As some of you know, my primary interest for sci fi and fantasy is movies and television. I have had very few that have kept my interest over the years, but they were major ones. Currently there is very little on television that interests me... and that brings me around to that sorry state we know as Sci Fi Channel.
While all other networks are moving forward with their programming, SFC seems to be stuck in the rut of 'We can make sci fi movies..it's easy and the viewers love it'. WRONG! They have a book or flowchart of some sort that their little group of writers references every month in order to come up with a tv movie. IT likely reads more like a chinese menu. Take Mythology from column A, Monster/God from Column B, Drop in choice of male/female scientist group, then match with military counterparts trying to solve the same problem.
VOILA! You have the formula for ANY SFC tv movie they are passing off as 'science fiction'.
Spiders, snakes, ugly whatevers from from some experiment, Norse mythology, Sumerian, Greek, Egyptian, (don't know if they've tried tapping the American or Eastern Indian mythos yet), and to top it off... terrible special effects! Star Wars when it first came out was better than what they have now! They likely have two or three guys working with some low end graphics interface creating all these things. But the stories... the dialogue... !!!! Aaaah!
I got sucked into one story about Ba'al the God of Storms... bleh.. simply because it seemed original.. then I realized the archeologist guy looked familiar and realized they had used him in another movie and lo and behold, they showed the other story a week later. Don't even get me started on Terrror at Snakehead LAke. (scuse me for gagging). Despite that having one of my all time favorite actors, Bruce Boxleitner, it sucked so bad it blew! (pardon the language) Even he skirted language at Comicon to describe what he had been doing since B5 just to keep his SAG card. 'It's nice to have some dialogue and story that has some actual... something I can sink my teeth into.' or something like that. He was referring to reprising his role as Sheridan in Babylon 5. That's another story anyway.
So, this brings me around to a show that, despite it having all the above mentioned bad heritage and earmarks, I am sucked into watching Eureka every week. The plots are all formulaic, I can see the outcome from the teaser (something I haven't seen since Voyager was on), and the science is way out there. What has me hooked (and it's the only thing that I pay attention to) is the characters. Even that is kind of wearing thin. A few twists and turns here and there, just to keep me on my toes, but the cast generally works good together and they don't take themselves seriously too much, how could they with clunky dialogue. But, hey, it's a job! IF the writers would only take a look outside their little cubicle and the 'Holy Book' of whatever formula their using, it might even become something better!
But I'm talking fantasy there...oh well.
I don't watch Heroes, it's to close to being 'drama' for me, Stargate..puhleese... there's nothing left to watch. Oh, there's Lost, which if I had gotten into it at the beginning I might be watching but it's too late for that. Oh well.
Is there hope on the horizon for sci fi? I don't think so, with all the good writers moving on to movies there's no one left to play in the small sandbox anymore.
(Don't start on Star Wars...that doesn't count and neither does the new series.)
Next time folks.. if I remember.