Xevallah

The 4400 has been renewed, as has Surface. Threshold is indeed axed, along with Night Stalker. Facts, get em' straight. Regenesis on Canada, and Charlie Jade was fantastic but I'm not sure it was renewed or not. There's also Hyperspace, and a few more I'm probably forgetting. Lost can be classed under sci-fi in a X-Files sort of way. Supernatural in a Smallville type of way. There's a few new sci-fi type shows in production for TNT, TBS, Sci-Fi etc for a fall release. I forget what they are though. Edit 1: oh right, one of them is the new Blade TV series on Spike.

Not only is Soderbergh's Solaris better in every respect, it is easily the most beautiful science fiction ever put to film. Easily. I was relunctant at first to brandish this opinion in public as it is relatively new, but after much time was spent on the can, and in the shower among other places dwelling on the matter, I finally realized that I couldn’t think of anything that even comes close to Solaris. This isn't an "IMHO" either, it's fact! OK-ok, Obviously science fiction is a genre for teenagers and tasteless adults, and movies like Alien, Matrix, Event Horizon, Buckaroo Banzai, Star Wars, the Star Treks--they're all great, but Solaris is Sci-Fi for grown ups and admittedly, Solaris serves to quench that appetite, not that of heroes, spandex, and lasers. I will concede to that atleast. The two juggernauts that come up when discussing serious science fiction are 2001 and Blade Runnerâ€â€ÂI’ll take the liberty of a little preemption: 2001 was a great feat for it's time, but now? It’s dated, behind the awe of piano string and camera tricks lays a film of philosophical exposition, devoid of character and essentially...the cinematic equivalent of a soul. Obviously this is a result of having a movie that focuses most of its attention on symbolism and a chatty analytical AI over the forgettable man of few words that is David Bowman. It’s a movie about mankind with no humanity, and it’s simply a movie that can’t move you once it's visual grandeur has faded. Blade Runner is terribly overrated. While 2001 was the masterpiece of it’s time, Blade Runner was always at best just an alright film. A bore, but with a great atmosphere, unfortunately the story can best be described as a bird flapping it's wings trying to gain the uplift of the current, only to fall flat onto the pavement. My opinion on Blade Runner is a bit more subjective then that of 2001, but I honestly can’t comprise anything great from this film. The only thing of note in the entire film is Batty's last words. That's it! I always wondered why it was such a popular quote. Turns out it's because it's the only thing worth watching the movie for! Great Movie! i just bought the superbit DVD and it's incredible! Well bartered for it my brothers friend from England and i trade alot of stuff!!! Can anyone tell me why Empire Strikes Back is so underrated I really thought this was the best Star Wars film. I can. It's not. ESB is considered by popular opinion to be the greatest of the OT. Ask anyone.

Really, if you think the US government murders its own people, and you are an abiding tax paying citizen, that makes you complicit in these alleged murders. And if you're from Europe...hating America is your national passtime so it's understandable why tinfoil hat freaks like Alex Jones get attention.

The thing with aliens is that they are still just manifestations of human beings while at the same time you completely alienate (no pun intended) your audience. How do you plan to convey a reference or humor from an alien’s perspective? It's not impossible but more likely then not you're going to lock yourself into stale monotone dialogue a-typical of the genre when two aliens exchange words (Think of a 20 minute conversation between 2 Asgard). It's even worse in that you have these super powerful trans-universal beings. All of the interesting aliens are the petty humanoid ones like Talaxians, not the higher evolved ones. I'm just skeptical, that's all. Personally I'm looking for a more human approach or an extension of the almost fantasy like way aliens are dealt with on Farscape or in the Star Wars universe. Revolvers, eye patches, blue grass music, and good guys winning? There are no good guys.

Two tired arguements in a row. Here...I'll give you some ideas...if you're going to have aliens in a show....make sure they are not all one dimensional and conform to a general stereotype. Romulans =sneaky, Klingons=crude, etc, etc. Pretty lame. Humans have to be a central focal point of the show...somehow. Hell, go ahead and make them the bad guys if you want. But that's just the way it is. You have to have characters as the central point to your story, epic struggles between galactic super powers are cool but get old pretty quick if you have no emotional investment in characters. I have lots of ideas, but I'm saving them for a script I may or may not co-author with someone.

Right, so what about all these writers in the 50's and 60's who cashed on the Flying Saucer mania and printed out formulaic stories involving little green men or other cliché elements ham fisted for journals in under a few days? Brimming with creativity, no!? Nothing has changed in the last 50 years.

Cable companies don't do much in the way of curtailing pirating because...let's face it...what do you need a 5mb line for...really? If I didn't pirate, I'd be very happy with a DSL connection. Pages don't load any faster.

It's still a rot of an argument. Commercialism only increases output, it doesn't inherently degrade quality. There is still an audience for intelligable sci-fi, thus we have Battlestar Galactica, Solaris, etc, etc. And if you don't think sci-fi has been commercial since its inception you have no sense of history.

Your shows would not get shown on TV because no one cares about The Conquest of Matter-Reality, Dimension Lords, Time Roots, Infinity Circuits, Crystalons, and the rest of these clichéd constructs you made up in the shower. Your whole shtick about corporatism and how it sucks the bad guys never win is so tired and stereotypical of an angst ridden youth who needs to grow up. C4- How is a picture of Sadam Hussein offensive? Do you cower under your bed when his trial comes on C-Span? Do you close your eyes when his picture is brought up in the news? Is having him as my avatar somehow construed as my endorsement of gassing kurds?

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess you're about 16...17 tops and listen to NIN.

Wow, first off some of you people need to accept that for the most part science fiction is a B genre (Same as horror and fantasy): the Sci-Fi channel makes lame creature feature TV movies month after month and Hollywood releases PG-13 movies with scantily clad (but never fully exposed) women and an explosion every 10 minutes because the audience for this kind of stuff are teenagers and tasteless adults. There is scifi content that is on a equal footing with the works from the premiere genres, but they are few and far between. Now if anyone thinks this is new, you're wrong. This year alone there has actually been a huge leap forward in bringing quality science/speculative fiction into the mainstream. LOST is the biggest tv cult phenomenon since the X-Files, Battlestar Galactica (the more identifiable scifi show) is making it "okay" to rank a scifi (on cable no less) up there with Desperate Housewives, CSI, and 24. (We are talking about 2005 right?) Filmwise we had Serenity and a few other good movies I can't recall off the top of my head. But you need to understand that all these things are for the most part cyclical. At present, the genre is a peak. In a few years it will probably be a low.

You can't be serious.

Don't put text in avatars...hard to read and detracts from the image. 5/10 Doesn't change the fact he's celebrating evil!

The Morale of the story? What was the message of the episode when they traveled back in time to 1930s Chicago? Tommy Gun = good? I can recall lots of ambiguous and altogether meaningless statements about Humanity via Kirk and Spock exchanges. Really, people try too hard to add another layer to the show when it really didn't exist and if it did, was executed in such a way it seemed like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in comparison to the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. No one watched Star Trek for the mental stimulation or "The Morale". It'd be the modern equivalent of a 40 minute show starring Vin Diesel where he does nothing but hunt and kill people, fornicate with their women, and then comes back to his cabin in the final 2 minutes, sips on a pipe and quotes passages from Genesis.

Wrong. Nice avatar though. I think Venom killed lots of innocent people too. 7

4, too much whitespace.

Speaking purely of television and cinema, this whole idea that science fiction used to have a message always baffles me. Rodenberry does one episode that is arguably a metaphor for racism and intolerance and suddenly that validates the entire show as social commentary? Give me a break. There where a few sci-fi shows that had messages, more specifically made the viewer ask questions, saying TV shows should "have messages" brings out an Orwellian chill down my spine. Isn't that essentially propaganda? Anyway, The Prisoner, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc. The last two have had modern remakes that basically did the same thing, so I don't see any digression there. Cinema wise there has been a steady stream (however thin) of serious science fiction movies since the 50s. Why recently I watched Soderbergh's Solaris. A modern masterpiece. Beats the original, 2001, and Blade Runner hands down. I find most of these “In the good ol’ days†rants are just people exercising their over active nostalgia complexes. Next thing you know people are going to start using the word "wholesome" while completely ignoring the god awful short skirts in TOS or the fact that any science fiction movie predating 1985 is nearly garunteed to have exposed breasts in it.

If Peter Weller playing a smooth talkin' past his prime Apollo astronaut and Sebastian Roche as a godless sardonic intellectual aren’t enough incentive to download, I don't what is. What about the fact that this is what Manny Coto was doing before he single handedly shot 20cc's of life into the the 4th season of Enterprise? The show was cancelled because Showtime did an evaluation shortly after they got rid of Stargate SG-1 and saw that of the 3 or 4 their original series, two of them where sci-fi shows: This and Jeremiah. They didn't want the association with sci-fi any longer and axed both shows. Stupid considering they are planning a "Masters of Sci-Fi" show last I heard. They also got rid of the fantastic Dead Like Me. I wish I could say Weeds or Huff where reviting but Sleeper Cell surely was and Penn and Teller's Bullshit! is a great piece of entertainment. (Did they renew it?)

Please, Crichton himself had more emotional resonance then the entire 5 seasons of Babylon 5. It might not of completely taken the science in science fiction seriously, but neither does Galactica. I empathized more with puppets in Farscape then I ever did with Dr Franklin or Ivonova. As for Firefly, you're actually the first person I've heard say Firefly was awful. Buck Rogers wasn't awful, that is if you possess the ability to take the show for what it was and not evaluating it on some criteria of what you think each and every sci-fi show should be. Dracoons- I don't know, "monsters" composed of black smoke and the other supernatural elements in the show certainly do lean toward sci-fi as a secondary or tertiary label, even if it is atypical of the genre. I wasn't comparing the two either. It is a quality show, and it is has not "lost itself". Season 1 generated too much hype and the second season is naturally feeling the effects of its die down. Lots of people are just pissed they don't know all the secrets of the island! Wahhhh! The plotting, storylines, and character development are all proceeding at the same pace and quality. It's just lost that new car smell for alot of people it seems.

Truly THE most over-rated Sci-Fi show of all time. Don't get wrong, it was a great series overall once you got passed the tragedy of the first season. (Tragedy in that it was put to film) JMS isn't really all that great either. He makes mediocre shows that on occasion border brilliance. Jeremiah's "Captain Iron" speech, Marcus's "You Want War?", Sheridan's declaration of separation at the end of season 3(?), the characters and relationship between G'Kar and Lando or Kurdy and Jeremiah. But like I said, the shows themselves are uneven and mostly average on mediocrity. Good show, just way too many people consider it the best thing since sliced bread.