What will it take for a space opera show to become mainstream?
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Well Macross live action movie is still in production, directed by the guy who directed IT might just do it. The movie though is still under the name Robotech in production because of "reasons".
Other than that space operas have been popular for some time, by dedicated people that like sci-fiction. Going too mainstream might actually end up destroying bits of the film genre though. Studios might aim more where the cash is over creativity making the genre more of a cash grab.Kind of what has been happening with a lot of Anime lately with the introduction of streaming services.
It is always a double edge sword
Other than that space operas have been popular for some time, by dedicated people that like sci-fiction. Going too mainstream might actually end up destroying bits of the film genre though. Studios might aim more where the cash is over creativity making the genre more of a cash grab.Kind of what has been happening with a lot of Anime lately with the introduction of streaming services.
It is always a double edge sword
Disagree there. Now, if you specifically mean OldWho after JNT took over at the end of the 4th Doctor, and didn't start finding his feet until the end of the 6th, maybe, but even then they had Robert Holmes writing some stories.Hawki said:
IMHO, NuWho has been consistently poor. The companion keeps being a generically "feisty" young woman whining about how much she loves the Doctor. They've not had a single season finale that wasn't dreadful (unless the last one, which I didn't watch).
However, of course, this is rather subjective.
As I recall, Tywin orders his men to rape Tysha for which he gives her silver coins. Then he orders Tyrion to do it, and gives her a gold coin because Lannisters, gold, symbolism and shit. So yeah, book Tyrion is really not a nice guy, but he says highly quotable things that go on T-shirts well so he gets to be a fan favouriteHawki said:
Even if that's the case, that doesn't make Tyrion a bad person. Rape is terrible, I'm not denying that, but Tywin isn't a person you say "no" to - especially if you're a dwarf, and the son of a person who despises you and would love to see you leave this world.Palindromemordnilap said:
Dude what do you want out of Star Wars?Hawki said:
A story about a Politician in Naboo negotiating neutrality with the Republic in the War effort of the Sith?
A story about a guy that works in a night club in Coruscant?
A story about 2 stormtroopers just shit talking with each other?
You're making the falacious argument that context dictates content. It's an example of how NOT to write a work of fiction.Samtemdo8 said:
But back to the original argument, I said "more than just about." If you look at the best lightsaber duels in Star Wars (I'd pin them as ESB or RotJ), it's because they have the character drama to go with them. The video in question shows a bunch of nobodies firing at a bunch of nobodies, using rediculous tactics (yes Republic troopers...give up your high ground position to charge, and then charge a Sith lord by your lonesome), and then have a lightsaber battle between Malgus and Shan with no depth or significance beyond the fact that it's a lightsaber battle. Even Maul vs. Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan at least managed some thematic/character depth. Here, it's just people fighting wildly. Oh, and apparently armour has regressed over the millennia because now troopers and Sith lords can survive grendae detonations at point blank range with no reprecussions.
Oh, and haduokens and kamaheas are a thing now because...of course they are.
Now, none of this is to say the trailer is bad, but as the template for a movie? Nup. I'd like something more than just spectacle.
Firstly that Republic Trooper Commander is Jace Malcom and he has faced Darth Malgus before in the battle of Korriban so there is charcater drama and history here. And whats going on here is the Empire launched a surprise attack on the Republic Core World of Aldaraan. (The same Aldaraan that was blown up by the Death Star in A New Hope)Hawki said:
Secondly how is armor being strong enough to make you survive point black grenade detenations a regression? If anything thats an improvement.
Thirdly the Force has been inconsistant in portrayals since forever because there was never a proper set of rules and limits established. I mean no one thought that the Force would give you the power to shoot lightning out of your hands until Return of the Jedi.
Regression in that TOR takes place thousands of years before the OT, and going by that, armor technology has apparently gone backwards (going by how stormtrooper armor is useless).Samtemdo8 said:
Difference being that Force lightning's use in the films (with the exception of Clones) has character and/or thematic relevance when it's used. There's nothing like that in the trailer.
And, okay, fine, trailer doesn't have much time to do that, but again, I wouldn't want that approach to replace the films' use of the Force as something more than just nifty powers (for the most part).
A sort of "Clerks" version of that actually doesn't sound half bad as an experimentSamtemdo8 said:
I missed this post for a bit, so sorry about that.Hawki said:
----
To the point at hand.
Yeah, that'sa pretty good critique of the situation, honestly. If you have so few channels, then stuff is going to 'stick out more'.
I also think there is a certain level of fragmentation in how we depict materials. But that being said, surely the 80s and 90s Transformers cartoons can be classed as si-fi?
Masters of the Universe?
Ghostbusters cartoons?
Old Red Dwarf?
ST:TNG + DS9?
Need I go on?
I remember heaps of late 80s early 90s stuff I watched that would totally class as 'sci-fi'.
Once again, though ... do I remember that stuff because there was so little else to watch, or because it was so ubiquitous?
The effects were certainly more dated, but I think Blake's 7 did more with less.
Travis was kind of fun ... but my favourites was the lovable dullard and coward, Vila. Avon was deliciously amoral, but at the same time for some reason not completely unlikeable.
I thought that was only rumour? If it's true, Awesome!
Babylon 5 had some horribly cringey dialogue, cookie cutter characters, and awful pacing.
I honestly don't get the love for Babylon 5. See, I liked DS9, and yes ... granted ... it was clearly an thinly veiled attempt to subsume Babylon 5 ... but I think DS9 told a better story and critiqued its own source material better than whatever Babylon 5 was trying to say every other season.
As for Firefly ...
Also I don't get the love. Firefly felt like ... I don't know, all style and no substance. It didn't give us genuine anti-heroes ... itjust gave us working class heroes.
And arguably early Red Dwarf did that better, with more humour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7Ha3VDbzESmithnikov said:A sort of "Clerks" version of that actually doesn't sound half bad as an experimentSamtemdo8 said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iJ56DcNtmo&list=PLuKg-WhduhkkrOEcq2NEAACFL2sk_pHx_
Not exactly the same, but close.
Um, yes?Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Fantasy.
Supernatural.
Can't comment too much, but I guess?
Yes.
Well, stands to reason that the 80s and 90s have more stuff than the 60s, and were also the point when DW went on hiatus.
But as for that, there's any number of reasons, boiling down to:
a) Genuine quality.
b) More time to watch TV shows/cartoons, so you can sample a wider range.
c) More impressionable.
This is the same for everyone mind you - it's why I roll my eyes when people say that the 90s had better cartoons than the 2010s. I have to ask what age the people are making these statements are. Because while I have a lot of nostalgia for the 90s and the stuff they produced, "nostalgia" is the key word.
Don't get your hopes up - been ages since we've heard anything about it, and Syfy being Syfy, even if it goes ahead, it'll probably get cancelled. Most I've seen is some concept art (see https://nerdist.com/exclusive-concept-art-for-long-simmering-blakes-7-series/).
Early in season 1 I'd agree, but that's about it.
Um, okay? Was Firefly selling itself on anti-heroes? That's more a critique of what something doesn't do than what it does.
I haven't seen much of Red Dwarf, but of what I have seen (and in the case of the novelization of the first season, read), I'm not sure they can be compared. Both are in space, sure, but Firefly is a space western that takes place in a set setting (the 'Verse). There's plenty of humour in it, but it still takes itself seriously. Red Dwarf, on the other hand, is a space comedy that takes place mostly millions of years in the future with little sense of worldbuilding. It's absurd, and it knows it. Even in the novelization which has a lot of pre-show material, it's still an absurd world that Lister lives in. The type of world where people are willing to get stars to supernova to form a constellation that says PEPSI RULES (or something similar).
Edit: Oh, fun fact, y'know that sci-fi show rankings I listed? I actually kinda lied, as Firefly has the #7 spot, while Blake's 7 has the #6 spot. That could change (and it wouldn't be the first time to do so), but, um, yeah.
Apparently someone filmed porn in one of those planes they simulate zero gravity to train astronauts in. So...maybe...undeadsuitor said:
MOTU is totally science-fantasy. If at least in totality not as worse as X-Men cartoons, or Flash Gordon.Hawki said:
I'd debate that, the franchise frequently tries to explain itself with technobabble, and tries to maintain a consistent internal science-babble logic. In the same way of Star Trek.
I'm not so sure. After all, people used to have radio serials of science fiction during and prior the Wars. Which is about as mainstream as it got in a pre-ubiquitous tv era.
There is a certain ease of production when it comes to suspension of disbelief.
Compare that to drama where the people and environment must have a pseudo-unconflicting sense of being able to be accepted into the zeitgeist of what an audience understands as leading to a common social problem.
Which is why Star Trek and Babylon 5 appear so moralistic.
Ehhhh, I have my own worries about a remake and the unique cynicism and pessimism towards science and megacivilization being automatically good for people that was a fixture of Blake's 7 would be either overdone, or the anti-heroic cast given false sentimentality.
I kind of see it as a problem that runs throughout the series.
But it literally opens up like that. Sets its premise of the show like that with a class struggle between the Alliance and 'Browncoats'. It arbitrarily portrays 'Mal' as likeable by the most grievous of tropes, that idea of uniting loyalty as if to some ubiquitous idea of 'freedom' based on what I can only seem to describe as 'lovable larrikinism'.
And even Whedon thought so as well. The Mal we saw on screens was arbitrarily made more flighty and less dark because Fox demanded that.
Kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy.
But I actually liked the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Even though I have a pretty vast antipathy to Marvel movies in general. Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy are effectively the only ones I actually like.
Faux-sentimentality in space operas can be done well, but not without dated intertextuality. Like Guardians of the Galaxy's fascination with late 70s/80s era music and pop culture colouring the dialogue and sense of an electronic Wonderland.
Call it 'artistic tackiness'.
This would fail as soon as you tried to be melodramatic without that intertextual tackiness.
Without that intertextuality, it becomes noisome.
As I was saying. Blake's 7 has better pacing, less tropish characters, and has a real sincerity of pessimism about the future.
Um, when is Babylon 5 moralistic?Addendum_Forthcoming said:
I mean, sure, there's a light-dark motif, but the universe operates in shades of grey.
Not sure what that has to do with anti-heroes. And the idea of a "class struggle" appears off. Class struggles come within a society. The Unification War is effectively two different societies coming to blows, one society triumphing, forcing itself on the other, but in practice, not changing much. Firefly's tropes lie far more in Westerns than anything else.
Also, Mal is hardly a "lovable larikin." Sometimes? Sure. But Mal can go from happy to dark at the drop of the hat - other characters even point this out. It's core to his character development that he isn't following a cause after the war, only does so in Serenity, and only really commits to it in 'No Power in the 'Verse.' Which I doubt is going to be continued due to what I suspect is rights issues, but that's another matter.
Eh...maybe? I mean, you can draw parallels, but they're extremely broad ones. As far as sci-fi shows of the 2000s go, GotG has far more in common with Farscape IMO.
On those points:
-Better Pacing: Debatable. Both series maintain loose continuity over effectively stand-alone episodes, but I'd say Firefly is better paced out. It has the advantage of fewer episodes to remember, but Firefly is far faster paced. Blake's 7 chugs along, but while that's fine in principle, it leaves less of an impact.
-Characters: Also debatable. You can easily boil down the B7 to tropes - Blake the leader, Avon the cynic, Villa the coward, Tarant the cowboy, Gaff the strongman, Servalan the puppet master, Travis the nemesis, etc. And tropes aside, a key difference is that on the Liberator for instance, while it has a number of standout characters (Blake, Villa, Avon, arguably Tarant), it has a lot of dead weight (Janna, Cally, Gaff). In contrast, every crew member of Serenity has a character I could easily describe with a dynamic between said characters.
-Pessimism: Still debatable. Blake's 7 is set way further into the future than Firefly, and to my knowledge, there's no explanation as to how society developed to the point of forming the Federation. Firefly has a set chain of events between the present and the world it takes place in (2517 and onwards, going from the start of the series) - there's no major gaps in its in-universe history. And if we're comparing the Federation and Alliance, the Alliance is far more nuanced. In B7, there's the sort of suggestion that Blake's crusade may do more damage than good, and even then, you could argue that the Federation is a necessary evil considering that it repels the Andromedan invasion. In contrast, the Alliance is a well-meaning but overreaching organization. There's far more depth in character like the Operative than Travis. While the Alliance does horrible things at times (Shadow and Miranda for instance), life in the Alliance is pretty good if you're a Core-worlder, and while life on the frontier can be hard, that's down more to neglect than malice.
So I'll grant you that Blake's 7 depicts a far more pessimistic future, but Firefly depicts a far more 'real' future. And that includes the notion that there'll always be a divide between the haves and have-nots, between those with power and those without, that human nature doesn't change even if you leave Earth behind. Contrast that to the Federation, which is a monolithic 'thing' that is far removed from present day circumstances, and would easily fit into pulp fiction.
To ruin the image.. the truth is actually not very sexy.undeadsuitor said:
Firstly, those planes are affectionately known as the "vomit comet". They're designed to simulate the sudden shift into microgravity when a spacecraft stops accelerating, which is often very unpleasant and debilitating for astronauts. It's going to be a pretty bad place to have sex.
Secondly, both astronauts risk passing momentum onto each other or drifting, which could be dangerous if they bang their heads on something. For this reason, the safest thing is to strap them together and strap them to the spacecraft so that they can't move very much. Astronauts are strapped down down they sleep in zero gravity, for the same reason.
Thirdly, hygiene and heat management is going to be a huge problem. Spacecraft are sealed environments. Often, there is air conditioning to try and simulate natural convection, but otherwise the air is incredibly still. This means our astronauts are going to end up floating in a cloud of hot air full of their own perspiration and spent bodily fluids, which will be uncomfortably hot and humid. Obviously, you'd also want to keep this moisture away from fragile components on the spacecraft as well as from other crew members who might be grossed out by breathing in smelly bodily fluids, and this is a problem because space aboard a spaceship is (ironically) at a premium.
Finally, the reproductive organs are.. well.. they're on the lower half of your body. Human bodies are designed to maintain optimal blood pressure in earth gravity. Microgravity upsets that and results in more blood pressure in the head and chest and less in the legs and in the junk. This means physical arousal in microgravity is more difficult and harder to maintain for both sexes. Prolonged microgravity also weakens the cardiovascular system, and while having sex would certainly be a good workout to help maintain cardio strength, it won't necessarily be as easy or fun.
In short, there's no physical reason why people couldn't have sex in micro/zero gravity, but it's not going to be very sexy and science fiction writers have tended to massively overstate the benefits while ignoring the many, many problems. Long term, manned space exploration and colonisation will depend on the use of artificial gravity to simulate conditions on Earth, and people will go into microgravity or zero gravity to work, not generally to have fun.
To add to what evilthecat said, IIRC you get serious Gs going up on those planes (which means you can't maintain an erection), then you get a very short span of time in simulated zero G. You're not having sex so much as sprint-ejaculating, which is normally not considering sexy. And then you all throw up, which, likewise.
As an aside, Kate Upton also apparently did a simulated zero G photoshoot (somewhat clothed), and greatly impressed the crew by not vomiting afterwards.
As an aside, Kate Upton also apparently did a simulated zero G photoshoot (somewhat clothed), and greatly impressed the crew by not vomiting afterwards.