SciFi channel changing name...

[Diggles]

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Not gunna help when they cancel well done shows like Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, BSG while picking up shitty replacements. NBC really knows how to run a network into the ground.

and WTF is with crappy wrestling and shitty B horror movies?

Personally I have no more reason to watch SciFi, as Atlantis is now over. Eureka and Sancuary dont float my boat. I'd rather be entertained by SpikeTV now (manswers, 1000 ways to die, UFC)

[Jakensama]

Good riddance, a channel that cancells any good programming it has to bring us the 5th made for TV movie of the month about the mummys curse or something.

[grizzle]

Yeah, I had heard about that. Their channel has been going down for years. I figured they'd do something to improve the programming. Looks instead like they decided to just change their name instead to meet up (or down) with the "standards" of their programming.

Between WWF and all of their brilliant original movies, like The Rats, The Snakes, The Cobra, The Bats, The Roaches, The Crocodile, The Alligator, The [insert every other animal species that somehow goes crazy], etc., it just sucks now. And I think they also only ever had access to ten Twilight Zone episodes, which they have re-run repeatedly for the past decade.

[Venganza]

I like eureka.. but yeah i agree they should never have let stargate sg-1 go or atlantis.

Outer limits was a good series too.

[Riz]

I also am a Eureka fan, and I really think they did a great job with the advertising to keep it alive. They wove the over-the-top product placement into the story-line with creativity. I give them credit for the attempt.

With the end of BSG (and I don't really care about the new Caprica) coming, Dr. Who is the only show I really care about, and I can see that on BBC America. Of course, I loved the Dresden Files, but that died after one season...bah.

Screw em.

[1000xZero]

I like eureka

I also am a Eureka fan, and I really think they did a great job with the advertising to keep it alive. They wove the over-the-top product placement into the story-line with creativity. I give them credit for the attempt.

I like Eureka a lot too.

Mostly watch SciFi for Star Trek Enterprise which I like but did not watch when it was on TV. Jolene Blalock(aka T'Pol) FTW.

BTW I was bit distrurbed with what I thought was the last episode yesterday. Not going to spoil it but it did not really tie things up for me.

[Slamz]

I knew SciFi was destined for mediocrity the day they canceled Mystery Science Theater 3000 and then continued airing the same utterly shitty, outdated movies, but without the funny. You don't cancel a cheap show and then replace it with something which is unarguably worse.

But yeah, no SG-1, no Atlantis, almost out of BSG, the channel has nothing anymore. I've tried watching a couple of their made-for-TV movies and can never get through more than about 10 minutes. (Although Tin Man wasn't bad.)



Although I don't put the blame entirely on the SciFi channel. Hollywood in general has had a real problem with creating good sci-fi shows and movies. "Aliens" is probably my favorite sci-fi movie in the world and when I try to think of other sci-fi movies that are up there with it in quality, it's a mighty short list. The sci-fi section of any video store is like a who's-who list of movie failures.

I mean, would it be that hard to do some kind of "Aliens" series? Have the prices of 1986-era special effects not come down in 20 years?


Or a new Star Trek show that doesn't suck. (I didn't like Enterprise.)

[Dustie]

I think they should change the name to

"Crappy TV with the occasional good show i.e. BSG"

or

"Send us your sci fi home videos, we'll label them as movies and air them"

[Jakensama]

I didn't watch the BSG mini series for quite a while because I assumed it was like every other sci fi original shitfest, and I was bitter that they canned farscape.

They are coming out with some new stargate series, IMO the original one lasted a bit too long... can only take so much old mcguyver.

Plus the show always bugged me because everyone in the universe speaks English.

[Diggles]

Plus the show always bugged me because everyone in the universe speaks English.

After you committ galactic scale genocide a few times, they learn your language

[Jakensama]

So shouldn't everyone speak whatever the little worm people speak?

[Vanraw]

They should change the name to GBW. Ghost Busters and Westling.

The channel is pretty much dead to me with the exception of BSG. Scifi Friday was a stable for me. Now I rarely even choose it while surfing for something to watch.

To bad really. Perhaps this will open up the market for new channel.

[Slamz]

So shouldn't everyone speak whatever the little worm people speak?

Don't we?



BSG I rate as maybe 3.5 - 4 stars overall. It has some great moments and certain episodes are solid 5-star events but overall I thought it was just "pretty good". Too much character undermining and behind-the-hand political jabs taken at the expense of not making any sense in the show.

Still, it's one of the best sci-fi shows to come out in the last 10 years. At least there was no long-standing, underlying flaw in it like in Space: Above and Beyond if anyone remember that show (so wait, the pilots are also the infantry and they just park their planes on the turf whenever they need to go out and fight? Isn't that a little inefficient in terms of logistics?)

[Jakensama]

What do you mean character undermining? I will agree the whole beating you over the head with current events during the new caprica story arc was kind of obnoxious.

The first and this last season were great, but I only watched the middle sporadically.

[Diggles]

So shouldn't everyone speak whatever the little worm people speak?

Humans wiped out the Goa'uld System Lords in less than 7 years and liberated thousands of planets.

Due to their alliance with humans, the Tok'ra are pretty much wiped out after adopting bolder human tactics instead of relying on their stealthy covert ops.

Humans also accelerated the process of their ally, the Asgard getting wiped out by the replicators.

If you are an alien race, find Earth and nuke it from orbit

[Jakensama]

Dude you can't nuke a planet with McGuyver on it, he would find a way to destroy the alien ships with the assorted household items at hand.

[Gnarnok]

Dude you can't nuke a planet with McGuyver on it, he would find a way to destroy the alien ships with the assorted household items at hand.

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/hijack off

[Slamz]

[BSG general-knowledge spoilers]

Over the progression of BSG, I just felt they undermined almost every character to where I didn't like them anymore.

Admiral Adama goes from hard-nosed, tough-but-fair captain to drooling in his oatmeal, crying all the time and smearing paint on the walls.

The president likes to put POWs out of the airlocks and has at least one emotional breakdown every 4 episodes.

The Chief was cool, then annoying, then more annoying, now he's cool again.

Kara goes nuts and also apparently dies and comes back, still mostly nuts, if not nuttier.

Dualla shoots herself in the head out of the blue.

Boomer (and her many clones) are prone to bad decisions and outside manipulation. And now crying fits.

Gaeta goes into perma-sulk and tries to take over the ship and dies.

Anders, uh, gets turned into a ship.

They even killed off that one female marine sergeant who was pretty cool and kept showing up as a background character.


And the whole Pegasus saga, particularly that one 2-hour offshoot, was just a parade of unlikable jackass characters.


For a while, there was actually no single character in the show I liked or could in any way identify with.


The only people I like now are ones I used to dislike: Saul turned out to be the new tough-as-nails guy and Helen is a good deal less annoying since she got killed and came back. Even Six and Baltar (who I initially could not tolerate) are more interesting (now that he has embraced his flaky, hippie ways). By comparison, I find most of the characters in "Lost" to be interesting, even the bad guys. They aren't as outright annoying as most of the BSG characters turned out to be.


I basically think the BSG writers heard somewhere that it was better to have "complex" characters, so they made sure to include a solid reason for disliking everyone on the ship, and killed off anyone else.

[Jakensama]

While there are characters that I certainly dislike (*cough* Roslin *cough*), I really don't think keeping everyone emotionally stable throughout the series would have made it realistic considering the subject matter, do you?

Is it better to not have complex characters? Better to make them charictures of people like the god awful original BSG or Star Wars or something? Its a damn space soap opera, what are you expecting

[Breand]

Wow, when Slamz puts it like that I tend to agree. They definitely do make you like the characters less and less. Personally I think theyve turned Kara into the most boring character on the show. I can only imagine the director and her on the set every day. "OK, today youre just gonna mope around alot. Tomorrow youre gonna mope. Can you give me more moping please? OK please mope on this piano. I got a fever and the only prescription is MORE MOPING!" I also dislike how they made her Cylon counterpart guy irrelevant.

I think this season sucks besides the mutiny episodes, which even that pissed me off when they turned Zarek into a ruthless murderer, which he never was.

I feel like the final 2 hour movie was the only idea they had for this entrie season and the past 4 episodes were just boring filler. Anyways the finale better be an orgasmfest or this final season will be a major let down.

BSG is a reminder of how awesome Lost is.

[Vllad]

I really don't think keeping everyone emotionally stable throughout the series would have made it realistic considering the subject matter, do you?

Having been a soldier myself and given the subject matter people just aren't as fucked up as the characters on that show are. People become less emotional in those situations not more.

The crying has to stop. STFU and do your damn jobs. Obviously that isn't entertaining so...


Vllad

[Jakensama]

Having been a soldier myself and given the subject matter people just aren't as fucked up as the characters on that show are. People become less emotional in those situations not more.

The crying has to stop. STFU and do your damn jobs. Obviously that isn't entertaining so...

You were a soldier when most of the human race had been eradicated? After 4 years of what they had been through, people would crack, especially if you were the last survivors of your species and the goal you had been working towards turned out being a dead nuked rock.

Plus there are plenty of historical examples of shitty morale on cramped ships over history and mutinies.

[Slamz]

So let me get this straight...

The writers sat down at a table and said, "Okay, so we've got a show about a bunch of people in a futuristic space fleet with a giant battleship fighting hostile robots and organic clones, so obviously the most entertaining thing we can do this episode is to have Admiral Adama cry. Again. For like the 5th time"?

Screw historical examples. Save that for shitty, mundane TV shows about office workers or people living in apartments. If I wanted realism, I'd go read another book about Fallujah.

[Jakensama]

The writers sat down and said "wow its a show about a holocaust and the travels of the last survivors of an entire species, maybe we should make the people slightly more realistic than a horrible 1970s space opera"

Its a sci-fi drama, we have plenty of space operas already.

[Dustie]

[slight spoilers, not really]

If you watched last weeks "lead up to the final" episode, you would find that the person who plays Kara's character would agree with Slamz. She said she hated where her character went over the last year or so. On the flip side, she seemed to imply that the ending makes it all worth it, we'll see.