Four Things and a Lizard

Well, here I am, doing my first entry on this blog before I even know for sure what the blog is going to be called, or where it’s going to be hosted. For now, I’m typing this in TextEdit in my Mac, and at the point when I get that other stuff ironed out, I can transfer these initial entries into the real, live, accessible-to-the-world blog.

So, what is this all about. It’s about Science Fiction. I tend to have a bias towards television sci fi these days, although I’m also interested in books and movies. I expect to concentrate on stuff that I’m most interested in, which is what some would call “TV Sci Fi”. Stuff like the Stargates, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, the various Trek series, and what-not. There are some major series that I have completely missed, such as Babylon 5. I’ll be watching those eventually, and chronicling my experience with them here. I’m also intrigued by the idea of revisiting some of the older, classic TV series, such as Space: 1999, The Twilight Zone, the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, and others.

There’s also the question of whether something is “sci fi” or not. For instance, I greatly enjoy the series Lost, but is it science fiction? My gut feeling is that somehow it is, even though the specifics have not yet become clear. Another aspect of this question are programs which stretch the definition of sci fi. One criticism I’ve always had towards TV science fiction shows is that their creators will often competely ignore what science fiction really is and so we end up with a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer included in the sci fi category. For the record, I own all seven seasons of Buffy on DVD, but I would never consider this show, as excellent as it is, to be anything close to science fiction. Joss Whedon, I am sure, knows the difference too—he was responsible for Buffy and Angel, neither of which could be considered sci fi, but take a look at some of his other stuff, such as Firefly, Serenity and the writing credit for Alien: Resurrection, all of which fall pretty firmly in the “SF” category. Whedon knows the difference. Some people (such as a lot of modern book publishers, who feel free to fill up the sci fi shelves with vampire stories) obviously don’t. Even many of the most popular SF series will sometimes break the rules and cross over into the “fantasy” category, or more often just the “bullshit” category. Sometimes it’s good bullshit though. ;)

In any case, since there is not a clear and hard dividing line between “SF” and “not-SF”, it shouldn’t be considered surprising if I sometimes cross the line into other forms of speculative and fantastic fiction.

There will be spoilers here. I’m not going to make any effort to despoilerize things. Sorry. I figure the people who would be most interested in reading this will have already seen virtually all of these programs anyway.

So….without further ado, here goes!