New SF on TV (1999/12/07)

New SF on TV

Posted by Dominic T. on 1999/12/07 12:20

Well, I watched Farscape again last night, and found it reasonably
appealing.
The short hairy alien is rather grating on the nerves though.
I'm going to carry on watching it. For those people coming in at this late
stage, you've not missed anything of significant plotness. It's
situation-SF.

Meanwhile, I'm probably not going to bother with C5's new thing tonight, but
I thought I'd mention it after so many people were unaware of Farscape last
week.

- - - - - - - - -
9:00 pm Doom Watch
Compelling drama about a Cambridge astrophysicist and scientific watchdog
whose research on
a cheap form of energy falls into the wrong hands. The thief plans to use
his findings to create
the world's first man-made nuclear black hole.
- - - - - - - - -

Dominic

"It's worse than dog-eat-dog.
It's Dog-doesn't-return-dog's-phone-calls." [Woody Allen (allegedly)]

New SF on TV

Posted by Daniel Celano on 1999/12/07 13:18

Just catching up on the chat...

Farscape is "Buck Rogers in the 1990's", so if taken lightly it's not
too bad.

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio
every week - could this be a remake.

The Ascot now looks like an reject from... I dunno it just looks
terrible...

Which is worse the ending of ST:DS9 with the wormhole aliens zapping the
dominion fleet
or B5 and I don't want to be alone? They are both pretty bad!

Daniel

New SF on TV

Posted by Adrian Long on 1999/12/07 17:26

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio
every week - could this be a remake.

From what I can tell it's a kind of remake / continuation crossbreed - but

don't quote me on that. The original was held in high regard, if not
exactly popular at the time... if this one follows in it's footsteps it
should be fairly passable...

Adrian...
etc...

New SF on TV

Posted by Chris L on 1999/12/07 19:44

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Celano <celano@>
To: <chat@>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 1999 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: New SF on TV

Just catching up on the chat...

Farscape is "Buck Rogers in the 1990's", so if taken lightly it's not
too bad.

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio
every week - could this be a remake.

It is a remake, the Radio Times said so.

The Ascot now looks like an reject from... I dunno it just looks
terrible...

Yup. And when I walked past yesterday, the staff seemed to outnumber
customers.

Which is worse the ending of ST:DS9 with the wormhole aliens zapping the
dominion fleet
or B5 and I don't want to be alone? They are both pretty bad!

Well, each is an example of there being no way for the heroes to survive
the firefight, so the bad guys just get taken away.
Much of a muchness really.

Chris Lyth. (clyth@)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
I am a very concientious man. When I throw rocks at
seagulls, I leave no tern unstoned.
Ogden Nash

New SF on TV

Posted by Philip Ayres on 1999/12/07 21:45

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio
every week - could this be a remake.

It is a remake, the Radio Times said so.

There were some videos of the original 3 or 4 years back - if you look on
the insides of some older Dr who coverdc there should be a piccy.

The Ascot now looks like an reject from... I dunno it just looks
terrible...

Yup. And when I walked past yesterday, the staff seemed to outnumber
customers.

Still to carry out a personal inspection.

On the subject of Sci Fi on TV as part of their Akira Kurosawa (sp) season
C4 are showing Godzilla, Godzilla's Revenge Godzilla vs Hedorah and return
of Godzilla over the Christmas period. Original Japanese with sub titles.
A new film is pending in Japan...

New SF on TV

Posted by Chris Turner on 1999/12/08 09:42

On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, chris lyth wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Celano <celano@>

[Snipped pointless quoted headers]

Just catching up on the chat...

Farscape is "Buck Rogers in the 1990's", so if taken lightly it's not
too bad.

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio
every week - could this be a remake.

It is a remake, the Radio Times said so.

Then the Radio Times (may their sales continue to fund my paycheck *8) are
wrong? It looked like it was a direct follow on from the original series.
I quite liked it - especially that nifty computer system with the angels.

The Ascot now looks like an reject from... I dunno it just looks
terrible...

Yup. And when I walked past yesterday, the staff seemed to outnumber
customers.

Well lets see what it's like in a week or so - we may find that we're the
only people in there. They're hardly likely to mind if we ask them to
turn the bloody music down a bit since they'd be stupid to scare off their
remaining custom. On second thoughts...

Chris

christ@ #include <stddisclaimer.h> http://www.instituteofcorrection.org.uk/

"So this is really me? A no-style gimbo with teeth druids could use as a
place of worship" - Duaine Dibley (Red Dwarf - "Back to Reality")

New SF on TV

Posted by Nick Waterman on 1999/12/08 14:06

Chris Turner said:

Doomwatch was the name of a 1970 series about the end of the world, a
new scenerio every week - could this be a remake.

It is a remake, the Radio Times said so.

Then the Radio Times (may their sales continue to fund my paycheck *8) are
wrong? It looked like it was a direct follow on from the original series.
I quite liked it - especially that nifty computer system with the angels.

The computer with the angels was cool, and borrowing other people's CPU time
to reduce the search time and stuff, yeah, not bad, and not ridiculously
unrealistic eaither (not PRESENT technology, but not made up bollocks)...

... but then there was the silly dancing black hole, bobbing round and round
and up and down, and the gravity that for some reason ony affected you when
the door was open (the door was like a gravity screen? so why didn't they
make the reactor itself out of that stuff?), and EXPLODING black holes? ...
and the sheer distillation of "science is bad" horror stories. A whole
series of anti-science myths gathered together in one chamber of horrors.

I dunno... I suspect I'll stick with it for another couple of episodes at
least... but with the exception of the cool computer system, I thought most
of the episode was pretty dreadful.

Nick Waterman. Senior Systems Administrator, Sony Interactive Services
mailto:nick-sig@ http://www.nilex.co.uk/~nick/
AX25:G7RZQ@#32.GBR.EU #include <stddisclaimer> Team *AMIGA*!
AAAAAA: American Association Against Acronym Abuse Anonymous

New SF on TV

Posted by Asan Tu on 1999/12/08 16:09

... but then there was the silly dancing black hole, bobbing round and

round

and up and down, and the gravity that for some reason ony affected you

when

the door was open (the door was like a gravity screen? so why didn't they
make the reactor itself out of that stuff?), and EXPLODING black holes?

...

and the sheer distillation of "science is bad" horror stories. A whole
series of anti-science myths gathered together in one chamber of horrors.

yes, that silly dancing black hole was a bit iffy. I only caught the second
half of the show (was channel hopping between the news, mcIntyre undercover
and The footie).

It seemed to peak up a bit towards in the end, but what the bloody hell was
all the exploding black hole stuff about?
typical american gung-ho stereotype boss, who doesn't want it all to get out
blah blah blah...
hmmmmmmmm so they grabbed all the power from the national grid to keep it in
check.... right, and I suppose the local power exchanges were built to
handle that amount of electricity flowing through them?

I dunno... I suspect I'll stick with it for another couple of episodes at
least... but with the exception of the cool computer system, I thought

most

of the episode was pretty dreadful.

yes, I agree. Though nowhere near as bad as that dodgy
asteroid-hitting-earth one on ITV a few months back (forgot the name) but
pretty poor. Then again, this was only one show...