Sci-Fi movies, TV Series

Radrook said:
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BTW:
My parents took me to see the film Them when I was approx. four years old. Unfortunately, I became ill after the film due to the nervous tension that I had experienced while watching it at the local movie theater. Once home, I suddenly began shaking with fear imagining one of those huge insects converging on me, and feeling as if I was about to black out. I only regained my composure after I had thrown up.
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I really liked Them! from 1954, although the ants looked a little cheesy, even then. I thought Tarantula from 1955 had much better special effects for its day, better dialogue and acting.

Actually I think The Thing (1951) got them all started. Great suspense, good acting, and great monster burning scene. What a role for James Arness! I believe that was the first movie to use someone set on fire. Pretty hot stuff.... [groan]
 
OldFeller said:
I own Forbidden Planet on DVD and it doesn't hold up to multiple viewings. It's too gimmicky and relies too much on the novelty of the robot, the spaceship.

Now The Day The Earth Stood Still does entertain no matter how many times you view it. That's because it relies on the story telling of regular people and their everyday lives and instead treats the sci-fi aspects more like a lens to filter out it's message.
Star Trek TOS tried the same thing. Try to give people something to think about.

I can never read books about things that don't exist. So reading SciFi/Fantasy doesn't interest me.
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I've seen the original Day The Earth Stood Still at least twice and the remake once. I still think the original was better. Like you, I'd rather watch SciFi than read about it.

As for the OP:
Movies: Favorites are Independence Day and The Fifth Element. I also liked the first couple of X-Men movies.
TV Shows: Eureka (watched the entire series 3 times), Grimm (also 3 times), which I guess is a combo of horror and SciFi. I was a Star Trek fan so I decided to try the newest Star Trek series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on a whim and found I liked it enough to stay with it. I also really liked The Orville and hope it will get at least one more season.
 

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles series was was a worthy successor to the first two Terminator films. Much better than the films that followed, TTSCC was more faithful to the story line.

TTSCC picks up shortly after T2, with John about 16 years old and Sarah having gotten over the misandry she was suffering from so bitterly in T2. There were many callbacks to characters and events of the first two films.

Canceled early, all we got for an ending to TTSCC was a glimpse of what was meant to follow. It would be easy to pick up the story where it ended though even today, carrying on with a new cast.
 
ChiroDoc said:
I really liked Them! from 1954, although the ants looked a little cheesy, even then. I thought Tarantula from 1955 had much better special effects for its day, better dialogue and acting.

Actually I think The Thing (1951) got them all started. Great suspense, good acting, and great monster burning scene. What a role for James Arness! I believe that was the first movie to use someone set on fire. Pretty hot stuff.... [groan]
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I recently watched the film Them to see exactly what had scared me so much at age four, Well, you are right, the ants do look that way. Much later I watched the film Tarantula and I agree that it looks far more realistic than Them and is a much better film.

Also, I was very impressed by the intense drama in the 1951 version of The Thing. Later I assumed that the remake was deviating from the original written story. Then I found out that the remake is exactly what the writer, John W. Campbell Jr. had intended to convey and that the 1951 version was the one that had deviated from his concept.

Based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella Who Goes There?, it tells the story of a group of American researchers in Antarctica who encounter the eponymous "Thing", an extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates, other organisms.
The Thing (1982 film) - Wikipedia

Curiously, I had never made connection between James Arness who starred in the TV series Gunsmoke, and the main actor in the film The Thing. I guess I must have been too focused on the monster to notice individual personalities too much at that time. Not the first time that I have been surprised in this way.

James Arness (born James King Aurness; May 26, 1923 – June 3, 2011) was an American actor, best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon for 20 years in the series Gunsmoke. He has the distinction of having played the role of Dillon in five decades: 1955 to 1975 in the weekly series, then in Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge (1987) and four more made-for-television Gunsmoke films in the 1990s. In Europe, Arness reached cult status for his role as Zeb Macahan in the Western series How the West Was Won. He was the older brother of actor Peter Graves.
 
Radrook said:
Yes I like sci fi and have written three sci fi novels and many short stories which are posted at Story Star.
I liked the Star Wars TV series. My favorite Sci fi movie is Forbidden Planet. Especially the scene where the monster from the Id attacks and the crew fights back.




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Like many Sc Fi movies, this one is based on much older stories.
It is considered to be loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest .
One wonders where Shakespeare got his idea from.

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia
 
cherylpamela66 said:
This is from the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action" I think my favorite is The Trouble with Tribbles, Assignment: Earth. What about you guys?
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I prefer sci fi that extrapolates present societal and technological realities into the near or far future. So that, along with the skill with which the concepts were presented, was always the criterion which determined my personal reaction to Star Trek episodes. The more statistically improbable the hypothetical scenarios became, the less interest I had in watching them.
 
I remember reading John Campbell's editorials. A nearby library had back issues of Analog going back many years. I always preferred it to Galaxy and I have years worth of 1970s Analog issues in my basement from subsequent subscriptions.

It was interesting to go back and see the reactions to L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and Dianetics in its formative years. He was all but universally despised by fans and fellow authors. Only Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury really bought in to the idea of manipulating the masses in this way.
 
Radrook said:
I prefer sci fi that extrapolates present societal and technological realities into the near or far future. So that, along with the skill with which the concepts were presented, was always the criterion which determined my personal reaction to Star Trek episodes. The more statistically improbable the hypothetical scenarios became, the less interest I had in watching them.
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IMO, the best sc fi is not really about science, rather it explores the human condition in an unrealistic setting. For some of us, it stimulates thinking about contemporary issues. Some of the better Star Trek movies did this.
 
Warrigal said:
Like many Sc Fi movies, this one is based on much older stories.
It is considered to be loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest .
One wonders where Shakespeare got his idea from.

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia
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Like all fiction writers, Shakespeare derived ideas from personal experiences and the modification of ideas which had been expressed before albeit in different ways. This article provides the surprising details:
What were the sources of Shakespeare's plays? - eNotes.com
 
Radrook said:
Like all faction writers, Shakespeare derived ideas from personal experiences and the modification of ideas which had been expressed before albeit in different ways. This article provides the surprising details:
What were the sources of Shakespeare's plays? - eNotes.com
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Thanks for the reference. It seems that The Tempest was a Shakespeare original

Tempest- Shakespeare Original. (There is a story that Shakespeare wrote this play based upon a bet that he couldn't use all of Aristotles's Unities in a play- Shakespeare tends to break these rules of theater. Tempest is the only play that follows all of the Unities. If so, it seems, Shakespeare won the bet.
 
Warrigal said:
the best sc fi is not really about science, rather it explores the human condition in an unrealistic setting
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I wouldn't say "unrealistic" since it is mostly just about extrapolated settings and situations.

Look at the movie and series Hanna and before that a somewhat similar story in the series Orphan Black. Both involved human genetic engineering, and in some ways resemble the movie Gattaca.
 
Warrigal said:
Thanks for the reference. It seems that The Tempest was a Shakespeare original

Tempest- Shakespeare Original. (There is a story that Shakespeare wrote this play based upon a bet that he couldn't use all of Aristotles's Unities in a play- Shakespeare tends to break these rules of theater. Tempest is the only play that follows all of the Unities. If so, it seems, Shakespeare won the bet.
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Thanks for the info as well!

I should have qualified my statement with "usually" since originality is not an impossibility.

Here is yet another opinion about The Tempest:

Inspiration for The Tempest

Shakespeare is thought to have based his play The Tempest on a real-life shipwreck. William Strachey’s A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, an account of his experience during the wreck of the ship Sea Venture on the island of Bermuda, was written in 1609, and many scholars believe that the Bard read this account and used it as inspiration for The Tempest. This isn’t as clear-cut as all that, because the account of the Sea Venture was only published later, but it’s possible Shakespeare heard something of the account before it was printed.
A Short Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Unities, in drama, the three principles derived by French classicists from Aristotle’s Poetics; they require a play to have a single action represented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day. These principles were called, respectively, unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time.
Unities | Classical, Aristotle & Tragedy

Those wish to read The Tempest Online can do so here:
https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-tempest/read/
 
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dilettante said:
I wouldn't say "unrealistic" since it is mostly just about extrapolated settings and situations.

Look at the movie and series Hanna and before that a somewhat similar story in the series Orphan Black. Both involved human genetic engineering, and in some ways resemble the movie Gattaca.
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Haven't encountered either of those works, probably because either they were streamed, or not available in Australia. My only streaming service is Netflix.

Thanks for your suggestion. I will look them up.

Just looked up Hanna and I think I have seen some of it somewhere. It is described as a "surreal fairy tale" with "omnipresent symbolism", with a "fairy tale theme" of childhood innocence confronting the modern "synthetic" world.

Hanna (film) - Wikipedia

If I come across Orphan Black I will take a look. Again, I think I might have seen some of it.
 
dilettante said:
I wouldn't say "unrealistic" since it is mostly just about extrapolated settings and situations.

Look at the movie and series Hanna and before that a somewhat similar story in the series Orphan Black. Both involved human genetic engineering, and in some ways resemble the movie Gattaca.
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True. it can be considered tantamount to saying that a science fiction story based on the Ukraine vs Russian war or based on the USA China/Taiwan situation would be unrealistic. On the other hand, equivocation might be involved.
 
Warrigal said:
IMO, the best sc fi is not really about science, rather it explores the human condition in an unrealistic setting. For some of us, it stimulates thinking about contemporary issues. Some of the better Star Trek movies did this.
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True, the message or messages underlying a story provide it with intrinsic value. Of course, not all audiences are capable of appreciating such underlying concepts and are only capable of enjoying stories on a very superficial level.
 
Radrook said:
True, the message or messages underlying a story provide it with intrinsic value. Of course, not all audiences are capable of appreciating such underlying concepts and are only capable of enjoying stories on a very superficial level.
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An example - The Star Trek Insurrection was clearly (or not so clearly) a commentary on the ethnic cleansing going on in the Balkans around that time. The Ba'ku and the Son'a are ethnically one people but having been separated for a long time, they are at war over the same territory. The Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats are essentially the same people divided by different religious practices. The Bosnians are muslims but they are ethnically much the same as the Serbians and Croatians.
 
Warrigal said:
An example - The Star Trek Insurrection was clearly (or not so clearly) a commentary on the ethnic cleansing going on in the Balkans around that time. The Ba'ku and the Son'a are ethnically one people but having been separated for a long time, they are at war over the same territory. The Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats are essentially the same people divided by different religious practices. The Bosnians are Muslims but they are ethnically much the same as the Serbians and Croatians.
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Then there was this one. These two aliens considered each other different species because one was black on the right side and the other on the left side.

 
Katherine said:
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and i also liked

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Gee! How do you get these large illustrations to show? All I can get is a little sqaure.
 
cherylpamela66 said:
I probably didn't see the thread, Does anyone like Sci-Fi? I especially am a Star Trek, and Star Wars fan. I also love stuff like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Quote: Spock would say "Live long and prosper" he was my favorite character, and Leonard Nimoy was sure awesome like all the actors, etc.
View attachment 363836
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I liked Star Trek but never took to Star Wars. Spock was my favourite too.
 

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