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.