SilverWook

Does something like Watchmen count as both Science Fiction and Alternate History?

Okay, let’s try this again. Just remember that the next person who gets out of line gets the Yeti!

Where’s the middle ground then? Letting these morons run amok without any checks on the vile sewage coming out of their mouths seems like a bad idea to me.

I find it curious these guys are standing guard well before there are rebel scum running loose on the Death Star. Does Tarkin have to worry about assassination attempts from his rivals? Does Vader just stand around wheezing all day when he doesn’t have people to torture?

I suppose it could simply be a honor guard befitting Tarkin’s title.

Interesting, as the HGTTG radio series began in 1978.

Deplatformed is not being muzzled. Youtube isn’t the only video sharing service out there. I’m sure somebody will bankroll an alternative service for all those crying over the big mainstream companies that won’t let them easily spew hate and FUD.

Astroboi2 said:

SilverWook said:

And Galactica 1980 doesn’t count. 😉

Oh god. Don’t remind me of that abomination.

The Starbuck episode was good though. They even spliced it into one of the movie edits of the series.

Or they can do what every loonatic fringe person did before the internet. Print out some leaflets and pass them out on a street corner, and write batsh*t crazy letters to the editor. Private companies don’t owe them a damn thing. I’m sure such people will find alternative means to spew their crap on the internet. Isn’t there already a twitter alternative catering to the people twitter is kicking off?
None of these cranks complained when they couldn’t get on anything other then public access cable tv.

Astroboi2 said:

If science fiction is about how scientific advancements impact humanity, then Star Wars can’t be sci-fi. There aren’t any real humans. It’s just a bunch of aliens… with many that happen to look like humans and happen to speak english. It’s a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, so it’s got nothing to do with us.

Now, if they went the Battlestar Galactica route and said that these were our forefathers who would one day colonize earth, then I would argree that it’s sci-fi.

Not that I really care. Star Wars just belongs in the genre of Awesome.

You mean had colonized Earth. The final episode of the original series pretty much sets things taking place after 1969. Whether a few years or thousand years after is anyone’s guess. And Galactica 1980 doesn’t count. 😉

Thread temp locked until people learn to heed the staff when a mod says take it elsewhere.

The people who cut the promos usually aren’t the people who actually make the show. I’m old enough to remember some groan worthy promos for Star Trek TNG.

Collipso said:

moviefreakedmind said:

The country needs a revolution (ideally a peaceful one, but if that’s impossible, then potentially a violent one) to get rid of both corporate and theocratic influences in our government.

most countries do at this point in time. in brazil, one of the mottos of the candidate that’s in the lead for the upcoming presidential election is “brazil above everything, god above everyone”, and he intends to make abortion and gay marriage crimes due to those practices being against the “traditional brazilian family and their christian values”, for example.

Plenty of christian values on display at Carnival in Rio every year. Makes Mardi Gras look like a Disney film. 😉

chyron8472 said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology.

No. Just because it includes technology, that doesn’t make the story about technology.

It is from a certain point of view. 😃
https://youtu.be/Ym7vAL_Gvqk

Let’s not get into political debates in here.

I’m sure that song appears nowhere in the actual show.

More than the budget of an entire 1960’s story. 😉

Shopping Maul said:

I love the ‘tech’ speak of Star Wars. It’s so good and natural that it’s easy to take for granted - vaporators, restraining bolts, nav computers, protocol droids, sublight engines and so on. I remember Battlestar Galactica attempting the same thing in '78 with ‘daggits’ and a ‘languatron’, but it just didn’t flow like the SW stuff. Star Wars even managed to goof with parsecs and own it!

Galactica was renaming things we Earthlings were very familiar with though. Animals, measurements of time, etc. And they got away with curse words you could never say in a Star Wars film, and that’s no fracking felgercarb. 😉

The making of Temple of Doom doc would be the holy grail, as it never it got a home video release.

He was the one who got Fox not to sue over Hardware Wars though.

I saw a 35mm print on Ebay a couple years ago, and didn’t know what the heck it was! I wonder if George has ever seen it…

Anchorhead said:

It’s always felt much more Fantasy to me. It takes place in a world far superior to ours technologically, but it’s still magic, wizards, and a princess. It’s more Tolkien than Asimov.

Science fiction, to me anyway, is where the science and technology play a major part of the story as opposed to just being the setting: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Lost In Space, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek.

As there have been three versions of POTA, three LIS incarnations, and two BSG’s, you’re going to have to be a little more specific. 😉

If I had a nickel for every time somebody has asked why the Death Star plans weren’t just sent as an email attachment. 😉

JP could be science fact if it was about Woolly Mammoths though. They may yet find a frozen one with viable DNA.

The passage of time can take a toll on a hard SF tale. Just about every story set on Mars before the first probes reached it in the 60’s are too fantastical now. The film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which used the scientific theories about the red planet in 1964 to craft it’s plot was rendered fantasy less than a year later.

She’s definitely a free person in TFA. What her status was as a child with Plutt is unclear. He may have put her to work doing menial tasks, until she got older and more capable of kicking his butt.

yotsuya said:

SilverWook said:

IIRC, Lucas was trying to differentiate Star Wars from hard science fiction, like 2001. Magazines like Cinefantastique took issue with the term, possibly because they felt the movie was a step backwards from THX-1138.

Flash Gordon is definitely space opera, and we all know Lucas originally wanted to make an FG movie, but couldn’t get the rights.

Yes, while Flash Gordon predates the term, it definitely is. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Star Wars is considered a space opera. It came as part of a movement in the 70’s that asserted that space opera was not just the old stuff, but was still being produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

And being in the writing and publishing business, one of the things I have spent a lot of time on is what is a genre and how to define it. Part of that is sticking to what is in use and not inventing your own. Book sellers don’t want new genres, there are enough already. Unless that new genre comes with something very popular and can sell books. Science Fiction and Fantasy are pretty stuck. Even the Vampire craze has been confined to the urban fantasy genre title.

Currently Amazon has no genre called Space Fantasy. Star Wars is listed under Space Opera, which is under science fiction.

Did the first Cyberpunk or Steampunk novels cause some confusion as to where they fit in?

Trek superbeings like Trelane or Q have always been explained as highly advanced life forms whose abilities only seem magical as they are beyond human comprehension otherwise. And you also had beings like Apollo who were perceived to be gods by primitive Earth cultures.
Unless there are some in the EU, there have never been god level aliens seen in Star Wars who can do the sorts of things Q does seemingly effortlessly.

The most amazing thing we’ve seen a Jedi do recently was likely fatal.