Before I really get into things I have to set the scene a little with a little bit about my family. I come from a pretty big family 3 brother and 2 sisters with myself sitting as the second youngest with only 1 younger sister. My brothers were into sports, 2 of them football and the other motorsports. I have never been into sports at all but they did try and lure me over to sports, taking it as far as to take to me Old Trafford ... It didn't work as you can probably tell. About the only time, I will watch the sports ball is if it's the world cup and I watch to see England throw away its chances. My Older sister really isn't important here and my younger sister is ... well she's a therapy session all to herself.
Red Dwarf follows the Misadventures of Dave Lister (Craig Charles) stranded in deep space, 3 million years into the future where he alone is the last human alive. He's not alone tho, he's joined by Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) a Hologram of his dead bunkmate, A creature who evolved from his cat (Danny John Jules), A Senile AI known as Holly ( Norman Lovette / Hattie Hayridge ) and later joined by a neurotic android named Kryten (Robert Llewellyn). Their only goal to get back to earth.
I was instantly pretty obsessed with Red Dwarf just the idea and it lasted the next 10 years of the shows initial run (series 1 - 6) this spanned not only the TV show itself but the books ( Infinity welcomes careful drivers, Better than Life, Backwards and Last Human)and comics (I really regret giving those away
) Season 7 Is things start falling apart for me. You see behind the scenes the writers Doug Nailor and Rob Grant had a falling out. Rob left the show leaving Doug to continue along with guest writers including Rob Llewellyn. This is reflected in the last two books. Backwards is funny but lacks the grounding that Doug brought while Last human is dark and gritty and lacks the humour that Rob bought to the table. On Red Dwarf the show suffered too, season 7 loses Chris Barrie due to other filming commitments and was replaced with Kristine Kochanski (Chloe Annette). Season 7 isn't bad but you can see the cracks starting to form as they try to throw things at the wall to see what sticks.
A lot of the fun of Red Dwarf was that it was a sci-fi show with two simple rules. 1) Lister is the last human alive. 2) There are no "Aliens"
In season 8 they brought back the whole Red Dwarf crew ( this number actually varies depending on what the writer felt like on that day from 169 1169 or 11169 + plus a magic 400 prisoners that no one knew about ) for me this is where Red Dwarf should have been left. Season 8 jumped the shark pretty damned hard and altho it had its moments the magic had definitely faded and had wandered a little too far away from its original premise altho Season 7 also had more than its fair share of its jump the shark moments like:
For me, this is where Red Dwarf ended and what continued many years later was only vaguely Red Dwarf.
Jumping back quite a bit to Series 6 of Red Dwarf there was quite a delay to season 7 being produced, partly due to the fact Craig Charles had been accused falsely of rape and spent three and a half months in jail before being bailed (he was eventually cleared of all charges) and the breakup of the two writers, but that delay in Red Dwarf left an itch in the middle of my back I just couldn't scratch.
I eventually found a back scratcher called Quantum Leap. Oh, how I love this show. Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator - and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al (Dean Stockwell), an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap... will be the leap home.
I still love this show to this day, it's a good wholesome sci-fi show that that never overstays its welcome. Each episode sees sam "leaping" into someone new to change history for the better and it's never quite what you would expect. Sam does have a problem. Altho some things he can remember just fine finer details tend to be missing as a side effect of the experiment. Especially personal details. There are also "brushes with history" where Sam will meet a famous person ( eg a young Micheal Jackson ), inadvertently kick off a famous event (watergate scandal) or leap into a famous person ( Elvis ). This show deals with a lot of serious subjects and they are all handled absolutely perfectly and with the dignity they deserve. If you haven't seen it and are looking for a show to sink your teeth in to then you really can't go wrong with QL. I will warn you however that the ending is a little ... disappointing. But this was NBC's (?) fault. Right down to the very last second they were being told they were being renewed and at the 11th hour had the rug pulled out from under them. I would love to see QL be brought back. With how things ended a modern continuation would be so easy to pull off well and introduce a new generation to Quantum Leap.
You may be noticing something missing here. Now my brothers did try and steer me away from star trek, they saw it as too niche and nerdy and did whatever they could to stop me from watching it. Of course, Star Wars was perfectly okay but not Star Trek. It wasn't really until I had a TV in my bedroom that I actually managed to start watching TNG on BBC2 and of course I loved it of course then followed a whole world of star trek, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. I'm gonna be brutally honest and say I'm really not a big fan of the original series. I completely respect it for what it did and what it's done for Sci-Fi, but I'm just not a huge fan of it. Of course, there is the Over Gene Roddenberry show to talk about.
Oh, you know the one.
Don't pretend you don't.
of course, I'm talking about Andromeda. Now stop before you start telling me it's trash because I pretty much already know that. Kevin Sorbo pretty much put the nail in that coffin, but at least the first 4 seasons do have a certain charm about it. I can still remember watching it on a Sunday morning (about 2 am) on channel 4 and it was a pretty fun show all in all. Not what you would call the best sci-fi out there but very definitely a guilty pleasure.
Another Sci-fi show I ended quite heavy into thanks to BBC2 was Farscape with puppetry from the Jim Henson workshop it was an absolutely great show that barely misses greatness by some of the sections where it drags its plot wafer-thin at times. Funnily enough, I was watching a movie review channel a couple of weeks ago and on his shelf behind the reviewer, he had a replica of John's pulse pistol "Wynona" and found out you can buy them from a guy on Esty (my god I cannot go to Etsy, way too much I want that just would sit pretty on a shelf )... It was like £400 but if I had the cash ...
I'm probably missing a hell of a lot here I mean I'm completely missing out on Stargate here (SG1, Atlantis - Universe was trashier than the original movie) and Dr Who and there is a lot more Sci-Fi I could just gush about all day long, quite happily too. I'm certain that there isn't a lot of people that are actually going to read this stream of consciousness but if you want to hear my views on Stargate let me know and I'll do a part two
The year is 1988, Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving British Prime Minister, The 15th Winter Olympics opens in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Apple files a suit against Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement in the Windows GUI. The British pound note ceases to be legal tender and is replaced by the one pound coin and I am 5 years old. Being as my parents don't know how to work the video recorder with any degree of competency, my brother asks me to record a TV show for him and little did I know that this TV show would begin a lifelong love affair with Sci-Fi. That show was ... Red Dwarf.
Red Dwarf follows the Misadventures of Dave Lister (Craig Charles) stranded in deep space, 3 million years into the future where he alone is the last human alive. He's not alone tho, he's joined by Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) a Hologram of his dead bunkmate, A creature who evolved from his cat (Danny John Jules), A Senile AI known as Holly ( Norman Lovette / Hattie Hayridge ) and later joined by a neurotic android named Kryten (Robert Llewellyn). Their only goal to get back to earth.
I was instantly pretty obsessed with Red Dwarf just the idea and it lasted the next 10 years of the shows initial run (series 1 - 6) this spanned not only the TV show itself but the books ( Infinity welcomes careful drivers, Better than Life, Backwards and Last Human)and comics (I really regret giving those away
) Season 7 Is things start falling apart for me. You see behind the scenes the writers Doug Nailor and Rob Grant had a falling out. Rob left the show leaving Doug to continue along with guest writers including Rob Llewellyn. This is reflected in the last two books. Backwards is funny but lacks the grounding that Doug brought while Last human is dark and gritty and lacks the humour that Rob bought to the table. On Red Dwarf the show suffered too, season 7 loses Chris Barrie due to other filming commitments and was replaced with Kristine Kochanski (Chloe Annette). Season 7 isn't bad but you can see the cracks starting to form as they try to throw things at the wall to see what sticks. A lot of the fun of Red Dwarf was that it was a sci-fi show with two simple rules. 1) Lister is the last human alive. 2) There are no "Aliens"
In season 8 they brought back the whole Red Dwarf crew ( this number actually varies depending on what the writer felt like on that day from 169 1169 or 11169 + plus a magic 400 prisoners that no one knew about ) for me this is where Red Dwarf should have been left. Season 8 jumped the shark pretty damned hard and altho it had its moments the magic had definitely faded and had wandered a little too far away from its original premise altho Season 7 also had more than its fair share of its jump the shark moments like:
Lister is his own father, with Kochanski being his mother *sigh*
For me, this is where Red Dwarf ended and what continued many years later was only vaguely Red Dwarf.
Jumping back quite a bit to Series 6 of Red Dwarf there was quite a delay to season 7 being produced, partly due to the fact Craig Charles had been accused falsely of rape and spent three and a half months in jail before being bailed (he was eventually cleared of all charges) and the breakup of the two writers, but that delay in Red Dwarf left an itch in the middle of my back I just couldn't scratch.
I eventually found a back scratcher called Quantum Leap. Oh, how I love this show. Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator - and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al (Dean Stockwell), an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap... will be the leap home.
I still love this show to this day, it's a good wholesome sci-fi show that that never overstays its welcome. Each episode sees sam "leaping" into someone new to change history for the better and it's never quite what you would expect. Sam does have a problem. Altho some things he can remember just fine finer details tend to be missing as a side effect of the experiment. Especially personal details. There are also "brushes with history" where Sam will meet a famous person ( eg a young Micheal Jackson ), inadvertently kick off a famous event (watergate scandal) or leap into a famous person ( Elvis ). This show deals with a lot of serious subjects and they are all handled absolutely perfectly and with the dignity they deserve. If you haven't seen it and are looking for a show to sink your teeth in to then you really can't go wrong with QL. I will warn you however that the ending is a little ... disappointing. But this was NBC's (?) fault. Right down to the very last second they were being told they were being renewed and at the 11th hour had the rug pulled out from under them. I would love to see QL be brought back. With how things ended a modern continuation would be so easy to pull off well and introduce a new generation to Quantum Leap.
You may be noticing something missing here. Now my brothers did try and steer me away from star trek, they saw it as too niche and nerdy and did whatever they could to stop me from watching it. Of course, Star Wars was perfectly okay but not Star Trek. It wasn't really until I had a TV in my bedroom that I actually managed to start watching TNG on BBC2 and of course I loved it of course then followed a whole world of star trek, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. I'm gonna be brutally honest and say I'm really not a big fan of the original series. I completely respect it for what it did and what it's done for Sci-Fi, but I'm just not a huge fan of it. Of course, there is the Over Gene Roddenberry show to talk about.
Oh, you know the one.
Don't pretend you don't.
of course, I'm talking about Andromeda. Now stop before you start telling me it's trash because I pretty much already know that. Kevin Sorbo pretty much put the nail in that coffin, but at least the first 4 seasons do have a certain charm about it. I can still remember watching it on a Sunday morning (about 2 am) on channel 4 and it was a pretty fun show all in all. Not what you would call the best sci-fi out there but very definitely a guilty pleasure.
Another Sci-fi show I ended quite heavy into thanks to BBC2 was Farscape with puppetry from the Jim Henson workshop it was an absolutely great show that barely misses greatness by some of the sections where it drags its plot wafer-thin at times. Funnily enough, I was watching a movie review channel a couple of weeks ago and on his shelf behind the reviewer, he had a replica of John's pulse pistol "Wynona" and found out you can buy them from a guy on Esty (my god I cannot go to Etsy, way too much I want that just would sit pretty on a shelf )... It was like £400 but if I had the cash ...
I'm probably missing a hell of a lot here I mean I'm completely missing out on Stargate here (SG1, Atlantis - Universe was trashier than the original movie) and Dr Who and there is a lot more Sci-Fi I could just gush about all day long, quite happily too. I'm certain that there isn't a lot of people that are actually going to read this stream of consciousness but if you want to hear my views on Stargate let me know and I'll do a part two
