact on any society is gargantuan. But it's something never explored, we just have to assume everything is fine and utopian. People become, to me, caricatures of reality.... my honest feeling is that the stuff Phillip K Dick was writing 10 years or so before was more interesting and progressive.