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#1 Aug 28 2012 at 10:11 PM Rating: Good
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Not talking ghost hunters or haunted what ever they are showing these days, or even when ever they decide to show wrestling (I guess it's fiction, so it kind of fits, right?)

Alphas
Warehouse 13
Haven

Warehouse 13 and Alphas started up a few weeks ago. They shifted their time slots to 8pm and 9pm instead of 9pm and 10pm, I can only assume so it didn't have to compete with Grimm at 10pm that just started up.

Next month Haven starts back up.

I'm not quite sure I like what they did in Warehouse 13. After the end of the last season, the premiere this season kind of made me say "Really?" I guess we'll see where it goes.

Alphas, I'm interested in. I do like what they are doing with Stanton Parish. I'm not sure if I'd be as interested in it if it weren't for Gary's character. Yesterday's episode had Summer Glau in it. I'm not sure if it was the makeup, or if she's just getting that much older now. Definitely doesn't look like the little girl she did in Firefly (The only thing I ever really watched her in).

Haven, I hope it goes well. I liked the last season, and am looking forward to the next. It's been so long I think I have to go back and watch the last few episodes of the last season as a refresher (or, I'm sure they'll marathon it a day or two before the season premiere).

Edit:
I guess there's Lost Girl too. I never watched that one, it seemed like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or that one about the three female witches. Just an excuse to put hot girls and make them all kick butt... Maybe it actually has an interesting story, I dunno.

Edited, Aug 29th 2012 12:20am by TirithRR
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#2 Aug 29 2012 at 4:31 PM Rating: Decent
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Since the final episode of Eureka aired (actually a fairly good series finale) I haven't really cared too much about the SciFi channel. None of their newer shows appeal to me. I've tried to watch all every show you listed, but I don't find any of the characters to be particularly interesting. On the subject of SciFi channel shows, I'm a bit annoyed that SGU started out so slow. A lot of people gave up on it, but it finally started to get good about three episodes from the end. I would love to have seen a second season.

Edited, Aug 29th 2012 6:33pm by Turin
#3 Aug 29 2012 at 4:43 PM Rating: Good
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It tried so hard to be BSG, and that's why it failed. Both SG-1 and Atlantis were lighthearted scifi/action/comedies with a few emotional episodes. As soon as the series turned into the emo/backstab boat it was doomed, it even managed to drag the Atlantis finale movie down with it.

Honestly the Sergeant (Greer I think) was the best character in SGU.
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#4 Aug 29 2012 at 4:47 PM Rating: Good
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Turin wrote:
On the subject of SciFi channel shows, I'm a bit annoyed that SGU started out so slow. A lot of people gave up on it, but it finally started to get good about three episodes from the end. I would love to have seen a second season.


There are two seasons. I agree that it should have a third though. I think they could sometime next year start up a third season and have it "fit" where they left off the second season.

And just so you know, Warehouse 13 and Haven aren't exactly "new". Warehouse 13 started back in 2009 and is in it's fourth season. Haven started in 2010 and is going to be starting it's third season.
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#5 Aug 29 2012 at 7:22 PM Rating: Decent
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TirithRR wrote:
I'm not quite sure I like what they did in Warehouse 13. After the end of the last season, the premiere this season kind of made me say "Really?" I guess we'll see where it goes.


Yeah. That kinda came out of left field. Wasn't the watch that he used the same one that MacPherson used to cause time to back up like 20 seconds at a time (and which was what he used to kill Myka's old partner and made her think that she was somehow late getting there to save him)? Maybe it was a different watch, but I had assumed that Artie would just use the watch to back time up a bit, and then have HG surround the bomb in the shield instead of the people, thus saving them all. I guess the writers wanted a more dramatic (and much more involved) means to get out of that predicament.

Just found it strange since the watch did something completely different (and not very sensible really except as a plot device). Even with the way they went with it, I'm not sure why Spiner's character is so upset. You'd think that the negatives of using the astrolabe can't possibly be worse than what was happening anyway and he'd recognize that this was the right time to use it. Guess the writers wanted something more dramatic than having characters act like they have some degree of common sense though. Not really liking the plot thread they're going through as a result at all.

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Alphas, I'm interested in. I do like what they are doing with Stanton Parish. I'm not sure if I'd be as interested in it if it weren't for Gary's character. Yesterday's episode had Summer Glau in it. I'm not sure if it was the makeup, or if she's just getting that much older now. Definitely doesn't look like the little girl she did in Firefly (The only thing I ever really watched her in).


Alphas has been kinda hit or miss for me. I keep waiting for the show to have an overarching purpose/direction. I guess Parish provides it, sorta. But I still just don't get the sense like the series has meshed yet. It's almost like there's disagreement among the writers/producers of the show over which direction to go. They do this whole "reveal alphas to the world" bit at the end of season 1, then start this season with dramatic (and relatively unbelievable) changes, then spend the first handful of episodes putting everything back the way it was in season 1. I'm not a fan of drama injected into a story purely for the sake of having more drama, but that seems to be what they're doing.

Pick a direction and go IMO. And while the Parish thing is interesting, other than somewhat random seeming side stuff, he doesn't appear to actually be doing anything at all. I'm sure that will change, but it seems like they're just using him as a boogieman backdrop to justify other seemingly unrelated things. The best fiction story arcs involve first deciding exactly who the bad guy is, and what his plan is and *then* writing him into the story. So far, I get the sense that they're just winging it with this one. I hope I'm wrong.

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Haven, I hope it goes well. I liked the last season, and am looking forward to the next. It's been so long I think I have to go back and watch the last few episodes of the last season as a refresher (or, I'm sure they'll marathon it a day or two before the season premiere).


I really like the direction, pacing, and style of this series. The season1 ending was fantastic. Their management of this through season 2 was clearly well thought out. While they had the normal amount of throwaway/filler episodes, they've done a great job at moving a steady plot forward. This is a show that clearly was thought out ahead of time, and acted on logically along the way. I much prefer that to shows that seem like the writers just went "what twist can we put in to make this more interesting" and hope a storyline emerges as a result. Even when they introduce new elements (like Duke realizing he's some kind of troubled person hunter) they fit into the story arc well.

And there's still a ton of secrets still floating around to keep interest. That's what I really like about the series. It's quite obvious that numerous different people know a lot more than they tell anyone, but each keeps that information within a small circle of people, so no one really knows everything. I'm still waiting to see how the brothers who run the newspaper fit into it all. Those two absolutely have a lot of hidden stuff surrounding them. Dunno. I just like the series. It's fun, interesting, but not too heavy.
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#6 Aug 29 2012 at 7:40 PM Rating: Good
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Unfortunately I missed a lot of what happened in the first season of Warehouse 13. I understand the gist of what occurred during it, but the details are not there. It all happened before I got my DVR and started using it a lot. Now I record anything and everything I may want to watch and decide later.

I agree with Alphas not being very set on what they want to do. I still think they had planned on ending it after the first season, and the writers weren't really expecting a second. It's going to be very Xmen-ish. Parish probably going the route of Magneto. Dr. Rosen taking the role of Charles.
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#7 Aug 29 2012 at 7:56 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
TirithRR wrote:
I'm not quite sure I like what they did in Warehouse 13. After the end of the last season, the premiere this season kind of made me say "Really?" I guess we'll see where it goes.


Yeah. That kinda came out of left field. Wasn't the watch that he used the same one that MacPherson used to cause time to back up like 20 seconds at a time (and which was what he used to kill Myka's old partner and made her think that she was somehow late getting there to save him)? Maybe it was a different watch, but I had assumed that Artie would just use the watch to back time up a bit, and then have HG surround the bomb in the shield instead of the people, thus saving them all. I guess the writers wanted a more dramatic (and much more involved) means to get out of that predicament.


The watch you're thinking of was the nautical timepiece from the Philadelphia Experiment ship. It didn't rewind time, it just affected the perception and senses of the target. To the victim it made it seem that they were frozen in time while the world around them was still normal.

The whole shield thing irritated me too, until I realized that it probably wasn't strong enough to contain the main blast but just strong enough to protect someone from the splash effect.

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#8 Aug 29 2012 at 7:57 PM Rating: Good
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TirithRR wrote:
Unfortunately I missed a lot of what happened in the first season of Warehouse 13. I understand the gist of what occurred during it, but the details are not there. It all happened before I got my DVR and started using it a lot. Now I record anything and everything I may want to watch and decide later.


Netflix has Warehouse 13 if you want to catch up on the story.
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#9 Aug 29 2012 at 8:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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Stargate Universe was just starting to get good when they cancelled it. But, it may have been for the best. One of the writers posted a synopsis of what the last several episodes would have been, and it was pretty bad. Basically The Ancients at the time the Destiny as launched didn't have Acension, but they knew what the mysterious signal that desteny was following was, and it it was apperently a big universe reset button center of some sort. Every billions of years, the universe's warranty expires, so some ship goes to that spot at the core, sets off a huge explosion, I.E. a Big Bang, and in doing so that ship and only its contents is somehow thrown through the explosion to be the ark for the next universe. The ancients would have used the planet with the huge naquadria generator that was destroyed in the initial episode to go to destiny en masse once it got where it was, hit Ctrl. Alt. del, and then boom! The Chair thingy that everyone thought was an ascencionometer was supposedly the control method for setting this off. Then acension happened and all the ancients lost interest or became gooey light beams. So, long story short, Desteny gets there, rush tries to trigger the explosion, all the bad guys from the previous seasons show up because they don't want the universe exploded and they really aren't that bad once you get to know them. Alien hybrid chick Chloe ends up doing some sort of space warp thing as the episode progressed, dumped the desteny back in earth orbit long enough to let everyone escape in the stargate, but then destiny is going to warp back and she'll be killed, big teary farewell, etc. But then at the last minute her unborn child from the future uses psychic future powers to go and kick her off destiny and let it explode on its own, preventing her demise and that of the entire universe.

And I realize thats a very quick summary and hardly sufficeint evidence to go off of, but near as I can tell the link where the actual season 3 scripts were posted has been obliterated. Probably copyright issues or something. But it was pretty bad. I'll see if I can find them somewhere else. Could have been fan made hoaxes too, but the person who posted them origionally was one of the writers, so no reason to hoax. Not sure why he pulled them though.
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#10 Aug 29 2012 at 10:59 PM Rating: Good
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I like the characters in Warehouse 13, but the plot is pretty much a game of "Will it blend".
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#11 Aug 30 2012 at 5:11 PM Rating: Decent
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Stargate Universe was just starting to get good when they cancelled it. But, it may have been for the best. One of the writers posted a synopsis of what the last several episodes would have been, and it was pretty bad. Basically The Ancients at the time the Destiny as launched didn't have Acension, but they knew what the mysterious signal that desteny was following was, and it it was apperently a big universe reset button center of some sort. Every billions of years, the universe's warranty expires, so some ship goes to that spot at the core, sets off a huge explosion, I.E. a Big Bang, and in doing so that ship and only its contents is somehow thrown through the explosion to be the ark for the next universe. The ancients would have used the planet with the huge naquadria generator that was destroyed in the initial episode to go to destiny en masse once it got where it was, hit Ctrl. Alt. del, and then boom! The Chair thingy that everyone thought was an ascencionometer was supposedly the control method for setting this off. Then acension happened and all the ancients lost interest or became gooey light beams. So, long story short, Desteny gets there, rush tries to trigger the explosion, all the bad guys from the previous seasons show up because they don't want the universe exploded and they really aren't that bad once you get to know them. Alien hybrid chick Chloe ends up doing some sort of space warp thing as the episode progressed, dumped the desteny back in earth orbit long enough to let everyone escape in the stargate, but then destiny is going to warp back and she'll be killed, big teary farewell, etc. But then at the last minute her unborn child from the future uses psychic future powers to go and kick her off destiny and let it explode on its own, preventing her demise and that of the entire universe.

And I realize thats a very quick summary and hardly sufficeint evidence to go off of, but near as I can tell the link where the actual season 3 scripts were posted has been obliterated. Probably copyright issues or something. But it was pretty bad. I'll see if I can find them somewhere else. Could have been fan made hoaxes too, but the person who posted them origionally was one of the writers, so no reason to hoax. Not sure why he pulled them though.


I think that was fan fiction, not anything official. Not that it's not possible that some of the elements were driven by actual ideas being floated around, but I don't think they had a plan going that far forward at the point the series was canceled. Given the presumption that they'd intend for the series to run as long as possible, about the only part I'd expect to be reasonably based on the intent of the writers would be the purpose of the signal in the background radiation. Certainly, the level of detail in these stories would not have been written or planned at that point.
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#12 Aug 31 2012 at 9:12 AM Rating: Good
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There are a handful of Sci-Fi series on Netflix, but almost all of them were ones with abrupt cancellations without any plot tie-up.

Alphas, Warehouse 13, and Eureka are all on there though, so I think I'll be checking them out.
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#13 Oct 26 2012 at 10:07 PM Rating: Good
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This week was the season finale of Alphas.

I really liked what they did with the season. They gave Parish a side you could feel for. Then they turned Rosen into a crazy old man bent on nothing but revenge. Near the end there you kind of felt that he was the bad guy. When he erased all of Parish's stored personal memories and burned his family farm to the ground out of pure revenge, even after learning about Parish's true feelings for his daughter.

I didn't mind how they ended the season, but I hope they'll do another.

And I still really like Gary. "I don't like horses. They look confused."
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#14 Oct 26 2012 at 10:13 PM Rating: Good
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I'm having trouble getting into Alphas. Part of it is that I really can't stand Bill. I'm assuming he'll develop an actual character eventually, but he's just too much of that macho-cop archetype for me to take. Plus, the way he picks on Gary really bothers me. I do like Rachel, and I think I like Nina? Not sure yet.

But I don't know, something's not clicking with me. Maybe it's the fact that the group doesn't have chemistry yet, so it just feels too jumbled for me to enjoy.
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#15 Oct 26 2012 at 10:25 PM Rating: Good
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Plus, the way he picks on Gary really bothers me.


I don't recall him ever really 'picking' on Gary. But Bill and Gary do become close friends. Everyone in the team seems to care about him a lot, even from season 1.

Gary just cracks me up. Cause it's like he doesn't get various figures of speech, but realizes what they are and uses them himself. Like he knows a secret of Hicks, is about to spill it, and Hicks says "Gary I'll kill you." His response "No, you can't, that'd be a felony." And later for the same figure of speech, he says in reponse "No, I'll kill you first, I get up at 7:35." (or some randomly specific time).
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#16 Oct 26 2012 at 10:37 PM Rating: Good
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It's just the way his confrontational nature manifests itself. He's bullying everyone, which I figure will be a part of his character development, but the way he bullies Gary is to pick at the traits caused by his autism, not the little things he tends to target for everyone else. It just really irks me.
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#17 Nov 09 2012 at 9:21 AM Rating: Good
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I really really liked the whole first season of SGU. I thought it was very grown up, with it's demonstration of how humans clash when they have pretty much exactly the same goals, but different opinions on what means will work to get everyone there. I adored the personality clashes between the military leader and the science leader, they got the best scenes. The Asian government leader was also great storyline wise. Very strong supporting cast in many of the other roles. Was disappointed that SGU was canned.

I really enjoyed first season of Continuum, even if it isn't first rate TV like Dexter, GOT, Mad Men or Breaking Bad. My theory on Continuum is that everything that is happening in the past is going to guarantee that things wind up exactly the same in the future. I
#18 Nov 12 2012 at 3:41 PM Rating: Decent
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I was disappointed that SGU got canned as well, because I thought they were just finally getting their feet underneath them in the second season. I suspect that if they'd been given a third the show would have gone on for quite some time longer.

Aripyanfar wrote:
I really really liked the whole first season of SGU. I thought it was very grown up, with it's demonstration of how humans clash when they have pretty much exactly the same goals, but different opinions on what means will work to get everyone there. I adored the personality clashes between the military leader and the science leader, they got the best scenes. The Asian government leader was also great storyline wise. Very strong supporting cast in many of the other roles.


I actually disagree with this. I think the conflict was way overdone and frankly led to the demise of the series. It was only when they finally seemed to have worked out those silly conflicts (more or less) and started working together that the series started to get really good. Unfortunately, it was too late to save it. While such conflict makes for great drama, it's not even remotely a realistic depiction of how humans interact in a crisis situation. We tend to think it is because we've been inundated with dramas that show exactly that depiction since we've been watching TV and film, but in reality people don't do those sorts of things. In the real world, you can find very close to zero examples of people being stranded/trapped/whatever and then turning on each other for petty reasons. In the real world, crisis and strife bonds people together. Sure, may not make great TV to show everyone set aside their differences for common survival, but that's what happens.

Some of the conflicts in the show seemed ridiculously contrived, apparently purely to create "drama" among the stranded crew. And that's what killed the show IMO. A little drama? Sure. But it seemed like the entire first season consisted of people attempting to gain some imaginary benefit by keeping secrets, plotting against each other, and otherwise taking actions that made no damn sense at all. Does anyone really believe that a group of civilian scientists, who've been working for at least a year (some of them longer) on an offworld base run by the military, upon finding themselves stranded on a ship on the other side of the universe with no way home would suddenly *then* decide that military command of the operation was intolerable? Why? It makes no sense at all.


I just think there's been a trend in TV to artificially create drama, not because it makes any sense at all from the perspective of the characters, but out of a belief by screenwriters that "drama sells". Well, it does. But not when it's done for the sake of the drama itself. Good writers would create situations and allow the drama to unfold naturally and logically. But there seem to be a hell of a lot of bad writers out there, and they seem to have gravitated to sci fi TV shows as their medium of choice. The result is a steady stream of shows with promising premises, but which fail because the audience just doesn't believe the characters because they don't act in any sort of rational or consistent manner.
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