mosymoseys:

Where have all the space operas gone?  Where are all the shows I grew up with filled with spaceships and lasers?  Where are all the scifi shows that weren’t ashamed to be scifi shows?

I miss those shows.  Because being an unashamed space opera filled with spaceships and lasers gave shows the opportunity to tell the great stories that only science fiction can tell.

It’s like everyone learned the wrong lesson from Battlestar Galactica.  BSG was created to prove that science fiction was a valid medium for story-telling.  And it was so excellent that all the critics, who for so long had dismissed scifi as synonymous with bad, had to sit up and take notice.  So they consoled themselves by telling people oh it’s not really scifi; it’s a character drama in space.  Never mind that that’s pretty much the definition of science fiction.  

And instead of learning that scifi can be good, everyone somehow walked away with the idea that good shows can’t really be scifi.

So today we’ve ended up with shows that I have bitterly dubbed “diet scifi”.  Scifi shows that spend most of their time trying to convince viewers that they’re not really scifi.  And in the process, they completely lose me.  Because I want to watch scifi.  

I want to watch unashamed space operas filled with spaceships and lasers.  

Shows like Star Trek or Babylon 5 or Farscape or Stargate.  Or Earth: Final Conflict or Andromeda.  Or even Sliders or Quantum Leap which lacked spaceships and lasers but were uncompromisingly scifi in other regards.  Hell, I will take Power Rangers in Space.  

Can I have shows like that back?  Please?