Sci-Fi we can do without

[Listener]

I'll put in my vote for "Mission to Mars".


Good frigging grief that was a horrendous piece of crap, as much as I happen to adore tim robbins and gary sinese.

I will have to admit to liking lexx, what I saw of it. It was different, and amused me. I met the guy who played stanley a few years ago, he was pretty cool.

Mission to Mars was really, REALLY boring, and the ending wasn't that great, but I don't hate myself for watching it.

Red Planet, which I never saw but really never wanted to see either, was a Mars movie with a great line in it, though:

Val Kilmer: "This is it."
Woman: "What?"
Val Kilmer: "That moment our teachers told us about in high school when algebra would someday save our lives."

[DKT]

Red Planet, which I never saw but really never wanted to see either, was a Mars movie with a great line in it, though:

Val Kilmer: "This is it."
Woman: "What?"
Val Kilmer: "That moment our teachers told us about in high school when algebra would someday save our lives."

That was the best part of the entire movie.  I think overall it was better than Mission to Mars but really, that's not saying much is it? 

[RichGarner]

Donnie Darko -- The Director's Cut.

Way to take a flawed yet intriguing movie with a forigvably massive time travel logic hole and turn it into a flawed movie with comical pseudoscience and a massive time travel logic hole that somehow seems less forgivable.

If you enjoyed Donnie Darko, I implore you to give the Director's Cut a miss.  Buy a second copy of the theatrical release if you want to show your support.

Uh oh. We have a conflict here...

I rented, then bought, the Director's Cut of DD BECAUSE of said "changes." I love the alternate use of music in certain scenes. It seems more impacting. I'm not saying it's awesome... but I DID buy it.

(Rich stands proudly waiting to absorb oncoming blows.)

[jscorbett]

Ones that come to mind right away for me is Robocop 2,3,4,5,6....or however many more they made.

[Leon Kensington]

RoboVampire- Listen to Podculture, you'll understand

50% of Scifi Saturday Movies- Some are good to have in the background whilst playing CSS but that is about it.

Star Trek TOS- I just can't stand the near Utopia, I'm sorry, maybe that removes all my geek cred but it just ginds on my nerves

Painkiller Jane- The title describes what you must be near overdosing on to like it.

[Bdoomed]

Goin back to the Sarlak thing... i was just wondering...
how did anyone figure out how long it took the Sarlak to digest something?
honestly there cant be any actual studies done on that... it was probably more of a myth than a fact...

[eytanz]

Goin back to the Sarlak thing... i was just wondering...
how did anyone figure out how long it took the Sarlak to digest something?
honestly there cant be any actual studies done on that... it was probably more of a myth than a fact...

Well, they could do a test - say, feed something to the Sarlacc, then remove it in a year's time and see how much progress the Sarlacc has made ("hmm... I think this guy is 0.1% digested...") and extrapolate from there.

Of course, though, the whole concept is pretty silly - the idea that the Sarlacc can somehow keep someone alive for 1000 years while slowly eating him makes no sense whatsoever - the Sarlacc would have to expend far more energy and nutrients keeping the victim alive than it would ever get out of him.

[Russell Nash]

Goin back to the Sarlak thing... i was just wondering...
how did anyone figure out how long it took the Sarlak to digest something?
honestly there cant be any actual studies done on that... it was probably more of a myth than a fact...

Well, they could do a test - say, feed something to the Sarlacc, then remove it in a year's time and see how much progress the Sarlacc has made ("hmm... I think this guy is 0.1% digested...") and extrapolate from there.

Of course, though, the whole concept is pretty silly - the idea that the Sarlacc can somehow keep someone alive for 1000 years while slowly eating him makes no sense whatsoever - the Sarlacc would have to expend far more energy and nutrients keeping the victim alive than it would ever get out of him.

No, no, no.  You can't use logic.  That's not fair.  That's like saying a professional bounty hunter wouldn't miss when he tries to shoot a guy sitting on the other side of a small table.

[AliceNred]

 Cleopatra 2525

Small Wonder

[wintermute]

Battlefield Earth
Ghosts of Mars
Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions
The Island
The Day After Tomorrow
Howard the Duck
Smallville
The Fantastic Four movies

[Windup]

Anybody else old enough to remember Space: 1999? Hint: that was then a date in the distant future... 

Martin Landau and Barbara Bain on a moon that has been knocked into interstellar space by the explosion of nuclear waste dumps on the far side. (Yes, you did read that right...)  Spider Robinson says that after being trapped in a room and being forced to watch, his wife found him "...weakly slumped over the television set, trying to destroy it with profanity." 

It really was that bad..

[wintermute]

Anybody else old enough to remember Space: 1999? Hint: that was then a date in the distant future... 

Martin Landau and Barbara Bain on a moon that has been knocked into interstellar space by the explosion of nuclear waste dumps on the far side. (Yes, you did read that right...)  Spider Robinson says that after being trapped in a room and being forced to watch, his wife found him "...weakly slumped over the television set, trying to destroy it with profanity." 

It really was that bad..

Space: 1999 was great!

It starred Brian Blessed as the ruler of every planet ever! You can't go wrong with that.

[stePH]

Battlefield Earth

I'll second that only if you're talking about John Revolta's abortion of a film.  I love the original novel, which made the film just that much more painful to watch.

John Travolta is off-source and out-ethics.

[Windup]

Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions

That was unfortunate, because The Matrix itself was so promising.  I think it's a case of art destroyed by commercial success. Once they produced a hit, there was nobody with the nerve to rein in the directors, and they desperately needed reigning in.  You can see the outline of a great movie hiding in Reloaded, especially in Neo's confrontation with The Architect.  Unfortunately, it gets buried in a steady stream of over-long action sequences and pointless filigrees.  I have the sense they got overwhemed by 'the coolness' of what they could do on film, and forgot they were there to tell a story.

[Planish]

I never got Buffy at all, and I tried becasue I had friends who liked it.

I never watched more than half an episode the whole time the series was running, because it sounded too stupid. Then one New Year's day (after the series wound up) they ran an all-day Buffy re-run marathon, and both my wife and myself were hooked. Some friends had a few seasons on DVD, we bought seasons 5 and 6.

Similar thing happened with Dark Angel, except that those same friends had it on DVDs.

I never could sit through Andromeda.

What partly spoiled Star Trek: Enterprise for me was Scott Bakula. They made up for him by casting Jolene Blalock. In general though, I think the overly-long story arcs and the time travel business lost them their audience.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Defense:

DS9: We initially gave it a pass when it was in its first season; then went back and started with Season Three, because we'd heard Worf came aboard.  By the time he did, we were hooked.  And it DID get much better; the Baseball episode and the story lines in which Sisko experiences life as a 1950s sci-fi writer (Far Beyond the Stars and Shadows and Symbols) writing the history of "Deep Space Nine" were very funny and powerful, respectively.

Middle of the Road Waffling:

Smallville: I had hope - and more than a little respect for Gough & Miller - after the second season.  The first season was a fun (for me) cross between X-Files and 90210 (two shows that I never really got into).  The second seemed to really pick up some interesting mythology, and the writing was much more interesting than the banal set pieces we are treated to in more recent years.  The third teased me by building on themes of friendship, loyalty, and parallels between fathers... and then it descended into melodrama and angsty poseury.  Now it's just something I watch because I got my wife hooked, and it's still fun to do the MST3K thing on it while hunting for bits of DC lore to pop up.

(Part of my misguided hope: I thought Spiderman 2 was written by G&M; apparently, they were working on it intially, but the script that went to production was by Michael Chabon.citation)

[wakela]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

What he said.
The guy who plays the captain is wooden and has no screen presence.  The aliens are all basically humans with intentionally two-dimensional characters (this will be the Violent Race, this will be the Intellectual Race, this will be the Sneaky Race).  Star Trek was basically dumb, but we all went into it already being familiar with the universe.  B5 is dumb, but makes us learn a bunch of unrewarding dumb stuff.

[stePH]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Since we're goring sacred oxen here (or something) ...

I've probably mentioned this already, but I'm underwhelmed by Firefly.  I've watched the first DVD and so far I don't feel a connection or empathy with any of the characters.  I don't get why it's so revered the likes of Steve Eley and Mur Lafferty, and SF fandom in general.  I don't feel at all inclined to continue with the series (but the fact that it's unfinished and likely to remain so probably isn't helping to motivate me in that regard.)

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Since we're goring sacred oxen here (or something) ...

I've probably mentioned this already, but I'm underwhelmed by Firefly.  I've watched the first DVD and so far I don't feel a connection or empathy with any of the characters.  I don't get why it's so revered the likes of Steve Eley and Mur Lafferty, and SF fandom in general.  I don't feel at all inclined to continue with the series (but the fact that it's unfinished and likely to remain so probably isn't helping to motivate me in that regard.)

Hey, wakela was WAY meaner then I was! 

But as for Firefly, there were a number of "hooks" in it for me.  I won't bore you by listing them (I'm sure that's been done to death) but for me, it just popped. 

Personally, I'm always wary of things that people suggest to me, and I had just given the thumbs down to a number of things that had been enthusiastically thrust at me when the first FF disc came in the mail.  I actually rolled my eyes, and thought, "Oh, boy... another chunk of fandom to wade through."

So, what I'm saying is, it was good, but made even moreso because I was expecting it to be bad.

[wakela]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Since we're goring sacred oxen here (or something) ...

I've probably mentioned this already, but I'm underwhelmed by Firefly.  I've watched the first DVD and so far I don't feel a connection or empathy with any of the characters.  I don't get why it's so revered the likes of Steve Eley and Mur Lafferty, and SF fandom in general.  I don't feel at all inclined to continue with the series (but the fact that it's unfinished and likely to remain so probably isn't helping to motivate me in that regard.)

Hey, wakela was WAY meaner then I was! 

But as for Firefly, there were a number of "hooks" in it for me.  I won't bore you by listing them (I'm sure that's been done to death) but for me, it just popped. 

Personally, I'm always wary of things that people suggest to me, and I had just given the thumbs down to a number of things that had been enthusiastically thrust at me when the first FF disc came in the mail.  I actually rolled my eyes, and thought, "Oh, boy... another chunk of fandom to wade through."

So, what I'm saying is, it was good, but made even moreso because I was expecting it to be bad.

I dunno, man.  I think we were about the same level of meanness.  Though it did take a swipe at trek. 

But I'm glad someone brought up Firefly.  I like it OK.  Some episodes were better than others.  I liked the movie a lot.  But I really don't get the hyperventilation that you run into whenever Joss Whedon's name comes up.  C'mon, the guy gets his own "Whedonverse" that is often simply referred to as "the 'verse"?  It was a pretty good show and it was funny, but it wasn't Earth shattering, and it played fast and lose with the laws of physics just like the rest of them do.
Disclaimer: never watched Buffy.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Hey, wakela was WAY meaner then I was! 

I dunno, man.  I think we were about the same level of meanness.  Though it did take a swipe at trek. 

Disclaimer: never watched Buffy.
[/quote]

You're right... but I was smiling REALLY big when I typed my comment. 

As for Buffy... I tried, but petered out halfway through season 2.  No reason... just haven't had any Vampire motivation lately.   

[Heradel]

I dunno, man.  I think we were about the same level of meanness.  Though it did take a swipe at trek. 

But I'm glad someone brought up Firefly.  I like it OK.  Some episodes were better than others.  I liked the movie a lot.  But I really don't get the hyperventilation that you run into whenever Joss Whedon's name comes up.  C'mon, the guy gets his own "Whedonverse" that is often simply referred to as "the 'verse"?  It was a pretty good show and it was funny, but it wasn't Earth shattering, and it played fast and lose with the laws of physics just like the rest of them do.
Disclaimer: never watched Buffy.

The verse is how they refer to the universe in Firefly, if it's used in Joss fandom that's why.

Buffy and Angel are good, character based shows. They take a while to get into, but once you're in it's sweet pleasure/torture.

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Since we're goring sacred oxen here (or something) ...

I've probably mentioned this already, but I'm underwhelmed by Firefly.  I've watched the first DVD and so far I don't feel a connection or empathy with any of the characters.  I don't get why it's so revered the likes of Steve Eley and Mur Lafferty, and SF fandom in general.  I don't feel at all inclined to continue with the series (but the fact that it's unfinished and likely to remain so probably isn't helping to motivate me in that regard.)

The first season is much better from the vantage point of going back from the last season and watching it again. Believe me, you've probably missing quite a lot that will be very important later.

TAD — On the cheesy graphics bit —>  Mid nineties. Amigas were costly, and it's only in the last few years graphics have gotten really good. At least they followed physics (for certain values of physics).

[stePH]

Offense:

B5: I never could get into Babylon 5.  I tried with Season one, and with a mini-series compendium (details foggy... I know Boxleitner was in it, though).  I just couldn't get past the horrible effects in combination with the cheesy dialogue, hokey characterizations, and the inscrutable political motivations.  It seemed to take all the things I liked about the Star Trek universe, and re-make them badly, instead of the other way 'round.

Since we're goring sacred oxen here (or something) ...

I've probably mentioned this already, but I'm underwhelmed by Firefly.  I've watched the first DVD and so far I don't feel a connection or empathy with any of the characters.  I don't get why it's so revered the likes of Steve Eley and Mur Lafferty, and SF fandom in general.  I don't feel at all inclined to continue with the series (but the fact that it's unfinished and likely to remain so probably isn't helping to motivate me in that regard.)

The first season is much better from the vantage point of going back from the last season and watching it again. Believe me, you've probably missing quite a lot that will be very important later.

I think you're addressing this to TAD, not me.  B5 is my all-time favorite SF show and I have never spoken a word against it (though I could; the final season left much to be desired.)

[Gwyddyon]

For me the one series whose popularity always makes a giant question mark appear above my head is Stargate SG-1.  I've tried to watch it several times, once starting in Season 1 and then just checking out whatever episode happens to be playing at the time, and it's never come even close to clicking for me.  The fact that it got 10 seasons astounds me (then again, look at Voyager!).

All that said, I'd rather have Jar-Jar Binks trapped in my head Scorpius style than watch Stargate Atlantis.

[stePH]

So... what sci-fi shows or movies could you do without?

Farscape from "Dog with Two Bones" on*.  "Into the Lion's Den" is the series finale as far as I'm concerned.

* i.e., the last episode of Season 3, all of season 4, and the "Peacekeeper Wars" miniseries.  Nothing to redeem any of it.