Sci-Fi Goodness

[Mark Fletcher]

This July, some great tv shows are returning to our screens:

Battlestar Galactica
Stargate
Stargate Atlantis
Firefly (havent seen this yet, but everyone raves about it)

Im looking forward to this so much, I upgraded my cable package to include a DVR (no more torrents!) so I wont miss an episode. It'll will be good to discuss the episodes on this forum again, although if you havent done so already, Id avoid

Gateworld

As it has a ton of spoilers on BSG, and SG-1/SG-A. Particularly BSG.

Ta,

Mark

[Jim Yingst]

Battlestar Galactica season 2 premiere is tonight. Also season premieres for both Stargate shows. The Firefly run will start next Friday. Woo hoo!

[David O'Meara]

This is still a rerun of the first season of FF or have they started production again?

Rerun:
Season 2:

[Bear Bibeault]

Firefly is a rerun of the 1st season. Sadly, not back in production. But there is the movie coming up!

Looks like Stargate SG-1 is going to be almost a complete reboot.

The BG episode had me on the edge of my seat, literally, and I found myself breathing hard at the closing frame. Man, that's a good show!

[Jim Yingst]

Reruns of the one and only season of Firefly. Though this will include three episodes that never aired on the network, though they did appear on the DVD set. So for those of us who have the DVD set,, the reruns are no big deal. But it's cool that they're being aired again, anyway, for those who never discovered it.

Firefly was canceled midway through it's first season by Fox. At this point there is virtually no chance ofgetting another seaon made anytime soon. Fox has exclusive TV rights; they won't make another season, and won't let the show be shopped sold to another network (assujing one is interested).

There is some good new though - while Fox has the TV rights, they don't have the movie rights. Joss Whedon retained those for himself. And after having crapping experineces with TV networks the last few years, he's decided to make a movie instead. Which will be released September 30. If it's successful, we may see more movies. I suppose a revival of the TV show is possible, but probably not until Fox's rights lapse, which I think is either 5 or 10 years from when they cancelled it in late 2003.

Also, there is a 3-issue comic series coming out from Dark Horse. It's written by Whedon, so the characters do in fact behave like themselves. This series covers events after the TV series and before the movie. The first issue came out last Wednesday (in the US at least; dunno about Oz). Though if you want to wait I'm sure it will be possible to get all 3 issues collected in a single volume, around the time the movie comes out.

[Jim Yingst]

[Bear]: Looks like Stargate SG-1 is going to be almost a complete reboot.

Dunno about that. Richard Dean Anderson is out; Ben Browder and Beau Bridges are in. I'm pretty sure the rest of the cast will be back for the full season, despite what their characters may currently be saying. And we also have the fun of Claudia Black as a guest for several episodes, I believe. She must be having a blast playing a character so different from Aeryn. Very funny.

The BG episode had me on the edge of my seat, literally, and I found myself breathing hard at the closing frame. Man, that's a good show!

Yeah. I was fully expecting to see one big glowing red eye in the dark, in that last shot. Naturally, BG exceeded my expectations.

[Sameer Jamal]

I miss X-Files

[Mark Fletcher]

Just caught BSG last night -

I wouldnt say I was on the edge of my seat, probably because I had spoiled it for myself by browsing the spoilers on GateWorld (dont go there!), but I did thoroughly enjoy it. Cant wait for next weeks episode.

Ive still got to watch SG:A and SG:1, but they seem almost comical next to BSG now. Ive also set my DVR up for Firefly since a lot of people rave about it.

One cool thing Ive discovered is that you can play video just fine on a Pocket PC. I bought myself a 1GB SD Card for it. I now watch episodes of Lost that I obtained (missed season 1 the first time around so now Im catching up for season 2). I commute daily to work via bus and subway, so it passes the time to watch Lost on it. If you rotate the screen to landscape, it views just fine.

Mark

[Max Habibi]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
Firefly was canceled midway through it's first season by Fox. At this point there is virtually no chance ofgetting another seaon made anytime soon. Fox has exclusive TV rights; they won't make another season, and won't let the show be shopped sold to another network (assujing one is interested).

This seems like a bizarre business decision: Firefly could easily have been as popular as Buffy. Any insight into what provoked it?

[Jim Yingst]

Well, I believe crack cocaine usage in Fox's corporate offices played a significant role. Seriously, it seems that in many cases, TV executive are not really interested in in cultivating shows with low ratings but "potential". They've usually got some midseason replacements lines up already (i.e. the network figures they're going to cancel something, even if they don't know what, yet) and they're more interested in trying out a new series that might turn out to be a huge hit, rather than keeping an existing series that hasn't had good ratings so far. Firefly did not have great ratings when it was on.

Of course network interference played a big role in this, too - e.g. replacing the original two-hour premiere with a different,more "action-packed" (and considerably inferior, IMO) one hour premiere, hastily written. And various other changes they asked for that I don't remember details of. My impression is that Whedon had a lot of battles with Fox execs over proposed changes to the series (many before the series even aired). I think he acceeded to some, to try to keep the execs happy, and not to others which he thought would pervert the nature of the series too much. The execs were less than pleased, and in return, did not promote the show much - making it easier to justify killing the show for low ratings. I have the vague recollection I read or heard something along these lines, but don't know where. (Though I'd guess that the audio commentaries on the DVD set are a good possibility.) Consider this a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors.

[Jim Yingst]

Oh, here's a nice tidbit for fans of Firefly: Serenity sighted on Caprica. No word on whether they made it offplanet when the Cylons struck.

[Jason Menard]

Aside from the pilot, other episodes were aired out of order and they had gaps of a week or more between some episodes. Basically, studio executive incompetence killed a series that would have likely done pretty well for Fox. Also, I think I had heard that actually the ratings weren't all that bad.
[ July 18, 2005: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Max Habibi]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
The execs were less than pleased, and in return, did not promote the show much - making it easier to justify killing the show for low ratings

It seems bizarre that they wouldn't allow the show to find a home on another network and that they choose not to air it. I wonder if the frankness of the show was part of the problem? That is, the characters were sometimes ugly and the women actually had sex.*


* On another note, I'm noticing a more than passing similarity between Firefly and farscape: rugged, down-to-earth southern leading men? A very anthropomorphized ship? A traveling, um, Companion, big tough side-kick fella, etc. I can't help but wonder if this was deliberate?

M

[fred rosenberger]

I've also heard it proposed that Firefly was cancelled due to the political environment in the country.

It is a show about a bunch of people who don't like the government, so they live on the edge of society, breaking the law, doing what they must to survive. The show's government decided to impose it's will on a bunch of planets that didn't want the government to come in and tell them what to do...

Now, this sounds like a big conspiracy theory to me, but it's kind of fun.

Fox totally screwed up the marketing of the show. I remember ads with a circus-style barker calling out "See HOOKERS!!! a GIRL in a BOX!!! (this was accompanied with River coming out of said box naked)". It gave NO indication what the show was really about.

[Bear Bibeault]

On the TiVo Community forums (where TV shows as well as TiVo are discussed) the general consensus for FOX's treatment of Firefly is "Burn in Hell, FOX!".

I think it's a text-book case of how to kill a show regardless of its obvious merit.

I'm very much looking forward to the movie.
[ July 19, 2005: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]