BAAAD Sci-fi - From anywhere or anytime

[Guts Gets Some]

Been on a bit of a sci-fi kick lately. Been my favorite topics and my favorite people all at once. Rather than continuing to complain about all the current ones in said topics, let's make a whole different area to really get into it, cross-over series and the like.
Like my "series falling out" thread.

So while it would be super easy to just go with what's topical and what everyone is complaining about these days; Trek, Who, Star Wars, etc, I actually remembered something truly horrible from my past, that inspired this topic. I'd like to share.

My friend routinely gives me random DVDs as gifts; movies, but sometimes animes. He just buys whatever and sometimes he strikes gold and other times he finds some of the worst things imaginable. This isn't quite that route, but still on the lesser end of quality.

And the funniest part was, I actually had heard of this series before it ended up in my DVD player, from reviews and I didn't think it sounded bad.
That was before I realized I hated the site and the reviewer who had given it such a score:

https://theanimeacademy.wordpress.com/the-stacks/the-stacks-c/crest-of-the-stars/

Crest of the Stars.

And look at that rating of 90% from the now defunct Anime Academy! With such zingers like "Never stops being fascinating" and the like.
With quotes like that, anyone would get excited! Until you sit down to watch it.

I don't know what this guy saw in it, but by the end of episode 1, I found myself so utterly disinterested by the concept and characters alone, I had to put on the dub version. I wanted to stick through it, but I couldn't force myself through it and read subtitles. Translation: I needed to be able to watch it with my eyes closed.

The funniest part was, despite how utterly forgettable the plot, characters, and everything was, one part did forever stick in my mind. And it was the point I knew I had made a mistake in trying to stick with it. In episode two, the main alien girl tells Earth boy her riveting backstory, "I'm a child of love. I know my parents were in love when they had me, so I'm happy because that makes me a Child of Love."

What a richly developed and endlessly fascinating alien race, I tell you. So much so, it actually made me laugh.

And I literally remember nothing else about it, and I know I fell asleep countless times throughout. It wasn't the pace or anything, there was nothing at all about this show I found remotely interesting or engaging, and I'd really like to hear from anyone else who is a fan of this series (which apparently even got a few sequel series) as to why it's as engaging as AA says it is.


And so I might as well leave my own review to compare to Anime Academy's:
"An anime that can literally be reviewed with only a single letter: ZZzzzzzzzzz"

Share yours!


Current, old, whatever!

 

[JULAY]

Battlefield Earth. Both the book and movie. L. Ron Hubbard named the protagonist Johnny Goodboy Tyler, for fuck's sake. Tells you everything you need to know.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Space Mutiny.

It features Cameron Mitchel, Reb Brown, stock footage from Battlestar Galactica, a nonsensical plot, really silly clothes and one of the most outrageous chase scenes ever made.
The MST3k version is a blast, too.
Overall, it's about some bad guys trying to take over a spaceship (as the name implies), the main villain chews the scenery whenever he can and Reb Brown does his best to act.
There's also a really weird sideplot about telepath nuns that look like strippers...

 

[Not Really Here]

Battlefield Earth. Both the book and movie. L. Ron Hubbard named the protagonist Johnny Goodboy Tyler, for fuck's sake. Tells you everything you need to know.

Mission Earth was much worse.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

The Female Man.

It's basically an incomprehensible feminist diatribe disguised as sci-fi. In particular is the world of Whileaway, an alternate future where all the men have been killed and only women roam the Earth. They've figured out how to procreate without men and they've basically advanced their technology and society to where there's world peace and shit. And what makes it sci-fi is that one of the inhabitants, Janet, travels to our world, and clashes with the patriarchal society. Also, the process of dimension hopping is never explained, it just happens, which isn't a bad thing I don't think but don't go into it expecting scientific explanations.

Later Joanna Russ followed up that story with another one where men reappear and start taking over, thereby destroying Whileaway.

You can tell Russ really fucking hates men and is basically saying that a world without men would be better. It'd be funny if it wasn't so legitimately angry.

 

[Not Really Here]

 

[Recoil]

The special effects in Equilibrium

Altho on second thought, they are kind of charming.

 

[Constellationzero]

Battlefield Earth. Both the book and movie. L. Ron Hubbard named the protagonist Johnny Goodboy Tyler, for fuck's sake. Tells you everything you need to know.

What could you possibly expect coming from a fat ginger R-tard who wanted to test whether or not tomatoes scream?

Wonder if watching this every single day of your life is part of the SeaOrg's billion year contract?

Oh--and to add to this, here's my picks for bad sci-fi:
Dark Star
The Incredible Melting Man
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Supernova
Solar Crisis
Dracula 2000

 

[Not Really Here]

The special effects in Equilibrium

Altho on second thought, they are kind of charming.

The idea of a gun kata is exceptional (not filtered) creativity in film.

 

[Recoil]

The idea of a gun kata is exceptional (not filtered) creativity in film.

That was great, definitely. Especially the part where they talk about analyzing hundreds of firefights for mathematical probability.
...But they tried to do matrix-level effects on a much lower budget and it aged horribly.

 

[JULAY]

The special effects in Equilibrium

Altho on second thought, they are kind of charming.

Being surrounded by six guys with rifles and not getting shot takes suspension of disbelief to insupportable levels.

 

[Not Really Here]

That was great, definitely. Especially the part where they talk about analyzing hundreds of firefights for mathematical probability.
...But they tried to do matrix-level effects on a much lower budget and it aged horribly.

I've watched every surviving Doctor Who episode starting in the '80's, black and white first doctor up to the 50th anniversary.
I don't understand the phrase 'effects on a much lower budget and it aged horribly'.

 

[Fluoxetine Man]

The special effects in Equilibrium

Altho on second thought, they are kind of charming.

Honesty, I don't think Equilibrium would be as fondly remembered if it had a higher special effects budget. The rough and tumble effects and choreography is perfect for a schlocky, sci-fi b-movie.

 

[Furina]

View attachment 1252375

Not sure I'd call this bad sci-fi since the actual sci-fi parts of it are pretty cool. The robots, the guns, the tech, etc. The story was just a bit predictable and whatever.

I think for sci-fi to really qualify as bad it has to be stupid, or based on some kind of faulty understanding of the world. So I'm going to say that Star Trek Discovery and Picard are real BAAAAD sci-fi. Not only are they riding on the coattails of a franchise that had some genuine thought put into it, but they're actively dismantling it and shitting on every idea the original series tried to push. Instead of depicting an optimistic vision of the future where so many of our current problems are things of the past, where peace is valued above all else and problems are resolved through careful discussion and understanding of all parties involved, they've taken every issue we have today and added magical future technology to them and then try fix everything with lasers and explosions. I mean, you could look at it from a meta perspective and see the Federation as a representative of the whole Star Trek franchise going through something akin to the decline of the Roman Empire. What was once this mighty entity ruled over by wise leaders has decayed into this crumbling shadow of it's former self, ruled over by petty tyrants and weaklings, so caught up in bureaucracy it couldn't fix itself even if it tried. All the visionaries are gone and a gaggle of violent morons have replaced them.

 

[XYZpdq]

"bad" can mean a lot of different things
Creation Of The Humanoids is a neat cheap scifi movie, basically imagine Ed Wood's Blade Runner and you're not far off, includes Dudley Manlove and a different Universal Horror cast-off with makeup effects by the guy who did The Wolfman

after the atomic war mankind is filling in the gaps with humanoid robots
also where that Alien game got its weird non-WY synths

 

[Not Really Here]

Not sure I'd call this bad sci-fi since the actual sci-fi parts of it are pretty cool. The robots, the guns, the tech, etc. The story was just a bit predictable and whatever.

I think for sci-fi to really qualify as bad it has to be stupid, or based on some kind of faulty understanding of the world. So I'm going to say that Star Trek Discovery and Picard are real BAAAAD sci-fi. Not only are they riding on the coattails of a franchise that had some genuine thought put into it, but they're actively dismantling it and shitting on every idea the original series tried to push. Instead of depicting an optimistic vision of the future where so many of our current problems are things of the past, where peace is valued above all else and problems are resolved through careful discussion and understanding of all parties involved, they've taken every issue we have today and added magical future technology to them and then try fix everything with lasers and explosions. I mean, you could look at it from a meta perspective and see the Federation as a representative of the whole Star Trek franchise going through something akin to the decline of the Roman Empire. What was once this mighty entity ruled over by wise leaders has decayed into this crumbling shadow of it's former self, ruled over by petty tyrants and weaklings, so caught up in bureaucracy it couldn't fix itself even if it tried. All the visionaries are gone and a gaggle of violent morons have replaced them.

They fired a shoulder mounted missile from the ground to orbit.....
They have bots able to preform as cops yet are supposedly out of resources......Because they forgot about the trillions of tons of resources one could easily mine with bots?
They have medical tech that can rewrite DNA and kill cancer in moments but they don't have either nanotech or replicator tech to recycle and or mine the existing junk?

No, just no. It's very bad at Sci-Fi and just about everything else.

 

[Furina]

They fired a shoulder mounted missile from the ground to orbit.....
They have bots able to preform as cops yet are supposedly out of resources......Because they forgot about the trillions of tons of resources one could easily mine with bots?
They have medical tech that can rewrite DNA and kill cancer in moments but they don't have either nanotech or replicator tech to recycle and or mine the existing junk?

No, just no. It's very bad at Sci-Fi and just about everything else.

Not sure where you're getting the "out of resources" bit from. From what I remember the whole point of the film was the people on Elysium had the technology but just not the willingness to help the people on the overpopulated Earth. As for the rocket, so what? What's so outlandish about that? They have single-stage ground to orbit spaceships too. Anyway, I don't want this to turn into a pointless back and forth. I liked Elysium. You didn't. No biggie.

 

[Not Really Here]

Not sure where you're getting the "out of resources" bit from.

Natural resource depletion and hording by the ultra class was the entire point of the film that you apparently missed entirely.

It's bad Sci-Fi.

 

[Save the Loli]

Crest of the Stars is actually pretty damn interesting, OP confirmed for shit taste. You can tell the writer spent a fuckton of time on the setting (come on, he made his own conlang and got a bunch of VAs to speak it) and it was nothing but a product of love. I'm amazed it got so many episodes worth of content and it's too bad you don't see distinctive anime like that these days.

The funniest part was, despite how utterly forgettable the plot, characters, and everything was, one part did forever stick in my mind. And it was the point I knew I had made a mistake in trying to stick with it. In episode two, the main alien girl tells Earth boy her riveting backstory, "I'm a child of love. I know my parents were in love when they had me, so I'm happy because that makes me a Child of Love."

That's an important scene for establishing the backstory of the Abh race (space elves/basically Romulans) as well as why Lafiel acts the way she does throughout the show.

Overall it's a flawed but still good series. My biggest problem with Crest/Banner of the Stars is that there's a tendency toward long dialogues that don't really advance the plot or tell you much about the characters. Well, that, and there's barely anyone from the enemy faction ever shows up. I'm sure it worked better in the book than animated (although I've never read the novels so I don't know how faithful it is to them). Banner of the Stars II is probably the best because it has a cool take on a "prison planet" story with a great cast of villains (which the other seasons were lacking in). All of Crest/Banner of the Stars is like the Legend of Galactic Heroes Gaiden arcs (the prequel stories showing Reinhard's rise to power), just snapshots of a galaxy at war and the intrigue that's always going on. The space battles in Crest/Banner of the Stars rule too, I love the rules the setting has with them and goddamn are they pretty and impressive as hell.

There you go OP, there's my defense.

 

[XYZpdq]

iirc I've heard Stars takes a few hits on its way across the Pacific as it's one of those Tolkien-y language and culture parades, which had an okay adaptation for the screen and some questionable English translations on top of that.