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Battlestar Galactica and others

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HFrankenstein:

--- Quote from: Archangel_Lucifer on 10 Oct 2006, 11:54 ---Its shit I never expected to see in a sci-fi show.

--- End quote ---

I barely even categorize BSG as sci-fi.  I call it a military drama.

Similarly, Firefly isn't sci-fi, it's a western.  Star Wars is fantasy.  Very little modern sci-fi is traditional Science Fiction.  You don't see stuff like Orwell's 1984 anymore.  Star Trek is probably the last traditional Science Fiction, and even that isn't quite.

Ozymandias:
I submit that there has never been a true 'sci-fi' TV series. Even Star Trek was pitched as 'Wagon Train...IN SPAAAAACE!' It's all just a futuristic version of accepted genres (fantasy,w estern, mystery, etc.)

I also submit that I do not ****ing care, because TV sci-fi contains the best stories on TV.

There has been some good movie sci-fi, though. Gattaca comes to mind.

KharBevNor:

--- Quote from: Ozymandias on 10 Oct 2006, 12:54 ---I submit that there has never been a true 'sci-fi' TV series. Even Star Trek was pitched as 'Wagon Train...IN SPAAAAACE!' It's all just a futuristic version of accepted genres (fantasy,w estern, mystery, etc.)

--- End quote ---

If this is true, then science fiction itself doesn't really exist. Star Trek is science fiction because it examines the effects of futuristic technologies and alien situations on people and their relationships, and the moral and philosophical questions raised, which is as good a working definition of science fiction as anything.

Try classic (and indeed more recent) British TV sci-fi, until quite recently it was markedly more original cerebral than its American counterparts, though America has since caught up some-what.

You want to watch Blakes Seven, Sapphire and Steel, classic Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Survivors, Doom Watch, Quatermass and the Pit and Children of the Stones. Low budget and somewhat dated, but all of them fantastic.

Ozymandias:
I think sci-fi should do more than put people in a futuristic setting or with futuristic tehcnology to be called true sci-fi. TNG might be the closest to real sci-fi American TV has ever seen. I wholeheartedly disagree that The Prisoner is sci-fi and am shaky on Doctor Who, having only seen a smattering of old episodes that suggest it isn't in that category. I do want to watch Blake's Seven, though.

But sci-fi should have some sort of basis in the real world's technology as it is today. It should be a natural progression. TOS sure as heck wasn't. Any scientific reality to come out of the original Trek was created after the fact, then used better for the later series.

I don't think TV lends itself to that kind of fantastic reality well. It would be too boring. Which is why I say that even thought I don't consider Firefly or BSG real, hard sci-fi, I don't really give a shit. Good TV is good TV.

KharBevNor:
"Science fiction (often called sci-fi or SF) is a popular genre of fiction in which the narrative world differs from our own present or historical reality in least one significant way.[1] This difference may be technological, physical, historical, sociological, philosophical, metaphysical, etc, but not magical (see Fantasy). Exploring the consequences of such differences (asking "What if...?")[2] is the traditional purpose of science fiction, but there are also many science-fiction works in which an exotically alien setting is superimposed upon what would not otherwise be a science-fiction tale."

That's Wikipedias definition, best I've got as I haven't got access to my library atm. Your definition of sci-fi seems to be basically limited to hard sci-fi and speculative fiction. Science fiction, good science fiction rather, is entirely about the reactions of people to futuristic technology or alien situations, or the philosophical and ethical questions these technologies illuminate, rather than the technologies itself, as well as being a set of aesthetics and what-not. Sci-fi, in the sense that it is used by critics and academics, covers everything from cyberpunk to dying earth stories. If your definition was accepted then, for example, 'The Demolished Man' wouldn't be sci-fi, '2001' wouldn't be sci-fi, 'War of the Worlds' wouldn't be sci-fi, and so on. Remember please that when Star Trek was actually concieved its timeline WAS concieved as future history, its just that its appeal lasted long enough to prove its predictions false (though it does seem that things like the Eugenics Wars have now been largely retconned out, possibly by the time war).

Doctor Who is absolutely 100% tv sci-fi of the best sort. The Prisoner trawls a line between Fantasy, Sci-Fi and sixties spy thriller (which already tended to have a good bit of sci-fi in them anyway. More than a few James Bond films have been soft sci-fi), but it has won a Prometheus award, and is anyway both highly influential and really fucking good.

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