[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

No sh**t, right? An Irishman? Crap, they can throw a stone and hit the Brit film studios.

Even if he wasn't that close, it's still a good question.

It's possible he was aware of it but simply not interested. That described me back when - while I did see a bit, it struck me as the sort of bad SciFi that was typical if SF did manage to make it to the screen.

(A BBC series I did like from somewhat later was Tripods, an adaptation of John Christopher's YA trilogy The White Mountains, The Pools of Fire, and The City of Gold and Lead. The premise is essentially "What would have happened had the Martians in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds had won and conquered the Earth?", though Christopher's invaders weren't from Mars. The tripods were the giant war machines the invaders used. Christopher claimed in a later interview that he'd never read Wells' War of the Worlds, and the resemblance between his machines and those used by Wells' Martians was coincidental.)

Ah. See, I was a fan--not rabid, but I looked forward to it--of the old cheesy show. I was residing in the slums of Santa Barbara, at the time ('82-83?), didn't know anyone, etc., and it came on every Thursday night, on my local PBS, w/o fail. To this day, there are certain old PBS tunes that make me look for DW. :-) I "found" the series at the same time that the Tom Bakers were running here, and didn't get to see the originals (with the Doctor's granddaughter!) until many years later. For me, it's associative, rather than a devotion to the show itself, I feel.

Understood. I know a fair number of Doctor Who fans, and I understand why they are and don't look askance at them. I just never got caught up in it.

The long-suffering spouse was flabbergasted to see me get weepy-ish, about Bab5. He's seen me cry, in more decades than I want to confess to, literally a handful of times. Seeing me get girly about a TV show? His response to that would be "Inconceivable!," if he actually did PB references. :-)

My long suffering SO was not flabbergasted, and understood the impulse. I wasn't the only one in my circles with that sort of reaction. (A comment made online back when was a girl telling her boyfriend "This is going to make me cry again, isn't it?", when a new B5 ep appeared. Er, yes...

Ditto, ditto, and ditto. Not to mention, JMS being keen enough to NOT fall into the ST trap--aliens that look like humans = good, and aliens that don't, = bad. I remember the first time, watching it, that I keyed to the idea that JMS *had* planned so far ahead, and that was fabulous.

They two things that made B5 possible and actually get produced were the use of computer generated FX and Joe's practice of having scripts in the hopper. The FX were an order of magnitude cheaper than the models used in things like ST, and scripts waiting in the hopper reduced overall production costs. The bit in the pilot episode when the Vorlon transport delivering their ambassador to Babylon 5 materialized out of hyper and approached for docking had my jaw drop in admiration. The original pitch to get the series produced had JMS and about 10 minutes of sample FX to give the buyers an idea of what they'd get.

Another series I rather liked from that period was "Space: Above and Beyond". It lasted a season and did not get renewed. Production costs of something like $1.5 million an episode using the sort of FX used in Trek were a principal reason.

(I actually had high hopes for Crusade, but, of course, back in the olden days when niche markets were blithely dismissed...well, it was blithely dismissed. Of course, I may have been influenced by the good looks of that one guy, the Brit, rather than the actual quality of the show.)

I had hopes for Crusade, but was unsurprised when it didn't catch on.

Sci-Fi routinely gets short shrift in TVland. Whether it's Bab5, struggling for continued existence, year after year, or Firefly, which never got the chance, or Farscape, having to be exhumed and fixed (ending-wise)....and I don't know WHAT it is, but I've seen series after series just killed off because one minute, it has excellent writers, and then, some other idiot is brought in, and you can bet your bippy that they'll either bring in the overly-tired "evil twin" plotline (always a dead giveaway that your show is struggling and will be axed soon), or the "main characters are suddenly in the future" plotline (yeah, I'm talking to YOU, Fringe, on both fronts!), etc.

The biggest problem faced by SF on TV is that it is a niche market. It costs a lot more to produce than other offerings, but can't generate the ratings and ad revenues broadcast TV needs.

{sigh}. I think about the only thing that SF fans can hope for is that the advent of niche streaming TV will allow for the Bab5s, Farscapes, FFs, etc., to survive, and gain the traction and audience that they deserve.

But after the fact, alas.

Or, hell, maybe I am stupid, and the audience really DOES only want those godawful reality shows, or soapy crap. Dunno.

An old friend who used to live in NYC but is in SF these days told me about an effort by her older daughter's NYC middle school. Her class was divided into teams. Each team picked a show to watch, and had to analyze it.

What were the tropes used? What kind of show did those tropes make the series?

What was advertised on the show? What did the ads indicate about the show's demographics, and who the audience was assumed to be?

At the end of the year, the teams had to create a pitch for a show they would like to see. Daughter's team pitched a reality show. When mom made a disgusted face, darling daughter said "But mom! They pull down such big numbers!" I thought daughter had a future in TV...
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Dennis