Firefly fans vs. Enterprise fans
POSTED BY: UFO
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 04:05
VIEWED: 8155
PAGE 2 of 2
Quote:
Originally posted by hook:
basicly all good sci-fi has two elements that make it "good" scifi. The first is that it must impose a sense of the exotic. (...) The second is much harder. To be "good" sci-fi you have to test the bounds of what it is to be human. I mention Philip K. dick because he is a master of this. (not to say that others aren't because there are plenty of others who do it well also) Dick tests the bounds of what makes a person a person. He questions identity, and free will. He bends the rules of the universe such as time or place using technology to force the characters and the reader to question who they are. Firefly does not do this. I'll admit Firefly is good, really good, but it is not good scifi.
Here's my question: Why do you assume Firefly *is* sci-fi?
I always considered Firefly a western that just happens to be set in outer space. Not a sci-fi show with western elements.
See, westerns aren't about technology. Neither is Firefly. Westerns are very much about morality, society and order.
Honestly? This is what I like so much about Firefly. I know that Mal would never order Kaylee to run a diagnostic, then generate a pulse that would disrupt the tachyon emissions and thereby solve all the problems. Technology in sci fi tends to make things too neat and crisp.
Westerns are messy. I prefer my drama messy. *g*
DL
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Quote:
Originally posted by DarkLady:
Technology in sci fi tends to make things too neat and crisp.
What Sci-Fi have you been reading (watching)?
hook
http://diogenes.gotdns.org
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Enough with the bashing. I've watched Trek since shortly after the original series premiered in the 60's. Haven't watched every single episode of every Trek spinoff since, but haven't missed very many of them, either. I agree with you that the franchise is getting tired, but I DO HAPPEN to like ST Enterprise. I couldn't give a rat about how you rate the acting and plot lines. I simply enjoy it.
Each and every spinoff from the original ST had to do it's own thing while still fitting within the confines of the Trek Universe as it continued to evolve. Frankly, I could have cared less about DS9. It was simply boring to me.
I like Enterprise because it's refreshing to see things in the ST Universe in a timeline before Kirk got there to hump every female alien around, before Picard got there to settle every crisis with a staff meeting, and before Cisco got there to waste a few years of my life.
Enterprise has plenty of "rough areas" to work out. Things like alien diplomacy, technology, etc. aren't quite so smooth, when you first leave the cradle of your home planet.
This is refreshing to me. Kinda reminds me of the glory days of NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, which did bring a lot unity to our Nation during that time. There were plenty of technological "rough areas" to work out, in order to get to the moon back then.
So am I picking Enterprise over Firefly?
Heck no. I love both of them.
Firefly is AWESOME!!! It's fresh. It's neither sci-fi/nor western. The characters are great!! It's one of the few shows that I look forward to seeing each week.
After seeing the first episode, I told my wife that Fox would cancel Firefly, simply because I enjoyed it so much. (I expect that line of thinking from a network that should have killed X-Files by about Season 3 or 4). And before you X-Filers jump on this, just how much satisfaction did you get by waiting season after season for Chris Carter to tell you the truth out there?
Chris had his own special formula. Bait us with little green men, get us all hot and bothered, then throw some supernatural anomalies or icky creatures in for a while. About the time we start coming back down to room temperature, add a pinch of little green men for seasoning (or season cliffhanging). Stir and continue, ad infinitum.
Sorry about the tirade. I guess I just don't quite see eye-to-eye with many of the decisions that the Fox network execs make.
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I too have been a Star Trek fan since the original series and I have hung in there; sometimes I ponder amight too long. The cash cow franchise that is TREK has long exhausted its course for the most part (though I have found that the new Nemesis movie has brought back a bit of my faith).
My opinion is while the DS9 spin-off had merit, it seemed the Powers That Be should have called it quits there instead of returning to the well with visions of gold-pressed latinum dancing in thier head. There have been many mornings I would wake up in a JR Ewing moment and hope that the 7 agonizing seasons of VOYAGER were a bad dream. Rick Berman aka The Anti-Christ, and the need to save a dying VOY in the ratings totally sold out Gene Roddenberry's vision. The emphasis was no longer on character driven morality tales and contempory issues, but emasculated Borg, hoo-hum holodeck fantasies and Jerri Ryran's boobs (not that it's a bad thing in itself, I'm just not that superficial...really).
While ENTERPRISE is a slight improvement, it still shows it is time for the franchise to pack up its limted-edition collectables and go home as sad is it is to admitt. My biggest problem is the gaping inconsistancies ENT creates from what has been established in original series. Not only is the ship much more advanced than Kirk's was, but makes other mistakes like the fact Spock was supposed to be the first Vulcan to serve as first officer on a Starfleet ship, Kirk's crew was the first to encounter a Romulan ship WITH a cloaking device (comments were even made that they didn't even know cloaking technolgy was in possible prior to that) and the appearance of the Ferrangi who the Federation didn't make contact with till NEXT GEN. Beezulbub Berman has not been doing his homework!
Since TREK's downward spiral, I have turned to many other choices for my sci-fi, some good (B5, Firefly) some more painful than TREK (Seaquest, Earth 2). But if given a choice on missing one for the other, I'd watch FIREFLY over ENTERPRISE any day. Though with the former's cancellation, I that decision would be moot and I guess the latter will still be the only dominant sci-fi series on primetime...sigh.
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Personally for me I like both shows equally.I enjoy the stories that both shows put out very much.Wednesday nights and Friday nights are my favorite Sci-Fi nights now.
"If you sleep with Targs,you wake up with Glob flies"
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I've always liked Star Trek (original&the one with Data, which are the only ones I watched semi-regulary) for one reason only: the not-so-subtle yaoi, especially the even-less-subtle-unless-you're-capable-of-thinking-about-something-other-than-sex dialouge.
Firefly I like mainly because it's got good fights. A few explosions would be nice, but we'd probably have to sacrifice the parts of the show I like the most: plot&dialouge.
That was really random.
Sensou
Yamatta! O-ishiri itai!
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