Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’
Nolan is taken to South America and found guilty of murder.
…Just kidding. Did you really think Nolan would be held responsible for his actions? Then you haven’t been watching the same show I have. Sigh… nope, a bunch of easily avoided mistakes happen and we lose one of the good things about this season. Somebody wake up Sukar, time to go soul-spelunking in the underworld!
After taking a month off, the Obscure SciFi Primer returns with a strange cross-genre offering, Century City. Century City is a sci-fi legal drama–quite possibly the only sci-fi legal drama ever, actually. Airing on CBS in 2004, it managed to film a mere 9 episodes, and of those, only 2 actually made it on TV before it was canceled, so it never really had a chance to succeed at all. Think of all the awful shows you’ve watched throughout your life: even those likely got a 13 episode upfront order produced. So was Century City really that bad, or did it simply get shafted even worse than Firefly and all our other cut short favorites? Let’s find out.
For those still developing a taste for sci-fi, the prospect of jumping into a major franchise can be an understandably daunting one. With some of them having literal weeks worth of footage accumulated, it’s hard for a newcomer to know where to start. The beginning would seem to be the obvious answer, but that’s not always the case, especially with the numerous shows that suffered through low quality in their early days. Sometimes it can just end up turning you off a show that you might otherwise love; I know I personally had a hard time getting into both Babylon 5 and Stargate when starting from the beginning, but was able to try again with later episodes and really dig in. Other shows have just been running so long that early installments can be hard to watch with how dated they are, something a pre-existing investment in the show can help to counter. The best way, often enough, is to find a so-called “gateway episode,” one that’s enticing enough on its own to pique a viewer’s curiosity into continuing on their own.
So if you’ve found your way here and are wondering how to try out a big franchise, or if you’ve got a friend or loved one you’re eager to convince to watch with you, here are 4 big franchises and the episodes that I personally feel are perfect for introducing people to them.
People everyone thought were dead come back to town, and Nolan fucks things up royally once again. In other words, just another day in Defiance.
If you’re a member of a relatively young race, just emerging onto the interstellar scene after discovering some means of traveling faster than light, it’s a big old galaxy out there. Odds are, you’re not the first to go into space. Heck, you might’ve been beaten to the punch by millions of years, by alien species that no longer exist (at least on this plane of reality). The lucky ones will strike out into a galaxy with adventure and hidden treasures around every corner, all set up by their thoughtful predecessors. If you aren’t so lucky, you might find yourself in a galaxy of traps and disasters lying in wait, left behind by those negligent early races… or worse, the situation you’re left with is outright malevolent!
Here’s how you can quickly survey the galaxy and decide what’s in store for you out there among the stars.
T’evgin shows his commitment to peace through killing, While Nolan enters a self-destructive spiral a little too rapidly. Everyone’s mad at him, which normally would be fine. The only problem is… this is the one time he doesn’t actually deserve it!
When you’re shooting a TV series or a film, sometimes real life gets in the way, and forces some changes to the plot. This is often expensive or problematic, so they’ll try to avoid it as much as possible (for example, giving Dr. Crusher and B’elanna Torres new oversized coats to hide their actresses’ pregnancies when the characters weren’t). But when it comes down to it, reality can force your hand–either due to budget reasons, or sudden illnesses or deaths, or scheduling conflicts, or even censorship, the original plan just flat out isn’t possible any more. Something new has to be made up, and fast. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, sure, but without those complications, we’d have missed out on some classic moments. So, let’s celebrate the good that came out of the bad by looking at these, 4 great scenes that nearly didn’t happen.
Episode 8 has an incredibly wordy title, probably one of the longest episode titles I’ve ever seen, but it’s also one of the best episodes of Defiance ever. Maybe they should just start giving every episode a ridiculously long title?
When you’re a celebrity, it’s a little bit easier to pull some strings and get a bit part on a TV show that you love than it would be for the average fan. Whoopie Goldberg famously got the role for Guinan after hearing about TNG from LeVar Burton and calling up Gene Roddenberry directly. And most celebrities don’t get quite so large a role as she did–sometimes you can’t even recognize them there at all! This is a little different from the Noteworthy Cameos from a few months back, as those were all people who were relevant or had a good reason for being on the shows, where as these were more for fun, either on the part of the actor or the producers. So with that in mind, here are 4 celebrities who showed up on sci-fi shows in some particularly unusual situations.
This week’s episode puts Berlin in the spotlight for once. Plus Datak shows his more honorable side and Stahma cowers in the corner. It’s like we’ve entered the world of Mirror-Defiance or something! Well, except for Nolan, but I guess he’s one of those things that’s the same in all universes.
