Star Wars / Star Trek Discussion (SciFi In General)

[Collector]

Any technology if sufficiently advanced over what people know will seem as magic. That is the thing about the Star Trek tech. It generally is not simply drawn from thin air, but is based on extrapolation of known physics. Even their warp drive is mathematically possible based on our current understanding of physics. We just don't know if it is truly possible and if it is it will be a long time before we would be able to achieve it. And this is exactly why Star Trek has inspired so, so many people to go into STEM careers. So yes, a *lot* of new tech was originally inspired by Trek.

A few SF shows have availed themselves of the services of scientists and technologist as consultants to stay within the bounds our understanding of physics. Hell, the writers of Stargate SG1 used to pour through scientific journals looking for story ideas. These are the difference between SF and SciFi. The likes of Star Trek, Stargate, and The Expanse are SF, not space operas.

[DeadPoolX]

The Expanse is an amazing show. Granted, some of the plotlines were a little... weird (particularly all that stuff with the proto-molecule) and Season 6* was way too short and overall quite disappointing, but the science around the ships and space travel was about as accurate as you can be without removing entertainment value.

I really liked how the ships rotated to create gravity (and even then, most people still needed to use magnetic boots on any ships) or performed controlled burns to move themselves (and flipped to use those same engines to slow themselves down) without keeping the engines on all the time, like they do in most science fiction.

Combat was more like submarine warfare using primarily torpedoes and guns (with the exception of railguns) were used more often than not as a flak screen to destroy incoming torps. Just the fact they only had ballistic weaponry already set it apart as most sci-fi prefers to use energy weapons.

Also, shields don't exist and ships are relatively fragile. One of the reasons they wear spacesuits and vent the oxygen when going into combat is to prevent explosions (and people getting sucked out of the ship) when a ship is hit since it was common for shells and torps to penetrate ship walls and blow apart sections, leaving holes in the hull that are easily visible on the bridge.

They also talked about the issues of growing up in places with lower gravity than Earth (such as on Mars or wherever the Belters exist) and how that negatively affects those people if they come to Earth.

* First it was Game of Thrones and now The Expanse... what is it with final seasons of shows that were generally loved and had a huge fanbase (not to mention had source material from books) being so disappointing? I understand that no show can ever end the way everyone wants, but in the case of both GoT and TE they received far fewer episodes (six episodes!) for their last season and everything was incredibly rushed, let plotlines unresolved, and some characters acted completely bizarre.

[Collector]

The Expanse is the best SF show in the past several years. It is reminiscent of Niven's Known Space series. You can easily see his influence on James Corey. While the series seemed to end too abruptly, there are several new shows that can be spun off. Its future history can be further developed. All of the new worlds inside the ring to be explored and settled. And there is still the mystery of the proto-molecule and what happened to that nonterrestrial race that disappeared. The concept is rich enough to be the basis of a number of future series.

[Rath Darkblade]

Any technology if sufficiently advanced over what people know will seem as magic.

Ah, yes - Clarke's Third Law! Which reminds me of this comic strip from Freefall, one of my favourite webcomics.

(The wolf is Florence, a genetically-engineered Bowman's Wolf, and an engineer herself).

I haven't seen The Expanse. Aussie TV channels have an infuriating habit of putting sci-fi shows on either in the middle of the day (when I'm at work) or late at night (when I'm sleeping). Red Dwarf was programmed to be on at 11 pm; Star Trek was programmed at 3 pm; and Firefly, even at the height of its popularity, was programmed to start at 10:30 pm.

Sigh. It's very frustrating. Fantasy series/movies seemed to suffer from the same fate; the Discworld movies, for instance, were shown once (only one of them; the others were ignored) and then never shown again. Good Omens was never shown at all, despite being so successful. The only fantasy films I know of that were shown at a reasonable hour were blockbusters like the Hobbit movies, the LOTR movies, and the Harry Potter movies.

Why do TV channels have such contempt for fantasy and sci-fi, I wonder? Any ideas?

[DeadPoolX]

I haven't seen The Expanse. Aussie TV channels have an infuriating habit of putting sci-fi shows on either in the middle of the day (when I'm at work) or late at night (when I'm sleeping).

[...]

Why do TV channels have such contempt for fantasy and sci-fi, I wonder? Any ideas?

They probably figure it doesn't matter what time the show is on because you can watch almost any show you want, whenever you want, on-demand through cable or through a streaming service. In addition, most people have a PVR/DVR or at least some device (such as a DVD or Blu-Ray player/recorder) that allows them to record any show at any time nowadays.

Even if you didn't have any digital recording devices, on-demand, or a streaming service (and not having at least one of those would be practically unheard of in 2022), VCRs existed as far back as the 1980s, which let us record shows if we couldn't view them as they aired, so the actual time the show comes on is relatively meaningless and has been for years.

The only reason I could ever see wanting to watch a show as it airs (instead of recording it to watch later and fast-forwarding through commercials) is if the show itself is live, such as a sports event.

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm. no, I don't have a PVR/DVR - only a DVD player, not a recorder. *shrug* I had no idea these things existed, but I've looked into it now.

Yes, I can already probably watch a show through a streaming service - just have to figure out where and/how. Thanks, DPX.

[Tawmis]

Hmm. no, I don't have a PVR/DVR - only a DVD player, not a recorder. *shrug* I had no idea these things existed, but I've looked into it now.

Yes, I can already probably watch a show through a streaming service - just have to figure out where and/how. Thanks, DPX.

Here you go.

[Rath Darkblade]

Thanks, Tawm ... or I could get the DVDs (up to the end of season 3, at least).

Pretty sure I could ask them to order in the others, too. Something to think about. Thanks again

[DeadPoolX]

Thanks, Tawm ... or I could get the DVDs (up to the end of season 3, at least).

Pretty sure I could ask them to order in the others, too. Something to think about. Thanks again

I'd go with Amazon Prime instead. Sure, you need to subscribe for the entire year (they don't do monthly plans), but just in case you don't like The Expanse, you still have access to a ton of TV shows, documentaries, and movies. In contrast, if you buy the DVDs you're stuck with those discs, which isn't an issue if you like the show, but it's a waste of money if you don't like it.

Also, DVDs are limited to Standard Definition (SD) whereas Amazon Prime is High Definition (HD). There's a huge difference between the two, and after you've watched shows and movies in HD, going back to the relatively low-res, semi-blurry visuals of SD is almost painful.

Maia and I bought our TV back in 2008 and despite it being 14 years old, it's still capable of playing shows and movies in HD, so unless you have an exceptionally old television, you should be okay. If you're watching stuff on your computer instead, then any relatively decent monitor widescreen monitor capable of showing 1920x1080 resolution (in other words, every monitor made in the last decade) will display HD content just fine.

[MusicallyInspired]

I tried to get into The Expanse after everyone was praising it after Game of Thrones failed so miserably and disappointingly. Went through the whole first season and it just wasn't grabbing me in any way. It was better than Game of Thrones S8 but...eh....it just didn't have the right ingredients for me I guess. I respect it as a great show with great writing though.

Also, DVDs are limited to Standard Definition (SD) whereas Amazon Prime is High Definition (HD). There's a huge difference between the two, and after you've watched shows and movies in HD, going back to the relatively low-res, semi-blurry visuals of SD is almost painful.

More practically, modern shows really take advantage of HD resolutions now like they never have before. Watch a movie from the 80s on VHS and watch a modern film on Bluray and tell me the differences you see in the size and legibility of the opening credits text alone. It can be very hard to read a lot of that anymore on VHS or DVD now.

[DeadPoolX]

I tried to get into The Expanse after everyone was praising it after Game of Thrones failed so miserably and disappointingly. Went through the whole first season and it just wasn't grabbing me in any way. It was better than Game of Thrones S8 but...eh....it just didn't have the right ingredients for me I guess. I respect it as a great show with great writing though.

Like most shows, TE takes a little while to hit its stride, and the first season feels a bit awkward. Seasons 2-5 are great, and Season 6 is... well, it's not as bad as Season 8 of GoT, but it was definitely very rushed and left a lot of loose ends. The weird thing is that since this show was based on a series of novels they still had a lot of source material left (I think at least a good three books, if not more) so they hadn't run into the problem GoT did with the source material running out.

Also, DVDs are limited to Standard Definition (SD) whereas Amazon Prime is High Definition (HD). There's a huge difference between the two, and after you've watched shows and movies in HD, going back to the relatively low-res, semi-blurry visuals of SD is almost painful.

More practically, modern shows really take advantage of HD resolutions now like they never have before. Watch a movie from the 80s on VHS and watch a modern film on Bluray and tell me the differences you see in the size and legibility of the opening credits text alone. It can be very hard to read a lot of that anymore on VHS or DVD now.

Yes, that was the first difference Maia and I noticed between SD and HD while watching GoT. The credits (and any other text written on screen) were far more legible. Other details such as clothing and skin were noticeable as well.

To be fair, even DVD quality SD was a lot better than VHS (technically, Betamax had better visual quality and didn't degrade anywhere near as fast after multiple viewings), but the difference between SD and HD — in the case of physical media, the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray — is very apparent.

What's interesting is that you'd think older movies would still look poor, having SD quality or worse visuals, but that's not the case. Apparently, the film that movies were shot on was cut down for movie theaters and the home video market, so when it came time to upscale to HD, it was easy to do because the original copies of films already had insanely high resolutions. The nice thing about that is you can watch movies from the 1940s to the 1990s in HD, assuming the original film is still in good condition. That's not always the case and a lot of original film reels got destroyed through accidents (like fires) or pure, plain carelessness and mishandling.

[Collector]

The reason that some older stuff is not HD, even on Blue Ray is simply because there is no higher res source. As DPX notes film can be very high res, even as early as the '40s. The trick is that you have to go back to the actual film, not just a video transfer from decades ago. It is the reason that TOS and TNG were released on Blue Ray. They were originally shot on 35mm film and that original footage survived. No such luck with DS9 and Voyager. Enterprise was originally taped on HD, so it can be had on Blue Ray as well.

[MusicallyInspired]

Actually, TNG was in the same boat as DS9 and Voyager. The original footage was on film, but the episode masters with all the visual effects were only done and stored in NTSC. For TNG they had to recomposite EVERY single visual effect and redo all the colour timings for the entire show for HD. Michael Okuda, a production designer on Star Trek since the TOS movie days (just before TNG started), oversaw the entire process so that it was done faithfully and authentically in the spirit of the original effects. It was so costly an endeavour that when TNG didn't make as much back as the studio would have liked in sales they scrapped any plans to remaster DS9 or Voyager. But the raw footage of DS9 and Voyager exists on film as well. About 25-30 mins of DS9 was even taken and remastered in the same way for the DS9 documentary "What We Left Behind." But Voyager got nothing. TNG was lucky. Another thing is that by DS9's later seasons and all of Voyager (I believe) there were rarely, if any, any real physical models or miniatures used anymore and it was all computer CGI. Many of those digital assets have been lost and would have to be recreated which would balloon up the cost even more.

TOS's composited masters were all on film to begin with so it was much easier to just throw it all on Bluray (which they did, and yet they remastered the visual effects anyway as well lol).

[notbobsmith]

You have to be familiar with the '70s Star Trek animated series to appreciate this:


They nailed all of the little details. The animation style. The stilted character movements. The awkward pauses and pacing. It's brilliant.

[Rath Darkblade]

I'm not familiar with the '70s Star Trek animated series, but I like this.