This is How We Geek Out: Interviews, Reviews & More
Inspired by a comment on a recent voice mail show, we ask you the question…
Would you rather have no sci-fi or fantasy shows on TV or would you rather have bad (or cheesy) genre shows on?
Cast your vote and tell us what you think in the comments!
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Cheesy!
That means, no Lost in Space, Land of the Lost, Land of the Giants, Dr Who (old 60’s/70’s rubbery set ones), Buck Rogers (come on!, the 70’s Buck Rogers was FULL of cheese!), Man from Atlantis, Red Dwarf etc etc etc etc etc!!!
We need bad scifi. It is part of the natural cycle of things
amazing, ok, making fun of itself, bad, nothing, then amazing all over again.
We went through a drought before battlestar and we are in the okay.
Deal with it people
If there’s Cheese out there, it means there’s most likely some good, serious stuff, too.
I’d settle for a few precious pearls, than a shovel full of sand.
A little cheese never hurt anyone. Anything is better than hokey sitcoms and chick flicks.
Who doesn’t like to cut the cheese? 🙂
Who doesn’t like to cut the cheese every now and then? 🙂
That was the point of my voice mail. The chessy stuff has the potential to become cult classics which inspire others to develop the next big classic sci-fi. Even though I find Flash Gordon (“FLASH!… ahhhh….”) to be unwatchable, I consider it a great way to get people thinking about how to make it better.
Maybe we should subject Hollywood screenwriters to repeat versions of Gordon in an attempt to get away from the remake meme. 🙂
why is bad and cheesy on the same ticket?
A good show without cheese: BSG
A good show with cheese: Firefly, Startrek, Farscape.
Some of your pools are too biased not to allow a “most correct answer.”
If it’s ONLY bad shows, then I think that hurts the genre. We’ll probably never get anything good again if the studios always associate sci-fi with cheap awful crap 🙁
If there is NO scifi on TV (or on SyFy) then the studios have proof that there is NO audience.
If there is ANY scifi on we should watch and really support the better stuff.
I’d settle for cheesy scifi but even that is scarce. It’s all ‘bigfoot ate my leg off’ or ‘sharktopus’.
For all who wanted just the cheese, you can have it. However we can debate on what is cheesy and what is quality. I see it as Yin and Yang. You actually cannot have one without the other.
There was a time when TV carried everything but Sci Fi/Fantasy. Then along came Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. Followed much later by Star Trek. The imagination and delight of endless possibilities blossomed. I list these as pivotal in my consciousness (yours of course will differ).
Given the choice of say bad food or no food, well one must eat to survive. However if no quality Sci-Fi/Fantasy is available on TV, then one can go to any of numerous sources to find it, including the rental of same. There is no good reason to waste one’s time and submit one’s mental health to a mal-nutritious show.
I’m old enough to remember a time when there was NO science fiction at all as it was not considered to be a legitimate form of entertainment. Then, after the enormous success of Star Wars, we started to see a plethora of really Gawd awful stuff hit the airwaves. Did I watch it? YOU BETCHA!!! I had been on a terrible TV diet totally devoid of any sci-fi, so when the cheesy stuff came along I would watch it with great enthusiasm and think of it as the greatest thing on television (since I would have nothing else really to compare it to).
I love the genre far too much to not live without it, so if I had to choose I would pick the cheesy stuff over not having any at all.
Not sure how old you are but I was born in the 40’s and since the inception of television there has always been some kind of sci fi/horror/fantasy programming.
Tom Corbett Space Cadet, Buck Rogers (with Buster Crabbe), Twilight Zone, James Bond (with Barry Nelson as Bond), Superman (with George Reeves), Captain Video and his Video Rangers, Buck Rogers (the 1950’s version), Space Patrol, Rocketman, The Outer Limits, and of course by the 1960’s — Star Trek and Lost in Space — ad infinitum.
I think there’s room for debate about what is and is not cheesy. Some shows are clearly high quality while there are some that skirt the boarder between quality and formulaic. And that definition actually changes as time and technology progresses. But for the clearly low quality stuff, like “Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century”, I think everyone is better off without it. Low quality shows only serve to lower audience expectations.
Also, it’s worth noting that “low quality” isn’t limited to the cost of sets and special effects. Script writing and acting quality is just as important, and a show with great writing and acting can endure and entertain even with a very limited budget. The original Star Trek series proved this in spades.
One person’s bad/cheesy can be another person’s brilliant, so I say have as much variety as possible. Every show will find an audience if given half a chance. Heck, I kinda liked the recent failed Flash Gordon and it was cheesy as hell.
Personally, I don’t care how cheesy or bad the TV movies on SyFy are… I watch them ALL.
If they are bad I do not watch them. If they are good cheesy I watch. I agree that bad shows hurt the genre more than help when it comes to betting other projects on the air. Be grateful that there is enough indy stuff along with the classics to get through the dry times.
Trick question!!
My answer is no SF or cheesy SF, but no bad SF, be it cheesy or not.
I’ll stick to my long-held position to watch nothing rather than watch something bad. I don’t even see why it’s a question at all, and it saddens me to see the disproportionate ratio of answers.
Only in TV (and movies) is this even a consideration; ask the same question regarding books, and the answer is bad books never make it out the gate. But on TV (and movies) we have trained generations to accept whatever crap is offered. In my opinion that has lowered the bar to the point I am not sure a good movie will even be recognized as such by the easily-amused-by-flashing-lights-and-loud-noises crowd . . . they like swiss-cheese-plots, cardboard characters, and senseless action wrapped in double layers of CGI.
No SciFi = Wrestling on SyFy
Bad SciFi = Saturday Night SyFy Original Movies
I think a better question would be would you rather see the sci-fi channel have wresting and reality shows, or old cheesy sci fi shows. I would take bad scifi movies over wrestling or that faky :ghost hunters” any day