Are Americans too cynical for the future to enjoy sci fi?

[Pogo]

I can't sit still for any of that shit. Way way way too contrived and full of its own fakery to take seriously on any level.

Take seriously? It's supposed to be entertainment.

Yeah I can't be entertained by a context I can't take seriously. Suspension of reality has its limits and these dramallama productions are way past that line.

That's pretty sad for you, you've missed out on tons of good entertainment.

No actually I've filtered out a lot of ultrapretentious crap.

Ever seen anyone cough on TV? Unless it was part of a script where they have TB or something? Ever see someone sneeze? Or ask somebody to repeat what they just said? Never happens. All contrived, all scripted, devoid of reality.

Actually I have seen someone sneeze on TV. It was a game show broadcast live, in France. The moderator sneezed like three times. I love live action --- because it can't be sanitized.

While I get your point, I think you do fiction in general, and science fiction in particular, a disservice. I sometimes get annoyed at the way people in TV and movies don't do the regular things all people do: using the bathroom, getting a runny nose, waking up with lines in your face from the pillow, scratching an itch in an indecorous place, etc. etc. However, none of those things are likely to advance the plot of a given story.

Not everything needs to "advance a plot". In this case it's simply laying a background of authenticity. If everything in the script had to advance a plot it would be a tedious work indeed. The point of which is not that sneezes or scratches should be scripted IN; rather it's that all of those realities are sanitized OUT, and sanitization means pretentious, and pretentious means I'm not interested.

In fact, those kinds of things would almost certainly be wasted time and are things that most people have no interest in seeing. Fiction is usually a form of escapism; if one wants to see a person performing the boring, normal actions of day to day life, there's no need to watch a movie or turn on a show.

If there were a demand to see an action hero pick his nose before getting out his guns, or a foreign spy sitting on the toilet before she goes to meet her contact, I'm sure producers would see to it they were added. Movies and TV shows are mostly supposed to be about those parts of the characters' lives that are outside the usual, though.

I absolutely won't agree that "demand" has anything to do with what goes into these things, as if the viewer were the actor. That's the same fallacy as car companies going "we're just giving the public what it wants" when they bloat cars up to inverted bathtubs and run ads to sell a pickup truck that can tow an asteroid. That's driven by the car maker, looking to exploit profit.

In the same way here the viewer is the exploited, not the driver, sat down in a passive posture to accept whatever emotion-mining is engineered to pour into that viewer's senses. ALL the control is in the hands of the film producer, just as it is in the hands of the car maker. In both cases the end user is the pawn to be milked for whatever the film can extract.

And speaking of characters' lives outside the usual --- how often do we see characters on TV, or the movies ----- actually watching TV?

 

[mudwhistle]

All of the right wing people I know enjoy The Walking Dead while my liberal friends enjoy Game of Thrones and Netflix stuff!

What about space opera? Are we too cynical for the future?

Too bad this didn't work out for network TV!


We need an epic space opera that is not set in a fantasy universe like Star Wars but set in our future but not is Star Trek and would not alienate both sides of the political spectrum!

We need an epic space opera to get us excited for the future!





How can TV make space exciting again?

I watched half of the first season of The Expanse, but it wasn't good enough to continue with IMO. I enjoyed the first 2 Mass Effect games, never played the third.

I like Star Trek Discovery, although not enough to pay for CBS All Access. There's a show called Extinct I'm curious about, from Orson Scott Card, but haven't seen. There don't seem to be a lot of space-based shows atm, though.

Star Trek Discovery kind of sucks.

I disagree, but it certainly isn't the same sort of show as the original or TNG.

Sorry, but I watched several episodes and it appears the focus is on a black female who is convicted of treason. What made the other shows interesting was character development in the crew. Friendships and conflicts. Examples of societal relationships. I saw none of that in Discovery.

 

[Votto]

All of the right wing people I know enjoy The Walking Dead while my liberal friends enjoy Game of Thrones and Netflix stuff!

What about space opera? Are we too cynical for the future?

Too bad this didn't work out for network TV!


We need an epic space opera that is not set in a fantasy universe like Star Wars but set in our future but not is Star Trek and would not alienate both sides of the political spectrum!

We need an epic space opera to get us excited for the future!





How can TV make space exciting again?

We are far to busy trying to take from each other and redistribute wealth to be bothered with working together for the future.

With the socialists on the verge of taking over the US, try the Hunger games instead.

 

[Montrovant]

All of the right wing people I know enjoy The Walking Dead while my liberal friends enjoy Game of Thrones and Netflix stuff!

What about space opera? Are we too cynical for the future?

Too bad this didn't work out for network TV!


We need an epic space opera that is not set in a fantasy universe like Star Wars but set in our future but not is Star Trek and would not alienate both sides of the political spectrum!

We need an epic space opera to get us excited for the future!





How can TV make space exciting again?

I watched half of the first season of The Expanse, but it wasn't good enough to continue with IMO. I enjoyed the first 2 Mass Effect games, never played the third.

I like Star Trek Discovery, although not enough to pay for CBS All Access. There's a show called Extinct I'm curious about, from Orson Scott Card, but haven't seen. There don't seem to be a lot of space-based shows atm, though.

Star Trek Discovery kind of sucks.

I disagree, but it certainly isn't the same sort of show as the original or TNG.

Sorry, but I watched several episodes and it appears the focus is on a black female who is convicted of treason. What made the other shows interesting was character development in the crew. Friendships and conflicts. Examples of societal relationships. I saw none of that in Discovery.

Having seen the entire first season, I can tell you that the show is not simply about one character, that there is development of multiple members of the crew, and that there are friendships and conflicts. From the captain of Burnham's ship when she committed treason, to the captain of the Discovery, it's first officer, the scientist who came up with the new drive technology, to the 'rookie' ensign who becomes Burnham's roommate and friend, there are plenty of characters getting screen time and development.

If you don't like it, you don't like it.

 

[ABikerSailor]

You know, even though it only ran for a short while (14 shows I think), one of my favorite sci fi shows was called "Firefly". It was basically a spaghetti western set in space, but the characters were interesting, the stories were pretty good, and on occasion, Jane was really good for comic relief.

Favorite episode of Firefly? "Heart of Gold", where they go and rescue a bunch of brothel workers.

 

[Montrovant]

Take seriously? It's supposed to be entertainment.

Yeah I can't be entertained by a context I can't take seriously. Suspension of reality has its limits and these dramallama productions are way past that line.

That's pretty sad for you, you've missed out on tons of good entertainment.

No actually I've filtered out a lot of ultrapretentious crap.

Ever seen anyone cough on TV? Unless it was part of a script where they have TB or something? Ever see someone sneeze? Or ask somebody to repeat what they just said? Never happens. All contrived, all scripted, devoid of reality.

Actually I have seen someone sneeze on TV. It was a game show broadcast live, in France. The moderator sneezed like three times. I love live action --- because it can't be sanitized.

While I get your point, I think you do fiction in general, and science fiction in particular, a disservice. I sometimes get annoyed at the way people in TV and movies don't do the regular things all people do: using the bathroom, getting a runny nose, waking up with lines in your face from the pillow, scratching an itch in an indecorous place, etc. etc. However, none of those things are likely to advance the plot of a given story.

Not everything needs to "advance a plot". In this case it's simply laying a background of authenticity. If everything in the script had to advance a plot it would be a tedious work indeed. The point of which is not that sneezes or scratches should be scripted IN; rather it's that all of those realities are sanitized OUT, and sanitization means pretentious, and pretentious means I'm not interested.

In fact, those kinds of things would almost certainly be wasted time and are things that most people have no interest in seeing. Fiction is usually a form of escapism; if one wants to see a person performing the boring, normal actions of day to day life, there's no need to watch a movie or turn on a show.

If there were a demand to see an action hero pick his nose before getting out his guns, or a foreign spy sitting on the toilet before she goes to meet her contact, I'm sure producers would see to it they were added. Movies and TV shows are mostly supposed to be about those parts of the characters' lives that are outside the usual, though.

I absolutely won't agree that "demand" has anything to do with what goes into these things, as if the viewer were the actor. That's the same fallacy as car companies going "we're just giving the public what it wants" when they bloat cars up to inverted bathtubs and run ads to sell a pickup truck that can tow an asteroid. That's driven by the car maker, looking to exploit profit.

In the same way here the viewer is the exploited, not the driver, sat down in a passive posture to accept whatever emotion-mining is engineered to pour into that viewer's senses. ALL the control is in the hands of the film producer, just as it is in the hands of the car maker. In both cases the end user is the pawn to be milked for whatever the film can extract.

And speaking of characters' lives outside the usual --- how often do we see characters on TV, or the movies ----- actually watching TV?

Are you saying that people don't want the things they see in movies, or get in cars? Why do they spend their money on those things, if not because they want to? At least with cars I could see the argument that car companies want to sell the most expensive cars they can to reap the greatest profits, but movies are getting progressively more expensive to make. If movie companies could just put out whatever crap they wanted to, regardless of viewer demand, why wouldn't they be going for less expensive films?

Realism is fine, but I think there's a distinction between realism and wanting to see all the normal actions of regular life. I've gone through many 2 hour stretches without coughing, sneezing, farting, etc. I don't find it too terribly distracting for TV and movie characters to do the same. I can live with the idea that the parts of their lives we watch are parts in which those sorts of things did not occur, however unlikely that might be in real life. I don't need to hear someone's sneezing interrupt a rousing speech, or a series of coughs making it difficult to understand the dialogue during an important exposition, to enjoy a film.

I'm curious, do you hold the same standard for literature? Does it upset you that authors don't generally describe the coughs and scratches of characters in books if it does not further the story or character development?

I also am not sure how removing those sorts of actions/noises constitutes pretentiousness. Does not having characters cough indicate that the directors/producers/actors believe their work to be more important than it actually is?

One other question: You seem to be arguing against film and television in general, so I'm wondering why bring it up in this thread? When I first saw your comment about suspension of disbelief, I figured you were talking about the aspects of science fiction which are either currently not possible, or never will be possible. This discussion is about all of film and television, possibly all of fiction.

 

[Montrovant]

You know, even though it only ran for a short while (14 shows I think), one of my favorite sci fi shows was called "Firefly". It was basically a spaghetti western set in space, but the characters were interesting, the stories were pretty good, and on occasion, Jane was really good for comic relief.

Favorite episode of Firefly? "Heart of Gold", where they go and rescue a bunch of brothel workers.

Firefly was great; horribly mismanaged by Fox. I wish the show had come out 10-15 years after it did, when there would have been a chance for one of the streaming services to pick it up.

 

[DOTR]

Like everything they touch liberals destroyed the science fiction genre. They had been working for years but it was 2013 when they gained power by paying the initiation fee for shills and in 2015 they left a "huge fucking smoking hole" in the Nebula Awards and Hugo Awards. Their self professed goal....to replace science fiction with "a broader sci-fi: stories about non-traditionally gendered explorers and post-singularity, post-ethnic characters who are sometimes not men and often even have feelings"
Who Won Science Fiction's Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters

Sometimes not men? LOL. See below.

Best Novel 2017 (2339 final ballots, 2078 nominating ballots cast for 652 nominees)

• The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)
• All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Books / Titan Books)
• Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris Books)
• A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager US)
• Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)
• Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor Books / Head of Zeus)

 

[Pogo]

Yeah I can't be entertained by a context I can't take seriously. Suspension of reality has its limits and these dramallama productions are way past that line.

That's pretty sad for you, you've missed out on tons of good entertainment.

No actually I've filtered out a lot of ultrapretentious crap.

Ever seen anyone cough on TV? Unless it was part of a script where they have TB or something? Ever see someone sneeze? Or ask somebody to repeat what they just said? Never happens. All contrived, all scripted, devoid of reality.

Actually I have seen someone sneeze on TV. It was a game show broadcast live, in France. The moderator sneezed like three times. I love live action --- because it can't be sanitized.

While I get your point, I think you do fiction in general, and science fiction in particular, a disservice. I sometimes get annoyed at the way people in TV and movies don't do the regular things all people do: using the bathroom, getting a runny nose, waking up with lines in your face from the pillow, scratching an itch in an indecorous place, etc. etc. However, none of those things are likely to advance the plot of a given story.

Not everything needs to "advance a plot". In this case it's simply laying a background of authenticity. If everything in the script had to advance a plot it would be a tedious work indeed. The point of which is not that sneezes or scratches should be scripted IN; rather it's that all of those realities are sanitized OUT, and sanitization means pretentious, and pretentious means I'm not interested.

In fact, those kinds of things would almost certainly be wasted time and are things that most people have no interest in seeing. Fiction is usually a form of escapism; if one wants to see a person performing the boring, normal actions of day to day life, there's no need to watch a movie or turn on a show.

If there were a demand to see an action hero pick his nose before getting out his guns, or a foreign spy sitting on the toilet before she goes to meet her contact, I'm sure producers would see to it they were added. Movies and TV shows are mostly supposed to be about those parts of the characters' lives that are outside the usual, though.

I absolutely won't agree that "demand" has anything to do with what goes into these things, as if the viewer were the actor. That's the same fallacy as car companies going "we're just giving the public what it wants" when they bloat cars up to inverted bathtubs and run ads to sell a pickup truck that can tow an asteroid. That's driven by the car maker, looking to exploit profit.

In the same way here the viewer is the exploited, not the driver, sat down in a passive posture to accept whatever emotion-mining is engineered to pour into that viewer's senses. ALL the control is in the hands of the film producer, just as it is in the hands of the car maker. In both cases the end user is the pawn to be milked for whatever the film can extract.

And speaking of characters' lives outside the usual --- how often do we see characters on TV, or the movies ----- actually watching TV?

Are you saying that people don't want the things they see in movies, or get in cars? Why do they spend their money on those things, if not because they want to?

Oh that's very simple, if tragic.

They do that because the advertising tells them to. Same reason they watch TV at all; because they're told to. And they obey.

That thought is heavy enough all by itself so I'll just leave it there.

 

[Moonglow]

I don't watch any of that crap....I have no cable and no stream for pay services...

 

[Montrovant]

That's pretty sad for you, you've missed out on tons of good entertainment.

No actually I've filtered out a lot of ultrapretentious crap.

Ever seen anyone cough on TV? Unless it was part of a script where they have TB or something? Ever see someone sneeze? Or ask somebody to repeat what they just said? Never happens. All contrived, all scripted, devoid of reality.

Actually I have seen someone sneeze on TV. It was a game show broadcast live, in France. The moderator sneezed like three times. I love live action --- because it can't be sanitized.

While I get your point, I think you do fiction in general, and science fiction in particular, a disservice. I sometimes get annoyed at the way people in TV and movies don't do the regular things all people do: using the bathroom, getting a runny nose, waking up with lines in your face from the pillow, scratching an itch in an indecorous place, etc. etc. However, none of those things are likely to advance the plot of a given story.

Not everything needs to "advance a plot". In this case it's simply laying a background of authenticity. If everything in the script had to advance a plot it would be a tedious work indeed. The point of which is not that sneezes or scratches should be scripted IN; rather it's that all of those realities are sanitized OUT, and sanitization means pretentious, and pretentious means I'm not interested.

In fact, those kinds of things would almost certainly be wasted time and are things that most people have no interest in seeing. Fiction is usually a form of escapism; if one wants to see a person performing the boring, normal actions of day to day life, there's no need to watch a movie or turn on a show.

If there were a demand to see an action hero pick his nose before getting out his guns, or a foreign spy sitting on the toilet before she goes to meet her contact, I'm sure producers would see to it they were added. Movies and TV shows are mostly supposed to be about those parts of the characters' lives that are outside the usual, though.

I absolutely won't agree that "demand" has anything to do with what goes into these things, as if the viewer were the actor. That's the same fallacy as car companies going "we're just giving the public what it wants" when they bloat cars up to inverted bathtubs and run ads to sell a pickup truck that can tow an asteroid. That's driven by the car maker, looking to exploit profit.

In the same way here the viewer is the exploited, not the driver, sat down in a passive posture to accept whatever emotion-mining is engineered to pour into that viewer's senses. ALL the control is in the hands of the film producer, just as it is in the hands of the car maker. In both cases the end user is the pawn to be milked for whatever the film can extract.

And speaking of characters' lives outside the usual --- how often do we see characters on TV, or the movies ----- actually watching TV?

Are you saying that people don't want the things they see in movies, or get in cars? Why do they spend their money on those things, if not because they want to?

Oh that's very simple, if tragic.

They do that because the advertising tells them to. Same reason they watch TV at all; because they're told to. And they obey.

That thought is heavy enough all by itself so I'll just leave it there.

If you don't think people enjoy watching TV, you're just silly. They don't need to be told to watch. If people simply did whatever advertising told them to do, the streaming services with far fewer ads would not have become as popular as they are.

There's certainly an element of advertising influence in what people watch, but everyone is not simply waiting for their marching orders to determine how they spend their leisure time.

 

[whitehall]

It ain't about politics. More right wingers enjoy the "Greatful Dead" than the "Walking Dead". It's a generation thing.

 

[fncceo]

A good show is a good show if it's set in space or set in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas.

It's not cynicism that makes people not like some SciFi shows, it's that they aren't good shows.

A good show has to have pithy dialogue, humor, pathos, a plot line that has people guessing but not leave too many holes, and ... above all ... it has to be fun to watch.

Very few shows, no matter where they are set, have that combination. Some do, but get cancelled way too soon.