Biggest Science Fiction Disappointments!

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Yes, the Sci-Fi channel has been pretty much a disappointment. They seem to be shooting for making friday the only day worth watching, then blowing off the rest of the week. It may just be me, but I feel that's a somewhat bizarre marketing strategy.

I can just picture their scheduling session..."Geeks don't have dates on Friday night - let's put all the good stuff on then."

The Space Channel here is okay, I guess.

[Patroklos]

I think that a series that people dedicate years of their lives following, and then gives you a big turb as your reward in the end, is the worst.

In this regard Babylon 5 takes the cake.

[Odin]

I agree with GePap, considering that this body form is the only one out of all the organisms on earth to yeild our type of intelligence, and that most of the species in the top of the intelligence tree share the same basic shape, it might be that this particular form is the most suited for it.

Vertabrato-centrism:

We only have a sample size of 1, Earth, so we canot say for sure if that is true, or if it is just chance that the vertabrates, as opposed to say, the cephalopods, spawned a sentient organism.

And remember, evolution does not strive for intelligence, it strives for survival, there has to be the right set of enviromental conditions affecting the right gregarious omnivore, and a good bit of luck.

Population able to reach a critical level for a techical civilization. Probably not an obligate predator of larger herbivores. Not an efficient, obligate herbivore. Multiple food sources make it more likely to reward mental activity and foraging, rather than just more effiicient digestion of a single food source.

Indeed, in fact, the transition from Australopithicus to Homo 2.5 million years ago seems to have happened when the drying climate in eastern and southern Africa forced our ancestors to rely alot on scavanging in the dry season (and chunks of flint are good for breaking open bones to get marrow and scare lions away from thier kills *hint hint*).

[Mr. Harley]

GePap, read Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. It deals with sex and aliens in a way very different than the Star Trek "everything fits and crossbreeds" mode (I had to sneak it off my dad's top SF shelf/verboten books while he was away on a business trip as a teenager). It's even listed in Wikipedia, which caught me by surprise. It's like discovering a movie you remember the as a kid is now considered "classic".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Visions

[LDiCesare]

Sci Fi lacks more authors like Lem, and Robert Forward should have written more books (atomic bombs as a means of reproduction is definitely one of the funniest things I've read, and it's even barely plausible).

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Patroklos
I think that a series that people dedicate years of their lives following, and then gives you a big turb as your reward in the end, is the worst.

In this regard Babylon 5 takes the cake.

Fah! Not... even... close... bub*!

The worst one, in terms of dragging its fans through a few years of blazing glory followed by twice as long in turgid mediocrity, then going out in possibly the worst series finale in the history of series finale's was:

The X-Files.

At least the final episode of B5 wasn't a goddamned clip show!

*Which movie?

[molly bloom]

'Event Horizon'. Utter pants, and a waste of talented actors.


Like a predictable slasher horror/ghost story, but set on a spaceship.

'The Matrix 2 & 3'. Chop-socky crossed with state of the art special effects to make high tech fight scenes that don't last ten minutes, but just make you feel time has slowed to a crawl and paint is drying as you watch.....


And that crappy hippie orgy sequence. Gah.


'Starship Troopers'- yes, we're a bazillion years in the future, terrorised by giant beetles that fart rocks through space and we fight them with mighty twigs and semi-automatic spitballs!

Still, Casper van Daytime did get to show off his hot bod whilst being chastised, so it wasn't all bad.


'The Avengers' - hmm, let's take a charismatic t.v. series, take all the things that made it quirky, unique and a favourite of fans worldwide and...... leave them out. Oh, and add two leads with as much sexual chemistry as a mouldy head of lettuce humping the corpse of a slug.

Sean Connery for once being allowed to act with the only accent he does well, but having recovered from the shock of eventually playing a Scots character, fails to act at all convincingly.

[Dis]

Originally posted by JohnT
The Phantom Menace, the re-issues, Greedo shot first, blech.

Greedo shot first? What's the deal with this? I can't remember the scene very well.

and is there any place I can find the original movies before they've been hacked to death?

[Dis]

Originally posted by GePap
Why would the chance of aliens being humanoid be 0?

It seems to me a rather useful body type for a species that does not specialize in any particularly. There is no greater reason for aliens being humanoid than there is for them NOT being humanoid.

and humanoids are an efficient body for moving around and thinking.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Tuberski
I must not be a big enough geek.

I've never read a Phillip K. Dick story, hate Asimov, and have no idea what FireFly is.

ACK!

me too!

I don't even read sci-fi

[Dis]

Originally posted by GePap
I mentioned Lem because he was one of the few writers to address the issues of the great difficulty of communication between species.

That to me is a much bigger problem than humanoid aliens, the notion every species can understand each other, or that they have similar motivations, or at least motivations they can each understand.

That and interspecies mating-that is a great sin of easy sci fi!

horses and donkeys can mate

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Dissident


Greedo shot first? What's the deal with this? I can't remember the seen very well.

and is there any place I can find the original movies before they've been hacked to death?

The Cantina 'seen' , it's a common Star Wars nerds complaint.

BTW the new versions are better, but if you must, the 'oldies' are on Kazaa.

[monkspider]

Come on guys, the Prequels, hands down.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by monkspider
Come on guys, the Prequels, hands down.

I sometimes think maybe I just got older inbetween the two sets of films getting made.... I really don't know, AOTC wasn't much worse than ROTJ was it?

[Mr. Harley]

yes, it was - as in AOTC had absolutely zero chemistry between the actors, the script and actions of the main protaginists is wooden, and oh heck if you have to ask you really need to rewatch both of them.