Which is the better Sci Fi Show?

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Which is the better Sci Fi Show?

Star Trek (any series)
6
23%
Stargate (SG1 or Alantis)
3
12%
Babylon 5 (incl Movies and Crusade)
4
15%
Battlestar Galactica (new series)
8
31%
Star Wars (if the movies were episodes)
3
12%
Farscape
2
8%
 
Total votes: 26

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LithiumMongoose
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#16 Post by LithiumMongoose »

I have always loved B5, and have been a huge SG-1 fan since I first saw it (which wasn't at the beginning but still well before most ppl knew about it heh). Those two have to be my favorites.

I have no problems with Atlantis; McKay is awesome, and Weir and Teyla are almost as attractive as Carter and Vala. :)

That being said I really can't stand the new BSG series. Some episodes few and far between are good, like the 3 where they met the Pegasus, but overall I think they completely blew it on this. The pilot miniseries was so promising too. Sigh.

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utilae
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#17 Post by utilae »

LithiumMongoose wrote: I have no problems with Atlantis; McKay is awesome, and Weir and Teyla are almost as attractive as Carter and Vala. :)
Heh, McKay is the man.
LithiumMongoose wrote: That being said I really can't stand the new BSG series. Some episodes few and far between are good, like the 3 where they met the Pegasus, but overall I think they completely blew it on this. The pilot miniseries was so promising too. Sigh.
I agree, that those 3 pegasus ones were the best. It is interesting how the show moves through such paradym shifts, eg end season 2 where they settle on a planet and then the cylons capture them. Overall, I just want to get to Earth and see what happens. Perhaps earth will be really powerful and waste the cylons (we don't know what earth year the show is in).

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StratCaster
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#18 Post by StratCaster »

utilae wrote:It is interesting how the show moves through such paradym shifts, eg end season 2 where they settle on a planet and then the cylons capture them. Overall, I just want to get to Earth and see what happens. Perhaps earth will be really powerful and waste the cylons (we don't know what earth year the show is in).
It is a very 'new' type of show... like 'Lost' it has a lot of depth and a pretty big backstory (although Lost has a gigantic backstory). A lot goes on outside of the weekly episodes. Between Podcasts, web content, webisodes and just plain old story jumps, they leave a lot of room for character development etc... Plus the realism is a huge step in a "scifi" tv series. The space battles are amazing! Other than the Cylons looking like humans, nothing is too far fetched... the deck officers use phones with cords for pete's sake!

I think like B5, you need to watch it every week to really get into.
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

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#19 Post by Wolverine »

eleazar wrote:If you look in the graphics forums you can see there is activity in Art.
If you look on sourceforge you can see there's activity on the code.
Presumable the design team is preparing the specifications for the space-battle aspect, but there's no way to gauge that other than take their word for it.
Good to know this. There are no recent news from the dev team and I really look forward to see new version or at least some new screens.
utilae wrote:Because I have never heard of it. Dissapointing that it was one of many good shows killed by Fox.
If you have never heard of it you should download this torrent http://isohunt.com/download/11896560/sp ... and+beyond from our oh-so-famous isohunt. It's worth it really. This show has some intense action and it's placed in a timeline not really that far away from ours. ;) Reminds me of early turns in Moo2 when many frigates and nuclear missiles are flying around. :D
utilae wrote:Babylon 5 is really really good. You have to watch every episode though. You can't just watch one episode and expect to be excited.
To be honest I've seen only five movies, a pilot and a few random episodes. But I don't really get the storyline. Maybe it's because of this fragmentation in watching, but if the pilot is the first episode it really doesn't say anything about the series, no clues whatsoever. It seems like it's took out of context and you're thrown into a story you know nothing about and watching this pilot really doesn't give any answers of what to expect. I had a feeling like this show was running for quite some time before the pilot episode.
stratcaster wrote:not only that, the show is about human development - bettering yourself, for the greater good, and all that fuzzy warm stuff... and btw, its really the only show of its kind...(on a galactical level)
I agree with you completely. I didn't vote for ST, because I only like ST:TNG, other series like DS9 lost the genre spirit in my opinion.
The emperor wants to control outer space. Yoda wants to control inner space. That's the fundamental difference between the good and the bad sides of the force... - Mof, Human Traffic ;)

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utilae
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#20 Post by utilae »

Wolverine wrote: To be honest I've seen only five movies, a pilot and a few random episodes. But I don't really get the storyline. Maybe it's because of this fragmentation in watching, but if the pilot is the first episode it really doesn't say anything about the series, no clues whatsoever. It seems like it's took out of context and you're thrown into a story you know nothing about and watching this pilot really doesn't give any answers of what to expect. I had a feeling like this show was running for quite some time before the pilot episode.
The pilot/first movie episode shows how the two main races in babylon 5 met and take you thru that war. The episodes are then set years after. There are still repucusions from that war in the episodes and some mysteries.

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StratCaster
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#21 Post by StratCaster »

Wolverine wrote:I agree with you completely. I didn't vote for ST, because I only like ST:TNG, other series like DS9 lost the genre spirit in my opinion.
same here, TNG is really what ST is about. The original series was, well, it was the original..nuff said. I liked Voyager but that was a completely different concept. DS9 had its own thing going on as well, but I didn't care for it much for some reason. Enterprise had much potential, but I think the producers were so worried about keeping the show popular, it lead to their ultimate demise. It also pissed me off that they never got shields!! How much protection can polarized hull plating really give??! come on!
"The mighty warships of the Vl'Hurg Empire dived screaming upon the unknowing Earth, where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." -Hitchhikers Guide

Aquitaine
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#22 Post by Aquitaine »

Firefly would be at the top of my list. The scum under Joss Wheedon's boots would make better entertainment than most SciFi today.

Battlestar Galactica is up there as well, though. Both BSG and Firefly are 'outside the box' series that aren't really about what they're about (Wheedon is an expert at this, though).

I like moments of B5 but I found the overall series to be disappointing -- some characters became caricatures and some of the suspension of disbelief required, particularly pertaining to the political changes throughout the series, was over the top. I never even finished the fifth season as the whole 'whoops, we're in charge of the universe!' plotline to be so tremendously far-fetched and gag-inducing that I couldn't make it. But if it gets better, someone let me know and I'll find some time. :)

As far as FO development goes, the design team is working on some stuff internally -- I know it's not the FO way but we need to have a more solid base to work from before we let the public chew on what we're doing. We are reading/collecting information from the game design space threads though. I know it's been a while, but we're still working!
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#23 Post by Daveybaby »

B5 can be quite difficult to get into, depending on what bits of it you watch first. The pilot is, quite frankly, appalling. And most of the first season feels very 'star trekky' with most of the episodes being (seemingly) unrelated to each other and no obvious story arc. It also looks a bit cheap and clunky and some of the acting is a bit poor early on. After watching the pilot and the first few eps i gave up on it.

Then i happened to catch the season finale of episode 1. Oh. My. God. Sinister. Dark. Yeah yeah, big deal every sci-fi show is like that now, but at the time i think that was a first for TV sci-fi. After that i was hooked. Seasons 2 & 3 are some of the best sci fi ever made for TV. Season 4 was a bit rushed because they got told they werent going to get a 5th season, and had to pack the last 2 seasons worth of story arc into 1. Then AFTER that they got the greenlight for the 5th season and didnt really have anything to put in it, hence it being a bit rubbish.
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Geoff the Medio
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#24 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Daveybaby wrote:It also looks a bit cheap and clunky...
My favourite scene is in episode 4x21 - Rising Star. It's just after they've liberated Earth. Sheridan and the various ambassador main characters all take turns giving speaches about how great they are and telling the world about the new Interstellar Alliance. It's a huge important state function in front of billions of viewers, and these dignified alien abassadors are all sitting on cheap plastic chairs of the sort you might find filling the gym at a high-school graduation.

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eleazar
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#25 Post by eleazar »

Aquitaine wrote:I never even finished the fifth season as the whole 'whoops, we're in charge of the universe!' plotline to be so tremendously far-fetched and gag-inducing that I couldn't make it. But if it gets better, someone let me know and I'll find some time. :)
I found the 5th season to be something of a let-down at first, after all we already did the big climax. But i got into it again as the season went on.

Sure the special effects weren't as shiny as some of the same period, and they were plauged by problems such as major characters leaving and the treatened demise of the show, which did mess some things up.

What i really did like is the whole continuous story thing, and the fact that it was a basicly a good story. Some of the characters become radically different people over time (an idea Joss Wheedon got ahold of). That's why i'm not really fond of the B5 movies which aren't strongly connected to the continuity of the show, and seem like an after thought.

LithiumMongoose
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#26 Post by LithiumMongoose »

StratCaster wrote:
utilae wrote:It is interesting how the show moves through such paradym shifts, eg end season 2 where they settle on a planet and then the cylons capture them. Overall, I just want to get to Earth and see what happens. Perhaps earth will be really powerful and waste the cylons (we don't know what earth year the show is in).
It is a very 'new' type of show... like 'Lost' it has a lot of depth and a pretty big backstory (although Lost has a gigantic backstory). A lot goes on outside of the weekly episodes. Between Podcasts, web content, webisodes and just plain old story jumps, they leave a lot of room for character development etc... Plus the realism is a huge step in a "scifi" tv series. The space battles are amazing! Other than the Cylons looking like humans, nothing is too far fetched... the deck officers use phones with cords for pete's sake!
Imo the best thing BSG could do storywise is eventually find Earth, and then have a whole season (at least) dedicated to the massive ensuing war. I'm convinced that'll never happen simply because it's what I think they should do, but then again it'd be another paradigm shift too. :)

Make no mistake, I like most of the elements of the new BSG. The sets, the ships, the actors, the corded phones on the bridge, the backstory, the documentary-style presentation, the music, ALL of that is great by me. I don't even mind the human-looking Cylons (heck they got Xena and Dean Stockwell on the show because of that). I was actually more psyched up for the series after the pilot aired than I have been for anything in a long while, so much potential.

And then, Rozalin started having visions. We got into religious debates. Baltar kept being an idiot every chance he had. In a show that tries very hard to be realistic, and consistently steers clear of even hinting at mysterious, super-advanced technology (like the Ancients have in SG-1 for example), in a show like THAT the main characters are mysteriously and without explanation teleported to another location and shown a holographic-style starmap leading to Earth (around the end of Season 1).

I actually love the actors behind Adama and Rozalin especially. The music in the first Pegasus ep made me buy the season 2 soundtrack CD. The space battles are nice. The drama is mostly nice. I even liked the "1 year later..." plot twist at the end of Season 2 (though one other person I know didn't heh). I WANTED to love this show. I still do. But I can't. Baltar's incessant lunacy plus the heavy religious overtones (thanks to these being the same ppl who brought us Deep Space Nine) plus some other stuff too ruins it for me.

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utilae
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#27 Post by utilae »

eleazar wrote: I found the 5th season to be something of a let-down at first, after all we already did the big climax. But i got into it again as the season went on.
Yeah, the big climax as in the episode that showed us millions of years into the future. I did like season 5 though. Season 4 was awesome. It was great they managed to fit "taking back Earth" into the season. But season 5 was really great in that it involved the Interstellar Aliance. I wish they would have had a season 6 to flesh out the telepath war and the drahk war. Crusade picks up after those two items of interest. I would like to see if Lyta the telepath lived through the war. And of course, Crusade should have gone on for five seasons, heh, that was starting to be good (ignoring the fact that episode order is in question).

Also they should show everything leading up to and a little bit after the point where Londo and G'Kar kill each other. Maybe some more stuff involving Sheridan and Delens son David too.
eleazar wrote: What i really did like is the whole continuous story thing, and the fact that it was a basicly a good story. Some of the characters become radically different people over time (an idea Joss Wheedon got ahold of). That's why i'm not really fond of the B5 movies which aren't strongly connected to the continuity of the show, and seem like an after thought.
Yes, they had a plan, a story that slowly develops over five years. One of it's strongest features.
LithiumMongoose wrote: Imo the best thing BSG could do storywise is eventually find Earth, and then have a whole season (at least) dedicated to the massive ensuing war. I'm convinced that'll never happen simply because it's what I think they should do, but then again it'd be another paradigm shift too. :)
Another reason why it won't happen is because that would be the last or second to last season ever.
LithiumMongoose wrote: And then, Rozalin started having visions. We got into religious debates. Baltar kept being an idiot every chance he had. In a show that tries very hard to be realistic, and consistently steers clear of even hinting at mysterious, super-advanced technology (like the Ancients have in SG-1 for example), in a show like THAT the main characters are mysteriously and without explanation teleported to another location and shown a holographic-style starmap leading to Earth (around the end of Season 1).
Yes, that was a load to take. Rozalin, sigh, I hate. Baltar, sigh, he's an idiot and makes dum decisions. Going back to earth to get the arrow was good, certainly the search for the temple thingy was good too. Though we know if stargate did this, they would have had some puzzle that Daniel Jackson would solve to get to Earth. But no, they got teleported to some kind of map thing.

Mateo1041
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#28 Post by Mateo1041 »

Definitely StarTrek for me. I never got into Deep Space Nine or the newer Enterprise, but I absolutely loved Voyager and The Next Generation. It's a shame they're not on basic TV anymore.

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