Andromeda To Become Less Complex?

Prehensile Plant writes "After 7 years of Voyager and now the godawful Enterprise, the guy responsible for everything good about Deep Space Nine has just been sacked from the show he developed. Robert Hewitt Wolfe has parted company with the last bastion of scifi for people with half a brain - Andromeda. Wolfe said: "Basically, they want the show to be more action driven, more Dylan-centric, and more episodic. They also want more aliens, more space battles, and less internal conflict among the principal characters. Also, they want a lot less continuity so as not to confuse the casual or new viewer with too much backstory." Slipstream has the full scoop.

Comments

My favorite quote

[LordNimon]

from Sorbo: "Robert is a genius, but was developing stories that were too complicated and too clever for the rest of us to understand."

Translation:

"Despite the fact that the average Sci Fi viewer is ten times more intelligent than the average soap opera viewer, we didn't think they'd be smart enough to follow a complex story line. Also, it doesn't make a difference if the episodes are bad, just as long as more people watch them. Only Star Trek geeks have pride in their work."

Re:I don't know

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

sci-fi is all about an escape from reality

How I hate when people spout tripe like this. Sci fi is not about "escaping reality". It is not. It never has been. If it is "escapist" at all, it's about escaping into reality -- into a Universe larger and more awe-inspiring than the insipid little minutae with which we fill our lives.

Science fiction is not about spaceships and little green men, time travellers and miracle cures. It's not about gadgets and gizmos. It's not about a million different outcomes to the roll of the dice. Science fiction, at its best, is about being open to new ideas and new ways of thinking about things ... it's about challenging orthodoxy and imagining that things could be different, even at a fundamental level. It's about understanding what it is to be human by examining those who aren't.

Perhaps three quotes by John Campbell typify what science fiction really is:

• The basic rule of SF is: Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences.
  
• No literature is sound, no philosophy of action workable, if it doesn't take a hard look at itself.
  
• (paraphrased) Give me an alien who thinks as well as a man, but differently.
  

TV that doesn't suck (and some that does)

[IronChef]

Of the shows current on, here are some of my ratings. All IMHO, of course.

shows I like with few reservations
24 (VERY GOOD, try it out.)
ER (there's more to life than SF)
Buffy
Angel (I actually far prefer this to Buffy these days, it has a "quirkiness" that reminds me of Herc & Xena)
Stargate SG-1 (best SF currently on, ties with B5 overall, on course to overtake it)
Junkyard Wars
Good Eats (the cooking show that's so good it inspired me to learn to cook)
The Sopranos (on hiatus)
Six Feet Under (on hiatus)
Malcolm in the Middle

shows that I watch despite some pretty serious flaws, though I feel kind of dirty after a viewing
Enterprise
Alias (Sidney has terrible, terrible fieldcraft and most of the tech is totally silly, otherwise pretty neat)
X-Files (increasingly incomprehensible!)

shows I really wish I could learn to like
Farscape (Saw it twice: blue-girl got a cold, and a monster in a cheap-looking mine. Lame.)

shows that even prisoners of war should not be made to watch
Lexx
Andromeda
Earth: Final Conflict
Dark Angel (She has cat DNA, so she goes into HEAT. That was the last of many straws.)

It's late and I have probably forgotten something obvious.