Posts Tagged ‘SciFi TV series’
This week’s episode is one that’s practically made for the shippers, featuring May and Coulson going undercover and posing as a couple. I can almost hear the fangirl (and boy) squeals now. But there’s seasonal arc relevance, too, so read on for more.
If you’re not a fan of Doctor Who, you probably wouldn’t know it, but the recent episode “Kill the Moon” has been divisive, to say the least. Most of the disagreement hinges on one thing: the believability of the plot. Scientific accuracy in science fiction is often a sticking point for fans. Some enjoy very “hard” sci-fi, kept extremely realistic by using only technology that is plausible today. These kinds of shows are rare, since that means no faster-than-light travel, no artificial gravity (which is very hard to film), no humanoid aliens, etc. The alternative is “soft” sci-fi, which bends the rules of reality for the sake of storytelling. On TV, this is often not just story-influenced, but influenced by the budget, as well. Star Trek didn’t use human-like aliens because they wanted to; they didn’t have a choice, as puppetry or stop-motion would be too expensive, and CGI wasn’t an option in the 60’s (and barely an option for TNG in the 80’s). Even today, CGI often breaks the budget, so having CGI aliens in every episode isn’t possible. So why are some deviations from real science okay, and some not?
While I don’t want to focus too much on “Kill the Moon,” some discussion of it is necessary, so spoilers for that episode ahead, if you care. Read more
We know now that Defiance has been renewed, and there’s still 19 episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to go (with Agent Carter in the middle, too), but what about new shows? Are there any upcoming sci-fi series that fans should be keeping an eye out for? On the immediate horizon, there’s Syfy’s Ascension, which, while just a miniseries, is looking pretty good (and being a miniseries didn’t stop Battlestar Galactica from getting a full pickup). It’s set to premiere November 24 (UPDATE: It’s been pushed back to December 15. Bummer), and deals with a generation ship secretly launched in the 1960’s. Better still, it’s an original property, not an adaptation or tie-in to something bigger. If we look a little further out, beyond 2014, there are these shows, (hopefully) making their way to our screens next year. So here are 4 new series that are currently in development.
With the threat from the premiere dealt with last week, Agents of SHIELD settles in as both SHIELD and HYDRA compete for the loyalties of returning character Donnie Gill, AKA “Blizzard.” Things are just as dark as the previous 2 episodes, though, and even the appearance (at last) of the real Simmons can’t shake that.
There’s been a bit of a theme as of late, with most of my recent posts dealing with cancellation and renewal and cliffhanger endings. So today we’re going to keep that rolling by taking a look at how the Netflix binge-watching trend has affected the development of TV versus the way things used to be in the past.
Watching TV can be a very enjoyable experience, but have you ever considered what it would be like to live a life like your favorite character’s? While we tend to look up to our heroes and hope to emulate them, if most people really thought about it very few would want to be them. The kind of world that TV protagonists live in is often an awful one full of crime, corruption, enormous alien threats and facing death on a daily basis. Take Agent Coulson, for example–he got stabbed by a Norse god and forcibly brought back to life, forever changing who he is. The organization he dedicated his life to is in shambles, and now all the responsibility for trying to rebuild it is on him, including the lives of both the people under his command and of the innocents caught up in the crossfire. But it wouldn’t just suck to be Coulson, or part of SHIELD; imagine being an ordinary Joe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, left powerless while gods and supersoldiers do battle for the fate of the planet. It’s downright horrifying, when you think about it.
And while there are some exceptions (I think we all want to live in the Star Trek Federation. Replicators and holodecks, anyone?) TV is littered with these kinds of unpleasant worlds. So here are 4 of the worst universes to live in that have ever been shot on camera.
Picking up exactly where last week’s episode ended, we get an interesting setup for Lance Hunter’s character, a returning character from last season, and a step forward in the season’s story arc with the (real) first-time appearance of someone that we’ve heard quite a bit about. It also has a really, really appropriate title. Read more
Seeing how popular the Stargate Atlantis article was last month, I thought we’d continue on this trend by taking a look at the lost future of its younger brother, Stargate Universe. Much like Atlantis, it was canceled prematurely, but unfortunately it wasn’t really given a satisfying ending. The producers tried to pull out the wrap up movie technique for this also, so we once again have two different possibilities that the show could have taken to continue on. There’s a lot less solid info for this one, given that it’s more recent, and part of it is still being withheld from the public on the vague hopes that the story may still be finished in some form, be it television or otherwise. Let’s push forward into inevitably depressing territory with vanished potential of Stargate Universe Season 3.
Crossovers are a funny thing; as I alluded to earlier in the week, most early crossovers were between popular shows on the same network that weren’t necessarily meant to be in continuity with each other when they were created. That’s how we end up with things like Adam West’s Batman and the original Green Hornet in the same universe. This tends to have some strange consequences, where previous in-jokes (like Batman watching Green Hornet on TV) no longer make sense or cause outright contradictions when trying to combine the two continuities. And while a main character crossing over is by far the easiest, most obvious, and hardest to deny of all the crossover types, there are many, many other ways for two shows to imply that they coexist in the same universe–some of which don’t even necessarily require permission from one of the shows! And that’s how we end up with these, some of the weirdest crossovers seen on TV.
Season 2 concept art, shared on twitter.
I know I don’t usually do news, but with as much focus as this site’s start had on Defiance, it felt important to get the news out there. As reported here and confirmed on Twitter, Defiance was successfully renewed for Season 3. I gotta say I’m rather relieved; as irritating as the show can be at times, I’m still pretty invested in it, even if I don’t (yet) love the characters as much as the crew of the Enterprise-D or the gang aboard Moya. I’m only so harsh because I care, really! The show has so much potential and I want to see it through, however it develops. And now, no more will we have to worry about the last hanging plotlines being resolved in game, for those of us who don’t play the MMO.
But just reporting the news that it’s returned isn’t very exciting. What can we expect from Season 3 of Defiance, then? Here are some plot teasers that Kevin Murphy, Defiance‘s showrunner (who will indeed be returning, according to the article), said he’d like to see next season:
That’s all I’ve been able to dig up as far as season 3 related tweets go. Obviously the show would pick up with some of the running plot lines, like Pilar and Quentin, and presumably they’ll have to dig Nolan and Irisa (and Sukar!) up somehow. And keep in mind these are just tweets, speculating about possibilities; that doesn’t necessarily mean all these things will happen. But it gives us an idea of what might lie ahead, and had the show gotten canceled I’d probably have used these to make a “What Could Have Been” post for Defiance. I’m glad I don’t have to, though.
