You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.
Flamebait is justified in my opinion, as it was one great big straw man. It wasn't starting an actual debate, it was attacking a made up view (that there exists someone - "Slashdot" - with inconsistent viewpoints) just to stir up an argument. Making up a straw man to criticise, in order to stir up controversy, is a classic example of flamebait.
It's not about disagreeing with it - indeed, if anything I would agree with him, if such a viewpoint actually existed, but the issue is that the point of view he argues against doesn't exist.
It's not even an original argument - I feel the "But how can Slashdot dare criticise copyright law, when Slashdot release source code as GPL!" is getting tiring.
Don't get me wrong - in general I hate it when negative mods are used merely for disagreement. But here I feel it was justified, because there was no actual valid argument to disagree with. I'm surprised it got modded up so high to be honest - but that's the problem: it's easy to look insightful when you make up an easy straw man as your opponent...
Where has Slashdot stated that they side with TPB?
If you actually mean "readers", then I suggest you take note that the opinions of individuals are not those of Slashdot, and drop the libellous claims.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Do you have a citation for your allegation that JC doesn't post here, because people here have views on copyright law - or in this case, legality of torrent search engines - that differ from you?
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work.
No, that's unfounded libel. And even if you mean the individuals, that's a straw man.
The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses,
I'll bite - find me two pro-piracy articles from today?
who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about
So? Do you have a problem with ads?
how evil they think capitalism is.
What on earth does being anti-capitalist have to do with this? And if anything, alternatives such as socialism were more likely to be unpopular here on Slashdot.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
So this time you actually mean Slashdot, and not readers, right? Make up your mind.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code.
If someone believes that (a) companies profiting from piracy is wrong, but individuals downloading something they weren't going to buy, and torrent search engines, are no big deal, there is no inconsistency.
If there was a story about a company who profited from non-GPL copyright violation, you can bet there'd be little sympathy.
OTOH, if it was discovered that an individual gave away a binary of Linux to his friend without offering the source, or that TPB linked to a torrent of a Linux binary, I doubt anyone would give a fuck.
But hey, let's not let facts and reason get in the way of your tired old straw man rant!
Not to mention that there exists more than one viewpoint on Slashdot. Not everyone loves the GPL. Not everyone thinks that piracy should be abolished. As an example, you and I have widly different views. But according to you, this means "Slashdot both thinks that Slashdot is pro-piracy, and that it isn't pro-piracy! How inconsistent of it!"
Merry Christmas? Nice straw man. And I bet you get angry when people say "Happy Holidays" to you.
Whilst I wouldn't have phrased it quite like the OP did, I did think the same thing about the unnecessary and obligatory Iphone slashvertisement. Of course it's promotion - "Hey you can do this on your XXX" is promotion, why do you think even simple product placement in films, with no explicit mention of the product, is so important?
It's also patronising to the reader - we know what products are, we don't need to be told buzzwords such as "Ipod", "Megadrive", "Dell" and so on, instead "mp3 player", "games console" and "computer". And even if that was the reason, why pick the Iphone, and not one of the far more popular phone companies? Oh right, because it's Apple, who need to be mentioned at least once a day in completely unnecessary circumstances (e.g., "Hey, you can read this website On Your Iphone!!!" as we had recently).
Whilst the Iphone mention is taken from the article, they also list: Adobe AIR, Java, Django and Rails. Why aren't these mentioned in the summary, if it's meant to be an accurate summary of the article? It wouldn't be promotion, according to you.
Demonstrated on this site time and again has been the fact that apple is not in way expensive for similar hardware.
I disagree, but that's beside the point - that's not the claim the OP was making. He seemed to be conceding that they are more expensive, but then waffled about the demographics.
The point of all this is that the Apple provides a nice balance of form and function that a lot of people like. There is a demographic for people that want their portable computers portable......
Which clearly can't be related to the OP's point (whatever it was), as plenty of companies besides Apple make portable computers. The success of netbooks suggests that they are a right balance between size and power that people like.
Except we get a story about Apple every time there's mere speculation or rumour - why not for all the other companies out there? In some cases, even actual product releases from major companies (e.g., Nokia) go unmentioned, where as "Rumour that the Iphone might be able to do something that other phones did 5 years ago" gets front page headline news.
Well, I suppose it means it can generate conversation about how it's been done 5 years ago, but I'm not sure that's useful.
I see this a lot with Apple - any criticism of them is hand waved away with "Well you're not in their demographic".
Of course Apple want to maximise their profits, as do all companies. But unless you're actually a shill, we're talking from the point of view of consumers.
If someone says "Company X is selling their product at a higher price than everyone else", it would seem odd to respond to that with "But you're not in their demographic!" Well in that case, what is their demographic? People who like to buy more expensive goods than the competition?
It's completely meaningless. If you actually mean something like "Their demographic is those who want to spend more for something that I claim is better", than why not say "I think it's better than the cheaper products", and follow that up with evidence and reasons.
Saying "the demographic" just means we have no idea what your explanation is - whether you're suggesting that some people like to throw away money (in which case, other people are right to ridicule it), or you have some reason for why a more expensive price is justified, but one you are unwilling to explain to us what it is?
Did you say it was a cheap stunt when they did it in T1, T2 and T3?
and just as irrelevant to what I was talking about.
Okay, I'll bite - don't keep us in suspense, what were those twenty "conflicts" you saw?
(And before you say it - the writers had explicitly stated that they were treating T3 as non-canon for the purposes of this story, and they'd changed some events of T1 and T2, such as the dates when things took place; that's not a continuity error, and no more relevant to pointing out differences between Buffy the TV series, and Buffy the film. Hell, you might as well point out differences between Lord Of The Rings the book, and Lord Of The Rings the film. You might disagree with making such changes, but they are not errors or conflicts.)
It's fairly common for TV series to not consider the films to be canon, or to change bits of it as necessary (e.g., Buffy), so I don't think being "part of the story" is a problem. It's not the same story.
Actually, I'm majorly pissed off that they DID re-write T3
It wasn't a rewrite, it was a different story.
I'm not sure how one could have written a story set between T2 and T3, and kept it vaguely interesting, or anything to do with terminators, time travel, or any of the other sci-fi themes from the films. I mean, we know from T3 that JC is alive and well, and SC died of natural causes, so there's no suspense about them dying. There's also no hint that he ever met any terminators in the meantime - in fact, he specifically shows his surprise, saying "You shouldn't even exist" - if he'd already met more terminators, he'd know that Judgement Day was still going to happen. Thus any TV series showing terminators between T2 and T3 would in fact be a rewrite of T3. And that would be worse - you'd be saying that T3 still happened, that it's still part of the same story, but you've introduced plot holes and inconsistencies.
There'd also be no reason to fight to stop Judgement Day from happening, because in JC's mind they already had, and it was only until T3 that he found out differently.
I considered fractals - but given their infinite length, I'm not sure how you would reference a point on them with a single number? The one dimensional distance along the curve, between any two points, would be infinite, surely?
And given that we're talking about fractals, the concept of dimension becomes more general - the Hausdorff dimension would be greater than the topological dimension of 1.
Mathematically, it's entirely accurate, and it's sloppy to equate dimensions only with spatial dimensions.
An example in computer graphics would be rational b-splines - it's sometimes useful to think of these as being a 3D projection from a 4D space. This doesn't mean I'm being sensationalist and claiming a fourth space dimension exists, but mathematically it is a dimension. As another example, quaternions are a four dimensional object - the set of unit quaternions (which could be represented by the 3D-"surface" of a 4D hypersphere) can be used to represent the set of 3D rotations.
It relies on the common understanding of physical dimensions as (3 x space + X), implying some other dimension besides the well known spatial ones.
You mean that we should use the lay person's definiton over the mathematical one? Now that would be sloppy.
But at the same time it would be nice just sometimes to have something that was thought out in advance and planned over a few seasons to tell a definite story.
But wait, isn't that what you were criticising - that would leave things unresolved in the earlier seasons, allegedly so there's room for more seasons?
I.E. skynet defeated by end of S3. No "well it's popular, lets string it out"
So you suggest a three season plan, but Terminator was "stringing it out" because they were still going with the story after only two? I'm not sure I understand you.
My understanding is that Terminator was written just as you suggested: they had a plan that was thought out for several seasons in advance. The problem is that it got cancelled after only two seasons, which obviously left unresolved subplots. If your "skynet defeated by end of S3" suggestion got cancelled after only two seasons, you'd also have left unresolved subplots. As I say, the problem is that whatever plan the writers decide in advance, the networks can cancel it at any moment, right at the last minute.
How do you tell a story over a few seasons, whilst still wrapping it up at the end of each season?
But that was part of my point - the fact that Reese mentions it shows you that the writers had thought about this, and they realised that the viewer might consider that. Perhaps the answer isn't perfect, but it's not like they thought the viewers were morons who wouldn't ask those questions (similarly with the "Why can't you bring ray guns back?")
The first season definitely suffered because of the writers' strike. I thought the start of season 2 was good though, it started to define its own story rather than just visiting themes of the films, but yes it did slow in the middle.
But let's take a popular long lived show - I think Buffy season one sucked, as did the start of season 2, and it wasn't until the end of season 2 that it suddenly got good. I thought that when I watched some episodes the first time round, and I still think it years later after seeing the series as a whole.
Just think if Buffy was cut after season two... (and at least Buffy got a chance to bring the season two storyline to an end!)
That's a good point. I think they tried to - but they took more of a "blame the scientists" line, rather than looking at the Governments, which annoyed me. Though to be fair, it was more in character for Sarah Connor (based on her rant in T2).
I guess part of the problem they were stuck in was that the characters were last decade - having literally jumped forward in time, they were completely oblivious to events of this decade (the show covered her learning about 9/11). A problem for this franchise is that it is very much tied to the current time - what happens if in ten years' time, someone wants to do a new TV series? They've got the difficulty of either setting a show in the near past (which doesn't really work, unless you're intending to do a historical drama), or explaining how the characters have suddenly zipped forward another ten years.
To be honest I'm getting bored of the whole series model.
I agree, though I think the network/funding is to blame. The idea that you have to write, film, produce even half of a season, without knowing whether the second half will be ordered, seems rather mad to me.
It's entirely reasonable that the writers have to allow room for another season - this is particularly an issue for Terminator where there is only one goal. Whilst say, 24 can have different terrorist threat each season, it would look poor for each season of Terminator to wrap up with "Skynet is defeated" and then the next say "Oh wait, no it isn't!"
Of course, all this could be avoided if they at least had advance warning on whether the season would be the last one or not. It would also help if they could write even just one complete season as a whole, without having to produce half of it, then not be able to change an earlier plot if something doesn't work out when writing the second half. Apparently shows like 24 are written as they go along, with shows airing before the rest of the season is written. And it shows.
Actually I thought the TV series did a good job of breaking away from that storyline. Perhaps you only watched the debut, which yes did start off that way, but the rest of it, and certainly season two, introduced many different storylines. Certainly it wasn't anything remotely like the unoriginality of T3.
It was also nice to see storylines set during the war - I'd love to see more of this, which I think would even be better suited to a TV series than a film. Oh well, at least we'll get a film of it.
When you think about it, the show couldn't go on too much longer, without stepping on the metaphorical toes of the storyline used in the sequel(s).
There was no problem here - the TV series considered Terminator 3 onwards to be non-canon, and it was a separate storyline continued from T2 (and even events from the first two films were changed, mainly the dates when things took place).
Put it this way - I suspect that John Connor will be older than 16 in T4, and not someone who's just travelled forward in time.
There's also the obvious point that they stood on the metaphorical toes of T3 straight away, by the rather notable event of a nuclear holocaust not taking place in 2004...
it seems the real purpose of the show (or at least one of the main goals) was to renew interest in the Terminator storyline.
I don't know how the funding works for these things - perhaps they were eager to give the rights with this in mind, but I don't see why Fox would want to renew interest in a film they wouldn't profit from.
If the purpose was to renew interest, I wish the franchise holders would have done more to fund it, and hence secure its continuation...
Two seasons, about 30-ish episodes IIRC, isn't so bad as things go. But the problem is that due to the lack of any kind of notice, I'm left with the feeling of only seeing half a story - as if I'd been watching a film that cut out half way through. Sure, the first half might have been really really good, but you'd be annoyed - and you'd never recommend it to anyone else for watching.
Whilst I realise that a lack of long term planning seems to be common for networks like Fox, it seems like most other shows have had a chance to wrap up their story, whether they went on for 10 seasons, or were cancelled after a few episodes. Even Firefly got a DVD to finish up. Rome is another example which was cancelled after only the second season, but they knew in advance, so could pick up the pace and at least tell a complete story.
Terminator OTOH ended on a cliffhanger in Season Two, with many loose ends unanswered through the season. To add to that, Season One suffered due to the writer's strike, and that also had many loose ends that were simply dropped and never resolved. Given that season two had several episodes in the middle that were slow moving and didn't seem to go anywhere, there would have been opportunity to drop some material out to finish the story, if only they knew in advance.
Thankfully they'd made the decision to keep the storyline a separate story from the canon of the films - and a good thing too, what use is half a story to the franchise? Which is a shame, because it was a good story they were telling.
As an aside, I'm curious what ratings are considered "popular" in the US. Here in the UK, over 10 million would be mainstream major success, and about 3 million would still be okay - and that's for a mainstream terrestrial channel. Of course there are also much more people in the US - but I was also under the impression of there being a lot more channels. Given the hundreds of channels of rubbish that gets churned out, it seems odd that good shows have to fight to survive...
Indeed the dates are interesting, but given that the movie will probably be much more popular that the series, I'd say it's the other way round: it'll be the movie that generates advertising and hype, and it seems sad to cancel the TV series now. Instead, it may have been better to have started a series shortly after T4...
A simpler explanation is that this show was just another attempt to increase the profits of the terminator franchise.
I don't think that in itself a problem - I'm looking forward to seeing Terminator 4, after all - I guess the problem was trying to cash in on the name, but also Fox expecting it could be done on the cheap.
Whether it was an attempt to make profit or not, I've always thought a TV series spin off would be interesting to see - in particular, showing stories set during the war (which this series did to some degree, and which Season 3 would have shown far more of, by the looks of how it ended). I don't really care who does it, as long as it's done reasonable well (and I think this show was generally good), and as long as they actually follow through with it.
But instead Fox give us a half-story that's cut off on a cliffhanger, with lots of loose ends around. It means that although I loved it, it's useless to the Franchise as a whole (unless someone else continues that story). I also fear it makes it far less likely that anyone else will want to do a TV series based on it (because of the expectation of failure, but also the confusion in all the additional storylines that have to be considered non-canon).
And I'd rather have a strip search than a kick in the teeth. But I think the point is that people would rather not have this scanning machine, nor a strip search (since they are basically the same thing, which is the whole point being made).
So all that needs to be done is to find a 17 year old who does a "suggestive pose" whilst being scanned, then the owners of the machine can be sent to prison on child porn charges...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your post, but I'd also say:
You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.
Flamebait is justified in my opinion, as it was one great big straw man. It wasn't starting an actual debate, it was attacking a made up view (that there exists someone - "Slashdot" - with inconsistent viewpoints) just to stir up an argument. Making up a straw man to criticise, in order to stir up controversy, is a classic example of flamebait.
It's not about disagreeing with it - indeed, if anything I would agree with him, if such a viewpoint actually existed, but the issue is that the point of view he argues against doesn't exist.
It's not even an original argument - I feel the "But how can Slashdot dare criticise copyright law, when Slashdot release source code as GPL!" is getting tiring.
Don't get me wrong - in general I hate it when negative mods are used merely for disagreement. But here I feel it was justified, because there was no actual valid argument to disagree with. I'm surprised it got modded up so high to be honest - but that's the problem: it's easy to look insightful when you make up an easy straw man as your opponent...
Where has Slashdot stated that they side with TPB?
If you actually mean "readers", then I suggest you take note that the opinions of individuals are not those of Slashdot, and drop the libellous claims.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Do you have a citation for your allegation that JC doesn't post here, because people here have views on copyright law - or in this case, legality of torrent search engines - that differ from you?
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work.
No, that's unfounded libel. And even if you mean the individuals, that's a straw man.
The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses,
I'll bite - find me two pro-piracy articles from today?
who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about
So? Do you have a problem with ads?
how evil they think capitalism is.
What on earth does being anti-capitalist have to do with this? And if anything, alternatives such as socialism were more likely to be unpopular here on Slashdot.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
So this time you actually mean Slashdot, and not readers, right? Make up your mind.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code.
If someone believes that (a) companies profiting from piracy is wrong, but individuals downloading something they weren't going to buy, and torrent search engines, are no big deal, there is no inconsistency.
If there was a story about a company who profited from non-GPL copyright violation, you can bet there'd be little sympathy.
OTOH, if it was discovered that an individual gave away a binary of Linux to his friend without offering the source, or that TPB linked to a torrent of a Linux binary, I doubt anyone would give a fuck.
But hey, let's not let facts and reason get in the way of your tired old straw man rant!
Not to mention that there exists more than one viewpoint on Slashdot. Not everyone loves the GPL. Not everyone thinks that piracy should be abolished. As an example, you and I have widly different views. But according to you, this means "Slashdot both thinks that Slashdot is pro-piracy, and that it isn't pro-piracy! How inconsistent of it!"
Merry Christmas? Nice straw man. And I bet you get angry when people say "Happy Holidays" to you.
Whilst I wouldn't have phrased it quite like the OP did, I did think the same thing about the unnecessary and obligatory Iphone slashvertisement. Of course it's promotion - "Hey you can do this on your XXX" is promotion, why do you think even simple product placement in films, with no explicit mention of the product, is so important?
It's also patronising to the reader - we know what products are, we don't need to be told buzzwords such as "Ipod", "Megadrive", "Dell" and so on, instead "mp3 player", "games console" and "computer". And even if that was the reason, why pick the Iphone, and not one of the far more popular phone companies? Oh right, because it's Apple, who need to be mentioned at least once a day in completely unnecessary circumstances (e.g., "Hey, you can read this website On Your Iphone!!!" as we had recently).
Whilst the Iphone mention is taken from the article, they also list: Adobe AIR, Java, Django and Rails. Why aren't these mentioned in the summary, if it's meant to be an accurate summary of the article? It wouldn't be promotion, according to you.
Happy Holidays.
Demonstrated on this site time and again has been the fact that apple is not in way expensive for similar hardware.
I disagree, but that's beside the point - that's not the claim the OP was making. He seemed to be conceding that they are more expensive, but then waffled about the demographics.
The point of all this is that the Apple provides a nice balance of form and function that a lot of people like. There is a demographic for people that want their portable computers portable......
Which clearly can't be related to the OP's point (whatever it was), as plenty of companies besides Apple make portable computers. The success of netbooks suggests that they are a right balance between size and power that people like.
Except we get a story about Apple every time there's mere speculation or rumour - why not for all the other companies out there? In some cases, even actual product releases from major companies (e.g., Nokia) go unmentioned, where as "Rumour that the Iphone might be able to do something that other phones did 5 years ago" gets front page headline news.
Well, I suppose it means it can generate conversation about how it's been done 5 years ago, but I'm not sure that's useful.
I see this a lot with Apple - any criticism of them is hand waved away with "Well you're not in their demographic".
Of course Apple want to maximise their profits, as do all companies. But unless you're actually a shill, we're talking from the point of view of consumers.
If someone says "Company X is selling their product at a higher price than everyone else", it would seem odd to respond to that with "But you're not in their demographic!" Well in that case, what is their demographic? People who like to buy more expensive goods than the competition?
It's completely meaningless. If you actually mean something like "Their demographic is those who want to spend more for something that I claim is better", than why not say "I think it's better than the cheaper products", and follow that up with evidence and reasons.
Saying "the demographic" just means we have no idea what your explanation is - whether you're suggesting that some people like to throw away money (in which case, other people are right to ridicule it), or you have some reason for why a more expensive price is justified, but one you are unwilling to explain to us what it is?
Did you say it was a cheap stunt when they did it in T1, T2 and T3?
and just as irrelevant to what I was talking about.
Okay, I'll bite - don't keep us in suspense, what were those twenty "conflicts" you saw?
(And before you say it - the writers had explicitly stated that they were treating T3 as non-canon for the purposes of this story, and they'd changed some events of T1 and T2, such as the dates when things took place; that's not a continuity error, and no more relevant to pointing out differences between Buffy the TV series, and Buffy the film. Hell, you might as well point out differences between Lord Of The Rings the book, and Lord Of The Rings the film. You might disagree with making such changes, but they are not errors or conflicts.)
It's fairly common for TV series to not consider the films to be canon, or to change bits of it as necessary (e.g., Buffy), so I don't think being "part of the story" is a problem. It's not the same story.
Actually, I'm majorly pissed off that they DID re-write T3
It wasn't a rewrite, it was a different story.
I'm not sure how one could have written a story set between T2 and T3, and kept it vaguely interesting, or anything to do with terminators, time travel, or any of the other sci-fi themes from the films. I mean, we know from T3 that JC is alive and well, and SC died of natural causes, so there's no suspense about them dying. There's also no hint that he ever met any terminators in the meantime - in fact, he specifically shows his surprise, saying "You shouldn't even exist" - if he'd already met more terminators, he'd know that Judgement Day was still going to happen. Thus any TV series showing terminators between T2 and T3 would in fact be a rewrite of T3. And that would be worse - you'd be saying that T3 still happened, that it's still part of the same story, but you've introduced plot holes and inconsistencies.
There'd also be no reason to fight to stop Judgement Day from happening, because in JC's mind they already had, and it was only until T3 that he found out differently.
I considered fractals - but given their infinite length, I'm not sure how you would reference a point on them with a single number? The one dimensional distance along the curve, between any two points, would be infinite, surely?
And given that we're talking about fractals, the concept of dimension becomes more general - the Hausdorff dimension would be greater than the topological dimension of 1.
Mathematically, it's entirely accurate, and it's sloppy to equate dimensions only with spatial dimensions.
An example in computer graphics would be rational b-splines - it's sometimes useful to think of these as being a 3D projection from a 4D space. This doesn't mean I'm being sensationalist and claiming a fourth space dimension exists, but mathematically it is a dimension. As another example, quaternions are a four dimensional object - the set of unit quaternions (which could be represented by the 3D-"surface" of a 4D hypersphere) can be used to represent the set of 3D rotations.
It relies on the common understanding of physical dimensions as (3 x space + X), implying some other dimension besides the well known spatial ones.
You mean that we should use the lay person's definiton over the mathematical one? Now that would be sloppy.
I'd like to know what curve you have that can fill a higher dimensional space...
But at the same time it would be nice just sometimes to have something that was thought out in advance and planned over a few seasons to tell a definite story.
But wait, isn't that what you were criticising - that would leave things unresolved in the earlier seasons, allegedly so there's room for more seasons?
I.E. skynet defeated by end of S3. No "well it's popular, lets string it out"
So you suggest a three season plan, but Terminator was "stringing it out" because they were still going with the story after only two? I'm not sure I understand you.
My understanding is that Terminator was written just as you suggested: they had a plan that was thought out for several seasons in advance. The problem is that it got cancelled after only two seasons, which obviously left unresolved subplots. If your "skynet defeated by end of S3" suggestion got cancelled after only two seasons, you'd also have left unresolved subplots. As I say, the problem is that whatever plan the writers decide in advance, the networks can cancel it at any moment, right at the last minute.
How do you tell a story over a few seasons, whilst still wrapping it up at the end of each season?
But that was part of my point - the fact that Reese mentions it shows you that the writers had thought about this, and they realised that the viewer might consider that. Perhaps the answer isn't perfect, but it's not like they thought the viewers were morons who wouldn't ask those questions (similarly with the "Why can't you bring ray guns back?")
The first season definitely suffered because of the writers' strike. I thought the start of season 2 was good though, it started to define its own story rather than just visiting themes of the films, but yes it did slow in the middle.
But let's take a popular long lived show - I think Buffy season one sucked, as did the start of season 2, and it wasn't until the end of season 2 that it suddenly got good. I thought that when I watched some episodes the first time round, and I still think it years later after seeing the series as a whole.
Just think if Buffy was cut after season two... (and at least Buffy got a chance to bring the season two storyline to an end!)
There are THREE provable dimensions
Prove it.
That's a good point. I think they tried to - but they took more of a "blame the scientists" line, rather than looking at the Governments, which annoyed me. Though to be fair, it was more in character for Sarah Connor (based on her rant in T2).
I guess part of the problem they were stuck in was that the characters were last decade - having literally jumped forward in time, they were completely oblivious to events of this decade (the show covered her learning about 9/11). A problem for this franchise is that it is very much tied to the current time - what happens if in ten years' time, someone wants to do a new TV series? They've got the difficulty of either setting a show in the near past (which doesn't really work, unless you're intending to do a historical drama), or explaining how the characters have suddenly zipped forward another ten years.
To be honest I'm getting bored of the whole series model.
I agree, though I think the network/funding is to blame. The idea that you have to write, film, produce even half of a season, without knowing whether the second half will be ordered, seems rather mad to me.
It's entirely reasonable that the writers have to allow room for another season - this is particularly an issue for Terminator where there is only one goal. Whilst say, 24 can have different terrorist threat each season, it would look poor for each season of Terminator to wrap up with "Skynet is defeated" and then the next say "Oh wait, no it isn't!"
Of course, all this could be avoided if they at least had advance warning on whether the season would be the last one or not. It would also help if they could write even just one complete season as a whole, without having to produce half of it, then not be able to change an earlier plot if something doesn't work out when writing the second half. Apparently shows like 24 are written as they go along, with shows airing before the rest of the season is written. And it shows.
Indeed, and IIRC, T1 has Reese explicitly saying that records were lost after the war, so all they had to go on was the mother's name.
Actually I thought the TV series did a good job of breaking away from that storyline. Perhaps you only watched the debut, which yes did start off that way, but the rest of it, and certainly season two, introduced many different storylines. Certainly it wasn't anything remotely like the unoriginality of T3.
It was also nice to see storylines set during the war - I'd love to see more of this, which I think would even be better suited to a TV series than a film. Oh well, at least we'll get a film of it.
When you think about it, the show couldn't go on too much longer, without stepping on the metaphorical toes of the storyline used in the sequel(s).
There was no problem here - the TV series considered Terminator 3 onwards to be non-canon, and it was a separate storyline continued from T2 (and even events from the first two films were changed, mainly the dates when things took place).
Put it this way - I suspect that John Connor will be older than 16 in T4, and not someone who's just travelled forward in time.
There's also the obvious point that they stood on the metaphorical toes of T3 straight away, by the rather notable event of a nuclear holocaust not taking place in 2004...
it seems the real purpose of the show (or at least one of the main goals) was to renew interest in the Terminator storyline.
I don't know how the funding works for these things - perhaps they were eager to give the rights with this in mind, but I don't see why Fox would want to renew interest in a film they wouldn't profit from.
If the purpose was to renew interest, I wish the franchise holders would have done more to fund it, and hence secure its continuation...
Two seasons, about 30-ish episodes IIRC, isn't so bad as things go. But the problem is that due to the lack of any kind of notice, I'm left with the feeling of only seeing half a story - as if I'd been watching a film that cut out half way through. Sure, the first half might have been really really good, but you'd be annoyed - and you'd never recommend it to anyone else for watching.
Whilst I realise that a lack of long term planning seems to be common for networks like Fox, it seems like most other shows have had a chance to wrap up their story, whether they went on for 10 seasons, or were cancelled after a few episodes. Even Firefly got a DVD to finish up. Rome is another example which was cancelled after only the second season, but they knew in advance, so could pick up the pace and at least tell a complete story.
Terminator OTOH ended on a cliffhanger in Season Two, with many loose ends unanswered through the season. To add to that, Season One suffered due to the writer's strike, and that also had many loose ends that were simply dropped and never resolved. Given that season two had several episodes in the middle that were slow moving and didn't seem to go anywhere, there would have been opportunity to drop some material out to finish the story, if only they knew in advance.
Thankfully they'd made the decision to keep the storyline a separate story from the canon of the films - and a good thing too, what use is half a story to the franchise? Which is a shame, because it was a good story they were telling.
As an aside, I'm curious what ratings are considered "popular" in the US. Here in the UK, over 10 million would be mainstream major success, and about 3 million would still be okay - and that's for a mainstream terrestrial channel. Of course there are also much more people in the US - but I was also under the impression of there being a lot more channels. Given the hundreds of channels of rubbish that gets churned out, it seems odd that good shows have to fight to survive...
Virgin 1, which showed Terminator in the UK, gets ratings of the order of hundreds of thousands ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/oct/02/tvratings ), which would be considered good for a non-terrestrial channel. I'd be curious to know what the UK figures for Terminator were like (they were over a million for the debut, record ratings for the channel - http://www.digital-tv.co.uk/blog/terminator-debut-breaks-virgin-1-viewing-figures.html - but I realise it would've dropped off since). Anyone know?
Indeed the dates are interesting, but given that the movie will probably be much more popular that the series, I'd say it's the other way round: it'll be the movie that generates advertising and hype, and it seems sad to cancel the TV series now. Instead, it may have been better to have started a series shortly after T4...
A simpler explanation is that this show was just another attempt to increase the profits of the terminator franchise.
I don't think that in itself a problem - I'm looking forward to seeing Terminator 4, after all - I guess the problem was trying to cash in on the name, but also Fox expecting it could be done on the cheap.
Whether it was an attempt to make profit or not, I've always thought a TV series spin off would be interesting to see - in particular, showing stories set during the war (which this series did to some degree, and which Season 3 would have shown far more of, by the looks of how it ended). I don't really care who does it, as long as it's done reasonable well (and I think this show was generally good), and as long as they actually follow through with it.
But instead Fox give us a half-story that's cut off on a cliffhanger, with lots of loose ends around. It means that although I loved it, it's useless to the Franchise as a whole (unless someone else continues that story). I also fear it makes it far less likely that anyone else will want to do a TV series based on it (because of the expectation of failure, but also the confusion in all the additional storylines that have to be considered non-canon).
And I'd rather have a strip search than a kick in the teeth. But I think the point is that people would rather not have this scanning machine, nor a strip search (since they are basically the same thing, which is the whole point being made).
So all that needs to be done is to find a 17 year old who does a "suggestive pose" whilst being scanned, then the owners of the machine can be sent to prison on child porn charges...