They strike without warning, without mercy, appearing out of nowhere and leaving no one alive…<\/p>\n
For Christmas, one of my sisters gave me a DVD of the short-lived SF series “Space Rangers.” I hadn’t seen the show since its brief original run in 1993, and I didn’t remember a lot of details — mostly I remembered Marjorie Monaghan as Jo Jo and Linda Hunt as Chennault, and that the show had a pleasantly scruffy feel. The last couple of nights I’ve been watching it while I do my nightly exercises, and I was struck by one story element I had completely<\/i> forgotten — the banshees. These are mysterious hostile aliens who are attacking helpless transports.<\/p>\n
And what struck me about them was a strong feeling of deja vu. I’ve seen this scenario before. What’s more, I’ve seen it as an important story element used to add excitement and intrigue to the first few episodes of a new spacefaring SF TV series.<\/p>\n
Twice.<\/p>\n
On “Firefly” they were called Reavers. On “Babylon 5” they were called raiders. All in all, though, they’re pretty similar in methodology — they appear out of nowhere, viciously attack lightly-armed transports, wipe out opposition with blood-curdling thoroughness, then vanish again before the more-heavily-armed good guys can get there to help.<\/p>\n
Now I find myself wondering why these three series all used such similar devices.<\/p>\n
I suppose it’s a cheap way to suck viewers in by showing Our Heroes fighting bloodthirsty monsters, and on “Firefly” they eventually turned out to have an important role in the series overall story arc. On “Babylon 5,” though, they were little more than a minor nuisance, contributing almost nothing to the five-year whole, and I would have thought the Narn-Centauri conflict would have been enough of a hook to draw people in without the raiders.<\/p>\n
On “Space Rangers,” of course, the series didn’t last long enough to see how important they were. “Space Rangers” was also so clumsily written that it’s hard to be sure why anything<\/i> was there. I mean, the first episode involves a whole bunch of backstory stuff (the hero’s old mentor, the alien’s mysterious culture) that viewers don’t yet know or care about — not good writing.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I find it curious that all three series used such a similar device, and I wonder why it happened. Are space pirates that<\/i> essential an element of space opera?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They strike without warning, without mercy, appearing out of nowhere and leaving no one alive… For Christmas, one of my sisters gave me a DVD of the short-lived SF series “Space Rangers.” I hadn’t seen the show since its brief original run in 1993, and I didn’t remember a lot of details — mostly I… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalities-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}