maingon

New Series this summer on TNT
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al_bundy

why is it that almost every advanced alien species ever portrayed in movies and tv looks like it belongs in a zoo? star trek and a few others got it right

to build advanced technology you need language and have limbs that can manipulate the world around you

DJariya

Noah Wylie, Moon Bloonglood, Will Patton and even Captain Dale Dye.

Cool, I'll definitely be tuning in next summer.

Looks like TNT spent alot of cash on this one.

Draven

Really? You know what the word "alien" means, right?

And from the trailer...it seems they have limbs. One could argue that humans would be better off with two more arms or 14 fingers. Seems silly to get hung up on details like that.

This looks pretty good to me. Has a definite "TNT" feel, which I can't describe further than that...just struck me that way. But I'll check it out.

Maxflier

Yeah, it takes major suspension of disbelief to imagine those things creating the techmology to travel across the galaxy/universe. I love alien invasion stuff, but this show looks pretty shitty from that trailer.

Navinabob

That is making a lot of assumptions based on a tiny bit of footage.

Considering the amount of variety on life on Earth, it would be extremely implausible that aliens would look anything like us (human with pointy ears) or even like any animal we got on this planet.

Star Trek got almost everything wrong that can get wrong. Babylon 5 got less wrong since they tried to account for things like not all creatures had the same atmosphere requirements, but still mostly implausible.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of a sci-fi TV show actually that might be realistic-ish. Anyone toss up a good example?

al_bundy

a lot of things wrong with star trek but if you look at humans first using rocks as tools and going forward you can extrapolate the same thing to an alien society. you need a way to manipulate simple tools to start building technology.

and you need language and writing to pass on knowledge from one generation to another in order to build on past discoveries

the rules of physics are the same everywhere in the universe. to build tech aliens will have to master electricity, magnetism and other basic technologies

Navinabob

Or they just ate the race that did and are basically pirates using the technology. Or they are the attack dogs shot off into space to hit our planet and the real brains of the attack will just mop up afterward. Or what we saw were the aliens that had their genetics modified to be more bad-assy.
Maybe the males and females are different and the females were the smaller and smarter techies while the guys just ate people. Maybe they had some sort of parallel evolution where their version of Neanderthals didn't die out and were used as brute force by the race that developed technology first.

We don't know from that tiny clip. Maybe the show sucks and we get a V rip-off... but it looks more like a District 9 pitch if you spun it with they had 20 more ships that wanted to mush our planet. I'll give it a try after seeing the names involved.

CreamyGoodness

[Trek Nerd] Actually, the "Star Trek: Next Gen" episode "The Chase" explained why many lifeforms in the galaxy are similar.[/Trek Nerd]

Navinabob

Yeah, I sorta took that as revisionist history. The original series operated under just a costume design mandate to save money and help facial expressions of actors that had nothing to do with the plan later told in The Chase.

<--- Also a Trek nerd... hell, even played the awful MMO for 6 months

MikahC

And that explanation is?

benedict

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cha...ext_Generation)

djones6746

Gave this a look see yesterday and will look forward to giving this a shot in the summer.

Lemmy

That might be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on the internet.

It's (at best) an assumption (and impossible to prove).


As for the clip....I thought the effects looked wonderful, but the story looked quite pedestrian to me. Then again, an alien story or saga has to be pretty compelling for me to dig it, or should (at least) have aliens that are so damned cool you simply cannot deny them your admiration (i.e., Alien/Aliens, Predator, etc.).

mgbfan

Proof?

Deftones

it looks cheesy, but it's on during the doldrums of summer TV, so I will watch. plus, i'm a sucker for sci-fi/alien stuff, so it's got that going for it.

jiggawhat

How can you say that when we don't know all the rules of physics.

DJariya

The main networks do suck during the summer. But TNT, USA, AMC and a few other cable networks make up for the lack of quality stuff during the summer. I think this is going to do well in the summer, especially with the lack of competition and Spielberg's name attached to it. And I just read the the show was created by Spielberg and Robert Rodat, who wrote Saving Private Ryan.

Chew

The Preservers were mentioned in TOS ("Paradise Syndrome", "Return to Tomorrow") and were believed to have done the same thing as the race in "The Chase" (seeding).....may of even been the same race. So maybe it's not that "revisionist" after all.

yoshimi

I wonder if the humans will defeat the aliens with walkie talkies?

Navinabob

Seeds planted and using past existing characters to explain a common gripe are two different things. One is intent at the start, the other good writing after the fact.

I may be wrong here, so I'd love to see a source cited that the original intent of that species was to explain the humanoid-seeding idea, but everything put in print on the subject from production notes, creator/writer/actor interviews and the oodles of insider books on the series all indicate that costume, budget, actor ease were the reason aliens all looked the same.

It's a lot like all the theories behind why the Klingons look different between movies and the shows (really budget!) but everything from those were hybrids, surgically altered, or human sympathizers have been offered as explanations (and many people will read into things to prove each version is correct). The show wisely went on record with Worf speaking for the entire Star Trek production universe when he said "We do not discuss it with outsiders."

Chew

Well, of course the "real" reason for humanoids throughout original Trek was due to budget constraints, I don't disagree with that.

But, they did specifically address it with the Preservers and here's the relevant lines from "Paradise":

superdeluxe

Just saw the trailer on TNT, start date is June 19th on Sunday at 9pm. I think that might conflict with GoT though.

Chew

northmoor

Just read where TNT is already almost ready to order the second season ofthis one.http://features.metacritic.com/featu...-preview-2011/

Tom Banjo

Bump...
Premieres this Sunday. I probably would have missed this if I hadn't caught Noah Wyle on Conan last night.