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What SciFi Should Get the Reboot Treatment Next?
Not long ago Wired ran their own list of which SciFi (not SyFy!) shows were in need of another go 'round in this era of the reboot. Well, it looks like many fans had their own opinions resulting in another list of reboots including everything from Firefly (please?) to The Outer Limits. Which SciFi stories could use the breath of life, and which ones might actually succeed it getting it?
Blake's 7. I was in the USAF for the final 2 series. Incredible characters and stories. Horrible sets.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
do a BSG style multi season show based on against a dark background by Banks
Maybe screenwriters and filmmakers could come up with an ORIGINAL idea for a change. Getting tired of inferior remakes, all they do is cause me to download and watch the original again.
What part of Firefly do you think needed a reboot? The whole point of these reboots is to drop the decades of cruft that have dogged down a series and made it impossible to create anything new thanks to all of the baggage. Firefly has a (too) short lived TV run and a movie. There's not really any baggage to drop. The only thing I'd change is the dumbass execs that cancelled it before its time.
I'll second this . . . Firefly was canceled it way to soon. If Stargate can live on like it is why can't Firefly?
...although supposedly a movie is in development, slated for a 2012 release. I think a series/mini-series might be a better fit for the subject matter.
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The part that needs to be eliminated in the reboot is the movie. I want to see a series that includes Wash and Sheppard Book.
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Far Out Space Nuts
You know you want it.
But, seriously, I agree with others who say "Do something new".
How about some retro space opera? Lensman or Perry Rhodan? Maybe a Stainless Steel Rat series?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
I was recently reflecting on Simmons' Hyperion myself, as I read it several times in my teens. I know there's long been talk of making a film or television adaptation of it, but I now see a number of obstacles to trying to bring this book to a more mainstream audience. One is that it's just a bit too nerdy. I mean, one of the major structural points of the book is the life of the early Romantic poet John Keats, and people want explosions instead of sensitive young men who write verse. Also, the subplot of the cruciform or the Jewish man drawn to sacrifice his daughter might offend religious sensibilities.
Hyperion is a decent work of science-fiction (though I think of it more as a young-adult choice than a universal classic), but it might just not be right for Hollywood.
I'd be happy just to get a boxed set of the whole series on DVD. Some friends and I actually looked into how much it would cost to buy the rights and produce/sell the DVDs. Didn't get very far. :-(
I read the Foundation series for the first time last year and I thought the books were very good, up until the "Scooby-Doo" ending of some of them (The Gods Themselves had the same problem). I don't think they would make a very good movie or miniseries though.
Logan's Run could use some reboot loving it was a fairly entertaining serie with potential for some good "revival"
Here were my ideas.
1) from the series, yep, some people go crazy when they spend too long on the edge of that much nothing.
2) in the series it was mentioned that, despite the rumors, there have never actually been any aliens or alien artifacts found. What if there were something so alien way, way out there, but attractive enough to draw people in, that was so alien that it broke the mind. (Would have dove-tailed in with River being prescient and mad, suppose the blue-hands were working from "the only reliable evidence" ever beamed back, trying to unlock the secrets and abilities of the thing without bringing on reaver madness.)
3) Evil government experimentation, version "not-dumb", something infectious. Call it Pax if you want. Give it the same reason and history, but instead of a "chemical" or in _addition_ to it being a chemical have raverdom be an Infectious Prion form of the original chemical (see mad cow disease). Still need to drop Miranda and the one central sun, but now being force-fed a little reaver flesh would maybe make you one of the family. Hell, "The Miranda" could have been a freaking cruise ship and the thing would work, but not a planet.
At a minimum, some serious retcon needs to take place to repair the plot damage the movie inflicted on the franchise.
I just wish they would ask me about this stuff before the script goes into production. 8-)
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For God's Sake, can't we have something original? Reboots are for tired old franchises that have a diminishing following and need a kick in the pants to get going again. Otherwise, it's a remake, not a reboot, and I'm frakking (reference intended) sick and tired of seeing stories from 30 years ago rehashed yet again. So just stop it, ok? We all act like there's only 10 or 12 properties in all of science fiction.
That said, I would have to vote for Firefly returning. A reboot is absolutely not necessary -- I do not need to see the same stories with different actors -- just continue the story, perhaps as a limited series of 6 to 13 episodes once a year, like they do in England.
I think the problem with Heroes was that they just plain ran out of story. The first two seasons worked because they had a preplanned story arc. The last seasons are floundering because they don't. Rebooting will not help -- it'll just move the problem to a different set of actors. Let Heroes die and allow us to remember the first seasons -- when it was still good -- with fondness.
In the case of Star Trek and James Bond, a reboot was necessary if we were going to have more of these franchises. Not having more of these franchises was -- in my opinion -- an acceptable alternative, but the idea of a reboot was interesting, and proved fruitful. Continuing with increasingly elderly actors and every film trying to be exactly like the previous film was clearly not working.
Here, I'll give you an idea for free that combines a story that hasn't been done yet with a current franchise, making it simultaneously new and marketable. Make a series from Andre Norton's "Star Rangers", but make it part of Trek canon. It's thousands of years in the future, and a old limping spaceship from the broken fragments of a federation crash lands on a planet that used to have a high level of technology. The survivors of the crash attempt to survive from the remnants of old technology found in the dead cities. At the end of the story, (first season) they stumble upon Star Fleet Headquarters and realize they've found Earth.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Amen.
So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
I would really like to see the definitive version of the Dune saga done right ; without the sort of budget and casting constraints that have crippled previous outings (i.e. "the original" which was a David Lynch 80s style film and the SciFi channel remakes which, while better and more ambitious, still suffered from obvious budget constraints). The Dune saga really deserves better treatment than it has received at the hands of previous studios and directors. The success of Avatar has proven the market for high-quality 3D "epic" Science Fiction films and Dune would look really great if it was done in a similar fashion; with the budget and length required to do justice to the story. IMHO, either James Cameron or Steve Jackson would be good choices to direct, but others may have different opinions. If Lord of the Rings can be done well, then so can a sophisticated and high-brow SciFi epic like the Dune saga.
The only thing that was a bit iffy about Firefly was the large number of habitable planets and moons orbiting one star. The backstory is that humans found this star system and was able to terraform all these planets and moons, which conveniently had approx. 1g gravity.
This setting was necessary to avoid the plot device of "warp drive". The show's creator wanted a show where people were in space, but not with technology too far more advanced that our own (though they do have some odd things like floating islands, etc.). The problem is that warp drive is theoretically impossible, and if it ever does happen, it'll require a complete change in our understanding of physics. But warp drive is a necessary plot device to have humans traveling between star systems in any reasonable time, a la Star Trek. So putting lots of livable worlds around one star is about the only way to avoid it.
The "cowboys in space" thing is completely reasonable given these constraints. Remember, with propulsion technology like our own, even traveling between planets/moons in the same system can take days, weeks, or even months (it would currently take us months to travel to Jupiter with current technology). So Firefly's creator envisioned a system where the inner worlds were controlled by the oppressive authoritarian government, and had lots of tech, while the outer worlds were not very well controlled by this Alliance (and not as well terraformed either), and thus it was much like the "Wild West", with less tech, fewer luxuries, not many police around to protect you, etc. This was actually a genius idea IMO.
What about Sliders? Fun show, great ensemble cast, interesting concept that postulated about alternate Earths. The first couple of seasons were great, but then they changed the tone to become a lot more dark and dreary. They whacked John Rhys-Davies, added Kari Wuhrer and started ripping off various sci-fi films for plots. Cleavant Derricks's character became serious and less of a comic relief character. They started fighting an unnecessary recurring antagonist, the cro-mags. Sabrina Lloyd was written out, Jerry O'Connell got his brother on the show and then they had some weirdness about two Quinn Mallories merging or something.
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The Titanides from the Titan series by Varley are the perfect application for the motion-capture and facial animation technology developed for Avatar.
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Wasn't Gibson one of the producers of Johnny Mnemonic? I remember being very shocked to see that in the credits, as in "how did this go so wrong?"
You're an immobile computer, remember?
I agree that Miranda would have been fine in a system where they weren't all orbiting one star.
And I would give you Reavers being the result of Pax if it were said that, perhaps, Pax was or caused a prion disease of the brain like Mad Cow disease etc. Easily done there.
Then again, the less-than-twenty (and likely less than ten) year timescale would belie Reavers being an old wives tale.
Draw out the time scale on paper sometime. Reavers would have been absolute fact, and a new fact at that, if the movie is cannon. They'd have exploded across the whole star system pervasively, and been hunted to extinction. They just wouldn't have the longevity (what with unshielded reactors and having to replenish their ranks and food supplies, since there isn't a 'reaver farmer' growing grain and we know food is scarce in that reality etc. In the absence of a reaver economy the would have been starved out of orbit at Miranda in like a month. etc.)
The whole thing reeks of vampire fan-boy logic. Hundereds of vampires inhabit 1840 Paris/Moscow/New York/New Orleans (as they have for hundreds of years etc), each one draining the blood from one human each night, year in and year out. So even in WWII where people die and go missing all the time 365.24 * 100 is, on average 36,524 people gone missing from one city each year. The numbers just don't work if you even glance sideways at the math.
To fix the problem with least effort: Keep the Pax, but try it on a cruise ship or a space station (e.g. "The Miranda" instead of "The Planet Miranda", or hell on a couple dozen people in a lab. Start with a smaller population. Make it properly contagious like the aforementioned prion disease (raver decides to rape you first, or feed you some of his flesh or blood, and _maybe_ you convert if you live long enough or get left behind) instead of a mystically repeatable experience that somehow has a predictable morphology, common enough for Mal to know the exact progression well enough to narrate it 8-). Same evil government, same evil plot, harder to come up with an armada of Ravers granted, but workable. Hell you even get to cut a word and some "look at the nothing" computer interface mock-up CGI from the script. Everybody wins. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
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Except Book died off camera and without ever fulfilling the potential of his storyline (who WAS he?) and Wash died in a stroke of abrupt and extreme bad luck that had to be summarily forgotten because of the imminent threat. I felt like the only purpose Wash's death served was to make the audience feel like anyone was fair game at that point. It was effective in that regard, but if that's all there was, I don't think it was worth the trade-off.
However, you bring up an interesting point, that I had not considered. I'd have to watch it again to see for sure if that comes across for me too, but I certainly didn't pick that up on a first run. The fact that he cared about the members of his crew was something I had taken for granted for a long time, and I didn't notice that he had changed appreciably at the end. I suppose he does allow the Operative to live, despite all he has done, and that could be indicative of a change, though I'm not sure that the death of Wash (or Book) was a critical part of that. Ultimately, I felt Wash deserved better than he got. My reaction was less sadness about the death of Wash than irritation with the writers for killing him so off-handedly.
The movie caught pretty damn well the fascism is all right, m'kay theme and made serious fun about it.
Pretty hilarious, unlike the book which was just serious about it all, really.