I slogged all the way through the Herbert books. Haven’t read any of the newer books. I thought Chapterhouse Dune wasn’t too bad. At least in comparison to some of the others.

I don’t care for “Medium” and won’t watch it. Maybe 20 years ago, but I don’t like the current wave of psychic medium nonsense (Ghost Whisperer, Medium, The Dead Zone, et nauseum). Given that the creative parties involved in these shows include “real” psychics (Allison Dubois, James Van Praagh), I think the intent is to promote psychics as reality, even if “loosely based” fiction. I can’t enjoy them as fiction. YMMV. Whereas I really liked Buffy and Angel. I had to be encouraged to watch Buffy as I originally didn’t until about halfway through the first season someone told me it was actually pretty good, so I gave it a try. It’s not the mysticism per se, it’s the attitude and approach. Firefly was the same way. I was cautious when someone described it as having a “psychic”, but River was more than that, and wasn’t a typical psychic at that.

A book series I enjoyed even with the mystical bent was the Mageworld books by Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald (The Price of the Stars, Starpilot’s Grave, By Honor Betray’d, The Gathering Flame). One of the main characters is something like a Jedi in training, and the mystical elements permeate the story. But I still liked it.

tacitus said:
> It just seems to me that right-wingers are more prone to prefer shows where characters will always end up “doing the right thing” and where good triumphs over evil.

Oddly enough, I tend to prefer that and I’m more of a liberal. So there.

flak said:
> Huge, series long story arcs are hard to pull off. Only Babylon 5 in may experience has managed it,…

Babylon 5 in theory and in actuality are slightly different things. I think how JMS envisioned the story and what really played out were slightly different things. I think he did a stellar job recovering from outside influences he couldn’t control (actors leaving, impending cancelation and last minute reprieve, contract renegotation, etc), but it disrupted the pure flow that I can see was perhaps his original intent. I also personally didn’t like a couple of the choices made by characters, even though I could see the creative intent from JMS.

StevoR said:
> Deanna Troi. Yes, okay she was telepathic (& TP ain’t quite the same as pyschic btw.)

Actually, she was telempathic, which is different still. Telepathic is mental communication, telempathic is sensing of others feelings and emotions, not thoughts and ideas. Star Trek always had the premise that some races naturally have the ability through their brain structure, so it was slightly different than granting humans inexplicable mental powers without rational explanation.

> and then last & by a long margin least, came ‘ST: Enterprise’ – a prequel that contradicted the series, was utterly stale, woefully backward

I am continually amazed by Star Trek’s ability to mangle its own storyline. The “temporal cold war” was a gimmick that allowed the show the creativity to add the drama that things might not work out as we knew they did. It was a “get out of jail free” card for the writers. But I think it sucked. I would much more have preferred a show that told us how they got where we saw them, but I wasn’t happy with just about anything they did as the prequel. The interactions with Klingon’s bothered me, the portrayal of Vulcan’s always came off as annoyed and pissed rather than rational and logical, and then there were events like meeting the Romulans. The show did get better writing in the last couple of seasons, but it was too late to save itself.

> All ‘Trek’ has struck me as being a bit one-dimensional & simplistic in taking an unrealistically clear good versus evil line and suffered at times from saccharine overload.

There’s another demonstration of the problem. I’ve heard that complaint before about Trek, yet when Trek tried to get grittier and drag in the interpersonal conflicts, it didn’t work. DS9 was darker than other Trek and tried getting more conflict, but it is one of the least liked franchises.

Trek was Roddenberry’s utopia. Earth had solved most of its own internal problems, and was working with other races in the peaceful Federation. Exploration was key, but there were still outsiders who didn’t have the best intents to be faced. Berman and Braga tried to dirty up the utopia, but really just annoyed people (me). It killed internal consistency at all turns.

Twenty years ago … Aya-Yiii-Yaa! Scary how quick time goes.

It may not have been as original as the (now very, very dated) ‘ST :The Original Series’ and Babylon 5 far surpassed it later to become my all-time fave SF TV series but I enjoyed most of the episodes & I have to say I drooled over Deanna Troi. Yes, okay she was telepathic (& TP ain’t quite the same as pyschic btw.) but I gotta say my only problem with her was the lack of seeing her in nude scenes!

(Yeah, okay I’m male & was at the time teenaged, so … a-n-y-w-a-y.)

Far as I’m concerned, ST:TNG was the best of the Trek franchise.

ST:TOS was utterly revolutionary in its time -but now seems so very dated as noted earlier.

ST : DS9 was boldy staying put, wrapped up too much in Bajoran baloney & very much overhsadowed by the similar but far deeper & better Babylon 5. Plus it liek the otherspin-offs endedup farmore soap opera than SF .. & too much baseball bleeech! It just ain’t cricket!

ST: Voyager had some good episodes esp. in later seasons versus the Borg and had its moments but the whole franchise was already getting quite stale. Neelix was Trek’s eqiv. of Jar-Jar – just too annoying to live!

and then last & by a long margin least, came ‘ST: Enterprise’ – a prequel that contradicted the series, was utterly stale, woefully backward (now we’re back to a nearly all-Yankee crew when ST:TOS broke the ground in showing international co-operation optimism and inter-racial kissing & ST :Voyager allowed a women to command for the first (Trek) time)

… and well, that ‘entry-prize’ tosh really put the nail in the Trek coffin. I stopped watching after the Ferengi episode … Just wishing they’d put the old franchise out of its misery. It really went one spin-off too many … & I hope it is allowed to rest in peace now.

All ‘Trek’ has struck me as being a bit one-dimensional & simplistic in taking an unrealistically clear good versus evil line and suffered at times from saccharine overload.

It does seem an American national trait to shift to black versus White hat thinking with a sickening dollop of self-congratulatory, “we are always right and lets not look too hard at the other culture’s views” approach.
Trek has suffered from that a lot but has often challenged it some too, esp. with ST:TOS & ST :TNG (Uhura kissing Kirk was appparently the first interracial kiss ever screened – even if both were under an ancient Greek God’s telepathic control at the time.)

ST :TNG has since been surpassed by B5, BSG, & the excellent ‘Firefly’ SF-Western (‘Who’ was always better) & has degenerated away ever since (pun unintentional) but yeah, I’ll always fondly rember the ‘Star Trek : Next Generation’ series – & esp. watching Deanna Troi.

——————————————————–

NB. Of course, the above is all In My Humble Opinion Naturally & all art is subjective & a matter for personal preference…

The original ST was about the Cold War, with its Klingons and Federation, but ST:TNG was about the work place, because that’s where all the baby boomers were.

DS9, with its multi-season story arcs, went back to the Cold War, except now it was over. The Cardassians had lost their empire and the challenge was integrating Eastern and Western Europe. You got a bit of this in B5 with the Centauri modeled on czarist Russia, though I think that story was really based on LotR.

I never got into Voyager. It just never got intrigue-y enough. I always like plotty scheme-y story lines. Enterprise had the feel of a rehash. I know I should watch and enjoy BSG, but it is just too grim for me. I don’t have the stomach for the gory details. I can get them from the online news.

I haven’t been watching much TV lately. I recently turned on the set and had to call tech support because the satellite modem software was 50 revisions out of date and couldn’t use the new software update format.

I agree B5 managed the story arcs very well, but I would put the first season of Heroes as well as Lost up there as well, ever though they’re probably not considered hard scifi. IIRC Farscape had plenty of long-running plotlines, but I’m not sure they would be considered arcs (I can’t remember enough to be sure).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (not really scifi, but genre shows) had season-long arcs of varying success.

British TV shows in general have always had more story arcs than American shows, but there just haven’t been that many scifi shows. The old Doctor Who tried once or twice (the Key to Time, etc) but mostly stayed away.

Re: BSG’s politics. I wasn’t suggesting that many conservatives dislike the show because of the politics (although, no doubt, many do). It just seems to me that right-wingers are more prone to prefer shows where characters will always end up “doing the right thing” and where good triumphs over evil. That’s not to say all conservatives think that way, at all, but that seems to be at the bottom of many of the complaints about the show.

Oh, c’mon. I didn’t mean any attack. I did say relax. It was metaopinion.

>>> In the case of Foundation, Psychohistory,
>>> an interesting and fun idea, gets all but
>>> discarded in favor of a bunch of boring
>>> psychic horse-hockey.

I’m a bit of a SF fan heretic. I don’t really like Asimov, so I found sufficient other faults with the series.

But I thought The Mule worked in his intended context. It was a random factor that Seldon’s science could never have predicted. I suspect Asimov made is something paranormal intentionally for that reason.

If you mean the stuff after the original trilogy, yeah, it’s pretty weak, but nothing specific to psi-ness. It’s just poor writing.

>>> I’m a HUGE Dune fan, but Paul’s/Leto’s powers
>>> are way more compelling than just generic mindreading.

Well, here I’m a heretic again. The first book was great. The five subsequent volumes descend into an eventually unreadable morass of author self-indulgence. I simply cannot get past Children Of Dune.

>>> Medium’s a fine show. But it comes on at the same time as Lost,

I’m a fan of both. This is why God gave us dual tuner Tivos.

> Actually, TOS had a number of pro-religous references and even Kirk, in a discussion with Apollo about gods, says that “we find the one quite sufficient” or words to that effect.

I think you misread that. “Like the Original” modifies the sentence following, not the sentence preceding.

Thomas said:
> What made TNG a real player was when the killed off Tasha Yar, not because I didn’t like the character but because the writers and producers proved early on in the series that they were willing to kill off major characters, something that wasn’t done often in those days.

What I liked wasn’t so much that they killed her off, but the way they did it. It wasn’t some drawn out, emotional sacrifice story. She just died doing her duty. Oil-beast throws her around, she’s dead. No last-minute rejuvenations, no transporter buffer miracles, just kaput.

It’s speculative fiction. Some of the great classics have psi powers as their central theme. You can’t let the real world put the kibbosh on any enjoyment of fantasy. That’s terminally pendantic. Relax.

Well, I don’t think I need to justify my personal preference… but I’ll do it anyway

I agree psi is okay sometimes. My problem is not in the explanation. I realize that it can be sci-fi justified (in fact I think I mentioned that). My problem is that it’s kind of done to death and, to me, isn’t a very interesting concept to begin with. I like Sci-Fi best when it introduces some new ideas.

In the case of Foundation, Psychohistory, an interesting and fun idea, gets all but discarded in favor of a bunch of boring psychic horse-hockey.

In TNG it works better because Star Trek is more of a Sci-Fi boullabase, with a little of everything thrown in. In stories that are more “high concept”, Ringworld and the Uplift books come to mind, Psi tends to feel tacked on, IMHO.

I’m by no means opposed to books where mental powers are treated well. I’m a HUGE Dune fan, but Paul’s/Leto’s powers are way more compelling than just generic mindreading.

As for other “magic wand” type sci-fi conventions, Warp drives have always been more of a means to the end of getting the people to space and/or aliens. Anyways, I’ll take some space-ship action over new-agey mindreading any day!

Medium’s a fine show. But it comes on at the same time as Lost, I think, and NOTHING gets in the way of Lost in the BlockStacker household.

Quiet Desperation, scifi props are plot devices to visualize alternative worlds, or in the video media to accelerate plots. I don’t mind those props, except when ST uses technobabble for other things such as providing unnecessary atmosphere. (SG handles that well.)

So I usually don’t mind mental powers. The problem is when they ride on, and probably amplify, ignorance and superstition. Actually, some portrayals of mental powers in US shows are so bad in that respect that it is probably hyperstition.

I consider AI and “sentient machines” to be forever science fiction.

It certainly seems like rather simple biologically inspired models exhibit properties observed in biological systems. For example, a network modeled loosely on what is known about dopaminergic synapses in basal ganglia to prefrontal cortex exhibits symbol-like processing. It spontaneously forms abstract representations of data, and avoids the usual overtraining problems in general networks.

So I’m optimistic that such efforts like the Blu Brain project with its ambition to provide a foundation for whole brain simulations will eventually provide networks that functions like brains.

But not this much:

Godel might disagree. If our brains turn out to be non-Turing hypercomputers, then forget about marketing those mind saver devices. Or if there’s any merit to quantum brain dynamics.

Gödel’s completeness and incompleteness theorems describes properties of formal systems, and have no predictive power on physical reality. In effect, they say that whatever axioms we need to describe nature with formal methods can be added at will, which means there is no constraints either way. (Ie, properties of formal systems doesn’t affect nature, and nature doesn’t affect Gödel’s result.)

If there are realizable computing devices that are more powerful than Turing, the algorithmic complexity classes will collapse and allow all problems to be easily solved in finite time, including the halting problem. As this seems highly unlikely considering the mathematical nature of this undecidable object, computer scientist Scott Aaronson suggests accepting the NP Hardness Assumption as a physical law. That would be consistent with the requirement of relativity that we don’t have closed timelike loops, ie “time machines”.

On quantum brain ideas, physicist Max Tegmark has convincingly showed that decoherence in the environment a brain consists of is many orders of magnitude faster than the relevant dynamical timescales for even the smallest neural components.

That just doesn’t compute with me. It probably has to do with the fact that I avoid rigid ideology like rape. I have yet to see anything on BSG (which I love) that bother me in a political sense. I didn’t even think the “Iraq war parallels” were all that big a deal. I probably just don’t have a political sense. IOW, I don’t see things through a political filter.

Yes, I feel very alone sometimes. I can’t even discuss current events anymore. It usually goes like this.

SOMEONE: Global warming is going to kill us in 10 years.
ME: Well, there’s some interesting analysis by some high level atmospheric scientists recently that suggest otherwise. In fact, it might even-
SOMEONE: Oh, so you support the Halliburton War in Iraq?
ME: Uh, what?
SOMEONE: Pffft! Go worship at the altar to your god Bush!
ME: Uh, I voted Libertarian last election.
SOMEONE: Fascist!

And so on and so forth.

Doesn’t bother me at all as long as it’s done well. That’s why I like the series Medium despite the fact I am an uber-skeptic. My major lust for Patricia Arquette has NOTHING to do with it. Honest.

It’s speculative fiction. Some of the great classics have psi powers as their central theme. You can’t let the real world put the kibbosh on any enjoyment of fantasy. That’s terminally pendantic. Relax.

Honestly, is psi speculation really any worse than warp drives or hand weapons that can level a building if they go into overload? Or humanoid aliens?

If it helps: pretend that quantum brain dynamics actually turned out to be true, and any sort of telepathy is just nonlocality at work, and the coherency of the brain waves establishing higher harmonic nodes beyond the physical bounds of the brain. There. I just hand waved it as well and any of the other impossibilities thst SF throws at us. Oh, and, um, tau-klaatu particles, or something.

DS9 blurred the lines a little bit, and B5 a little bit more (with G’Kar & Londo at least), and that same tradition has been carried forward with into the Stargate Universe.

But things have changed a great deal in other shows. Heroes deals with a whole group of flawed individuals who only get it right despite their own personal demons and selfish motivations. Farscape included similarly flawed characters who often only did the right thing whenever they are forced to by circumstance. Hiro stands out as the most popular character of Heroes partly because he represents the heroic strain of scifi from the past.

And, of course, we have the new Battlestar Galactica, which is probably the antithesis of TNG. Ron Moore, the creator of the show, explicitly wanted it to be that way, and given the howls of protest from the viewing public, he was a very brave man to do it! Yes, there’s hardly a person in the series without serious and chronic character issues, and while the idealism of TNG occasionally peeps its head above the parapet it is usually pounced upon immediately by all kinds of complications and unsavory motivations. Kind of like real life really

For me, while I still enjoy shows like Stargate, I prefer the intrigue and suspense a show like BSG can bring, with its ability to use the full gamut of human emotion and behavior. It makes the show more unpredictable, more compelling, and thus more entertaining. I know lots of people hate all the angst and the misery that comes with the show, and that’s fine, no show from any genre will suit all tastes. But I am so glad grateful that there are people in the scifi business who are willing to take risks and take the genre in new directions on TV.

Interestingly enough, with BSG there seems to be a noticeable political bias as to who loves or hates the show. Right-wing message boards have been particularly dismissive of the show, even before the overt Iraq war parallels of the previous season. I suspect that conservatives tend to prefer the old style of heroic scifi, where the issues are more black and white with no Shades of Grey (worst TNG ep ever?) to muddy the waters. It seems to fit their world-view better where there are moral absolutes with none of this relativism “nonsense”. I know they hit the roof when the new captain of the Pegasus turned out to be a nasty piece of work.

And when Picard died and was able to redo some of his life…

Also when Pulaski stuck a bunch of needles in Riker’s head…

Okay, maybe not the last one.

The implicit knowledge that not just random ensigns could die added a certain dramatic tension to the show.

I found out later that it was because Denise Crosby wanted to leave the show but, no less, it counted for something.

I usually hate when psychic powers get shoehorned into sci-fi. So many writers seem to regard it as inevitable. I loved the first couple of Foundation books, but the introduction of psychic powers just about ruined the series for me. Why couldn’t the Second Foundation just be really good psychohistorians? (Don’t get me started on the later books. Gaia?! Ugh…)

I see your point about woo in TNG. I was thinking about woo more in the sense of how they approached unexplained phenomena and extraordinary claims. Like Steve said, TNGs psychics had testable, falsifiable powers and they didn’t resort to supernatural explanations for them. Granted, the powers had very “magic wand”, Star-Trekkie scientific explanations, but so did most of the rest of the technology on the show.

Yes there was a “psychic”, but her abilities were fully natural. They evolved as part of her species (well, her mother’s species). They were also testable and consistent, though still scientifically mysterious to humans. Any full-blooded betazoid would certainly win the JREF prize.

That’s not woo.

I was never fond of any off the other spin offs, never made it past the first season of Deep Space 90210, or a few episodes of voyager or enterprise… Rick Bermann taking over the franchise after Roddenberry died killed it… I doubt we’ll see another Trek on TV for a long time. I am NOT a fan of metaplots or story arcs, which was all DS9, Babylon 5, and the new BSG is. Bleakh. Give me one hour of a self contained story, with the occasional two parter.

I hope Russel T. Davis doesn’t do the same thing to Who… Although I am really loving Torchwood and surprised it seems to not be well liked. (although it’s the highest ranking show in BBC America’s History which is a very good sign, maybe we can see Sarah Jane in the States now too).

I just hope all the spinoffs doesn’t ruin Who like they seemed to have done Trek…