Space Above and Beyond

Bigt028

Bigt028

Rear Admiral
greetings, this may have been discussed already, however i am big fan of this show, and thought it too was short lived (only one season)
i recently found out that there are books and graphic novels on this show,
anyone looking to dump their colleciton of the novels, i am checking on ebay but wanted to put the work out.
or if anyone read the novels and can tell me if it's worth the reading. thanks
 
I've seen the comic books from Topps on Ebay constantly. I can't say if they're any good but the first few issues were simply the pilot episode. Similarly, the first SAAB novel was based off that episode.

Peter Telep, who wrote the Wing Commander movie novelizations and their two follow-ups (one of which remains unreleased) did two(?) more SAAB books. One of them involves infiltration via surf board ala Die Another Day.
 
Honestly, the thing that sticks out most about the S:AaB novels to me is that they came out during that weird period in the mid-1990s when paperbacks cost $5.50. Peter Telep does a great job of turning a script into a full novel - the adaptation of the pilot was very well done. The original story, Demolition Winter, wasn't my favorite (but then I read it when I was 15, so who knows what I would think today). These two should be easy to find via Amazon's used book network for pennies (I know used copies of Demolition Winter were expensive for a while, but I think the price has come down to a few dollars).

The first three Topps comics are an adaptation of the pilot and the second two are an original story ("The Gauntlet"). I re-read them fairly recently and they held up well. A quick check of mycomicshop.com says that you can get them for about two bucks each online.

There are also four 'Young Adult' books, which were adaptations of episodes (the pilot was "The Aliens Approach", the other three use the same name as their scripts). I remember *one* of the four being a pain in the ass to find and the other three being really common.
 
I'd also like to point out that they're still selling props from the show on Ebay. Everything from a dollar with George Bush Sr on it to the Invitro inventory sheets from "Mutiny" all the way up to a Hammerhead cockpit.
 
I'm totally going to eBay... who DOESN'T want a Hammerhead in their living room?? ;)

Seeing as how you've gotten to the point where you are interested in novels and comics, I would imagine you already have the DVD box set - but I just wanted to remind you that it is out there, incase you've just been trying to DVR them off of late night Sci-Fi channel or anything!

As a side note: if this TV Series came out on BluRay, I would spend $80 for it in a heartbeat.

NuAngel
 
Given the age of the show, i'm not sure how much value there would be had in having a Hi-Def version of the episodes.
 
thanks for all the feedback. i do have the dvd box set and started rewatching the episodes, this show really grabs you. when i found out that Peter Telep wrote two novels i just had to find them.
thanks
 
Madman said:
Given the age of the show, i'm not sure how much value there would be had in having a Hi-Def version of the episodes.
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Age has nothing to do with it - what they filmed it on is what matters. Video can't be cleaned up nearly as well as film. (As LOAF pointed out, this is why you have crisp, clear copies of Star Trek and rather muddy DVDs for TNG, DS9 and Voyager)
 
Age has nothing to do with it - what they filmed it on is what matters. Video can't be cleaned up nearly as well as film. (As LOAF pointed out, this is why you have crisp, clear copies of Star Trek and rather muddy DVDs for TNG, DS9 and Voyager)
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Almost everything we're interested was initially shot on film, though -- it's where the special effects shots were edited that hurts things like the modern Star Treks (so you can go back and do ST:tNG in HD... but you'll have to redo all the special effects, which were one of the most expensive things about the shows in the first place).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Almost everything we're interested was initially shot on film, though
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Hey, I remember 6 episodes of Twilight Zone shot on video tape. Gotcha there! </Nitpicking>

Bandit LOAF said:
so you can go back and do ST:tNG in HD... but you'll have to redo all the special effects, which were one of the most expensive things about the shows in the first place.
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I wonder if it would be viable to redo the F/X for the show.
 
I wonder if it would be viable to redo the F/X for the show.
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CBS is experimenting with it now, trying to find a way to make it cost effective. I'd say it's an eventuality - they know it's something they need to do to be able to keep selling the shows into syndication, which is a perpetual cash cow.

For S:AaB it probably isn't likely.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
CBS is experimenting with it now, trying to find a way to make it cost effective. I'd say it's an eventuality - they know it's something they need to do to be able to keep selling the shows into syndication, which is a perpetual cash cow.

For S:AaB it probably isn't likely.
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I'd argue that except for the Colony Attack and later the colony ship in the pilot episode, the CGI on SAaB holds up remarkably well for a 14 year old show.
 
LeHah said:
Age has nothing to do with it - what they filmed it on is what matters. Video can't be cleaned up nearly as well as film. (As LOAF pointed out, this is why you have crisp, clear copies of Star Trek and rather muddy DVDs for TNG, DS9 and Voyager)
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Thanks LeHah, but my point was more that the show is sufficiently old not to be on hi-def film! and as such there would be no real video benefit over normal dvd (some but nominal)
 
older footage Hi-Def

Madman said:
Thanks LeHah, but my point was more that the show is sufficiently old not to be on hi-def film! and as such there would be no real video benefit over normal dvd (some but nominal)
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Not true at all. The EXTREME majority of movies since the 70's were filmed in widescreen, and widescreen TV's weren't even common until the last 5 years. Depending on frames per second, aspect ratio, and film used, transferring to Hi-Def could be quite amazing. Film is neither considered "SD" or "HD." Not to mention that higher quality audio can be a benefit of hi-def/blu-ray discs.

Some interesting feedback on this very debate was gleaned by metafilter:
http://ask.metafilter.com/32336/Wha...when-they-are-too-old-to-have-been-shot-in-HD

NuAngel
 
Thanks LeHah, but my point was more that the show is sufficiently old not to be on hi-def film! and as such there would be no real video benefit over normal dvd (some but nominal)
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Film is film, there's no special high definition type. It has a lot better resolution than anyone can use for home video, even today (digital archive versions of films right now have four times the resolution of a Bluray disc.)

You can theoretically go back to the original film elements of S:AaB and create a new HD transfer... except that the special effects probably *weren't* edited on the film itself, which means you'd have to redo them all. Anything that involves mattes or that's entirely CGI would need work.

There's also the question of whether or not the show would hold up to a new 1080p transfer. Look at the Wing Commander IV DVD - there's an amazing improvement in picture quality over the Xanmovie version with the new transfer, but you also see how cheap many of the sets and props are.

(Now, this is all theoretical - remember we're talking about a show that FOX cared so little about for the regular home video release that they stuck a picture of the Babylon 5 space station as the artwork on the DVD menus. It's doubtful that they'd want to invest the money for a new transfer alone... much less any work.)

Not true at all. The EXTREME majority of movies since the 70's were filmed in widescreen, and widescreen TV's weren't even common until the last 5 years. Depending on frames per second, aspect ratio, and film used, transferring to Hi-Def could be quite amazing. Film is neither considered "SD" or "HD." Not to mention that higher quality audio can be a benefit of hi-def/blu-ray discs.
Click to expand...

There's a good bit of tail chasing in the case of movies, though. Remember that the home video market is a pretty new thing -- when people switched away from the Academy Ratio in the 1950s to the various widescreen formats it was specifically because they wanted films to stand *apart* from television. Now we have studios that make their money selling DVDs, and a home display standard that has adapted to better show those films.
 
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