[karajorma]

I still think B5 at its worst is still head and shoulders above most Sci-Fi. Garibaldi's scene with the Edgar Industries board is another favourite scene of mine, not to mention his hiring policy for its replacements.

[starbug]

Vir was always one of my favourite character's along with G'kar, while season 4 was very good I didnt quite enjoy it as much as the first 3. Season 5 I didn't enjoy, well except for the last episode.  I like in the beginnig and thirdspace but didnt like any of the other films, crusade premise was good, but poorly executed and dont even get me started on rangers that just sucked.

[Luis Dias]

Person of Interest is the best SF show on TV right now.

SF?

The tech on that show is oh so already obsolete.

e: On the original post, wow I am actually amazed at the production there. The visual is spot on. The acting.... well...

[General Battuta]

It's definitely SF dude, we don't have strong AI.

[Luis Dias]

Strong AI?!? Clearly I haven't reached that point. I just remember the guy from Lost being a rich hacker and this lost policeman soul being the dirty job guy doing the "hard" work. Saw several episodes not sequentially and I don't recall any AI... so I'm kinda more interested now.

[OverDhill]

Check out Almost Human as it is way more SciFi than Person of Interest. It probably has the most future tech than any show on the air at the moment. Intelligence is another show that has future tech and lastly SHIELD also has a lot.

I love person of interest but never considered a SciFi show. Sure the "Machine" is AI but its not something you can see.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns91hBJqsDM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjgObuY_EOk

[General Battuta]

As an SF writer I don't think calling things 'more SF' or 'less SF' is really useful, especially when you're just talking about the number of gizmos on screen. It's about the questions the story engages with.

[Scotty]

Indeed.  Science fiction is a diverse and adaptable genre that can easily focus as much (or more) on the interpersonal relations between characters, the setting of the story, and even the vehicle of plot progression (amusingly, that last part is meant both literally and literally).

As a very, very easy counter-example to "It's obsolete so it isn't SF" is the entire steampunk sub-genre.  Almost by definition anything in a 'mundane' steampunk setting is already obsolete, and has been for decades if not longer.  It's still science fiction.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I like the actors in Almost Human (especially Michael Ealy), but there appears to be two forces at work in the writing staff; one that writes good things, and one that writes stupid things, leading to almost Voyager-esque quality shifts.

[MP-Ryan]

I like the actors in Almost Human (especially Michael Ealy), but there appears to be two forces at work in the writing staff; one that writes good things, and one that writes stupid things, leading to almost Voyager-esque quality shifts.

QFT.

It doesn't help that the episodes appear to be airing out of order, either.

[AdmiralRalwood]

QFT.

It doesn't help that the episodes appear to be airing out of order, either.

Indeed; but what can you expect from FOX?

[Goober5000]

Or DS9 where they have to pull a literal Deus Ex Machina to resolve the Dominion War.

First of all, that incident didn't end the entire war, and second, the arc was planned that way.  To quote Memory Alpha:

When this show aired, there were some criticisms of it having a deus ex machina ending, something which infuriated Ira Steven Behr; "I felt it was the perfect next step in the evolution of the relationship between Sisko and the Prophets that began in the pilot. Hearing people refer to it as some dopey deus ex machina is really annoying because I would think they'd give us more credit for being on the ball. We didn't have to end it like that, we chose to end it like that. Because we wanted to say that there was something going on here. And ultimately, that would lead to our finding out that Sisko is part-Prophet. They wouldn't have done this for just anyone. This was the man going out into the wilderness and demanding God to interfere, to do something for crying out loud. The corporeal characters had done so much in the episode; surely they'd earned the help of the gods." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

[karajorma]

Yeah they hinted the whole time that the wormhole aliens could have done that and decided not to. I never said that the ending came out of nowhere. But the fact remains that they deliberately chose a bad, Deus Ex ending. Do they want points for foreshadowing their ****ty ending?

Hell if anything, that comment makes the whole thing worse. This wasn't that they'd written themselves into a corner like BSG did. This wasn't that outside forces forced them to end the story before they could in a meaningful way. This says they deliberately set out to have a ****ty ending.



Now compare that against the ending of B5's Shadow War and you see what I mean. That superficially seems to be very similar but in fact it is very, very different. This isn't about a race of godlike aliens finally deciding to do something, Sheridan isn't screaming at the gods to do something (He'd already done that with Kosh in season 3 and we'd quite clearly been shown that there were severe consequences for the gods if they did act) this is about the godlike aliens realising that they were failing in their role as guides for the younger races. Failing in the only reason they had for their existence. They were shown that their war was pointless and that they were undoing their own goals. The end of the Shadow War wasn't a Deus Ex. It was the man going out into the wilderness and demanding God NOT to interfere.

[Luis Dias]

Ahh, now I realise why I never bothered much with DS9. Pretensious babbling with godlike creatures. At least in TNG, Q was fun and Picard taunted him appropriately.

[karajorma]

To be fair in DS9 when he turned up Sisko punched him.

To be honest I never much liked Q. I only really thought him worth it for the first episode with the Borg. That one really did make the character worth putting up with.

[Luis Dias]

Q was also the only thing interesting in the Farpoint episode and let's not forget him in "All good things...". He was also edible in "Hide and Q" and excellent in "Tapestry".

And then there's this of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XZBTv5yrmA&list=PL7CA617586FAE1F61

The less said about his appearances in Voyager the better.

[Goober5000]

Yeah they hinted the whole time that the wormhole aliens could have done that and decided not to. I never said that the ending came out of nowhere. But the fact remains that they deliberately chose a bad, Deus Ex ending. Do they want points for foreshadowing their ****ty ending?

Well, now we're getting into opinions.  If you don't like the ending, that's your call.  But I will say that there was a major arc over the course of the entire series dealing with Sisko's relationship to the wormhole aliens.  That episode was intended as taking the next step in that relationship.  Previously, Sisko was coming to terms with who he really was; in that episode, he finally takes the next step from theory to application: if he is the Emissary, then he is going to use his position to demand something from them.

So it makes sense, whether or not you personally like it.  And really, it would have been trivial for the writers to resolve the arc without a Deus Ex Machina: just have Rom sabotage the station in the nick of time rather than a few seconds too late.  Choosing the option they did allowed them to tell a deeper story.

[Nuke]

i really need to watch ds9 again. i haven't seen any of it since the original tv run.

To be fair in DS9 when he turned up Sisko punched him.

To be honest I never much liked Q. I only really thought him worth it for the first episode with the Borg. That one really did make the character worth putting up with.

q was really an interesting character. initially it seemed like he would be a villan throughout the series. he is essentially getting them ready for a lot of future problems. namely the borg and the anomaly in all good things. if you put all his episodes perspective its more of a guiding role. initially they get vague warnings and then a face to face introduction with the borg around season two. of course the latter q episodes kinda departed from this until the final episode. all in all i dont think tng would have been the same without him.

[karajorma]

Well, now we're getting into opinions.  If you don't like the ending, that's your call.  But I will say that there was a major arc over the course of the entire series dealing with Sisko's relationship to the wormhole aliens.  That episode was intended as taking the next step in that relationship.  Previously, Sisko was coming to terms with who he really was; in that episode, he finally takes the next step from theory to application: if he is the Emissary, then he is going to use his position to demand something from them.

So it makes sense, whether or not you personally like it.  And really, it would have been trivial for the writers to resolve the arc without a Deus Ex Machina: just have Rom sabotage the station in the nick of time rather than a few seconds too late.  Choosing the option they did allowed them to tell a deeper story.

I just don't think it was particularly deep to be honest though. B5 was deep. Everything you thought the war was about was completely turned on its head in season 4 when you realise you're not watching the simple good vs evil story you'd be led to believe all along.

Sisko's confrontation with the wormhole aliens is to be honest rather predictable, the comment about him being part prophet actually makes that less interesting than if he was just a man doing it. I was left wondering why he hadn't simply asked them months or years ago. What makes it worse though, is that we've already seen this confrontation executed in a far superior method more than three years previously in B5. Sheridan is just a man, he's going out there demanding that Kosh does something, he doesn't just happen to be in the same place as Kosh is and think "Well I might as well give it a shot", he walks into Kosh's quarters and confronts him about the lack of Vorlon involvement in what is supposedly their war against evil. And unlike Sisko he walks in willing to die for his cause if that's what will tip the balance (and damn near does).


I thought DS9's ending was **** previously, but if they planned it all along, then this is just really, really bad scriptwriting.

[General Battuta]

And Sheridan's intervention with Kosh came at a steep and foreshadowed price, which is Really Good Storytelling in the classic mythic sense when you're dealing with effectively divine powers.