Yeah he does have a point it has become a touch deus ex machina. I've been watching the new series as well as working through some of the previous ones I missed for some reason which meant I was introduced to those angel things in reverse so noticed they had now acquired totally different powers and indeed become scary serial killers instead of just temporal inconveniences plus the whole thing about them not looking at each other seemed to have gone completely.
I also noticed the end of one of the David Tennant series the grand solution went from highly plausible time lord death injection gun to super psychic powers from everyone on the planet thinking the same word ... my word at that point was bullshit!
Still a lot of fun tho so I guess I'll forgive it.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to use my laser screw driver (who has sonic?!) to build a mirror hat that allows me to see in 360 degrees in the dark out of an old tea cozy and a pocket watch to stop stone angels sneaking up on me.
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The end of series eps are getting increasingly ridiculous. Saving the earth stopped being enough several series ago, and apparently simply saving this universe is not enough these days either.
Its a real shame you didn't watch Blink first - its the best ep of the new DH in my opinion. Followed by Midnight I think.
Yeah, they didn't seem to care much about looking at each other - although when there were two ranks they tended to be looking in slightly different directions, not by enough...
I dip in and out of DW. It's ok but I would call it fantasy rather than Sci Fi. There's no science in it at all really.
The Deus Ex Machina gets on my nerves big time. Also, having DW as some sort of God is annoying.
I'm glad TP wrote this as he is reverred more than DW and it takes someone of his stature to come out against something so dear to people's hearts.
What the BBC is a hard core Sci Fi, perhaps Icar based...
He's not really against it though - unless I misread - he's saying that it has a number of major flaws but he likes it despite all that?
BSG was hard-ish (hard-ish? no good. Hmm. Firm? ) sci-fi, and if you're looking for a replacement then StarGate Universe (I know, I never got into stargate either, but this is different. Give it a go if you liked BSG) is also, um, firm.
Hard sci-fi as TV is rare, because its a demanding label to comply with. You need the right people involved as early as the writing, as several things just won't work and you can only do so much retconning. US TV is just too quickly written and produced to have this level of auditing as a rule.
Even relatively science-misuse-susceptable individuals can generally get by with firm sci-fi, they just wince once or twice an episode...
I think his main complaint was that people think it's Sci Fi. That's what I meant.
Firm Sci Fi is a good phrase. Sounds like a racing term but I think that's a genre not borrowed enough from.
Yeah - Sci Fi: good to firm.
Blink was a very good episode tho in some ways the presentation of the angels were a bit incongruous with their vampire faces they make more sense in the new version where they rip out your spleen through your ears. In blink they are more of an inconvenience, a very large one I'll grant you although less than it would have been since Hawking came out with this how to guide and if you can't get an LHC then just make sure you have this tshirt handy. In some ways Blink was good because the doctor was a minor character he was the deus ex machina that made it turn out ok admittedly.
I would say BSG flirts with scifi there is relatively little in the way of science to it as with pretty much all series. It was just in BSG the conclusions didn't rely on some piece of slight of hand to wrap things up, a big explosion or space battle was the substitute :S
You could argue that in someways things like house and CSI are closer to hard science fiction than most labeled Sci fi shows. Sure both play fast and loose with the rules of what can and cant be done but there is a element of real science in there to prop up the fiction.
I think it's more than just the speed that shows are produced at I think it's also the fact that even if the writer has the back ground knowledge or urge to get the science right it often doesn't lend itself to the compressed format of tv or film. Explaining something complex in say a hard scifi book well you can stick a few pages in that would give you a fairly good idea what was going on. With a tv show or film there just isn't the time to allow for that sort of thing.
It might be nice to see a rational science based show where instead of every thing being explained as the mystical it boils down to reasonable explanations the conform to scientific understanding. A sort of Scooby do for adults to borrow an idea from the late great Carl Sagan.
There has been a push towards this a bit with things like mythbusters (and even to an extent sceptical shows like the mentalist and bullshit) but it's still very much a veneer of science with a ruddy big explosion to keep things going.
I'd like to take this flimsy excuse to heavily recommend The Mentalist. Its damn good.
It depends what you mean by science fiction. You're coming at it from the scientific method, which is absolutely fine and what you say is true. I always thought that the consistancy (firmness) of sci-fi was more of a measure of the number of times fundamental tenets of Physics were broken in a given episode, as opposed to how well it showcases the scientific method...
Traditionally proper Hard Sci Fi is as close as possible to physics with all it's inconveniences you might get away with one or two violations (like invention of ftl or somesuch) but they need to be consistent.
Yes the mentalist is very good thoughrally enjoyed series 1 now just need to wait for a complete link to watch series 2.
But Sci-Fi is often taken to mean 'future/space'. Wether that's correct or not, I think its what many people mean by the term... and as such, there isn't really any Hard Sci-Fi about. BSG didn't defy physics too wildly (obviously FTL is an exclusion here) although it got inconsistant in places as it went on...
indeed I don't think there are any Hard Sci Fi tv shows or movies. Quite a lot of books tho
Yeah - guess you need the time to explain your working in order to get Hard certification ;) Would require far too much exposition to work in TV film really.
Although maybe it could be worked in. Really like the way Castle has a char called "Esposito" who is used pretty much for that in the first series :D
You'll be waiting a little while for Mentailist complete S2 - its still being aired. Currently on e21 though, so probably not too long...
Yeah I've been keeping an eye on it and I've got a fair number of series 2 but no luck with ep 2 so far, I could probably get the SD version but so figured I'd just wait since I was working my way through DR who anyway.
Ah castle I should catch up on series 2 I love that show :D
I've noticed the title has a little of Baby vs Rhino about it