# Does the TV scifi paradigm need to change?



## Darrin Drader (Jan 7, 2004)

Something has been bothering me lately about science fiction on TV. It seems that the '90s were a great time for scifi on TV with the successful run of Babylon 5 (though it almost ended in ruin at the end of each season), the three Star Trek Series', Earth: Final Conflict (not a show I watched, but it still survived a few years), and the numerous others. 

Recently scifi TV hasn't been doing nearly so well. Farscape was cancelled before its proposed 5 year run. Other failed series' include Firefly, Crusade, and even the direction Enterprise is headed makes it look like the whole Trek franchise is going the way of the dodo within a year. The most recent successes have been the miniseries. Scifi had huge hits on their hands with Dune, Children of Dune, and Battlestar Galactica. In fact, those are the top 3 rated events in the history of the channel.

Another real problem with scifi on TV, I feel, is that people are getting a little bored with the whole thing. I'm not saying that there's something wrong with the genre, but Star Trek has established a trend of recycling plot lines over and over. Other shows tend to have a few huge episodes per season that end up defiing the entire show, but their impact is lost among a great deal of less memorable episdoes. Frankly, I would have watched Voyager if I would have known which 2 or 3 episodes a year were actually worth wathing.

So I'm wondering if what we would really rather have are 6 to 8 hour miniseries rather than entire 22 episode seasons of certain shows. 

Take Battlestar Galactica. Despite the incredible ratings, the Scifi channel has yet to greenlight a series, mainly because of budgetary concerns coupled with the fact that they can't predict what the ratings will be. It may not get picked up at all. Traditionally a network will air a pilot that they are interested in developing into a series, and then if the ratings are high enough, the series is approved and then all the fans of the show hope that the ratings continue to do well. Lately this model hasn't been working for science fiction.

What if they instead produced another miniseries 8 hours long? You can cover a lot of ground in 8 hours, and it would end up costing the network less than half the amount of a standard season. Rather than getting a season full of mediocre episodes, you get one or two large stories of epic scope that would be far more memorable. What's more is that since the entire series would be very tightly focused, you wouldn't get people not tuning in because they missed an episode. The channel would want to re-show the miniseries as often as possible so that people could either re-watch or get drawn into it and it wouldn't require a great deal of dedication on the part of the viewers. Assuming that the ratings remain good, follow this up with yet another miniseries the following year. In essence, instead of the traditional TV show, what you really end up with is something much closer to a series of novels that slowly unfold at about the same rate most novels are released. Hercules actually went from a pilot movie to a full blown series in exactly this way, except that they did movies rather than mini-series'.

So, what do you, the fans of science fiction, think of this idea? Would you like to see this become the future or scifi TV, or would you rather cling to the one or two series that actually manage to survive from one year to the next?


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## takyris (Jan 7, 2004)

There are strengths and weaknesses to each format. The average SF short story can be done as a one-hour short movie, or as the inspiration for a two-hour movie with a larger plot.  The average SF novelette (7500-15000 words) works well as a two-hour movie.  The average SF novel works best as a miniseries, and the average SF series of novels would be best done as a TV series.

I'd like to see good series, and I'd like to see good miniseries.  In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to choose.  I don't entirely believe the minis are less expensive than series, because with a series that is set-driven rather than effect-driven, you've got big up-front costs, but you get to use those sets for a longer period of time.  Think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I believe that part of the reason it was able to grow and prosper was that it had decent sets that it used along with relatively few effects (some set props, energy bolts now and then, and a few dust-the-vamp effects per week).  Quantum Leap had an effects-light show -- usually one blue-light per week -- but needed entirely different sets every single time, which made it much more expensive.  I believe that in the last season Sam found himself leaping into prisoners more than once, because it was cheaper to re-use the prison set.

Farscape was actually doing well -- it had a lot of "Bad guys come onto Moya" episodes per season, which kept the set costs relatively low, and it used muppets when possible instead of CG-ing when they didn't have to.  The big problem was that Stargate: SG-1 came in and gave Sci-Fi unrealistic ratings expectations (not that SG-1 is a bad show; I like both shows a bunch).  SG-1 had a bigger audience, and I would guess that the show is relatively inexpensive to produce as genre shows go -- you've got whole episodes with no more than a few effects (staff blasts, stargate wormhole), and you've got re-usable sets for most episodes.

As a writer, I love writing with constraints -- seeing my limitations and making the most out of 'em.  I've written without the letter "E", I've written a vampire mafia witness protection story without using the words vampire, mafia, or witness protection, and so on.  I see this kind of challenge -- write a good SF series whose concept is cheap enough to produce that it can make studio execs happy even without CSI-like ratings.


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## Umbran (Jan 7, 2004)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> So, what do you, the fans of science fiction, think of this idea? Would you like to see this become the future or scifi TV, or would you rather cling to the one or two series that actually manage to survive from one year to the next?




Well, I wouldn't mind there being more miniseries, but I think that approach has a couple of problems.  And, I don't think it's a solution to the problem, it's more like a hack, a workaround.  Better to deal with the real central issue...

The problem with this method is this - continuation.  If you ever want to see a story that goes for more than a single miniseries, you're pretty hosed.  A miniseries is nice, but it isn't what an actor would call steady work.  Anyone who does well on such a project will get lucrative offers to work on movies full series in other genres, thus leaving them unavailable to continue with a second miniseries.  This is good for stories longer than a movie, but not good for stories that need mulitple seasons to tell.

And, as I mentioned, I don't think it solves the root problem, which isn't sci-fi specific.   Something less than half of all new series make it into their second season these days.  The problem isn't that sci-fi has trouble making shows that last.  The problem is that _everyone_ has trouble making shows that last.


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## Viking Bastard (Jan 7, 2004)

Well, one of the main problems Farscape faced was that they *did* use 
muppets, which is much, much more expensive to make than CGI, not the 
other way around. Of course, muppets can be reused, but they rarely were.


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## Darrin Drader (Jan 7, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Something less than half of all new series make it into their second season these days.  The problem isn't that sci-fi has trouble making shows that last.  The problem is that _everyone_ has trouble making shows that last.




The way things have been the past few years, I would be happy if anything genre related made it past the half season mark.


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## mojo1701 (Jan 7, 2004)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> The way things have been the past few years, I would be happy if anything genre related made it past the half season mark.




You said it.


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## Tarrasque Wrangler (Jan 7, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> I've written a vampire mafia witness protection story without using the words vampire, mafia, or witness protection, and so on.



  Sorry to hijack, but I gotta read this story Tak. Is it on the web somewhere?

 Call me nuts, but I think the reason sci-fi shows are failing is because most of them aren't very good. I like good science fiction, but I'm constantly  every time I watch some hacky basic cable/syndicated show with fake-looking sets, lame-o CGI (I couldn't get past the fx on B5, call me a heathen if you will), cardboard characters, mediocre acting, and plotlines that were old when Shatner and Nimoy were reading the dialogue. The only sci-fi show (note: I don't lump Buffy or Angel in with the sci-fi group) that sounded remotely interesting was Firefly, but the day you catch me watching TV on a Friday I better be in traction or something.

  As for miniseries, I'm considerably meh.  

  Dune: What I saw I couldn't stand..
  Children of Dune:  Heard it was "as good as the original!"  Took that as a warning.
 Battlestar Galactica: It was OK. Helped that I didn't have much in the way of memories of the original show to cloud my judgement. Wouldn't stay home to watch another miniseries of it though.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 7, 2004)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> Something has been bothering me lately about science fiction on TV. It seems that the '90s were a great time for scifi on TV with the successful run of Babylon 5 (though it almost ended in ruin at the end of each season), the three Star Trek Series', Earth: Final Conflict (not a show I watched, but it still survived a few years), and the numerous others.
> 
> 
> 
> Recently scifi TV hasn't been doing nearly so well. Farscape was cancelled before its proposed 5 year run. Other failed series' include Firefly, Crusade, and even the direction Enterprise is headed makes it look like the whole Trek franchise is going the way of the dodo within a year. The most recent successes have been the miniseries. Scifi had huge hits on their hands with Dune, Children of Dune, and Battlestar Galactica. In fact, those are the top 3 rated events in the history of the channel.




Farscpae didn't have a set time of length to run - it was renewed for it's fourth and fifth seasons, which SFC then reneged on, cancelling it only a couple of days before filming ended.  Crusade was nixed from the beginning by TNT.  Firefly was shown out of order and on a crappy night.  The Trek franchise has been dying for years.  You forgot Stargate, but that aired on Showtime and so was unavailable to a large cable-based audience.



But I agree, the most successes have been in the miniseries.





> Another real problem with scifi on TV, I feel, is that people are getting a little bored with the whole thing. I'm not saying that there's something wrong with the genre, but Star Trek has established a trend of recycling plot lines over and over. Other shows tend to have a few huge episodes per season that end up defiing the entire show, but their impact is lost among a great deal of less memorable episdoes. Frankly, I would have watched Voyager if I would have known which 2 or 3 episodes a year were actually worth wathing.




Well, Farscape was hugely successful, Stargate is hugely successful... it's not that people are getting bored, it's that writers aren't taking risks, and aren't being innovative, and networks aren't taking risks, or being innovative.





> So, what do you, the fans of science fiction, think of this idea? Would you like to see this become the future or scifi TV, or would you rather cling to the one or two series that actually manage to survive from one year to the next?




Both.  There's good and bad points for either, and I don't particularly see why it has to be an either/or situation.  You could use mini-series with the usually higher ratings and cheaper production to make up for the losses incurred by the traditional series format.  You use the series you already own (B5, Stargate, Farscape, among others) as lead-ins to your evening programming to increase ratings, since they cost relatively little to air.



However, let's also keep in mind that there's really only one station that will even show Sci-Fi shows nowadays (in the US) - SFC.  SFC is pretty much the sole provider of both series and mini-series.  So it's really which is more beneficial for them - which is obviously the mini-series approach, since it costs less and requires less thinking about programming schedules.  I suspect we'll be seeing more of this sort of thing, and having the series be the cheaper stuff.



Obviously I'm an outspoken opponent of SFC's programming and business strategies, and I feel that this question really doesn't have to be an issue, if SFC managed their station a little better.  I also feel that some of the other stations that might show Sci-Fi, like WB, Fox, and UPN, look to SFC to see how they are doing before accepting a Sci-Fi show of their own, and the (IMO) mismanagement of SFC hurts the genre as a whole, because it just "proves" that the risk is too great.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

Tarrasque Wrangler said:
			
		

> Sorry to hijack, but I gotta read this story Tak. Is it on the web somewhere?




Second... and the letter E one 

I've lost my copy of Steven Brust's _Agyar_  ... but wasn't that a vampire novel that didn't actually mention "vampire" (for much the same reason, from memory - to see if he could do it)?

-Hyp.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 7, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> And, as I mentioned, I don't think it solves the root problem, which isn't sci-fi specific. Something less than half of all new series make it into their second season these days. The problem isn't that sci-fi has trouble making shows that last. The problem is that _everyone_ has trouble making shows that last.



Amen.  Preach Umbran, preach!!!


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## John Crichton (Jan 7, 2004)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> So, what do you, the fans of science fiction, think of this idea? Would you like to see this become the future or scifi TV, or would you rather cling to the one or two series that actually manage to survive from one year to the next?



Just as an aside, I think we can throw *X-Files* into the 90's sci-fi success stories. 

Looking back at the history of sci-fi on TV, it simply seems that we are in another one of those lulls. It was bound to happen. As fans, the 90s spoiled us; there was always something to watch. You may not have been a big fan but there were always options to watch established shows. Come 2003 we are left with *Enterprise*, *Stargate: SG-1* and *Andromeda* as the only sci-fi shows with at least 2 full seasons of running. 2002 saw the death of *Firefly*, *Farscape*, *The Outer Limits*, *Dark Angel*, *Roswell* and numerous other shows with smaller fan bases. The problem appears to be that nothing has stepped to replace them. The only new sci-fi show that has survived into 2004 has been *Jake 2.0*, which I cannot comment on the quality of.

1987-2002 was basically sci-fi TVs finest consistant run. I believe we are now currently in the domain of the fantasy/paranormal/superhero TV run. Shows like *Buffy*, *Angel*, *Xena*, *Hercules*, *Smallville* and *Alias* (not to mention others I am surely forgetting). There is no true leader or top dog for the sci-fi fan to look to like Star Trek was.

That said, I look at mini-series as something that could be an answer, but only a temporary solution. The sci-fi fan can only hold on to a mini-series for so long before he or she gets bored. Personally, I'd rather see a full-feature than a mini-series but I'll take a mini-series. Problem is that only one network (as someone mentioned) is even trying sci-fi minis. There are only so many times you can show it in reruns before the fans start looking for a new development.

Most networks get by on talk shows, reality TV, sitcoms and dramas most of which are relatively cheaper to produce. This hurts sci-fi as fans want to see a show that looks like the movies, or at least reasonably close. Some of the shows in the fantasy/paranormal/superhero category have strong ties to sci-fi but are more of a variant. Not to mention that they are cheaper to produce than, say, a space opera. I think we will see more of these shows pop up, especially superhero-type shows. With *Lord of the Rings* and *Harry Potter* being so big now I'm sure there are tons of people out there working on ideas for fantasy (medieval) shows. Some will fail and others will be embraced but these shows won't hit the air until late 2004.

Typical, space-based sci-fi as we know it will continue to be in a lull for a bit. It was bound to happen. I even remember a time, near the end of end of DS9's run where I commented to a friend that this (speaking of the "Golden Age" of sci-fi TV) couldn't last forever. There was just too much good stuff on the air.

But mini-series will continue to fill a stop-gap, IMO. If there were a proliferation of them, something like in the number of a half-dozen per year then maybe that would do the trick but networks like to make things like these events, rather than make them regular programming. The SFC has fallen in love with them, but they are the only ones.

It doesn't help that the big sci-fi movies of the last 5 years have been *The Matrix* which wouldn't translate in TV very well at all and *Star Wars*. There aren't many good role-models, so to speak. Not a high-time for sci-fi in my mind. I will just wait it out.

:: edited formatting ::


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## Starman (Jan 7, 2004)

More TV series would be successful if they were given enough time to find an audience. Not everyone is glued to their TV 24 hours a day. Many shows need a least a full season to start generating buzz. Suits seem to think that if a show is not successful right away, it never will be, so they cancel it and try something else.

Starman


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

Starman said:
			
		

> More TV series would be successful if they were given enough time to find an audience. Not everyone is glued to their TV 24 hours a day. Many shows need a least a full season to start generating buzz.




I think it was near the end of Season 1 or start of Season 2 we actually started watching SG-1.

Before that, we were thinking "A whole series based on that Kurt Russell movie?  You gotta be kidding."

Now, of course, we have Seasons 1 through 4 on DVD, and are avidly watching Season 7...

-Hyp.


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## takyris (Jan 7, 2004)

Heh.  The vampire/witness-protection one is currently sitting in the slush pile in the magazines, so I'd rather not post a public link to it (on the off-chance that somebody decides to buy it).  I'd be happy to e-mail to anybody, but I'll note that there is at least one other large plot element in there that I don't generally mention, and it could make the story odd for folks.

The "E" one was actually just a poem.  Sorry if I misrepresented myself on that.  I did write a murder mystery where, if you looked at the first letter of each sentence, it spelled out the clue that the detective overlooked and who the real killer was.  Trying to come up with "E"-starting words for the beginning of each sentence was a pain in the ass.  And I wrote a conversation between five guys, Al, Ed, Id, Ox, and Ur, who could not use the letter A, E, I, O, and U respectively.  They were doing a modern interpretation of Plato's Symposium (trying to define love).  Ox just said "It's beautiful," and all the others called him a moron.

(This was back in college in a class on writing with constraints.  The "E" stuff, that is.  The vampire thing got written back in October when I decided to write something funny.)

As for the actual main topic at hand -- I didn't realize that we were focusing exclusively on the Science-oriented Science Fiction -- SF as opposed to Fantasy.  One aspect of that is that a lot of good, inventive ideas have been done to death.  How many new energy fields can today's TV Space-Ships get caught in?  How many times can they run out of air?  How many times can they get blasted?  Firefly looked poised to deliver some fun new twists by combining genres, and I for one loved that -- but evidently, the rest of the world did not agree with me (or us, rather).  Lexx tried to combine space opera and sex opera, and produced garbage, from the few times I watched it.

But really, the field needs to de-ghetto-ize itself.  Buffy pulled in some of my literary friends when I made them sit down and watch an episode and showed them that yes, there were real writers working on the show.  Babylon 5 did the same thing -- I converted multiple people just by showing them the last twenty minutes of "Whatever Happened to Mister Garibaldi" (Londo visiting G'Kar in his cell and showing him a way to free himself and his people, Lorien finally bringing Sheridan to the breaking point).  If they made a space show that involved an interplanetary peacekeeping squad solving crimes in a small but combat-worthy ship and made it one part blowing-stuff-up-in-space, one part CSI, and one part Homicide, it might survive long enough for people to begin to take it seriously.

Or, hell, you know what I'd like to see?  Another Alien Nation-type show.  Take an interesting alien, flesh it all out beforehand, and then spend a season or two letting the human explorers contact the weird aliens and begin to figure them out, with all the backsteps and problems and miscommunications that stuff would really carry.  Add in political tension to bring in the West Wing fans, and a known enemy to provide a ticking clock.  Humanity *needs* to make these new aliens its friends, or at least needs to know that it can turn its back on them while it goes off to fight the Sk'paa.  Yeah, in space.  But not in the thing-to-blast of the week format.  Another of those will pop up at some point anyway.  Give me a plot.  I'm 27, for crying out loud.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> I did write a murder mystery where, if you looked at the first letter of each sentence, it spelled out the clue that the detective overlooked and who the real killer was.  Trying to come up with "E"-starting words for the beginning of each sentence was a pain in the ass.




The clue the detective overlooked was "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee"?

-Hyp.


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## Darrin Drader (Jan 7, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> If they made a space show that involved an interplanetary peacekeeping squad solving crimes in a small but combat-worthy ship and made it one part blowing-stuff-up-in-space, one part CSI, and one part Homicide, it might survive long enough for people to begin to take it seriously.
> 
> Give me a plot.  I'm 27, for crying out loud.




I agree with your assessment, though I'm not specifically just talking about science based sci-fi. At this point I would welcome a Lord of the Rings rip off series.

I'm a major B5 fan, and as far as I'm concerned it is the pinnacle (so far) of science fiction on TV. The one thing it offers above most other shows is the fact that it has distinct, well though out, and interesting characters. I've said this before and I'll say it again, Londo Mollari does so many politically despicable things that resulted in the deaths of so many narns (and others) that it would be easy to draw parallels between him and Hitler. Despite this, by the end of the series you actually like the guy and feel sorry for him. How many shows would actually be able to pull that off?

Anyway I agree that the whole science end of sci-fi has been done to death. The Star Trek style spacial anomaly of the week. Strong characters are the key to any successful series, which is why I hated Voyager. The characters were so shallow that I couldn't stand watching the show for more than 15 minutes at a time. Any time they tried to do character development, the acting was so bad that I just couldn't care less (of course if you've read my earlier rant about the bad acting cop-out excuse for not liking something then you know that I find this a very subjective topic and really something that really means you just don't like the character(s) or the actor(s) to begin with).

My hopes are still riding with Battlestar Galactica. Ronald Moore's vision of BSG did away with the cheese whiz of the original (even if some of us actually appreciated the cheeze whiz), and made the show dark, intelligent, and very human. He gave it a realistic feel and a tone that resonates with modern post 9/11 audiences. I think it will do well if Sci-fi can get their heads on straight and greenlight the series. If they can't do that, even after the excellent ratings it received, then it proves that they might as well not even bother with original programming at all since they refuse to do what is necessary to get them off the ground. The Sci-fi channel, on one hand, complains about bad ratings, and then turns around as soon as they get the chance and take active steps to undercut their own credibility. They could have taken the monetary setback to give us one last season of Farscape. They could have resurrected Crusade before it was too late. Did they? No. Instead they put all their eggs into one basket with Stargate SG1 - a series I have no appreciation for, and have given us nothing else of substance. Right now I'm giving a BSG series only a 35% chance of getting picked up, despite the ratings.


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## takyris (Jan 7, 2004)

Hyp: Darnit.   Not *exactly* what I meant.  My darn murder clue message contained far too many E's.

Whisperfoot: Generally agree that SciFi is undercutting itself.  

I personally like SG-1, however, and would hesitate to say that it has added nothing to the field.  It made its focal choices, and it stuck to them -- the characters are relatively stock, and the emphasis is on problem-solving, for the most part.  I'm fine with shows like that, as long as they accept what they are and go with it.  I like CSI, for example, even though the characters don't change much, because they don't act like they're really deep and meaningful.  They pretty much say, "Here's who we are, we're a set of archetypes, and now we're going to get to the story, okay?"  It's not the way I tell a story, but I can enjoy it.

And as a successful show that wasn't a direct Star Trek knockoff, I'm happy to see it prosper.  I also like the fact that they seem to have taken some pains to be consistent with their science (which is not to say that they are rigorously accurate scientifically -- just that they don't have things work one way one time and another way another time, generally speaking).

But mileage may vary.  Vote with your remote.  S'what I do.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> Hyp: Darnit.   Not *exactly* what I meant.  My darn murder clue message contained far too many E's.




You should have learned more from the experience of writing your E-less poem, then 



> I also like the fact that they seem to have taken some pains to be consistent with their science (which is not to say that they are rigorously accurate scientifically -- just that they don't have things work one way one time and another way another time, generally speaking).




Well, except that if you believe the dialing computer footage, you can frequently reach new destinations by dialing Chulak or Abydos 

-Hyp.


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## frankthedm (Jan 7, 2004)

when the aliens stop being good looking bipeds and start being alien i will start watching sci-fi.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> when the aliens stop being good looking bipeds and start being alien i will start watching sci-fi.




Someone has to do a series of telemovies for James White's _Sector General Hospital_.

-Hyp.


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## jdavis (Jan 7, 2004)

As far as Space Opera shows go I think they are a dying breed, in the seventies they were too expensive, in the eighties they were too expensive and in the nineties they got a lot of attention because they had been too expensive before but could be done on computers now. I don't think you can get the crowds you used to with crappy digital effects, so now we have higher expectations of what we wish to see, which makes them too expensive again. Occult Sci Fi still throws some good shows every now and again (X Files, Buffy) but there are only so many people out there who are good enough to produce watchable shows in that genre. The Mini Series is dead on network TV due to the cost (they are very expensive compared to how much air time you get out of them). They have found new life on cable and Sci Fi has used them pretty well to draw people in but the big mistake Sci Fi has made was they don't have any way to keep the viewers after the mini series is over. That little 2 minute commercial that aired before Galactica where they ran through the next years teasers was the most important part of the show, and they blew it (they went the reality show route about 2 years too late for it to look anything but desperate, and I can't even remember anything else they showed clips of). Galactica scored huge ratings for them but it failed to boost any other shows ratings at all and that's part of the reason of having big event mini series and stuff, to get attention for the network. They have the budget to do maybe two miniseries a year and they have to be huge events to pan out so they can't be very risky about what they do. They just don't have the budget for much stuff. How long can they continue to show 10 hours a week of Stargate SG1 before they burn that out, and what else do they have waiting?  Sci Fi can't save science fiction because they don't even have a big enough budget to make good science fiction (and they are run by morons but that's a different discusion). I'm sure there will be more Bryant Gumbel UFO specials in the future from them though.

Another thing happening is that we are starting to see a negative backlash from cable saturation. The days of the big budget must see TV network show are coming to a end. It's very hard to generate the Nielson numbers like you could ten years ago, networks are starting to spend less on shows instead of more on shows. There is just so little return to be had on their investment anymore, instead of 3 or 4 shows they have to compete with at that time slot they now have to compete with dozens and dozens of shows. It's real hard to generate decent numbers for any show and Sci Fi has always been considered niche entertainment so it's a real risk. At the end Buffy wasn't doing all that great of numbers and it never really did standout numbers, there is no garantee it would of made it past the first season on one of the big networks. Star Trek always has done decent numbers but it's never done E.R. level numbers for any of the differetn series, heck it doesn't do Spongebob level numbers now. I can't think of a big science fiction hit since X Files. Science fictions biggest hope for the future is the same now as it has always been, feature films.

One area I think you will see a increase in is in imported Japanese Animation science fiction. It's a shame American television has never really embraced animation for serious shows (well not since the 60's when Jonny Quest was a prime time cartoon) as it is comparitively cheap particularly when compared to science fiction show cost and is very flexable. One of the best outlets for science fiction type shows right now is the action section of Adult Swim, it does great ratings (particularly in the 18 to 31 male demographic that is so important these days) and many of the shows are real standouts storyline wise (I'm real suprised there hasn't been a attempt to do a live action Cowboy Bebop series in America). Heck it was my love of science fiction that lead me to anime back in the 80's. Sci Fi really dropped the ball when they let the whole anime thing pass them by, they are the ones who should be doing the adult swim style programming block. It's a large crossover audience that they used to have a part of back in the mid to late 90's that has all but dried up now.


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## WayneLigon (Jan 7, 2004)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Someone has to do a series of telemovies for James White's _Sector General Hospital_.
> -Hyp.



Well, they tried _Mercy Point_; a hospital-in-space is something I think would still work. _All-Souls_ was horror + hospital; also something you'd think would work. Never heard of either? Apparently, neither did anyone else. 

Well, I started five or six times to post thoughts on the whats and whys of 'why we don't have a lot of good science fiction on TV' before I realized that I have no idea. What makes a show become a hit appears to be just totally random, to me. 

_Babylon 5_ is probably the single best science fiction series ever produced, hands down. And yet through it's entire run it was barely noticed. When it looked as if it was going to be dropped from the FOX lineup here, we called the station and I talked to their programming guy; he pulled figures and told me that the show was placed in a good prime-time slot, and yet it was drawing only a 1.5 share (1.5% of the viewing public were estimated to be watching the show at that time). Reruns of _Mama's Family_ routinely beat it into the ground, every single week. 

Some easy answers occur to me, but none seem to fit. 'Too weird' is the most common thing I hear. 'Too cheap' or 'too cheesy' occur to me, but _Hercules_ and _Xena_ were about as cheap and cheesy as things get, yet they were very successful. _Beastmaster_ is pretty cheesy, yet it's in it's third season. Not too many series can say that. Same thing for _Mutant X_. 

The whys? I got nothing


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## Atridis (Jan 7, 2004)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> ...Reruns of _Mama's Family_ routinely beat [Bab-5] into the ground, every single week.
> 
> Some easy answers occur to me, but none seem to fit. 'Too weird' is the most common thing I hear. 'Too cheap' or 'too cheesy' occur to me, but _Hercules_ and _Xena_ were about as cheap and cheesy as things get, yet they were very successful. _Beastmaster_ is pretty cheesy, yet it's in it's third season. Not too many series can say that. Same thing for _Mutant X_.





I've never taken a poll, but I wonder if sci-fi and related genres still have an image problem with the general public. "Too weird", as he said. Juvenile perhaps. Everyone who ever watched Buffy liked it, so far as I could tell, yet some people staunchly refused to even give it a whirl. I have a friend who loves the '60s Batman show, but didn't like the '90s cartoon because it was too serious. It wasn't that he doesn't like serious shows, it was that he couldn't handle Batman as a serious show (and that isn't a guess, he actually told me that). Shows like Beastmaster & Mutant X may be more acceptable precisely because they're cheesy. Even well-done shows like Hercules and Xena may have garnered an atypical audience because they were (intentionally) tongue-in-cheek. 

Another big problem with shows like Buffy and B-5 is their ongoing, and often convoluted, storylines. One of my favorite shows right now - Alias - I cannot recommend to many people because it demands constant attention. Sit-coms are popular, in part, because they don't require such slavish devotion.


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## Kesh (Jan 7, 2004)

I agree, Sci-Fi has an image problem. If you tell someone you have a new science fiction television series coming out, what do they think of first?

_Star Trek_ (TOS)
_Lost in Space_
_Buck Rogers_

Old, low-budget, poorly acted shows with cheesy FX and (usually) silly stories.

The sad part is, I've got several ideas for how to make a decent SF series, but I'll never be able to break into the 'biz'. What's worse was reading this thread, and seeing people asking for the show ideas I've come up with three to five years ago! 

I have:


A Star Wars TV series outline, three to five years
A deep space 'first contact' series (mostly 'hard science' sci-fi) loosely outlined
A new Star Trek franchise that _would work_, and seems blatantly obvious to me... 
A detailed, five-year plan for a _Werewolf: the Apocalypse_ show... that's basically pointless now that the *Time of Judgement* is upon us. 
A modified version of previously mentioned Star Wars series & Star Trek series, stripping out the setting-specific material and blending them into a new, generic SF series of my own. Since there's no way in hell I'd get either liscenced property to work with.


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## Kid Charlemagne (Jan 7, 2004)

One of the biggest problems with Sci-Fi in today's TV landscape is the economic aspect.  Sci-Fi doesn't get great ratings, but it does get good ratings in some important demographics.  Unfortunately, Sci-Fi shows are expensive, and the networks are seeing big profits from lots of reality shows that are very inexpensive to produce.

On the subject of mini-series vs. series, I think the mini-series are fine, but the reason producers want to go the series route is for the syndication payoff down the road.  Most series lose money the first several years, but make a huge payoff once they hit the magical "100 episode" mark that is the norm for the syndication market.

The proliferation of networks is also a reason why Sci-Fi shows have gone down hill.  ST:TNG, DS-9, and Babylon 5 were all first-run syndication shows that got their start when there were a large number of independent TV stations with time slots to fill and lots of money.  In the mid-90's, most of those stations became WB or UPN outlets, which caused that market to dry up.  Star Trek was one of the cornerstones of UPN, so that survived, but the others went down the tubes.


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## Rackhir (Jan 7, 2004)

I would agree that costs are probably the main thing that is killing SF on TV. One of the main thrusts behind the "Reality" TV shows, is that you don't have to pay writers to do one or "name" actors. If the networks are so cheap that they don't even want to pay writers, something that requires expensive sfx really doesn't stand much of a chance. 

Especially given the short term narrow mindedness that is rampant in hollywood and TV. Pretty much nothing is given a chance to grow and develop an audience these days and SF because of it's niche status is never going to attract big numbers right off the bat, barring some big name franchise being involved.

Also and perhaps I'm just getting older, very little seems to be done on TV especially in "SF" shows that shows much in the way of sentience. Most of what's been on TV has been the kind of junk like Mutant X or Beastmaster that seems to be aimed at pre/early teens. The market is headed steadily down hill interms of the average intelligence it's aimed at. If the presence of shows like "Beyond with John Edwards" (forget the actual title) or the increasingly sleezy and tawdry "reality" shows leave anyone with questions about that?

Finally, Fear Rules Hollywood and the Networks - The people in charge in the entertainment industry are those who have spent a lifetime working to get into a position of power with all the attendant perks and privileges, while watching rivals and friends loosing jobs at the drop of a hat or a single mistake. They are facing a shrinking fragmenting market, because of the vastly expanded market of cable channels and rise of other entertainment mediums (internet, video games, etc...), which means that the pressure is increased even more. They will do anything and listen to anything that seems to offer some measure of control and certainty over their future, while avoiding as much risk as is at all possible. Which is why there are 18 different shows based on Law & Order, CSI and 2000 shows which are variations on what was sucessful last season.  Despite the success of SF at theaters, it is always going to be viewed as a niche market (especially on TV) and the people who are in charge of the networks don't understand it, aren't interested in it and don't want propose anything that puts them at risk.


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## WizarDru (Jan 7, 2004)

WayneLigon said:
			
		

> Well, they tried _Mercy Point_; a hospital-in-space is something I think would still work. _All-Souls_ was horror + hospital; also something you'd think would work. Never heard of either? Apparently, neither did anyone else.



Oh, I saw Mercy Point, all right.  Not just bad, *DOA bad*.  Bad medical drama, bad sci-fi...but the actors were young and sexy, so that makes up for it, right?  Not to mention that we'd had hospital drama saturation, by that point.  Between E/R, Chicago Hope had both been running for 7+ years by that point.  All Souls wasn't nearly as bad as Mercy Point, but it still wasn't that strong, from what I've heard.  Placing it directly opposite Angel's time slot wasn't exactly a smart idea, either.  And considering it was brought to you by Stuart Gillard, well....his name isn't exactly synonymous with quality (though he's stumbled into some reasonable work from time to time).



			
				WayneLigon said:
			
		

> _Babylon 5_ is probably the single best science fiction series ever produced, hands down. And yet through it's entire run it was barely noticed. When it looked as if it was going to be dropped from the FOX lineup here, we called the station and I talked to their programming guy; he pulled figures and told me that the show was placed in a good prime-time slot, and yet it was drawing only a 1.5 share (1.5% of the viewing public were estimated to be watching the show at that time). Reruns of _Mama's Family_ routinely beat it into the ground, every single week.



Rod Serling's ghost is holding for you on line one.   I love B5, but the fact is that it succeeded *in spite of* Warner Brothers handling of the show, not because of it.  How often did you say advertisements for B5?  Almost never.  How often did it get moved from night to night, to differing time slots?  All the time.  B5 survived based on one important fact: JMS and crew knew how to make a show under-budget.  That allowed them to keep the series afloat, even amidst mixed ratings.

That same fact played _against_ the more successful Farscape.  Scifi discovered that they could run a rerun of SG1 or some other shows, and get nearly the same ratings...for far less outlay of money.  Remember, your attention is the product the TV station is selling to the advertisers.  If they have you watching, they don't care about quality, necessarily.

One problem is that many SF shows...aren't SF.  They have the trappings of SF, but they're really just zap-gun shows.  I've only seen the pilot and a little of episode 2 of Jake 2.0, but it's basically just a superhero show.  Which is fine...but unfortunately most of SF on television doesn't aspire to anything more.  Jake's 'powers' could just as easily come from a magic thunderbolt, and his enemies might be trying to steal his magic necklace, and it functionally wouldn't be much different.  One of my favorites ST:TOS episodes was based on a script for a WWII series.  They merely changed the word "nazi" to "romulan" and "sub" to "spaceship", and left the script virtually untouched.  Luckily, it was a great script.  Most TV series equate special F/X with and flash with SF.  If it turned out that Joan in "Joan of Arcadia" wasn't talking to God, but to an advanced alien being, what then?  Was "John Doe" SF?  'Alias' or 'La Femme Nikita'?  "Brisco County, Jr.?"  Consider that the original Twilight Zone series still packs a punch, *40 years later*.  I watched a few episodes during the recent marathon...and it still bowls you over, with virtually no special effects or flashy visuals.  Take a show like "Jeremiah": virtually no special effects, but it's a solid SF show.

"Alien Nation" didn't cost much more than a normal cop drama, and many episodes had virtually no special effects at all.  When it first came out, I ignored it, thinking it was a cheap knock-off show.  When I finally gave it a chance, I was suprised at the depth of the writing, or how they spent an entire season just exploring cultural differences between the characters...and still managed a decent buddy cop show in the mix.  And, like most of the shows already mentioned, it failed.  

Since SF shows are generally more expensive, they formulate a greater risk.  Since SF fans are often perceived as fickle, as well, it means fewer shows in general.  Remember, Star Trek: Next Gen was a syndicated program, as was DS9.  And during it's first year, ST:NG's success was, by no means, a given.  

I could rant some more....but it's lunch time.


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## Umbran (Jan 7, 2004)

Starman said:
			
		

> Suits seem to think that if a show is not successful right away, it never will be, so they cancel it and try something else.




Close, but not quite.

The suits know that shows that aren't immediately successful could become successful if given time.  But the competition in the entertainment industry is pretty darned fierce.  While the show may need time, the suits don't have the time to give.  They are driven by their corporations to make money now, not in a season or two.

Let us remember that in commercial-driven TV, the stations don't answer directly to you.  They aren't really providing a service to the viewer - they're providing a service to the advertisers.  So, what you want is less relevant than what the advertisers want.  The advertisers want more eyeballs on those ads, and they want them now.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jan 7, 2004)

I used to whine on and on about how my cable company wouldn't carry the sci-fi channel, now that they do and I've seen it I realize that it sounded cool but in actuality it was nothing like I thought.  Nothing very interesting except Farscape.  I do like the Dune mini-series though.  I was over at my dad's one weekend and "Taken" must have been on 46.5 of the 48 hours I was there.  There was a lot that horrible True or False show with J. Frakes from TNG.  Ugh!  What a waste of prime airtime!  I guess I was just expecting too much wall to wall sci-fi goodness from them.  I haven't had cable TV in five years and I feel like I haven't missed out on any good Sci-Fi becuase there isn't any out there on cable or network TV other than B5 and ST:TOS reruns.  Now with DVD I don't need networks to watch those shows.  

The thing that made Babylon 5 the best sci-fi show ever put to screen is the thing that may make it hard to get into...the long storylines.   I'm so tired of Star Trek and the recycled drek that the franchise churns out and they way they write it.  "Next week, another episode that rehashes another storyline from TOS and has nothing to do with the events of this epislode!"  Blah!   Actually the entire Star Trek franchise seems quite sad when I compare it to B5 except the last few seasons of Deep Space 9, which took the long story idea "from" B5 and did good things with it.  The war with the Founders and whatnot.   That wasn't bad.   Enterprise I guess is trying to do that this season.  But the highpoints of Enterprise so far have been T'Pal's decontamination scenes, not a good sign for a sci-fi show unless it's supposed to be about hot Vulcan chicks.  Sci-Fi is in a sad state these days.  And with our ever decreasing attention spans maybe it's done for good barring the show that panders to the LCD.


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## Umbran (Jan 7, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> Consider that the original Twilight Zone series still packs a punch, *40 years later*.  I watched a few episodes during the recent marathon...and it still bowls you over, with virtually no special effects or flashy visuals.




Hm. I don't fully agree.

I watched a good chunk of the recent marathon too, and I wasn't bowled over.  Instead, I was struck by how trite most of the episodes seemed to be.  The acting stiff, the dialog stilted, the camera work primitive.  From the point of view of a modern sci-fi fan, the plots had all been done before.  Now, that's because Twilight Zone had itself done many of them, and authors since then have taken TZ as an influence.  But there's not much there to really hold a modern sci-fi viewer who isn't particularly looking to go on a nostalgia or historical binge.


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## takyris (Jan 7, 2004)

A lot of really good points in this thread, except for Hypersmurf and his "I should be used to writing without "E", darnit" stuff. 

Wizardru, I'm gonna harp on one thing you said, though.  Maybe it's because I write stuff that doesn't fit neatly into one genre or another, and thus haven't sold as much as I could have.  (This is not an "I would totally be a bestseller if not for gablah" pity-fest.  Multiple agents have independently told me, "This novel was written in a professional, polished style, and it was an enjoyable read, but I don't know that there's a market for something that crosses genres like this.  I wouldn't know how to sell it."  And of course, if it had truly blown their socks off, they'd have taken it anyway.)  Whatever the reason, I really get annoyed wtih genre snobbery -- and I'm not saying that Dru was being a genre snob, but I disagree that SF stuff "isn't SF".  It's not *hard* SF, certainly, but neither was Babylon 5.  Babylon 5 could have been a fantasy epic with no real difficulty, with people flying around on dragons through magical portals between worlds.  It could even have been a weird and interesting political espionage show with generous tweaking.  A tiny American embassy in the middle of Europe that has a small city and a really big airport.  The Vorlons and Shadows are ancient secret orders that have manipulated history over the centuries.  The Minbari are the British, the Narns and Centauri are Eastern European countries in constant conflict, and so on.

It is perfectly legitimate and good to use the Science Fiction genre to tell a story that could only be told with science fiction -- "Hyperion" would have been a tough read as fantasy, I think -- but it's also perfectly legitimate to use the SF genre to tell stories that could also have been told in other genres.  I don't want every one of my SF shows to spend most of the episode talking about the physics behind interstellar travel.

That said, I totally agree with what I thought was your main point -- the real problem is not the stories that are being told, but the fact that they're being told badly.  I gave up on "Joan of Arcadia" halfway through the pilot, and I had Tivo'd it out of interest.  I gave "Tru Calling" two or three episodes because I like Eliza Dushku.  Everyone here is entitled to their opinions, and I hope that those shows appeal to enough people somewhere to make the industry realize that SF can work -- but they didn't work for me.

Brisco County Jr. was SF in several episodes, and steampunk in several others, and a darn romping good time in several others.  The fact that he wasn't dealing with time travelling criminals every week doesn't mean that it was bad that he did it once.  Heck, "The Dukes of Hazzard" had one episode near the end where them Duke boys done found themselves a little gray spaceman and helped him get back to his ship (Oh yeah.  Seriously.  I could not make that up.).  Does that make the entire run of "Dukes of Hazzard" SF?

I'd rather worry about whether or not a show is good than what specific genre I can lump it into.


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## Mallus (Jan 7, 2004)

Here's what I'd like to see.... 

More pulp-style SF, Planetary Romance, the ample low-gravity cleavage of Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, the Lensmen battling Boskone from week to week [well, during sweeps weeks anyway...]. Now that we can [relatively] cheaply render the ancient pyramids of Mars and the dinosaur-and-Amazon infested swamps of Venus, it would be a shame not to... 

BTW, I think we've already seen a bit of this with Farscape, which stikes me as a --vastly-- more sophisticated take on the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers/John Carter archetype. But not so sophisticated and mature as to eschew the insane, improbable, and wildly entertaining aesthetics of good pulp SF.


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## WizarDru (Jan 7, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> Whatever the reason, I really get annoyed wtih genre snobbery -- and I'm not saying that Dru was being a genre snob, but I disagree that SF stuff "isn't SF". It's not *hard* SF, certainly, but neither was Babylon 5. Babylon 5 could have been a fantasy epic with no real difficulty, with people flying around on dragons through magical portals between worlds.



Well, believe me, I'm no genre snob.  Hell, I love watching even the worst Dr. Who episodes, in all of their scientifically incorrect and anachrnostic glory.  I would disagree about B5, though, because some key elements would not translate with some work, which was what I was getting at.  To use a concept like the Psicorps and how they work in a fantasy setting (let alone the whole concept of Psi powers), you'd have to do some major retooling for a traditional fantasy setting.  You can't transplant it to a small embassy somewhere without having to do major revisions to handle things like the markab plague, and rewriting it accordingly.  The point I was getting at there was that most TV shows aren't made by people who understand SF at all.  Therefore, they make a normal show, drop some SF element in, and expect it suddenly becomes an SF show.

To use another example...does anyone here remember a show several years ago called "Covington Cross"?  Anyone?  Anyone?  It was another in a long line of very short lived series to try and capitalize on the post-90210 teen-craze back in 1992, I think.  Listen to this description from TV Tome, and you'll see what I mean:



			
				TV Tome said:
			
		

> "A fanciful drama about life in medieval England for Sir Thomas, a widower, and his four children. Richard and Armus are stalwart young knights, but the other two children only wish they were. Cedric is in training to be a cleric as his late mother wished. Eleanor finds it difficult because of her sex, although she is as good on a horse and with a crossbow as any man. (Another son, William, left for the Crusades after the pilot episode and was barely mentioned again.)
> Sir Thomas has developed a relationship with Lady Elizabeth, who lives in her own castle nearby. Their other neighbor, Baron John Mullens, is continually plotting to ruin Sir Thomas and take his land."



It was anachronistic, it was pedantic and it was terrible.  The main characters all behaved like modern teenagers (with associated catch phrases and modern difficulties), and absolutely no attempt was made to make it even remotely logical.  It was made by people who had no idea what life was like on a medieval estate...other than that people must have lived in castles, swung swords a lot and wore armor whose sole purpose was to create jokes about having to go to the bathroom.  Everyone was apparently a knight, except for the angsty young daughter who complained constantly about wanting to be one.  Oh, and it also wasted Nigel Terry.

The point is that most SF is crap on TV because most SF is made by people who either don't know how to do SF or don't care to try.  



			
				takyris said:
			
		

> I don't want every one of my SF shows to spend most of the episode talking about the physics behind interstellar travel.



Oh, and believe me, I wholeheartedly agree.  Did I mention how much I love Dr. Who and Blake's 7, even at their worst moments?  I enjoy SF shows that are totally illogical, anachronistic or just plain silly.  Brisco County Jr. was a fantastic show, for example, but it made little or no sense from an SF standpoint.  Was it an SF show?  That's a matter for debate, of course, since it could also just be a western when it wanted to be.  But I loved the hell out of that show.



			
				takyris said:
			
		

> That said, I totally agree with what I thought was your main point -- the real problem is not the stories that are being told, but the fact that they're being told badly.



That's really where I was going.  I probably didn't make it clear because I was hungry. 

I just want to see good stories, told well.  I like fantastic elements, be they magical, SF or whatever.  What I really want is someone to get HBO to make an SF series.


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## John Crichton (Jan 7, 2004)

Kesh said:
			
		

> The sad part is, I've got several ideas for how to make a decent SF series, but I'll never be able to break into the 'biz'. What's worse was reading this thread, and seeing people asking for the show ideas I've come up with three to five years ago!



I can relate. I have been working on a novel series with a friend for nearly a decade now with many ideas that ended up in *Farscape*. While I loved the show it nearly killed our project (which we always saw as a great TV show or movie series).

No matter how bad the landscape is, it is never that bad. With enough drive and a little luck, any show has a chance. If you have what you think are good ideas, go with it!! Things look bleak for sure but as someone else said, there really isn't a formula for a good show or what will do well.

Mark my words: Good sci-fi will be back on TV. We are in a lull now. We have just come out of a Golden Age. Give it some time.


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## WizarDru (Jan 7, 2004)

John Crichton said:
			
		

> Mark my words: Sci-fi will be back on TV. We are in a lull now. We have just come out of a Golden Age. Give it some time.



I believe you.  I remember the bleak, empty desert that the mid to late 80s were.


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## John Crichton (Jan 7, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> I believe you. I remember the bleak, empty desert that the mid to late 80s were.



Whenever I think of today's state of sci-fi I always think of the "pile-on" of good stuff in the early 90s.  I never had time to watch it all.  I'm lucky that I haven't seen B5 yet.  I have the season 1 DVD set sitting on my shelf waiting for me.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 7, 2004)

I think the whole "it's expensive" argument is rather weak myself.  Otherwise there's no way SFC would be able to stay in business.

There's two problems I see.

One is advertising - Sci-Fi shows so often don't get the advertising that they need to draw in viewers.  A lot of that is because I think the networks think that only the hardcore fans will watch a show, and won't be able to pick up any new viewers - something not entirely unsubstantiated, but certainly not close to true either.

The other is budgets.  You know the primary reason JMS could keep B5 on the air?  He was consistently _under_ budget each year, something that _most_ Sci-Fi shows to my knowledge don't do.

Given these two problems, _of course_ money is going to be an issue.  But I don't think it needs to be as big of one as it's made out to be.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 7, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> To use another example...does anyone here remember a show several years ago called "Covington Cross"?  Anyone?  Anyone? It was anachronistic, it was pedantic and it was terrible.




Yes, yes... but it had Ione Skye... 

-Hyp.


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## Rackhir (Jan 7, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> I think the whole "it's expensive" argument is rather weak myself.  Otherwise there's no way SFC would be able to stay in business.




99% of what SFC shows are old series and movies that probably aren't terribly valuable. That's how they can stay in buisness. Granted they are producing a very limited number of new series and movies, but I doubt they are the only ones financing them as they also show up on DVD quite rapidly. Clearly most of them are also done on a shoestring. Jon Edwards being a prime example of a very cheap to produce show, that probably garners/ed pretty respectable ratings.


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## takyris (Jan 7, 2004)

I don't know much, but I do know that Smurf likes Ione Skye *a lot*.


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## WizarDru (Jan 7, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> I think the whole "it's expensive" argument is rather weak myself. Otherwise there's no way SFC would be able to stay in business.



Well, I agree with your points, but I'd point out that SFC's programming mostly consists of (and used to consist even more of) reruns of older shows from all over the place.  I remember when they had a bunch of marketers come to Philcon back in....hmm, late 80s, I think it was.  Almost everything that they had planned was based around a large catalog of syndication and reruns, and a handful of original utlra low-budget 'movies'.

Anyone have Scifi channel long enough to remember 'FTL Feed'?  Ugh.  Man, were those lame.  These days, SciFi Channel shows almost as much horror (if not more) than Scifi shows, it seems.  I mean, let's not forget, SG1 started on Showtime, originally.  Scifi channel, a division of the fine, fine USA network, rarely creates a show that lasts longer than a season, anyhow.    I remember our optimism about a SF channel fade faster than a candle in a windstorm after that presentation.  It became clear that it was a channel from folks who really didn't get SF to begin with, and weren't really interested in doing so.  

Mind you, they deserve praise for when they do the occasional miniseries or special that exceeds those boundaries.  But it's fairly rare, these days.


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## John Crichton (Jan 7, 2004)

Speaking of older SFC shows, does anyone remember the talk show that would have a panel of writers/producers/people in the know that included from time to time Harlan Ellison and Harry Knowles?  I always liked that show.  Nothing else much like it on the air...


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## Pielorinho (Jan 7, 2004)

I was under the impresion that cost was the primary reason why SciFi channel didn't pick up _Firefly_.  Indeed, that show's special effects were a lot better than what I was used to seeing on _Star Trek_ or _Andromeda_ or the like.  (I watched a few episodes of _Babylon 5_ from the first season, hated it, and apparently was turned off of the best SF show of the nineties, unfortunately).

The bulk of SF shows are cheesy crap, in my opinion, but that's not because the genre necessarily encourages it; rather, it's because the genre is itself unpopular right now, and so the big money doesn't go to SF shows.  When you're working with second-rate actors and third-rate writers and no-name directors, you're not going to end up with a polished product.  These days, the big money is in crime drama and reality television, and you can tell it by the gloss.

If a breakthrough SF show occurs, the television equivalent of _Terminator_, then the money will start going toward producing more shows in the genre; with the money will come first-string actors, directors, and writers, and we'll have more shows of the caliber of the insanely good _Firefly_.

Daniel


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## Ranger REG (Jan 7, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> To use another example...does anyone here remember a show several years ago called "Covington Cross"?  Anyone?  Anyone?  It was another in a long line of very short lived series to try and capitalize on the post-90210 teen-craze back in 1992, I think.  Listen to this description from TV Tome, and you'll see what I mean:
> 
> It was anachronistic, it was pedantic and it was terrible.  The main characters all behaved like modern teenagers (with associated catch phrases and modern difficulties), and absolutely no attempt was made to make it even remotely logical.  It was made by people who had no idea what life was like on a medieval estate...other than that people must have lived in castles, swung swords a lot and wore armor whose sole purpose was to create jokes about having to go to the bathroom.  Everyone was apparently a knight, except for the angsty young daughter who complained constantly about wanting to be one.  Oh, and it also wasted Nigel Terry.



Yes, I do remember watching ABC's _Covington Cross_ that starred two leading actors from the fan-cult fantasy film, _Excalibur_ ("Arthur" Nigel Terry and "Guinevere" Terri Lunghi) and previous attempts to put a fantasy series on a major network's programming (can you say CBS' _Wizards & Warriors_ starring _B5_ and _Taxi_ actor Jeff Conaway, and Disney's "Zorro" star Duncan Regehr).

It could have been good had it taken on a much darker tone rather than a lighthearted swashbuckling romp through the virtual "Sherwood Forest."

OBTW, _CC_ also starred the late Glenn Quinn who plays the womanizing second son destined for the clergy.



			
				WizardDru said:
			
		

> Oh, and believe me, I wholeheartedly agree.  Did I mention how much I love Dr. Who and Blake's 7, even at their worst moments?  I enjoy SF shows that are totally illogical, anachronistic or just plain silly.  Brisco County Jr. was a fantastic show, for example, but it made little or no sense from an SF standpoint.  Was it an SF show?  That's a matter for debate, of course, since it could also just be a western when it wanted to be.  But I loved the hell out of that show.



Actually _Brisco County Jr_ is considered action-adventure alongside an old Western TV favorite, _Wild, Wild West_ starring Robert Conrad. They're both considered pulp by the way their villain templates are usually mad geniuses who wants world domination. The same could be said of UPN's short-lived series _Legends,_ starring _SG-1_ Richard Dean Anderson and _SG-1_ (but he's well known as "Q" in _ST_) John DeLancie.




			
				WizardDru said:
			
		

> That's really where I was going.  I probably didn't make it clear because I was hungry.
> 
> I just want to see good stories, told well.  I like fantastic elements, be they magical, SF or whatever.  What I really want is someone to get HBO to make an SF series.



Why HBO? Not many of us have cable. I prefer syndication. Although others may say that the syndication market is dried up, it is not completely extinct. Rookie networks like UPN and TheWB don't have a full 7-day programming schedule (usually the weekends). Plus there are other local TV stations not affiliated to any major network that may want to fill their timeslots as well.


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## Ranger REG (Jan 7, 2004)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> I was under the impresion that cost was the primary reason why SciFi channel didn't pick up _Firefly_.  Indeed, that show's special effects were a lot better than what I was used to seeing on _Star Trek_ or _Andromeda_ or the like.  (I watched a few episodes of _Babylon 5_ from the first season, hated it, and apparently was turned off of the best SF show of the nineties, unfortunately).



Honestly, I wasn't that too impressed with _Firefly_ special effects, including the "robotic camera" view effect (how it pans and then makes a tight magnifying focus). But the story was good enough, especially the arc concerning the psychic girl.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 8, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> Well, I agree with your points, but I'd point out that SFC's programming mostly consists of (and used to consist even more of) reruns of older shows from all over the place. I remember when they had a bunch of marketers come to Philcon back in....hmm, late 80s, I think it was. Almost everything that they had planned was based around a large catalog of syndication and reruns, and a handful of original utlra low-budget 'movies'.



I've said it before, and I've said it again... if SFC used their cheap stuff _wisely_, money would not be a problem.

It's highly debatable if money is why Farscape, Firefly, and Crusade were cancelled, but for the sake of arguement, we'll assume it was the primary factor.  We'll also assume that TNT, Fox, and SFC would all make the the same decisions.

Take the shows in syndication that _were_ hits - B5 being the prime example.  Put them on prior to your evening line-up, not at nine in the morning (or whatever ludicrously early time B5 is on).  Use the properties you have rights to to make some money - don't waste them crappy times.

Use the money garnered from older _successful _properties and the cheaper shows, and use that to drive the development of new shows and the funding of the more expensive ones, such as Farscape, Firefly, Crusade, and the like.  If they're failures, cancel them.  If not, keep them on, pour some money on advertising (SFC's _biggest_ problem).  Grab a night, make it solid.  Then work outward.

Like I said though, money doesn't seem to have been the cause of any of the big three shows (in my mind) - Firefly, Farscape, and Crusade - to be cancelled.  Farscape was initially renewed for a fifth season, so money didn't seem to be an issue - otherwise they wouldn't have planned for it.  Crusade was nixed by TNT before it even aired, in large part I think due to JMS fighting with TNT.  Firefly was shown out of order, and Fox didn't seem to have much faith in or dedication to the show anyway, since it was cancelled pretty quickly.  Besides which, IIRC Fox isn't doing too hot these days, so they're probably under pressure.

Aside from that, especially for SFC but true for most sci-fi shows, the _biggest_ problem with the failure of sci-fi shows nowadays isn't because they're too expensive, it's because they aren't being advertised consistently.  Farscape had almost no advertising for it's third and fourth seasons, and I don't recall seeing _any_ for Firefly.  And the networks wonder why ratings are going down?


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> Grab a night, make it solid.  Then work outward.




Which is exactly what SciFi was doing with Farscape paired with teh Invisible Man...



> And the networks wonder why ratings are going down?




Well, here's the question - are the networks wondering?  There's some reason to think that the networks know exactly what's going on.  

With Farscape, for example, there's some indication that internal politics and opinions of higher level management (meaning those who owned SciFi, but were not previously part of day-to-day operations) had drastic consequences for the show.  

When the suits get locked into battles of wills, nobody wins.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> Crusade was nixed by TNT before it even aired, in large part I think due to JMS fighting with TNT.




Yup - never underestimate the power of politics, personal agendas, and personality clashes.

As an example - potentially highly inaccurate, since the information was third-hand when I heard it several years ago, but still relevant to the point  :

_Young Hercules_ was a second spin-off series from _Hercules: The Legendary Journeys_.  Hercules, and subsequently Xena, had both held the number 1 spot for Action/Adventure shows; Young Herc was supposed to do the same for the 10-14 year old demographic (or thereabouts).

Well, Young Herc went to number 1, but it the 5-9 year olds, not the 10-14s.  And the network already had a show - Mystic Knights of Tir-Na-Nog - aimed at that demographic.

Young Herc was pulling better numbers.  It was cheaper per episode to produce, filmed in New Zealand.  And sure, it was cheesy, but it was cheesy in the good Herc/Xena way, not in the bad Sinbad/New Adventures of Robin Hood way.

Mystic Knights was just _lousy_.

So when they dropped one show to avoid doubling up on their demographics... which one did they pick?

The story we heard back here is that one of the guys who had to make that decision... well, Mystic Knights was _his baby_.  Numbers be damned, quality be damned... his show was going to stay on the air.

Gah.

And then there was the Back-2-Back Action Hour, Jack of All Trades and Cleopatra 2525, two half-hour shows.  Two half-hour shows are more expensive to produce than one one-hour show, and when PRP ran into some financial trouble, they decided to axe one and extend the other.

I don't honestly know what the numbers were like.  But Jack of All Trades was a great show, and it was wonderful to work on, and it had Bruce Campbell, and Ange Dotchins, and a 2'8" Napoleon... 

... Cleo had three female leads with big breasts.

(That was the unofficial production motto for the second season - More Booms, More Breasts.)

Gah.

-Hyp.


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## John Crichton (Jan 8, 2004)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> And then there was the Back-2-Back Action Hour, Jack of All Trades and Cleopatra 2525, two half-hour shows. Two half-hour shows are more expensive to produce than one one-hour show, and when PRP ran into some financial trouble, they decided to axe one and extend the other.
> 
> I don't honestly know what the numbers were like. But Jack of All Trades was a great show, and it was wonderful to work on, and it had Bruce Campbell, and Ange Dotchins, and a 2'8" Napoleon...
> 
> ...



I really liked Jake of All Trades, mostly for Campbell of course.  Cleo was bad but the lead actually didn't have very big breasts, but the character was supposed to be a cryogenically frozen exotic dancer.  Natch.

It also had Gina Torres in it, but still sucked.  Looking back, I can't believe I actually watched it.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

John Crichton said:
			
		

> Cleo was bad but the lead actually didn't have very big breasts, but the character was supposed to be a cryogenically frozen exotic dancer.  Natch.




Well, do you remember _why_ she was cryogenically frozen?

Botched cosmetic breast surgery resulting in a coma.  (!?)

So she has an excuse for not having big breasts.



> It also had Gina Torres in it, but still sucked.  Looking back, I can't believe I actually watched it.




I only ever watched it 'cos I worked on it.  I watched Jack of All Trades 'cos I enjoyed it as well 

-Hyp.


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## takyris (Jan 8, 2004)

You do realize that I just turned an almost you-like shade of blue with envy from hearing that you worked on Jack of All Trades, right?


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

takyris said:
			
		

> You do realize that I just turned an almost you-like shade of blue with envy from hearing that you worked on Jack of All Trades, right?




Gosh... I probably shouldn't mention the time Bruce Campbell and I both caught a lift back into town from the Xena set with the same AD, huh? 

It wasn't all that exciting... he spent most of the ride talking about how he was gonna kick Sorbo's ass at golf the next day, since neither the Herc nor Xena main units were shooting...

-Hyp.


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## Kid Charlemagne (Jan 8, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> How often did you say advertisements for B5?  Almost never.  How often did it get moved from night to night, to differing time slots?  All the time.  B5 survived based on one important fact: JMS and crew knew how to make a show under-budget.  That allowed them to keep the series afloat, even amidst mixed ratings.




B5 was a syndicated show for most of its run.  That means that it was at the mercy of the stations showing it as to when it aired, meaning it could get yanked around at will.  Also, being syndication, JMS had no choice but to be on budget.  There was no network to bail him out if he went over.


----------



## s/LaSH (Jan 8, 2004)

Random thoughts:

Economically speaking, what's wrong with the Red Dwarf model? Get some good writers. Maybe get an exterior shot of a spaceship. Set most of the show in the same bunkroom. Run eight seasons.

SF is supposed to be the literature of ideas. Cheap-to-film ideas would be good, if only to serve as stopgaps.

Anybody ever hear of The Tribe? It was doing pretty well a few years back, I haven't really kept on top of it. It's a NZ-made show about a world where everyone out of their teens died of some weird disease, and as expected, things went to the dogs. Sounds similar to Jeremiah, only with a far younger cast and first. That's cheap to film - just put some rubbish on the street, make some costumes, and film people in real cities. No more budget than a standard soap.

The SF genre has evolved in directions that nobody's filmed yet. Good news is, it looks like some of them may be getting onto the screen soon - David Weber's Mutineer's Moon will be an animated series, and his Honor Harrington last I heard was under development for live-action. So someone is working on animation to cut back on costs; and HH, of course, is like nothing you've ever seen before on TV. Assuming they do it right, of course.

Come to think of it, those two are my two picks for Shows To Watch Religiously In The Next 3 Years Or So.

Advertisers need to get their head on, true. Every show I've loved, I've seen reports from the US about how poorly treated it's been. But I'm in New Zealand, and even those shows that have survived to broadcast a couple of episodes don't seen to get picked up here. Curse them. B5 got one piece of publicity beyond the weekly newspaper mention of '2.00: Babylon 5 (PG)' and a synopsis if we were lucky, and that was one article when they started showing the last season. I never saw a single ad for the best show in recent history. This seems to be congruent with general treatment of things of quality.

Continuity is a problem too. I picked up B5 because it looked cool midway through Season 3, however, and didn't really look back. There is one solution to this: online support. PC gaming, now rivalling the movie industry if I remember correctly, frequently requires users to download patches to make the games run right. I figure the audience is ready to be told about websites where you can read up on the cast, synopses of old episodes, view trailers and get supplemental material. You can also build a community with these funny things called messageboards or forums.

Which brings me to another point: geek networking. We know what we want. We are possibly the most in-touch group in modern society, thanks to places like this (notable exception given to TXT-capable mobiles, blamed for letting the Hulk go out of theaters before I could get out of my chair). Advertising can be supplemented by word-of-mouth. In the modern TV climate, I think we should all do out bit to make sure everyone's watching what they _should_ be.

I just don't have anything to recommend beyond Stargate.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> David Weber's Mutineer's Moon will be an animated series, and his Honor Harrington last I heard was under development for live-action.




Wait... what... where?  Cite, source, link, scoop?

-Hyp.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Which is exactly what SciFi was doing with Farscape paired with teh Invisible Man...



You know, I had a paragraph where I praised SFC for doing this, and then deleted it because I thought it was too much of an aside... 

SFC _was_ doing good with that pairing. IMan pulled in a very strong female demographic compared to most of their shows, and Farscape of course had some serious numbers. Then they messed up by moving IMan to some god-awful night (Monday, I think) and showing crappy shows in it's place (Black Scorpion, anyone?). Not to mention the _entirely_ political reasons IMan was canned.



> Well, here's the question - are the networks wondering? There's some reason to think that the networks know exactly what's going on.
> 
> With Farscape, for example, there's some indication that internal politics and opinions of higher level management (meaning those who owned SciFi, but were not previously part of day-to-day operations) had drastic consequences for the show.
> 
> When the suits get locked into battles of wills, nobody wins.



Another amen.

IMan, for example, was canned because SFC (and supposedly Bonnie Hammer herself) forced a new character on the writers in the second season. A _lot_ of people on set resented that, and I suspect they were more than willing to say so. Well, when the show started to decline, the writers blamed the new character forced on them, and that apparently rubbed someone the wrong way. To be fair, the writers _should_ have been able to deal with that, but from what I understand it was _quite_ an intrusion into the writing of the show. The writers eventually even managed to make her work (although note how she isn't in the final few eps of the season). But the damage was done.

A similar story was rumored to have happened with Crusade, though JMS stood up to them.

Notice the characters of Jool and Sikozu, who seem primarily designed to increase male viewship - though the Farscape writers made them work more, I think.

Also, to further drive the nail in SFC's coffin - why is Farscape on Sunday through Thursday at midnight? It was one of their highest rated series for four years! And they put it on at a late hour before workdays? More proof that the SFC programming people just don't have any clue how to do their jobs.


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## ConnorSB (Jan 8, 2004)

I agree with almost everything people have said. And I have a question:

What would you do if you had the job? I mean, assuming you had a modest budget, what would the "Sci-Fi show of today" look like? And what would you do to keep it on air?


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## Darrin Drader (Jan 8, 2004)

ConnorSB said:
			
		

> What would you do if you had the job? I mean, assuming you had a modest budget, what would the "Sci-Fi show of today" look like? And what would you do to keep it on air?




An excellent question, and one that certainly invites a lot fo armchair quarterbacking.   

First of all, I think that in today's climate, the overriding psocietal philosohy is no longer promoting the notion of peace at all costs. I think this is a diametrically opposed to the fundamental philosophy behind ST:TNG. As much as I loved that show at the time, it was made in a pre-terrorism world. Without going all bonzai on the restricted political discussion, I think that what this means to scifi is that a successful scifi needs to allow for some pretty dark stuff, but it also has to be about fighting the good fight and it has to be about hope. I think in many ways that is what our society is looking for, not just in entertainment.

I think people are also tired of the problems being dealt with being based on science. Granted, its science fiction, but as has already been pointed out, we don't need a five minute dissertation every episode on what makes their ships travel faster than light. Instead, there needs to be human drama, compelling characters, and there needs to be action. Babylon 5 had all of these things, but if I get going on that topic, I'll be writing until morning.

So, the ideal sereis, from my point of view would be darker than a lot of the fare we got in the '90s. It would have strong characters. It would have human drama. It would have combat, It would have good special effects. It would focus on hope. In short, it would look very close, or exactly the same as the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. That was the most compelling science fiction I've seen on TV since Babylon 5. Ever since I started writing professionally I haven't made a lot of time for watching any TV. In fact, the only show I watch religiously is 24. The BSG miniseries had enough of what I was looking for that I not only watched it once when they first showed it, but then I watched it again when they showed both parts together. I want to buy that DVD, regardless of whether this goes to series. I know a lot of people were disappointed that it had a lot of points of departure from the original, but for me, it delivered a story that was able to compress a lot of _soul _ into 4 hours.

So what would I do to keep it on the air? If I was the exec that gave it the greenlight, I would set a relatively low benchmark for ratings and if it was able to average those ratings on a weekly basis, I would commit to 2 years up front. Beyond that point, much would depend on whether it was able to find an audience. If it does, then I would increase the budget, keep the advertising the same, and try to find the ideal timeslot for it. If it met the expectations but didn't exceed them, I would take some money from the show's budget and put it into advertising. Yes, this means that in some areas the show's quality might suffer, but this is something it could overcome with good enough writing. If the increased writing was enough to draw in more viewers, then I would increase the show's budget again. If the show failed to make the numbers during the first 2 seasons, then I would probably pull the pug. After all, if it can't succeed after 2 seasons, then its time to make way for something better.

Of course that's just my business sense. Maybe I'm clueless.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 8, 2004)

Well, I've already said what I'd do if I were a programming executive.

If I were a writer, I'd be promptly blacklisted because I have no skill.  I'm more of an idea guy mixed with a practical side.  I'd be a decent programming executive because I could suggest ideas if a company felt a show was flagging, but not force any one idea on someone.


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## Kesh (Jan 8, 2004)

Without giving too much away:


*Plot & Character Driven* - Screw 'monster of the week' and 'this looks/sounds cool'. People need characters they can connect with to care about, and a reason for things to be happening that makes sense.
*Light on the Tech-speak* - No one really cares how communicators work, unless you want to show why they _aren't_ working in a situation. Same with many other elements of sci-fi... don't geek out on the audience, but don't talk down to them either.
*Epic Storytelling* - I'm a sucker for a good epic. I want a beginning, middle and an end... not just to an episode, but to a season or a series. Take me from A to B to C. Just don't assume that your audience has seen A when you get to C...  a slight problem with shows like _Babylon 5_.
*Entertain the Audience!* - Let's face it, we're not watching these shows to be enlightened or to learn physics. We want to be entertained. Sometimes that means making us laugh or cry, feel shocked or amazed. Sometimes that's brilliant gun battles, and others it's listening to a character spill their soul to another person. It's celebrating humanity's achievements and wincing at our worse natures. Make the audience want to know what happens next, because they're loving the roller coaster ride.

I want to tell a story. One that shows people life through a slightly fantastic mirror. Show them wonders of imagination, against the backdrop of human triumph and frailty.

I want to make a science fiction show that's about humanity first, technology second. The starship is merely a vehicle for my tale.


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## jdavis (Jan 8, 2004)

ConnorSB said:
			
		

> I agree with almost everything people have said. And I have a question:
> 
> What would you do if you had the job? I mean, assuming you had a modest budget, what would the "Sci-Fi show of today" look like? And what would you do to keep it on air?



A non stop action thriller with space ship dog fights and lasers blasting everywhere. You know a show where a loveable rogue, his alien sidekick, a young brash hero with a heart of gold and a rescued space princess fight the forces of a oppressive space dictatorship while learing to get along in their rusty old space freighter as they travel across the galaxy. I'd call it "_Space Wars the series_" or something like that.

How about taking the original scripts from Black Sheep Squadron and changing it into a space fighter action show. Change the names and places but leave the storylines in tact, sort of a re-imagining of a world war two action drama in space. Call it something like "_Rogue Squadron the series_".

Live action Jonny Quest in the style of the original (you know when they actually killed people). Deal with some of the more adult issues a boy and his mad scientist father would have to deal with, not to mention frog men getting the hell kicked out of them by a 12 year old boy, his dog and his super-spy protector. Would be called "_Jonny Quest_" (the series  )

Genetically engineered flying primates who live on a skyscraper in Los Angeles and work for a large finacial firm. Each hyper intelligent ape will be of a different species led by the mighty Bill, the flying Silverback Gorrilla. The show will be called "_Repo-monkeys_".

Or how about the deftly entitled "_Bubba Slapjaw and the Spaceknights_" a show that needs no explination (It was a comic book I did for 9th grade art class, real high quality stuff).


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## takyris (Jan 8, 2004)

Ditto the armchair quarterbacking.

If I were a writer, I'd... oh, wait, I am, and I am, as it were. 

But I don't plan on going into television until I've risen to such fame and fortune as a novelist that I can go into television with *power*.  At least one reason we're all complaining so much is because writers in TV-land are low on the totem pole.  JMS was able to do what he did with B5 because he was the dude in charge, in addition to being the writer (of many/most episodes, and the final-viewer on the ones he didn't write).


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## jdavis (Jan 8, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> I think the whole "it's expensive" argument is rather weak myself. Otherwise there's no way SFC would be able to stay in business.
> 
> There's two problems I see.
> 
> ...



I think Sci Fi channels new show budget for all of 2003 was around 135 million (about the same as the budget for the first Spiderman movie). The budget for the Taken Mini-series was around 40 million, Stargate runs around 1.5 million per episode (36 million for a 24 episode run). So there's more than half their total new show budget for the year, then you got all the other shows and movies and specials and the Galactica mini series and well you can see it just doesn't go all that far. 

Here is a chart I found on a Firefly messageboard, don't know how reliable it is:

*Genre Show Budgets
*Enterprise (2001)
$5,000,000 (per episode) (Season 2-7)
$3,500,000 (per episode)
$12,000,000 (pilot episode)
Star Trek TNG (1987) 
$2,500,000 (per episode) (season 3-7)
$1,500,000 (per episode)
Star Trek DS9 (1993)
$4,000,000 (per episode) (Season 4-7)
$2,000,000 (per episode)
Star Trek Voyager (1995)
$3,500,000 (per episode) (Season 4-7)
$2,200,000 (Per Episode)
Stargate SG1 (1996)
$1,400,000 (per episode)
The X-Files (1993) 
$1,500,000 (per episode - Canada)
$2,500,000 (per episode - US)
$66,000,000 (movie)
Space: Above and Beyond (1995)
$5,000,000 (per episode)
Star Trek TOS (1966) 
$100,000 (per episode)
Babylon Five (1994)
$750,000 (per episode)
$900,000 (per episode) (Season 4-5)
Battlestar Galactica (1978) 
$750,000 (per episode)
The Outer Limits (1995)
$1,100,000 (per episode, 7th season)
Buffy (1997)
$2,300,000 (per episode, 5th season)
Angel (1999)
$2,000,000 (per episode)
Firefly (2002)
$2,000,000 (per episode)
$10,000,000 (pilot episode)
Farscape (1999)
$1,500,000 (per episode)

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=3136


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## s/LaSH (Jan 8, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> I think Sci Fi channels new show budget for all of 2003 was around 135 million (about the same as the budget for the first Spiderman movie). The budget for the Taken Mini-series was around 40 million, Stargate runs around 1.5 million per episode (36 million for a 24 episode run). So there's more than half their total new show budget for the year, then you got all the other shows and movies and specials and the Galactica mini series and well you can see it just doesn't go all that far.




Now let's ask the question: Why is their budget $135M? How might one go about increasing it? Perhaps through the success of other sides of the business? Are they allowed to do that?

Reality is not a zero sum equation. It sounds to me like SFC has a few nice big wooden blocks and a lot of little ones, and has lined them all up on the floor and occasionally shuffles them around and sits on them. Meanwhile, we're sitting over here, shouting 'Build a house! Build a house! Make it reach up to the sky!' But they don't.

And before I forget: Is SFC capable of putting ads for shows on its own channel? Or does it have to pay money to some amorphous entity to do so? If so, WHY?

The more I read about it, the more I think the entertainment industry's gone soft in the head... anyone think the Japanese will save us?

Speaking of which: http://www.mutineersmoon.com - Hypersmurf, be happy. I don't know precisely what's going on with Honor Harrington, but you can always check http://www.baen.com and see if you can turn up anything (and if you can't, just download a couple dozen books the authors have chosen for dissemination and call it even).


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Speaking of which: http://www.mutineersmoon.com - Hypersmurf, be happy.




Well, to be honest, the Mutineer's Moon books are the Webers that grab me least of everything he's done.

Which isn't to say they're _bad_, in any respect... I'm just far more excited to hear the Honor rumour.

I'd love to see Bahzell brought to screen as well...



> I don't know precisely what's going on with Honor Harrington, but you can always check http://www.baen.com and see if you can turn up anything (and if you can't, just download a couple dozen books the authors have chosen for dissemination and call it even).




Heh.  I just posted eight links to Baen and the Free Library over in this thread... 

The only information I could find Googlewise was that ADV Films was looking for investors, co-producers, etc for an Honor series in September 2002.

-Hyp.


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## jdavis (Jan 8, 2004)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Now let's ask the question: Why is their budget $135M? How might one go about increasing it? Perhaps through the success of other sides of the business? Are they allowed to do that?
> 
> Reality is not a zero sum equation. It sounds to me like SFC has a few nice big wooden blocks and a lot of little ones, and has lined them all up on the floor and occasionally shuffles them around and sits on them. Meanwhile, we're sitting over here, shouting 'Build a house! Build a house! Make it reach up to the sky!' But they don't.
> 
> ...



Sci Fi's budget seems to increase every year it's just that they still seem to mar every year with one or two bonehead decisions. With the recent Universal/NBC merger you have to wonder if there may be a shake up comming at Sci Fi and if they may get the opportunity to do some more mainstream advertising. Originally the Battlestar Galactica project was a Fox tv project that was going to air on Sci Fi as reruns at a later date, wonder if they may be able to get some of that NBC clout behind a joint venture show now?

The Japanese have already saved Saturday morning cartoons so anything is possible.


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## Pielorinho (Jan 8, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> Honestly, I wasn't that too impressed with _Firefly_ special effects, including the "robotic camera" view effect (how it pans and then makes a tight magnifying focus). But the story was good enough, especially the arc concerning the psychic girl.



The two that stood out in my mind were the movements of the ships in space (they felt like they were moving in a vaccuum somehow), and the incredibly cool horizontal flaming cyclone in _Out of Gas_.  Some of the other effects -- the magnetotrain in _Train Job_, for instance -- were pretty obvious CGI, but other bits of effects were great.

Daniel


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## WayneLigon (Jan 8, 2004)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Anybody ever hear of The Tribe? It was doing pretty well a few years back, I haven't really kept on top of it. It's a NZ-made show about a world where everyone out of their teens died of some weird disease, and as expected, things went to the dogs.



It had it's own programming track at Dragon*Con this past year, and they had the DVD compilation there. I should have picked it up, because it did look interesting, but I'll see if Netflix picks it up first. It certainly seemed popular, and had an interesting 'look and feel' to it.


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## WizarDru (Jan 8, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> I think Sci Fi channels new show budget for all of 2003 was around 135 million (about the same as the budget for the first Spiderman movie). The budget for the Taken Mini-series was around 40 million, Stargate runs around 1.5 million per episode (36 million for a 24 episode run). So there's more than half their total new show budget for the year, then you got all the other shows and movies and specials and the Galactica mini series and well you can see it just doesn't go all that far.
> 
> Here is a chart I found on a Firefly messageboard, don't know how reliable it is:



It's moderately reliable.  I remember JMS specifically discussing budget for B5 multiple times, and the numbers provided here are slightly lower for the average, but about correct.  Individual episodes would widely diverge in cost, based on the requirements for set construction and CGI.  B5 was the first show I know of that used the occasional 'virtual' set....meaning most of the room was CGI.  B5 was _very_ concise on what was to happen during the year, with the main story specifically planned from the start, which allowed them to better plan what they'd need (the same approach that Jackson used for LotR).  And being syndicated doesn't mean there haven't been shows that go over budget, or that being a network show means that you _can_ go over budget.  In both cases, unless you're phenonemally successful, you end up having to cut costs later in the season to make up for it.  Some B5 episodes were much more expensive than others, due to makeup or CGI requirements, for example.  Star Trek used the 'Ship-in-a-bottle' episode idea (not the first to do it, of course, just the first I ever heard use a title for it): namely that you shoot an episode without using _any _new sets, to cut the costs and time requirements.  Which, if done properly with a good story, can work very well.

Different factors affect costs, too.  Location shooting is expensive, generally.  Many shows are co-produced outside of the US, such as Highlander and Farscape, so that TV stations in places like France or Germany help defer the costs in return for getting first run shots at the show.  Having multiple cameras, CGI or extensive makeup effects add up, as do needing new sets on  regular basis.

Mind you, all of that can be irrelevant to why a show succeeds or fails.  Politics can be huge.  Stephen J. Cannell, Stephen Bochco, David Kelley, JMS and many other writer/producers have had very public feuds with their networks and distributors over their shows.  Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose.  Remember when B5 was part of PTEN?  JMS had plenty of feuds with WB's movie division, who was responsible for B5, not their TV division (and what a convulted web that was).  In the case of TNT, JMS attempted to compromise on some issues, and ended up with some terrible episodes of an otherwise good series.  The political and very public scuffle almost certainly led to the show's demise.  JMS' subsequent battles over Jeremiah have led to his severing ties with that show after season 2.

When a show like NYPD Blue, the X-files, and Law and Order has problems with the networks who help make them, you can bet a show like B5 or the Invisible Man has much less chance of getting it's own way. 

The only way really good shows get made, SF or no, is to fly under the radar of most TV execs until it becomes a certifiable hit...and even then, it's not only stronger, not invulnerable. 

As for the ideas of mini-series versus regular series: they're different formats, and have different strengths and weaknesses.  I"m not sure that I'd prefer one to the other.  A good mini-series often leaves you wishing they had done more, for example (a lot of BBC productions can be like this, due to their short runs).  A regular series can often flounder, with episodes that are clearly 'filler'.  A mini-series often is more expensive than a regular series, as you're not deferring some costs over a long period.  

If I had my druthers, I'd have both.


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## WayneLigon (Jan 8, 2004)

ConnorSB said:
			
		

> What would you do if you had the job? I mean, assuming you had a modest budget, what would the "Sci-Fi show of today" look like? And what would you do to keep it on air?



I think that show would be a mini-series  I think there are lots of good books out there that would make excellent shows but they would need to be done as mini-series because they involve changing circumstances. Almost all TV is done with the assumption that the basic circumstances will not change (and I can understand somewhat the idea behind this; it's easy for someone to start watching, say, _Friends_ or _ST: TNG_ in the middle season 4 and never be aware at all that has gone before).

The idea of a series that has a definate beginning, middle and end is very appealing to me.  The idea of a series of series that share the same universe is also very appealing. 

What would I create, if given a magic wand of money?

*Batman*. Doing Batman as a totally straight series concentrating on detective work, crime fighting, and the occassional supervillain would be great. One part action, part _CSI_, use over-arching plots and meta-plots like _Law and Order_.... You have a small cast of main characters with all these wonderful people on the sidelines; combine with normal types of crimes that Batman usualy deals with and once or twice a season have a two or three part major supervillain scene. Batman has, hands down, one of the best series of villains in comics, but they're like spice. Too many and the soup is inedible. You can do almost anything, juggling and weaving plotlines as needed: Batman on the trail of a serial arsonist; Tim Drake juggling his school and girlfriend and family duties with being Robin at night; Commissioner Gordon trying to keep the new Internal Affairs political hack off his back; a corrupt city council dealing with their new silent partner: The Penguin, who promises to bring  much needed money into the city with his new waterfront gambling casino complex; Oracle overseeing everything from the Watchtower... It would actually be a fairly low budget series; most of your SFX cash would go into the occassional explosion and a few low-level Bat-Gadgets. CGI 90% of the mansion and Batcave sets and there you go. Once in a while, blow the big SFX scene with someone like Poison Ivy (the entire park comes to life and tries to kill Batman and Robin), or Clayface (do him like the animated series, with him being a shapeshifter).


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

Kesh said:
			
		

> [*]*Epic Storytelling* - I'm a sucker for a good epic. I want a beginning, middle and an end... not just to an episode, but to a season or a series. Take me from A to B to C. Just don't assume that your audience has seen A when you get to C...  a slight problem with shows like _Babylon 5_.




That's asking a lot.  Too much, really.  

You want to be taken from A to B to C, but when you're between B and C you can't refer to A?  Essentially, that's asking for a the story to havew a solid and rational arc, but the series to have episodic structure.  It's like asking Robert Jordan to write "The Wheel of Time" series so that each book stands alone.

While some shows may occasionally be able to do that for short periods, asking for it consistently isn't at all realistic or fair to the writers.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 8, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> I think Sci Fi channels new show budget for all of 2003 was around 135 million (about the same as the budget for the first Spiderman movie). The budget for the Taken Mini-series was around 40 million, Stargate runs around 1.5 million per episode (36 million for a 24 episode run). So there's more than half their total new show budget for the year, then you got all the other shows and movies and specials and the Galactica mini series and well you can see it just doesn't go all that far.
> 
> Here is a chart I found on a Firefly messageboard, don't know how reliable it is:
> 
> *snip chart*



Are those numbers adjusted for inflation?  I know it wouldn't add much, but one thing that truly annoys me is when people compare numbers without accounting for it.

So my question is, why is the budget only 135 million?  And that's _apparently_ a total programming budget, otherwise stuff like mini-series and specials wouldn't be taken out of that fund.  I just don't feel that it needs to be that low.

Any numbers on SFC's advertising budget?


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> You want to be taken from A to B to C, but when you're between B and C you can't refer to A?




Wait... didn't he say "_Don't_ assume I've seen A"?  As in, some time between B and C, remind me about A in case I missed that episode?

-Hyp.


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> Sci Fi's budget seems to increase every year it's just that they still seem to mar every year with one or two bonehead decisions.




Well, that leaves a question - how boneheaded are these decisions if they allow for an increase in budget every year?  They can't be so bad that they're quickly sinking the channel.  As I understand it, the Sci Fi Channel has been making a consistent profit for a number of years now, so they're decisions are obviously not completly imbecilic.

There is something we have to avoid here - the preconception that what we like and want is necessarily the best business move.  

Let's face it - we are oddballs, fairly hard-core sci-fi and fantasy fans.  We like Farscape and B5.  But if ratings and past success are a measure, the rest of the world likes Jerry Springer, "Married with Children" and  "reality TV".  Our tastes are not run-of-the-mill, and pandering to our tastes may not be the way to greatest profits for the Sci Fi Channel.


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## WizarDru (Jan 8, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> Are those numbers adjusted for inflation? I know it wouldn't add much, but one thing that truly annoys me is when people compare numbers without accounting for it.
> 
> So my question is, why is the budget only 135 million? And that's _apparently_ a total programming budget, otherwise stuff like mini-series and specials wouldn't be taken out of that fund. I just don't feel that it needs to be that low.
> 
> Any numbers on SFC's advertising budget?



Those numbers are _not_ adjusted for inflation, which is an important point.  ST:TNG's budget is worth comparing to B5s, because they were contemporaries, as was DS9.  The original series, however, is another story.

So, for example: ST:TOS had a budget of $100,000 an episode.  In 2002 dollars, that would be equal to roughly $518,000 an episode.  ST:TNG had a budget of 1.5 Million, which is worth about 2.35 million today.  DS9 had a stating budget of 2 million, which translates into about 2.46 million today.  Babylon 5 had a budget of 750,000, which becomes $897,000 in 2002 dollars.  Battlestar Galactica cost $750,000 per episode in 1978 (where'd *that* money go?) or 2.14 MILLION today!!

Read into those numbers what you will.


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## WizarDru (Jan 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Let's face it - we are oddballs, fairly hard-core sci-fi and fantasy fans. We like Farscape and B5. But if ratings and past success are a measure, the rest of the world likes Jerry Springer, "Married with Children" and "reality TV". Our tastes are not run-of-the-mill, and pandering to our tastes may not be the way to greatest profits for the Sci Fi Channel.



That's not the problem.  The problem is that we'll watch ANYTHING, sometimes.  Remember, one of the reasons that Farscape got dropped is that they ran the numbers, and noticed that first-run Farscape episodes and reruns of some shows generated about the same numbers.  They decided that there wasn't much point in spending money for almost the same amount of profit.  It's the whole 'captive audience' concept that drives Star Trek onward.  Paramount is pretty much convinced (and unfortunately, the numbers have borned out over time) that they have a plug-in Trek audience that will watch Trek, regardless of it's respective quality.  Call it the Voyager Factor, if you will.  It doesn't matter if Trek fans didn't enjoy a show or not...they tuned in, just the same. 

If the Scifi channel concludes that they can throw virtually anything vaguely scifi-ish on the screen and have an audience of about the same size, why wouldn't they do just that?


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Wait... didn't he say "_Don't_ assume I've seen A"?  As in, some time between B and C, remind me about A in case I missed that episode?




If you don't assume the audience has seen A, when you refer to it you must retell the entire story of A, comic-book style, the way they tell you every other issue how Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, and his Uncle ben said "With great power comes great responsibility".

If you make only partial reference, say by having a plot point relate to A, but you don't explicitly say it, and instead expect the audience to remember it, any viewer who didn't see the previous episodes gets lost.  

You wanna see what happens when you try to write a show that doesn't assume you've seen previous episodes?  Look at "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda".  Started out with some of the greatest character development, some of the most interesting plots you've ever sunk your teeth into.  But some folks felt that long, involved sotryline depended too much on the audience having seen previous episodes.  And honestly, it did.  They simpley didn't have time to explicate all that had gone on before each time it became relevant, since there was a lot going on.  If you didn't watch regularly, you got lost.  It was felt that made the show "inaccessible to new and part-time viewers", and that would severely limit the show's growth and longevity.  So, all that plot and development was scrapped, and the show turned to mush.  

Mind you, last time I checked (which IIRC was back at the beginning of this season), Andromeda was still the #1 syndicated genre show, still making money.


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> That's not the problem.  The problem is that we'll watch ANYTHING, sometimes.




Well, actually you're supporting my point, so long as the different forms of "we" are kept straight.

There's we - the general American viewing public.  

There's we - the hard-core geeks who want better shows.

Scifi seems to do reasonably well panding to the former.  As you note, then there's not much point at going after the latter, which is a much smaller group.


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## Umbran (Jan 8, 2004)

Hm.  Posting a lot to this thread today.  My apologies...

Apropos to the discussion, though, is an announcement found in today's Sci Fi Wire.

The Sci Fi Channel will be creating a new "SciFi Thursday", an evening of Scifi Original programming. What's in this lineup?  "Mad Mad House", a form of reality show.  "Scare Tactics", a hidden camera/practical joke show.  And "Tripping the Rift", an animated show - the original short is crude enough that I wouldn't link to it here as it'd offend Grandma seven ways from Sunday.

So, does it look like SciFi is aiming at highbrow viewers?  Given what else has been successful on TV ("reality" and crudeness), is this at all surprising?


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> What's in this lineup?  "Mad Mad House", a form of reality show.  "Scare Tactics", a hidden camera/practical joke show.




Wait, but... the...

... what?

-Hyp.


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## WizarDru (Jan 8, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Well, actually you're supporting my point, so long as the different forms of "we" are kept straight.
> 
> There's we - the general American viewing public.
> 
> ...



Well, I guess you're thinking of a smaller subset of fandom, then, because last time I checked, there were still people out there writing "Manimal" and "Automan" fanfics and making Ewoks Flash movies.  I guess I don't accept the 'blame Joe Six-Pack, not SF geeks' theory for the current state of SF.  YMMV.


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## Hypersmurf (Jan 8, 2004)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> Well, I guess you're thinking of a smaller subset of fandom, then, because last time I checked, there were still people out there writing "Manimal" and "Automan" fanfics and making Ewoks Flash movies.




Automan!

They need to remake Automan.

-Hyp.


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> Are those numbers adjusted for inflation? I know it wouldn't add much, but one thing that truly annoys me is when people compare numbers without accounting for it.
> 
> So my question is, why is the budget only 135 million? And that's _apparently_ a total programming budget, otherwise stuff like mini-series and specials wouldn't be taken out of that fund. I just don't feel that it needs to be that low.
> 
> Any numbers on SFC's advertising budget?



That's the development budget so I will assume it is for the development of original Sci Fi productions, such as series, mini series, specials and original run movies. That budget has basically doubled in the last five years. I think they realized the network would fail if it continued to rely on reruns (there are only so many science fiction shows out there and only so many times you can sit through the same episode of Knight Rider before you pull your hair out). The question to ask is what is the new show budget for other cable channels? I mean how does their new show budget compare with say Cartoon Network or Comedy Central? I don't have a clue and I had a real hard time finding any information on what Sci Fi's budget was due to the fact that I am not in the industry and recieve buisness journals and such. The big thing here is that it shows just how much money they have to work on for their yearly budget (this came into play big time when they tried to pick up Crusade but had already allocated their budget for the year). It might also explain the hesitation on Galactica, they have Stargate Atlantis and a new season of SG1 comming up (the SG1 season wasn't originally planned), can they get the money to do three space shows together? I mean it's one of the reasons why they claimed to kill of Farscape, they couldn't afford two space shows can they now afford three fo them? There was rumor of them wanting to do a Dune series too, can they do four space shows? That's a lot of programming to budget for them. Scare Tactics got renewed not based on ratings but based on the ever important ratings vs cost ratio, it was cheap enough to offset it's lackluster ratings to give it a second season to develop, most Space Operas just don't have that option.

As for the show budget list those will vary due to script needs (as has already been mentioned). I remember reading a long time ago that set needs was one of the big reasons for the holodeck in Next Generation, if they were short on money they would just set a show on the holodeck and use whatever set was available out there or they would find a planet with a 60's style casino on it or such. They were vary consious of what sets on the lot weren't being used and I think they actually used some movie sets after that production ended so as to not have any of the budget go to set building and design. It's been a while since I read that but I think that was actually pretty common for space opera type shows. Lots of shows would use back lots sets to save money. A lot of shows now are done outside of Hollywood to save money so you don't see that as much anymore.

Another thing for comparison the average episode of Friends runs around 4 to 6 million depending on what figures you see. The original budget for Enterprise was around 5 million a episode and it doesn't do anything near Friends numbers. It's not episode cost it's episode cost vs ratings.


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Well, that leaves a question - how boneheaded are these decisions if they allow for an increase in budget every year? They can't be so bad that they're quickly sinking the channel. As I understand it, the Sci Fi Channel has been making a consistent profit for a number of years now, so they're decisions are obviously not completly imbecilic.
> 
> There is something we have to avoid here - the preconception that what we like and want is necessarily the best business move.
> 
> Let's face it - we are oddballs, fairly hard-core sci-fi and fantasy fans. We like Farscape and B5. But if ratings and past success are a measure, the rest of the world likes Jerry Springer, "Married with Children" and "reality TV". Our tastes are not run-of-the-mill, and pandering to our tastes may not be the way to greatest profits for the Sci Fi Channel.



Vivendi/Universal was in trouble with 13 billion in debt, thus the sell out to NBC (80/20 merger with Vivendi having the option to sell their 20% in 2006). Sci Fi channel was a very small fish in that bucket but there was a push for them to actually generate revenue and grow. When the parent company is in financial trouble then it does effect everything below it. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on Sci Fi to turn a profit and cut cost. 

Some of the decisions I am talking about are that Sci Fi has killed almost every new show it has had in the last five years. Many of them in a very public and ugly showing. No reason to go into why they killed Farscape but the how they did it was PR nightmare, they are still being eaten up about it and it's hard for them to do a press conference without it coming up even now. Galactica was a PR nightmare for them, after years of fans trying to get a show made they finally decided to do it, then basically told all the fans that their opinions didn't matter. The fan drives and Richard hatch making his own trailer is what got the Galactica property remade, but Hatch was a victim of politics and Edward James Olmos basically came out and told fans of Battlestar Galactica to avoid the new show. Yes it got good ratings, but even in the midst of that sucess they took a big PR hit with the very core group of thier target audience, science fiction fans. B5 Crusade bit them in the ass, Invisible Man was a PR disaster and Bonnie Hammer has cone out looking like a complete political tyrant with no love for science fiction. I mean really when has a organization had such a negative image with with the very group they claim to champion? What would happen to Cartoon Network if they started acting like they didn't give a crap about what kids liked, what would happen at Comedy Central if the head of programming said they were going to take a new direction away from Comedy? Sci FI channel needs a really good PR man, there is only so long you can get away with insulting your core audience (wheter intentional or not) before it starts to really affect the bottom line. I'm sure the last thing they ever wanted was to look so bad on the Farscape issue but they can't even keep their own story straight, and just how hard would it to of kept even a cordial relationship with the Galactica fanbase (several hundred thousand people), I mean really it's one thing to do the reimagining and another thing to insult the people who are concerned about it. Instead of talking to these people and at least pretending to listen they basically called several hundred thousand raving science fiction fans nutjobs whose opinions didn't matter. Science Fiction does have a stigma associated with it but that shouldn't pop up on the freaking Sci Fi channel. What if Peter Jackson came out and told all the Tolken book purinst who had questions about the movie that their opinions didn't matter and they were just a unimportant fringe group? It would be a PR nightmare.

Yes we are not the normal viewing audience here but then again when you have a channel called Sci Fi that is supposed to cater to the science fiction fans but it doesn't then maybe they need to change their name to something else. Science Fiction is in a rut right now and it does have a stigma of not being considered mainstream, but gee isn't the title of this thread about science fiction? I mean really this thread is about what we like and want and how it could be a good buisness move. Everybody who is looking forward to the zany reality show raise their hands. Everybody who wants to see Science Fiction be replaced by Jerry Springer style shows raise their hand. Sci FI channel stays on the air because this niche audience is starved for entertainment, lets face it most of us will watch just about anything with a sci fi twist just to get our sci fi fix. I hated the new Galactica but I watched the first episode three times and the second night four times, why because at least it was some sort of science fiction. I was willing to suck it up just to watch something from the genre I love, heck I got in to Stargate basically because nothing else was on that grabbed my attention. I watched it for weeks not liking it before it started to grow on me. I'm sure a lot of Star Trek fans are the same way, they will stick with a show they don't care for just because it's Star Trek well until they eventually just burn out and tune out, which seems to be what is happening right now. 

Basically what you are saying is that SCi FI channel should close up shop and start pandering to the masses just like all the others but in the cable market pandering to a target niche audience is a much safer bet, it's why TNN changed to Spike TV, to pander to a tighter demographic. Demographics are more important than general ratings anymore, and while science fiction fans might be a small market they are in the prime 18 to 31 male demographic for the most part. What we like and want in our programming should be important to people who are trying to sell into our demographic and our niche market. What happens to Sci FI channel if they loose their base audience of science fiction nuts?


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## Umbran (Jan 9, 2004)

*WizarDru:* Whether you want to say it's Joe Six-Pack, or less disciminating sci-fi fans, or what - I expect most fo the folks in this thread are in a minority of viewers.  We have rather high and exacting standards that have to be met before we call a thing "good".  All that's required is that there be a lot of viewers who aren't as picky.  



			
				jdavis said:
			
		

> Some of the decisions I am talking about are that Sci Fi has killed almost every new show it has had in the last five years. Many of them in a very public and ugly showing.




Quite true.  In terms of public relations, Sci Fi has done poorly, no doubt there.  I think, though, that this can be attributed mostly to the pressure you note above.  I find it terribly difficult that Bonnie Hammer, the woman who brought us Farscape in the first place, would have worked the way she did if she had a reasonable alternative.  The only people keeping her from reasonable alternatives would have been the Vivendi folks.  However, here we enter the land of speculation, because we don't know what went on behind those closed doors.



> ...Edward James Olmos basically came out and told fans of Battlestar Galactica to avoid the new show.




Now, let's not take that out of context.  Olmos wasn't saying the show was bad.  He said that the new show was going to be different enough that the old fans weren't going to like it.  And he was probably right.  Because the real rabid fans of any property are just plain intolerant.  Richard Hatch is a fine enough gent, but it's not like he's the end-all, be-all, final word on BG.  Honestly, his involvement in the whole thing struck me as... a bit egotistical.

Personally, I was a fan of the old BG.  I didn't get to see all of the new one (screwed up setting my VCR).  But what I saw I liked.  On it's own merits, it was a good show, IMHO.  Probably better potential for character and plot development than the old show ever had.  But, fans are intolerant.  If it doesn't fit their vision of what the show should have been, it won't fly.  

Odd, really.  Here, we say we're looking for good writing and originality.  And when someone deviates from an old vision and old stilted writing style, we jump down their throats.  "We" being fans in general, that is.  Seems it happend with DS9 and Firefly, too.  Give the fans something different, and they get all weird in the head.  



> I mean really when has a organization had such a negative image with with the very group they claim to champion?




I've never seen a SciFi ad saying, "Watch us, we are the champion of genre fans!"  I don't think the channel has ever made any claims to being a champion of anything. They provide programming.  They aren't defenders of the fannish cause, and never have been, and never said they were.



> Basically what you are saying is that SCi FI channel should close up shop and start pandering to the masses just like all the others but in the cable market pandering to a target niche audience is a much safer bet, it's why TNN changed to Spike TV, to pander to a tighter demographic.




I'm not saying they should or shouldn't do anything.  I'm saying they already seem to be doing so.  Sometimes playing to a tighter audience is the thing to do.  Sometimes the audience you're trying to play to is too tight, too small. Then, you have to broaden your base, rather than contract it.

We aren't in a position to do anything but guess about whether SciFi should broaden or tighten it's target.  We don't have the market research data to know.  I don't think Sci Fi has that data either.  The Neilsen system doesn't give it to them, and hunting it down themselves would be costly.  So, we all guess.  They guess in a way that seems to get them more money than before...


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 9, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> Sci FI channel stays on the air because this niche audience is starved for entertainment, lets face it most of us will watch just about anything with a sci fi twist just to get our sci fi fix. I hated the new Galactica but I watched the first episode three times and the second night four times, why because at least it was some sort of science fiction. I was willing to suck it up just to watch something from the genre I love, heck I got in to Stargate basically because nothing else was on that grabbed my attention. I watched it for weeks not liking it before it started to grow on me. I'm sure a lot of Star Trek fans are the same way, they will stick with a show they don't care for just because it's Star Trek well until they eventually just burn out and tune out, which seems to be what is happening right now.



I just want to say, why?  I've never understood why people would watch things they didn't like just because.  I loved Andromeda before they decided to simplify things, when they did, I gave it a chance but ultimately stopped watching it.  I didn't watch Enterprise until this season, because I knew what had come before.  I never watched more than a few episodes Buffy, because despite everything I just wasn't a fan.  If you don't like something, don't watch it, simple as that.  So there's no Sci-Fi on TV, other genres do exist.  It's unfortunate, and I would like to see more Sci-Fi on TV, but I'm not gonna watch crap to get some "fix."



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> I'm not saying they should or shouldn't do anything. I'm saying they already seem to be doing so. Sometimes playing to a tighter audience is the thing to do. Sometimes the audience you're trying to play to is too tight, too small. Then, you have to broaden your base, rather than contract it.
> 
> We aren't in a position to do anything but guess about whether SciFi should broaden or tighten it's target. We don't have the market research data to know. I don't think Sci Fi has that data either. The Neilsen system doesn't give it to them, and hunting it down themselves would be costly. So, we all guess. They guess in a way that seems to get them more money than before...



Both.

There's a place for stuff like John Edwards and Scare Tactics.  It serves several useful functions - broadening your audience, making cheap money, and filling prime time with original stuff and not repeats.

There's also a place for stuff like Farscape and Firefly.  They also serve useful functions.  Catering to the higher-brow viewers, keeping your core fanbase, and perhaps making the next big Sci-Fi show.

And finally there's a place for stuff like B5 and MST3K.  These can act as filler, grab the nostalgia viewers, nudge ratings, and are reasonably cheap.

Perhaps expecting SFC to take the riskier road and try and balance all three of these is just overly hopeful.  After all, they _do_ need money, they _are_ a business above all else.  I would rather have SFC than not have it, all things considered.

I will say this - I think the Thursday night line-up is great.  Take those shows and put them together one night, leave "high science-fiction" for Friday.  They get the best of both worlds this way.  And Thursday is the perfect night - Tuesday you compete with Angel and the angsty-stuff, Wednesday you're competing with Enterprise.  Monday your key demographic is watching football or wrestling.  Out of the three days left, Thursday is by far the strongest.


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## Staffan (Jan 9, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> B5 Crusade bit them in the ass,



I'd just like to point out that Sci-fi channel is largely not responsible for what happened to Crusade. That was TNT. Sci-fi apparently had the option to pick up Crusade afterward, but decided it wasn't worth it - but the people screwing it over were TNT.


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## Darrin Drader (Jan 9, 2004)

Staffan said:
			
		

> I'd just like to point out that Sci-fi channel is largely not responsible for what happened to Crusade. That was TNT. Sci-fi apparently had the option to pick up Crusade afterward, but decided it wasn't worth it - but the people screwing it over were TNT.




I agree. TNT killed Crusade before it ever had the chance to air because of their meddling with the series. JMS made the statement that the TNT suits wanted Crusade to be like WWF meets Baywatch in space, and he wasn't going to turn a Babylon 5 spinoff into that. Once things fell through with TNT, Scifi had the option to pick it up, but had already invested in all their original programming for the year and couldn't afford to pick it up. Every indication was that they actually really wanted to at that time. These days, who knows? I mean they got great ratings on a masterfully produced Battlestar Galactica miniseries and they're still sitting on the pot.


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

Umbran said:
			
		

> *WizarDru:* Whether you want to say it's Joe Six-Pack, or less disciminating sci-fi fans, or what - I expect most fo the folks in this thread are in a minority of viewers. We have rather high and exacting standards that have to be met before we call a thing "good". All that's required is that there be a lot of viewers who aren't as picky.



 I'm not looking for anything highbrow here at all, heck I'd be happy with a show called "TJ Hooker in Space" where space cops shoot it out with space bad guys. I'm a Star Wars guy not a Star Trek guy, I want shooting and explosions and nonstop action. I don't think I'm a less descriminating fan nor do I think that people who like shows where they talk about stuff in space settings are particularly high brow snooty types. I think that we are all fans of a genre of shows which is pretty wide and encompases a lot of ground. My problem is that I get more science fiction off of Cartoon Network than I get off of the SciFi channel. Their job is to make money and my job is to entertain me, I don't give a rats ass how much money they make or loose as long as I'm entertained, it's my perogative as a consumer. Yea I know there is much more to the buisness than making me happy but for me it starts at making me happy and ends at making me happy because if I'm not happy why should I care if they are making money. If the only way I can get some happiness out of Television is to turn it off and get on the computer to talk about it well then at least I'm happy. When I'm watching a show I prefer one where you can tell the cast is happy with it and the directors and writers are happy with it, too many shows compromise themselves for some percieved market share expanse and you can tell. Too many shows get compromised or focused grouped into some non offensive safe little ball where you can tell that the people doing it are not happy with it. 



> Quite true. In terms of public relations, Sci Fi has done poorly, no doubt there. I think, though, that this can be attributed mostly to the pressure you note above. I find it terribly difficult that Bonnie Hammer, the woman who brought us Farscape in the first place, would have worked the way she did if she had a reasonable alternative. The only people keeping her from reasonable alternatives would have been the Vivendi folks. However, here we enter the land of speculation, because we don't know what went on behind those closed doors.



 Bonnie Hammer has done a smash up job of getting market share and growth out of the channel but she still comes off looking bad, moreso than any other network head out there. They have a real PR problem here and they shouldn't have one. Every good decision they make gets glossed over and every bad one gets blown out of proportion, they have people running their mouths and putting their feet in them all the time and they basically arespyralling out of control PR wise. Not to go into any reason why the cancelled Farscape but they can't even consistantly give a decent reason why. One person says this and another says that, people are leaking stuff and internal politics get made public way too often. You got to get some control going and get a lid on things, hire a spin doctor or a good PR firm to work on the image and get proactive before some of these problems crop up.


> Now, let's not take that out of context. Olmos wasn't saying the show was bad. He said that the new show was going to be different enough that the old fans weren't going to like it. And he was probably right. Because the real rabid fans of any property are just plain intolerant. Richard Hatch is a fine enough gent, but it's not like he's the end-all, be-all, final word on BG. Honestly, his involvement in the whole thing struck me as... a bit egotistical.





> *"Don't Watch My Program," Advises Star*
> 
> 
> 
> ...



http://us.imdb.com/SB?20030711#7

This is where a good PR person would of come in, see you said the same thing above "_Because the real rabid fans of any property are just plain intolerant._" Well isn't that painting with a very wide brush? Isn't that very insulting to say to somebody who is highly supporting of a show? Good grief Olmos put his foot in SciFi channels mouth up to his knee. Your talking about several hundred thousand people here. I'm a fan of the old show, I grew up with it and cried when it went off the air (I was 7 at the time) I bought the toys and read the comic books and wished that soemday somebody would bring the show back, so now I'm a intolerant ranting fan who just hates everything? He's not the only person who insutled the fan base here, heck his comment was actual pretty nice compared to a lot of the others. A lot of these "rabid good for nothing fans" are the core audience for the channel, what do you think they only like one show? How many of them do you think might of been Stargate fans? How many of them had been watching this channel for the last decade because they were the outlet for science fiction? Look If Edward James Olmos worked at McDonalds and told upset customers that they should just mosey on down to Burger King if they don't like Big Macs then he would of been fired. "there is a reason almost all buisnesses in America use the phrase "The customer is always right" and it's not because the customer is right, it's because the customer is the only reason you exist as a organization. Why would you come out and malign your own show like that, I mean really a statement like:

"_I know this show may seem really different than the old one but I am very excited about it and the potential it has. Yes this mini series may not be to everyones taste but please give it a chance as it is a pilot for a series and we will be listening to the fans responses to fine tune the show. We really do care about the old shows fanbase"_ 

Is it a lie? Well yea, obviously they hold the fans of Battlestar Galactica in contempt but instead of telling them that you now have included them and given them hope that the show might grow to be something they might actually like. Even if you don't embrace the fanbase freaking fake it, and most definatly never turn the thing into a national news event where it looks like you are against the fans. The tagline for this article was _*"Don't watch my program" advises star*_, man if that isn't a black eye regardless of what the actual article says I don't know what is.

As far as Richard Hatch goes, he bankrolled his own teaser to sell USA network on bringing Galactica back. The network told him no it wouldn't work so he maxed out his credit cards and mortgaged his house to make a Galactica teaser, went around getting fan support and proved to them that it was viable, then they basically kicked him to the curb (there are rumors of politics involved of course). At the same time Glen Larson was working on a Galactica movie. Then Universal started a project with Bryan Singer and Tom Desanto, Singer went on to do X2 the movie instead (good move on Singers part there) and so the show got passed down to a Ron Moore and David Eich and was pushed through to what we saw. 

Hatch was basically moved by all the fan support he saw to give this a shot I don't know how egotistical he is but you got to respect the fact that he believed in the property enough to mortgage his house.

Here is the information on the many different versions and the basics of what went down: http://www.cylon.org/bsg/bsg1978-intro-01.html



> Personally, I was a fan of the old BG. I didn't get to see all of the new one (screwed up setting my VCR). But what I saw I liked. On it's own merits, it was a good show, IMHO. Probably better potential for character and plot development than the old show ever had. But, fans are intolerant. If it doesn't fit their vision of what the show should have been, it won't fly.
> 
> Odd, really. Here, we say we're looking for good writing and originality. And when someone deviates from an old vision and old stilted writing style, we jump down their throats. "We" being fans in general, that is. Seems it happend with DS9 and Firefly, too. Give the fans something different, and they get all weird in the head.





> I've never seen a SciFi ad saying, "Watch us, we are the champion of genre fans!" I don't think the channel has ever made any claims to being a champion of anything. They provide programming. They aren't defenders of the fannish cause, and never have been, and never said they were.



 Their network slogan is "I am SciFi". If you went to Books a Million you would expect to find books, you wouldn't go there if you were looking for toilet paper and dog food. They are the network channel for Science Fiction, you would expect them to be big proponents of science fiction. Their website is one huge community for people who like science fiction. If they are not going to be showing science fiction then they are just the USA channel #2.  No they are not champions of any cause or anything but you would expect them to be science fiction fans. They claim to be the network of Science Fiction. Just like Cartoon Network claims to be the network of cartoons and Comedy Central claims to be the network of comedy. They say watch us we show the genre you like, if they called it Cartoon Network and they only showed romance movies and old soap operas then it wouldn't make sense, you sort of expect to see cartoons as that is what is implied by the network title.




> I'm not saying they should or shouldn't do anything. I'm saying they already seem to be doing so. Sometimes playing to a tighter audience is the thing to do. Sometimes the audience you're trying to play to is too tight, too small. Then, you have to broaden your base, rather than contract it.
> 
> We aren't in a position to do anything but guess about whether SciFi should broaden or tighten it's target. We don't have the market research data to know. I don't think Sci Fi has that data either. The Neilsen system doesn't give it to them, and hunting it down themselves would be costly. So, we all guess. They guess in a way that seems to get them more money than before...



Trust me they have the marketing data but sometimes you got to stick your neck out a little, you got to actually enjoy what you are producing. Sometimes I wonder if the execs there even like science fiction at all. Sci Fi channels biggest problem right now is a image problem and eventually they will alienate enough of their core audience that they will start to go the other way and loose market share, I mean they pretty much announced publicly to several hundred thousand people to not watch their product. Their upcomming schedule is not all that bad (well if your a Stargate Fan it isn't because that's what you will be getting tons and tons of Stargate), they are about two years too late on the reality show deal but I actually like the silly little Bryant Gumbel UFO specials of course I actually find myself feeling guilty for watching the channel because they just come off as really bad people. It gets harder and harder for them to get me to turn their channel on for anything but Stargate.


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> I just want to say, why? I've never understood why people would watch things they didn't like just because. I loved Andromeda before they decided to simplify things, when they did, I gave it a chance but ultimately stopped watching it. I didn't watch Enterprise until this season, because I knew what had come before. I never watched more than a few episodes Buffy, because despite everything I just wasn't a fan. If you don't like something, don't watch it, simple as that. So there's no Sci-Fi on TV, other genres do exist. It's unfortunate, and I would like to see more Sci-Fi on TV, but I'm not gonna watch crap to get some "fix."



 Some people are addicted to TV, my wife will sit for hours and just surf through the channels, heck we leave the TV on when we aren't hear for the Parrots to watch (my African Grey can whistle the Ed Edd and Eddy theme and he goes wild for Scooby Doo). I have a friend who actually watched every episode of Cop Rock, why well because it was on the tv. Myself I find that I am spending more time on the internet and less time watching tv. Even with 99 channels it's hard to find anything to watch but when the alternative is sitting there in the dark you will make do with what you can find for entertainment. Soemtimes you just sit through a show about the history of the Winchester rifle because it's the least crappy of everything on and sometimes you sit through a poor Battlestar Galactica mini series because you are hoping that you can find something worthwhile about it because you so desperatly want to like it. I don't watch a show because it's in a specific genre I just pick whats closest to what I can get into and when it's a stupid Mtv show or a Lifetime movie or a science fiction show I'll normally pick the SciFi show. What do you watch when there is nothing else on? If it was Buffy or the news which will you choose? There is also the hope that a certain show might get better, which is probably what keeps most Star Trek fans hanging on, better ok Star Trek than no Star Trek at all.


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

Whisperfoot said:
			
		

> I agree. TNT killed Crusade before it ever had the chance to air because of their meddling with the series. JMS made the statement that the TNT suits wanted Crusade to be like WWF meets Baywatch in space, and he wasn't going to turn a Babylon 5 spinoff into that. Once things fell through with TNT, Scifi had the option to pick it up, but had already invested in all their original programming for the year and couldn't afford to pick it up. Every indication was that they actually really wanted to at that time. These days, who knows? I mean they got great ratings on a masterfully produced Battlestar Galactica miniseries and they're still sitting on the pot.



Yea the flack SciFi got was for not picking it up, strange they should take a PR hit when they were trying to save it, this is one of the areas where they really needed a good PR person. They should of come out looking like heroes in this one and instead came out looking like goats. They really didn't do anything at all wrong, there is some of the same going around for why they didn't save Firefly. It leads to this appearance of them not liking science fiction, which in this case is sort of silly but truth and perception are totally unrelated. On the Crusade scene it was TNT who were the actual "bad guys".


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 9, 2004)

jdavis said:
			
		

> Some people are addicted to TV...



That's a problem with the person then, not the genre.



> *snip*
> 
> Even with 99 channels it's hard to find anything to watch but when the alternative is sitting there in the dark you will make do with what you can find for entertainment. Soemtimes you just sit through a show about the history of the Winchester rifle because it's the least crappy of everything on and sometimes you sit through a poor Battlestar Galactica mini series because you are hoping that you can find something worthwhile about it because you so desperatly want to like it.



If you go to watch TV, and there's nothing good on, don't watch TV.

The latter reason (about BG) is a good one though - giving a show a chance isn't bad for any reason.  You don't have to have liked it in the end, but at least you didn't stubbornly refuse to let it try and amuse you.



> *snip*
> 
> What do you watch when there is nothing else on? If it was Buffy or the news which will you choose?
> 
> *snip broad generalization about ST fans*



What news channel?  

Seriously though, nothing.  I'll read a book.  I'll surf the net.  I'll call up a friend I haven't spoken to in a while.  I'll sit down with a notebook and write (I hate typing on computers when I'm inspired).  I'll exercise my meager music composition skills.  I'll lay back and listen to music.  I'll manage my budget or something equally tedious yet productive.  I'll play some video games.  I'll do some studying (even though I've graduated college - good to keep up on these things).  I'll cook.  I'll clean.  I'll just go out and drive around.  I'll go to the mall.  The list goes on and on.

The point being, don't put up with crap because you like the color and there aren't any roses.  Crap is crap is crap, steam and all.


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## WizarDru (Jan 9, 2004)

Heh.  I wish I had so much free time that I had to find something else to do.  Between a job with longish hours, a long commute, going to the gym and 2 kids (not to mention the weekly game), I don't have enough free time to watch that much stuff as it is.

I didn't watch the new BG.  Did I avoid it because it wasn't the original?  No.  I avoided it because the early reviews I heard of it sounded awful (cylons are now sultry women who have glowing spines while they have sex).   I vote with my attention-share.  While BG was on, I was playing Prince of Persia or watching something on Tivo.  Or playing D&D.

As far as the SciFi Channel is concerned: I remember when they first came out, to do their ptiches, as the regional SF conventions.  They were there to generate buzz, and to invigorate their potential viewer-base.  It was _embarassing_.  The reps from SFC were painfully ignorant of their audience, and it was clear when the sharks started circling that they realized it.  They had come with beads and shiny trinkets, and expected the natives to be pleased.  However, these natives were restless.  They weren't prepared, for example, to answer the questions that were asked.  Any halfways knowledgable person should have expected a "Will you be showing Star Trek?" question.  They stared in horror, clearly not having expected it.  They flubbed the answer for five minutes before giving the actual answer they should have.  They came expecting guys easily cowed geeks, and found that they didn't really know that much about SF fans.  The people who ran SFC's excellent website and scifi weekly were there at the con at different panels...and they immediately distanced themselves at every opportunity.  "Oh, I don't have any connection with programming decisions or things like that." was heard several times an hour.

And that is the problem, right there.  SFC gave lip service to being a channel for SF fans...but it's not, and never really was intended as such.  It's a channel that air shows that have some SF element in them, from Wonder Woman to The Man from Alantis to The Food of the Gods to Mann and Machine.  If they can attract the core SF fan audience, that's swell...but they're not going to cater to them.  I lost hope in the SFC the minute I saw my first "FTL feed".  Oh, how awful those were.

Does that mean that SFC is a complete failure?  No.  In fact, they've done some excellent things over time, like the talk shows they had or the news show with Harlan Ellison doing commentaries.  Their show-slot where they'd show old shows that only went a handful of episodes was excellent, too.

But jdavis has a significant point.  I see more Science Fiction on other channels than I actually see on SFC.  SFC was the first channel to show anime...but Cartoon Network figured out how to actually use it.  While SFC showed the same four movies over and over, CN figured out how to make the format work.  Shows like Cowboy Bebop and Blue Gender, which are perfect fits for SFC (due in part to their broad appeal to people who aren't anime fans).  And if you want to see a monster movie or science fiction film from before the mid-80s, you'd best head over to AMC or TCM, instead.  

I don't watch SFC because it doesn't offer me anything anymore.  And that's a shame.


(_by the by, LightPhoenix...Tenacious D fan, are we?  Eric's Grandma wouldn't like the title of *that* song, now would she? _)


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## jdavis (Jan 9, 2004)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> That's a problem with the person then, not the genre.
> 
> 
> If you go to watch TV, and there's nothing good on, don't watch TV.



Well see that's not a problem at all. Some people just like TV and some of us are old enough to have lived pre-cable and are used to making do with what is on. If I got a book I'll read a book, If I have someplace to go I'll go someplace, but if I'm sitting in my giant La-z-boy watching tv then I don't want to get up and do stuff I want to sit in my giant La-z-boy which is in front of the tv set. I live in small town USA there just isn't a lot to do here for recreation, I read and game and type stuff like this on the internet and I watch TV. When I have free time I'm most likely either on the internet or watching tv. I'll read a 900 page book in about a week and I am sort of picky about what I read so it's not really a option 99% of the time, clean the house? yea that's entertaining, it's snowing outside reight now why would I want to get out in that and go somewhere if I don't have too? We got one mall with a half dozen stores I have any interest in at all and I was at them all two days ago, there are no new movies out right now I want to see and I have been to Wal Mart 4 times already this week. I'm off work, my wife is at work and I got absolutely nothing to do except 1. watch tv or 2. talk about watching tv on a messageboard. The older I get the more I enjoy just sitting around and putting my brain in neutral and zoning out to the big zombie box.


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