Top 50 SciFi TV Shows of All Time
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RainOfSteel
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I've looked up Spaced, which I'd never heard of before (must have been a particularly small and irrelevant show).
Given what it was, a short-lived comedy, quoting it does not lend credence to a statement.
Your own statement of dislike for B5 is far more credible than anything stated on a show like Spaced.
Cite for said plagiarism?
Frankly, I think you're mistaken, but I'll be waiting around to be proven wrong.
Oh, and quotations are not plagairism, so don't bother with B5 elements that are quoting Tolkein.
Parallel story elements are also not plagiarism.
I have headed out on the Internet and Googled. Someone out there actually claims that B5's Ranger organization is a rip on Tolkein. What a titanic laugh. That's like saying Tolkein ripped the Rangers from the US Army. Poppycock!
Someone claimed Garibaldi's corruption and redemption were a plagiarism of Tolkein because it was "similar" to Boromir's. Hello? Don't these people know what plagiarism is?
I even found someone who was claiming Tolkein was stealing from B5! I'm not joking!
Bring me back an actual plagiarism, please.
Since you hate B5 so much, if you're willing, go ahead and drop your DVDs in the mail and mark them postage due. PM me if you're willing to part with them and I'll send you my snail mail address.
RainOfSteel
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I wasn't going to get into it, but . . .
The Boston.com list is horribly prejudiced by not including some Anime.
Especially Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
I personally loathe lists. One: because I never agree with them-and they're made up of people who either don't understand the genre or like one show, period. Two: I always have problem rating shows I like. But I'll give it shot of the shows I like.
Outer Limits(the original), the 1st two seasons of the original Star Trek, 1st 5 seasons of Star Trek TNG, Buck Rogers, Firefly, Farscape, the first 2 seasons of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea(before their budget got slashed 50%), the 1st 2 seasons of Andromeda, Quark, the orginal pilot of Lost in Space, the early episodes of Lost in Space(before it became the Dr. Smith Comedy Hour), & animated: Cowboy Bebop, Tenchi Muyo GXP, the original Gundam series, Gundam Wing, Vandread, Ghost in the Shell S.A.C., Last Exile. My wife would add Babylon 5 to the list-not one I got that excited about, but is the first Xenocentric SF TV series where the humans are a small, annoying, intrusive element in the cosmos. For my part I warmed to the aliens rather than any of the humans.
Outer Limits(the original), the 1st two seasons of the original Star Trek, 1st 5 seasons of Star Trek TNG, Buck Rogers, Firefly, Farscape, the first 2 seasons of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea(before their budget got slashed 50%), the 1st 2 seasons of Andromeda, Quark, the orginal pilot of Lost in Space, the early episodes of Lost in Space(before it became the Dr. Smith Comedy Hour), & animated: Cowboy Bebop, Tenchi Muyo GXP, the original Gundam series, Gundam Wing, Vandread, Ghost in the Shell S.A.C., Last Exile. My wife would add Babylon 5 to the list-not one I got that excited about, but is the first Xenocentric SF TV series where the humans are a small, annoying, intrusive element in the cosmos. For my part I warmed to the aliens rather than any of the humans.
I agree.
I'm a very longtime Trekkie(though I no longer associate with any fan groups anymore) & remember having to set a young ST fan straight who believed that Irwin Allen stole from Gene Roddenberry. Egads!
Originally posted by Marvo:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Now that's funnyAlthough, sadly, I am not surprised. </font>
I disagree with this backhanded summation. It was good drama with intriguing stories. I think the one real critique is the liberal use of colors to capitalize on colo television technology. The SFX for the time, for a TV show, were fairly good (save for a handful of shots; i.e. the Constellation in the "Doomsday MAchine" episode).
What the autnhor of the article fails to observe is that inspite of the colorful costumes and odd bulky lights and other props, is that the writing, direction and acting carried the show.
I'm a fan, and I do write this retort through Trek colored glasses, but I'm not inaccurate.
RainOfSteel
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I disagree with this backhanded summation. [...] is that the writing, direction and acting carried the show.
</font>[/QUOTE]It depends on what you mean by writing.
If you mean quality of dialog and character interaction, that was fairly good.
If you mean story and plot, that was fairly bad.
The Balance of Terror episode usually gets fairly high rankings as a fan favorite.
It is full of gigantic plot holes that you could drive the Doomsday Machine itself through. The episode constantly violates the series' own technological premises. The Enterprise and her captain discard patently obvious military advantages in combat (a warp-drive vessel vs. an impulse drive vessel, for starters). Additionally, whenever Kirk said, "Fire phasers," the SFX showed photons firing, and whenever he said, "Fire photons," the SFX showed phasers firing.
This episode is just one example from the ToS, though its certainly one of the worst. TNG's devolution episode, Genesis, and Tasha's-death episode, Skin of Evil, are radically further up the stupidity scale than Balance of Terror.
As I noted in my earlier post, when I was seven years-old, I worshipped ST and I really thought Balance of Terror was one of the best episodes. My opinion changed as time went by and I discovered all the problems and contraditions.
The SFX in Balance of Terror were the result of a change in Roddenberry's thinking. All the early episodes had phasers and photons backards from the later episodes.
The story itself was borrowed from the movie The Enemy Below starring Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens as the respective captains.
As for warp vs sublight, something all Stare Treks consistently screwed up was travel. Warp speed dogfights always gave the crew several minutes in deciding what to do with an enemy ship less than a light-minute away. An sublight Romulans always managed to cross parsecs in a few hours. Go figure.
Still, terms of when it was broadcast and what else was on the air, Star Trek TOS was good overall. I do not think any series can always be good. Only individual episodes.
My favorite TOS was City on the Edge of Forever even though the Midget God of Thunder's original script was conventionalized (prostituted ??).
The story itself was borrowed from the movie The Enemy Below starring Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens as the respective captains.
As for warp vs sublight, something all Stare Treks consistently screwed up was travel. Warp speed dogfights always gave the crew several minutes in deciding what to do with an enemy ship less than a light-minute away. An sublight Romulans always managed to cross parsecs in a few hours. Go figure.
Still, terms of when it was broadcast and what else was on the air, Star Trek TOS was good overall. I do not think any series can always be good. Only individual episodes.
My favorite TOS was City on the Edge of Forever even though the Midget God of Thunder's original script was conventionalized (prostituted ??).
One thing to note about inconsistencies is that writers and directors tend to not be anal like fans. They will sacrifice "realism" to further the plot.
So, yes, warp drive "dog fights" make no sense in terms of "realism" but to the director/writer that is not relevant.
Steven Spielberg is notorious for this. I am surprised he can even find a continuity supervisor for his movies.
So, yes, warp drive "dog fights" make no sense in terms of "realism" but to the director/writer that is not relevant.
Steven Spielberg is notorious for this. I am surprised he can even find a continuity supervisor for his movies.
No, not really. The SFX were just one of those production anomolies. If you've ever read anything about the filming, then you'll understand how some of the effects got mis-matched (albeit arbitrarily). There just wasn't a cohesive thought as to what a phaser ought to do and look like until halfway through the first season.
The warp verse impulse thing is akin to a WW@ era DD against a submersed sub (American, German, Japanese, you name it). Going faster doesn't give you all the much an edge of your enemy's weapon can track you, and packs a pwoerful punch on top of that. That's why the Roms had their "cloaking device" (parlance derived from late 40s Air Force screening technology.
It was solid writing through and through. There's a handful of nitpickings that can happen for sure. My favorite is with the "Taste of Armageddon" episode, where the Enterprise is under threat od destruction, so she has to keep her shields up; i.e. no one can beam down. Yet after a commercial break the guest star who plays the ambassador beams down with his assistant. And yet the Enterprise is still safely in orbit
RainOfSteel
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I read the original The Making of Star Trek, and it didn't mention anything about that.
Wikipedia mentions that photon torpedos hadn't been added to the ship's inventory of weaponry yet, and the white spheres displayed for "proximity phaser" fire were later used for photons.
This is a case of failing to establish fundamental premises, like weapons load-out, that should have been a foundation stone before the first episode began filming.
Adding this sort of thing in the middle of filming is an indication of weak vision and incomplete basic background work.
That is not a parallel example.
The difference between a FTL ship and an impulse ship is the difference between the Space Shuttle on reentry and an amoeba.
Here's a good one for you!
If the Enterpise's own large and powerful sensors are incapable of locating a cloaked Romulan Bird of Prey at close range int he middle of combat when their doing their best to find it . . . then how do does any "poximity weapon's" sensors (far smaller and less powerful/sensitive) get triggered by proximity to the Bird of Prey in order to explode and hurt it?
That's right, proximity weapons don't explode unless they get close to a target (i.e. can "sense" it).
Since the Romulan ship was cloaked, the proximity bombardment, which was what disabled the Romulan vessel in the end, would never have worked.
OTOH, if proximity weapons can pick up a cloaked ship, then the Enterprise just needs to launch a set of probes to bracket the vessel with all of their "proximity" sensors just barely going off, which would effectively pinpoint the vessel. Except that the Enterprise's own sensor should be able to do the trick.
Speed is life. It's a foundation-level military maxim.
The character dialog was perfectly acceptable.
There are more than a handful in that episode.
Yes, I remember that one, and the transporter problem, and the later incompatiability with the johny-come-lately Prime Directive (which Kirk, Jean Luc Picard, and Janeway violate constanly, I can't recall about Cisco, but I'm sure there was something in there somewhere).Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
My favorite is with the "Taste of Armageddon" episode, where the Enterprise is under threat od destruction, so she has to keep her shields up; i.e. no one can beam down. Yet after a commercial break the guest star who plays the ambassador beams down with his assistant. And yet the Enterprise is still safely in orbit
Rain; then you didn't read all there was. One of the definitive books on the topic was authored by Robert Justman and Herbert Solow, the two producers who brought Roddenberry's concept to fruition, and made it their own creation.
Now go read, and when you finished then, and only then, can you come back and act all high and mighty
Off with you lad. Your destiny awaits.
p.s. I also read the Making book, and its filled with a lot of good info, but also good amounts of ... how does one put it ... "puffery"? You should also know that I used to do SFX work over ten years ago, and know a little about the subject.
Now go read, and when you finished then, and only then, can you come back and act all high and mighty
Off with you lad. Your destiny awaits.
p.s. I also read the Making book, and its filled with a lot of good info, but also good amounts of ... how does one put it ... "puffery"? You should also know that I used to do SFX work over ten years ago, and know a little about the subject.
