I am using footnotes to clarify some of my statements, so watch for the asterisks.
That FP box set is actually some years old, and now you can get it cheaply. I paid half price for mine, and that was five or six years ago. I got it cheap because though it was new there was a small dent in the metal box and it was the last copy they had. The figurine also has a defect, one of the ears is missing, but I don't care, I love him and the set regardless.
UPDATE: I take that back, it's now out of print and getting rare. It's available used on eBay, but the cheapest I can find is $45.
EBay:
Forbidden Planet: 50th Anniversary Edition (DVD, 2-Disc Set) in tin + figurine
Funny you should mention "Space Precinct", actually. I was actually going to add that to my next reply (this one). I'm a big fan, and I own that box set as well.
One I do intend to add is another children's show that had slipped my mind, but it's sheer genius. It's an Australian show,
"The Girl From Tomorrow". Most shows, especially those targeted at younger audiences have a pretty much generic plot line. I believe it was Goldwyn who stated that there are only seven original plot lines and everything else is a variation of one of those, and most are based on Shakespeare or Dickens. With this show I can in all honestly say that I have never seen a story line so original.
The characters are absolutely charming, you instantly fall in love with each one of them, and that is important because you really CARE about what happens to them all. The Baddie is fantastic with a wide range of emotions, and you truly want to see him beat but at the same time you can't help but really like him.
It is an absolute MUST see. By the way, whenever you see a title in blue such as the one above, it's a hyperlink that will take you to a page that has it free of charge. I'm actually going through and watching them all again and I'm amazed anew at how good it is.
I really need to read Watership, you know I never have. I did watch the animated movie, but when I was very young, and I can't say that I remember more than a flash or two. On my to-do list.
In LIS the change was really to tailor the show more for children. At that time, the powers that be in the studios felt that young boys were the only ones interested in science fiction, so they moved away from the realistic, gritty and dramatic format to a simpler, more kid friendly format. The network heads insisted on it.
You probably know that Roddenberry had to fight tooth and nail to keep the cliche cute robot and the kid with the IQ level of ten gazillion out of the show. Those were considered to be essential in any SF show at the time. No one took the genre seriously, to them "science fiction" was synonymous with "children's show", and he had terrible difficulty explaining that "Star Trek" was science fiction for adult viewers, not children, they simply could not conceive of such a thing. Ironically, "The Next Generation" included the cute robot and the kid with the IQ level of ten gazillion, which I thought very odd and completely unnecessary. Data proved to be a good character. But I hated and despised the kid. Still do.
LIS predated ST, of course, so it had the obligatory cute robot and the kid with the IQ level of ten gazillion. But the network heads weren't satisfied with it because the Robot wasn't cute and Will was highly intelligent but didn't have a completely unrealistic IQ level, and they felt they had to intervene with the producers to make it fit with their ideas of a kiddie show. It worked, ratings went up, but it ceased to be as interesting for those of us who take the genre seriously.
The same thing happened with "Space: 1999". The first year focused on science and drama, the second they went from scientific problems to hokey "man in a rubber costume" BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters) for the benefit of the kiddies. Of course, they also introduced Maya, whom I absolutely worshiped. She was a huge role model for me when I was a child, so I forgive them. She makes the second season a treat to watch by herself.
Honestly, the science in "Space: 1999" wasn't really that accurate, and the scripts really weren't that good. Sub par, really. They tended to rely too much on technobabble and they rather wore out a few cliches, such as "a strange, new form of radiation". Most critics panned the acting abilities of Landau and Bain, calling their performance "wooden", but I disagree with them on that. I thought Landau especially turned in a very dramatic performance, but I seem to be in the minority.
The real star of the show was the Eagles and the model work, which was first rate, and rivaled "Star Wars" on a fraction of the budget, and it still looks great today. The monsters really were cheesy, though, so the format change wasn't really a good idea in my view, but no one asked me. Also, accurate SF is just expensive to produce, and they had to lower their budget to get green lighted for the second season.
But the EAGLES! They just take my breath away! And the fact that they are lower tech and not FTL capable just made them more realistic, as did the very practical and versatile workhorse design.
I haven't read novelizations in years, but I have read a lot of them. At some point I just got tired of them. Boxed up in storage I have hundreds of them, literally. Right now I live in a tiny studio apartment and just haven't enough room for more than one very small shelf.
Some of the novelizations were astonishingly good, and some were utter crap, it was always a bit of craps shoot.
I expect they have gotten better since then.
I would say by all means watch the original "Battlestar Galactica". It's really worth the time, whereas the new one I just couldn't get interested in. As I say, in every single respect the new one is
better; at least in every technical way. The special effects, the more adult writing, the added drama, every way that I can list.
But it's not nearly as much
fun to watch as the 1978 version. That version had less drama and more action, and the characters were more interesting and the acting was superior. The cast had a chemistry that made you
believe the characters were real people, each one a unique individual. I enjoy watching it, and I can't say that about the new one.
The character of Baltar especially, you just loved to hate him in the original. The villain is always the most important character in a story, they make or break the show. A hero is nobody if he hasn't a good villain. In the new one he was just a slimy dork, in the first one he was a former Colonial military officer who had resigned his commission to join the Cylons in a commercial mining venture for profit before the war. When the war started he acted as the Cylon ambassador to the Colonies, and it was he who planned the attack, and it was he who convinced the Cylons to pursue the Colonial convoy. He was the driving force, the main antagonist.
Count Baltar was self assured, and calculating, and a strategist. He lorded over the Cylons he commanded like an emperor, whereas in the new one was just a spineless coward whom the Cylons kicked around and manipulated to their advantage. You could FEAR Count Baltar, who exuded competence and command and always had every situation in control, whereas you had nothing but contempt for the replacement who feared everyone and was completely lost and constantly scrambling from one deception to another in an effort to live a few more days.
And John Calicos played the part to the HILT, he loved the role and it showed. It was he who was the driving force in getting the new show made, and regrettably he passed away just a couple weeks before it was given the green light.
The new character was just NOT Baltar, he was NOT interesting, he was NOT scary, and he was NOT someone you respected as an adversary and he certainly wasn't someone you could love to hate. You couldn't actually bring yourself to care about him at all, except to occasionally wish he would just go away so you can get to the good bits.
I'd have to say that that character alone was why I just felt no interest in the show, I didn't CARE if anyone beat the guy, because you knew he was such a pathetic wuss that all anyone had to do was kick the crap out of him and would spill the beans and Bob's your uncle the show is over. And every time he came on screen I couldn't help but wonder why no one was doing just that, because you wanted to kick his butt yourself.
As I said before, a Good Guy is nothing without a Bad Guy.
The human looking Cylons were also a disappointment. They were actually introduced in the last season of the original show, but really what it comes down is that no matter how often they tell the audience that a completely human looking and acting robot is so much technically harder to manufacture in the story, and that it is much scarier than a traditional robot because you can't
tell it's a robot, it still just comes across as a cop-out that screams "we're too cheap to spring for a costume and special effects". I did mention that that final season really, really sucked, didn't I?
The original Cylons were COOL!!!! They looked, moved, spoke and acted like a machine. Think about it; it takes a good actor and a really good writer and director to have a human actor act like a robot, and that's magnified when you have dozens of actors on screen at the same time, especially considering it's very hard to tell them apart. Not to mention the cost, time and effort of making costumes. By contrast, it is really SUPER EASY to have a human act like a human. You pretty much don't have to do anything at all. In other words, it's just a tragic, epic FAIL.
Funny you should mention "Firefly", actually. Everyone raves about it, and a friend from work gave me copies of the entire collection he had burned to DVD-R when he downloaded them, but I've tried watching it four times and never got more than twenty five minutes into the pilot.
It's the actors that annoy me, they all look and act like young actors, they don't look or act at all like the characters that they are supposed to portray, and none of those characters seem interesting to me. In fact, they all look like cliche characters, not at all unique. When I watch it, I just don't buy into it, and I can't get interested in it at all. It bores me to tears, I don't care how good the script or the special effects, the actors and the characters just turn me off completely.
I love "Cowboy Bebop", I have the box set of that as well.
Every true fan of SF knows "The Starlost", and you can actually use that as a meter stick to judge a person's interest in and knowledge of SF*. For the general viewing public it's completely obscure, almost unheard of, because it was never of any interest to the general public. It was low budget and a bit hokey looking, but the scripts were superb and so were the characters. For this reason today it is only known by people with a serious interest and passion for hard science fiction, it's not something a "Star Wars" fan would have the slightest interest in.
It is about a generation ship that has been traveling in space for millennium, and none of the inhabitants remember that it's a ship, to them it is the world. Centuries before an undefined catastrophe had occurred and each bio dome was sealed off from the rest of the ship. The crew had all been killed and ship was off course.
A man exiles himself from his primitive, agrarian society, and finds a way through the door from his bio dome and into the ship proper. With no knowledge of technology the first couple episodes involve him, his fiance and best friend trying to overcome culture shock and learn about their surroundings. There is an information computer network, but it's damaged, and unreliable, and a lot of data has been lost, including the nature of the accident that so badly damaged the ship.
It reminded me very much of "Orphans in the Sky" by Heinlein, actually, but it wasn't just a knock-off of it. It's really a must see for anyone who is interested in the ESSENCE of science fiction, which I can sum up in two simple words: "What if?". It is not at all for the casual viewer who just wants to see spaceships and lasers and doesn't care about the plot.
I'm the former type, and have only a passing interest in "Star Wars"**, and a bit of a love-hate relationship with "Star Trek" which I like, but find too soft***. "Space: 1999" is an anomaly for me, it's the exact opposite of the type of SF I usually like, but somehow it just works, and I just adore it.
One thing I have noticed is that ,with very few notable exceptions, bad science fiction makes great movies, while good science fiction makes absolutely terrible movies. The screen is such a limited form of media, you can only represent so much detail, emotions and technical details because of budget, technical and time constraints. Books are an infinitely richer medium, and it hasn't got those limitations.
Also, books and stories HAVE to be plausible because the reader is concentrating on the story, whereas on the screen nobody notices plot holes just so long as the pace of the story is fast enough and there are enough interesting things to distract them.
Take the robots in "Star Wars" for example; what do they contribute to the story? Nothing. They are completely extraneous and serve only one purpose. They distract the audience from the fact that there is no real story.
I mean, when you get right down to it, it's really silly to suggest that an obsolete freighter would be able to outgun and outrun a squadron of modern military fighters. If I told you that this:
Could whip this in a fight:
You wouldn't believe it, would you? Yet NO ONE QUESTIONED IT WHEN THEY SAW IT ON "STAR WARS".
It doesn't make sense, but hundreds of millions of people saw the film, and I have never heard anyone point out that glaring discrepancy. All those people saw it, yet not one noticed it. Why? Lots of action and special effects and everyone was too busy thinking about how cute the robots were to devote even a second of thought to the fact that the entire scene was completely ludicrous. Because were distracted from thinking about it.
Let us look at the Death Star. A fixed defense has only one possible use, and that is as a defensive fortification for an immobile asset, for example a planet. The French proved conclusively that a stationary fortification is of no use at all for anything else than that with the Maginot Line. All one has to do in order to defeat it is stay out of it's firing envelope and go around it. For offense you need to take the fight to the enemy, and to do that you need mobile units. Of course, the only war that the French have ever won was the French Revolution, and that was only because the other side was also French. You can always trust the French to be really good as bad examples when it comes to military tactics and strategy.
Even the greatest military mind the French ever had, Napoleon Bonaparte, was appallingly bad at strategy and tactics. He succeeded because he recognized the fact that organization, morale and logistics was what won battles and wars, not tactics and strategy. The best tactics and strategy in the world is useless if you can't get your forces to a position in which they can do the most good or can't keep them supplied with bullets and beans, fuel, spare parts and any of the other millions of things an army in the field needs in order to be effective.
Getting back to Star Wars, why would such a massive, expensive, state of the art, military fortress have such an Achilles heel? I mean, a teenager took it out with one shot. It makes no sense whatsoever. But no one noticed that, because "oooh, look at the lasers and cute robots!"
I actually have only seen a couple episodes of "Quantum Leap". It was good, but it didn't grip my interest enough to watch any more. The lead had very good acting abilities, though, the show depended on it.
It was actually really good SF. Science fiction is not about spaceships, or time travel, or lasers or the future or robots. It can have all of those things, but that isn't what science fiction IS.
What science fiction IS is speculation. You start with a scenario and then ask yourself "what if THIS happened, how can I make that work and seem like it might actually happen?" It doesn't matter what "THIS" is, not really, it merely has to be something unexpected, and then you study that unlikely thing to discover a way in which it actually is possible, even probable, no matter how unexpected it was. Alternatively, you can forget about explaining it, and describe how your protagonist copes with the unusual situation created by the unexpected thing. As I said earlier, it boils down to one question, just two very short and simple words: "What if?".
The original "Twilight Zone" from the 60's was real science fiction, and very good science fiction, though only rarely did it involve spaceships or the other elements commonly associated with the genre. You don't need those to have SF. The same can be said of "The Outer Limits" (I have that box set as well, by the way). And the writers who wrote those stories were not screenwriters, they were all published science fiction novelists.
I could actually recommend some books, that is my real passion. I'm far more qualified to discuss that than I am movies and television.
Oh, this cat is a real character, she has more personality than any other cat I have ever met, and they are all characters.
That 'corn I spotted at the drug store while picking up a prescription one day, and I just had to have it.
I'm sorry to write such a long post, but you got me started on a pet subject, and I do get pedantic.
* In literature the genre is abbreviated as "SF". On screen the accepted abbreviation is "sci fi". I am primarily a reader of the genre, and have only a mild interest in a select few science fiction movies and television shows, therefore I always use "SF".
** In order to be called science fiction a story has to plausible, has to use real science and be consistent within it's own framework. "Star Wars" is NOT science fiction, it's space opera. There is zero real technology or science, it's not plausible, and it's certainly not consistent. it's all action and fun.
*** "Star Trek" has been described as "the McDonalds" of science fiction by David Gerrold, who wrote many of the scripts and books, and I must agree with him. It has a plausible basis but is massively oversimplified for a non-technical audience and depends far too heavily on technobabble rather than real science. It's a good stepping stone into hard SF, but that's all it is.