What show would you "reimagine"?

[Charly]

After the unexpected success of Battlestar Galactica as a rather adult piece of Sci-Fi, it goes to show that old classics can be remade, and not be rubbish.

So I fully expect a glut of remakes, just as there have been with movies.

So I put the question to you: What series would you like to see remade?

My own fave would be Blakes Seven. There was a rumour of a contiuation, and then a remake, but this has since dies a death.

[Lance]

I'm on about episode 23 of 30 of "The Time Tunnel". They've been showing the entire series in back to back episodes 6 days a week on The Action Channel for a few months now.

I was 8-9 when that originally aired in 66-67 and haven't seen it since. Boy oh boy, is some of it funny now. Talk about bad science, sheesh!

But it would be interesting to see what something like that would look like today. I think it could be decent if done right.

Trivia: The premiere episode of The Time Tunnel aired the day after the premiere episode of Star Trek.

[Inferno]

The most unrealistic aspect of the time tunnel is that the characters never change their clothes!!

[Gullible Jones]

Doctor Who, with less cheese and less nonsense. With current special effects and better science, they might actually be able to make it quite creepy, and get rid of that sterile atmosphere.

[Lycus]

Doctor Who, with less cheese and less nonsense. With current special effects and better science, they might actually be able to make it quite creepy, and get rid of that sterile atmosphere.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but that one's on its way.

LINK

[peter eldergill]

For animated shows, I would love to see Dungeons and Dragons again. I was a kid when this first aired and loved it. I saw it again a couple of years ago and realized it was awful. They could have done so much more.

I saw recently the original Gatchaman and an updated Gatchaman as well. Both pretty cool, I thought, but I'm not willing to buy them or rent them. With dial up, though, downloading is not an option either...

Pete

[eburacum45]

Doctor Who, with less cheese and less nonsense. With current special effects and better science, they might actually be able to make it quite creepy, and get rid of that sterile atmosphere.

The Doctor has got a lot of potential; they have a panoply of alien civilisations, from the Timelords to the Ogrons-; the Doctor Who universe could be morphed into a space opera on an epic scale, instead of being confined to an endless series of chases through corridors.

[Jpax2003]

How about a re-imagining of Buck Rogers? Perhaps something a little darker and conspiracy laden, like Farscape without puppets. I'd still like to see a Babylon 5: The Next Generation as well.

[Weird Dave]

I don't know about TV shows, but there are some books that need re-writing. For example, Time and Again by Clifford Simak has an excellent, well-weaved plot, but his handling of the future is atrocious. We're supposed to believe that in the year 8000 or so, humans still smoke pipes and drive cars with steering wheels. :-?

I'd like to see this re-written by someone like Stephen Baxter or Peter F. Hamilton - keeping the plot but adding their own atmosphere and technology.

Incidentally, Simak's All Flesh is Grass has none of the flaws of Time and Again (being set in the present day) and needs no rewriting.

[JonnyWishbone]

JPax stole my Buck Rogers suggestion! I think Larry Niven supplied ideas or an outline for a series of grim&gritty Rogers novels in the 1970s (one of them was called Modred or Mordred, I remember that). They weren't bad, but tilted a bit too far the other way. But something that could not be like the cheeseball TV series but aim for too much grim revisionism would be nice -- the basic idea has a lot of potential.

With all the space-opera shows that have appeared since the early 1980s, a remake of the Buck Henry/Richard Benjamin Quark series might be pretty good, especially if it were on a network that only needed to produce eight-ten eps. of it a year. That galactic garbage scow could probably mock a lot of sftv conventions.

I also wish they'd get a new Flash series up and running. As someone somewhere pointed out, Barry Allen is a police scientist. CSI with superheroes might sound loopy, but by God it just might work! Also, I have found memories of the 1990 tv series.

Cheers, Jon

[Doodler]

I hadn't thought about the old Buck Rogers series, even though I watched regularly as a kid. (Repressed memories, I guess)

Maybe someone putting a new spin on The Prisoner or Logan's Run might have something to offer.

[Jim]

How about a re-imagining of Buck Rogers? Perhaps something a little darker and conspiracy laden...

Okay, but they have to keep Wilma Deering true to the Erin Grey portrayal, at least the skin tight suits.

[Lycus]

Maybe someone putting a new spin on The Prisoner or Logan's Run might have something to offer.

That one's coming, too.

LINK

[ChesleyFan]

I always wanted a Battletech/Mechwarrior TV show. I heard they made an animated series, but I've never seen it.

[Matherly]

The Prisoner.

Maybe give it a plot arc so it feels like Number 6 might be making headway (or then again, it just might be what Number 2 wants him to think...)

[archman]

I always wanted a Battletech/Mechwarrior TV show. I heard they made an animated series, but I've never seen it.

Pick up one of the Robotech series at your video store... or Gundam Wing. Close enough to Battletech, in a looney-tunes anime sort of way.

[jaeger]

Anybody remember the old "Men into Space" CBS TV show from the late 1950's with Willian Lundigan as Col. Ed McCauley? It supposedly showed what space travel would be like in the 1970s with a space station and a lunar base. Probably would be a little tame now, but it was my introduction to Sci-fi and to Science in general.

Definitely "retro" would be making "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels into TV shows or movies.

[Van Rijn]

Definitely "retro" would be making "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels into TV shows or movies.

That has been done in anime, though I wasn't too impressed:

http://www.animecritic.com/lensman/anr-lensman.html

I didn't think it was all that close to the source material or very interesting, but then again, I preferred the Skylark series over Lensman and had read Lensman a long time before I saw the anime.

[Van Rijn]

Another one I suspect few will remember, but I would love to see "The Starlost" done right. This was about a giant generation starship where the inhabitents had forgotten where they were. It was the type of show where the execution was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine, but you could see some great ideas peeking through the seams.

[Nowhere Man]

Babylon 5, the way JMS originally plotted it out: Keep Sinclair, keep Lyta, don't end it at the end of season 4, etc.

I've also heard that the mole was supposed to be Takashima, not the blonde telepath (blanking on her name).

Basically keep the network suits out of the production process. If an actor had to bail, replace the actor but not the character -- just don't mention the change.

Fred

[The Supreme Canuck]

I've never liked that sort of thing happening. It ruins the consistency for me. Change the actor, change the character, I say.

[jaeger]

I didn't think it was all that close to the source material or very interesting, but then again, I preferred the Skylark series over Lensman and had read Lensman a long time before I saw the anime.

I also fondly remember reading the Skylark series. The problem with the Lenman series was each book seemed to pile on more magnificant technology from one book to the next. Skylark was more of a "fun" read.

[gopher65]

I'd like to see some of the better video game plots turned into GOOD movies (and I don't mean cheesy resident evil type movies).

I thought "Freespace 2" had a plot that was worthy of a movie or a miniseries. Decent: Freespace was basically just a copy of Wing Commander, but it wasn't bad.

There are a few other games like Starcraft that had decent plots.

[eburacum45]

Another one I suspect few will remember, but I would love to see "The Starlost" done right. This was about a giant generation starship where the inhabitents had forgotten where they were. It was the type of show where the execution was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine, but you could see some great ideas peeking through the seams.

That is because it was conceived by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the -best Star- trek- episode- ever

[JonnyWishbone]

Another one I suspect few will remember, but I would love to see "The Starlost" done right. This was about a giant generation starship where the inhabitents had forgotten where they were. It was the type of show where the execution was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine, but you could see some great ideas peeking through the seams.

That is because it was conceived by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the -best Star- trek- episode- ever

Edward Bryant wrote a novel based on Ellison's original screenplay for the Starlost called Phoenix Without Ashes (as by Edward Bryant and Harlan Ellison, I think). And Ben Bova wrote a novel loosely based on the mess that was the making of Starlost called The Starcrossed.

Cheers, Jon

[Jpax2003]

Babylon 5, the way JMS originally plotted it out: Keep Sinclair, keep Lyta, don't end it at the end of season 4, etc.

I've also heard that the mole was supposed to be Takashima, not the blonde telepath (blanking on her name).

That blonde telepath was Talia Winters played by Andrea Thompson, former wife of Jerry Doyle who played Michael Garibaldi on B5. Some like Lyta Alexander, played by Patricia Tallman (who later married Jeffrey Willerth, who played Kosh), but I prefer blondes (sigh).

BTW, Harlan Ellison did a lot on B5 as well.

How about a remake of Get Smart, it was practically sci-fi. Maybe a live action-CGI adult oriented version of the Transformers.

[JonnyWishbone]

There's a post somewhere (probably at Lurker's Guide) that outlines the original arc. Takashima is the mole and War Without End is the end of the series, so far as I understand it. I actually like the tweaked version better, but that's because I like Bruce Boxleitner better than Michael O'Hare. Also, John Sheridan never met a major problem that a nuclear bomb couldn't solve. He's the Edward Teller of the 23rd century.

Cheers, Jon

[Doodler]

Another one I suspect few will remember, but I would love to see "The Starlost" done right. This was about a giant generation starship where the inhabitents had forgotten where they were. It was the type of show where the execution was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine, but you could see some great ideas peeking through the seams.

That is because it was conceived by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the -best Star- trek- episode- ever

For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky?

Great episode, but we can debate about its being the best

[Stuart]

Another one I suspect few will remember, but I would love to see "The Starlost" done right. This was about a giant generation starship where the inhabitents had forgotten where they were. It was the type of show where the execution was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine, but you could see some great ideas peeking through the seams.

That is because it was conceived by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the -best Star- trek- episode- ever

Heinlein came up with it even earlier - IIRC Universe. A Giant multi-generational starship where there was a mutiny sometime after the ship set out and in the fighting, all the books and the primary reactor were lost. The survivors have forgotten they were on a starship and they think they are the universe. The catch is there is conflict between those living at the core of the ship (the descendents of the loyal crew) and those living in the outer levels (the descendents of the mutineers). The catch is, the secondary reactor is running down, the air is leaking out and those in the outer levels are suffering from mutation problems. Eventually, some of teh crew solve the problem and escape to an inhabitable moon. Years later, Heinlein picked the story up again in "Time Enough For Love" , mentioning that the ship had been found, those who stayed on board had died and those that had escaped to the planet had reverted to barbarism

[ToSeek]

Ellison talks about pitching ideas to the eventual producers of Starlost. He went through a bunch of ones he liked, which were all turned down. Then, in desperation, he came up with the most cliched sf concept he could imagine: the generation ship where people have forgetten it's a ship except for a few who need to rally the others to prevent disaster. And the producers swooned over that one. The rest is (rather sad) history.