Star Trek, and lesser SF franchises (was "Movies to see")

LeHah said:
Shakespeare stood the test of time. I sincerely doubt we'll be seeing Buffy 300 years from now.
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We won't be seeing Star Wars, Star Trek, or just about any other sci-fi/fantasy film either, because anything with special effects ages terribly. Does that mean we shouldn't study any such works? The "test of time" is purely random in any case - we've still got some pretty lousy works from Roman times around (and they are studied), while some of the finest Roman and Greek literature was lost within just a few decades after being written.

There is a difference. Plagiarism by the world's most famous playwright is important - telling me that there is a difference between an actual religion and... CGI effects is not. I mean - no one wrote a discertation that The Ten Commandments got the parting of the Red Sea wrong.
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Heh, I was more referring to the stupid argument that he couldn't write that particular play because he hadn't been to Venice - as if there had even been anything in the play that actually referred to Venice.

(also, you're twisting things - I'm sure any papers about Wicca in Buffy are silly stuff... but I'm equally sure they refer to the differences in ideology between real Wicca and Buffy-Wicca, not differences between CGI and non-existent "real" magic. It's still silly, because nobody actually cares about something as ridiculous as real Wicca - but certainly the general idea of comparing how a show depicts a given ideology or religion with how it works in reality has a lot of merit)
 
Quarto said:
We won't be seeing Star Wars, Star Trek, or just about any other sci-fi/fantasy film either, because anything with special effects ages terribly. Does that mean we shouldn't study any such works?
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The written page doesn't age the same way visual effects do.

Quarto said:
also, you're twisting things
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Or you're just vauge :)

Quarto said:
I'm sure any papers about Wicca in Buffy are silly stuff... but I'm equally sure they refer to the differences in ideology between real Wicca and Buffy-Wicca
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If there is an arguement to be made about television religions that require CGI, don't you think that the audience is either too stupid to know the difference between what reality is and is not - or simply doesn't care?

Quarto said:
It's still silly, because nobody actually cares about something as ridiculous as real Wicca
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I have something to say - but I am not going down a road that involves a discussion on religion past the point of people taking a long-canned TV show too seriously.

Quarto said:
the general idea of comparing how a show depicts a given ideology or religion with how it works in reality has a lot of merit
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LeHah said:
If there is an arguement to be made about television religions that require CGI, don't you think that the audience is either too stupid to know the difference between what reality is and is not - or simply doesn't care?
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Sigh. That's pretty much the point - any time you've got a show watched by millions putting out its own version of some ideology or religion, it's worth studying exactly to see how the audience reacts, and to see what exactly they're getting. You may or may not have noticed, but these days, there's a lot of people playing neo-pagans - and it's not a coincidence that there's so many such people after a decade of shows like Buffy, Charmed, et cetera.

In short, whether something is worth studying has nothing to do with how ridiculous it is - what matters is how seriously people are willing to take it. History knows a lot of works that were dismissed as being ridiculous - and then went on to affect things in a huge way, simply because the general population couldn't care less what the intellectuals proclaim to be worthy.
 
Quarto said:
We won't be seeing Star Wars, Star Trek, or just about any other sci-fi/fantasy film either, because anything with special effects ages terribly. Does that mean we shouldn't study any such works? The "test of time" is purely random in any case - we've still got some pretty lousy works from Roman times around (and they are studied), while some of the finest Roman and Greek literature was lost within just a few decades after being written.
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I'm not so certain, whilst shakespeare documented specific events such fiction created entire universes which can be continued long past the lifespan of the original creator. Honestly I don't think there is anything that remarkable about shakespeare by todays standards, it was popular at the time (and it would not have survived so well were it not forced upon school children).

Star Trek is a good example, the show will most definately not be permanently abandoned, fans won't allow it, so another TNG quality show every 30 years could give the show real staying power.
Just look at Doctor Who, it's almost 45 years old but not only are the new episodes doing well but the re-releases from 1963 constantly make it into the charts, it's not hard to see this being the case in another 45 years (20 years before I was born but as a kid the earliest ones were my favourites).

Who is to say what we perceive as pop culture now will not be forced upon school children 200 years from now?
 
Hey, have you guys read Wil Wheatons Star Trek:TNG reviews? They're funny as hell, and gives a differnt perpestive on the show.
BTW, to find them, search TVSquad.com
 
Quarto said:
Sigh. That's pretty much the point - any time you've got a show watched by millions putting out its own version of some ideology or religion, it's worth studying exactly to see how the audience reacts, and to see what exactly they're getting.
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Ehhhh. That means that every "major" fandom is full of complete idiots who don't understand the subject matter. Its rolled over into almost every franchise I can think of - Voyager with that awful transforming starship, complete with Andy Dick hologram, BSG with its self-involved for the sake of being self-involved sense of pesudo-religious conflict in space, Star Wars with so much stuff I can't even begin to list it.

Whatever happened to this stuff being *fun*? Has science fiction degenerated into nothing more than an aristocrats joke?

Quarto said:
You may or may not have noticed, but these days, there's a lot of people playing neo-pagans - and it's not a coincidence that there's so many such people after a decade of shows like Buffy, Charmed, et cetera.
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I don't understand why anyone would want to write to fans to tell them that what they're watching isn't real, though. It seems silly to say that Buffy or Charmed isnt anything like "real life wicca"; I mean, have we ever seen people walking down the street and suddenly shoot lightning from their eyes?

Quarto said:
In short, whether something is worth studying has nothing to do with how ridiculous it is - what matters is how seriously people are willing to take it.
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Thats a broad statement thats almost an inkling that everything remembered is somehow something that isn't important.
 
LeHah said:
Whatever happened to this stuff being *fun*? Has science fiction degenerated into nothing more than an aristocrats joke?
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Ehhhh... science fiction was hardly ever only about fun. It's pretty much *the* message genre - the one everybody uses to make social commentaries and stuff.

See, here's what it comes down to. You can laugh at the stupid Star Trek Vietnam war commentaries, or at BSG's stupid monotheism vs. polytheism thing, or at Star Wars' faith vs. technology, et cetera, et cetera. You are entirely welcome to enjoy these shows while ignoring the messages they attempt to convey - most people certainly do exactly that. But you have to draw the line when it comes to laughing at people who decide to study the messages contained in these shows - just because *you* don't care what the authors of the shows wanted to get across doesn't mean that people who take an interest are somehow stupider than you.

Needless to say, the exact reverse is also true - if you ever run into a college professor who tells you that you can't enjoy Buffy if you don't care about its feminist themes, please knock his teeth out for me :).

I don't understand why anyone would want to write to fans to tell them that what they're watching isn't real, though. It seems silly to say that Buffy or Charmed isnt anything like "real life wicca"; I mean, have we ever seen people walking down the street and suddenly shoot lightning from their eyes?
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Hehe, no - but witchcraft is one of those things that people engage in seemingly in spite of the obvious and utter lack of results :).
 
I don't think that was a troll - but it was cutting a little too close to Rule #2.
 
Oh, it's more than "cutting a little too close".

2) Controversial subjects that have already been discussed at length or are likely to cause a disturbance (eg. canon issues, politics, religion, other space sims, etc.) should be avoided if not presented in a thoughtful way.
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(emphasis mine)

This is a formal warning, Spertallica. Don't go there again with nothing more than a quip (or with anything at all, at that), or you're going to be the winner of the grand prize of a week's vacation from the forums.

And, also, what Quarto said. Don't be an idiot.
 
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