Sci-fi and sillyness

[Paul Osborne]

I would rather gnaw my own leg off.

Paul

[Louise Pembroke]

We can replace that with a nice Borg mechanical leg!

[Andrew MacLean]

Paul

I am ashamed to say that I had not noticed the variant spelling of your surname until you pointed it out.

The Borg are jus the latest version of the cinema or televison baddies; they can be utterly dehumanized to that we all cheer when the heroes give them a spanking.

In the early days of the cinema it was the Red Indians. We never got to know about them, their culture, or even their grievance. All we knew was that they were not like us, and that they attacked nice people. Obviously they needed to be wiped out.

Various other groups have filled this space: the Japanese or Nazis in WW2 films, the Soviets in cold war films, the roundheads in films about the civil war, vampires in buffy or the dracula films ...

Now it becomes necessary to make something that has been dehumanized by the addition of mechanical components. We can safely project our hatred onto the Borg, until Janeway rescues Seven of Nine and we are thrown into conflict again. Janeway needs Seven to survive, and Seven retains much of benefit from her time with the collective.

They will need to make new baddies. Even Darth vader has been humanized by the end of episodes III and VI.

In the English press you find the same sort of thing in their attitude to the French (although the Scottish Press takes a different line). During hte Falklands conflict we were encouraged to think of Argentinians as irrational, corrupt, even aggressive and predatorial. Then an English Archbishop gets it in the neck for saying that our enemies are really not so unlike us ...

At least if the enemy is a fantasy we are not in danger of letting our animosity to the fictional villain spill out into any actual hosptility to real people.

Andrew

[Louise Pembroke]

Yes 7 of 9 was an interesting character desperately resisting her humanity reminding me of Spocks distain for human emotions and then Data so wanted to be human. These characters are very enduring like the Daleks etc. In th the recent series of Dr Who one of the Daleks looked depressed and lost it's way self-destructing' Love 'em or loathe 'em you'd be hard pushed to meet someone who hasn't heard of them. 40-50 years later these things still go strong. Yeah it's all harmless stuff but some of the ethical dilemmas are interesting and at times even relevant to the real world.

[Knight]

Farscape Don't forget Farscape. Took me a while to get into it, but some really good bad guys in that ... personally I couldn't help fancy Chiana (Gigi Edgely) ... but the best babbies were especially the Scarans and Scorpius lol ... major leather/rubbish fetist thou ... does that make me a sci-fi anorak?
But if anyone is interested the new Farscape starts tomorrow on Ch 5, The PeaceKeeper Wars ... I remember the insane cliff hanger in farscape the very last ep of the season, and they axed the show! Could not believe it, the Sci-Fi channel company got inundated with fan-mail and offers to revive it, even one last season to wrap it all up and according to the 'Save Farscape' site they raised I think over 10mil$! ... they won their battle, hence the newer Peacekeeper Wars.

[Louise Pembroke]

It's ok, you can share my clothes hook

[Andrew MacLean]

I really enjoyed Farscape when I could see it. I like the idea of the living spaceship.

Andrew

[John Smith]

Well, as cool as the Borg are, they are far from original.

Let's see... a race which replaces living parts with mechanical ones... would that be the Cybermen?

OK, so the 1991 Borg was more menacing than the 1966 Cybermen, and the 1988 Cybermen were quite ineffectual. But something tells me that the 2006 Cybermen will be something to hide behind the sofa for.

Actually, I think with the Cybermen the BBC were quite brave - each time we saw them, they'd evolved. Not many TV shows would do that!

[Louise Pembroke]

even the Daleks too because they have an organic gooey bit inside them, but the Borg are just so wonderful!

[Louise Pembroke]

I want to be a Borg Queen when I grow up John