TV Poll! I don't watch enough to know what's on!

[beccatoria]

Okay so. When I started hating The X-Files, it was right around the time I fell for Farscape. When Farscape got axed BSG very kindly showed up to steal my heart. Now that BSG is over (and my heart is in tatters; nope, still not over the surreal anti-intellectual reactionary technophobic crap: after all the stuff it pulled and the wars fought in its name they should have kept the tech and thrown GOD into the sun) I find myself adrift.

My cunning plan was to jump on the Terminator train and develop wallow in an enormous crush on Agent Ellison and an intellectual crush on Weaver/Cameron/John Henry. However, it's looking increasingly and depressingly likely that it won't get renewed. *commences wailing*

And for real, I watch like, no television. Occasionally I'll catch an episode of House or Bones or something but other than that, my TV schedule consists pretty much exclusively of BSG, Terminator and, when it's on, Dexter. So I need advice on what to start watching next.

I know you can't force fannish love, but I can at least start, um, "seeing other shows," and finding out if there's a spark, right?

So, my personal ad! Sorta.

Basically I like science fiction/fantasy/magic realism/SOMETHING that means its not just...our normal, ordinary world. This makes me feel like a really huge geek, because I don't watch shows everyone tells me are amazing like The West Wing or The Wire because I'm like...blah. It's not crazy or magic or epic enough! Boo!

I love brilliant acting and interesting character arcs. I like narrative story arcs.

I also like shows that make me think. I like shows that try to talk about big, complicated issues, and I have a special weakness for techy cyborgy religious weirdness and moral relativism done well (i.e. NOT as an excuse for the hero to do reprehensible, selfish things just because it's "dark" which MUST make it "cool" and "more mature.")

I mean, I enjoy TV that doesn't make me think lots too; I do completely get that "I just want to have fun with it!" mentality. But I find it hard to be truly fannish about those shows because, well, I end up with nothing to say, or vid.

Similarly, I can love shows that are set completely within the bounds of the "real world" (Dexter and Breaking Bad are both ace) but similarly, it's hard for me to really connect on a total geek-out level.

I think the problem is that I'm a science fiction fan in the tradition of LeGuin or Ghost in the Shell. I want everything. I want all the big issues we face combined with world-/civilisation-spanning alien fascinating stuff that punches these issues out into an arena other than the one we're familiar with, and as such, allows us to examine these issues from new angles.

I guess what I want is intelligent science fiction, with a side-order of character-arc and extra epic.

Do any of you know where I might be able to find such a thing these days?

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Redacted.

Comments

[frolicndetour.livejournal.com]

Yay! I hope you enjoy it when I finally finish it. I'm hoping to work in a "LOOK SAM WOKE UP!" easter egg into the tripped out final sequence.

:bounce: I think I'll just set any and all future fic I write in Becca'verse canon, okay? :D

And yes! I love Babylon 5! I watched it well after it originally aired (because I was younger and it aired like...really late at night here a lot of the time) but it's just awesome. And yes, is exactly what I love about big, epic narrative arcs and characters and worlds and SPACE and stuff. Really all it was missing was killer robots. I was never incredibly fannish about it, mainly because I watched it well after it aired, I think.

I remember it aired here at like, 3am on a Saturday on some random channel. My parents were pretty dubious about what I could possibly be watching at that hour. ;) I'm sure would have been fannish about it if I'd been a bit older and known about such things.

But it'll always be special cus me and my husband and our best friend watched it when we were all living together over a period of four or five months, just every couple of days we'd marathon a few episodes and chat about it and stuff.

Aw, that sounds like so much fun. I'm jealous! It's nice when RL people share your obsessions.

I'm slightly disconcerted to say that Carnivale was much better during the first season when Ron was involved with it. o.0 Of course, there is a blonde woman who's married and literally a whore (and cheats on her husband for fun too), and he can't bring himself to leave her and it's all very tragic. I mean, I thought it was great at the time, but now I'm retroactively offended. ;)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

:bounce: I think I'll just set any and all future fic I write in Becca'verse canon, okay? :D

I am very, very okay with this notion. In fact I move we name it something less proprietary, like the guess-what-RDM-we're-mutinying-verse so that it can belong to everyone! :p

I'm sure would have been fannish about it if I'd been a bit older and known about such things.

I feel that way about DS9 and Roswell!

I'm slightly disconcerted to say that Carnivale was much better during the first season when Ron was involved with it. o.0 Of course, there is a blonde woman who's married and literally a whore (and cheats on her husband for fun too), and he can't bring himself to leave her and it's all very tragic. I mean, I thought it was great at the time, but now I'm retroactively offended. ;)

Hee! Yeah, it's weird how stuff goes from being progressive to regressive when you think you know too much about the potential motivations behind it. But, I'll watch before I judge on that; in the context of the show it sounds like it would probably work.

I still...I'm not shocked that the RDM season is good. RDM gave us three and a half excellent seasons of BSG. I think the guy has really good ideas. I liked a lot of what he did with DS9. It's still a little too trekky for me, but the parts of it that aren't, I think, are down to him.

I think grrl_unscripted summed it up well for me when she said she thought that RDM was really good at asking questions, but perhaps not so good at answering them?

Ugh, I don't know. It's so frustrating. I want to just say, "IDIOT!" and never watch anything by him again, but at the same time, he like...made the entire show that I love. I'm just SO CONFUSED.