New ScyFy that might actually be good. Thoughts, comments, etc.
A lot of sci-fi shows have been quite good. It's their movies that need help in my experience. This show should be as good as any, but the production values seem quite high- it's gonna have to pull in a lot of viewers to stay on the air.
I like the overall premise of the new series but it cuts into my WWE time. Ah the agony of choice.
And the premise is found here.
When is it on again? It looks interesting....
Not a cheap show. Biiiig production. LOTR meets Star Wars meets 100 other things. Every trope you ever wanted.
I'll watch the next one.
And you can play the game as well. It's an MMO. It's set in the Bay area in California. There is supposed to be interaction between the TV series and the game. I'm not too sure how well that will work out...
I dismissed it when I heard about the MMO link, but actually after watching it, I quite enjoyed it. The pilot definitely set up a lot of plot threads which will be interesting to follow.
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I don't know about the finished product, but the special effects in the 14 minute preview were shockingly bad.
IMO, a preview of that sort should have something gripping in it, that makes me want to tune back in. This was kind of bog-standard introductory stuff.
It's kind of a catch-22 for sci-fi/fantasy shows. You either show your really cool effects stuff / monsters at the beginning, when you have no experience at making them look really good and are running on start up cash, or you save it for later, when your casts ever-expanded salaries are eating up all your budget and you have to skimp on effects and sets and whatnot...
Or you pull a Stargate and keep cancelling and restarting your show with all new lower-paid actors every few years. :)
Or you pull a Stargate and keep cancelling and restarting your show with all new lower-paid actors every few years. :)
The actor defections from SG-1 were more about exhausting the characters potential and the desire to move on and do something else. Richard Dean Anderson (O'Neill) for example wanted to spend more time with his family than the grind of series television allowed. They did keep the series going by switching in new characters but it didn't match up to the early glory days of SG-1 imo. Star Gate Atlantis had a decent run and Star Gate Universe was just starting to find traction when it was cancelled. 10 years of SG-1, 5 years of SG-A and 2 years of SG-U. Not a bad run for a franchise. Oh, and two TV / DVD movies to tie up loose ends. And a fairly rabid fan base as well...
THIS is how you do a SF western! Awesome!
It strangely paralleled Eureka on many levels.
Is it a Eureka rip-off? Heavens no. That's not what I am saying in the slightest.
However...
You have a father and a daughter who are taking a trip elsewhere and who are in an argument, and are waylaid to a small town not of their choosing.
They just want to get the vehicle fixed, but have to hang around for awhile.
There is a death, and the only law enforcement official is killed, and the "main" character is eventually steered into the role. He does so reluctantly, only temporarily, but by the end of the show circumstance and some desire leads him to stay.
The itinerant daughter (The Zoe) is locked in a jail cell where she engages in the Deputy (The Jo or The Deputy Andy), who the new Top Cop (Carter) will inevitably have to learn to work with. The daughter is pissed off at her dad, and doesn't want to stay in town. By the end of the show she forgives him and agrees to stay in the town.
The Mayor is an attractive principled female authority figure. (The Allison)
There is a quirky alien doctor who is kinda weird but with a sharp wit, who just so happens to know how to work complicated alien technology. (The Fargo)
Now Eureka never had the Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but you do have Rafe McCaulley the principled man who is hard working and good with mechanical things (The Henry).
Opposite him is the alien political figure, who acts and speaks with authority and achieves his goals through politics, subterfuge, and kind of backstabbing sneakiness. (The Nathan Stark)
A sub-plot, the GOVERNMENT wants to get more involved with the town and interfere with how it operates. (The Department of Defense's relationship with Global Dynamics)
And some outside threat aims a threat towards the town, and all the characters set aside their issues and unite to save the town, because the town itself is special. We find out at the very end, the thread was manipulated into place by the benevolent person we least expected, the former Mayor, and get this—its a mysterious cause to save the world. (The Beverly Barlowe)
Now, before anyone jumps up and tells me the characters are nothing alike—stop. I agree with you. They're nothing alike. There are many differences.
1.) This grittier
2.) Not meant to be funny per se
3.) The characters are not alike, rather they mirror archetypal roles
4.) Defiance struggles to survive and money has meaning, where Eureka was a "scarcity free" environment. That's a term I picked up from Eclipse Phase.
5.) There are characters for which there are no parallels
I am sure the two shows given time will become less and less similar. But I was distracted by the parallels in the pilot.
It doesn't make it a bad show nevertheless.
I liked it. I really don't care about the special effects. I rather see the show develope and have meh special effects....than really 'awesome' special effects and the show gets canceled due to a overly large budget.
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It strangely paralleled Eureka on many levels.
Is it a Eureka rip-off? Heavens no. That's not what I am saying in the slightest.
However...
** spoiler omitted **...
I agree with a lot of what you said there.
I thought it was OK. I was hoping there would be more alien psychologies and not just humans-in-funny-masks, but I guess that's a lot to expect from a company called Syfy. :-P
Also, I'm reading some CJ Cherryh now, and that always makes me more critical of non-CJ Cherryh SF. ;-)
I thought it was OK. I was hoping there would be more alien psychologies and not just humans-in-funny-masks, but I guess that's a lot to expect from a company called Syfy. :-P
Also, I'm reading some CJ Cherryh now, and that always makes me more critical of non-CJ Cherryh SF. ;-)
We've only seen two hours so far--there is plenty of time to develop these cultures...
Not cultures. Psychologies. I want to see aliens that think differently than humans.
OK, culture is part of it. But I want to see a TV series with aliens that fundamentally act and react differently than humans.
To be fair, that's going to be very difficult to pull off for an alien race that isn't a 'throwaway'. If the race is truly alien in thought processes, then it will be close to impossible to generate the connection viewers need to keep them interested.
Babylon 5's Vorlons were a pretty good example of non-human psychology, and that while important, their participation in episodes was quite rare.
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It was far better than the 14 minute preview led me to believe. I'm glad I was willing to ignore my initial distaste and give it a shot.
I also noticed that sheriffs in Sci-Fi shows seem to have it rough. (and not just sci-fi shows, since I also watched the first season of Banshee, which had the similar 'outsider becomes the new sheriff' sort of intro).
Plus a million to wanting to see shows with aliens who are *alien* in personality, which is often an uphill struggle to get greenlit, even on this channel. Who knows, perhaps we'll see some of that.
We've still got a few of the 'eight races' that haven't made an appearance (or, like the orangutang faced dude walking his dog, haven't had a speaking line yet), so there's still room to surprise us with something more nuanced than the traditional Star Trek race from the Planet of Hats, where the 'alien' turns out to be a bumpy faced human with one characteristic or trait bumped up to 11.
I give the show a C-/D.
Good points-
1.Lead actor/daugthter-First 15 minutes hes tough and witty. Comes off like Han Solo/Ben Browder tough smuggler guy. Daughter comes off as slinky/dangerous sidekick.
2.Special effects-Blue knives,Enemies at end, and makeup
Bad points
1. Story revolves around Teen Agnst/Romeo Juliet. Been done way too much
2. Rich unlikable guy vs local guy. Tied to point 1
3. Acting after 15 minutes went way down. Probably the worst ive seen in a while. Makes Falling Skies look really good. Compared to other SciFI/fantasy such as Game of Thrones, Falling Skies, Walking Dead, Being Human or True Blood its barely watchable.
4. Predictable
5. Car scene reminded me of the 80's cop chase scenes or even the A-team.
6. Enemy Dialogue at end. Really bad. Especially the scafollding comment, The rich family, and the diner scene.
7. The biker scenes.ouch
8. The planet has been partially terraformed and yet all the wildlife in the town is normal.
9. The bad guys strategy at the last battle.
10. With most shows you tend to care what happens to the cast. Other than the main star i wouldnt have been shocked if any of the others hadnt survived. Hes the only one that seems to have a clue.
I'm with wicked cool here. It was barely watchable.
Is anyone else about sick and tired of yet another Sci-fi anything with humanoid aliens? I mean really. If there is even a single human/alien hybrid that isn't the product of pure science experiment gone wild I am going to leave the genre for quite a while.
Sorry for the rant but I am very bitter with Science Fiction genre as a whole. We can't even find another species compatible to mate with here on the planet we evolved from, what makes people somehow believe we would find one that evolved on a completely different planet in a completely different solar system...
On this grounds I am very leery of this series on premise alone.
High quality? Try having a realistic science-fiction series with alien species with not one humanoid alien species. Falling Skies sort of did it though (mostly).
Don't we have sufficent puppet technology to make non-humanoid aliens?
Don't we have sufficent puppet technology to make non-humanoid aliens?
Yeah, like Pierson's Puppeteers.
Don't we have sufficent puppet technology to make non-humanoid aliens?
Yeah, like Farscape did, but he was rather stationary. Its bad though when even the CG aliens are humanoid, like in Defiance and Falling Skies.
Not cultures. Psychologies. I want to see aliens that think differently than humans.
OK, culture is part of it. But I want to see a TV series with aliens that fundamentally act and react differently than humans.
Agree, every sci-fi writer that wants to do aliens should STOP, take a deep breath, and study cat and dog psychology for a little to get a grasp on what makes use human compared to other species and use that as a basis of what to do next with human level intelligent aliens.
Maybe have a species that has an even more pack mind mentality? Still very intelligent, or even more intelligent than humans, but also better at using tools than we are. Early sub-species of humans, like Cro-Magnons were not as good at using tools as we were, but had very human-like inelegance. Hmm lets take this another step futher, why would they even be animal base, why not try some insect/cephalopod hybrid like race. 2 arms and legs? Try 6-8 appendages.
In the end though you are stuck with a race that is totally un-relatable to the audience and the viewers would not care about such a species of the characters of the species. Then there is that there would be no sexual tension with such a species ever, and the hug budget of having such a species on the show as even a co-star or frequent race, not chance.
I think I answered my own question here, so all I can think of is maybe writers should try and step up the creativity and present a reason why the aliens are humanoid. I have just now got a good idea, but might want to keep that one under my hat as I am a writer and might want to get it published.
The reason you get humanoid aliens in TV is because most television can't afford the special effects or more bizarre morphologies, and extensive prosthetics can hinder acting. I am not a fan of bumpy forehead aliens, but I can accept them as a limitation of the medium
The reason you get humanoid aliens in TV is because most television can't afford the special effects or more bizarre morphologies, and extensive prosthetics can hinder acting. I am not a fan of bumpy forehead aliens, but I can accept them as a limitation of the medium
I would be more accepting if they were all mutations of humans, rather than aliens. At least that would be more scientifically believable and make for a better science fiction show premiss.
I had no issues with the acting. As to the aliens, SF is usually about showing us ourselves from a different angle--hard to do if you struggle to understand the aliens...
I would be more accepting if they were all mutations of humans, rather than aliens. At least that would be more scientifically believable and make for a better science fiction show premiss.
I think you misunderstand the FICTION part of science fiction. Hard Science fiction just does not sell well.
Also...we have not seen all species of aliens yet...who knows.
As for culture and such being similair to human...well they have been living on the planet for 33 years...they would be some adaptions...as is shown by humans using alien words.
I think before judging the show we should wat for more background. We don't know why these diverse alien races go around teraforming other planets. Were some of them enslaved? A enslaved species would not hold on to their culture much....and I could easily see coping human cultures in places.
Just saying it is too easy to judge.
Bad points
1. Story revolves around Teen Agnst/Romeo Juliet. Been done way too much
2. Rich unlikable guy vs local guy. Tied to point 1
While I disagree with the other points mostly I think those are just...opinions.
As to the two above though...are not entirely accrurate.
1. Is just one one of the stories...and seemingly alot more politicaly charged than your basic Romeo/Juliet storyline. And I don't see much anst there...as it seems they will be getting married.
2. Um they are both pretty much the same character...but becasuse of that they are coming to come to conflict...with moments of unity. I mean I found both characters to be not as simple as you protray them.
I want to see crow-like intellegences.
I want to see elephant-like intellegences.
I want to see dolphin-like intellegences.
I want to see bee-like intellegences.
I want to see octopus- or squid-like intellegences.
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I had no issues with the acting. As to the aliens, SF is usually about showing us ourselves from a different angle--hard to do if you struggle to understand the aliens...
I think the argument is that's been done to death. I hope with Rockne in the works we can get a little more alien from the show. We shall see.
I would be more accepting if they were all mutations of humans, rather than aliens. At least that would be more scientifically believable and make for a better science fiction show premiss.I think you misunderstand the FICTION part of science fiction. Hard Science fiction just does not sell well.
Your right, but my problem is that people forget the SCIENCE part...
I think it can be done, but it will just require writers that are not just trying to re-create what has already been done. Sci-Fi seems more like a different medium for what they really want is a fantasy that isn't some off-shoot of some J.R.R. Tolkien want-a-be.
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Yeah, I fell asleep hard during Defiance this week.
I'm just glad I woke up in time to watch Castle.
lol, I wasn't pulling a Rip Van Winkle! Defiance is on at 9 and Castle at 10. :-P
It was no B5 or BSG, but it also wasn't horrible. As a commercial for a video game, it was awesome. As a sci-fi TV series, it was mediocre.
Wicked Cool hit all the major points above; I can't add much there.
I'd give it a C+.
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I watched it again. I don't hate it, but I am saddened that Alphas was cancelled to free up more money in the budget to pay for this.
Alphas had interesting characters and really demonstrated good storytelling with minimal waste in terms of settings, locales, and special effects.
Defiance really strikes me as an expensive boondoggle that has produced an okay show. Still, it could improve. B5 needed a good handful of episodes in 1st season to gain some momentum and energy, in my opinion.
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I think it will suffer from what most Sci-Fi shows suffer from ... Season 1 Character Development. TNG, DS9, and the rest of the follow up Star Trek franchise all had this (the first season was a "Get to know the characters/setting" season), as did B5. It is a rare thing to have the characters be developed before the show starts to the point where the introduction is brief or nonexistent.
EDIT: Agreed on the loss of Alphas, Jim.
I like the show not the best thing ive ever seen but still not bad. It has the potiential to be awesome but equal (maybe even a little higher) potential to become stupid....quickly, we wil ljsut have to see how it pans out. I was unaware that they canceled alphas for it...that makes me sad as well. [stargatenerd] I think they shoulda canceled them both and made some new stargate! (or brought back universe)[/stargatenerd]
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I think it will suffer from what most Sci-Fi shows suffer from ... Season 1 Character Development. TNG, DS9, and the rest of the follow up Star Trek franchise all had this (the first season was a "Get to know the characters/setting" season), as did B5. It is a rare thing to have the characters be developed before the show starts to the point where the introduction is brief or nonexistent.
EDIT: Agreed on the loss of Alphas, Jim.
Totally agree with you here. DS9 and B5 are my favorites and both had lackluster first seasons. SCI-FI shows need some time to flesh out. Ill give Defiance the chance since its not like it has much competition for the genre.
Which leads me to apologize to smilodan. I read your comment and fired off a response that came into my head on my way to work. Castle isnt bad but its not great. Its also a detective show in a saturated market of detective shows. I don't get why sci-fi shows fight to the death just to stay on the air. Cop shows get 10 seasons easy-peasy. Hell 5 seasons is like a miracle for a science fiction show.
why not try some insect/cephalopod hybrid like race. 2 arms and legs? Try 6-8 appendages.
.....
Then there is that there would be no sexual tension with such a species ever
Eh, I'd hit it.
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I've only seen the first episode so far. I do wish the aliens were more alien and diverse, but yeah...budget.
I'm oddly frustrated. On the one hand, it's hitting close to some sweet spots that I've always wanted out of a big budget TV-series(down to earth perspective in a character-driven sci-fi setting with a diverse set of alien races living alongside each other, right down to the specifics of "Big alien guy with tiny Earth dog"), but it didn't feel like it really took full advantage of that. Things don't feel quite "alive" enough yet.
(I have to admit, I really want a Star Wars series set on Coruscant)
That and the Space Elf culture being the only one dipped inot much in the pilot didn't really catch my interest. Though I do like the idea of human-emulating Castithan "punks/goths".
I can't not think of that one character as Albino Cersei.
I kind of wish I didn't know about the MMO connection, because now I'm looking at things while watching the show and going "yeah, that looks MMO-ish".
