h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I've given it up. Its been moved to mornings and that woudl involve waking up. Same reason why I miss Blakes seven. I catch the repeat of teh Dr Who omnibus on UK Gold 2 though, and follow it up with streethawk. Neat.

No way am I getting up early to watch people get zapped with curling tongs, much as I love the dialogue, and no matter how much of a crush I had on Tarrant when I was 10. I caught a bit of Dr Who the other day with the Dr, sidekick-blonde-girly and some bloke stuck in a cellar. The Darleks sere hovering about menacingly upstairs - great stuff.

Well, if people want to exchange the dark-side of Star Trek for the poor man's Knight Rider that's there lookout. Of course, however poor Streethawk was (and let us not quibble, it was poor) it could not possibly be as bad as Team Knight Rider.

I can't berate you for not hauling yourself out of bed for Blakes' 7 though, as I often didn't make it in time myself (and I've missed the Powerpuff Girls the last couple of weeks).

The Prophet

Missint the powerpuff girls, tut tut. And streethawk was cool, what a theme tune, makes me teary for the 80s. But it wasn't near Knight Rider no matter what Bravo's ads say. And very little is worse than team knight rider. I've seen better episodes of power rangers.

Oh, another early morning move that has proven unpopular with me, Starship Troopers the series.

Actually the one I'm waiting for, and would get up for (or remember to programme the video recorder for, anyway) is Space 1999. Is it on anywhere?
Starship Troopers - did you see the film? I haven't seen the series, but really, how much worse can it be??
Still get shivers down my spine when I hear a Darlek talk, though. They're Menacing. And yesterday when I was doing my hair, I put down my round brush and my 3 year old tried to shoot my 2 year old with it! Yaay! Way to go, kids!

I don't know about Space 1999, but maybe you'll luck out and the rerun of Thunderbirds will spark off a general Gerry Anderson revival: Terrahawks, yay! After all, they repeated UFO not long ago.

As for Starship Troopers, imagine the film but with computer animated humans as well, and the arachnids move _really_ slowly. I mean, on the limited plus side there's a skinny in it, but they appear to have completely ignored the potential of animation to make the troopers like the ones in the book, with all the power armour and stuff. That could have been cool.

Oh, and even worse than Starship Troopers is the new Flash Gordon cartoon; it makes Defenders of the Earth look really classy. Ming the Merciless is this big scaly dude now - seems to have pretty much lost most of his subtlety. Not that his daughter seems to have inherited the scales. And Dr Zarkov has become a useless screaming comedy scientist.

What a load of old cobblers.

Although not quite as bad as Team Knight Rider. I mean, there isn't even any theme in the names of the cars: Dante, Plato, Kat, Attack Beast and Domino (presumably because being the worthless sports model that bends if it hits a small shrub she's the one that always gets sent out to get the pizza). And they're all smug in a way that even KITT wasn't; I mean, he was very superior, but he was never really smug. And he never needed rockets and barely needed a laser.

And to be clear, I've seen about an episode and a half, but no one episode all through.

And why don't they have Cylon visors on the bonnets? That's how we knew KITT wasn't just a car, he had a Cylon eyepiece glued to his bonnet.

But hey! Good on those kids. As long as they only try to kill each other with hairbrushes, that is.

The Prophet.

P.S. Did I mention yet that you should avoid Roar! I think I did, but it bears repeating.

Thanks for the advice!! Although I have to come out here as the erstwhile proud possessor of a Scott Tracey doll (cried buckets when it was lost) and Thuderbird 2 with Thunderbird 4 inside (brilliant) - I love Thunderbirds!!!

I have to admit here, that I'm a little perplexed. The title of the thread is Ropey Effects, and nobody has mentioned Andromeda yet. Why not, because (even with my very untutored eye) that is the ropiest of the lot. I mean, in Blake's 7 time the best we could have hoped for was polystyrene boulders, tin foil space suits and killer curling tongs. But Andromeda? They do shakey camera stuff when they do that fast thing (forget what they call it... hmmm.. nope, it's gone) and they couldn't even be bothered to make an Airfix Andromeda model, just used some computer animation. Pah. Glad to see they went with the sexy outfits for the women (not!) and the stupid "futuristic" (futuristic? that leather jacket thing he & the kids were wearing this week looked like a 1980s DuranDuran castoff!) non-clingy stuff for the men.

And why oh why do we have to see that "Andromeda" girl again right afterwards on the New Professionals (don't get me started on that, the plots might have been ropey, but their tight-trousered predecessors at least had a bit of personality)?

I'm a little too sympathetic clearly. Andromeda isn't great, but had a great totty count and is watchable tosh. It is, however very clearly knock off trek and that can't eb denyed. And teh slipstream effect is annoying. I think andromeda's problem is the fact that it's unorigional, but doesn't carry it with the same pinash (sp?) of series like Farscape.

And I would love Space 1999 repeats. But a question. Is that really our moon up tehre, because by rights it should have blown out of orbit by now. And UFO repeats would be cool too.

Oh, and for teh record, Thunderbirds does rock.

For other bring backs, Ulysese (sp?) 31, I know some people who have episodes on tape and it's still good today, Transformers (Obviously) and The mysterious cities of gold.

And I liked teh starship troopers movie, and teh series, better than pokemon.

I like Starship Troopers too, it reminds me of Reboot.

I'm feeling really deprived here, I've never seen Farscape. Sniff.
And, obviously, I'm much older than "you lot" so I'm at work (!) while you're watching this other stuff (or ironing, or watching Bob the Builder - which is fantastic - or Noggin the Nog or something)

Not missing a great deal with Farscape, although that being said it is far better than some I've seen (Team Knight Rider, Roar!, Starship Troopers, the new Flash Gordon series).

If you want Reboot-esque all-CGI animation, may I humbly recommend Shadow Raiders (but if you have sensetive children they might not like it - there's really a great deal of sex and death in it).

As for the moon and Space 1999, remember that Dan Dare Pilot of the Future first went to Mars and battled the Meekon in about 1991.

I'm entirely unable to comment on Andromeda, having never seen it. But Noggin the Nog was cool; almost as cool as the other Smallfilms stuff: Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, The Clangers.

The Prophet.

What are you talking about, Farscape is great. Good fun and actually really well done, no original Ideas but it shows taht it doesn't need them. As for Starship troopers, like I said, it reminds me of space above and beyond, which I liked. And reboot which was great and I still haven't seen the last few episodes of. for other things, apparently, according to Star Trek, kahn Noonian Singh ran several continents in the late '90s during teh eugenics wars. Amazing what I sleep through eh?

If you have missed Farscape and have sky/cable/anything better than analogue terrestrial and have the sci-fi channel. They are showing Farscape from teh 12th onwards, followed by, space above and beyond. yay

Oh come on; Space Above and Beyond was dreadful. Not as bad as Space Precinct - but then short of major bowel surgery with an inept anaesthetist what is - but still pretty bad. The lead characters were all so damnably bland.

OK; Farscape picked up a bit in the second series, but it still has a tendency to spend too long building up its storylines and then rush the conclusion.
Darned sexy spaceship though.

I always thought Kahn was a twenty-first/second century boy, but I see from some fairly minimal research that yes, I too have missed that episode in our planet's history. I guess I was just making generous assumptions about Star Trek's timeline.

The Prophet

This post has been removed.

I liked Space Abouve and beyond because it was a nice little tale about war with only a middling amount of gung ho. Peopel had emotions, and yes, teh clones thing wasn't developed but I loved some particular episodes with teh characters. Particularly teh last two.

Farscape will be on at least sundays at 8pm.

Was there actually a reason for the tanks? Having been vociferous in my opposition to Space Above and Beyond, I should admit I only saw a couple of episodes and I was never entirely clear on _why_ there was a need for tank-grown people when there were so many regular ones lying around already.

As for Farscape, be wary of the Sci-Fi Channel. If they run to form then they'll have the first six episodes run weekly on Sundays, then show the rest of the series twice daily, Monday to Friday, and it'll be over before you notice. At least that's what Bravo did with Monkey (or should it be MONKEEEEEEEEEY!).

The Prophet.

The tanks (actually a slang term, invitro is teh PC one)were origionally grown to do menial tasks and fight wars for natural-born people. They were actually gestated until they were teenagers and then tehy were programmed to be subserviant killers. However, they had a peaceful rebellion and were eventually given equal rights. However, when their Anroids rebelled (AIs) the tanks refused to fight making them unpopular with the natural borns. Tanks are still produced, often illegally for manual labour. Hope that cleans some stuff up. And looking at teh schedule, they may stick to weekly. Then obviously endlessly repeated monday to friday.

OK, although one would have thought that - assuming a mentality that a certain class of humans were expendable in this way - there would be enough poor people, or even androids, to do the manual labour and the warring. While I got that they were the politically acceptible racial underclass, I was unclear why they were needed in the first place. Was there a plague or something that left too few naturals to work the fields and the factories? Otherwise why would you produce a worker class that need to eat and sleep?

I am actually interested, rather than just nitpicking, although I am a great fan of internal consitency these days.

The Prophet.

Nope, teh reason for growing them was taht an evil corporation (Probably Aerotech) argued that, since tehy hadn't been naturally born, they didn't have the rights of normal people. I think androids were developed afterwards and aren't after teh AI war where they all rebelled and started killing people. it is assumed that the poor people woudl support tanks so that they could get better jobs because they wouldn't eb teh underclass. And teh programming was meant to make tanks more controllable.

This post has been removed.