The importance of being Sci-Fi

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Sorry, but I don't have the time, money, or cable to track down all of the so-called classics from any genre. Until it plays on PBS or something and I notice it, it will fail to exist in my consciousness.

Video rental? What, $5 at most?


To describe '2001' as a 'so-called' classic and lump it in with pretty much anything else is blasphemy against sci-fi. It transcends classic. It's a Kubrick film, you *know* it's worth watching.

@Mav: If you stick it through, it's actually quite...well, you'll see...

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

I can see that my hard, soft, and bizarre categories have generated quite a bit of controversy.

No, they were just badly defined

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Most entertaining, which I'd measure as laughs per minute, is h2g2. I'm surprised that this is in dispute.

'laughs-per-minute' is not a good measure of sci-fi quality. THAT is why it's in dispute. Also, that site is seriously unfunny. Literally.

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Stargate is soft because the general user of this advanced tech doesn't have a stinkin' clue how it works. Even Teal'c and his zats and tacs and so forth only knows how to fire the things. Ask him how a liquid naquadah battery works and you'd get a blank look. Oh, and except for the guns, they left "real-world" human technology years ago.

Has already been covered, moving on...

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Oh, and my major exposure to Also Sprach Zarathustra is the Buzz Lightyear game in Toy Story 2. I've heard it elsewhere, but that's what comes to mind.

*shakes head*

[Nate the Great]

(Opens wallet, shakes out a few moths. Empty laugh. Points to self) Poor ex-college student? Oh, and I don't have a membership to any rental places. Too much temptation.

If my categories are awful, present something better.

Never said most laughs per minute=sci-fi quality. I said laughs per minute=most entertaining. We can enjoy shows that make us think, make us cry, etc, but I don't necessarily call that entertainment. I call that catharsis.

Oh, and using h2g2 to refer to the entire Hitchhiker's universe is not uncommon. And the site is not that bad. My longest online relationship ever sprang from that site.

[Chancellor Valium]

So Monty Python is more entertaining than "Empok Nor"? I beg to differ.

[Nate the Great]

You don't have to beg; you can be as different as you want...

It suddenly occurs to me that this whole standardized Cardassian space station design would've presented some interesting possibilities if they'd carried it further. A real "evil twin" station still in Cardassian control, another station in Federation control that was so thouroughly gutted by the Cardassians that everything was actually replaced by LCARS. And so on.

[Chancellor Valium]

True, but it would've been tough to put into stories...

[Nate the Great]

Really? How? Empok Nor was a completely new concept for the episode that it appeared in, and everyone got what the intent was. Let's imagine for a moment that the station that was gutted and replaced by LCARS is named Grempok Nor. All we need is O'Brien griping every now and then, "our shipment of computers was diverted to Grempok Nor again! Just because they're closer to the Klingon border..." or "hey, Quark, drinks all around! I finally won that bet with the engineer of Grempok Nor! I crawled through every access tube in the station in less than a week before he did!"

As for the evil Cardassian counterpart, call it Brintak Nor. I can just hear Dukat now. "You still have voles? We do weekly sweeps of Brintak Nor for all sorts of vermin. My fighting vole would've killed all of these runts by now!" etc. You don't need to devote an entire episode to something to make it an interesting idea. Heck, how much screentime did jumja sticks get and we still remember what they are?

[Chancellor Valium]

Perhaps, but it would feel a little contrived. For starters, how many old space stations are the Cardassians really going to give up?

The second one would require Dukat to take command of a station. Dukat doesn't like sitting around. And it would keep him out of the way. Also, Cardassia is destroyed as a power by season 5, and in a full-scale war for 6-7. That leaves 1-3, when he is the Reoccuring Menace.

And how many other Cardassian Egos does a show like DS9 need?

[Nate the Great]

The Cardassians would "give up" whatever stations aren't in their possession anymore. Remember that the treaty put people high and dry on the wrong side of the border all over the place; that's what the Maquis were all about.

How can you have too many Cardassian Egos? Egotism is part of what makes Cardassians Cardassians.

Plus Dukat was a Legate for a lot of the show. He doesn't have to personally command a station to brag about them. Remember that Starfleet Admirals routinely have their "home" Starbases while still having the freedom to travel around.

[Derek]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Plus Dukat was a Legate for a lot of the show.

Actually, Dukat was a Gul for most of the show. He became a Legate at the start of the 4th season when the Cardassian government changed hands, then he lost his position in the 4th season episode "Indiscretion" because of the shame of Ziyal. He remained a Gul for the rest of DS9's run despite becoming ruler of the Cardassian Union under the Dominion. He even mentions the lack of change to Sisko (in "Ties of Blood and Water").

[Nate the Great]

I could BS about how vague a term "a lot" is, but I'm not going to.

[PointyHairedJedi]

I find it genuinely astounding (hahaha) that no-one has mentioned the sf/fantasy/adventure pulps of the 20's through to the 50's. It was the likes of Amazing Stories and Astounding/Analog that brought science fiction (or scientifiction, if you prefer) into the mainstream. Despite Verne, Wells, and others, SF was very much the oddity before this time - so many of the 'great' names in SF were inspired to start writing because of these magazines, and indeed many got their first break by being published in them. Without that dramatic explosion in awareness, science fiction in all forms would I'm sure occupy a pretty miniscule niche compared to what we enjoy in the here and now.

Ahem, of course, what I really mean to say is, Doctor Who.

[Nate the Great]

Actually, go back to Jules Verne. I think he'd be a BIG Trekkie; using fictional science to explore the human condition.