My Top 6 Sci-Fi Shows

By Geeky Gem

Yes I know what your thinking not another Top 6 of something Geeky Gem likes, well its my blog and if I want to write a top 6 then I shall write a top 6. Any way this top 6 is on a subject we havent really looked at, Sci-Fi. This one of my favourite types of genre to watch.So many good shows out there to watch here I will tell you about six of my favourite shows and maybe give you a video clip or two. As always they are in no real order.

Doctor Who

Well what can I say about Doctor Who, some of you may already know that Kirkiechick and I love this show but Mr Beefnuts doesn’t like it all. This has no impact on our friendship at all.  I’ve been watching this show since I was a kid and its one of this first shows I have real memories about, The Doctor a mysterious man from another world hops in and out of people’s lives trying to hep them as he travels through time in his ship. The Tardis, I so wanted one when I was and I still do, the show may be routed in time travel but at the heart of it all is the Doctor and his friend and deadly enemies.

At the time I started to watch the show the current Doctor was Sylvester McCoy, the Doctor always travels with a companion. I always wanted to go in the Tardis. Oh did I mention that the Doctor doesn’t die so much as he regenerates, here is my favourite regeneration clip.

Battlestar Galactica

If my memory serves me right, I did in fact watch the original series of this show on re-runs of course with my Dad. This incarnation of the show had me glued in every week. Now I have to admit I missed the mini series and in fact the first season, so I was little late to the party. However when I got to the party boy was it a party I was glad I went to. The human race is on the run from the Cylons, robots that have blown up Earth and forced the humans into outer space. What’s left of the human race is ow looking for a new home amongst the stars while the Cylons chase them. A new bread of Cylon comes to life, these Cylons look like the humans and even love like they do. Will the human race find a new home? Below is the opening credits for season 1.

Star Trek: Voyager

I’ve watched every series of Star Trek apart from Enterprise which I just couldn’t get on with. I did try ok, but I just couldn’t which is a great shame really. However Voyager next to Deep Space Nine where my favourites. The reason Voyager made this list and DS9 didnt is because of the ship and the Captain. Janeway was the first female Captain in the shows history to hem a show and come on that ship is cool. The Doctor is hologram how cool is that. Janeway kicked some ass and even took on the Borg Queen in an epic battle at the end of tha last series. Here is a little clip for you, it shows Captain Janeway, Tuvok and B’elanna Torres getting assimilated by the Borg

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

Another show I used to watch with my parents, a show I never missed. I loved this show right from its cheesy sets to its funny little robot named Twiki. It was everything space adventure shows were meant to be. Buck was now trapped in a future where he had now way of getting home, kinda like some of the other shows on this list.  I loved the opening credits and I am posting them below for you to enjoy, if you never saw this show you really must its awesome.

Firefly

I am aware that the first blog I wrote for All Geek was about Firefly, I couldn’t go with out this on my list the show was great and Joss Wheadon did a fantastic job. It’s a shame the show never took off the way Buffy and Angel did. At least we had it for a little while. Firefly was Cowboys in space and who couldn’t like that. The casts were great and so was the direction the show was going to take. Below is the opening credits as I like the song.

Quantum Leap

Now I know for a fact that Kirkiechick likes this show too, I had never meet any one else who liked this show untill I meet her. I used to have to stay up late n a school night to watch this again with my Dad as my Mum was in work. I loved, Sam would lea from life to life putting things right not always in the right way. There was nearly always a fight and Sam always said “Oh Boy” that’s when you knew it was going to be good. If you never seen this show then you really must, it’s a good one. Here is intro nd opening credits, I dare you (if you have seen it ) not to hm the tune and know the words.

There you have it, just some of my favourite all time Sci-Fi shows, I am sure I can think of more and maybe one day I will bring them to you, but for now I gotta leap out of here.

Good Job Disney: How The Mouse House Nearly Killed John Carter

By Hmsbeefnuts

John Carter. John Carter? John Carter. Think about that name for a minute. Imagine a film called John Carter… what’s it about? Could be a tiny indie movie, perhaps about a down on his luck single Father. Or maybe it’s a comedy about a Medieval Cart manufacturer. Perhaps it’s a grand Sci-Fi adventure film that is better than every Star Wars prequel, with amazing special effects, and exciting story, epic battles, superpowers, monsters and a beautiful Princess, set on Mars. Yeah right, you wouldn’t call that kind of movie ‘John Carter’ right? Wrong. Disney did. A huge movie that cost reportedly $250 million to make, has been badly handled in the advertising department, so much so that you might think that they did it on purpose.

 

The poster campaign for John Carter was absolutely woeful. See the poster above, what does that mean? I can understand trying to create a buzz, a bit of mystery, but I don’t think that this was the right way to go with this property. The trailers too were, well, uninspiring. They showed enough for me to make it a film that was on my radar, and I was bothered to find out more about the character. To be fair, the film had been on my radar for a few years thanks to Head Geek himself Harry Knowles, so I knew the basics, and could piece the basic premise together from this and the trailer. I was excited to see it. But I was very much in the minority. The trailers were generic. They didn’t seem much different from a dozen other recent Sci-Fi films, such as Avatar or the Star Wars Prequels. Nothing was saying must see, and it felt like such a waste.

 

The main problem seemed to be that, whoever came up with the trailers and posters, seemed to assume that everyone knew who this John Carter guy was. Well guess what, hardly anyone does. I would like to use an example at this point, Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a worldwide phenomenon. A legit super franchise, that is known to most people. Whether it is in book form, video games, toys, or obviously the movies, surely most people who see movies regularly know at least something about Harry Potter, and if not, have certainly heard the name. As such, you could legitimately call a movie Harry Potter, and not only would it not harm the movies box office overly, 99.9% of the population would have some knowledge of who Harry Potter was, and what that meant. John Carter is no Harry Potter. He is a character created around 100 years ago, that was never really that popular to begin with. He was a pulp hero, certainly the stories he was in, and the character himself, are excellent, but they have always been for a small section of society who likes these kind of adventure stories.

 

John Carter simply does not have the name power to promote a movie. It would be comparable to calling the recent Captain America movie, Steve Rogers. Harley anyone would know what Steve Rogers was about, the name has no pull to it, Captain America, however, does have pull, people have heard of Captain America. John Carter would have faired much better with a longer title, for instance, John Carter of Mars. All of a sudden, the name has some context, people start to get what the movie may be about. It must be remembered that not everyone watches trailers, or sees posters, sometimes, the name of the movie is all that is known, and a decision on whether or not to go may be made on title alone, and buzz can be a big part of this. Give your movie an exciting title, and it may not be tremendously helpful, but it certainly won’t hurt. Give it a boring title, and usually, your on a one way ride to Boxofficebombville.

 

I have seen John Carter. I loved it. It was the type of film that isn’t really made that often, a genuinely brilliant, exciting adventure story with Sci-Fi/Fantasy overtones. John Carter shares many similar things with Star Wars and Avatar, and it’s because, George Lucas etc. based their films partly on Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. In my opinion, John Carter was a superior film to any of the Star Wars Movies, and more fun and enjoyable than the excellent Avatar. The effects were outstanding, the story strong, and the cast and acting excellent. It’s such a shame that American audiences have not felt the same way. At the time of writing, John Carter has made a little over $37.5 million, not brilliant numbers, and it looks like a much wanted and deserved sequel may not be on the cards. However, things may not be all that bad. Internationally Carter has pulled in $108 million in the same time frame. Perhaps John Carter will be able to make it’s budget back, and perhaps a little more, and a sequel may not be beyond hope.

A few people have commented that Disney finds it quite difficult to advertise films to males. That their usual out put is female centric or for smaller children. There could be something in this, however, now that Disney owns Marvel, perhaps some of the Marvel magic will rub off on their advertising department. Certainly they have had little trouble making The Avengers look exciting to both sexes and all ages. I will end this article with another plea for you to get out and see this film. I genuinely think it is one of the best films yet this year, and should be in the top 10 film lists of many people come December, or damn well should be.