Author Topic: Must See TV Thread  (Read 113407 times)

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Offline Lintyfresh85

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #300: June 22, 2015, 06:21:15 PM »
Start of True Detective Season 2 was a bummer.

Offline UMDNats

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #301: June 22, 2015, 07:07:56 PM »
Start of True Detective Season 2 was a bummer.

But Ballers was amazingly hilarious.

Offline Lintyfresh85

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #302: June 22, 2015, 08:36:33 PM »
But Ballers was amazingly hilarious.

"What am I going to do, play in a IDP league? That's for suckers!"

Offline PC

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #303: July 08, 2015, 09:17:23 PM »
Sirens was cancelled.  I really liked that show.

Offline Tokeydog

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #304: July 09, 2015, 09:52:17 AM »
Mr. Robot seems pretty good so far.

Offline dracnal

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #305: July 09, 2015, 12:48:04 PM »
I am having a love/hate with Mr. Robot from the first episode. Haven't watched second yet.  As a tech guy, they're closer on stuff then say, CSI: Cyber (which makes Star Trek physics seem sane), but they still don't use things like CloudFlare on a massive corporate account?  It's a rough suspension of disbelief in some spots. 

For the non-techy that like psychological/thriller type stuff with a bit of techy thrown in, it's fun.

Offline mitlen

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #306: July 09, 2015, 01:37:24 PM »
If you've got the baseball DT's like I do, the Cards/Bucs game tonight on MLB TV might be fun.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #307: July 09, 2015, 01:43:14 PM »
I am having a love/hate with Mr. Robot from the first episode. Haven't watched second yet.  As a tech guy, they're closer on stuff then say, CSI: Cyber (which makes Star Trek physics seem sane), but they still don't use things like CloudFlare on a massive corporate account?  It's a rough suspension of disbelief in some spots. 

For the non-techy that like psychological/thriller type stuff with a bit of techy thrown in, it's fun.

Star Trek physics is actually pretty sane most of the time.

Offline dracnal

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #308: July 10, 2015, 03:05:29 PM »
Nathan...


Just...


No.

**and that would make a pretty good thread to discuss.  But yeah, inertial dampers, the shock that all the neutrinos around the quark table were left handed, the crack in the event horizon that the Enterprise escaped through... I can go on and on. If you want physics that actually are sane, Babylon 5.  JMS did some -serious- research on the mathematical likeliness of how non-adjacent hyperspace and artificial gravity via rotation, as well as any other Earth related tech was really, really solid.

Offline The Chief

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #309: July 10, 2015, 04:13:11 PM »
Comparing a single show that ran for 5 consecutive years in the late 90s to an entire franchise that spans decades and dozens of different writers is what's ridiculous.  Also Voyager is ridiculous :P  I honestly wasn't aware that anyone compared B5 to Voy.  You usually hear B5 compared to DS9 due to all the (manufactured) drama about story pilfering.

Offline PC

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #310: July 10, 2015, 04:25:39 PM »
CSI Cyber's problem is more the acting and the writing than bad cyber, though the cyber is terrible too.  Patricia Arquette is awful. 

The show that bothered me the most this past season as far as its tech goes was Silicon Valley.

Offline The Chief

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #311: July 10, 2015, 04:31:58 PM »
The fact that they named the show "Cyber" says enough.  Having never watched it, I'm curious...  on a scale of 1 to NCIS, how ridiculous is their portrayal of technology?

Offline houston-nat

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #312: July 10, 2015, 04:36:08 PM »
CSI Cyber's problem is more the acting and the writing than bad cyber, though the cyber is terrible too.  Patricia Arquette is awful. 

The show that bothered me the most this past season as far as its tech goes was Silicon Valley.
What is wrong with Silicon Valley?

Offline PC

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #313: July 10, 2015, 04:41:13 PM »
What is wrong with Silicon Valley?

Well, the first season was better than the second season but the tech went off the rails in season 2 when the tequila bottle on the delete key deleted thousands of hours of content, through an FTP client, off someone else's server.  And they had no backups so the files were gone permanently.

That was the absolute bottom.  I don't even think CSI Cyber reached those depths.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #314: July 10, 2015, 04:45:47 PM »
Nathan...


Just...


No.

**and that would make a pretty good thread to discuss.  But yeah, inertial dampers, the shock that all the neutrinos around the quark table were left handed, the crack in the event horizon that the Enterprise escaped through... I can go on and on. If you want physics that actually are sane, Babylon 5.  JMS did some -serious- research on the mathematical likeliness of how non-adjacent hyperspace and artificial gravity via rotation, as well as any other Earth related tech was really, really solid.

I'm an avid reader of /r/DaystromInstitute where all kinds of things about the Trek universe are discussed.

Yeah, there are some outlandish things, but things that you know go against physics they at least usually have some technology that they mention that circumvents it.  They acknowledge the issue.  "You can't travel faster than light!"  Right, and the ship doesn't actually ever exceed c, it's in a bubble of warped space.  There were writer manuals on what you can and can't do within the Trek universe.  The transporter even has a "Heisenberg Compensator" :lol:

Of course I never really watched much of TOS, I was more TNG era and up.

But yes, B5 was also an enjoyable show, I wish they still had it on Netflix.

Offline UMDNats

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #315: July 10, 2015, 04:49:44 PM »
What is wrong with Silicon Valley?

every episode:

things going well!
oh no richard freaked up
oh no someone else freaked up
maybe we can salvage it
nope they freaked up

still love the show, though

Offline Lintyfresh85

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #316: July 10, 2015, 05:37:21 PM »
Back to Mr. Robot.

I'm thinking Mr. Robot is the ghost of Elliot's dad.

Offline dracnal

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #317: July 11, 2015, 01:59:44 PM »
I'm an avid reader of /r/DaystromInstitute where all kinds of things about the Trek universe are discussed.

Yeah, there are some outlandish things, but things that you know go against physics they at least usually have some technology that they mention that circumvents it.  They acknowledge the issue.  "You can't travel faster than light!"  Right, and the ship doesn't actually ever exceed c, it's in a bubble of warped space.  There were writer manuals on what you can and can't do within the Trek universe.  The transporter even has a "Heisenberg Compensator" :lol:

Of course I never really watched much of TOS, I was more TNG era and up.

But yes, B5 was also an enjoyable show, I wish they still had it on Netflix.

Generally speaking, when they invent a tech you're absolutely right that they come up with some kind of McGuffin to keep it consistent.  The ones that I found the funniest though where things like the crack in the event horizon - treating a line of demarcation like it's a physical shell was just ... weird.  The left handed neutrino one was a DS9 episode where they realized Quark was manipulating probability in some space roulette game (can't remember the name) and the proof was that all the particular particle had a left handed spin.  The problem with it was that while it's true particles can have a left and a right handed spin, the particular particle they settled on was one which always, 100% of the time in nature, has a left handed spin. 

The warp idea - yeah, I get the idea of creating a bubble of normalized space that essentially can avoid violating c because it's not acceleration - it's more like a lubricated thing moving through whatever. That's fine. But a stable wormhole connecting two specific points in space/time (Stargate series) or non-adjacent hyperspace (ie moving 15 feet to the left in that space, then reentering normal space does not equate to 15 feet in our space, but to a completely different location) are the more likely options from a science POV. Einstein's math supports a non-adjacent hyperspace as being theoretically likely.  Wormholes already exist naturally - they just don't exist for more than a blink of an eye and they don't get much larger than a pencil sized hole.  They spontaneously pop in and out of existence, spew a few particles and go away. 

Don't get me wrong - I love Star Trek. Haven't watched Enterprise, haven't seen the last 3 seasons of Voyager (yet - been burning through it marathon style with the wife), haven't seen more than a handful of DS9 episodes after season 2 ended, but I've seen TOS, TNG, the movies, etc. countless times. Am an avid Star Fleet Battles lover and know way, way, way too many facts about the show's lore and all that.  Absolutely great entertainment and as DaystromInstitute proves, it's something that will spawn advancement in technologies simply because it gets people thinking about 'well, how could we do that?' Cell phones are something we take for granted, but if you think about it, you can trace the idea for them back to the early 20th century when someone wrote a comic called Dick Tracy.  His wrist communicator was the first place I've seen that presented the idea of a portable phone that didn't need wires.  SciFi is awesome for that and spurring the minds of folks to create wild new ideas.

***edit: holy cow that's long. even I say TLDR, skip this one :)

Offline Nathan

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #318: July 11, 2015, 03:30:07 PM »
You need to watch DS9.  By the later seasons, it becomes the best series of all of them.

Offline dracnal

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #319: July 11, 2015, 03:32:00 PM »
That's next on the marathon list. We started Voyager about two weeks ago and cram in episodes whenever we can. Chewed through the first four seasons so far which is around 100 eps.

We saw Nemesis and wife said 'Whoa. Admiral Janeway? WTH?' so Voyager was bumped to the top of the priority queue. DS9 was quickly added to the 'we really need to get around to that' list too. So, soon.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #320: July 11, 2015, 03:56:40 PM »
Voyager has some good episodes (and some BAD ones - Threshold for one), but is worth watching.  DS9 isn't the greatest in the first few seasons, but it has some really great ones there.  Duet is one, I think season 2, the one with Gul Dar'heel / Amin Maritza.  But by the later seasons it becomes consistently great pretty much every episode.  Just like TNG comes into itsown when Riker grows the beard, DS9 becomes better when Sisko goes fully bald with a beard :lol:

Offline dracnal

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #321: July 11, 2015, 04:09:14 PM »
We just finished watching the Hirojin episodes last night. The scene where the 8472 critter is crawling on the hull immediately caused a riff of Shatner's 'There's something out there! There's something on the wing!'

Offline PC

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #322: July 11, 2015, 04:59:34 PM »
You need to watch DS9.  By the later seasons, it becomes the best series of all of them.

The Dominion War arc was the best of the franchise.

Offline UMDNats

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #323: July 12, 2015, 11:04:32 PM »
Ballers is the best show on tv

Offline Slateman

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Re: Must See TV Thread
« Reply #324: July 12, 2015, 11:15:05 PM »
You need to watch DS9.  By the later seasons, it becomes the best series of all of them.

Agreed. DS 9 was ahead of its time