Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

*The Expanse* To End On Syfy With Season 3, Will Be Shopped Elsewhere By Alcon

#1
C C Offline
No surprise. The entertainment world (slash audience) still isn't quite ready for adult space-opera. Just the *Star Wars* stuff for kiddies, the safe-conduct character stiffness of the *Star Trek* franchise, and the deluge of comic-book superhero movies and shows (er, slapstick antics of the computer generated version of live-action animation).

Considering a medium that retrospectively chopped "space-cowboy" fare like *Firefly* off at the knees with just 14 episodes, it doesn't even like "cute, laid-back, and anachronistically unrealistic" when it's not specifically aimed at the kiddies.

'The Expanse’ To End On Syfy With Season 3, Will Be Shopped Elsewhere By Alcon
http://deadline.com/2018/05/the-expanse-...202388026/

When the third-season is finally done, I guess we'll still binge-watch it even knowing it'll probably end on a yet another forever unresolved cliffhanger in the land of aborted speculative fiction ventures.

~
Reply
#2
Syne Offline
For some reason the Expanse never caught my attention, although I loved Battlestar Galactica. Did it compare favorably to BSG?
Reply
#3
C C Offline
(May 11, 2018 06:02 PM)Syne Wrote: For some reason the Expanse never caught my attention, although I loved Battlestar Galactica. Did it compare favorably to BSG?

No FTL drives, hyperspace transitions, etc. So far the events transpire within the interplanetary politics of the solar system.

*Battlestar Galactica* was probably mildly better with the personal drama side of getting a viewer wrapped-up in the characters' personal issues, struggles, and development. So far *The Expanse* also lacks the pervading god or gods mysticism that played behind BG events and resulted in that ending that provoked a lot of disappointment. (Again: Divine intervention was advertised well in advance, so who knows what blindspot the disappointed fans and critics were wallowing in during all those seasons of BG).

In certain respects watching *The Expanse* feels as if I'm instead reading a science fiction novel. I don't know if the elements of the original literature in its own context was really "new enough" to deserve to be nominated for awards or not. But when adapted to the screen the latter should have garnered some nominations as well as the one Hugo it apparently did win.

The first season had a dash of film noir about it with regard to one of the characters who was a detective on Ceres (arguably provoked a mental flash of "Blade Runner" occasionally).

~
Reply
#4
stryder Offline
The problem with most scifi is that it's built around a particular dystopia and that the overall planning of the universe in which the story exist can be extremely linear.  This means that once that story has played out, it becomes up to a batch of writers to team up and try to produce something that seems "naturally" to follow on and unfortunately that isn't always the case.  

Many scifi series have suffered from the change of direction, where particular protagonists change their entire ethical make-up as the new stories diverge so far from the original.

One of the most prolific deaths to scifi series is the "coming of religion", someone gets the great idea to take something that most scifi buffs are actually attempting to escape and place it as a question in the scifi.  (Examples of this was occurrences in Quantum Leap, Sliders and a number of other series that are too great a number to mention.)  For the most part scifi breaks religious doctrine by being based upon a world that isn't necessarily dominated by "faith" (although in such shows as The 100 religion and faith exists as apart of the social castes and is more politics than railroading faith into the limelight.)

Currently though for some reason television has steered clear of The Sprawl trilogy and the subsequent Cyberpunk scene that wrote many fan stories set within the same work.  (Gibson, Sterling, etc )

P.K.Dick stated something during an interview once about his method of story inspiration being to imagine a utopia and then to consider what would cause that utopia to fall apart, as the stories are written from both the breakdown of such societies dealing with the changes through its demise or from those that choose to attempt to remain.  Incidentally the man was prolific when it came to universe building.

A friend brought to my attention the other day the Space Theatre that was/is EVE-Online in regards to a real world story of a guy that literally crushed a vast corporate/alliance by literally going rogue and handing the space stations they controlled over to independent operators while selling assets worth around $18,000 off.

Perhaps that's future of scifi, where penmanship is swapped for the followings of ad-lib ex nauseam (a band of cheeky gamer/actor misfits living in a virtual world) and streamed "live". The problem however is being in a virtualised universe where people maintain their characters over just "casually playing".
Reply
#5
Syne Offline
Many good/great works of sci-fi included religion, as it is essential to a well fleshed out world. BSG, Stargate, Dune, etc..

Sci-fi has far more fans than the ~7% atheist/agnostic in the US and ~20% who don't believe in a god worldwide.
Reply
#6
C C Offline
(May 12, 2018 09:49 AM)stryder Wrote: . . . Perhaps that's future of scifi, where penmanship is swapped for the followings of ad-lib ex nauseam (a band of cheeky gamer/actor misfits living in a virtual world) and streamed "live". The problem however is being in a virtualised universe where people maintain their characters over just "casually playing".


Prisoners might opt for being dedicated members of a role-playing sim community, as an alternative to boredom in their cells and confined spaces.

As long as there were the same lackluster payments to family members, migrant domestic workers could fancy it as an alternative to traveling to the potential patriarchal abuses of the Middle East. If a local village had the equipment and the fiber-optic access, they might not even have to travel to a neighboring city that provided facilities for both residing in and being hooked-up to during the required stint of indentureship.

But one really has to wonder about a combination of convicts and non-Anglophone speaking maids providing the bulk of sim-world entertainment for the next step up in the reality show market.

~
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)