Author Topic: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot  (Read 21748 times)

Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #40 on: 09/10/2017 08:35 pm »
Anything by C.J.Cherryh, especially any episode from the Corporate Wars Union/Alliance Series, which are old-school space opera.  I always thought "Heavy Time" would make a good movie.

Considering how well "Avatar" came out, somebody with deep pockets might attempt the "Foreigner" series, but that is probably too intellectual for the movie public.

The Gaea trilogy by John Varley.  Serious special effects required - on the order of "Lord of the Rings".

Not exactly "Old Space" but a sequel to "Europa Report" might be good.

Absolutely not "Space 1999".   Go read Isaac Asimov's review of that.   And "alien of the week" is such a hackneyed TV plot device.

Online sanman

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #41 on: 09/11/2017 07:43 am »
Space 1999 wasn't alien-of-the-week in the first season. It was the second season where the producers/writers lost their marbles - that's when the cast of the show expressed their misgivings about all of it, while veteran stage actor Barry Morse simply left.

I'd like to see Robotech done as a live-action series, with an HBO-style big budget. Or maybe Heavy Gear, or the Jovian Chronicles.

Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #42 on: 09/11/2017 07:57 am »
First season Space: 1999 was not too bad - but even in those days watching as a kid I knew some of the science was suspect. If it were rebooted - an actual science advisor or set of writers who know reasonable science and drama could make a decent fist of it. Set the show in '2099' to get around the prematurely advanced tech the Eagle ships and the Moonbase had.

And: many of the novelizations were better than the show scripts - because real science fiction writers like Brian Aldiss, EC Tubb and John Rankine 'tweaked' them and improved them. It wouldn't have to BE Space: 1999 rebooted - just based on Space:1999...
« Last Edit: 09/11/2017 07:57 am by MATTBLAK »
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Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #43 on: 09/12/2017 03:33 am »
I will also toss in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosiverse.  Bujold cut her teeth on Trek fan fiction (among many other things), and writes in nice, tight little scenes that just beg to be translated into scripts.

Though, thinking about it, a series that features a hyperactive dwarf imposing his will by sheer force of personality might not go over especially well in this just-show-us-perfect-looking-people society.  Perhaps, although they are not as much my taste, her Spirit Ring series would be more appreciated by the Game of Thrones crowd...
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Online sanman

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #44 on: 09/12/2017 12:08 pm »
First season Space: 1999 was not too bad - but even in those days watching as a kid I knew some of the science was suspect. If it were rebooted - an actual science advisor or set of writers who know reasonable science and drama could make a decent fist of it. Set the show in '2099' to get around the prematurely advanced tech the Eagle ships and the Moonbase had.

And: many of the novelizations were better than the show scripts - because real science fiction writers like Brian Aldiss, EC Tubb and John Rankine 'tweaked' them and improved them. It wouldn't have to BE Space: 1999 rebooted - just based on Space:1999...

I think the reason that reboots are so popular and so frequently resorted to, is because of having the pre-existing fan-base to tap into, which can make the difference between success and obscurity. Goodness knows that Marvel Studios has certainly benefited from that.

There are many pioneering sci-fi stories from the 1930s-50s that could be mined to provide good storylines.
(eg. "Astounding Science Fiction" magazine) John Campbell's own "Who Goes There?" was turned into John Carpenter's movie classic "The Thing".

Consider EE Doc Smith's "Lensman" - I've always wondered if George Lucas had been influenced by it, when coming up with Star Wars.

And coming back to 80s again, I think The Last Starfighter could also be suitable for a reboot - but with much better computer graphics, of course.

« Last Edit: 09/12/2017 12:09 pm by sanman »

Offline Steve G

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #45 on: 09/12/2017 12:38 pm »
The Starlost has a great potential for a reboot. It has all different worlds within this massive arc, and with any kind of budget this would be a great series. I really liked it when I was a young lad, but did see the terrible production as its death knell.

Offline Steve G

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #46 on: 09/12/2017 12:43 pm »
Space 1999 had the moon drifting from one star system to the other which would take tens of thousands of years. I always thought that the nuclear pile that caused it to blast out of earth orbit could have a cyclic wormhole creating mechanism similar to Battlestar's FTL drive, but they had no control over it. So it would put them in a star system, but with maybe 48 hours before the next event, but not known with any certainty. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain didn't help, especially the latter who displayed as much on-screen passion as Steven Seagal. She could have been replaced with a poster of herself. Barry Morse was great in season one.

Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #47 on: 09/12/2017 02:16 pm »
Space: 1999 always suffered (if you want to call it that) from the issue of 'cool story' first and scientific accuracy last if ever (this because far more pronounced in season 2 after the soft reboot/retcon of the show). This jarred hard against the great deal of effort on the part of ITC's SFX team to make the actual human space hardware technically plausible.

FWIW, I sort of fused the story with Interstellar in my proposed reboot with the META object (which contains a considerable mass of WIMP dark matter and antimatter) contacting the hastily-relocated nuclear waste at the EML4 liberation point. The interaction of exotic non-baryonic matter and the huge neutron, alpha, beta and gamma flux (perhaps even a touch of delta) around the waste plus the enormous energy release of several hundred tons of antimatter being instantly annihilated creates a wormhole with an oscillating far terminal, giving a somewhat-artificial urgency to every episode - the mission must be complete and the Eagles must return before the wormhole moves on.
« Last Edit: 09/12/2017 02:22 pm by Ben the Space Brit »
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Offline grakenverb

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #48 on: 09/12/2017 02:35 pm »
How about a reboot of "Salvage One"


Online sanman

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #49 on: 09/12/2017 03:14 pm »
How about a reboot of "Salvage One"

Heh, not bad - now just convince Liam Neeson to modify his impression of George Peppard into an impression of Andy Griffith.  :D

Online sanman

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #50 on: 09/12/2017 05:13 pm »
Alien Nation is another one I forgot to suggest - but apparently it may getting a reboot by Netflix, in the form of Bright:


Online sanman

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #51 on: 09/13/2017 07:53 am »
It seems like The Starlost and Space 1999 suffered from opposite problems.

Both shows had somewhat of a hard sci-fi premise, but Space 1999 had the big leap of the Moon escaping the Earth's orbit due to a nuclear explosion, while the Starlost kept the details of the Ark's embarcation/launch purposely vague.
The Starlost had some pretty cheap-looking production quality, with cheap-looking sets and cheap special fx. Meanwhile, Space 1999 seemed to have higher production values with higher-quality looking sets and higher-quality special fx. The technical fx team for Space 1999 were really superb (Gerry Anderson FTW!)
Both shows attempted to incorporate thought-provoking storylines, but I felt that The Starlost was able to keep things looking more plausible through self-consistency and vagueness (a la Star Trek), while Space 1999 seemed to sometimes get caught in the weeds with lack of self-consistency and specifics that sometimes discarded plausibility.

Incidentally, Barry Morse who played scientist Victor Bergman in the first season of Space 1999, was also in an episode of The Starlost - he was in an episode entitled "The Goddess Calabra" alongside John Colicos (another sci-fi veteran, who famously played Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, as well as Klingon commander Kor in Star Trek)


Since Jeff Bezos wants a Game-of-Thrones-quality hit to boost Amazon TV's market share, and since Space 1999 has an existing fanbase, and since Bezos himself has real-life near-term ambitions towards the Moon in particular, maybe a Space 1999 reboot would be a good candidate for Amazon TV to pursue.
« Last Edit: 09/13/2017 07:55 am by sanman »

Offline litton4

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #52 on: 09/13/2017 12:25 pm »
Space 1999 had the moon drifting from one star system to the other which would take tens of thousands of years. I always thought that the nuclear pile that caused it to blast out of earth orbit could have a cyclic wormhole creating mechanism similar to Battlestar's FTL drive, but they had no control over it. So it would put them in a star system, but with maybe 48 hours before the next event, but not known with any certainty. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain didn't help, especially the latter who displayed as much on-screen passion as Steven Seagal. She could have been replaced with a poster of herself. Barry Morse was great in season one.

Stargate did this with Stargate: Universe

The found themselves on a massive ship of the Ancients which was traveling across between Galaxies, with initially no control over the FTL drive.

It didn't last long......
« Last Edit: 09/13/2017 12:26 pm by litton4 »
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Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #53 on: 09/13/2017 02:05 pm »
Stargate Universe didn't last long in my opinion for a trio of reasons: not all the characters were immediately likeable (not necessarily a handicap), there was 'franchise fatigue' because of being third out of the gate. SG1 was enormously successful, Stargate: Atlantis was moderately successful. And Stargate Universe? Well... It simply wasn't the original SG1 - that show had a fan loyalty.

But the premise that 'Universe' came up with near the end? That there was an ancient message/pattern encoded into the fabric and background radiation of the Universe?! That intrigued me.

Just like the sometimes unfairly-maligned 'Star Trek: Enterprise' - I think people who didn't give 'SG: Universe' a chance should just go back and revisit it. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised...
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Offline Norm38

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #54 on: 09/13/2017 08:47 pm »
I loved the Wing Commander spin-off videogame Privateer.  But it basically won't run on modern hardware, and the flight engine was crap anyway.  I know there was a project to modernize the original game, but I want to see full scale re-up.
Dream is that Bethesda (Fallout, Skyrim) would do it, and do it right.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #55 on: 09/14/2017 01:00 am »
I loved the Wing Commander spin-off videogame Privateer.  But it basically won't run on modern hardware, and the flight engine was crap anyway.  I know there was a project to modernize the original game, but I want to see full scale re-up.
Dream is that Bethesda (Fallout, Skyrim) would do it, and do it right.

It actually runs fine, and comes even prepackaged in proper Dosbox config files and all. I've re-purchased the entire collection, when GOG had it on sale. It actually runs better now, on linux and mac too
« Last Edit: 09/14/2017 01:00 am by savuporo »
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Offline JAFO

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #56 on: 09/14/2017 04:56 am »
I was thinking




but then I thought, Nawwww.... leave it well enough alone.
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Offline MickQ

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #57 on: 09/14/2017 09:17 am »
Stargate Universe didn't last long in my opinion for a trio of reasons: not all the characters were immediately likeable (not necessarily a handicap), there was 'franchise fatigue' because of being third out of the gate. SG1 was enormously successful, Stargate: Atlantis was moderately successful. And Stargate Universe? Well... It simply wasn't the original SG1 - that show had a fan loyalty.

But the premise that 'Universe' came up with near the end? That there was an ancient message/pattern encoded into the fabric and background radiation of the Universe?! That intrigued me.

Just like the sometimes unfairly-maligned 'Star Trek: Enterprise' - I think people who didn't give 'SG: Universe' a chance should just go back and revisit it. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised...

And toward the end you could even get to respect, if not actually like Nicholas Rush.

I also really, really want to know if Ely made it.

Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #58 on: 09/14/2017 09:41 am »
My headcanon is that, right at the end of the voyage of the Destiny, they found a planet hidden deep inside a Seyfert Galaxy's core. There, on a ridge above a dessert plain in thirty-foot high English letters of fire, they read:

"WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE"
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Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Older Space SciFi Worthy of Reboot
« Reply #59 on: 09/17/2017 04:06 am »
A couple of reboots that I would watch would be:
Star Cops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Cops
A series based on Enemy Mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Mine_(film)
Something based in Iain M. Banks culture universe, although that would be a boot, rather than a reboot.
And if we are going to allow boots then a series based around House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds could be amazing.
I'd definitely like to see a reboot of star cops - realistic police procedural in space.
I just watched that on youtube. Always nice to stumble across a hard-sf tv series.

Lots of little complaints, but after all, that is why you would want a do over.

What interested me most is that it did seem to have a workable recipe for a procedural, which seems to be very hard for hard-sf.

I think it had two core plot generators
* police procedural.. these can last well.
* cold war shenanigans .. a sore thumb in most police procedurals, but very reasonable in this 'mini-UN' setup.

I think it would be a real winner if we could add one more "*" . Im not sure exactly what, but it has to be about the awe of it all, the hope of a future wider than today. So much hard-sf just shows us the maximisation of our current fears, living in smaller and smaller boxes where sociopathic corporations own the very air we breath.

Just thought of a possible third "*"
Postulate something like the large scale one-way colonisation that Elon talks about for Mars, but going everywhere in the solar system. These people are just passing through. The destinations are too far away for a hard-sf to flit between. However I think it could provide a sort of "love boat" procedural. Never actually watched that, but I imagine you have a holiday atmosphere, a wide range of people you meet for only a single episode, a happy resolution and all done on a limited set (a boat for them, various cis-lunar locations for this). Part of the happy resolution is that in the epilogue they can send back postcards from the rest of the solar system.

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