British SF HERO

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Rene

But of course I'm generalizing. It's not very acurate to classify all of American SF as optimistic ("the frontier spirit") or all of British SF as pessimistic ("the decadent empire spirit"), but still those are important (though not omnipresent) tendencies in both countries's SFs.

 

True. As an addendum tied to this thread, remember that many BBC Sci-Fi series end with everybody dying and the bad guys (at least in the short term) triumphant.

 

I always thought that those cliffhanger endings must have made for great contract negotiation tools. "We'd love to have you back next season Bob, but your character was shot in the last episode. We can do this either way..."

[Rene]

Originally posted by OddHat

True. As an addendum tied to this thread, remember that many BBC Sci-Fi series end with everybody dying and the bad guys (at least in the short term) triumphant.

 

I always thought that those cliffhanger endings must have made for great contract negotiation tools. "We'd love to have you back next season Bob, but your character was shot in the last episode. We can do this either way..."

 

 

I don't really know much about British TV shows.

 

I think my analysis apply better to written SF, generally. TV and movie SF (from all countries) usually is a mix of optimism and pessimism; on one hand, most of them have strong cautionary notes about the dangers of unbridled technology (pessimism), but also have daring heroes that save the day in the end (optmism).

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Rene

I don't really know much about British TV shows.

 

I think my analysis apply better to written SF, generally. TV and movie SF (from all countries) usually is a mix of optimism and pessimism; on one hand, most of them have strong cautionary notes about the dangers of unbridled technology (pessimism), but also have daring heroes that save the day in the end (optmism).

 

Your comments apply far more to American TV sci-fi than British (childrens programming aside).

[Rene]

I guess you're right. I don't know much about British TV SF. I'm Brazilian.

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Rene

I guess you're right. I don't know much about British TV SF. I'm Brazilian.

 

Your written English is excellent.

 

I've always been a fan of UK media. It's surprising how different American and British storytelling styles are under the surface.

[Rene]

Thanks!

 

I'm addicted to fantastic fiction, so I had to learn to read English, only the tip of the iceberg gets translated to Portuguese.

[Victor]

Dimensionally Transtangential...

 

http://www0.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/drwho/2003/09/26/7012.shtml

 

Good news, IMO.

[Michael Hopcroft]

This is indeed exiting news, although I was hoping for more than six episodes. The BBCi series sounds exciting too -- I've seen the BBCi adaptation of Shada and found it quite exciting -- I want to see it again. It kept me up all night a few weeks ago watching it, i was that enthralled, and the story was that good.

 

Of course, what could you expect from a faithful adaptation of the lost Douglas Adams episode? I wish i remembered the URL.

[Michael Hopcroft]

As for Blakes 7

 

I was wondering if any of the Blakes 7 fans on the board might be interested in trying to model the Liberator or the various hand weapons used by Blake and Avon's crews, not to mention the infamous Federation 'flash-gun" (so-called because of the time a Federation troooper fired into the camera and you could see the flash=bulb go off in his gun).

 

For the record, the Liberator was equipped with energy blasters that looked vaguely like curling-irons but which were deadly against human targets. Its successor, Scorpio, came equipped with apecilized handguns that could fire multiple types of ammuntion, from percussion bullets to laser blasts. How this is phsycially possible I'm not sure, but their inventor had several centuries to work on the design.