I’m currently binging old scifi series. I’m 6 seasons deep into Stargate SG1 and just cracked open Fringe, while Stargate Atlantis & Universe, Farscape, and a few others are already on my watchlist. I’ve watched schlocky (wellwritten, true, but schlocky) things like Buffy several times, and I’m eyeing Supernatural for a future go, even if neither of those are really scifi. I’m also considering really cheaplooking fantasy stuff like Hercules (the Kevin S one) and Xena.
Why??
I know these are not that amazing. They are trope-heavy, with often super campy or kind of drowsy, phone-it-in acting, the stories are soap opera with gadgets or magic, and all in all, they feel more like guilty pleasures when thinking about them. But I can’t stop! They suck me in and keep me locked! I have a DVD collection full of high quality stuff, but I keep going back to these ones, the campy, low-budget stuff. And I have no idea why!!! It’s so ‘bad’ that I start wondering if what I consider ‘good’ or ‘high quality’ scifi (Babylon 5, for example) is just schlocky discount scifi I love too much to notice it with.
There has to be something that draws me from seeking out high quality and just space out (pun not intended) on these things. Maybe they’re… inoffensive? Non-threatening, unlike Death Love & Robots which makes me think and have, like, strong feelings about most stories (yoghurt excepted).
What do you people think, and do you have some bingemania series that you feel as weirdly attracted to, despite knowing that they’re not as good as they could/should be? I’m not throwing shade on anything or anyone, I LOVE these things! I just also know, even while I watch them, that they’re not really that well made. It drives me nuts!
Whether or not it’s schlocky, or at least schlocky at times, is up for debate, but if you’re binge-watching old sci fi series you’d do yourself a real favor by adding Star Trek Deep Space Nine to your queue. Maybe skip a few of the first season episodes like “Move Along Home”, but watch “Duet” at least twice.
In spite of some mid-90s cheesiness, I consider ST:DS9 to be one of the greatest war stories ever told.
It seems we are of similar taste in this. Babylon 5 is my favorite show ever (only rivaled now by the expanse), even though I regard Buffy highly (the first season is nothing to write about, but it gets really good and depressing, unfortunately, in the later seasons).
I second the recommendation of ds9. It’s pretty much a mirror of Babylon 5: similar premise, completely different universe and themes, which makes a comparison between them interesting. Also, Star trek Voyager is enjoyable too.
Maybe what they had in the 90s is a notion of serial television that is gone now from the high profile shows. These shows survival was dependent on you coming back every week for more. That is one reason Babylon 5 is unique: it successfully blended serial television with a continuing arc.
Babylon 5 was mostly cheap on the FX. I enjoyed the importance of politics and that things felt somewhat “wholesome”. Trying to find some good english words here for what I mean, Star Trek for example always felt isolated. Many elements in the world you often heard of, but never (or rarely) saw them. Terran HQ for example. Not saying I didn’t like Star Trek, though
Also, take a look at Dark Matter, Defiance, Lexx, Star Wars Rebels, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda. I wish I could unsee all of these to watch them again for first time
Farscape to me is state of the art cutting edge For me it may be nostalgia, ST Voyager for example premiered when I was around 17 so it carries a lot with it I think on a subconscious level.
I would agree with this for TOS TNG and ENT, very monster of the week formatted with no real grounding to the world. Of course there are some really powerful episodes in all of those, but they don’t really dig into bigger issues much.
Voyager also was somewhat in the same vein, but the overarching plot of getting back home, and the moral ambiguities that go along with that sometimes created some very powerful characters and plotlines.
I will definitely agree with @markholley DS9 is amazing, the depth that the series was able to summon up by just sitting in one place, rather than running around the universe allowed much more of the politics and complex interpersonal dynamics to shine through. Probably the strongest ST series, imo.
But to your point of low budget vs high budget, I feel there is more suspension of disbelief with low budget productions. You aren’t caught off guard when there is a cheap looking alien on screen, because everything is cheap looking. Oftentimes, Star Trek (especially TNG and later) really shot for that high budget, glossy production. They attempted to carry the weight of suspending the disbelief, and generally did a pretty good job. the viewer doesn’t have to do much imagining, and it’s more of a passive experience.
But, if you watch something like Farscape, they often aren’t convincing anyone simply on face value. That means the viewer is more involved in committing to the story that the producers are trying to tell, and thus can be more involved in the outcome.
I’m strongly of the opinion that if it doesn’t provoke you to think, it’s not scifi at all. Any good scifi story needs to have a what-if, and to follow that what-if wherever it leads by the logic of its world.
Ironically, I feel the budget stuff of the past decades attempted this with greater frequency than the ‘high quality’ series of today. Doesn’t mean a lot of it was terribly smart, but at least they tried!
They definitely had a different storytelling style than newer SF, where I think the focus is currently on realism. Like I can think of a few Voyager eps where they are stranded on a desert-like planet, which are cheap and fun, and new sci-fi the focus would be on on handheld camera and really capturing the sun drained dreariness, as well as strained psychological and hierarchal interactions. Like where Neelix want Chakotay to try the root and he spits it out, “You expect us to eat this!?!” in a new one Neelix would have gone missing in some racially charged scene after Chakotay nearly horribly dies rom eating the root.
Talking about farscape reminded me of "the storytellerhttps://m.imdb.com/title/tt0092383/. 9 short episodes, and a master class of amazing tv. A must see.
Someone here mentioned The Expanse. I require each person who is even remotely interested in science fiction to watch the first three seasons of The Expanse, available on Prime in the US and possibly Netflix or Hulu elsewhere.
Tried watching it. Fell asleep thrice before the end of the second episode. Between the unlikable protagonist and the lack of a hook, it’s just super boring.
“Star Trek?” Bah! Humbug! The 1960’s series is the only “real” Star Trek that there ever was! So, stack up your BetaMax (VHS is for weenies …) videotapes and watch them on your black-and-white television sets alongside Battlestar Galactica!
Ahh … seriously … I still love these old programs because, in their own zany, campy way, they were indeed “revolutionary.”
("Nanna nanna nanna nannaBAT MAN!") But, I digress …
They were, because they were pushing the envelope – even if they were just trying to survive the “ratings wars” that, to them, were economic life-or-death. I love reading stories about how Star Trek raided the dust-bins of (much better rated …) Mission: Impossible. About how salt-and-pepper shakers became Dr. McCoy’s medical instruments. Plenty of the scripts were pure-crap, but … OMG … some of them were pure magic. The likes of which network televison had never seen. “These, too, were ‘interesting times.’” (Even when your existence depended on a tobacco company.)
Today, we have plenty of readily-available “sci-fi tropes.” Back then, they had none. They were competing against Gunsmoke and Gilligan’s Island.
(and, full disclosure: “I was there. Sorry you missed it …”)
That’s fair enough. At least you gave it a shot. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but Amazon saw fit to bring it back from cancellation, based on popular demand, and has re-upped it for another couple of seasons at least - Season four is due out soon.
I, on the other hand, liked it so much that after I got done watching the three seasons currently available, I went and read the entire series of books that the show is based on. I think there are at least six books out now. I don’t like the books as much as the show, but they’re pretty decent.
I’ve had Altered Caarbon and The Expanse and some third one I don’t recall right now on my watchlist for ages, but whenever I try, I just kinda… fizzle out. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s actually that whole “real enough to not require suspension of disbelief” thing, or maybe they just take themselves a bit too seriously. Also, AC has a thing about showing nudity as if it’s a gimmick, I got annoyed by that in GoT, too (not the nudity itself, but prancing it around like a gimmick). But I just can’t help thinking that maybe someone should make a low budget, campy show, rather than a new flashy one? In spite of all the finer logic and tasteful superiority my brain tries to project onto me, I think I’d jump right in to something like that, whereas AC and tE just have trouble grabbing and holding me (which annoys me, because the inspiration for them, Eclipse Phase, is really cool…)
For me it may be nostalgia, ST Voyager for example premiered when I was around 17 so it carries a lot with it I think on a subconscious level.