Erik Henriksen fills in for Mike Russell, and after an extended discussion on his vegetarianism, and the amazing human achievement that is Tofurkey, we get into some Sci-Fi stuff: Cloned meats, the Star Trek future that’s been long denied us, the unbelievable, unmitigated chutzpah of Bobby to dare try correcting Science Wizard Neil DeGrasse Tyson, why Deep Space Nine is a superior show to The Next Generation, why Stargate is fun even when it shouldn’t be, and a hastily assembled hierarchy of Sci-Fi television history that key members of our audience are DEFINITELY going to disagree with. Erik then peels back the curtain of schlockmasters The Asylum, who make movies EXACTLY the way you thought they did, before closing with a quick discussion on why Hitchcock is worth an all day marathon.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
The name of the song from the Walking Dead trailer is called “Black” by Kari Kimmel. I instantly searched for the song the first day you guys played your new intro, and I love it. Once you hit play the song immediately adds weight/drama to anything you’re doing.
I think DS9 was a better show because in later seasons, it was one of science fiction TV’s first forays into epic storytelling as opposed to episodic story telling. DS9 ends up being a novel to TNG’s collection of short stories. It made the series a lot more interesting.
B5 > Ds9 in terms of storytelling.
Finally, a kindred soul in this comment section…
Best TV sci-fi? Where’s Dr. Who?
No, Fatty
You’re WRONG! LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
1) Red Dwarf
2) Star Trek TOS
3) Firefly
4) Doctor Who
5) Battlestar Galactica.
Boom, done.
I don’t understand why you would put BSG so high on your list. I mean, don’t get me wrong, great show overall, certainly one of the best scifi shows of the past decade, I just can’t see it competing with the likes of TOS and Doctor Who.
And this list is just limiting the list to live-action shows. If we weren’t, then I’d bump everything but Red Dwarf down a peg and put Cowboy Bebop in slot 2.
Again, for clarification’s sake, this was a list straight off the dome with no forethought.
Not only were Doctor Who and Red Dwarf left off because I was thinking about American sci-fi television, not british, I would have left them off because 1) I’m not a fan of Red Dwarf at all, really, and 2) Doctor Who has a LOT of really, REALLY shitty television under its belt. Like, a LOT. A LOT LOT
So that leaves BSG versus Star Trek: Original Series, and again – the sheer amount of bad television with The Original Series, plus the sheer weight of Battlestar’s greatest episodes, puts it at #1. Basically, BSG at its worst was never as bad as “Spock’s Brain,” and Star Trek at its best was never as good as “Pegasus” or “Exodus.”
Actually, can I just come out on something potentially blasphemous?
I never really “got” BSG.
I watched all of it, and enjoyed most of it, don’t get me wrong! It’s just so…cynical. And there’s long stretches where it “LOSTs”, and teases HUGE REVEALS for weeks while nothing really happens. And almost everyone’s characterization boils down to either Punchy, Douchebag, Sexy, Cylon, or Adama. Often a combination of two or more. Also the ending was a bit unsatisfying, I thought. Maybe I’m missing something, I dunno.
Also, and I know I’m just splitting hairs here, but it feels almost unfair to lump Old Who and New Who together like that. They’re so drastically different in tone and writing style and targeted audience and production values.
And I want to argue your “BSG’s best episode is better than TOS’s best episode” but that means I’m going to have to actually hash out what ToS’s best episode even is and……fuck that’s gonna take some time, and soul searching.
Off topic, but speaking of Cynical and depressing, I was hoping you guys would get around to talking about it but you never did; Have any of you played the newest episode of the Walking Dead game?
Because FUCK.
My favourite Sci-Fi shows-
1. Quantum Leap
2. Doctor Who
3. Red Dwarf
4. The Twilight Zone
5. Firefly
You didn’t say who is in Adopting Terror by The Asylum. None other than Sean Astin! If you want to know a bit more about the Asylum, I recommend going to downinfront.net and downloading their commentary for 2010: Moby Dick as it was directed by DiF’s Trey Stokes. He talks about working at the Asylum, it’s quite interesting. He’s clearly not happy with his experience. Trey is a puppeteer and FX guy who has worked on The Abyss and Starship Troopers. He also made the Star Wars fan films ‘Pink Five’. Highly reccomend listening to some DiF commentaries, especially ones on films Trey worked on.
Oh, and the MacGyver comic is called ‘Fugitive Gauntlet’. I am going to read it later
You’re a good man, Jimmy B.
Awww, thanks Bobby
Benedict Cumberbatch! also played Stephen Hawking in a TV movie/bio-pilot on the BBC.
I’m going to assume that the lack of Quantum Leap on your list is due to off-the-dome induced error, and give you a pass. Just this once.
Erik says to show him one person he likes who likes Babylon 5. Dawn Taylor likes Babylon 5.
Also, i’m so sick of people bashing a show that they obviously never watched. (And, by that I mean they never watched more than one or two episodes from season 1.) The thing about Babylon 5 is that (like many Sci-Fi shows) it has an uneven first season as it finds it’s legs. However, most of the bad episodes in season 1 are the episodes written by freelancers. The episodes written by JMS, the ones that build on the long arc and mythology of the show, are quite good. And seasons 2, 3, and 4 (which were almost entirely written by JMS) are very good. Babylon 5 was a novel for TV. It had a beginning, middle, and end that were known before they began shooting. So, you have things that are set up in episode 1 of season 1 that pay off in season 3. Every episode doesn’t have to have the characters reset by the end of the episode.
It’s not perfect. Season 5 is kind of a mess because they thought they were going to be cancelled and wrapped up most major plotlines by the end of season 4, then got a renewal for a last season at the last minute. But, it is a great story told over the course of 4-5 seasons.
Why is it not enough for people to just say they don’t like something, or that they never watched it, instead they have to call it crap or belittle it?
Because sometimes things are crappy, and people belittle crappy things often. My question: Is it worth the consternation felt by taking someone’s opinion of a show you had no part in creating so closely to heart that it causes you to ask existential questions like “Why do people belittle things?”
That and J. Michael Straczynski is a pretty fucking terrible writer.
As with any writer, some things are good and some things are not. Judging the writing on Babylon 5 based on how you feel about his comic writing is not fair. (Which I feel pretty confident guessing that is what you are doing since you basically stated in the podcast you didn’t watch Babylon 5 and I have heard your opinions on his comic writing in past podcasts.) There are plenty of writers who do good in one medium, but terrible in another. Or, who do one or two good things, but then can’t catch that lightning in the bottle again.
Like most people, I do not find it enjoyable to hear people calling something I enjoy “crappy”. It would be one thing if they had actually watched it, but 9 times out of 10, they have not. It’s a lot different with movies and TV Shows. A movie is 2 hours. Most people will watch the movie and if it’s crap, they have at least seen it and can talk from that position. With episodic TV, people will watch 2 or 3 episodes and if they don’t like it, they will stop watching. Then, without having seen the other 20 episodes will declare the entire show garbage.
If you want to call something crappy, at least give examples of why. Otherwise it’s no different than the idiots who parrot what Fox News says about Obama or just follow what their pastor says without thinking about things for themselves. As I said above, I have not watched any of the Stargate TV shows, so I would not take it upon myself to call it garbage. Just about any form of media out there is going to have people who like it. If I am going to tell them that the thing they love is no good, the least I can do is have reasons for it.
As a show that I immensely enjoyed, I can go in to a great many details on why I like it and why I think it is a great show. (Flawed, but still great) Can you give me any reason why it is crap that actually has to do with the show itself? Something besides watching a few early season episodes and not liking them? Because you didn’t say you didn’t like what you saw, you said it was crappy. So, if you honestly think that, i’d like to hear something to back that up.
Not too long ago you spent a good portion of a podcast berating nerds for belittling sports people over the bad calls by the temporary refs. You went on and on about how they needed to stop being assholes about sports because people who like sports are just “sports nerds” and we should try to be more inclusive. Should not the same thing hold true for the pop culture or geeky things that we might not like ourselves, but other geeks do?
Jesus Christ, Walz. Babylon 5 is a shitty show. I’ve watched a lot of it. I’ve said as much. Unless you wanna start combing through all the comments on the show and vigorously defending every piece of pop-culture entertainment I’ve derided/criticized/belittled, I’d say chalk this one up to “people on the internet don’t like the things I like and that bothers me” and let it go. Because that’s a lot of thankless work you’d otherwise be signing yourself up for lest you be complicit in all this unfairness towards poor, defenseless television shows/comics/movies/music/novels. You should at least draw a salary for it.
You also didn’t answer my question.
The answer is “no,” by the way. it’s not worth it.
I don’t like the television show you like. It’s not really a big deal.
I did answer your question. I enjoy the TV show Babylon 5. It annoys me when people call it a shitty show, because it is not a shitty show. Just because Fatboy says it is shitty does not make it so. You have not given one reason why it is a shitty show, you just proclaim that it is. I am not a guest on your show, I don’t get an hour a day, 5 days a week to go in to great detail about all the things that I like. Yet, when I go in to the comments section to defend something that I like, you basically tell me that since I don’t make money off it, I shouldn’t care and just let it go. That strikes me as a bit hypocritical coming from a guy who is on several podcasts that do nothing but talk about pop culture things they like, none of which they get paid for. Hell, the entire point of the Nedrfight podcasts is to argue about crap like this.
As I have said several times, I don’t really care if others on the internet don’t like the things I like. But, I don’t have a podcast. My only chance to voice my opinion is here is the comment section. Why shouldn’t I chime in and say “Hey, thing A that I like, quite pissing on thing B that I like.”
What is the point of the comments section if it is not to comment (good or bad) on things in the episode that got to us? You put down one of my favorite shows, I commented on that. Just because I wasn’t part of the show doesn’t mean I can’t defend it any more than it means you can’t put it down. I’m defending something I enjoy, which is kind of the whole point of being a fan of something.
Hey, Walz.
You’re making no fucking sense. I didn’t say you couldn’t comment. I didn’t say because you don’t make money your comments are worthless. I didn’t say your opinion was lesser than mine. This has nothing to do with you not being a part of the show.
I said you should let it go because it’s not worth it. Babylon Fucking 5 isn’t worth whatever it is you’re doing right now.
The funniest/stupidest thing about this whole fight is that in the podcast itself you made the offhand comment that you heard it got better in later seasons. So, apparently something about me rubs you the wrong way because you have gone from that stance to it’s just crap.
… mhmm. Okay then. I see how it is.
Erik said all that Farscape shit of his own volition. We had NOTHING to do with that.