Battlestar Galactica destroyed sci fi for me.
Yes it did, but hear me out ok?
After having seen BSG in a week, lived with it you might say, I can't fully enjoy other sci fi as I used to (with the exception of Farscape and Firefly, I'll mention them later). It feels unreal, shallow, cliché and occasionally even badly acted.
Why? BSG spoiled me, it really did. It plays in a league of its own. The characters feel so real, so human. They are flawed, they hurt, they scar, they love, they die. The ship feels real too, it isn't too "far out". It isn't run by a super smart computer and you can't just press a button or say "computer, do this and that". It doesn't have an energy field around it with blinking percentage showing up at a screen and someone saying that shield's are down. It's a tin can, and it's run by people. It has keys, levers, phones with cords… and people. And they turn the keys, pull the levers, and needs to find a phone whenever they want to contact someone. And there's someone at every little station imaginary. No single computer whiz doing it all. It feels like it's inhabited. People live on that ship.
There isn't some advanced alien race looking like us (having evolved to almost the same thing at exactly the same time in the eternity that is the universe) wanting us dead. The enemy is our own creation, we built them. And it isn't about heroes and all good men and women. It's the few shards left of humanity… on the run. Trying to find somewhere to live, somewhere to restart civilisation.
They aren't "superheroes". They don't succeed with everything. They cheat, they fail, they lose.
It all feels so real.
And the acting is superb. You believe them.
I was so caught up in this show; I believed in the characters so much that I didn't recognize actors that I really should. I am the kind of person who recognizes people from a guest spot on a show I saw two years ago. But in this they aren't actors, the characters are real.
Yep, can't watch sci fi in the same way anymore.
But, you say, what about Farscape and Firefly that you mentioned in the beginning?
Yeah, those two shows (the ones that own my heart) still feel as good. But then again, when reading the essay collection books on those shows you find them mentioning each other, saying that they're different. I agree completely.
The reason Firefly didn't destroy my view of sci fi? It was so short. But it was the same thing there. Real people, a ship that was a home not a computer and superb actors.
Farscape just kidnapped my heart. The acting and writing was so good. But yes, here you have loads of aliens (looking like us) and not a ship that is an inhabited tin can but a living being (although, that is the thing, it's really alive, and she has her own problems and mood swings sometimes). I won't go deeper on this show, because I won't be able to stop. But yeah, I could surely suspend disbelief for this, maybe largely because Crichton was from here and now. And the people stuff mentioned above still apply to all these characters, even the aliens. The reason it didn't frell up sci fi? I'm not sure, probably because it was quite a funny show at times (light hearted stuff doesn't have the same effect) but also that it had such heavy drama, just like BSG does... (and an insane plethora or aliens)
I already miss being able to enjoy the other shows the same way, but I wouldn't want to trade it back. No frakking way!