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If you’re a fan of classic sci-fi TV shows – and let’s face it, if you’ve ended up here then there’s a good chance that you are – check out the Sci-fi Airshow website. I just hope they find the time to add The Liberator to their collection at some point, as everyone knows it’s the most gorgeous sci-fi ship of all time.
After the first couple of episodes of FlashForward I came to the conclusion that most of the characters were complete idiots. Now that I’ve watched the whole series, I can honestly say that my opinion of the characters hasn’t changed much: they’re still idiots.
That said, by the time it finished, I was actually quite enjoying it. Certainly enough that I’m annoyed that yet another ambitious plotline has been cut short before it really had a chance to get going. After its mid-season hiatus the show returned stronger and more compelling than before. The intertwining paths of the characters became more convoluted (in a good way), and they’d finally realised that their futures weren’t set in stone. That still didn’t stop any of them being idiots, especially in the last episode as they all inexorably followed paths that almost deliberately led to their flash forwards coming true – even when that wasn’t a good thing.
But now its over. No second series. No answers to the many outstanding questions. No incentive for me to ever watch another drama with a long-term storyline ever again. That’s the saddest thing about FlashForward’s cancellation: not the fact that it’s joined the long ranks of prematurely cancelled shows, but that it asked for an investment from the viewer that will never be repaid. Please stop doing that. Whomever it is who commissions these things, please treat the viewer with a bit more respect.
I’ve suggested in the past that the commission for a programme should include a contingency fund to allow for an extra episode or two to be produced post-cancellation in order to tie up the loose ends. I fear that unless something like that happens viewers will just become less and less inclined to start watching programmes with an ongoing dramatic narrative. That, in turn, just makes it even less likely that such programmes will be commissioned in the first place, and that really would be a shame, not just for the viewers, but for our culture as a whole.
I watched the last episode of Defying Gravity last night. It was an excellent series – the best sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time. For a start the “sci” was largely believable, while the “fi” was a lot more than just shooting aliens with lasers.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s set in the near future, and is based within our own solar system. No warp drives. No extra-solar alien planets populated by space-faring races. No teleport devices – in fact no shore leave at all, unless you count 20 minutes or so in a refrigerated space suit on Venus. What it did have was strong characters, made all the stronger by gradually unfolding back-stories, excellent sets which looked like they could have come straight out of the NASA design book, and an ongoing plot which, though slow at times, did have the effect of drawing you in if you were prepared to stick with it.
An ongoing plot, however, pretty much guaranteed that ratings would progress mostly downwards, rather than up (it’s a disincentive for people to tune in halfway through). It didn’t start strongly enough to overcome that, so only made it as far as one series. For that reason, even though I thoroughly enjoyed it, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch it unless you quite like the idea of being left with only a fraction of the story completed.
Alas, it’s an all too familiar tale: Programme gets commissioned; Writers plan for a multi-season storyline; programme gets cancelled part-way through the plot, which rarely gets resolved (unless the producers manage to wrangle the money for a film or comic book out of someone). If you’ve stumbled across this page because you did watch Defying Gravity, then you might like to follow this link to find the resolution to a few of the dangling plot lines.
So farewell DG, you were too good for the TV of our time. Oh, and could you TV execs please stop commissioning series if you’re not going to show any commitment to the integrity of the story. At the very least, try to find another way to deal with this issue, other than just leaving your viewers in limbo. Again.
There’s been a long history of alien fascination with cows, from alleged cow mutilations to full-on abductions.
Quite what aliens want with cows, we don’t know. Perhaps Douglas Adams was close-but-wrong, and it’s the cows, not the mice, that are actually superior pan-galactic beings. The fact that we turn a lot of them into inferior pan-fried products probably won’t do much to gain their assistance when the Vogons arrive. Of course we have our own theory about the alien-cow relationship.
Having drawn a cartoon cow we decided it needed more than one outing in our little cartoon universe, so our little Daisy got promoted to the heading of this site. It’s right up the top of the page, if you missed it. Daisy appears a couple of times: letting you know that we post a new comic fortnightly (every other Thursday, to be precice), and getting abducted by a passing UFO.
If you’re a big fan of the whole cow-being-abducted-by-a-UFO meme, then you might also be interested in a lamp modelled on just that scenario. UK readers can buy it from Firebox.com for the princely (or is that pricey?) sum of about £80. The original manufacturer’s website is worth a look, too – especially as it gives you an excuse to dig out those anaglyphic glasses you’ve got buried away in the back of a drawer for the full 50s B-movie effect.
I know, I know. You’re an alien-cow-kidnap fan, but can’t really justify spending £80 on a lamp. I understand completely. Or perhaps you’re reading this in the future, having missed out on the limited run of 2,000 original lamps. If you don’t mind putting in a bit of Blue Peter effort though, you can also make your own much more cheaply. You could even save a little money by foregoing the “Package of farm animals” and instead printing a picture of our little Daisy onto cardboard to insert into the evil abduction beam of doom.
(Click for the SVG version)
I watched the second episode of FlashForward last night. On the plus side it’s nice to get a series at roughly the same time that it airs in the US. On the downside all the characters are idiots.
Basically it’s a twist on the old time-travel paradox problem. In this case everyone (as in the entire world) has seen an excerpt from their life in about six months time. Because they all saw the same time period there’s enough corroboration for everyone in the world to know exactly which point in time it is, down to the minute. The characters all seem to be concerned about whether they saw the “real” future which can’t be changed, or just a possible future.
Listen up idiot characters, what you saw was at best a possible future, and at worst a poorly thought out plot hole!
Think about it. If you knew that at a specific time in six months you could effectively send a message back in time to yourself, do you really think you’d spend that couple of minutes on the toilet or having an ultrasound? Of course not. You’d spend that couple of minutes intensively looking at a message to your former self – most people would send back the lottery numbers or share prices, but others would warn themselves to have a health check, or to look in on their mother more frequently. But nobody would just be carrying on their normal lives for that couple of minutes.
There is, of course, the argument that we’re watching them the “first time” through this time loop, so they’re seeing mundane futures because they haven’t lived through them to change them yet. But that doesn’t mesh with the fact that FBI guy has a wall full of clues about the flash forward – he must have gone through it at least once.
Which does raise the question as to why FBI guy isn’t keeping a nice summary sheet in the middle of his board. Why all the rubbish with the cupcake woman, when he could have just left himself a note to say “Go to Pigeon, Utah. Doll factory. Watch out it’s booby trapped.” I’m sure the dead policewoman would have appreciated that at least.
The underlying problem is simply that they all saw the same moment in time. If everyone had seen a different moment – some in six months, some in six years – then most people wouldn’t know exactly when their flash forward moment takes place, and therefore wouldn’t be able to send themselves a useful message.
Unless the writers are going to pull some amazing paradox-nullifying plot out of thin air, I fear that I won’t be able to watch the rest of this series without constantly wondering why they’re all complete idiots, rather than lottery winners having a grump about how many other people won that week. But I thought we’d get a badly thought out time paradox story as soon as I saw Brannon Braga’s name on the credits – it always used to be a red flag for such stories back in the days of Star Trek:The Next Generation as far as I was concerned.
Either way, we’ve had some printed, A5 size. The full details are on our new “Promoting The Greys” page, complete with various associated downloads.
We love the original Star Wars trilogy, but like so much sci-fi it’s got more plot holes than actual plot. Of course “popular sci-fi films” plus “lots of plot holes” equals “great source of material for comic strips” – and indeed we have dozens of Star Wars jokes just waiting for us to draw some suitable images to go with them.
In the meantime, you might like this article about some of the (many) bad design decisions in the Star Wars universe.
The comments are worth a read as well, and one comment pointed us to this great parody: The Inbox of Nardo Pace, The Empire’s Worst Engineer. Well worth a read if you’re familiar with the original Star Wars trilogy and its many, many plot holes.
A little late to the party, we’ve both managed to catch up with this serial over the weekend. In short, it proved to be one of the best sci-fi dramas to have aired on British TV in a long time.
Earlier series of Torchwood seemed to relish the post-watershed timing as an opportunity to push innuendo and sex. All that was missing was a poster on the wall of The Hub saying “You don’t have to be bisexual to work here… actually, you do”. Not so much “Dr Who for adults” as “Dr Who written by hormonal teenagers”.
Children of Earth, however, seriously toned down the sexuality and cranked up the drama, conspiracy and threat – and it was all the better for it. Yes, there were some plot holes – but nothing disastrous. Yes, some of the special effects could have been a little better in parts – but they were still worlds ahead of the wobbly-walls of BBC sci-fi from the past. But taking it as a whole demonstrated that the BBC can still create gritty and powerful sci-fi drama.
One thing I’ve disliked about the renaissance of Dr Who has been the move from deep, episodic stories to simplistic “must wrap it up in 45 minutes” plots. Hopefully someone at the BBC will take on board the generally positive reaction to Torchwood: Children of Earth and re-think that decision. There’s room for both types of storytelling, and a few more two- or even three-part episodes certainly wouldn’t go amiss.
Thanks to volunteers from around the world, many of our comics are also available in other languages:
To read more about our translations click here.
If you are interested in becoming a translator, please email greys@peppertop.com
