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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Which Trek show does your favorite non-Trek sci-fi show resemble?

22:05 / 20.09.05

For example, IMHO Babylon 5 is the "Deep Space Nine" of non-Trek shows. It's in many ways the best of the bunch, but also in many ways kind of boring and political.

Farscape, IMHO, is the "Star Trek: The Original Series" of non-Trek shows. It has rabid fans, but really it's just a bunch of overacting and muppets.

Thoughts?

This is my first post here, so go easy on me if I've duped or violated some ethical boundary.

22:19 / 20.09.05

Farscape, IMHO, is the "Star Trek: The Original Series" of non-Trek shows. It has rabid fans, but really it's just a bunch of overacting and muppets.

Never ever compare Farscape to TOS. There is nothing humble about such an opinion, and it shows appaling disrespect to Muppets.

OK, to answer your question: The Camomile Lawn is Lexx with John Barrowman swinging in occasionally to harrass a transplanted Nicola Bryant. Or something. Sorry, my rabid Farscape fan sensibilities make that seem incomprehensible.

22:48 / 20.09.05

I am deeply disturbed by the central proposition behind this thread; that there are people who have never watched anything but the various Star Trek series... Not that I think that such a scenario is particularly unlikely, but, brrr... it'd be like being brought up on a diet consisting entirely on food available from McDonald's...

01:18 / 21.09.05

How would it be like that, sleaze?

02:42 / 21.09.05

All of my favorite sci-fi series (Farscape, Serenity, and Doctor Who) are most similar to Deep Space Nine, because Deep Space Nine was written for adults. I know that sounds patronizing, especially to TOS (which had some brilliant episodes), but DS9 just operated on a much higher, more intelligent, more thoughtful level than the other Treks.

02:54 / 21.09.05

I think both scenarios would have similarly deleterious effects on your innards...

06:34 / 21.09.05

DS9 just operated on a much higher, more intelligent, more thoughtful level than the other Treks.

Yes, it's kind of like the salads that MacDonald's sell; more nutrious than anything else on the menu, but still no substitute for a real salad...

At the same time, you know, I'm not wanting to denegrate either Star Trek or McDonald's. Some times you just want a hamburger and although there are better hamburgers on the market this one is cheap and ubiquitous.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:47 / 21.09.05

Sleaze- try working in F*rb*dd*n Pl*n*t for a few years... you will meet many such people.

09:48 / 21.09.05

All of my favorite sci-fi series (Farscape, Serenity, and Doctor Who) are most similar to Deep Space Nine, because Deep Space Nine was written for adults.

DOCTOR WHO... written for adults...?

Nah. Too easy.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:20 / 21.09.05

I'm afraid I just don't see how Farscape, Serenity and Doctor Who resemble Deep Space Nine, although I haven't seen that much of DS9, unless it be because they are "written for adults" (no good thing in itself). For starters, they are itinerant whereas DS9 is static. Farscape in particular resemble Blakes 7 more than anything, and Serenity could trace a line from here to there pretty easily as well. This is, for future reference, because Blakes 7 is the best sci-fi series ever made. There is no Trek equivalent, although Andromeda is a grim lesson in what might have been.

10:55 / 21.09.05

DS9 wasn't static. It was a story that was set in the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants, and therefore had a larger playing field than any of the other Trek shows (including Voyager, because Voyager generally didn't include much Alpha Quadrant stuff).

It's has some nice parallels with Blake 7 and Serenity because of the flawed and often wholly compromised lead cast, which consisted of terrorists, soldiers, smugglers and members of various secret services. The parallels aren't complete (the mandate for DS9 seems a whole lot more complex than Serenity, for example: it's set up to do a lot of things that show can't), but there are similarities in tone.

DS9 was produced and written by TNG writing staff who were increasingly pissed off with the limitations of that format and wanted to platform to tell whatever kind of stories they wanted. It's therefore got a lot more variety than almost any other sci-fi show, which is where comparisons mostly fall down.

11:02 / 21.09.05

sleaze: Some back up to the McDonald's analogy, please. Surely there's a huge established history of mass-produced pulp sci-fi that both inspired, ran alongside or was inspired by Trek that forms a more ready point of comparison?

The only thing worse than shooting at an easy target is missing, dude.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:39 / 21.09.05

Seth: But am I right in thinking that there is a central base - DS9 itself, which for most episodes stays in one place - that is, like Babylon 5? Obviously, the more like Blakes 7 it is the better... it already scores big because DS9 looks like Space Command.

Sleaze: Got to be said, I'm not following the idea that the Trek franchise necessarily produces McSeries, as oopposed to "real" sci-fi TV shows. Is this the setting, or the ownership of the franchise by Paramount?

20:07 / 21.09.05

I see the DS9 and B5 connection, added to by the mysterious and tragic disappearances of previous DS and B stations. And the penultimate manifestations of both Deep Space and Babylon stations recur in time-anomaly episodes, do they not?

My lust for Gul Dukat leads me to propose salacious analogies to fetish porn but, more seriously, I see a strong link between DS9 and the second edition Battlestar Galactica because of the prominence of religion and religious leaders as major plot devices.

Stargate Atlantis, Andromeda and Farscape with their humans lost far from their own time/galaxy riff strike a chord with Voyager in that regard and also focus on the diplomacy necvessary to forge alliances necessary to survival, getting caught up in other people's feuds and racial wars, and funny looking aliens who reveal, over time, their All-American hearts.

20:24 / 21.09.05

Ok, I'll allow that, in terms of plot, Voyager was kind of like Farscape with all the jokes, sex, intertextuality, well-drawn characters, coherent story arcs, relationships, cool effects, interest and (most importantly) Muppets removed. In spirit, DS9 was much closer.

05:02 / 22.09.05

Yep, as far as Muppets go at least DS9 had Morn.

Yep, DS9 was a space station. Apart from in the pilot episode it stayed in one place. The series which used it as a backdrop did not.

No, the promenade did not have a McDonalds.

12:12 / 25.09.05

I've been meaning to return to this thread for a while

The problem with the whole enterprise (ho ho) of describing ALL sci-fi shows in terms of Trek franchises is that sci-fi is far broader than star trek - there aren't necessarily going to be Star trek equivilents, unless you go for the line of arguement that equates all other somewhat ambitious andsomewhat ambitious sci-fi with DS9 on the grounds that it was the most ambitious and successful, both creatively and financially of the trek franchises...

As for Trek as McDonald's analogy, I'm not sure I follow you Seth - how are you claiming non-propriatry pulp sci-fi magazines produced before relates to both the TV series trek and its various spin-offs? Or are you talking about somethings else entirely.

I guess what I was attempting to get at with the McDonald's analogy is Trek's ownership and the degree that impacts upon the stories it can tell, the ways it can tell them and its ability to dominate the the marketplace...