Thoughts on two ’90s sci-fi shows
Finished watching both “Earth 2” (IMDb rating: 7.0/10) and “Space: Above and Beyond” (IMDb rating: 8.1/10). I was watching the latter on the Greek TV in the ’90s, but the first one never broadcasted in Greece as far as I know. So I Netflix’ed both and [re-]watched them as I am such a sci-fi sucker (if you want to torture me, you can always force me to watch a medical/drama). So, as you can see that S:AAB has a higher rating compared to “Earth 2″. Usually, I trust IMDb’s ratings. But I won’t agree this time. In my opinion, “Earth 2″ is superior to S:AAB.
“Earth 2″ has elements that show that its writers had a pretty objective view of the future: a totalitarian government, chips implanted to people without their knowledge, an almost uninhabitable original planet Earth, non-humanoid aliens that are different enough from humans to be interesting, genetically engineered people pre-destined to follow certain professions, long interstellar travels that required cold sleep, the fact that in order to survive a colonization of a planet the humans must be genetically modified, while other humans were modified to become cyborgs. It’s all there. It’s true sci-fi, but with enough future reality dosage in it. So from the writing point of view, “Earth 2″ was great (and it would be greater if they dropped the parapsychology-driven episodes). Where it lacked was in the actual realization of the writer’s vision. It seems that the rest of the crew did not get it, and gave us some constipated-looking aliens, cheap directing in addition to bad broadcasting times that drove ratings down.
Earth 2 trailer
S:AAB suffers from the exact opposite problem. Better directing, more expensive sets, “Starship Troopers”-like battles, a “Wing Commander”-like universe (the show was obviously inspired by the video game), computer generated sequences that were a first for TV at the time. And at the same time, writing sucked big time. Stupid dialogs (don’t you hate it when characters start explaining shit like we are 5 year olds?), idiotic characters, aliens that seem to share similar values with us and yet don’t sit their ass down to discuss a treaty. While the Sillicate AI story is somewhat believable (although the show is set awfully too close in 2063), the InVitro story is not: it’s cheaper to employ soldiers than to gestate them and pay for their growth and education. The fact that only 6-7 characters were recurring, shows how shallow the show was. If it wasn’t for the super-hot James Morrison as the Lt. Col. “T.C.” McQueen, I would have been sleeping in the couch in no time.
Lt. Col. McQueen: hot, hot, hot…
Truth is, there were things that really bothered me in S:AAB. No matter how sexy McQueen was, when he was talking how much “hope” the Hiroshima bomb gave to people and he wanted to do the same, I just wanted to blow his brains out. Or how greatly he talked about the Vietnam war: the guy is a maniac, and yet his character was meant as a father figure. The show felt like a US Army propaganda at times. Or when Lt Wang said something about the ancient Greek God called “Cer”, a God that does not exist (what did the writers were smoking?). Or that episode where the marines were stranded in space and they *heard* the alien fighters closing in (WHAT)? What really bothered me was that episode called “Who Monitors the Birds?”. For the S:AAB fans, this is one of their favorite episodes ever. To me, it was freaking incomprehensible. Alien soldiers exchanging tokens? And that vision (or was it an alien?) “The Whore of Death”, a concept taken (unfortunately, literally) from the William Manchester’s “Goodbye, Darkness” book. I mean, if you had never read that book, you can’t help thinking that the writers went mad. What a waste. No wonder it got canceled.
9 Comments »
Well Eugenia
I hope you won’t blow my brains out as I say this.
I think there is not question that many more lives were saved by use of the Atom bomb that was taken by it. This included Japanese industry that was largely intact. I think there is serious differences between the morality of of WW2 (my father’s war) and Vietnam (my war).
The fact remains that instead of allowing National Hari Kari or fighting to the last man, that the Japanese leaders were stunned and simply gave up.
This is all recent history to me. I am not happy that we dropped the bomb, but because we did it saved many Japanese lives and no question it saved their jobs, how sad the thousands that lost their lives and how sad that Japan attacked us. Much better to fight economically than militarily.
I am putting on a bullet proof vest, but your opinion has value to me despite likely being of different opinion
I can only say this, but please don’t reply on this, because it is off topic to the larger blog post.
I remember Earth 2 (MAN, that was some time ago), and I did like it. Sure, they needed a slightly bigger budget, and I’m sure they didn’t stick to the writer’s vision as much as they could have - but it was nice because it was different. I liked the show but the aliens were so-so - this is where 95% of sci-fi shows/stories lose me: the aliens. Aliens (from what I can cobble together) would most likely look nothing like us even if we shared similar biology and chemistry. As the most probable place to find life is in extraterrestrial oceans, we would likely find our nearest neighbors to be some sort of squiddy-octopus-like form. They are very intelligent, well adapted to their environment, and LOOK NOTHING LIKE US. Bipedal (often naked), primitive tribal humanoids just don’t strike me as ‘alien’ and often ruin the plot for me (especially when they somehow speak English). Now a seven-eyed flying octopus that writes in extended Chinese and speaks by clapping, now THAT’s an alien!
Never seen “S:AAB”, isn’t that a car brand?
No, that’s SAAB. This one is S:AAB, according to its fans.
As for the aliens on Earth 2, I think the premise was good, but with no huge budget they had to look like humans a bit.
Eugenia, I love you dearly as a person, but Google still finds hits for what you claim does not exist. Deleting my comment doesn’t change that
It annoyed me last night, but I was too tired to argue and TBH, now, now I don’t care much more than the say this. No ill feeling is intended by this comment, so please don’t send me daggars in the email system 
Earth 2 lost me. I did try to watch it, but it was on at some weird time on Sky One and I missed a few episodes and lost the plot. I think S:AAB was on the BBC.. if so, they did their usual best effort to put it on at some idiotic slot that no one niticed. Shame.
The best Scifi show I wished I stuck with was Farscape. Farscape rocked.
I did not delete your comment. Your comment was rejected by the blog as a spam because it had too many links, or something like that, the error message said.
Um.. weird it was there to begin with, I saw it there. That’s why I assumed you’d removed it.
Did you get the jist? It was basically that, whilst you say “Cer” does not exist, there are a tonne of sites that say differently. She was: “Cer goddess of violent death”, and was also known as “Ker”. There was more,, but that was the premis.
I though it was odd that it went, coz you’d usually have jumped on me and bitten my head off if you’d been that pissed off with me as to delete the comment!
Anyway, much pleutonic love at you. Life ultimately sucks, but you have to see the good in things else, you’ll always feel down. (yeah, this is replying to another post, but as you disabled comments and I wanted to give good vibes, I assumed you wouldn’t mind!)
>Um.. weird it was there to begin with, I
No, it was never published. The engine had it removed and only sent me the message why.
Comments are closed as this blog post is now archived.
Lines, paragraphs break automatically. HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>The URI to TrackBack this blog entry is this. And here is the RSS 2.0 for comments on this post.