What SciFi Should Get the Reboot Treatment Next? 922
Not long ago Wired ran their own list of which SciFi (not SyFy!) shows were in need of another go 'round in this era of the reboot. Well, it looks like many fans had their own opinions resulting in another list of reboots including everything from Firefly (please?) to The Outer Limits. Which SciFi stories could use the breath of life, and which ones might actually succeed it getting it?
Blakes 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's a good one. Imagine Blake's 7 with a *actual budget*.
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Re:Blakes 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blakes 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blakes 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
The actors who played Avon, Vila and Blake were great actors, the rest were mediocre. Orac and Zen were also acted superbly for being machines. Oh and you cannot forget Servelan. She played hot sexy strong in a way I haven't seen yet the only person come close was the visitor leader in V the new series.
The thing is most of the crew needs to be made up with criminals both political prisoners and otherwise. They need not be acted like they are feral animals, the original show did a good job at that, they need the "Violent Offender with Neurochip suppression" otherwise known as Gan. The team needs to be made up of a group of amoral people led by a complete Idealist (Blake). Of course in the original series when Blake left, he took their morals with it and it become a power play between all of the amoralistic bastards left in the crew, save Cally and Dayna. Though season 3 and 4 were fun as well!
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Oh and you cannot forget Servelan. She played hot sexy strong in a way I haven't seen yet the only person come close was the visitor leader in V the new series.
Hot damn. Morena Baccarin as Servilan.
Yes.
I'll be in my bunk!
Re:Blakes 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
> Originally, robin Hood stole, but did it with style.
> The whole protect the poor thing is probably a disney thing.
I have read several Robin Hood books from the early 19th Century and the "robs from the rich and gives to the poor" trope was firmly established then. Disney is not responsible for EVERY non-cynical idea in the world.
Personally, I just assumed that it was obvious, tactically, just as it was later obvious to Mao in the Little Red Book. If you pay back some of your take to help the "poor" or disenfranchised (aka peasantry, in Mao), they cover for you against those who only take (landlords or their agents)(even if you only pay a few pennies of the pounds that you take). This idea also occurred to the Medellin and Cali Cartels in Columbia.
Re:Blakes 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
I read recently that BBC is actually considering a reboot of that one, but at the moment I can't find a reference - so it was probably word of mouth. If not, I agree, that definitely needs a reboot. I remember watching that one after Dr. Who on PBS and loved it.
It certainly fits better than too many shows on that list that are too recent to be in reboot country IMO. Babylon 5 is definitely the most recent I would put in the reboot category. Firefly was nice, but if they can get the money to complete the movies, it doesn't need a reboot.
Others are just way too recent IMO (Roswell, Lexx).
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against a dark background (Score:2, Interesting)
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Naw, I'd prefer they do a show set in his Culture universe.
Reboot should get a Reboot! (Score:5, Insightful)
Reboot should get a Reboot!
That was a great cartoon.
Maybe C.O.P.S too! Fighting crime in a future time!
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Futurama. Think about Futurama reimagined in a younger, edgier style.
Fry: Chill, Hube. I'm like translating as fast as I can.
Leela: I'm so sick of being treated like some kind of object to be worshipped. I'm a real person with real feelings.
Young Zoidberg: You know, I don't think Mitchell likes me any more.
Leela: I'm pregnant.
[Everyone]: No.
With apologies to Stargate.
Why Firefly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I'd change is the dumbass execs that cancelled it before its time.
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What part of Firefly do you think needed a reboot? The whole point of these reboots is to drop the decades of cruft that have dogged down a series and made it impossible to create anything new thanks to all of the baggage. Firefly has a (too) short lived TV run and a movie. There's not really any baggage to drop. The only thing I'd change is the dumbass execs that cancelled it before its time.
I'll second this . . . Firefly was canceled it way to soon. If Stargate can live on like it is why can't Firefly?
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90% of the planets have an environment remarkably like Vancouver, WA, and a sum total of 500 human inhabitants makes sense to you? At least it's consistent, I guess. But if you're saying FireFly's mythos is sub-standard to SG1, I think you have to do a lot better than that.
And btw: it is not really ever very clear that all of FF's planets orbit the same star. I think Joss left it purposely vague, 'cause he didn't want FTL but wanted more room to explore than a single solar system would allow. I have m
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing that was a bit iffy about Firefly was the large number of habitable planets and moons orbiting one star. The backstory is that humans found this star system and was able to terraform all these planets and moons, which conveniently had approx. 1g gravity.
This setting was necessary to avoid the plot device of "warp drive". The show's creator wanted a show where people were in space, but not with technology too far more advanced that our own (though they do have some odd things like floating islands, etc.). The problem is that warp drive is theoretically impossible, and if it ever does happen, it'll require a complete change in our understanding of physics. But warp drive is a necessary plot device to have humans traveling between star systems in any reasonable time, a la Star Trek. So putting lots of livable worlds around one star is about the only way to avoid it.
The "cowboys in space" thing is completely reasonable given these constraints. Remember, with propulsion technology like our own, even traveling between planets/moons in the same system can take days, weeks, or even months (it would currently take us months to travel to Jupiter with current technology). So Firefly's creator envisioned a system where the inner worlds were controlled by the oppressive authoritarian government, and had lots of tech, while the outer worlds were not very well controlled by this Alliance (and not as well terraformed either), and thus it was much like the "Wild West", with less tech, fewer luxuries, not many police around to protect you, etc. This was actually a genius idea IMO.
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Re:Why Firefly? (Score:5, Interesting)
The part that needs to be eliminated in the reboot is the movie. I want to see a series that includes Wash and Sheppard Book.
-Loyal
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The part that needs to be eliminated in the reboot is the movie. I want to see a series that includes Wash and Sheppard Book.
Maybe some things in the movie didn't fit the way they should have, but I don't think that the death of Wash and Book are among these. Were they likable characters? Yes. Are you supposed to be sad that they died? Yes.
Firefly is primarily a story about Mal and his journey. At the beginning of the series he is battle-hardened and stoic while being burdened with Brown Coats' loss to the Core Planets. He is very much a closed-off person and the only glimpses we see of his humanity are his feelings for the ship and a strange sense of loyalty to his crew. He never gives any further explanation to why he protects them other than that they are his crew. There is a common theme throughout the series dealing with the stalled relationship between Mal and Inara due mainly to Mal's inability to open himself emotionally.
The events of the movie bring Mal's humanity back. The uncovering of the atrocities performed by the Core Planets government gives Mal a sense of purpose outside what we saw in the series which was to simply stay alive and flying. The deaths of Wash and Book uncover the real reason that Mal was so protective of his crew and this is alluded to in the last lines of the movie. Mal explains to River that the secret to captaining a ship is love. He protected his crew because he loved them and he is finally able to admit it, but it cost the lives of two good friends for him to realize it. Just previous to this scene Mal expresses to Inara that he would like it if she stayed on the ship, a tacit admission of his feelings for her.
If you don't like the movie because two good characters died, then you are selling the writing short. They died for a reason so that the main protagonist can undergo a change in character. If you felt sad that they died then the writers did their job of good writing.
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:5, Funny)
Man, you are way off. Firefly was primarily a story about a really cool guy who wore Hawaiian shirts, played with plastic dinosaurs, married a total badass wife, made funny (ding!) informative (ding!) and insightful comments (ding!), and occasionally flew the ship.
It is no wonder that a show without the main character would lose some appeal.
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:4, Funny)
Alan Tudyk, is that you?
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Except Book died off camera and without ever fulfilling the potential of his storyline (who WAS he?) and Wash died in a stroke of abrupt and extreme bad luck that had to be summarily forgotten because of the imminent threat. I felt like the only purpose Wash's death served was to make the audience feel like anyone was fair game at that point. It was effective in that regard, but if that's all there was, I don't think it was worth the trade-off.
However, you bring up an interesting point, that I had not con
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Firefly has a (too) short lived TV run and a movie. There's not really any baggage to drop.
The only thing I'd change is the dumbass execs that cancelled it before its time.
See, that's what would be rebooted. The short lifespan and the execs would be booted. With a bladed boot. Into a volcano.
Even if we don't restart the show, I'd like to see them get kicked into a volcano.
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Not reboot. I'd just LOVE to see the series continued. The movie kinda sealed the story shut, but still, that show was killed way before it was due.
Bring back Firefly. Please. Pretty please!
Why Firefly? Here's why... (Score:4, Insightful)
That and un-kill Wash and Sheppard Book.
Oh, and get rid of the whole Miranda bullshit. The people who ply the lanes of space would neither "overlook" nor "forget" an entire main planet over the course of less than 20 years. Nor could such a thing be hidden as, outer-most or not, it would show up on everybody's orbital computations as a huge perturbation in their plots. Let alone one ten-year-old with binoculars.
Oh yea, and drop that whole "all the planets orbiting one sun" nonsense since it isn't workable. Miranda would have been frozen ice-ball _or_ the "inner planets" would be molten slag.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the show. The movie needs to be declared out-of-cannon before the series would be workable.
I could have come up with a better "reason for the reavers" in my sleep. The original one from the series (mental erosion from facing the emptiness of space etc) was good enough. Hell, the movie contradicted the series directly. If the Pax caused reaverdom, the the episode where the one guy got tortured and became a reaver himself woudln't have worked unless the reavers carry a supply of the otherwise secret Pax around and deliberately pre-expose potential recruits to it before deciding who to kill, rape, and eat (in that order, if you're really lucky).
So yea, it needs a reboot.
Reason for Reavers (Score:3, Interesting)
Here were my ideas.
1) from the series, yep, some people go crazy when they spend too long on the edge of that much nothing.
2) in the series it was mentioned that, despite the rumors, there have never actually been any aliens or alien artifacts found. What if there were something so alien way, way out there, but attractive enough to draw people in, that was so alien that it broke the mind. (Would have dove-tailed in with River being prescient and mad, suppose the blue-hands were working from "the only reliab
Re:Why Firefly? Here's why... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, un-kill Wash and Shepard Book. Although, honestly, a 7 year run could take place in the intervening year between the end of the series and movie. Not sure a sane genius class River would improve a continued show any.
Miranda is easy to accept, though. She's not a planet that's forgotten or overlooked, not a perturbation on plots or anything. She was a young colony that was still new to people's minds. Mal even knew "terraforming didn't take or somesuch". She was publicly known to be a failure, and even the mangnitude of the failure was known. The nature of the failure was the only unknown.
Human history is filled with similar misdirected failures.
Re:Why Firefly? Here's why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, un-kill Wash and Shepard Book. Although, honestly, a 7 year run could take place in the intervening year between the end of the series and movie.
Yeah, I gotta disagree with this one. I don't want a series where nobody can die (and wanting to undo their dramatically significant deaths suggests this desire). Especially in the "movie is still canon, and this happens before it, so you know exactly who is still alive and when," sense. That would be the worst.
Not sure a sane genius class River would improve a continued show any.
Yeah I have to agree with you there.
I'm going to be honest here. While it is truly a shame that the series was cut short, I think it's best left alone outside of some supplementary filler like the comics and whatnot. I don't think you could just hop right back in and recapture the magic. Hell, I even have a sneaking suspicious that in some ways the short run of the series was a godsend, since the end result is that pretty much every episode is a home run. But that's only a suspicion... If I had a time machine and a Fox-exec-calibrated-clue-stick, I'd go back and ensure that it wasn't taken off the air.
But barring that? Let's just let Firefly stand on its own.
She was publicly known to be a failure, and even the mangnitude of the failure was known. The nature of the failure was the only unknown.
And nobody cared to find out, because to do so you had to go through Reaver territory.
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I agree that Miranda would have been fine in a system where they weren't all orbiting one star.
And I would give you Reavers being the result of Pax if it were said that, perhaps, Pax was or caused a prion disease of the brain like Mad Cow disease etc. Easily done there.
Then again, the less-than-twenty (and likely less than ten) year timescale would belie Reavers being an old wives tale.
Draw out the time scale on paper sometime. Reavers would have been absolute fact, and a new fact at that, if the movie is c
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:4, Funny)
It's Slashdot, you're required by law to mention Firefly every time anything sci-fi comes up. Firefly, Firefly, Firefly.
Personally, I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and I don't like Firefly at all. But I can't say that due to Slashdot Law. Oh crap, it's the Slashdot Police...
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the solar system in Firefly is very plausible.
It's not, but neither is FTL travel. To have people traveling between star systems in any reasonable time (i.e., not generation ships or suspended animation taking decades or centuries), you MUST have FTL. But FTL is theoretically impossible with our current understanding of physics, so the idea of a convenient star system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons able to be terraformed to some extent, and conveniently having nearly earth-normal gravity, is a workable plot device to avoid the overused plot device that is FTL.
As a counterexample, look at the new Battlestar. They had FTL in the form of "jump drive", but it was really out of place, because all the rest of their technology was really not that much advanced from our own: nuclear-propelled Viper ships, machine guns just like our own, nuclear missiles for shooting at planets or enemy ships, seriously low-tech computers, etc. However, because of the nature of Battlestar's story, FTL was an absolute requirement.
The other thing which both shows seem to have which is out-of-place is artificial gravity. But it's nearly impossible to make a TV series that doesn't have artificial gravity (Avatar had a brief scene at the beginning with zero-g, but that was a half-billion dollar movie).
Any imagining of the future is always going to have things which require a suspension of disbelief, because there are going to be things which are necessary plot devices because of reality constraints or budget constraints, and also because we have little idea what technologies will be possible in the future (or else we'd have already invented them).
Re:Why Firefly? (Score:4, Funny)
(or for the Americans in the audience, Saved By The Bell: The College Years to Saved By The Bell.)
I do not think you are making your point as compellingly as you believe you are.
How about something new? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather see the nice old b&w Twilight Zones, grainy old BSG, the 1 or 2 seasons of Firefly, than ALL NEW DISNEY PIXAR TWILIGHT ZONE 3D ON ICE !!eleventy!!!
Lets get some NEW stuff - the enjoyment from the show should come from the plot/characters/message rather than the latest special effects or rehashes of To Serve Man.
Re:How about something new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about something new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than remake something, or have some ignorant Hollywood producer create some new but clichéd and/or stupid story, why not go look to the great science fiction writers and put them on the screen (suitably updated)? Now that special effects are no longer any sort of obstacle, how about something based on Cordwainer Smith's stories of the Underpeople? E.E. Smith's classic Lensman series? Why not a TV series based on Pohl's Heechee stories? Maybe an Iain Banks novel, as someone mentioned above. How about Heinlein? Asimov? Charles Stross? Larry Niven? Keith Laumer's Retief (sort of a tongue-in-cheek James Bond-ish diplomat dealing with various troublesome alien species) could be huge, and there are enough stories for a dozen films. Any sf fan could list more.
It's annoying when all Hollywood seems to consider is remakes, "original" stories that aren't often good science fiction, and maybe things by Philip Dick. There are literally hundreds of great sf stories that could make fine films and TV series.
Varley's "Titan" series (Score:3, Interesting)
The Matrix and Highlander (Score:2, Insightful)
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How about none? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about none? There's a million* SF ideas out there that have never gone much beyond the printed word. Why do we have to keep rebooting old franchises? How about turning the Vorkosigan saga into a miniseries? Or something by Cory Doctorow or Charlie Stross, if you want to be a little more up-to-the-minute? How about a miniseries based on Hyperion, or A Deepness in the Sky?
Or even just forget about things that have already been written -- commission Doctorow or Stross (or someone) to create a TV miniseries based on new SF material.
* Not precisely 1 million.
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Is This What They Mean By "Mash-Up Culture"? (Score:2, Insightful)
The mind boggles: We are reading an article about another article about which TV Shows should be re-done. Is there not one self-respecting Creator of Original Stuff left? Is this why Young People Today are so angry about the length of copyright?
Re:Is This What They Mean By "Mash-Up Culture"? (Score:4, Insightful)
New doesn't always mean good. There are things like the original Battlestar Galactics, where the premise had a lot of potential, but the execution was terrible. Then there are things like Babylon 5, where the setting left a huge amount of unexplored scope. There's nothing wrong with taking a good idea from a poor execution, and producing something good from it, and there's nothing wrong with expanding existing good shows (although not like B5 Crusade). There's no reason to abandon good ideas just because they aren't new or original.
That doesn't mean that original ideas are bad, and that you shouldn't create them, but some people consider the reimagined version of The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet to be one of the greatest works of English literature, so you shouldn't discount recycled ideas.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Geeky/nerdy can work if done right (Score:4, Informative)
This show is a sit com in which Schrodenger's cat was explained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory#U.S._standard_ratings [wikipedia.org]
The reason most sci-fi tanks is that it's so poorly done.
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Worse than talk, supposedly they are planning on making a single movie out of both Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion [wikipedia.org]. There are at least 6 or 7 tales told in those two books, each one would almost be capable of filling 2 hours.
I think the only way the Hyperion Cantos could make out of book form would be a long-running serial. Something with a really decent production team, that allowed each character time to build up the story.
Of course, one major problem with that is these stories are fairly depressing. Esp
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Can I get a Snow Crash movie or mini-series here?
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So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
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Re:How about none? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cory Doctorow? Really? Stross is a solid, workmanlike writer, but Doctorow? He's a hack. I could name a half dozen current Science Fiction writers better than Doctorow and Stross combined. Greg Bear. Stephen Baxter. John Barnes. Iain Banks. Peter Hamilton. Greg Egan. And that's just current authors, off the top of my head.
Twilight zone (Score:5, Insightful)
There are too many sci-fi stories out there that need to hit the screen before we get reboots of old ones. Where is? Ender's Game, Antares Dawn, Startide Rising, Fire in the Deep, Armor?
I'd love to see Ender's Game in 3d. "The enemy's gate is down..." and our orientation would switch appropriately....
Re:Twilight zone (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the hell is Asimov's Foundation series? Where is Zelazny's Lord of Light? We have well over a century of science and speculative fiction that has barely, if ever been touched, and yet all anyone can ask for is retreads of Star Trek.
Re:Twilight zone (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you read the Foundation series as an adult? It's not really very good. There are certainly some good ideas but the writing is trapped in the 1950s. It seems really awkward in places and overall (in my opinion) it hasn't aged well. It's nice to have classics in whatever genre but don't live in the past. There is a lot of fine writing now.
The movie and TV business is risky and they want to minimise their losses so they rehash what has worked in the past.
Re:Twilight zone (Score:5, Insightful)
I reread it about seven years ago, and enjoyed it as much as I did when I was first read it at 15. Yes, some of the ideas are caught in the "atomic age" notions of the period, but the main plot line, of a Foundation preserving technology in a fading empire, and of a Second Foundation of psychics, along with an extraordinary antagonist like the Mule, well, that's a damned good set of stories. Modernize it a bit, and you're on your way.
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I read the Foundation series for the first time last year and I thought the books were very good, up until the "Scooby-Doo" ending of some of them (The Gods Themselves had the same problem). I don't think they would make a very good movie or miniseries though.
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Twilight Zone got a re-reboot in 2003. It only lasted one season.
Misfits of Science (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait. That'd be Heros.
Maybe (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe screenwriters and filmmakers could come up with an ORIGINAL idea for a change. Getting tired of inferior remakes, all they do is cause me to download and watch the original again.
reboots are so 2009 (Score:2)
Lets get some fresh stories.
And the correct answer is... (Score:2)
None. Come up with some new ideas already.
what? (Score:2)
Many of those show I'd never heard of. Significantly disappointed Lexx made but not Farscape. I wanted Farscape to continue.
What I really want is a live action series out of Starblazers - does anyone else remember how awesome that story was, or I am just making a childhood memory better than it really was?
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Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Score:5, Funny)
Princess Ardala, Col. Wilma Deering, and little robots that want to be your best friend.
What more could any nerd boy want?
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What more could any nerd boy want?
The second season not to have happened?
they should turn 'land of the lost' into a movie (Score:5, Funny)
maybe anchor it with a hip contemporary comedian?
i'm sure it would make lots of money
The Tripods (Score:3, Interesting)
Battlestar; Just the 4th Season (Score:2)
Suggestions: Kara aint no ghost, but a clone or maybe.....A CYLON, bitches?
Let the President live to set foot on Earth, before killing her off, heartless bitches?
Dont kill the hot black chick via suicide; let her F#$@ her way to an early grave?
Must we RAM the BASESTAR? I mean, really?
Go back to Season 2's "Exodus" for inspiration. Do that shit again!
Silent Running (Score:2)
I hesitate to say it because the original was frankly one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time but I think the message is still pertaent and as long as they stay true to the original it could be a very good movie to remake.
Max Headroom (Score:5, Insightful)
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The entire run of Max Headroom is available for torrent via dapcentral.org if you're unable to wait.
A colder war (Score:2)
How about Honey I Shrunk the Kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to see that done with darker, grittier feel.
Ringworld (Score:3, Insightful)
CC.
How about Rebooting Reboot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bob the guardian, his girlfriend Dot and the great villains Megabyte and Hexadecimal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReBoot
Actually it looks like they are reviving it already, so -asked and answered as they say.
-I'm just sayin'
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A canadian animation that took place in
I agree on the sentiment...
But it was inside a Computer, not a game console. The "User" just happened to like playing the occasional game.
I believe they said it out right in an episode, plus one day they were all impatiently waiting for a new upgrade.
Then again I could be wrong.
Fun series. They continued via a Comic a little later, but I hadn't heard of a revitalization.
There is only one worthy (Score:5, Interesting)
Far Out Space Nuts
You know you want it.
But, seriously, I agree with others who say "Do something new".
How about some retro space opera? Lensman or Perry Rhodan? Maybe a Stainless Steel Rat series?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan [wikipedia.org]
B5: Crusade (Score:3, Informative)
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Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Starwars. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 especially.
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Starwars. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 especially.
Lets let Uwe Boll remake them, should be an improvement.
Let's have something original instead (Score:3, Interesting)
For God's Sake, can't we have something original? Reboots are for tired old franchises that have a diminishing following and need a kick in the pants to get going again. Otherwise, it's a remake, not a reboot, and I'm frakking (reference intended) sick and tired of seeing stories from 30 years ago rehashed yet again. So just stop it, ok? We all act like there's only 10 or 12 properties in all of science fiction.
That said, I would have to vote for Firefly returning. A reboot is absolutely not necessary -- I do not need to see the same stories with different actors -- just continue the story, perhaps as a limited series of 6 to 13 episodes once a year, like they do in England.
I think the problem with Heroes was that they just plain ran out of story. The first two seasons worked because they had a preplanned story arc. The last seasons are floundering because they don't. Rebooting will not help -- it'll just move the problem to a different set of actors. Let Heroes die and allow us to remember the first seasons -- when it was still good -- with fondness.
In the case of Star Trek and James Bond, a reboot was necessary if we were going to have more of these franchises. Not having more of these franchises was -- in my opinion -- an acceptable alternative, but the idea of a reboot was interesting, and proved fruitful. Continuing with increasingly elderly actors and every film trying to be exactly like the previous film was clearly not working.
Here, I'll give you an idea for free that combines a story that hasn't been done yet with a current franchise, making it simultaneously new and marketable. Make a series from Andre Norton's "Star Rangers", but make it part of Trek canon. It's thousands of years in the future, and a old limping spaceship from the broken fragments of a federation crash lands on a planet that used to have a high level of technology. The survivors of the crash attempt to survive from the remnants of old technology found in the dead cities. At the end of the story, (first season) they stumble upon Star Fleet Headquarters and realize they've found Earth.
ALF! (Score:5, Funny)
I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- the darker re-imagined ALF would be a blockbuster (I'm seeing this version of ALF as a movie, just to be clear).
We could establish with the big effects piece: the destruction of Melmac. We could shock the audience right away by killing off Lucky. Pretty soon it's a hunted man movie -- this year's District 9 -- and away we go!
We'd do all the big character surprises, too. Willie would be a female, maybe a hard-drinkin' fighter pilot with a bit of the reckless sex streak. The nosy old lady next door could be a transvestite (very edgy). Before the first act is done, ALF is halfway across the country -- a vast break from the original series, I should add -- and has left a trail of broken lives and broken promises behind him. There would the climactic fight. Willie avenging her dead cat. Lots of dialogue -- total ripoff of Kill Bill's climax. And the final blow. ALF is dead.
Starship Troopers (Score:3, Insightful)
Do it for the Lieutenant!
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Come on, the book was about two things:
1. The politics
2. The powered armour
Just because both those things were missing from the movie... oh, wait, I see your point now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The movie caught pretty damn well the fascism is all right, m'kay theme and made serious fun about it.
Pretty hilarious, unlike the book which was just serious about it all, really.
Star Wars Christmas Special (Score:3, Funny)
On Naboo with JarJar. George Lucas needs to outdo his last Christmas Special.
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
... no seriously. Slashdot needs to have a reboot with a younger cast. The cast of Slashdot had too little diversity. I'd like to see some more female leading characters... maybe a range of ages and some interesting quirky characters. The whole "Evil Bill" thing got old too. Perhaps we could make a new enemy?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The whole "Evil Bill" thing got old too. Perhaps we could make a new enemy?
I nominate kdawson...the biggest advantage is that it has that whole, evil but insider to the good guys' organization twist going for it.
Dune....Definitely Dune (Score:3, Interesting)
Sliders (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I second this. Sliders is a very excellent idea which went haywire due to various reasons (as stated by the parent). I just got brought back into this series due to the fact that the first three seasons are now available on Hulu [hulu.com]. But, I do agree - after John Rhys-Davies was yanked, the show just continued to go downhill from there. Plus, while I realize the show needs a plot, can it stop being from the standpoint of, "Quinn decides to be dumb and save a damsel in distress and gets everybody into a heap
UFO - No Question (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine most of you have never seen this excellent British SF Series but you should. Despite those elements which date it horribly, it was still far far ahead of its time. This was my favorite show as a kid without doubt and in many ways its still an excellent show and aged well. It deserves a reboot if anything does.
However, it needs to be redone by the British, not Americans, or at least a co-production. Letting American writers and producers loose with it would ruin the show I think - it had an air of understatement that American TV shows and Audiences seem unable to maintain. A US production would be totally over the top and I think that would be a mistake.
By far the best show in the entire list - and amazingly ignored in all the comments I read.
What about Alf? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depends on how the "reboot" is done. (Score:4, Insightful)
Had they stuck with the Trek story, and had the Temporal Integrity Commission go back and set things right, again, great movie.
No, that would have been awful, because it would have meant we're stuck with the forty years of canon that has been bogging the series down so badly. The series was toppling under its own weight, but trekkies wouldn't let go of a single scrap of that history. Such that their opinion of any Star Trek media is based almost entirely on how well it sticks to that history to a tee. Ugh.
Splitting off the timeline, freeing the series from that history while simultaneously respecting it, was the best thing that could have happened to Trek. And if doing that means going against Trek's standard temporal theory where time is linear and the Time Cops come around and "fix" it whenever someone mucks with it, then so be it. Actually, expunging that piece of Trek canon was in and of itself a great move by itself. Because when your sci-fi series shares the same theory of time travel as a Van Damme movie, that's a hint that your theory is dumb.
Thank God JJ Abrams came along and saved the series from the Trekkies.
You smell like bacon... (Score:3, Informative)