What I've been doing this afternoon...

[Clunkmeister]

50 minutes ago, [CAT]CplSlade said:

My favorite 1999 episode is Dragon's Domain, with the people-eating monster in the graveyard of ships.

I'd love to get a really nice model of an Eagle. The Hawk not so much but I would not turn one down if it was offered to me.

Not sure about the new Picard show as I have been off Trek since Abrams shat on it.

Yeah, I liked that one alot, although it scared the dickens out of me when it was first released. 

[GazzaS]

I haven't any Star Trek tv series since I got sick of Explorer.  I saw a few episodes with Scott Bakula.  What else have I missed?

[[CAT]CplSlade]

I'm assuming you mean, "Enterprise". The new Star Trek: Discovery, or STD as it is more commonly known by all the angry fans, is the first series since then. It has already managed to piss lots of people of by claiming to respect canon--and then shit all over it. It introduces situations and characters at the wrong times and totally screws up the timeline it is supposedly following.

Netflix stopped supporting it financially when it became apparent the true fans despised it. Toy and paraphernalia makers have told CBS that if the show does not swing closer to original Trek they WILL not make any more crap for it. The new stuff does not sell like the older stuff. This is the same problem with new Star Wars: people don't care about the new characters (Disney's new Star Wars theme park doesn't have any OT or prequel stuff in it besides the  Falcon, which makes zero sense). Remember when toy stores always had a big SW section? It's pretty small now. Toys'R'Us lost a lot of money on unsold Abrams-era toys, and when they were liquidating inventory under the company closure, there were dozens of videos online showing how those toys just sat on the shelves while all the other stuff in the stores sold away.

Would you rather have Luke or Rey? Han or Poe? Vader or Kylo? R2 or the mechanical Teletubby?

[Clunkmeister]

Like all series, they all eventually “Jump the shark”, ST and SW not excepted. I think ST, like the story of Superman, can be saved completely by boing back to the raw original storyline, not changed up for social justice or political correctness, just use what made it great in the beginning.

For ST, I’d go with the Picard/Striker/Data/Worf theme, that series took ST from cult acceptance to modern day huge mainstream success. 

SW? Go right back to the original storyline and don’t waver one bit.

Just like Superman, they went back to Smallville with an unassuming middle America small town kid who made it big. 

[GazzaS]

The last Sci fi series I could watch without sneering were Babylon 5 and Battlestar Gallactica.  Star Trek the Next Generation (I considered it degeneration) wasn't too bad except I hated seeing Whoopie and it irritated me that every race in outer space bar humans and human allies had one thing in mind:  Klingons: war, Romulans:  Deceitful+war, Ferengie:  Profit (WTF!!).  The episodes were hit and miss for me.

Explorer...  worst of the worst.  Unbelievable characters... Female captain...I'll live with it.  Man in the military with a face tattoo?...C'mon man!  A black Vulcan complete with a tight fro??  At least give him maybe a little makeup to go with that green blood?  Romulan/Vulcan hair?...jeezus!  And the ship's doctor?  Dufus!!

B5 had some great stuff but could have used more action.  The characters evolved, and there was enough mystery to make it interesting. 

Gallactica was a surprise.  Much better than the 70's version.  And I didn't discover it until it was over...  so I could binge watch it.

 

[Clunkmeister]

Galactica was GREAT. But to me, Space 1999, for all its hokey 1970s schlockyness, was a really decent series. We saw it first run in Canada, but if I remember right, it took a little longer to air in the USA.

I think Patrick Stewart WAS Star Trek NexGen.  He was and is, brilliant.  Yeah, the Ferengi were just a bit over the top for me.

If I build any SciFi kit at all, it’ll be the MPC 1/48 Eagle transporter.  

[GazzaS]

I agree.  Patrick Stewart was and is a great asset to any film.  I honestly can only remember a few episodes of 1999.  I started to watch them as soon as they came onto 70's TV, but then there were summers away with no TV and I pretty much lost contact with the series.  Mebbe I should get it on DVD.  How many episodes were there?

[Clunkmeister]

Two full seasons for sure, unless they did more.  It’d be cool to have a sympathetic careful redo of that show, don’t change much of anything, just modernize the special effects a bit.  Looking back even today, that show had most of the real space effects nailed. 

[DocRob]

By the time I was a kid times were different. Many things like exploration of space or deep sea had an 'anything goes' approach, everything seemed possible. People where hopping on the moon and little DocRob was glued in front of the screen or reading books about Cousteaus expeditions under the sea. That was no Jules Verne stuff, it was reality and it translated into a deep addiction to these subjects.

Then there was Sci Fi, mostly in the form of Star Trek (Shattner /Nimroy) and Space 1999 and the gerat German Space Patrol Orion / Raumpatrouille Orion (No idea if it is available in English), but my screen time was limited by my parents and some of the stuff added to me being fascinated about these subjects. After a while the simple and often repeated plots started to annoy me more and more until today which lead to not showing any series of Sci Fi on TV anymore. Beside the plots I do not like the simple and ever same lame animated CGI.

But that changed with me sitting in a cinema and watching ALIEN and sweating and wincing with my fellow attenders, how that Giger creature not only ripped apart the crew of the Nostromos, but also did the same to the boring and still reflecting the spirit of the 1950's, now old school Sci Fi.
There was something new, it was dirty, it was tough, well designed with a simple but catching plot, it had everything the old stuff lacked, it was believable. Not in a way like real live, but in itself. I have the same problems with Sci Fi like Ernie mentioned, with stuff that would not work that way in reality, but if something tells a redefined story like Alien or later Aliens, I skip these concerns, because the story works in itself. Besides Alien and even more Aliens had a lot of metaphors in their story which enhances the audiovisual experience to a new level in Sci Fi. 

Having designed 3D animations for fun in my earlier years, I have to admit, that a well made stop motion animation is far better than the most computer generated animations with their always flirtation to hype effects, like the addition of lens flares in every possible setting in the late 90's until now. This in small describes the lousyness of CGI, blow up a defect in the believe of creating drama with it. 

Sorry to get me drawn away on that subject, but one last and pity thought about it is, that I lost my old finished model of a Dropship from Aliens while going to Spain. I would love to give it a new paintjob and weathering with my tools and abilities of today.

Cheers Rob

 

[Ryan]

15 hours ago, Clunkmeister said:

Yeah, I liked that one alot, although it scared the dickens out of me when it was first released. 

Me too, I didn't want any part of that thing. The deep end pool light eye was kinda cheesy but it worked. (I still think of it when I look at my own pool light)

We only saw the front end of the monster too, not the mouth part...the sequence were they are eaten then cocooned then tossed back out seemed like a lot of work for the creature.

[[CAT]CplSlade]

Space: 1999 only had two seasons. Two episodes were stuck together as a movie a long time back, and they ended up getting RiffTraxed by some of the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys.