If you’re involved with medicine and biology, for example, then simply switch off your training and enjoy a work of fiction – as a systems programmer and digital media developer I often have to ignore Hollywood’s portrayal of hacking and CSI-style photographic enhancement to rebuild a fingerprint from half a tiny CCTV video – it’s just not possible as they portay it, but it’s fiction so I don’t get worked up over it and just enjoy.

What I DO have a problem with so far is the Deus Ex Machina approach to the use of this pseudoscience. I have no problem with the Jules Verne concept of capturing the final images from a dead eye, but for Bishop to go from hypothesis based on a fictional work to SUCCEEDING on his first attempt with a piece of equipment Massive Dynamic just so happen to have lying around is so much more unbelievable than the concept behind the procedure in the first place.

The Steampunk-style approached used in the pilot was so much better – networking two brains together using a huge brass spike, a body-full of LSD and dumping you into a sensory deprivation tank was superb! And that’s how Bishop should stay – stuck with 70s tech and 70s ideas, Massive Dynamic are just going to be a Star-Trek style “I can fix this in the last 5 minutes of the show” device and will kill the show.

“In 50 years, people will remember X-Files, I Love Lucy, The Honey Mooners, ST:TOS, Roddenberry, P.K.Dick, Frank Herbert, MASH and Monty Python. Hell, they’ll probably even remember Irwin Allen’s crap.

Now go IMDB JJ, Orci or Kurtzman. Look at their work, then me in the eye and tell me what they’ve done that will keep them in the collective pop culture memory in 50 years.”

Well funny… this show must have struck a nerve with you.
X-files: didn’t watch it… or either movie. And I LIKE science fiction.
Honeymooners (yes, 1 word), I Love Lucy: Sorry, I watched them as a kid. There’s no yearn to go back to nostalgia-land and see Lucy stomp grapes again.

MASH, Monte Python. Again I watched, and enjoyed. But pertinent in 50 years? No.

The same with the authors.

The point?
What do you want? Good entertainment or something you can point at in 50 years with a shaky finger and say “I remember that”.
None of your examples are current (except MP has a Broadway play “Spamalot”), yet you demand that these young men who ARE making a mark on movies and entertainment right now must have something you determine as socially redeeming or part of “collective pop culture”.

I understood…you didn’t like it. There’s a simple solution.

@ 51. montreal paul: Fringe is not Science Fiction.

Just because someone says it is doesn’t make it so.

If there’s a story where some guy pulls a laser out of his pants and says he can read minds with it… well, that’s just silly. It’s a gimmick. Certainly not good eats or science fiction.

But if you have stories where someone talks about placing satellites in orbit to create a planetary communications network, or an adult wagon train to the stars, or an epic Lawrence of Arabia in space, then you’re a whole lot closer.

If Irwin Allen were alive and had a Sony HD Cam and green screens, Fringe is the sort of shallow, Monster of the Week nonsense he’d be making. There’s a reason why the greats like Asimov and Clarke had no love for Lost in Space, Time Tunnel or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

They just weren’t that good. The Jetsons were better sci-fi. :)

It’s kinda insulting to have this dumb-downed, derivative, made-for-a-wider-audience claptrap passed off as something that it isn’t.

In 50 years, people will remember X-Files, I Love Lucy, The Honey Mooners, ST:TOS, Roddenberry, P.K.Dick, Frank Herbert, MASH and Monty Python. Hell, they’ll probably even remember Irwin Allen’s crap.

Now go IMDB JJ, Orci or Kurtzman. Look at their work, then me in the eye and tell me what they’ve done that will keep them in the collective pop culture memory in 50 years.

Yeah, I said it.

After the first 30 minutes, I flipped to see what the UFO show on ABC was like for a few seconds. Before I knew it, I forgot all about Fringe.

I don’t know. It’s just my opinion which doesn’t count for much. I watched House without losing interest. But I guess the characters on Fringe just annoy me.

I watched the mad scientist–who annoys the crap out of me. Not because of the actor, but because it’s such a stupid character who’s not interesting. He’s a throughback to the old 30s B horror movies. And I thought, “all this weird crap happens and he’s the only one the government could find? When it came to the atomic bomb during WW II, the U.S gathered the greatest minds to build it. When it comes to dieases, there are tons of doctors studying and researching them. Hell, ABC had all sorts of scientists talk about UFOs. But this show says, weird crap is happening, and this is the only guy who can solve the problem. This and Joshua Jackson’s character is allowed to tag along. He can questions suspects and beat the crap out of them if he wants. He’s not an agent so his actions wouldn’t screw up the law’s case against the bad guys. Yeah, ok, sure.

Maybe I expected more. But I don’t think it’s that. Hell, a few years back I prepared to watch Supernatural, not expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised because that show is actually damn good. Fringe, I don’t expect will be a show I’ll be watching too much longer. House, yes. Fringe not so much.

That’s just my opinion. I don’t know if the show will do well or not. I don’t really care. Dancing with the Stars and American Idol, which should have been called “Who wants to be a Fake Rock Star” (Simon Cowell said on one interview that Tom Petty wouldn’t have made it on his show; nor would Dylan. I guess he’s not interested in true tallent. The person who signed those two has got tallent not Simon.) is still on T.V. and I don’t know why people watch that crap.

I agree with your take on the most recent Sarah Connor Chronicles episode. I like the show, but much of that was, as we say, ridonkulous.

And then there’s that series where a vehicle goes far FAR past the speed of light with no effect on time or mass or the perception thereof just by creating some stable “warp field” (whatever that is) generated by two pencil-looking things.

As if!

As someone stated before… EVERY science Fiction show is not based on Science fact.. Not Star trek, not lost (which takes place in present time btw), not Stargate, not Firefly, not Twilight Zone not even X-Flies. If you want realism.. .watch CSI or ER. Even those two stretch thing sometimes.

I don’t know about you guys.. but i like to watch science fiction to escape from th ereal world.. go to the world of what if…? Suspend belief and enjoy the stories. God, has everyone lost their sense of imagination?

What about The Time Machine by Jules Verne? NONE of that is possible.. yet it is an enjoyable and classic read. You don’t hear anyone saying.. well that’s impossible so it’s crap.

I just feel that most people on this board are so so negative about everything! About any aspect of the new Star Trek to Fringe and everything in between. Wow.