B5:TLT Actual DISCUSSION Thread

[RMcD]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

Moved on? Sure, we are watching other shows, but that doesn't mean that we will view "human actors wearing prosthetic makeup to play aliens" as quaint or old fashioned. Just because BSG 2003+ and Firefly didn't do that , doesn't mean that "human actors wearing prosthetic makeup to play aliens" is now passe.

I dunno, I'm struggling to think of any sci-fi film or television property originating in this century (eg. since 2000) that has done it.. In fact even to me, personally, it does seem a little bit 20th century now. It was always a constraint of television that aliens that had to act tended to look and sound amazingly like Earth's dominant primate but with lumpy extra bits added, and I think it tended to alienate Joe Public. The current trend in sci-fi seems to be much more anthropocentric and 90% character-driven to 10% concept-driven where it had been the opposite (B5 probably embodies the middle of that shift). Obviously B5 can't exist without humanoid aliens, but I'm wondering if there may be more than just the stated reason for JMS choosing to focus on human characters for the first installments of TLT.

And if TLT turns out to be more of the same old but with better effects.. Again I dunno, I want to see it be successful enough to keep it going, and I'm not sure that's going to be enough, without injecting some fresh mystery, spark or hook..

 

[KoshN]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I dunno, I'm struggling to think of any sci-fi film or television property originating in this century (eg. since 2000) that has done it.. In fact even to me, personally, it does seem a little bit 20th century now. It was always a constraint of television that aliens that had to act tended to look and sound amazingly like Earth's dominant primate but with lumpy extra bits added,

That describes Trek (TNG thru ENT) more than it does B5. Just because nobody's done it in this century (B5-style prosthetics), doesn't mean that it's old fashioned, and that it'd be unpopular if done again. It just means that the current fad is not B5-style prosthetics, and that's emblematic of producers making something more for the mainstream than sci-fi fans.

...and I think it tended to alienate Joe Public.

Maybe superficial Joe Public. Yeah, he looks at B5, sees Londo and G'Kar, sneers and flips the channel. His loss.

The current trend in sci-fi seems to be much more anthropocentric and 90% character-driven to 10% concept-driven where it had been the opposite (B5 probably embodies the middle of that shift).

The current fad is to look down on "human actors wearing prosthetic makeup to play aliens." Doesn't mean that I'm going to do that. If the stories and character development are there, who cares?

....but I'm wondering if there may be more than just the stated reason for JMS choosing to focus on human characters for the first installments of TLT.

I doubt it.

And if TLT turns out to be more of the same old but with better effects.. Again I dunno, I want to see it be successful enough to keep it going, and I'm not sure that's going to be enough, without injecting some fresh mystery, spark or hook..

Fresh mystery, spark or hook is STORY, not prosthetics. Also, IIRC we are going to see a Centauri on this DVD, high hair and all.

 

[darth_librarian]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I want to see guys in Alien make-up again. I loved B5 and Farscape precisely because they did this in such an interesting way, no more Trek style silly noses / foreheads.

I agree its currently passe to have sci-fi that general only features human or human derived characters, but there is surely room for one show with rubber faced characters?


Plus, this is going down the direct to DVD route, so to a certian degree it does not have to cater for TV 'trends'. My only hope it that Interweb piracy by those curious who could buy does not eat into DVD sales too much ...

 

[KoshFan]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I think the writers of, say, Firefly and BSG have realized that whenever there are aliens with bumpy heads or prosthetics, such costuming is really just an elaborate nametag.

After all, the Narns and the Centauri acted in extremely human ways -- quite intentionally, as JMS was holding a mirror up to humanity. Basically the only truly alien being on B5 was Kosh, and when his crazy dialogue and his encounter suit got stripped away, he was rather human himself.

Since all our aliens are essentially acting like humans, I think some writers have decided to take a shortcut and save some money by just having them be humans.

 

[GaribaldisHair]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

There are basically two problems with aliens in TVSF as far as I can tell ... one related to production and one to audience.

From a production point of view, we are only now approaching the technology to create a completely convincing character that is totally alien (i.e. not a 5-6 foot tall biped with prosthetics) through the use of CGI. And I don't think anyone has yet tried to do it on a TV budget - except for small scenes here and there. Even Gollum was produced by motion-capturing Andy Serkis' very human movements.

From an audience point of view, would viewers have been able to so completely identify and sympathise with characters like Londo and G'Kar (generally considered B5's strongest characters) if they hadn't so closely resembled humans?

If all aliens in all TV shows were portrayed as truly alien in look, thought and behaviour how would the audience react?

I guess someone out there needs to give it a try ...

 

[KoshN]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

After all, the Narns and the Centauri acted in extremely human ways -- quite intentionally, as JMS was holding a mirror up to humanity. Basically the only truly alien being on B5 was Kosh, and when his crazy dialogue and his encounter suit got stripped away, he was rather human himself.

You consider a glowing squidlike creature rather human?

Since all our aliens are essentially acting like humans, I think some writers have decided to take a shortcut and save some money by just having them be humans.

I think they are afraid of looking "too sci-fi."

 

[PillowRock]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I dunno, I'm struggling to think of any sci-fi film or television property originating in this century (eg. since 2000) that has done it.

That doesn't mean that it's any more a thing-of-the-past than it ever was.

The SciFi Network (US) made a conscious decision to move away from space and aliens sorts of shows. That only reflects one small group of "suits". (Farscape started in 1999, and so *barely* misses your cut off.)

The US syndication market (where such things as B5 and Andromeda got going) basically completely disappeared as an option as all of those independent stations that used to fill programming schedules with syndicated shows joined the newer baby networks. (BTW: Andromeda started in 2000.)

The broadcast (in the sense of aiming at broader audiances, as opposed to niche "narrowcasters) networks never did create new space/aliens franchises more often than one every couple decades or so.

And, apart from a couple relatively short fad periods (like all of the copycats for a few years or so after Star Wars), movies have never been anything like a prolific source of SF with aliens in prostetics either. Besides, in the early years of this decade, the niche of movies-with-non-human-characters was filled by LotR. (The pockets of market resistance are the same for both space-SF and that kind of fantasy.) Nobody wanted to risk anything big going head-to-head with those; and now we're in the copycat fad period of fantasy ..... such as Eragon.)

So I don't think that the new millenium has seen any particular shift in how SF is to be done. It's a continuation the long standing trends of the business. It's just that the disappearance of the one piece of the market where prosthetic alien shows did a get a bit more of a chance (syndication) roughly coincided with this time frame.



I will say this, though:

I think that one of the reasons why there haven't been more space-alien movies over the decades is budgetary: it costs a lot to do the makeup for a whole universe of passers-by in alien settings up to the quality required to not look *really* bad in a movie. You could just see the detail so much better in a movie than you could on TV. For example, when ST:TNG went directly from shooting their last TV season into shooting their first movie the first thing that they had to do was destroy all of their sets from the show and rebuild the same sets better and more detailed for the movie to make up for the difference in how well they would be seen.

With the advent of HDTV, you can see everything much better on TV. That means that things like prosthetic makeups for alien characters (or extras in places like B5's Zocalo) will have to be done that much better going forward. Space based SF already tends to be relatively expensive to produce because of the need for FX budgets that other shows don't need. Having to cover that *and* higher makeup budgets may make space based SF with lots of aliens prohibitively expensive to produce for while ...... until the makeup people figure out how to make things look better without spending so much more money, or until the technology allows the FX budgets to come down more, or something.

But agian, that's a business and financial trend, not anything directly in the form of what people will accept as legitimate SF.

 

[puzzle]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

It's a question with many compromises.

If you desire diversity, you can now create it. Past is the time of physically building models/puppets/muppets, you can go CGI and convincingly animate anything which human eyes can see.

In some way, this permits increased realism.

A quite likely form of life in the interstellar void... is a machine, artificial intellect, with complete freedom to choose any form it wants (including antiquated forms for sentimental reasons) or no properly visible form.

But in other ways, full realism hurts story-telling.

As long as we remain bipedal humanoid air-breathers, best equipped to understand creatures who share our external form and mimics, there's going to exist a story-telling penalty everytime you have to skip actors (or limit their help to voice acting).

There's also a predictable loss in smooth transfer of story, everytime you cannot use humanoid form.

And the cause is us - precisely as static or dynamic as our ability and mind will be. But currently and in near future too, I suspect we read a story smoother is it somehow resembles our enviroment, and links up with our experience.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

If you desire diversity, you can now create it. Past is the time of physically building models/puppets/muppets, you can go CGI and convincingly animate anything which human eyes can see.

However, it's not clear to me whether it can be done convincingly *yet* on a TV series budget and turn around schedule. That becomes a particular issue if your CGI characters need to directly interact with your live human actors.

I mean, even with the time and budget that they had for Fellowship of the Ring there were still some things that immediately jumped out at me as being "wrong" or "fake". They improved in the later two movies, though it was a bit unclear to me how much that was due to improved animation and how much was due to PJ & Co learning which sorts of things to avoid letting the audiance get too good of a look at. (I think that it was some of each.)

 

[puzzle]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

You're probably right, and I quite likely over-emphasized the possibilities of CGI. Animating a non-humanoid character in a credible manner, it seems quite challenging and time-consuming, yes. Even an expert would have little intuition to draw from, to determine how that kind of a creature should behave.

Even animating a humanoid character is difficult, if the result must withstand close scrutiny. For distant or less detailed footage, good enough and probably helps quite a lot.

 

[Telepath]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I mean, even with the time and budget that they had for Fellowship of the Ring there were still some things that immediately jumped out at me as being "wrong" or "fake".

Besides, bad or mediocre CGI appear even more fake on HD-DVD. I recently watched King Kong on HD-DVD, and it's hideous. Ann seems SO cut into the scene with Kong.

Concerning aliens and their physical appearance, the possibility of one head, two hands with opposing thumbs and no more than two legs - making the whole creature a humanoid - is not very unlikely to emerge in a process of evolution. It's just weird that ALL aliens on SciFi shows are usually bipeds.

But B5 tackled that problem quite well - at least a lot better than Trek. And it tried to balance bipeds with creatures such as N'Grath, Vorlons, Shadows - and a lot of unseen aliens in their respective sections with a different atmosphere All in all, a very good effort.

 

[AnlaShokGrey]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

Part of what's going on is simply fashion, based on budget. Big-budget space-based-with-aliens SF went out, and Earth-based conspiracy-format sf stories started getting made (Odyssey 5, Heroes, The 4400, etc.). Even on the Stargates, all of the planets look like Earth and the aliens are mostly human in appearance. Firefly was space-based, but the stories were about people who'd defied the Empire/big dogs and were at constant odds with them, so you really didn't _have_ to see anyone but humans.

Anyway, as has been said before, it's mainly a budgetary constraint.

On the subject of how people relate to various alien types, I'm not sure that CGI characters would be that successful or popular. People relate, after all, to _humans_, and so the more human the alien, the more relatable. Of course with that philosophy, you run the risk of people making fun of your aliens for simply being humans with funny prosthetic foreheads (i.e. Trek). I'm not saying we don't have the technology to do it _well_; I'm just saying that I think there is at least some aspect of the 'Uncanny Valley' effect to be considered with the widespread use of CGI characters.

On a personal note, I'd be sad if this is the way sf television was going -- replacing live actors with CGI alien characters. Not only would that put live actors out of work (or at least reduce their pay; I'm sure voiceover work has a lower scale than live appearance); we would also lose the possibility of amazing performances like those regularly turned in on B5 by Andreas and Peter. I don't care how great the voice would sound with a human behind it -- you simply cannot convince me that a CGI character could 'act' with as much instinct and subtlety, or informed by such humanity, as, say, Andreas Katsulas.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

People relate, after all, to _humans_, and so the more human the alien, the more relatable.

I think you've hit on a major point. However, I don't think that it's the humanoid form (2 arms, 2 legs, etc.) that people need to see.

Further down you talk about the subtlety of actors expressions. That's hinting at what I think is the human-like thing that people need / want most ..... a human-like face in which we can read and recognize non-verbal communication or emotions and reactions.

Farscape had more than its share of non-humanoid characters pass through, including some regular characters, but it didn't hurt them because people could still read them and become attached. Pilot wasn't even vaguely humanoid, but the audience loved him. The one (and only) physical thing about Pilot that resembled humans at all was his facial features.

effect to be considered with the widespread use of CGI characters.

It's tough for the close up characters.

However, I think that we'll see an increase in CGI replacing the use of extras for crowd scenes (background shoppers in B5's Zocalo, and the like), whether human or alien. This just seems to be an extension of the move to "virtual sets", and the software has gotten (and is still getting) much better at controlling reasonable actions for those kinds of background "characters".

In that respect, for the near term future I see CGI as much more of a threat to the jobs of extras than to those with speaking parts.

 

[hypatia]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I wish fewer sci-fi fans hated the option of muppets/puppets.

Like in Farscape, and even Star Wars.

When Farscape was on, I heard bitching about Pilot.

Even as a kid I remember people complaining that Yoda didn't look real in Star Wars.

I'd love to see more non-humanoid characters in t.v. and movie sci-fi. But the CGI just doesn't turn me on, and I did like Yoda and Pilot.

JMS couldn't do a good "Na'Grath" or whatever the big bug was called. I wonder if he could now?

 

[KoshFan]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

You consider a glowing squidlike creature rather human?

Not in his appearance, but appearances are superficial. I meant in his actions: fatherly compassion, fear, self-sacrifice.

Firefly was space-based, but the stories were about people who'd defied the Empire/big dogs and were at constant odds with them, so you really didn't _have_ to see anyone but humans.

It was also explicit that there were no aliens, period. Even the Reavers were human once.

People relate, after all, to _humans_, and so the more human the alien, the more relatable.

Also, the best writers write aliens to describe humanity, as I said. The Narn and the Centauri were reactionaries and revolutionaries, both of them extreme, both of them locked in a cycle of hatred and destruction which we saw come full circle -- and JMS showed them to us so we would understand ourselves better. As I said, bumpy foreheads or six... appendages are all just nametags for aspects of the human race and the human condition.

Ever notice how most aliens have one "dominant religion," or only one system of government? It's because they've usually been lifted straight from humanity, and the writers don't want other elements tangling up their metaphors.

And so the writers of Firefly and BSG* have decided to abandon the nametags and just play it straight. The masks came off and humans started playing humans again.


* = technically there have been alien species on BSG. However, they're all vegetables.

 

[AnlaShokGrey]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I didn't know there was an anti-puppet/muppet faction in sf fandom. My dislike of Farscape had nothing to do with puppets or muppets!

And, fyi hypatia, the bug creature was "N'Grath."

KoshFan (Mac?), what do you mean by "It was also explicit that there were no aliens, period"? Explicit in what way? I don't recall any bit of dialogue within the show's universe where someone said, "Gosh, it's sure a shiny thing that there ain't no aliens in the whole dad-blamed 'verse!" If it wasn't in the show, is this something Whedon was quoted as saying somewhere, in commentary about the show?

And yes, I do realize that Narns and Centauri were just 'humans in disguise,' with the same motivations, problems, hopes, joys, fears, etc. as humans. My point in saying that people relate to humans is that I think that people watching films or television relate to the humanity in aliens. There may be a race out there who looks like reptiles, but even if there are, they'll have different cultural references than we do, and will have evolved differently, and so when a Narn is thinking up something crafty he likely will not have Andreas's very-human sneaky expression on his face. Joy may not invoke a smile. Etc. So the audience is relating to the human part that shows through Andreas's portrayal of G'Kar. No matter how good the CGI gets, or the puppets, they will not have the innate appeal that a costumed/masked human actor will, which is based on a deeply-ingrained bonding response we have when we see other humans -- even ones with layers of latex prosthetic on their face. IMHO.

 

[KoshN]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

KoshFan (Mac?),

No, KoshN = Mac

I was going for "Kosh Naranek" back of The Sci-Fi Channel boards years ago but that was taken, so I shortened it to KoshN, which has nothing to do with "caution" . I try to use KoshN everywhere, except on IMDb, where I managed to get KoshNaranek.

 

[GaribaldisHair]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

When Farscape was on, I heard bitching about Pilot.

I did some of that (and at Rigel(sp?) too) ... but not because there was anything fundamentally wrong with Pilot (or Rigel) - he was after all magnitudes better than some of the original Star Wars puppets.

What bugged me was that just prior to the premiere of Farscape, Brian Henson gave an interview in the Radio Times in which he basically said that Farscape was great because for the first time ever they were going to portray non-humanoid aliens in a way that was utterly convincing ...

Yeah, right!

 

[RMcD]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

Actually one aspect in which I really did like the way that B5 handled the makeup thing it was that it did emerge in the course of the story that whereas the younger races all tended to look pretty much human, the elder races had weird and wonderful body types (Lorien aside but then who knows if that was really what his race originally looked like or just a disguise allowing him to better relate to Sheridan and the younger races).

That leaves the viewer free to come up with explanations such as the Vorlons mingling species DNA and derailing their natural evolution (which seems like a nicely credible explanation for why a marsupial and an ape could evolve into Narns and humans and even go so far as to be sexually compatible).

I think TNG also had an episode in which it emerged that something exactly like that had happened in their universe, explaining why aliens in Star Trek look human..

So there can be 'story' reasons for it, and once you make the leap to acceping it it's something you never think about it again. And I totally agree that if aliens really were alien we wouldn't relate to them half as well. Muppets are a nice compromise actually - recognisably not human but still able to emote just as well if done skillfully.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: Actual B5:TLT News

I didn't know there was an anti-puppet/muppet faction in sf fandom.

Of course there those people out there ..... just like ther were people who watched a couple minutes of B5, decided that Londo's hair was too much like Bozo the Clown and tuned out.

Both reactions were much more common among people who were not SF fans in general ...... but there were some.