There's 2 kinds of science fiction shows about space exploration:
Ones with aliens, where the interaction between humans and aliens tends to be the center of the show, for example Star Trek or Farscape. These tend to mostly be about humans maneuvering around strange alien politics and customs.
Ones where there are no aliens and everything is about human drama/politics, like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, or Dark Matter.
Which do you prefer?
I tend to be annoyed by shows with aliens in them. It's not that I don't enjoy aliens, far from it, but those shows tend to devolve into just characters having misunderstandings with aliens because of how "kooky and weird" their cultures are, and I find it tiring. People keep telling me time and time again how great Farscape is and how I should love it, but I've never been able to get through more than a season of it, and that's after multiple attempts.
Generally prefer aliens, but it's not really a deal breaker for me. I've seen and like all of the shows you listed, but like them for different reasons. For instance, if I had to rank the shows you listed, for me it would be Farscape>Battlestar Galactica>Firefly>Star Trek>Dark Matter. Farscape has aliens and is at the top, while Star Trek has aliens and is near the bottom.
My brain tells me a sci-fi show with humanity at its centre is the best. I like the Battletech universe.... because the focus is on just how diverse human cultures can be and have a message of the inconsistencies of 'human nature' tend to transform the term itself into an oxymoron.
I love Star Trek. I love Farscape. But I think the human-alien interactions in both are best served as allegories for history on our planet.
The Ferengi represent greed and avarice as if made not merely acceptable, but a virtue of personal endeavour. By Deep Space Nine we begin to realize that this isn't actually as bad as it was made out in TNG (DS9 is, whether you like it or not, one of the best critiques of the fairly barebones moralities put forward in TNG) ... that capitalism and staunch ideas of liberalism in all manner of trade can birth the end of conflict.
How Quark goes on and says; "We would have hammered out a peace agreement... one we could all live with..." a message where 'liberty' and 'peace' might not actually be a thing you have, merely something that has its limits centred in agreements between interested parties. Something that can be quantified and valid solely in its interaction and exchange.
The Ferengi weren't aliens. They were 1920s Western culture post the disillusionment of the Great War, and current vulture capitalism and globalisation, viewed in critique.
If a sci fi show had aliens that were literally betond understanding how they organize, what they consider important, how they view the universe ... it wouldn't be a fun show. Unless you can manipulate the dialogue where the aliens have a shared meaning, a shared language, a shared vision of the universe ... then you're just left with a boring arse show of schizophrenic proportions.
And no... I didn't like Arrival before you ask.
It felt like two hours of wasted time and a trite, meaningless, *insulting* morality and conclusion that had me literally scoff as the credits appeared. Frankly it epitomizes the worst aspects of Cold War-esque paranoia about China as both irredeemably evil AND stupid, and how the magical mcguffin that saves them from themselves is how people construct language (because apparently Chinese figures themselves is inherently bad at this). Which is odd that a movie about linguistics and an alien language made up of radicals, spatial partitions and particles, that Chinese characters are somehow bad at constructing shared meaning. Despite the fact that written Chinese characters are given weight by its radicals, structural particles and partitions. Because, hey! Why should a movie about psycholinguistics make sense in terms of psycholinguistics!? Because Mahjong. No really. Mahjong. Chinese didn't understand because Mahjong. If it had been a film about Scandinavians and aliens, and how Americans wanted to hit them with nukes ... people would have screamed 'SJW propaganda'.
And I feel as if the makers of this thoughtless disaster of a film knew this.
Mahjong. This. This explanation here was enough for the reviewers and the makers of this god-awful trash to give two thumbs up. Mahjong. And this wasn't even the low point of the film.
None of it made sense. Not the psycholinguistics. Not the premise of the ships coming down. Not the aliens. Not their language or its explanation, which the movie IMMEDIATELY DISCREDITS AS A NON-LINEAR LANGUAGE DESPITE PRETENDING OTHERWISE. Not the shark-jumping garbage, hackneyed, forced conclusion to all problems forever(tm) at the end. Not the pathetic, intellectually insulting conclusion to the China problem. Not a fucking thing. It was a movie with emotion but not a lick of fucking sense. None of it made sense. Not in this universe or any other. Why did the aliens have to land on Earth rather than ship to surface capsules they are shown to have? Why did they come en masse? Why the fuck did they come at all now?
This movie didn't just commit cardinal film sins, it co-authored the fucking book with Adam Sandler. Lumping ontop of it all with bad characters, a POINTLESS supporting cast and pointless melodrama where the aliens themselves take a backseat to the deteriorating political conditions on Earth. That problem of which is handled at best as if from the mind of a raving Cold War-era prepper who has gone off their meds, and the conclusion of which is so fucking bad it's hard to imagine anybody but the scriptwriter's 5 year old kid wrote it.
Literally, the ending can be summed up as; "I need to tell you something I only know because you told me, but not really because it relies on you not doing a thing you will do if I don't tell you the thing you told me because you didn't." And don't give me that bullshit that all her trauma with her daughter was because she got unstuck in time, that is so beyond ridiculous as to be mind-numbingly stupid equal to every Shyamalan movie barring The 6th Sense. All to basically suggest none of it happened and therefore I shouldn't be invested *at all* in ANY of her actions, because they mean so little to begin with. It would also be inexcuseable to have that line; "If you want science, go talk to your father." Even though psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field in science, but putting even that aside... it would also mean I shouldn't give a shit in any of the chemistry of the cast members to begin with. Which if that was the case, good ... because there was none.
It also means that Banks is just a god-awful person through and through who learns nothing and ultimately treats her daughter like shit despite knowing ahead of time not to ... so perhaps you don't want to read too much into that theory. Also don't give me the garbage that living fragmented time makes it impossible for her to understand her actions in between moments, because she wouldn't have been able to make that phonecall if she couldn't. That last action insists the universe we operate in is both indeterministic and possibly suggests the capacity for humans to have free will. So she could, 100%, shape all elements of her reality. Including not being short-tempered arsewipe to her daughter.
Seriously, yelling at your daughter asking you for a word substitute for something when you're a fucking linguist and rubbing it in her face with a backhand how her parents have split up? AND you know that's wrong and you have literally been given God-like powers to undo it through postcognition of knowing you will say it and the power to not do so?
None of this movie makes sense and it was entirely ripped from another story to begin with, so it's not like they're treading unfamiliar territory.
This is what people gave two thumbs up about. This. The ending to this film is not merely lazy, not merely thoughtless, not merely schizophrenic ... it's just bad. You know what this movie is? Space Gods. And apparently Space Gods need help and humanity needs to be Space Gods, too. Because reasons. Which won't be given. Because reasons.
There was nothing in this movie that was smart, witty or original. Because none of it made sense ... and I will fight you if you pretend otherwise. Fuck the critics. While I'm at it, fuck all critics. You're as bad as the game reviewers that favourably compared the writing in Mass Effect to the script of The Godfather II.
The aliens? They were the Chinese. Their writing is like Chinese characters. And that would be a clever critique of international relations and the insane lengths we go to to paint other cultures as so alien to our own rather than realize the common bonds between all of mankind. Insanely clever. But no... we didn't get that movie, did we? Now... compare this with District 9. Same story, same elements, one actually makes sense. Watch District 9 instead. Or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Literally every other 'movie-about-aliens-but-not-really' is better or at least watchably bad at worst compared to this pile of rot congealed tripe of mindfuckingly awful dimensions.
I lost brain capacity for this film. Its only redeeming value is remembering how much I miss Stanley Kubrick.
We didn't get a good movie in Arrival because we tried to make the aliens as aliens. Not allegories or symbols of humanity as it exists or through the ages. Only by trying to make the aliens truly alien to our existence, we inadvertantly make people realise how they are actually connected to knowledge of a shared universe we inhabit with nothing else in direct comparison to it.
This isn't bad by the way. This is why good monster movies work. Whether Alien(s), whether Romero zombie films, whether Ash vs. the Evil Dead. All good monster movies are based on constructed human virtues (or their self-expository negation). (Good) zombie films highlight the innate fear in all humans that in truth, if we strip away the veneer of civility and intellect, that we are nothing more than merely mindless consumers of self. Barren of any real identificatory qualities beyond a figment of a shared visage that is in the end as if rotting in the slow march of death that is ever present.
(edit) Ditto for aliens in this regards. It requires either humanity in its reflection, or something that is inimical to any of its beauty without. Whether in Star Trek or Lovecraftian mythology respectively. In Star Trek the aliens represent us, and thus we can tell when they're good or bad by the moderation that the actual humans on screen bring to the equation. The humans (physically) are the humans (subjectively) telling other humans (as in aliens) to tone it down (or you'll catch a phaser beam between the eyes).
This isn't (necessarily) bad storytelling, either. Because it allows us to even appreciate the other 'alien' cultures. For instance, the best thing about DS9 was Quark and Garak. Quark was undeniably a pacifist, who when you take all his other qualities allow us to appreciate even those of differing political outlooks separate from those who would resonate with the political landscape of the Federation. With Garak's morality, when you think about it, actually make sense. How you can appreciate the beauty of the idea that justice needs to be seen and celebrated when put in action. Do not mourn that a crime has taken place, celebrate that it is an example for which to set those of wayward thoughts into place. That there is a certain 'feel good' in the idea of enforced penitence through the celebration of justice to be had, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.
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