Scifi fans, what show would you bring back?

[Grant Lamontagne]

I love how no one is arguing about how bad Andromeda and Earth Final Conflict were, and that no one seems to have even been aware of that awful Flash Gordon remake!

Usually there's at least one different opinion no matter what the topic is here and it's one of the reasons I love this place, and yet not one person is willing to step up for those truly awful shows! 

I suppose I could go one step further and say that I actually liked Star Trek Enterprise, and I'd love to see it come back.  In Kirk's era the Federation still had some decent battles to fight and some manner of exploring to do but by the time the Next Generation came along the Federation was pretty well the dominant force in the galaxy and there really weren't any significant threats, so there wasn't really much to get excited about, other than the Borg, and let's face it, they did the Borg to death.

Maybe a new show about a bunch of Borg that were separated from the Hive mind and became smugglers?

Def

[Syph007]

I'm a pretty geeky sci fi nut, and Ive never seen Andromeda ... seems like a good thing then!  I read a review of the show once and I think it just said, avoid.. so I did!

[Gareth]

I'm slightly ashamed to admit I didn't mind Andromeda, though I'm totally with you on Earth final Conflict and the terrible Flash Gordon series.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I'm a pretty geeky sci fi nut, and Ive never seen Andromeda ... seems like a good thing then!  I read a review of the show once and I think it just said, avoid.. so I did!

Andromeda features Kevin Sorbo (TV's Hercules) as a combination Buck Rogers/Captain Kirk kind of thing.  He was catapulted from his own galaxy and somehow got put in charge of a spaceship with the imprinted personality of a hot chick and the crew consisted of a hot blonde who did a horrible tough guy routine all the time, a kid who was so annoying you wished they'd replace him with Wesley Crusher and a big guy whose loyalty was always in question, largely because he occasionally tried to kill the rest of the crew.... and yet they trusted him.

BTW, the blond tough guy chick was the one who replaced the bald guy on the Canadian TV classic Forever Knight about the vampire policeman.

Andromeda:



Forever Knight:



Apparently a Roddenberry reject is still a step up from a Canadian TV drama.... 

Def

[Grant Lamontagne]

Oh yes, and I sort of remember some brown hairy guy on Andromeda that had some kind of weird Warrior Spock thing going on.  Or maybe I am thinking of another awful show?

Def

[Gareth]

Oh yes, and I sort of remember some brown hairy guy on Andromeda that had some kind of weird Warrior Spock thing going on.  Or maybe I am thinking of another awful show?

Def

lol, I'd actually forgotten about the man/bat/hairy thing character.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I really didn't spend a lot of time watching the show- I think I watched it once and saw that thing and said "Nope- we'll be having no more of that..."

Def

[Biru]

What about "Space:1999" ? I wasn't nuts about the cast, but I loved the production design. The Eagles were very cool, somewhat the multitools of spaceships (they could be tactical, transport or personnel vehicles). The episode where one of the crew became transformed into a creature who craved warmth so badly that he obliterated himself in a reactor chamber was very good.

[Carlos]

What about "Space:1999" ? I wasn't nuts about the cast, but I loved the production design. The Eagles were very cool, somewhat the multitools of spaceships (they could be tactical, transport or personnel vehicles). The episode where one of the crew became transformed into a creature who craved warmth so badly that he obliterated himself in a reactor chamber was very good.

Those bell-bottom pants were awesome   

The first season was very good, the story was well built and the episodes just kept rolling on that. The following season lost some quality, in my opinion, as they started to introduce lots of weird stuff (eg: that girl which could transform itself in anything).

[dks]

Nobody used to watch the "invisible man"

I liked it; shame they stopped it..

[Biru]

That's a good one, Carlos. I had forgotten about how Disco the outfits were, but thinking back they did seem somewhat ABBA at that. Being a nerd, I mainly watched the Eagles. I primarily watch Star Trek to ogle the Enterprise (the classic angular one 1701, I used to refer to the "D" on STNG as the Ford Taurus of the galaxy).

A while back a local retro station was showing 1999 and "Buck Rogers" (the one with Gil Gerard). Both didn't last long. I figure there weren't many episodes to show. I cringed every time the dancers on Buck Rogers would get those strobe-lights-in-a-tube and start twirling them about their heads!

DKS: are you referring to the B&W series? I watched it last weekend! It's always fun to watch the bad guys pantomime getting beat up or "carrying" themselves to a couch or behind a box. The mix of accents irks me a bit.

Regards.

[Biru]

Sorry, I see the box now. I was referring to the old British series. Some of its plots are very strange (read contrived). It's funny to watch if you think about the fact that the IM is naked while he's stalking about on the ships, wharves and hideouts.

[Medic82]

What I really would like to see being brought back are more original Star Trek, Star Trek Enterprise, X-files, Battlestar Galactica, Quantum Leap, Farscape and Space Above and Beyond

[Grant Lamontagne]

Well I have now watched all of Stargate SG-1, and I am downloading Atlantis and Universe.  I have to say I liked the first 6 or seven seasons better but the show didn't get as bad as I was expecting it to after the cast shuffle.  Usually when a show starts moving characters around and replacing half of them it is a sign of the show dropping off, but in this case it didn't completely suck.

The 200th episode was hilarious as they just had fun with the whole concept and poked fun at themselves.  Plus it's great to see Dom Delouise's sons still getting work after the colossal failure that was the second season of Seaquest DSV!   

Def

[Steinar]

ST: Enterprise is something I'd love to see... done right.

The concept is golden, the first human high speed (from humanity's point of view), long range ship travelling into a friendly, and unfriendly, world... But they didn't have the writing quality to back up the concept... and then they started flailing... and... Well, I have watched the entire show a long time ago, but it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I'd love to see some sci-fi about, well, boldly going where no-one has gone before.

B5 is probably my favourite show of all times, but I don't want it brought back. The story is told, don't fiddle around with the concept Lucas style. Perhaps it didn't come out the way 100% the way it was envisioned, but then again, what does? Last Christmas my wife and I watched the entire five seasons, just doing minor skipping, and I still choke up some places. It's an immensely satisfying show to watch in such a compressed manner on cause of the strong arc.

Even though I'm not a big fan of remakes and reboots and whatnot, since it is the theme of the thread: The British vampire series Ultraviolet. It was extremely underrated. The vampires, “code V”, were bad guys, hello, they are immortal mass murderers(!), and the protagonists of the show were the morally grey government agency hunting them down. I remember the first episode I watched “Yawn... more vampires... Err... The shoot at the vampires with carbon bullets? And the vampires explode? ... This is actually pretty cool!”  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169501/

[Grant Lamontagne]

I'll have to check that one out.  I never heard of it before.

Def

[thebullfrog]

Whenever I re-watch B5 I skip the last episode of season 4, and all of season 5 aside from the series finale (that was originally filmed to be the season 4 finale) The show comes across much more coherent that way. I honestly tend to pretend season 5 never happened lol. I know they tie up some loose ends, but it's mostly filler and I HATE Lochley. It's just so painfully obvious that all of her stories and scripts were intended to be Ivanova's.

[Grant Lamontagne]

So I take it you aren't a fan of Crusade then either huh?   

Seriously, that's a problem with most series, Sci Fi or not.  They often flounder in the first season until the actual enemy is identified, pick up speed in the second season, build a lot of momentum in the third then somehow manage to beat the enemy somewhere in the fourth.  From there the ratings are so good that the studios are insisting on another season to continue making money even though the story has been told, and anything new is just picking at bits and pieces, but the writers are under contract and they would rather get paid than start looking for new jobs so they try to keep things going.  Many of the bigger name actors on the other hand have seen that it's done and they ride the peak by trying to get on to other shows, which means that they have to be written out and new people written in, and the whole feel of the show changes, turning a good percentage of the audience off.

Seen from that perspective, the fifth season of B5 sucked.  Seen from a "real life" type perspective where things tend to continue long after the excitement is over I actually appreciate these kinds of things, and I think it's a testament to the skill of the writers if what follows is actually good on it's own, and I think B5 was.  Not great, but compare it to the first season and it wasn't that bad.

Def

[Whoey]

I grabbed a complete B5 torrent a while back since I didn't follow the show too closely while it was actually on TV. Haven't had a chance to get into it yet...

[turnsouth]

Contracts are the key, take for example the actors. When a series pilot is picked up by a network, most of the actors sign on with a four year contract. The details of the contracts vary greatly, depending on the potential value of an actor, the projected viability of the series, etc... But when the four years are over, the actors have the opportunity to renegotiate their contract with the studio, and if the show is quite popular the situation becomes carte blanche for the actor (this is also true to some extent with writers, and the others involved in production)

This presents a problem for the network, as in a show that may have had a 30% profit margin now may only have a 15% one, so new ROI is less likely in the short term. This puts a great strain on the production to "keep it going" as long as possible. Which usually ends up in crappy television.

There are ways around this:

• Change the cast, which rarely ever works
• Write the show from the beginning with the intention of killing off some or all of the main cast throughout the series, and constantly refreshing the characters. The long running show "ER" was a good example of this, as well as Dr. Who, where the cast changes constantly
• Start the show knowing when your last episode is going to be. "LOST" is an example of this

There are also examples of shows where they are popular to their own demise. Star Trek TNG was one of these. The show ran so long that it became too expensive to produce, and no longer could be supported by advertising revenue. Another one was the comedy "Friends"

[thebullfrog]

I was actually really starting to get into Crusade when they pulled the plug on it. I think that show some good potential.

The thing about TNG running so long is that I think it's one of the few shows, especially sci fi, that got better as it went on. The last season had some great stuff.

[Woz]

Firefly! Most brilliant show ever! It´s a crime they killed it!