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ust an "IMHO-Ditto" to Mr. Keith Kitchen's comments (John Doe Has Interesting Identity) on the new Fox series John Doe! My experience with the show was similar to his, in that I sort of stumbled upon it.
I also enjoyed it immediately, and found myself immersed in both the story line(s), and John's battle/search with finding out his true identity. Is he human/android/savant, etc.? For "escapism" I just love the manner in which he knows (and/or figures out) just about anything/everything, while the story makes his super-intelligence ability almost believable (close enough anyway).
Keith goes on to say, " ... but it's been a long time since I saw a single episode of any series that caught my attention so thoroughly." Again, ditto! I've always been able to watch anything remotely considered sci-fi (as I'm from a past age when nothing was sci-fi!).
However, even I must be getting spoiled, as I find that there are some sci-fi productions that I can't enjoy enough to watch them again. And, of course, most of the ones I enjoy get
dropped, cut, shelved, destroyed or just—poof!—disappear just when I get into them (Witchblade and Crusade to name a few, and, may the devil do something dastardly to TNT!)
Anyway, let us all hope that because I like the John Doe series, it won't go "POOF!"
Randy Gaudian
R12347@aol.com
was saddened to hear that Joss Whedon's new show, Firefly, isn't doing well in the ratings ("Fans Rally for Firefly"). It's not too surprising, though. Everything that I had read prior to watching the show touted Whedon's success with Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] in relation to this new series. The two just aren't the same.
I like Buffy. I like Buffy's spinoff series, Angel. I like Firefly, too. But I like them all for different reasons. Buffy has always been something of a teen drama to me. Angel is a big morality play. Firefly is a simple adventure story. I think it's somewhat unfair to lure fans of a series like Buffy to a very different series like Firefly, just because Buffy fans will
recognize Whedon's name. As a result, Firefly seems to be held to the same standards as seven-year-old Buffy. One of them has had time to grow and find its niche; the other is still finding its space-legs.
I've read comments that Firefly is cliched. It's also pretty silly. But, I've had more fun and laughed out loud more times watching Alan Tudyk's and Adam Baldwin's characters be just plain weird in the last six episodes of Firefly than I have watching the last two years of network genre TV. One sign of good writing is when you feel for the characters. Doesn't laughter represent a feeling just as legitimately as tears?
I hope that Firefly finds its audience before the axes come crashing down on it. I like the difference of the show.
Thanks for the time.
Mayumi Hirtzel
ardessah@usa.net
ormally, I do not write letters of complaint or protest, but this situation and SCI FI's actions prompted me to do so.
I discovered Farscape midway through the first season. I was, like
so many others, channel-hopping, looking for something worthwhile on a Friday evening to watch. I landed in the middle of an episode. I was instantly intrigued. I thought maybe it was an episode of Babylon 5 that I had missed from years ago. Then I thought it was a science-fiction movie that had gone straight to video and not the big screen, or a feature-length movie I never found the time to go see. I was very happy when I soon learned a new series had been born and I
could enjoy it weekly.
I am an avid TV watcher, when the programming is worth viewing and the storylines are worth following. I learned as a child that there could be valuable, educational and entertaining television.
My father was in the local TV news business as I was growing up. While he worked for NBC, he had access to information about programming most people did not. When the mini-series Shogun aired, as a family, we were expected to watch at first, but then were "hooked" because of the acting, the characters and the value of the production. The same thing happened when the Roots phenomenon aired. There have been few episodic television programs that captured the attention of critics and real fans like those miniseries. TV series such as Babylon 5, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos or The West Wing captured that kind of attention because they were (and are) ground-breaking.
I put Farscape into that same category—ground-breaking. The writing, original story lines and arc, characters, acting, actors, special effects, sets and production are all things TV viewers do not witness often enough. Unlike most television series, Farscape is not truly episodic. Great TV occurs much like a great novel lays itself out before a reader. It is a continuing story line with cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. There is a beginning, there is a middle and there is an end. Farscape is like very much like a great novel.
John Crichton set out on an unintended journey. On another side of the universe, he found whole other galaxies of planets teeming with new life and new beings. He introduced us to friends, villains
and other heroes. John is just an astronaut who wants to get home. We, as fans and viewers, want him to get home. Why is SCI FI stopping him from doing so? It is like I sat down to read Lord of the Rings and found someone had discarded the last few chapters. It would be a travesty if we never learn what happens to John. The wonderful and talented people at The Henson Company know; why not let them share it with the world?
If SCI FI believes the expense is too great to bear, then allow another network to pick up the last season. Don't cheat millions of fans. Don't make it impossible for Farscape to continue by making the price too high for another network. Don't destroy the sets—the world in which John, Aeryn, D'Argo, Pilot, Chiana, Rygel, Jool, Moya and even Scorpy exist, until they have had a chance to finish telling us their story. Keep Farscape alive!
Dana Foulks
dana.foulks@eds.com
o, the SCI FI Channel will be concentrating on making up to 20 original "made for the SCI FI Channel" telefilms per year, according to the venerable Variety and Cinescape, including two to be written by Bruce (Evil Dead) Campbell.
With the exception of the films involving Bruce Campbell ("Campbell Signs With SCI FI"), who is always guaranteed to be amusing and entertaining, the four most recently announced films sound, frankly, like duds.
Deadlands and Encrypt both deal with that overused science-fiction cliche, the post-apocalyptic future.
Webs and Bugs both deal with giant insects, for crying out loud.
So, this is the future of the new, improved SCI FI Channel, financed and run by individuals who detest and misunderstand the genre. A year or two ago, SCI FI had Farscape, Frank Herbert's Dune, The Chronicle and The Invisible Man to deservedly brag about.
Today it offers nitwit new-age pseudo-documentaries like the remake of In Search Of ... , every bit as inane as the original, and sideshow charlatans like John Edward. And SCI FI Channel's plan to take its viewers into the 21st century is the masterful stroke of—wait for it!—giant bug movies!
What brilliance! What imagination! What daring! Cancel Farscape and replace it with giant bug movies geared to reach a larger audience.
It would appear that the new powers-that-be at the SCI FI Channel are cut from the same cloth as those who thought New Coke was a fantastic idea. ...
Thomas Brush
brush@cerritos.edu
reetings Mr. Grinch: It is a shame that such a warm and light hearted family film (Santa Clause 2) did not have enough of the hardcore sex, violence and debauchery that it would seem [reviewer Patrick Lee] thinks it required to make a great film.
I saw both films and loved them both. It was a wonderful film. You have a right to your opinion and I am sure nothing will ever cause you to change it, but it is really a shame that you certainly have no holiday cheer.
Mike Leeling
balrog9@comcast.net
ust writing to say that Birds of Prey is getting better and better, especially if the Black Canary is making an appearance. As a long-time fan of comic books, this show gets my pulse racing every time I think of the possibilities. Imagine the other heros of DC who will appear in the future.
I am on the edge of my seat. Watching the Huntress do her thing makes waiting for the Wonder Woman film more bearable.
On another note, the Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] musical was incredible. That is all I have to say about that. Incredible.
William Shatner is God! Thank you for putting his beautiful mug on the SCI FI channel so I can see him before I fall asleep. Bill Shatner is my sci-fi hero!
I miss the X-Files! When is the next film? Please keep us X-Philes updated.
I thank God for the SCI FI Channel, because being someone who has sci-fi in the blood and not having my threshhold for sci-fi tested every day would make me insane. Thank you, SCI FI, for making my world a happier, brighter, more interesting place to be.
Dashka Nishki
superhumanalienhunter@yahoo.com
want to love the new Star Trek series Enterprise. I really do, but the creators' reckless disregard with
the language issue really makes it hard. In some of the season one episodes, we were told how the
translators worked and led to believe that the Enterprise crew had to depend on these translators to communicate with alien races. In fact, Hoshi needs to create a translation of the language before the translators can work for a particular alien language. I was comfortable with this, because it seemed to add some sense of reality to a series with far too many inconsistencies.
However, in the latest episode, "Marauders," the crew lands on a mining colony and immediately starts communicating with previously unknown aliens. We have to assume that the aliens are speaking their own language, and that the crew (and Enterprise viewers) are hearing them speak in English, thanks to the translators. But when did the crew have time to work through a language translation? Also, when the Klingons arrive, they appear to speak in English sometimes, but then switch to the Klingon language from time to time. How can this be? If the translators were being used, then the crew would hear the Klingon language being instantly translated into English. If the translators are not being used in the first place, then how do the aliens running the colony know English?
I'm asking these questions rhetorically, of course, because I already know the answer: bad writing. The creators of Enterprise need to either ignore the whole language issue, or remain consistent on the need for language translators.
Robert Cusolito
rcusolito@yahoo.com
am quite disappointed with the recent action-oriented episode of Enterprise, "Marauders," which had Enterprise crew teaming up with colonists to protect themselves against renegade Klingons. First, why would any ship captain have angst over what to do about what is essentially a group of organized criminals harming innocents? I guess Capt. Archer never watched movies like The Magnificent Seven in his youth. Kirk would have had all the Klingons in the brig or dead by the first 10 minutes of the show.
I also was dismayed to hear the use of the phrase "feed a man to fish ... " Are we so politically correct in our outlook anymore that we have to use touchy-feelie catch phrases from the 1960s to justify use of force against a criminal who is attacking you with force?
What really got my goat was how unbelievable the Klingons as warriors were. I recently watched an old rerun of the television show Combat!, with Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders, where he yells at his squad to "Split up, a single grenade could take all you guys out!"
At the end of the Enterprise episode, we see a group of Klingons all walking together in a tight group, wide out in the open with no nearby cover, even though they have all been shot at recently. Wouldn't you seek cover, even in an advance, after being shot at? While the colonists and
the crew of Enterprise hid in fear behind the rocks, Sgt. Saunders in the exact same situation would have wasted the entire squad of Klingons in a few seconds using his primitive World War II Tommy Gun and a couple grenades.
Which leads me to my next question—why in all the episodes of every single Trek series, with all the fancy phasers they have, do we never see a single modern machine gun or rapid-fire phaser?
In future, if the producers and writers of Enterprise are going to have combat-oriented action, they should all sit down and watch a few episodes of Combat! or Band of Brothers and see how people really run and duck for cover in a fire fight.
Joseph O'Neil
joneil@multiboard.com
truly enjoyed the Stargate SG-1 series for years. Part of it was the character portrayed by Michael Shanks. Daniel Jackson made it cool to be a geek. His character proved that a person could be intelligent and remain on par with the action-characters. To me, it was dumb the writers allowed the character's wife to be killed. T'ealc's son was returned back to him; the
young alien boy Jack O'Neil had a bond with was also freed from alien possession. So why not Daniel's wife? That was part of the basis for the show's original beginning, wasn't it? Even after her death, I hoped they would allow a "trans-dimensional" version of her to cross over from a reality where her Daniel may have died. It would have been cool if that was how the Daniel Jackson character left the show, but I guess that's too much imagination there.
When writers begin lacking imagination to the point where the only new thing they have is to kill off individuals that the main characters care about, I call the Miami Vice-Syndrome. Remember the last few seasons of that show? When an episode started with one of the characters in a close relationship, you pretty well knew who was going to die before the show was over. Is that what we have to look forward to in the coming Stargate season? How about this ideal: Have them score a major victory over the enemy. Not a secret one; a victory that is known throughout the galaxy and maybe even on Earth. It was pathetic where SG-1 actually had two main enemy warships in their possession but lost both of them. And please, no more of the "They find a person/place/thing that can give them a great advantage only to have it lost by the end of the show."
Try something good for a change.
Nathan Ewing
ewingn@planetc.com
just finished the final episode of Lexx. With the exception of a bumpy beginning, this was truly an outstanding show that was far ahead of its time.
What set this under-appreciated show apart from all other sci-fi was not its irreverence, or its quirky humor, but its seamless deconstruction of sci-fi as a genre. Not since Blake's 7 has there been a captain that was almost entirely self-interested. (And, at least as far as I know, there has never been a sci-fi leader/anti-hero who was a bumbling fool.) Stanley Tweedle was a refreshing counterpart to a strong moral hero like Picard, or Kade Foster, or John Sheridan, or Sisko.
Its overtly sexually frustrated female lead, Xev, stands in stark contrast to a chaste and Christian-acting Janeway who represses or sublimates her sexual desire, or Doctor Who's asexual female companions. Xev is a slap in the face to political correctness, and, like so many letters here have recently pointed out, is not a backlash against the Leftism on TV, but a deconstruction of female sexual roles that makes her character so alluring. Xev is hot. She wants sex, she likes sex, and she has no qualms about having sex outside of marriage.
790, well, what can be said about a pathological homicidal robot head? This is an extremely clever twist on the mandatory character who needs to know it all so that the audience will be able to follow what's going on-imbue him with an ever degrading sense of morality. Kai deconstructed notions of power and blurred the line between a strong male lead and someone with whom one could identify.
The musical score, while not receiving rave reviews like the score from Earth: Final Conflict, perfectly comported with the characters and the theme of the show (anyone wishing to buy the CD will be disappointed to know that the song, in Celtic style, of Kai singing "Yo Way Yo" on the piano, is not included). But even the soundtrack ventured far beyond the attempts at hope and inspiration found in nearly all sci-fi TV shows (to see what it's rebelling against, just think of the new theme for Enterprise).
It's disappointing that the sci-fi community did not do more to support such an innovative, original and clever show. We like to think of ourselves as thinking outside of the box, but I am not sure that we live up to our own standards. It never ceases to fascinate me why the endless parade of thoughtless juvenile series like Andromeda, Earth Final: Conflict, Starhunter, Mutant X, Tracker, Dark Angel, Seven Days, Quantum Leap and mediocre vanilla series like Enterprise, DS9 and SG-1 seem to do well, but genuinely excellent shows like Farscape, Babylon 5, the original Trek and Lexx all struggle or get cancelled. As a community, perhaps we're less ready to entertain ideas and themes that are ahead of our time than we would like to think.
Pete Boghossian
pete@boghossian.com
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