Jack Bohn wrote:
> Mac Breck wrote:
>
>> Jack Bohn wrote:
>>> Mac Breck wrote:
>>>
>>>> List of Sci Fi Channel (United States) programs
>>>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sci_Fi_Channel_%28United_States%29_programs
>>>>
>>>> Sci Fi Channel (United States)
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci_Fi_Channel_%28United_States%29
>>>>
>>> You know, I see no mention of "Crossing Over With John
Edwards"
>>> on these pages.
>>
>> Not to put too fine a point on it, but....
>>
>> It's "Crossing Over with John Edward" and it should be there.
>> http://www.johnedward.net/
>>
>> John Edwards was one of the Democratic candidates for President.
>> http://johnedwards.com/
>>
>> While the political candidate wasn't my favorite, I still don't want
>> to mix him up with John Edward.  :P
>
> My bad, that *is* too cruel.

Yeah, even for a politician.


>>> Having some time, I've put their First Run series in
>>> chronological order and hunted down selected Second Run series,
>>> the miniseries (marked with +), and some original movies (-):
>>
>> What is the * for?
>
> The serieses.

Oh, now you're just making up words.  Good thing this isn't Scrabble.



> Looking at the list they just seemed to need some
> delimiter.  Not just so I could put a minus sign in front of the
> SciFi Channel movies!  Really!!

We know how you really feel.  It's how most of us probably feel.



>>> 1997
>>>  *Mission Genesis
>> Don't remember it.
>
> Nor I.  Looking at the list, it seems I started getting the
> channel in 2000.

I got The Sci-Fi Channel as soon as it was available on TCI Cable (which
turned into COMCAST here) in the Pittsburgh PA suburbs, but can't
remember the year.  Probably ~1997.



>>> 1999
>>>  *Farscape (2003)
>> Really liked it.
>
> Coming in late to this, and Stargate, I never started watching
> either.  Totally my fault for missing them.

There's always the DVD route (e.g. via NETFLIX).  I bought Stargate SG-1
on DVD, but not Farscape (except for the finale, Peacekeeper Wars).



>>> 2000
>>>  *Exposure (2002)
>> Don't remember it.
>
> Experimental or European short films, several in an hour.  Varied
> quality -it goes without saying- but interesting.  I think they
> also sponsored a contest open to the public.
> You know, this would seem to be the type of show that would be
> about as cheap to produce as an interview show (of which the only
> title on those pages was The Antigravity Room).  The amateurs,
> independents, or experimentalists would have already taken the
> gamble of making the films, and you're just paying off to buy the
> rights to the successful ones.  I'll have to guess the ratings
> were really bad, because the alternative is that there just
> aren't that many successful experiments.

I see.

>>> 2001
>>>  *The Chronicle (2002)
>> I could watch it. (Never saw all of the eps.)
>
> Somehow missed it, but I'm a big fan of Weird Al's song about
> such a paper, "Midnight Star." DVD set?

Not on DVD yet.  Check at tvshowsondvd.com

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/shows/Chronicle/4975
(You have to be logged in.)

>>>  *Crusade
>> When I saw this in first run on TNT, and wasn't used to the
>> characters or the music, I thought it was so-so.  After I watched
>> the series a few times, and got to know the characters better, and
>> see the little nuances, and got how the music set the just the right
>> alien-foreign tone for the show, I really liked it.  The music is
>> too loud in places, and the end "music" from
"Ruling from the Tomb"
>> is awful, but sans TNT-Atlanta interference, I could see loving this
>> show as much as Babylon 5.
>
> To me, this was one step to sf/fantasy conventions and away from
> the "reality" of Babylon 5: the "guild" of thieves,

JMS explains some of this on the Crusade DVD set.


> the easy acceptance of the Technomage,

Technomages have been around in the Babylon 5 universe for over a
thousand years.  Londo talks about them in "The Geomerty of Shadows" as
being around in the time of the first Centauri emperor.  Elric, one of
the mages in TGoS, was Galen's teacher.  This part is really fleshed out
in "The Passing of the Techno-mages" trilogy.  Technomages are also in
the Centauri trilogy.




> the Excalibur main gun.

You can't have the ship be TOO powerful, because otherwise there's no
dramatic tension.  A weakness has to be built in.  All of this is
explained in the bonus materials in the Crusade DVD set.


> However, I could imagine it settling down to get good.

If only they'd have gotten the chance.


>>> 2002
>>>  +Taken
>> Bloated.  Watching it was a chore.  Isn't it mandatory to mention
>> Steven Spielberg in the title?
>
> It's not in the Wikipedia article title, the way "Frank
> Herbert's" is in the article title for their Dune miniseries.
> I'm sure the SciFi Channel didn't need it to be mandatory to flog
> the name as often as possible.
>
>>>  -start of Sci Fi original films
>>>  -Legend of the Rangers
>
> The next step away.

Nooo, many steps away from both B5 and Crusade.  Crusade is a lot closer
to B5 than this is to either B5 or Crusade.  Didn't even feel like it
was in the same universe as B5 & Crusade.  It was almost as if it had
been written by somebody else, not JMS, but using the characters and
races of the B5 and Crusade universe.



>>> 2004
>>
>>>  *Ghost Hunters (c)
>> Never watched it.  It's sort of a documentary, right?  I can take
>> this kind of stuff as a fictional story, but not as a documentary.
>
> Never watched it, although I might this week, when they visit my
> neighborhood Wright Patterson Air Force Base.  I really don't
> know how they can have a show about Ghost Hunters run four years
> if they haven't caught a ghost yet.  ("We're here where this
> scary story took place... we're here in the dark...  Aaaah!  What
> was that?  I don't know.  Well, see you next week.")

Seems kinda cheap, like one step above an infomercial.


>>> 2005
>>>  *Firefly
>> Similar reaction to that I had with Crusade.  When I first saw it, I
>> was put off by the twangy western score and sixguns, but on
>> subsequent viewings I liked it more and more.
>
> Now this is the rare show that was perfect -as a whole and in all
> of its parts.  I suspect it would have had some bad episodes if
> it had gone longer, and we'd seen more of the Blue Gloves who can
> go anywhere and do anything... except track a miscellaneous group
> of hoboes.
>
> From the way your adverse reactions or "Never watched it"
> responses accumulate post 2004, I can see where it fell into near
> uselessness for you.

Well, Sci-Fi moved to "Digital Cable" here in late December 2003 or very
early 2004, and I didn't follow, because I was getting fed-up with the
channel in 2003, and because I was getting fed-up with the cost of
cable.  I was paying  ~$49/month in 2003, and "Digital Classic" and a
DVR was going to take that up to over $70/month.  So, I dropped cable,
and have been using that money for DVDs.  I've kept up with certain
shows (Monk, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica,
etc.) by DVD (NO commercials, NO pop-ups, NO scrunched credits with
voiceover ads. stomping on the end music.  Hooray!!!).  In fact, when
the Battlestar Galactica miniseries first aired, it had a text crawl
across the bottom of the picture detailing the change, **over ALL four
hours** of the miniseries *non-stop* , and the crawl caused static in
the audio. Damned COMCAST!!! [Grrr!]  Glad to be rid of 'em.


> Oddly, for me, I don't watch much television, and didn't start
> watching any series regularly until 2003 with BSG, (did their
> earlier series not have as many repeat performance spots through
> the week?) and added a second "gotta catch 'em all" show in 2005

I think they started that with Farscape, or around that time.


> with Firefly and 2006 with Doctor Who (and 2007 with Flash
> Gordon, but I don't want to mention that.  It's not even an
> argument of tastes, that one was pure self-torture.) so that it
> seems SciFi has been on an upward trajectory.

A lot of my past viewing is a blur, mainly because I was working so
much.  For example, when Brimstone first aired (on FOX) from October
1998 to February 1999, I never even knew it existed.  I only caught it
because of Peter Woodward being in Crusade, and somebody recommended
Brimstone on Sci-Fi to me because they knew I liked him in Crusade.
Peter Woodward was in the Brimstone pilot.  You miss a lot when all you
have time to do is work, commute, eat and sleep, and sometimes not much
of the latter two.

Thinking back now, the only show I watched regularly (religiously), was
Babylon 5 starting around Sept. 1996.  Since then, I've gotten more
serious about watching shows regularly, timer record all of my favorite
shows (to not miss 'em and be able to FF past the commercials), and now
watch 9.5 hrs/week (19.5 with late night).  I don't watch *anything*
live.


-- 
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"The Dresden Files" (2007)
Harry Dresden: [re. Bianca] What is it about bad girls?  They lie,
cheat, won't suck your blood even when you beg them to, and for some
reason, no matter how badly they treat us, we still can't walk away.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32