Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Android Blues
Nov 22, 2008

Non-linear time is different from non-linear storytelling, a la what Momento has. Even time travel stories are kinda distinct in that they operate on a recognisable basis of causality.

If you're proposing a universe where time isn't linear, then you're talking about a setting where basically every concept is wildly different from expected norms, words like "past" and "future" have no meaning, and such statements as "doing something causes something else to happen" may no longer apply. I haven't heard the stuff in question but it's a really high conceptual standard to live up to, so it's not surprising they flagged out after the initial blue sky idea.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Barry Foster
Dec 24, 2007

What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)
I think Jsor is talking about non-linear time diegetically, as in, within the world of the characters and events themselves, rather than in the telling of the story itself.

Yes, plenty of stories can be told where the events are experienced out of order, by the reader/viewer and sometimes by the characters themselves, but the fundamental nature of cause and effect are preserved.

A 'story' where everything happens at the exact same instant - a world without time, which is essentially what 'experiencing all time at once' is - is pretty much unimaginable, unless you're a Tralfamadorian.

Cruel Rose
May 27, 2010

saaave gotham~
come on~
DO IT, BATMAN
FUCKING BATMAN I FUCKING HATE YOU

qntm posted:

Did we ever find out whose TARDIS the Doctor stole?

Actually, a recent Four/Leela story covered this! Basically Marianna was a creepy old time lady who traveled to the "Point of Stillness" (a place forbidden and supposedly inaccessible to time lords) and gained incredible powers. She got stuck there and died, but uses her power to resurrect herself in the TARDIS.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Abandoned_%28audio_story%29
It's a good story and I highly recommend it. Louise Jameson even co-wrote it!

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

qntm posted:

Did we ever find out whose TARDIS the Doctor stole?

All contextual stuff points to the TARDISes just being a pool that are used when required. Which is never because why would you want to do anything? Do you even understand what being a Time Lord is all about??

FreezingInferno posted:

The other half of Piscon Paradox is brilliant. Then it gutpunches you near the end. Then your van skids on ice and rolls over a few times.

No, wait, that was just my experience with Peri and the Piscon Paradox. I'm never going to forget that drat audio story because it could have been the last thing I ever heard.

You would have died doing what you loved. Skidding on an icy road and rolling over.

McGann
May 19, 2003

Get up you son of a bitch! 'Cause Mickey loves you!

I just finished binging through Dark Eyes 3 and I am... a little underwhelmed. I mean, the stakes are high but it still feels like they can't quite recapture that "epic" feel of Dark Eyes 1. It was an enjoyable listen and I'll have to give it another go, since when I binge through in 1-3 days I miss a lot of details.

I'd rank it slightly above DE2, if only for the inclusion of more Master.

PriorMarcus
Oct 17, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT BEING ALLERGIC TO POSITIVITY

Cruel Rose posted:

Actually, a recent Four/Leela story covered this! Basically Marianna was a creepy old time lady who traveled to the "Point of Stillness" (a place forbidden and supposedly inaccessible to time lords) and gained incredible powers. She got stuck there and died, but uses her power to resurrect herself in the TARDIS.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Abandoned_%28audio_story%29
It's a good story and I highly recommend it. Louise Jameson even co-wrote it!

That sounds awful. Sorry.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

Yeah, the TARDISes are just there s that bad guys can secretly use them for horrible time experiments to fragment people across reality in the audios while the House of Time Lords clutch their pearls in shock that anyone would actually touch those things.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Yeah the non-linear time in the Divergent Universe was never more than something they paid lip-service to, they either weren't sure how or didn't bother to try and bring it across for the majority of the stories set during that line. That's part of what made it so disappointing, most of the stories wouldn't have felt out of place in the standard universe of Doctor Who.

PriorMarcus posted:

That sounds awful. Sorry.

Yeah, it's yet another "answer" to a question nobody asked (or if they did, they shouldn't have). Why does the TARDIS have to be anything particularly special (BEFORE the Doctor started traveling in it) or have a backstory or any other rubbish? It was just a TARDIS that the Doctor stole when he left Gallifrey, albeit a particularly old model, and what makes it special is the length of time he has spent traveling in it and the experiences they have shared together as it quickly came to replace Gallifrey as his actual "home".

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

Jerusalem posted:

Yeah the non-linear time in the Divergent Universe was never more than something they paid lip-service to, they either weren't sure how or didn't bother to try and bring it across for the majority of the stories set during that line. That's part of what made it so disappointing, most of the stories wouldn't have felt out of place in the standard universe of Doctor Who.



Yeah, they more or less completely ignore it except that people don't know what the word "time" means. Some of the stories in the arc are okay, but they're definitely dragged down by not deciding whether they're a part of the theme or not and always teetering on the fence.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Jerusalem posted:

Yeah, it's yet another "answer" to a question nobody asked (or if they did, they shouldn't have). Why does the TARDIS have to be anything particularly special (BEFORE the Doctor started traveling in it) or have a backstory or any other rubbish? It was just a TARDIS that the Doctor stole when he left Gallifrey, albeit a particularly old model, and what makes it special is the length of time he has spent traveling in it and the experiences they have shared together as it quickly came to replace Gallifrey as his actual "home".

Eh, The Doctor's Wife claimed it was special - "Do you ever wonder why I chose you?" "I chose you! You were unlocked." "Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough." And I like that. She wasn't super-special, but she was itching to explore too.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

MikeJF posted:

Eh, The Doctor's Wife claimed it was special - "Do you ever wonder why I chose you?" "I chose you! You were unlocked." "Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough." And I like that. She wasn't super-special, but she was itching to explore too.

I like that because it's not really that the TARDIS was special as much as it was ridiculous and defective enough to be a good match for the Doctor.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Bicyclops posted:

I like that because it's not really that the TARDIS was special as much as it was ridiculous and defective enough to be a good match for the Doctor.

Agreed. There wasn't some super-special spirit of a long-dead Time Lord who traveled to some crux point of time and space inside the TARDIS manipulating events or anything, it was just an old but enthusiastic TARDIS that saw a kindred spirit in the Doctor.

It's the same kind of problem I have with that notion of the Doctor as some kind of ridiculous reincarnation of THE OTHER or the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller or being chosen by Death (ugh) etc - you don't need anything to make the Doctor some special chosen one. What makes him special is the things he has experienced, the lessons he has learned, and the choices he has made, almost all of which WE have also experienced watching his adventures over the last 50 years.

PriorMarcus
Oct 17, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT BEING ALLERGIC TO POSITIVITY

Jerusalem posted:

Agreed. There wasn't some super-special spirit of a long-dead Time Lord who traveled to some crux point of time and space inside the TARDIS manipulating events or anything, it was just an old but enthusiastic TARDIS that saw a kindred spirit in the Doctor.

It's the same kind of problem I have with that notion of the Doctor as some kind of ridiculous reincarnation of THE OTHER or the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller or being chosen by Death (ugh) etc - you don't need anything to make the Doctor some special chosen one. What makes him special is the things he has experienced, the lessons he has learned, and the choices he has made, almost all of which WE have also experienced watching his adventures over the last 50 years.

I'm agreeing with everything your saying, so I've nothing to add.

surc
Aug 17, 2004

Jerusalem posted:

Agreed. There wasn't some super-special spirit of a long-dead Time Lord who traveled to some crux point of time and space inside the TARDIS manipulating events or anything, it was just an old but enthusiastic TARDIS that saw a kindred spirit in the Doctor.

It's the same kind of problem I have with that notion of the Doctor as some kind of ridiculous reincarnation of THE OTHER or the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller or being chosen by Death (ugh) etc - you don't need anything to make the Doctor some special chosen one. What makes him special is the things he has experienced, the lessons he has learned, and the choices he has made, almost all of which WE have also experienced watching his adventures over the last 50 years.

Yes, this exactly. I think of this kind of thing as the "Drizzit/Superman" problem. It's really hard to write stories that aren't crap when your character is super amazing in every way with no flaws, and/or totally invincible.


Also personally, I think that the implied message of "Go out and see the world and amazing things will happen to you" is a waaaaaay better one than "if you are pre-destined to be awesome and the best, amazing things will happen to you!"

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Jerusalem posted:

Agreed. There wasn't some super-special spirit of a long-dead Time Lord who traveled to some crux point of time and space inside the TARDIS manipulating events or anything, it was just an old but enthusiastic TARDIS that saw a kindred spirit in the Doctor.

It's the same kind of problem I have with that notion of the Doctor as some kind of ridiculous reincarnation of THE OTHER or the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller or being chosen by Death (ugh) etc - you don't need anything to make the Doctor some special chosen one. What makes him special is the things he has experienced, the lessons he has learned, and the choices he has made, almost all of which WE have also experienced watching his adventures over the last 50 years.

This is also why I dislike "academy era" stuff and all that rot. We've SEEN the Doctor's origin story. It ran from November 23, 1963 through to somewhere around December 1966 (Power of the Daleks). And it was pretty good, for the most part. A few stumbles, but who's life doesn't have those?

thexerox123
Aug 17, 2007

DoctorWhat posted:

We've SEEN the Doctor's origin story. It ran from November 23, 1963 through to somewhere around December 1966 (Power of the Daleks). And it was pretty good, for the most part. A few stumbles, but who's life doesn't have those?

....to be fair, a lot of that hasn't been seen by a lot of people in the thread, what with a good chunk of that time period being missing episodes.

Forktoss
Feb 13, 2012

I'm OK, you're so-so

Jerusalem posted:

the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller

Speaking of, I've been reading Jean-Marc Lofficier's The Nth Doctor, which is a great account of all the dumb and ill-conceived Doctor Who movie projects people tried to get off the ground in the 1980s and 90s. It's a really fun read, even if it desperately tries to give a positive spin on all the ridiculous film ideas and hype up how great it would have been to see K-9 on the big screen. The only criticisms he comes up with are things like "the Time Lord President should have been called Pandak instead of Borusa", which, to be fair, is kind of expected from a mid-90s fan journal.

The book also has some utterly mad notes on the script summaries where Lofficier tries to reconcile all the unmade sequels, prequels and remakeboots not only with Classic Series continuity, but also with each other. Things just get more and more convoluted as the book goes on, and by the end he's up to about 17 pre-Hartnell Doctors and an explanation about how the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops was Ulysses and probably the Other too and also had a piece of the Key to Time, which he was given by the Fourth Doctor but that was later stolen by "the Mandrake" who's really the Master and also his son and also President of Gallifrey.

The Leekley Bible stuff is especially galling, he just lifts tired Joseph Campbell concepts wholesale and Lofficier praises him about how clever that is. It's also got "Cybs", space pirate Cybermen that are too cool for multiple syllables and who are apparently "deadly cyborg versions of Native American -style warriors". Eric Roberts is honestly the least of the evils that might have been.

Big Mean Jerk
Jan 27, 2009

Well, of course I know him.
He's me.

Jerusalem posted:

or the son of Ulysses the great Time Lord traveller

I don't really have a problem with this, but then again I'm a lunatic who really would have liked to see a 90's Doctor Who show on Fox and the inevitable X-Files crossover.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?



What a weird and ultimately disappointing story Scaredy Cat is. An 8th Doctor audio, it attempts to tell a story about innocence and the nature of evil but gets so bogged down in bizarre and contradictory characterization and attempts to shoehorn in the continuity of other audios that what is left leaves me as confused as those poor neanderthals trying to live their life on the planet the story takes place in. Throw in an absolutely awful attempt at writing and voicing a child and an extremely unsatisfying and predictable conclusion, a weird side-adventure halfway through that could have warranted it's own (entirely better!) audio, a framing device that is abandoned halfway through, and a poor attempt at a Hannibal Lecter impersonation and... well, yeah I've tried to be diplomatic but this is a bad story.

On an unnamed colony world a piece of space-junk crashes into the ground, and appears to kill one of the colonists who approaches it. Some unspecified amount of time later, Charley is showing C'Rizz the TARDIS' gardens. It is a kind of Noah's Ark of the universe's various plantlife carefully put in place by the Doctor, though he admits that sometimes he forgets to tend to it and things run wild. C'Rizz is unimpressed though, having come from a world where beauty is apparently defined by context, and the "artificial" nature of a garden leaves him cold. What he really wants to see are forests and plants in their natural environments, not sculpted or otherwise cultivated by civilizations. Charley laughs that he wants to see The Garden of Eden, and the Doctor surprises her by obliging, taking them to a planet called Endarra, the undeveloped sister planet of the highly developed Caludaar. Caludaar has been wracked by war and pollution and urbanization in its past, and though they eventually made peace they took the lesson of their impact on their home planet seriously - all nations agreed that no matter how advanced they became technologically, they would forever leave Endarra alone, and allow it to develop naturally and unspoiled.

So it is of some surprise to the Doctor when he registers technology on the planet. Landing, they discover a small research outpost and, after some unpleasantness with some automated guns, learn that three scientists from Caludaar are conducting highly disturbing research on the natives in pursuit of the elimination of "evil" - they want to physically alter the brain to "fix" evil people and allow them to become productive members of society. It is, in effect, a more sophisticated version of a lobotomy, and the Doctor is horrified at their research, especially since he recognizes the prototype device they are using as one that will eventually be banned in the future for all the great harm it will do.

So far, so good, as far as the plot goes. But already the characterization has been lacking, as far as the three scientists go. It's difficult to get a read on any of them, which will continue throughout the whole story. Is Bronik an idealist and visionary who grasps the social sophistication of the native hominids? Or is he a mean-spirited, close-minded monster who happily throws a stranger into a room with a known murderous psychopath just because she is irritating him? Is Arken an emotionless, unethical scientist? A grieving father hiding his trauma behind his work? A leering sadist who gets his thrills from watching the suffering of those he deems worthless as human beings outside of their value as test subjects? Is Niah a victim, powerless to have her voice heard or an active and enthusiastic participant in torture and other unethical activities? Does she deserve to be saved at the end of the story? Shouldn't she also be punished for her part in the unconscionable experiments that took place on the planet? These characters seem to fit into whatever the script demands of them next, and while with editing or rewriting maybe these conflicting drives could have been used to give depth to the characters and their motivations, what comes across is a mish-mash.

As far as the main cast goes, this is primarily a Doctor/C'Rizz story, with Charley mostly separated from them as a group and left to do her own thing. She has plenty of stuff to do, but feels like a sideline character. This is a little understandable since C'Rizz is fresh into this universe and it is worth exploring how he is reacting, but given the strength of the Doctor/Charley relationship it is a little disappointing to have so little interaction between them. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly good outing for C'Rizz, as the writers still seem to be struggling to define him as a character, not just across multiple audios but even within a single story. I'd hoped they'd finally defined him somewhat by the end of Terror Firma but if so, this story would appear to have been written before the memo went around. C'Rizz's lack of a distinctive personality causes him to shift between compelling at one moment and hilariously inept at the next. Perhaps the funniest (unintentionally!) scene in the audio comes at one point where C'Rizz is stranded with the supposed antagonist of the story and tells him,"I'm a killer too... so which of us should REALLY be scared? :smug:" followed almost immediately by the antagonist completely dominating and terrifying him.

Roughly halfway through the story, the Doctor takes C'Rizz on a sidetrip. Breaking one of the laws that even he has been careful to maintain, the Doctor takes them back to the early days of Endarra's formation. Time Lords are forbidden from landing on a newly formed planet due to some technobabble nonsense about the "morphogenic field", a catch-all description for what is essentially the lifeforce of the planet itself (which kind of comes up in In the Forest of the Night from season 8 of the revival). He discovers the colonists from the start of the story in the aftermath of the space-junk falling to the ground and learns that they've been infected by a biological weapon. It seems long before Caludaar developed its own civilizations, Endarra had been marked for colonization by another space-faring race of humanoids. But their initial colony was wiped out by the attack, guinea pigs for a passing warlike race that wanted to test their latest biological weapon. The Doctor has bought C'Rizz here because in the "present" they've both seen visions of a little girl skipping happily about singing,"Scaredy Cat!" and he has tracked her back to this place. It turns out the little girl has a natural immunity to the virus, but that doesn't explain how she can still be around four million years later.

Amidst that mystery though, the Doctor and C'Rizz clash over the Doctor's decision to return to the present day and abandon these colonists to their deaths. It's an age-old story in Doctor Who, the Doctor and a companion arguing over what can and can't be done to change history in order to save lives, one that runs through the classic series and into the revival in the current day. It's the absolute strongest part of the entire audio and yet is a side-plot tangential to the main story. C'Rizz's refusal to meekly follow through on the Doctor's orders, stealing the vaccine in the TARDIS and handing it out to colonists, and his realization that the Doctor was fully aware of this betrayal and allowed it to happen anyway... well it's like getting a peak at an alternate reality where THIS was the main story of Scaredy Cat, and it was a better audio by far than the one we got. Especially when the Doctor takes C'Rizz a few months into the future and shows him the result of his interference in the web of time - I wish they had stretched this premise out into an entire audio.

Through the first half of the story, a framing device of a mysterious man amusing himself telling stories to an unknown listener is present. At the end of part two, the identity of this person is revealed: Eunis Flood. He claims to be a political prisoner being experimented on by scientists working for the Government, but is later revealed to be an unrepentant serial killer. He's clearly meant to be very much in the Anthony Hopkins mold, but it is very easy to gently caress up a Hannibal Lecter style sociopath and boy do they gently caress it up. It's not quite as hamfisted as Jerry Bruckheimer's version of the character in the wonderfully awful Con Air, but Flood's supposed charisma and devilish charm just falls flat and is quickly discarded for not-quite-believable insane glee as he runs amuck once he inevitably gets free. It would have been interesting to further explore the notion of who was worse - Arken or Flood - but even that rather trite notion of "Who is the REAL monster!" would seem to have too much depth for this story. Instead Flood just runs around being ridiculous, only to be overcome when the Doctor solves the mystery of who the little girl who keeps cropping up is and brings the two together.

The climax attempts to tie together a whole lot of themes and the lack of focus means none of them are particularly well-handled. The treatment of evil vs innocence has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer; C'Rizz learns he is more than just a killer; Arken finds the peace he was looking for; Endarra is once again left to its own devices etc. But so much is left unsatisfied - most particularly the notion of Endarra as an off-limits world. Such a big point is made about how huge a deal it is that Endarra is left untouched by the people of Caludaar. But once people are discovered on it and THOSE people discover the Doctor and his companions, none of them offer more than lipservice to,"Oh hey you really shouldn't be here." Also the planet HAS been spoiled now, not just by those initial colonists but by all the horrible poo poo the native hominids have suffered/seen/experienced at the hands of the research scientists and Flood's antics. That's okay, but they should have actually talked about that - Niah tells them that she'll tell her Government to leave the planet alone and they kind of see her off with a happy goodbye as if she isn't complicit in the horrible things that have happened, and what is to stop that (or any other) Government from just sending up another mission in secret anyway? Hell, who is to say there aren't multiple research outposts on that planet?

In the end, Scaredy Cat is a big disappointment and, despite some good individual elements, is ultimately a bad story. Unable to focus on exactly what it is trying to say, sidelining away to a much more interesting premise halfway through and then returning to the less interesting story, and hampered by a truly appalling "child" voice that only the kid in The Holy Terror managed to surpass... it is a struggle to get through this story. As usual McGann and Fisher do fine work with the material they're given, though it is harder to tell if Westmaas is just ill-served by bad material or isn't capable of elevating what he gets like the other two.... because to date he really hasn't gotten ANY good material. The closest I've heard is at the very end of Terror Firma, and I don't know if that was a fluke or not because everything else has been so inconsistent. There was promise in that side-plot though, and I'd like to hope that future stories might live up to that promise.... because Scaredy Cat itself certainly did not.

Solaris Knight
Apr 26, 2010

ASK ME ABOUT POWER RANGERS MYSTIC FORCE

Forktoss posted:

Speaking of, I've been reading Jean-Marc Lofficier's The Nth Doctor, which is a great account of all the dumb and ill-conceived Doctor Who movie projects people tried to get off the ground in the 1980s and 90s. It's a really fun read, even if it desperately tries to give a positive spin on all the ridiculous film ideas and hype up how great it would have been to see K-9 on the big screen. The only criticisms he comes up with are things like "the Time Lord President should have been called Pandak instead of Borusa", which, to be fair, is kind of expected from a mid-90s fan journal.

The book also has some utterly mad notes on the script summaries where Lofficier tries to reconcile all the unmade sequels, prequels and remakeboots not only with Classic Series continuity, but also with each other. Things just get more and more convoluted as the book goes on, and by the end he's up to about 17 pre-Hartnell Doctors and an explanation about how the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops was Ulysses and probably the Other too and also had a piece of the Key to Time, which he was given by the Fourth Doctor but that was later stolen by "the Mandrake" who's really the Master and also his son and also President of Gallifrey.

The Leekley Bible stuff is especially galling, he just lifts tired Joseph Campbell concepts wholesale and Lofficier praises him about how clever that is. It's also got "Cybs", space pirate Cybermen that are too cool for multiple syllables and who are apparently "deadly cyborg versions of Native American -style warriors". Eric Roberts is honestly the least of the evils that might have been.

This sounds amazing. How much is it?

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Big Mean Jerk posted:

I don't really have a problem with this, but then again I'm a lunatic who really would have liked to see a 90's Doctor Who show on Fox and the inevitable X-Files crossover.

Sliders crossover.

Big Mean Jerk
Jan 27, 2009

Well, of course I know him.
He's me.
The 90's truly were an incredible time for genre TV.

Star Trek: TNG
Star Trek: DS9
Star Trek: Voyager (if you hate yourself)
Buffy
Angel
Outer Limits revival
Sliders
Quantum Leap
Farscape
X-Files
MST3K


Plus a billion others I'm forgetting.

surc
Aug 17, 2004

Metal Loaf posted:

Sliders crossover.

SOLD!

Forktoss
Feb 13, 2012

I'm OK, you're so-so

Solaris Knight posted:

This sounds amazing. How much is it?

I think you can get it on Kindle for about a fiver, and old paperbacks pop up on eBay for a few pounds every now and then. It's definitely worth the price if you're into that sort of thing.

Metal Loaf posted:

Sliders crossover.

:getin:

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
SeaQuest DSV

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible




You failed to mention that the whole four part story could have fit on one disc. Disc 1 (34' 43"); Disc 2 (39' 10")

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

The_Doctor posted:

SeaQuest DSV

Man the one season they made of that show was so great. I really admire the guts and dedication it took for the cast and crew to film that one season, admit that doing any more would tarnish the show, shook hands and congratulated each other, then went their separate ways.

Davros1 posted:

You failed to mention that the whole four part story could have fit on one disc. Disc 1 (34' 43"); Disc 2 (39' 10")

I just do digital downloads of these audios v:shobon:v

It did feel short though, though this is actually not necessarily a bad thing where this audio is concerned.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Big Mean Jerk posted:

Plus a billion others I'm forgetting.

Highlander: The Series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess are probably the holy trinity of nineties genre camp (I've only seen the first one all the way through).

And I'm quite partial to Forever Knight as well.


The story I've heard is that when Fox passed on picking up Doctor Who as a new series, they gave Sliders a third season instead.

Jerusalem posted:

Man the one season they made of that show was so great. I really admire the guts and dedication it took for the cast and crew to film that one season, admit that doing any more would tarnish the show, shook hands and congratulated each other, then went their separate way.

See, the first season was TNG; the second one was VOY; the third wanted to be DS9 but couldn't pull it off, and ended up as TNG season seven or something.

My brother refused to believe that this series featured episodes where William Shatner plays a Balkan war criminal and Mark Hammill plays an alien fugitive masquerading as a blind astronomer (in a series about a futuristic submarine), but there we go.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Big Mean Jerk posted:

Plus a billion others I'm forgetting.

Go watch Babylon 5 already, it is legitimately great.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
I'm still trying to get around to Blake's 7!

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

CobiWann posted:

I'm still trying to get around to Blake's 7!

What the hell kind of deprived life have you had where you've missed out on proper British television?

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

CobiWann posted:

I'm still trying to get around to Blake's 7!

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

CobiWann posted:

I'm still trying to get around to Blake's 7!

If time is a factor here's a neat shortcut - wear an eyepatch, glue a calculator to the wall and play an endless loop of Paul Darrow laughing as you point a water pistol at a cardboard box and make pew-pew noises. You've now recaptured the spirit of Blake's 7 perfectly :)

I love Blake's 7.

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"

CobiWann posted:

I'm still trying to get around to Blake's 7!

Audios, Videos or both?

Seconding the Babylon 5 recommendation. My favourite Space Opera-series.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

adhuin posted:

Audios, Videos or both?

Seconding the Babylon 5 recommendation. My favourite Space Opera-series.

Backstory: in the Star Trek thread, Big Mean Jerk announced that B5 was terrible because he didn't like JMS's run on Superman.

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

I can't really say with a straight face that Babylon 5 has stood the test of time, but it's well worth watching once, just to admire the spectacle of a man going completely mad and deciding to write the whole drat series himself.

Disclaimer: I may have listened to Nekromanteia today and thus want all of humanity to suffer as I have suffered.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

docbeard posted:

I can't really say with a straight face that Babylon 5 has stood the test of time

It's stood it as well as Doctor Who has. Even revival Doctor Who.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Neddy Seagoon posted:

What the hell kind of deprived life have you had where you've missed out on proper British television?

Mistakes have been made, what can I say?

BTW, it's no Pertwee in Spearhead from Space, but Davison rolling around in the wheelchair during the second episode of Castrovalva is one of the greatest things I've seen in Who history.

Solaris Knight
Apr 26, 2010

ASK ME ABOUT POWER RANGERS MYSTIC FORCE
All this mention of genre TV and not one single mention of Red Dwarf?

I am ashamed of you, Doctor Who thread :colbert:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Solaris Knight posted:

All this mention of genre TV and not one single mention of Red Dwarf?

I am ashamed of you, Doctor Who thread :colbert:

...

...

...um...er...what's Red Dwarf?

  • Locked thread