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Post by mndwrp on Jun 19, 2006 0:10:22 GMT -4
hey there the show is FARSCAPE It's the story of an amercian shuttle pilot accidentally thrown across the universe by a wormhole. He gets rescued by a living ship full of escaped prisonners running from a militaristic galactic empire. thats the basic premise .. the first 10 minutes of the first episode .. the general story arc is epic in nature and had me on my knees, begging for more, after each episode .. the show was on for 4 seasons for a total of 88 hour long episodes plus a 4 hour mini-series it's all available on dvd or a torrent near you (i am not involved in any way with the production or the dvd sales ;D i just love a good space fantasy !) check it out ! FARSCAPE www.farscapeworld.com/
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 19, 2006 4:07:04 GMT -4
Firefly was better
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Post by gwiz on Jun 19, 2006 6:29:16 GMT -4
I don't watch much TV sci-fi, but my son does, so there's frequently some series running in the background. Firefly is the only one that's grabbed my attention enough for me to join him in actually watching it.
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Post by mndwrp on Jun 19, 2006 9:22:04 GMT -4
Firefly had some really good stuff in it .. i had a hard time with the whole cowboys in space thing .. it was a bit overdone but it would have been interesting to see where it was going had it been given the chance.
Farscape had much more profound concepts about space/time travel and the characters from another world actually seemed alien (even if theyre still basically humanoid)
but i dont want this to become a fight on who's show is better, it's a matter of taste. theyre both great shows well worth watching but i wanted to give a heads up to people who might not have seen the little show from australia .. Farscape
cheers !
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Post by gwiz on Jun 19, 2006 9:31:41 GMT -4
Aliens are one of the problems I have with TV sci-fi. Most of the time they're too humanoid and communicating with them is too easy. I much prefer the more baffling aliens of 2001 or Forbidden Planet.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Jun 19, 2006 9:59:23 GMT -4
As Jack Cohen put it; "The problem with little green men is not that they're little or green, but that they're men"
Some sort of Universal Translating McGuffin tends to be a standard in SF, mainly because there's only so many times you can do the "How can I talk to this thing?" story, not that there haven't been fine examples of that.
Farscape on the whole did aliens reasonably well, with a relatively high proportion of (superficially) non-humanoids, although ironically, one of the sadly more neglected characters development-wise was probably Moya herself...
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Post by mndwrp on Jun 19, 2006 10:14:02 GMT -4
Aliens are one of the problems I have with TV sci-fi. Most of the time they're too humanoid and communicating with them is too easy. i totally agree with that .. but remember that it is still entertainment meant to be enjoyed by humans .. if every time they encounter a new alien they have to spend 10 years trying to decipher and understand their culture in order to talk to them .. it would make pretty boring shows .. so here comes the little tool that translates it all on the fly ! the farscape solution to this was a bit more elegant than cold technology, the translation is done directly in the brain of those injected with "translator microbes" .. so anyone injected can pretty much understand any form of verbal languages. at the beginning of the series, the puny human who finds himself on the alien ship can't understand a word theyre saying .. until he's injected i find it a cool sci-fi idea, unlike the Universal translator device used in star trek .. where the hell is that device anyway .. in their ears and mouths ? on their little communicator pins ? i never got that bit ...
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Post by mndwrp on Jun 19, 2006 10:21:07 GMT -4
the same is true for space travel in sci fi shows. you cant have a show that goes " all right lets go the the next planet .. put on your seatbelt and be patient .. we'll be there in 10 years" the narration has to go foward faster than that to make it good entertainment so .. light speed go !! .. its sci-fi right ? ;D
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jun 19, 2006 11:14:24 GMT -4
Not only is the universal translator on Star Trek able to translate alien speech instantaneously into English, it's also apparently capable of making the mouths of aliens move in time with the translation, so that it even looks like they're speaking English! And it's able to completely fool aliens from primitive cultures into thinking that the starfleet officers speaking to them are speaking their own language. And it's capable of telling when it would be dramatically appropriate for someone like Worf to speak Klingon without it being translated into English.
That's one handy piece of technology there.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jun 19, 2006 11:31:55 GMT -4
My choice for best Sci-Fi on TV currently is the new Battlestar Galactica, although it's more of a drama with sci-fi trappings than it is science fiction, in much the same vein as Firefly.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Jun 19, 2006 11:37:04 GMT -4
I really like the new Battlestar Galactica too... the season two finale was a little weird though, almost like it's going to turn out to be a bad dream or something.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jun 19, 2006 12:01:28 GMT -4
That's what's great about the new BSG (and was great about Firefly too) - they like to break the conventions of the genre you've seen in Star Trek and similar shows.
The people on BSG are not the paragon examples of humanity's best who are all the greatest experts in their field - they just happen to be what's left.
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Post by mndwrp on Jun 19, 2006 12:09:54 GMT -4
i really like BSG also .. great show .. the oly thing that bugs me about it is the technology and everyday items are way too human to be from another culture of humans that evolved somewhere else .. they even have those decorative german beer mugs with a cap on top ..
good show though .. season 3 begins in october if i'm not mistaken ..
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jun 19, 2006 12:20:10 GMT -4
That has to do with one of the central premises of the show (and the original '70s version) - that Earth and the Colonials are somehow related. They call themselves colonists, after all.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Jun 19, 2006 12:24:35 GMT -4
...it's more of a drama with sci-fi trappings than it is science fiction... Grrr, you can really wind people up saying stuff like that; it's one step away from "It can't be Science Fiction - it's good" ;D
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