Current TV Boxset Addiction

[Greg M.]

I do love I, Claudius. It took me a couple of goes to get through the lengthy first episode, but once Ian Ogilvy (one of my favourite actors ever) had popped up, I had my in-roads and was hooked. After that, it just got better and better. It goes without saying that John Hurt, clearly in the midst of one of the purplest patches of any actor's career, probably steals the show during his reign as Caligula. The interplay between he and Jacobi is fantastic - I was amazed they got away with broadcasting his most infamous moment.

[Charlie boy]

I'm going to start buying The Shield boxsets; never watched it but I've heard it goes great once Kurt Sutter is promoted as the man in charge. Anybody here actually watch it when it was on channel5 a few years back?

[TordelBack]

... I was amazed they got away with broadcasting his most infamous moment.

Yeah, even from the vantage point of 2013 it's as shocking a piece of telly as there's ever been.

[pictsy]

I am currently watching all Star Trek ToS for the first time.

Although I am led to believe the show was a pioneer in terms of equality attitudes it still suffers from being a product of it's time.  It is still very chauvinistic.  It does appear to be trying nonetheless and it's chauvinism isn't as bad as some modern media equivalents and it at least has an excuse of being the aforementioned product of it's time.  That aside, it's quality is better than what I had been led to believe through many a Star Trek cliche.  It's not good quality though.  It's fun watching Shatner actually developing his terrible over acting he is renowned for over time.  The pauses in his sentences are slowly but surely getting longer and longer. 

There are some nice ideas being presented (and often repeated several times over) that could be fleshed out and modernised.  This has me thinking about the rebooted Battlestar Galactica which I loved watching.  When I have finished with ToS I may go onto the original Battlestar Galactica - avoiding Galactica 1980.

[Professor Bear]

Roddenberry deliberately reined-in the overt gender and racial equality of the show because when he tried to make it too blatant (in the original pilot The Cage), the network passed on the show, citing among other things that the ship's first officer was a woman and this meant that whenever the captain was off having adventures in the course of any hypothetical series that she'd be in charge of the ship and everyone on it.  Paradoxically, they also complained that the green lady slave type was offensive, so eventually the series settled on a middle ground of just having women - and non-Caucasians - around but never going into details, while individual scriptwriters could choose to go forward from that as they saw fit.
For the most part, just being present and visible in the background was a huge leap forward for equality in the era as the Enterprise was a defacto military ship and miniskirts or not the female crew-members were serving military officers.  Just take a look at other sci-fi of the era like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants or Lost In Space and how they portrayed women - if at all.

[pictsy]

Roddenberry deliberately reined-in the overt gender and racial equality of the show because when he tried to make it too blatant (in the original pilot The Cage), the network passed on the show, citing among other things that the ship's first officer was a woman and this meant that whenever the captain was off having adventures in the course of any hypothetical series that she'd be in charge of the ship and everyone on it.  Paradoxically, they also complained that the green lady slave type was offensive, so eventually the series settled on a middle ground of just having women - and non-Caucasians - around but never going into details, while individual scriptwriters could choose to go forward from that as they saw fit.
For the most part, just being present and visible in the background was a huge leap forward for equality in the era as the Enterprise was a defacto military ship and miniskirts or not the female crew-members were serving military officers.  Just take a look at other sci-fi of the era like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants or Lost In Space and how they portrayed women - if at all.

Hence "product of it's time", "It does appear to be trying" and "isn't as bad as some modern media equivalents".

[Professor Bear]

Now you leave Battlestar Galactica alone - for all we know there maybe just wasn't a whole lot of tv shows about sex robots and we really needed another one.

And there's really no need to be defensive, I was joining the debate rather than derailing it.

[pictsy]

Now you leave Battlestar Galactica alone - for all we know there maybe just wasn't a whole lot of tv shows about sex robots and we really needed another one.

I don't understand what you mean here.  You're going to have to explain this one for me, please.

And there's really no need to be defensive, I was joining the debate rather than derailing it.

Fine. Join the debate, there's really no need to be defensive about my replies

[Dr Feeley Good]

I'm going to start buying The Shield boxsets; never watched it but I've heard it goes great once Kurt Sutter is promoted as the man in charge. Anybody here actually watch it when it was on channel5 a few years back?

first couple of series are great, dips a bit then goes really good again when Forrest Whittaker comes into it

[HdE]

After a hectic weekend, I'm now three episodes into Dollhouse and I really don;t care for it so far.

Weakly written, limp episodic fluff. Well, okay the second episode had a bit more muscle to it, but so far, this is pretty lame. Not actually sure if I can be bothered to stick it out and see if the stories I hear about it improving dramatically are true. This show just feels completely vacant.

[pictsy]

Dollhouse has been recommended to me countless times and I still haven't managed to muster up enough enthusiasm to give it a go.  The concept just doesn't excite me enough.  I find it a bit off putting, to be honest.

Although when I get recommendations they usually turn out to be worthwhile, eg.  Battlestar Galactica (reboot), Game of Thrones and the absolutely fantastic The Wire.

[SmallBlueThing]

I'm literally choking on my biscuits at the suggestion that Shatner was "crap" in Trek! That's a muddleheaded piece of nonsense spread by terrible stand up comedians back in the nineties,and endlessly copied and repeated by office bores trying to appear cool and funny in front of the latest sexy temp. Shatner's Kirk is an incredible creation- undeniably the most famous hero in a'll of science fiction, and utterly believable from start to his end. Shatner is a great actor anyway- check out 'nightmare at 20000 feet' for more of this. What always makes me laugh about trekkers who have a go at Shatner, is that they then claim Patrick Stewart is "a good actor". Let me make this very clear: he is not. But he very very much thinks he is.

SBT

[Professor Bear]

Kirk is rightly an icon, but I think what I found most grating about NuTrek is that Chris Pine doesn't have that smarmy, sleazy porn-star charm that Shatner does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAvRBDQqSmY

[pictsy]

I can't say I'm overly impressed by Star Trek ToS.  Some episodes are enjoyable, some a laughable and some a just plain awful.  So far, at the end of series 2, I can say that it's better than what I expected but not by a great deal.  Still, I take that as a win and who knows, I may even develop a bizarre fondness for it.

With all that in mind I still think it is better than the New Star Trek films.  By lightyears.  OK, I've only seen the first New Trek, but I'm led to believe that the second is worse (which I'm happy to accept without viewing it for myself... it's probably wall to wall lens flare).  Karl Urban does a pretty good job as Dr McCoy, I'll grant him that, but he's Dredd.  Of course he doesn't suck.  I can't say I was impressed with anyone else, not even Simon Pegg.  Back to the point.  ToS = better than Star Trek Reboot.

Due to ToS' repetitive nature in terms of story themes I am still enjoying considering the potential of a Star Trek series reboot ala BSG.  Of course much of it's tone would need to be less dark than BSG.  I like the representation of the Klingons and the way they are presented in ToS is very different from the Films and spin offs.  Expanding the original Klingon concept would be interesting.  I do end up bustling with loads of ideas and if I had both the time and talent I'd write a reboot fan fiction or something.

[TordelBack]

Shatner's Kirk is an incredible creation- undeniably the most famous hero in a'll of science fiction, and utterly believable from start to his end. ... they then claim Patrick Stewart is "a good actor". Let me make this very clear: he is not.

While completely agreeing with you that Shatner is superb, almost ridiculously so in ToS, I just can't agree about Stewart: he does precisely what he needs to do as in actor in TNG, which is to appear to believe utterly in and treat the ridiculous tosh around him completely seriously, to the stage where it becomes a plot point to have his character want his scientific/diplomatic/humanitarian/military mission to be run professionally, and not as an interstellar daycare centre.  I think his performance is every bit as good as Shatner's in filling and developing the role his character plays.