What I want on TV because Sci-Fi is horrible!!!

[Mike Scott]

Maybe something like this should be constructed on the UMA site incorporating to these links, as well as the HuLu links

The hulu would be worth linking too, but those others may not even be around tomorrow. Wouldn't want to have to keep changing links every time somebody's illegal uploads get yanked.

[BlackLagoon]

It's not only Sci-Fi but TV Land that is drifting away from the goodness it once was.

I have to agree, this is why if a dvd isnt on, its either ESPN or Xbox for me...when TV Land was in its hey day I used to watch a few episodes and fall asleep to those "block parties" of something pleasant like Munsters, Gilligans Island, I Love Lucy..I even dug Dragnet!!.....

Now I see some reality TV thing on there....sigh...I have enough drama in my own life, I will never understand the idea of putting cameras in someone elses home and having them followed around...its SOOOOO lame...there is such a lack of good clean fun, adventure and comedy on TV now, I can see why more and more TV shows are available on DVD

[preyer]

'Have you ever seen professional wrestling?' ~ what's funny is john bradshaw layfield is coming to my store april 22 to promote his energy bottle stuff. he's making the rounds in the area. i'd never even heard of the guy before the distribution guy asked if i wanted him to stop by. waste a millionaire's time? you betcha! the ironic thing is he's coming in the morning when i'm at my day job. too bad, that, as i wanted to put him in a headlock.

man, i feel like popping open a milwaukee's best ice and watching some nascar right now... just to see which will make me puke first.

i guess the question i want answered is: if you have a channel called the sci-fi channel, meaning your core audience is science fiction/fantasy fans, then why start it up in the first place if you didn't think there was enough of a demographic there to support it? smacks of corporate committee thinking backed up by bean counters whose only goal is the bottom line. it's a rhetorical question, i think: the answer is simply because they feel they can make more money.

any, hey, i'm all for capitalism. at least up to the point where it ruins the reason you were successful in the first place. why change coke's formula?

you watch, they'll come up with a new series aimed directly at girls. it'll be about witches. one will be white (probably quasi-goth, named 'siley'), one black (the sassy, no-nonsense streetwise girl), one latina (who dances in street competitions and is from the barrio), and one will wear a fat suit and ugly make-up so that she'll be able to transform herself into a cheerleader (she'll have a gay friend, whom she'll 'fix' with magick, leading to all kinds of teenybopper angst and moral questions). we'll follow this coven through high school, their romances, their lifestyles, whatever. 90210 for the occult set. mix in a bit of harry potter for good measure. the heartthrob has to be a moody 'twilight' kind of loner, but yet popular. maybe the philosophy teacher learns of their secret and tries to manipulate them into doing his wicked bidding. (season one finale: mr. banks, the teacher, is tricked into the coven's scheme to send him back in time to debate a conveniently english speaking socrates, wherein mr. banks is

is it a total rip-off? of course. do you think siffee cares? it's all about the ratings, baby, and once it shanghai's impressionable tweens into the fold, someone somewhere will say to someone else wearing an expensive suit, 'letsdolunchsometimenoimeanthatreallyido.'

if i'm going to rip something off, i'm just going to do a flat-out retelling of 'andy griffith.' in a magickal small town, something everyone can enjoy. why the hell not? i mean, don't you sometimes get tired of these gritty dramas that's all premise? well, if you call them 'gritty' and 'dramatic,' that is. you know what? i say use all the CGI you want, but still air it in black and white.

that would totally... suck.

reruns are fine in the right doses. they say it's not the medicine that kills you, it's the dose.

you'd think siffee would be at the forefront of covering comicon, eh? let's face it, your supposed core audience collects this stuff. sorry, siffee, try as you might, the head cheerleader really doesn't care about it.

i've always said, if you try to be all things to all people you just wind up being nothing to nobody.

wanna know what i wanna see, black? a scripted 'reality' show starring a variety of historic figures, and put hitler and ghandi on the same team. that's just good tv right there.

[Wicked Lester]

Holy #$%^&&%#$(*at*)$#(*at*)^^&(*&*%^&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT!!!! That is AWESOME!!! Thanks for dropping that!

What he said! I was suppose to do my taxes but ended up watching Beginning of the End. Haven't seen that in 20 years. COOOL! Still gotta do taxes.

[hammerfan]

Have you watched Fringe   It's a great show and reminds me of X-Files of course, but has a nice creepy twist to it. JJ abrams came up with it so it is original and takes you by surprise. Give it a try. I admit most of the Sci-fi on TV now  is crap, but BBC America has some good stuff  with Primeval  along with the Dr Who and Torchwood.  Much better than most American Sci fi.

[ChattyLMS]

Preyer!  You're too much!!!  You're idea about a girls SciFi TV show is hilarious!  And it wouldn't surprise me if they came up with that!  Maybe they can adapt a few Bewitched scripts and throw Serena in there!

[preyer]

thanks, chatty. but, honestly, if they're trying to drum up new markets, this is a cinch. there've been plenty of fantasy and sci-fi based cartoons for girls (power puff girls and sailor moon, for example, even my little pony is pretty fantastical in my opinion), and with the recent wild success of a certain high school vampire flick which will go nameless, why not strike while the iron is hot? i mean, the female tween fantasy market has been exploited for a long, long time... were i trying to change my corporate image, you betcha i'd be all over this. i'd dump a lot of my future bad movie projects and hire some good writers, design the series to culminate in an end-of-the-first-season feature movie, and sell the series on DVD to boot.

we know that's not going to happen. they're going to attempt some lame, cheesy crap and continue making bad movies, then wonder why their new name hasn't solved all the problems they think they have.

back in the day, a friend of mine owned a video store before blockbuster ruined the competition, back before even major video stood a chance. anyway, i asked her what rentals did the best. first off she said porn (no surprise), then, surprisingly, she said B-movies. she claimed people ate up the dreck. apparently, people other than myself enjoy a bad movie.

obviously, siffee wouldn't continue making these were there not money in it. i doubt i'd be the CEO long if i stopped milking my cash cow, so i don't foresee an abatement in that respect.

in a move that seems to me much like putting all your eggs in one basket, they're due to come out with this weird interactive tv show via an online videogame. or somethehellthing like that. rest assured that when you put the masses in control of the plot, things can and will get stupid. you know how there's the votefortheworst site where they encourage folk to keep the worst singers on american idol? putting two and deux together, i think we're looking at a real crapfest on the horizon.

some bad movie ideas for siffee:

'haunted racetrack.' built on an indian burial ground... 'nuff said, eh? the pay-off is watching the indian ghosts racing the racecars. as a lark, i tried to convince the woman i work next to how easy it is to come up with bad stories and this idea came to mind. i had the entire thing worked out while setting the timing on humvee engines. so either there's an awesome story i've rather forgotten or there's about a hundred humvees out in the desert that run for shyte.

untitled: a swarm of carnivourous flying spiders. who needs a plot when all you want to see is the flesh stripped off a hapless victim in a few bloody seconds?

'garolo: the severed head.' created as i'm writing this. garolo, a name i stole from bob shreve's past prime playhouse (which one of the 'characters' was a severed head), spouts prophecies ala john the baptist's severed head (or so i've read in a fantasy novel about the templars). pick a setting and this junk writes itself.

all these things are is just a premise, and usually not a very good one at that. since i'm fond of egyptian stuff, i think 'the mummy king' sounds pretty much up their alley.

the one i actually like i gave a working title to, then changed to 'sky bastards' for no good reason. it evolved into a complex story, but basically it was about WWI flying aces battling dragons in the sky, but less cheesy than it sounds.

go ahead, siffee, challenge me. i dares ya. gimme a genre, a sub-genre, a setting, a timeframe, a character model or two and, just for s&g's, a few lines of dialogue or objects to work in. 1920's chigago with zombies? c'mon, give me something hard! mutant grizzlies rampaging through new york? pfft! a religion-free future that clones an ancient god? like that's tough!

[Inkfink]

Great movie ideas, Preyer! We should gather all the artists here and do some faux movie posters. Picture the celebrity victims list for "Swarm of the Flying Vampire Spiders."

[preyer]

thanks, ink. most of it's just rip-offing and riffing ~ you know, s.o.p. for siffee.

the hardest thing to do is come up with an original monster. that's why siffee doesn't even try, i guess. most screenwriters can't do it, and it doesn't help that a lot of them get their start in horror, a genre which is attractive from a business and professional standpoint (even if it's not very attractive artistically a lot of times, but in my uneducated opinion if you want to be an artist then most folk should stay out of the screenwriting aspect unless you plan on directing, too... and producing and editing...).

quick and easy monster: pick a profession. make said professional a psycho. 'i scream man' ('ice cream man') pops to mind. (this was an idea i had that i thought had promise, so i researched it on imbd and found crispin glover was in the process of making it.) of course, write what excites you. if you like aliens, fine, but even most aliens have an occupation. stone cold killers aren't very interesting without an unusual premise or twist.

'smart' flicks that are really dumb (like 'jumpers') require a bit more thought, but that's really just a coordination thing. the trick to fantasy is avoiding writing a 105 page script based on a dungeons & dragons module you played. i say that and i *know* siffee might bite, lol.

pick a setting that turns you on. WWII. antairs IV. the bottom of the sea. middle earth rip-off. bear in the mind budget constraints. need i mention all of siffee's movie productions are low-budget? (i forget the name/s of siffee's production companies.)

i find that having a character or two, genre, and a setting more often than not suggests a plot or premise that leads to a plot. there's not often a huge character arc for a siffee flick, so 'the guy gets the girl in the end and kills the giant snake' is good enough for this stripe of storytelling. a 'call back' is rare in a siffee film as that would indicate some level of competence on the writer's part. nope, simple characters with simple motivations will do just fine.

i've always said that there's less art in screenwriting than there is craft. i honestly believe that there's not a single person on this board that couldn't write a passable screenplay assuming you can string a couple of coherent sentences together.

for me, premises are harder to build stuff around than making crap up from a character standpoint. for example, here's a premise: 1905, czarist russia. in a small village, a vampire has been kept prisoner in a boarded up church for a hundred years. i like the irony of a vampire being penned up in a church for a long time, and as winter approaches you have your necessary sense of isolation intregral to most horror stories. okay, so what do you do with this information? i know what *my* intentions were....

to me, i think where science fiction suffers is it's often heavy on premise, lighter on plot, and lightest on characters. and because i like stories to be good, it absolutely *must* be about the characters first and foremost. as evidence of what i'm saying, compare the two 'the day the earth stood still' movies and i think my point is clear. one is a great classic, and the other stars kanoe reeves. from a different genre, 'gran torino' isn't really that good a movie, but the characters make it a movie i recommend.

heh heh. i once posed one of these challenges to a person, said i'd write an indiana jones fanfic about what clues she said. she wanted the star of india, a map hidden inside the carcass of a moose or elk or something, and a grizzly bear. it wound up being over 400 pages, and just between you and me and the rest of the world, 'indiana jones and the island of gold' *should* have been 'indy IV'! of course, my story was about alchemy (which anyone should be able to wring several decent premises out of, if you ask me). (the hard part about an indy story is coming up with a good gross out animal and/or scene. i went with eels. i hate those things, and i couldn't think of anything worse or uglier. plus they're snake-like. oh, and the rest of the story rocked, too. i definitely missed my calling... as self-promoter.)

ah, the daze when i had the time to write such nonsense....

all this is to say that these movies have to be bad for anyone to watch 'em. doesn't sound right or logical, but if siffee practice and anecdotal evidence means anything, i have no other grounds as to justify why these things are made. it's pure product with no intrinsic or artistic value other than punch-crotch entertainment. making better movies simply raises the bar for them, a bar they have no interest in maintaining.

to anyone who's actually read all this mess and who wants a brief outline, the challenge still stands.

two more since i'm here:

a young man joins a pirate crew after being jilted. the captain's cruel and malicious nature allows the boy to die in a tavern as the result of a drunken bet with a rival captain. the boy's ghost haunts the pirate vessal, calming the ocean to strand them asea. the boy falls in love with esperanza, the captain's whore he's transporting to a safer location, all the while toying with the crew, knocking them off here and there.

'the collector.' a man is involved in ultra-rare collection pieces he gathers at secret auctions. things turn strange once he buys the supposed remains of jesus.

bonus bad idea!

really more just an episode of the macabre, two graverobbers discuss things over... with an apparent corpse who claims to yet be alive in the crypt. problem is the marker says he's been dead a hundred years. open it up and save a prematurally buried man? or let the corpse of a notoriously evil lout out? or....

[preyer]

'SCI FI Channel is a television network where "what if" is what's on. SCI FI fuels the imagination of viewers with original series and events, blockbuster movies and classic science fiction and fantasy programming, as well as a dynamic Web site (www.scifi.com ) and magazine. Launched in 1992, and currently in 93 million homes, SCI FI Channel is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies.' from: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=20080729scifi01

'what if' their original programming were as good as their quirky, imaginative promos? okay, i'll give them the original series, but what events are they talking about? for that matter, what 'blockbuster' movies did they *ever* show with any consistency (or ever for that matter)? 'classic' must mean reruns of 'twilight zone' and 'st: tng.' while you might expect that, it's no big deal, nothing i'd go around bragging about. they use this stuff as filler.

[BaronLatos35]

A national Horror Host Show!

BTW, why is Chiller only on Verizon! What happened to Monsters HD! Why is AMC's Monsterfest weak nowadays!

All these shows sound great, especially Twilight Zone, but sadly we are probably past the age demographic they want.

BlackLagoon, did you say David Hasselhoff is Nick Fury? Blasphemy!!!!!!

[preyer]

pushing 40 this year, i think i'm still in their main age demographic. well, maybe not the one they're concentrating on currently. i've seen the '18-45 male' tag a couple of times. that's a far cry from the '13-18 female' group, lol. i want to say they've (siffee) has consistently been in the top ten basic cable channels for a long while (i believe they were 6th overall for '08), so i don't think they're exactly starved for attention.

like a lot of businesses, i think they're thinking of the future while sacrificing those that put them where they're at in the first place. if you're curious about where they think their audience is, watch the commercials. if you're watching siffee run a lot of ads about all-purpose cheer and supplemental retirement plans, then at least that slot isn't reserved for the young woman who should be seeing more cell phone plans.

based on the commercials run during the stuff i watch, they think i'm in desperate need of a penis extention pill, credit counselling, a new car, legal services and a girlfriend of the stripe you only find on a sex site. i'd not be so angry about it were it not all so true....

tonight's awesome crapfest is an 'original' siffee movie, 'thor: hammer of the gods,' which i think is about vikings versus werewolves. while they were pulling ideas literally out of a hat and handing them to a screenwriter/janitor, here are some other ideas that didn't make the cut:

cheerleaders v. vampires (they accidentally drew this one, decided that even they can't rip off another idea *that* much)

the monster squad v. al queda

chuck and the lamp genie v. hitler's psychic pschos

anaconda v. cloned mummies v. casper van diem leading a crack military strike force

killer fast food v. the human race (guest director, m. knight shyamalan)

kangaroo-zilla v. girl scouts (as an aside, ever notice how they always bring out the McRib sandwich right around kangaroo season? hmm....)

...and if all else fails they just open up an old dungeons & dragons monster guide at random and pit them against some military types.

[ChattyLMS]

Now I see some reality TV thing on there

Reality TV - hardly.

They are unscripted stupidity disguised as "reality"

[preyer]

true, but often entertaining and, most importantly, cheap.

anyone catch that crapfest, 'thor: pean hammer of the gawds,' last night? i watched as much as my stomach could handle. after about twenty minutes i said, 'shazaam, this is bad!' and started something more productive, scotch taping the split ends on my shih-tzus.

[Nicole]

based on the commercials run during the stuff i watch, they think i'm in desperate need of a penis extention pill, credit counselling, a new car, legal services and a girlfriend of the stripe you only find on a sex site. i'd not be so angry about it were it not all so true....