The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

In the grand tradition of the fav(o/ou)rite sci-fi movie and book threads, this is the official favorite sci-fi series thread!

My picks:

Firefly
Star Trek: The Next Generation
(The new) Battlestar Galactica

Star Trek: The Original Series!  ;D

Star Wars, in spite of Jar Jar.

erm, ok, but that belongs in the movie thread...this thread is for television shows.

Oh, I thought you meant any series, period. I didn't know this was for broadcast.

In that case I'm going with Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I quite enjoy starGate, if only because of Mr anderson.

Does Knight Rider count as Sci-Fi? K.I.T.T is pretty advanced...

Why not? Because I dont sprout out random sentences and claim to be witty? I do drink, but I have trouble seeing how this would affect anything I do online...



Not to feed the troll or cause you any more drama, but you really aren't in any position to criticize grammar. Regarding mine, as a non-native english speaker I make some rather horrendous mistakes with the noble english language. It's a learn by errors process. Feel free to point out any grammatical mishaps I make if you like, I enjoy learning...

And lastly, if you're insulted you're once again taking the online forum in virtual reality far too seriously. When/If I want to insult you, I'll do it by PM rather than drowing the board in drama.

Regarding the topic, my opinions stand.

*plonk!*

Hey, at least Luki doesn't use "lol" and "u" and other AOLsp33k too often! :)

Favorite Sci-Fi Series? No idea... I don't watch Sci-Fi series that often.. Prefer the movies....

And as a perfect tie in between series and movies, I recently saw a collections DVD box with (I kid you not) the first season of Knight Rider. Apparently it also contains the movie Knight Rider 2000... Anyone familiar with that movie? It sounds so foreboding that I think I shall have to dig it up somewhere on the world wide web...

Getting back on track, I'd say the original Star Trek. While
it was cheesy as hell, that was half the fun. Watch Kirk
loose his shirt again. Who will be miss myster alien this
week?

I agree, Kirk sure did have a lot of fun. And isn't it amzing how many "earthlike" civilizations they came across, only with romans or suchlike?

"Regarding mine, as a non-native english speaker I make some rather horrendous mistakes with the noble english language."

That's not true, your english is fine. Also, remember that native english speakers make loads of mistakes. You can't very easily correct something that you didn't read, and when someone does go over the writing that they just finished, their minds fill in any gaps because they know what they are trying to say. That's why many forums have spell checkers.


"When/If I want to insult you, I'll do it by PM rather than drowing the board in drama."

So then you think we prefer stuffiness over theatre? If we have fought intragalactic battles against giant aliens bent on obliterating us, I'm sure a few typed out flames won't hurt.


"Forgot to add that in, Im posting as a quest .
Therefore, as a quest, I can not modify it.."

Oh, well then that makes perfect sense.  ???

So, REGISTER. Anyway, you're a guest, not a quest. I have only ever seen Luki make minor tangential errors, including in this thread.

OK! Favorite TV Sci fi series? B5.

Definitely Babylon 5

B5 has cheesy graphics. You feel like it should at least be interactive.

More than that, B5 is a totally cheesy show in just every respect, and I don't mean that in a good way.  The acting and dialogue are some of the worst I've ever seen.  Yeah, yeah, I know it has some grand plot running over the entire show, but it appears to be utterly soulless.  It is pretty clear that whoever is responsible for the writing in the show is poorly socialized and poorly educated (or at least doesn't let any education transfer to the writing).  I have trouble seeing how any 'grand plot' resulting from the same ilk being worth my time.

Tell us what grand achievements in literature give you the authority spill out crap like this?

Since when you need to achive something in literature to give your opinion on the subject?

I agree with Baltar about B5, I never could bear to watch an entire episode. As for graphics... I could point you to people that do better stuff in their free time.

As for my favourite series... Star Trek TNG, I guess. But I say that based on sentiment and childhood memories. I don't know, if I could bear to watch a single Star Trek episode today either.

One does not need to be able ot write abbok to have an opinion on one. Likewise does one not need to be able to play the guitar to have an opinion on guitar music. That is oner of the oldest and weakest retorts in a debate like this.

Besides, these are opinions. I liked the B5 plot, especially aroudn season 3 onwards when it started getting more involved, forgoing the one-epsiode adventures. And I seem to recall the graphic got steadily better as the series progressed. I would say that it's a bit foolhardy to dismiss the entire longspanning plot on the basis of "well, the few epsidoes I watched were crap so I decided not to watch the rest", but then again that depends on how many episodes were watched, of which I have no knowledge.

Each to their own though, everyone doesn't have to like or enjoy the same thing.

Ah... but what other way of dismissong a series do you see?
Watching more then 3 crappy episodes would, in my eyes, make you a masochist.

If I see a very bad show, I'll change the channel the next time it's on. If a friend of mine tells me that the show is good, and I must have seen a realy bad episode, then perhaps I'll give it another try. If it turns out the the show is still crap, then I'll avoid it like the plague, unless my friend would be very persuasive and would convince me to watch it one more time.... but after that, you'd have to tie me to a chair and force my eyes open a'la Clockwork Orange.

Well, if a show claims to have an underlying story that will tie in, I'd give it 5 or 6 episodes to see if it picks up. Of course, the "How many episodes" question is directly tied into the "How awful did you think the first epsiodes you watched were", which is pure opinion. For all I know, you might feel much more strongly about television shows than me in general, meaning that if I had your level of commitment I might not watch more than 3 episodes either. Since that's just a wee bit hard to measure, the conjecture is pointless.

So to reiterate, when I wrote my previous post, I was thinking 5 or 6 epsiodes, but in light of this I'd have to say there really is no guideline.

Objectively though, I'd say that someone watching fewer episodes of something because of their low pain threshold or whatnot are less able to make a serious judgement about the series as a whole. Thus, saying I watched one epsiode and made the logical conjecture that the entire series is utter crap can be a very inaccurate statement.

In conclusion, if you haven't watched more than a "few" episodes of something, while you are certainly entitlted to your own opinions, maybe you should not be so eager to give such harsh critique to the series as a whole, and rather let those better fit to do so handle it?

"Objectively though, I'd say that someone watching fewer episodes of something because of their low pain threshold or whatnot are less able to make a serious judgement about the series as a whole."

Oow, the hate is swelling in you now. . .take your weapon. . .strike him down with it. . .

Hehe, I never knew B5 was such a hot topic. And Luki, behind the veneer of euro intellectualism, you have the heart of a true berserker. I like it.

I on the other hand like the phrase "thin veneer of euro intellectualism". I shall have to make use of that somewhere.

EDIT: Waddaya know. I added thin myself because I thought it was appropriate. How Freudian.

Well you're actually quite lucky, you could have a veneer of american intellectualism (which is worse) or you could be entirely evil (like me).

As for the graphics in B5, remember when it was produced. CG was still in its infancy. I'm not surprised that people could do better in their spare time, with the tools available now.

I'm not fanatic about the show. Heck, I can cringe at Gray 17 is missing just as much as anyone else... but the show points well enough that I can see where it was aimed, and I like what I see.

Exactly.

I think that critisizing persona of JMS (or any other) on basis of something he wrote (or did NOT write, some episodes were written by others, maybe Baltar saw only a couple of those, or maybe not...) is plain stupid. Well, I'm a fan of the show, and I use that as an excuse for my less than polite words earlier...

'm actually not that much of a fan, surprisingly enough. I have seen quite a few episodes, especially from the final seasons, but I don't try to deny that the series had flaws as well as virtues.

As an interesting sidenote, I caught a glimpse of a episode from B5 season one today (A friend had bought the DVD), and it seems all CG effects have been remade. They are still far from brilliant, but they are a lot better than they originally were...

star trek. too bad its been cancelled :'(

firefly. why, god, why? again, cancelled.

stargate. i watch it when i can.

yes i did. very well done i might add. the gorn was a little over the top but all in all one of my favorite enterprise episodes.

It was a bittersweet moment learning Enterprise had been cancelled, but only because of my fondness for TOS and TNG.  Star Trek should have stopped with the conclusion of The Next Generation.  Everything since that point used 'Star Trek' in name only and dispensed with its original mission.  From the sounds of it Enterprise tried a few times but the piss poor writing quality prevented it from meeting the standard.

And yeah, I caught the mirror universe 'remake'; it was an abyssmal pile.  It had no connection with the series at large and just stumbled along from one cliche and crappy 'twist' to the next.  Oh and ending on a cliffhanger--(sarcasm) BRILLIANT!!! (/sarcasm)  It only proves how aimless the whole effort was.  Oh wait, they just wanted to needlessly rehash an element of the old series and nothing more.  mission successful I guess.  Woohoo!  What a waste of two hours.

Firefly, hands-down!  Too bad only one season of it got produced.   :'( :'( :'(

After that, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica (both incarnations) probably.

I enjoy Earth: Final Conflict a lot. The plot has more subtlety, intrigue and continuity than most sci-fi series. It is also slightly harder science fiction than most TV sci-fi.

Farscape has its good parts, but some episodes are just plain silly (although usually in a self-consistent and cool way).

Firefly was cancelled just as it was starting to get interesting. Turning the train robbery episode into the pilot episode and showing the real pilot last also made the series unnecessarily confusing.

How could I have forgotten Babylon 5? Now to atone this I shall go and perform an imaginary ritual suicide on my imaginary shelf.

Given the fair number of science fiction TV series we have these days, why is cyberpunk almost nonexistent? That could certainly be used to a good effect. The closest thing I've seen is Total Recall 2070, another excellent show which sadly only lasted for half a season. Maybe I'll go seek solace in Ghost in the Shell series.

I always liked star trek. When I was young I saw some episodes from the next generation and even the original series with Kirk! Mind you, that was in the nineties so Kirk's episodes weren't exactly up to date with their special effects, but I simply loved it! :D Kirk had this nice attitude of ,,any enemie to the federation will get a phaserblast in his face and if that isn't enough, we'll keep firing till theý get the message!"
While Picard was the eternal diplomat working for galactic peace. Deep space nine sounded a lot less interesting to me (what, they are just going to sit there for the rest of their lives?!!) and it got canceled in my part of the world pretty quik, so I've missed the whole Dominion war thing that sounds pretty cool. :'(  The ones I didn't like where Voyager and this Enterprise thing. Voyager was constantly the same, they meet a bunch of aliens and at the end of the episode, they somehow wind at least 10.000 lightyears closer to home. It's amazing how long it took them to get even to the edge of the federation with all those big jumps. And the borg were just plain wimps! compare that to the movie First Contact were a single Borg cube managed to beat up an entire fleet which also included warships whil it made its way to earth. And Enterprise, I just didn't understand it. That whole thing with these xindi who blew up part of earth. And where the hell did they get this hot rod that makes Kirk's old ship look like a model T ford?!! But apart from those two series, I always liked star trek.

JMS... Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar?

Let's see... sci fi series... how about Clone High?  Does that count?  I mean, the whole cloning-famous-dead-people-from-their-skeletons is pretty sci-fi to me.  And Butlertron?  ...or whatever his name was...?  Come on.  Totally Science Fiction at its best.

Heh, that show had a cool theme song.

"Way way back in the 1980's
secret government employees
dug up famous guys and ladies
and made amusing genetic copies..."

JMS stands for J. Michael Straczynski
:)
I don't remember what's the name behind this mysterious 'J' though...

john??? james?? B5.

Joseph.  Come on guys it took me five seconds to go to wikipedia and dig up the article.  And I don't even like B5 ;D

B5 is the best series, hands down, ever.

Btw, B5 was one of the forrunners of CGI, as in, they invented some shit that made CGI possible as it is today. Pretty revolutionary. Also, they are the only TV series (except the Prisoner) which had a story arc with a definitive beginning, middle and end, which is why it stopped in its 5th season, when ratings were highest.

The CGI was perfectly fine for the time.

The scripts were fantastic, the acting was never cheesy, and personally, I think that B5 had the only good spaceship fights to date, where the impacts on damage actually looked realistic. By comparison, I consider Andromeda the worst.

I think the B5's CG sucked when compared to that of mid to late Star Trek TNG's, which ran about the same time.

TNG had roughly (literally) 5 times the budget of B5. And they STILL went over, whereas B5 is something like the only Sci-Fi series to never once go over budget =p

How many episodes have you seen for saying this?
true, even that it's my favourite, there were some cheesy dialogues, but just like every other american  show. It's something you get used to. for example something cheesy that happened at least 20 times in the show. 'walking out of tthe door'  sinclair:"Oh and michael".... few moments of dramatic waiting. sinclair:"Thank you." that's very annoying but you get used to it.

as for the graphics, season 1 was shit graphics, but there was a major improvment in season 2 not to mention season 3 and 4.
see "Interludes and Examinations" or "Into the fire"  for example. very impressive battle graphics

Quantum Leap....

j/k

I like Star Trek TOS
the original Twilight Zone
Stargate SG-1
Stargate Atlantis
i used to watch tremors the series, but for some reason i never see it on anymore.
and a couple others i cant remember the names.

"there were some cheesy dialogues, but just like every other american show."

What? That's outrageous! Our shows aren't cheesy, they're just. . .um. . .uh. . .dramtic, or something. But hey, who on this planet churns out non-cheesy television, non-stop?

I've seen a few, both first season and not.  Don't know where you come away with such a generic statement as 'every other American show', but B5 was exceptionally bad by any standard.  Everything about it screams D-grade production.

...and the special effects weren't all that great.  It relies on 'wow'-ing people with the large scale of the battles they are seeing so that they won't notice the horrid texture on the ship that just flew by ;)

I'd rather have a nontrivial number of ships with horrid textures rather than a battle in which only one ship can be seen at once, but boy is it good-looking!

If they had a hot chick for an onboard AI, then you would probably say otherwise.  Speaking of which, Andromeda is a fairly good sci-fi series that ranks pretty high on my list.  The type of conflicts that they encounter plus the fact that they're not exactly a tight knit group to begin with makes this a very fun story.

Well, Star Trek has stupid amounts of money, and they still get canned, I dunno, maybe AAA production don't mean squat when the show is inherently crap.

Andromeda is good, Tyr is easily one of my favourite sci-fi characters, his best line was "I believe at the end of the universe only three things will remain. Tyr Anasazi,  The cockroaches, and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches." Classic =p

I agree with the above statements.
I also happen to own all the Babylon 5 DVDs.

Other ones i like are:
Startrek: Deep Space Nine.
Stargate SG-1.

B5 is the only choice for everybody. The best Sci-Fi for now and forever ! The eternal champion of TV series !

I've been checking out Doctor Who lately, and being a huge fan of the Borg, the Daleks (and Robomen) and Cybermen naturally appealed to me. The Sontarans are kinda cool aswell.

I wish there was a serie in the same style, ie. 60's-70's designs and hairstyles, but a lot more immersive and epic. Most Doctor Who episodes are just some guys in 3 different sets, and then there's some evil guys/robots pretending to be an army of 1000. In the end the doctor saves the entire world by blowing up a massive invasion fleet (consisting of 1 ship) by some doubtful and too easy method.
I really wish there was some more 'battle of Endor' scale battles, it doesn't matter if it's just silversprayed papermodels as long as it's a massive battle. One of my favourite scenes from StarWars is the M.Falcon swooshing between the battlecruisers. That would be so cool to paraphrase in a retroish manner.

I'm not sure how you can call Doctor Who anything but 'epic'.  Considering the scale of what transpires and the simple fact that he can go ANYWHERE and to ANYTIME....its just mind bogglingly huge.  And the show had an enormous (nearly 30 year) run to boot.  I'm not sure where you get off saying "Most Doctor Who episodes are just some guys in 3 different sets" as if that was a minus.  Have you watched...well...just about any other sci-fi show?  The number of environments in a given episode isn't that high for most shows.  Taking the series as a whole Doctor Who takes you to waaaaaay more places than any other show ever produced I'd wager.

As far as other shows in that style, I think you might want to check out Blake's 7.  Stylistically it is very reminiscent of Doctor Who but is centered around a galactic struggle against an oppressive goverment.  Of course, take this with a grain of salt as Iv'e only seen one episode ;D

Speaking of retro styles I've longed for a Flash Gordon-esque game, series, or movie for a long time....

Flash Gordon approaching! Launch war rocket AJAX! DIIIIIVE!

Yeah as a whole Dr Who is epic, although whimsical. However, all the episodes I've watched have the 'some ppl in a studio claustrophobia'. The fact that other series share that trait doesn't make it more okay. I dislike it wherever I see it. The Alien movies are the only ones that really got away with it I think.

I think Star Trek manages pretty well to make it seem like there's a community on the ship and a living universe around. Andromeda certainly didn't pull this off. I haven't seen B5 (not broadcasted here).

To remove the feeling of claustrophobia you need to show some planet shots, fleet shots, crowd shots, city shots, and establish environments in general. Dr Who never really did this. They just teleport into a cave and spend 40 minutes running around the same passageways, chased by a rubbersuit guy who is eventually defeated by finding the akilles heel, which incidently also destroys an entire invasion (not shown).

Dr Who is also terribly redundant. There's a lot of silver-ish robot/cyborgs, and they're always, always evil. Apparently the guy who (partially) came up with the Daleks got into an arguement with BBC and BBC had to invent new Daleks, which was the Cybermen, which are a paraphrase of the Daleks really.
The same guy went off to do Blakes 7 I think. I haven't seen it though.

But like I said, I like Dr Who cuz of the retro feel and awesome Daleks.

Call me a retro guy.

Space 1999!!!  best series ever.

You know I've been wanting to see that actually.  I remember seeing a few odd eps back when the Sci-Fi channel first started, and I remember laughing at how lame it was.  Recently I've heard some favorable comments about it, however....

Geeze let's tear each others throats out...

Well the first Star Trek WAS cheesy but it was part of it's charm.  There are times when I watch it now and think "Did I actually LIKE this melodramatic, badly written crap?"  The same Dum-dm Dum-dm dramatic music in every episode over and over again.   The first season of TNG was even worse than the old series and I refused to watch it till it's third year.

All of the Star Trek Genre has been good-feeling-always-end-the-one-hour-episode-conclusively-don't-pay-any-attention-to-real-science crap but it didn't stop me from loyally watching it.  Not to mention that everyone looks human (kudos to Farscape) and speaks the same language of English.
One of the measures of good sci fi is to ask yourself  "Do they speak the same language?  Can they breathe the same air?  Are the rules of science being obeyed thoughout the show?"

The first commander of B5 I hated and it seemed the first season was B-movie stuff but it improved steadily unlike Andromeda which started excellent (a whole lot like Blakes 7 thoughout) and sadly deteriorated to Hercules' Ego and Input...

Majel Roddenberry's guest starred on an episode of B5 where she was a psychic representing her dead husband and she stated that her husband would have approved.  The way she said it wasn't just in character.  It appeared she was giving her approval to the show for her dead husband Gene Roddenberry.   

Andromeda was so possibly the best series ever made in science fiction but then what happened to the epic tale?   Makes me cry to this day...

"Not to mention that everyone looks human (kudos to Farscape)"

Indeed, I have seen some many cheesy "humanoids" in various sci-fi series and movies, that the sight of my own homo sapien form in the mirror wells up buckets of repressed pain.

However, I don't see why you think Farscape is any better. I've never watched it, but in the commercials I've seen, there's two normal humans, a blue human, a weird harry human, and a puppet (a bad puppet).


"Andromeda was so possibly the best series ever made in science fiction but then what happened to the epic tale?"

Is that they show with captain jercules, where everybody is armed with flashlights? The ship isn't very cool, either. Only the Enterprise D is uglier.


Seriously though, if you don't what human aliens, then games are your ticket. Most don't use actors and actresses anyway.

You forgot to mention the pilot of Moya which was not humanoid.   

And Rigel the puppet was supposed to seem like a muppet because it was Jim Henson's company doing him.  There were many guest aliens that were cool and unusual and really...

come on how many sentient species are even going to resemble humans even a little bit?  Or that we are the highest evolutionary form in the universe.
Pretty pompous.

Andromeda's first season had some of the coolest sci fi from modern day writers.  Any other sci fi series have earth as slave planet, or have cyber-jacked characters,  recognize that human biologics are waaaayyyyy to slow to operate a ship (for the most part), allow that human eugenics is very realistic possibility and egads that greed will be limited to the Ferengi and humans will give up on commerce and money... geeze be realistic.   

Roddenberry was laughed at by much of his contemporaries for those concepts...

I'm saying that the sci fi in the Star Trek series didn't get to the point of any realism till Enterprise and then they still had to put the technically impossible beaming technology in that early part of humans climb to the stars too...
The amount of energy created by converting one person's mass is so enormously huge that they would be working with eneriges to rival a sun.  Otherwise the only other way to transport someone is to deconstruct atom by atom and hope you have the same elements available at the other end to rebuild a human.  Then you would need to restart their heart and everyone would wonder if their souls came along.   Never covered the missing souls of transporters victums in any ST episode TMK...

Did I say I hated crappy science in my scifi???

Well, kinda hard to find consistant information here. Not quite the power of the entire sun anyways, if we are to trust the first quote. Of course you can always say that the energy consumption for a lightbulb is equal to that of the entire sun... for a very short period of time.

Opening a wormhole might require a shitload of energy though (well, depends on the size and duration I guess). This kinda stuff is probably reserved for Type III civilizations.



I wouldn't be surprised if anatomy similar to that of humans is out there. The human configuration makes a lot of sense for this type of environment atleast. If I were to construct something different, I would probably go for a tentacled thing with radar/sonar/magnetic sensory. Tentacles are great cuz the skin is soft enough to grip and feel, and a radar sense could measure distance, something which we need two eyes and lots of experience to do.


It wouldn't take very long for humans to populate the entire galaxy though, or the entire universe. Of course spacetime being kinda tricky, it would seem like ages here on earth, but only a lifetime for the travelers. I read somewhere that any point in the entire universe can be reached within a crew lifetime (using a 1G acc force ship).

"Otherwise the only other way to transport someone is to deconstruct atom by atom and hope you have the same elements available at the other end to rebuild a human.  Then you would need to restart their heart and everyone would wonder if their souls came along."

Hehe, yea I've wondered about that.

I mean, if you break someone into bits, haven't you just killed them (permanently)? If someone died in a fire, and you found all their atoms and replaced them exactly as they used to be, would that person be resurrected?

Star Trek actually has mentioned this soul vs. teleporter thing on at least one occasion. In the episore "Daedalus" of Enterprise. They refer to the early resistance against the teleporter.
And I think, but I'm not absolutely sure, that in an Enterprise episode Barclay also mentioned this as one reason for being afraid of teleporters.

Ah yes, one of those nice things you can talk about for hours. Me, I wouldn't step into one of those damn transporters if my life depends on it. I remember seeing this episode of star trek were this guy was scared of the transporter. I felt so sorry for him, not because he was scared, but because everybody refused to listen to him and even had the guts to call it a rare disease that had to be cured with a hypospray! >:( I mean, just listen to the guy! He doesn't like being taken apart, killed and have a clone reconstructed of him!

I'm saying, the Federation isn't pacifistic, they're one of the most bloodthirsty organizations in sci-fi! They even have a method of transport that kills you as the number one means of transportation!

My revenge? I tried to make this star trek fic (never got far with it though, just an Excelsior getting blown up by the purple beam of death) were there was this race that hated transporters. I wanted to put in this scene were the human captain was complaining about the fact he had to walk, only to hear that the only transporters on the ship are used for ferrying cargo.

Anyway, I really think star trek (and most sci-fi series I know have the same problem, only different names) could use some diversity, instead of having everybody use warp,  transporters and the same damn energy gun on a daily basis. Voyager solved the problem of just one faster than light travel method, but managed to screw up by having Janeway run across this super warpdrive every week, go really fast for a while, then throw the super engine out of the window and ending with talking about how much it took of their journey. (Janeway would beat every competition at screwing up get home early opportunities)

Arne,

That 330 MTon quote is what I was trying to find.  Was it Asimov who did that calculation?

Guess I was waaaaaaayyy off on the energy levels.   The sun burns up 233,000,000 equivalent people masses EVERY SECOND.   GEEZ.

The sun is truly larger than you can fathom sometimes.

I wonder if we are capable of managing energy levels anywhere near that?  I can't find the maximum current levels in the new HAC colliders network....

They got close to explaining the transporter in the Tom/Will Riker episode.  But they wussed out...

I got the quote from a report the US military commissioned on the subject. Not sure how accurate it is. They spent 25k on it, if we are to believe internet sources. "The Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas" did the study.