BS: New Sci Fi

Subject: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Mar 24 - 01:24 PM

I was impressed by the 'Three Body Problem' series.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Helen
Date: 25 Mar 24 - 01:32 PM

Have you watched The Black Mirror series? Each episode is a separate story. Some are very good.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Mar 24 - 07:34 PM

The video game competition was creepy. Some of the b mirror stories were so strange they were hard to describe and some of them were just good morality plays.

The 3 body problem had a healthy budget and effects.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Mar 24 - 05:42 PM

Dark Mirror: metalhead

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Helen
Date: 26 Mar 24 - 07:06 PM

I had seen an episode of Dark Mirror Hang the DJ Season 4 Ep 4 and conflated it with one of the Divergent series movies after I saw an episode of an engineering marvel type of documentary which explored the huge fence in Ukraine.

Complicated huh? Well in the BM episode the couple climb a huge wall to escape the confined rules of their society at the end of the episode. In the Divergent movie series there is a huge metal structured wall , and it looks very similar to the Duga Radar System in Ukraine. Later I read somewhere that the Ukraine radar array was the inspiration for the wall in the Divergent series.

My problem was that on seeing the wall in the engineering series my brain was on a mental roundabout flicking from one image to the next and making me unsure of which fictional show had the wall which was similar to the radar array. Lucky for me both series have been on TV again recently so my brain could sort the data anomalies and I can sleep peacefully now.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Mar 24 - 03:01 PM

I've paid a lot of attention to the Black Mirror series. Some of them have been as brilliant as anything done by Twilight Zone in its heyday. I enjoyed "metalhead" and the one about mechanical bees and the political one about the comedian going around in a small van making fun of his opponent by displaying himself as an animated dog. Then there are the sad ones involving using technology to store eidetic motion picture memories which can be used in retrospect to reveal things we wish we'd never seen.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Helen
Date: 28 Mar 24 - 03:53 PM

I missed the first couple of seasons of Black Mirror, but it pops up every year or so on Oz TV. The last one I watched this week was The Black Museum, and Metalhead was on last week. I haven't liked all of the episodes I've seen but the series has been good.

I used to watch The Outer Limits and maybe another similar show, probably Out of the Unknown, back in the black and white TV era i.e, the '60's. I still remember one episode about an alien whose hand had a function of transporting him from one place to another but a human cut off his hand to use the function. Something like that. I just remember the sad last scene where the alien was trapped in a confined space and couldn't get out because his transporter device was stolen.

I didn't see many of the episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: robomatic
Date: 29 Mar 24 - 03:40 PM

Today on a show I try not to miss: "Science Friday" they discussed Netflix' recent ?current? release of the series "3 Body Problem" by Cixin Liu. The books have won international awards, deservedly so. It is a magnificent effort by a Chinese writer with an engineering background. Among the interesting points of the series:
It's from a modern Chinese point of view but it is not ideologically enslaved.
It takes a somewhat pessimistic viewpoint of the interaction of other intelligent life forms. But it is consistent in developing this viewpoint.
While it is extremely imaginative, it takes the 'scientific' approach to science fiction which is similar to the current successful series "The Expanse" No matter transporters, no flouting of relativistic time limitations (well, maybe a little...) Conceivable forms of politics as an extension of how we poor obnoxious humans currently operate.

If you ever read an extremely popular Sci-Fi award winner of the 1970s "The Mote in God's Eye" I'd say this is sort of a similar type of intense species engagement through space.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Mar 24 - 06:46 PM

The 3 body problem is scientific although there is still romance.
It had loads of surprises.
"We may be bugs in comparison to the alien race but despite all our pesticides, there are still swarms of bugs".

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Apr 24 - 01:05 AM

3 Body Problem: Just watched episode 5 with nanofibers bringing on Judgment Day. Pretty spectacular effects.

In this case you've got to watch the episodes in order and for me it really really helps to have read the books. The translations were well done.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Amergin
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 05:48 PM

The Black Mirror episode about social media and how your popularity defined everything was too real and accurate. We're seeing it now.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 07:13 PM

Is this the program you're talking about, Helen and Amergin? Black Mirror

Featuring stand-alone dramas -- sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales that explore techno-paranoia -- "Black Mirror" is a contemporary reworking of "The Twilight Zone" with stories that tap into the collective unease about the modern world.

Subject: RE: BS: New Sci Fi
From: Helen
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 10:30 PM

Yes Stilly, that's the one. I haven't seen all of the episodes, and I only stumbled on it by accident when I was recording a show next to it on the TV schedule. I haven't liked every episode I've seen but I have liked a lot of them. In my youth I was always partial to reading Sci-Fi short stories so it fits with that.

My other fave Sci-Fi TV show is Fringe. Each episode is a separate story but there is continuity in the main characters and their ongoing situation throughout the show. I stumbled on that one by accident, watched the re-runs, bought the DVD's and watched it again. Like Black Mirror, it can be dark, sometimes scary, but always food for thought about life, the universe and everything.

Which reminds me, of course, of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams, and also the Terry Pratchett books, movies and TV series.