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Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Streaming

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 2:35 pm
by malletmann
I have officially reached my wit's end with cable, upon which no good sci fi or space opera show can survive. With The Expanse not being renewed for a fourth season, I have it in my mind to leave Syfy for good. Are there any good shows on any streaming services, either current or upcoming, that are set in outer space?

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 4:11 pm
by Arioch
Netflix has a bunch. As to whether they are "good" or not depends on your own mileage, but if you were liking Syfy's offerings, I suspect you may like at least some of them. Actually, some of it IS Syfy stuff.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 8:12 pm
by orion1836
Honestly, if you don't hate the medium, I would recommend embracing anime. What originally brought me to it was the fact that I could get truly imaginative science fiction and fantasy that was just not present in western media.

Knights of Sidonia is a good place to start on Netflix.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 10:27 pm
by Zarya
Ars Technica has an article that basically says that Syfy only had the first-run linear broadcast rights, disappointing on-air ratings for that, and no exclusive streaming rights. Commercially, apparently, too large a hole beneath the water line:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/ ... -new-home/

I am often disappointed with shrink wrapped TV/Cinema SF in a fast food vs. real food kinda way.
Fortunately a good alternative is always written stories, including graphic novels.

(Edits: had misspelled Syfy - multiple times)

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 2:47 am
by RedDwarfIV
To expand on what Zarya said, because SyFy is only dropping the broadcast rights, the company that actually produces The Expanse can just sell them to someone else. This means that The Expanse is not dead.


Doesn't change whether you should quit cable or not, just thought I'd point it out since a lot of people seem to think The Expanse has been cancelled completely.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 7:22 am
by Victor_D
I am afraid the times are not good for good sci-fi, space opera TV series. I am far more inclined to re-watch Babylon 5 than watch anything produced these days. Even the Expanse is – how to put it without offending anyone... well I can't – dumbed down, full of needless "drama" and artificial "tension"; the fanboys' drooling over it makes it even more annoying. This isn't necessarily only the fault of the TV series creators, the books aren't that good either and the setting, while interesting, is pulp-ish. Passable, but nothing special. I've read 3 and a half of them and gave up, they were too annoying. Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series, on the other hand, blew my mind: a space opera in a hard(ish) sci-fi setting? Amazing; I'd love if someone adapted it for TV and did it well.

I was also excited when I heard that J. Michael Straczynski was working on an adaptation of Kim S. Robinson's Red Mars, but apparently that has fallen through, to my huge disappointment. STD is unwatchable drivel that insults Star Trek with every second of its footage and aside from that, I know of nothing else that would remotely be able to scratch the itch.

I wonder if this is because there is a creative vacuum these days, or if today's audiences simply don't want this genre any more (at least not in sufficient numbers to justify the production costs).

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 11:19 am
by Dahak
Victor_D wrote:STD is unwatchable drivel that insults Star Trek with every second of its footage and aside from that, I know of nothing else that would remotely be able to scratch the itch.
The Orville is at least better Star trek than STD.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 1:37 pm
by Cthulhu
orion1836 wrote:Knights of Sidonia is a good place to start on Netflix.
That's not something I would recommend to a anime newbie. While it does have that echo of the Battlestar Galactica vibe, it's yet another mecha-centered anime and that's not everyone's cup of tea.

I would recommed Planetes instead. A good, solid, hard sci-fi without too much drama or crazy space-magic but with character development and backstories instead.
Victor_D wrote:I was also excited when I heard that J. Michael Straczynski was working on an adaptation of Kim S. Robinson's Red Mars, but apparently that has fallen through, to my huge disappointment. STD is unwatchable drivel that insults Star Trek with every second of its footage and aside from that, I know of nothing else that would remotely be able to scratch the itch.
While the Mars series are indeed very good books, I simply can't see them as a TV show. A film trilogy would be doable, but not a live-action show over the span of multiple seasons. There's not enough cheap drama or fast-paced action to make for a modern, "marketable" show. It's not nessesarily a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact, but I can see why the idea was abandoned.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 2:05 pm
by discord
victor: given that B5 has been the gold standard that no other scifi show has come even close to since but the expanse is at least playing on the same play field.

on the original request.
lost in space(heard some good things about it)
westworld(fascinating idea, saw a few episodes should probably watch the rest)
the crossing(very much not sure about this, reasonably well done, story seems decent and acting not too bad, but i am wary of it.)
legion(if you for some reason got a hankering for drowning yourself in a study of insanity and superpowers, actually a part of the marvel 'verse)
altered carbon(very nice scifi action detective story? highly recommended)
counterpart(fascinating setting of parallel worlds, i really should keep watching this to see where it goes)
the strain(for that horror urge)

dunno about the original question but a few shows that are of some interest to me, on a side note, plenty of years anime you might have missed.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 4:04 pm
by Arioch
Dahak wrote:
Victor_D wrote:STD is unwatchable drivel that insults Star Trek with every second of its footage and aside from that, I know of nothing else that would remotely be able to scratch the itch.
The Orville is at least better Star trek than STD.
AIDS is better Star Trek than STD.

I watched the first three episodes of Knights of Sidonia, and I don't even remember what happened or why I stopped watching it. It seems like most anime these days is identically boring. Everything must be set in some analogue of high school, including science fiction and fantasy. The main character must be a useless tool with as little personality as possible.

I'm also not a fan of the 3D cel-shaded anime. I don't know why, but the Japanese are simply awful at 3D animation.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 8:13 pm
by icekatze
hi hi

I'll second Planetes as a worthy Sci Fi. It does get a bit melodramatic here and there, but that's really more of a Japanese drama thing than a fault of the writers, in my opinion. If you can accept that it is going to go back and forth between taking itself seriously and not taking itself too seriously, then you might really enjoy it. And the science is quite hard.

I'm not sure if it is available on any streaming services or not, but a friend of mine just let me borrow Legend of Galactic Heroes, and it is living up to its reputation.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 8:14 pm
by orion1836
Arioch wrote: AIDS is better Star Trek than STD.

I watched the first three episodes of Knights of Sidonia, and I don't even remember what happened or why I stopped watching it. It seems like most anime these days is identically boring. Everything must be set in some analogue of high school, including science fiction and fantasy. The main character must be a useless tool with as little personality as possible.

I'm also not a fan of the 3D cel-shaded anime. I don't know why, but the Japanese are simply awful at 3D animation.
Quote emphasized for truth.

Looking at it again through unbiased eyes, I can see how Knights would be an acquired taste. I have a particular soft spot for ark-ship stories, and admittedly, Knights does start slowly. That said, while it sets up the standard anime tropes early on, it also does a hard subversion around... ep. 5 I think, and where it goes from there I found to be very enjoyable.

In the interests of public service, I'm breaking open my anime list to see what is space-opera worthy:

-Cowboy Bebop should be a no-brainer.
-Crest of the Stars had a great premise, but holy hell did it fail on the execution. Probably the closest thing to Outsider you will find in anime, but as gorgeous as it looked in '99, it was a yawn-fest.
-Infinite Ryvius... bit of a mind-bender. Essentially co-ed Lord of the Flies on a spaceship.
-Last Exile is not space-based, but still fits many of the space opera tropes and is one of my personal favorites.
-Legend of Galactic Heroes. 'nuff said.



EDIT: Any of the Harlock titles would also qualify, but to me they've always erred on the 'opera' side of space opera.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 12:26 am
by RedDwarfIV
Thirding Planetes. The ending went into kind of politically weird territory, what with INTO accepting the demands of terrorists, but the reasoning was understandable and this isn't so much a criticism as me being perplexed by the actions of characters who aren't even part of the main cast.

Its a good show that delves into the issues that could be caused by rapid expansion into space, such as imminent Kessler Syndrome, resource inequality between spacefaring nations and groundlocked nations, the effects of living in low-G and other things. The cast are differentiated and the protagonist has an actual personality.


I watched Knights of Sidonia all the way through, and I'd say Arioch isn't wrong about it, the flaws just didn't affect me as badly. I liked the setting a lot more than the characters, and I kind of wish there were spinoffs about other ark ships carrying people from countries other than Japan. (Though the author notably pointed out that he made the Sidonia have a Japanese culture because that's what he knows, and he believed that if he tried to write a different culture, it would come out looking like an inaccurate stereotype, like how american shows often portray Japan inaccurately.)

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 4:43 am
by icekatze
hi hi

The manga of Planetes has a somewhat different ending than the anime, in that the story keeps going for a while until the Von Braun reaches Jupiter. Although it roughly ends up in the same place. (There's an arc in the manga where Fee goes back to her hometown for a while, which I particularly liked.)

Throughout the series, INTO and the SDF are both portrayed as being groups of different people with different goals and moralities, legitimate grievances, and neither being all good or all bad. Honestly, both sides end up doing horrible things to earn the animosity of the other.

Because the series focuses on a group of garbage collectors, I think that one of the main themes is ordinary people struggling to get by and clean up the messes that other people make for them, literally and figuratively.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 6:58 am
by discord
for some anime then....

Planetarian is a nice post apoc..... love story?
Steins;gate which apparently gives you a decent understanding of quantum physics, assuming you do not die from brain injury.
Ghost in the shell is a classic cyberpunk with several spinoffs and such, even a live action adaptation which was....not horrible.
evangelion some swear by it, i personally found it boring, but mentioned it for reasons.
Battle Angel Alita another post apoc junkyard themed story, although much older as compared to planetarian but still a classic for good reasons.

none of thew above are really space opera though, for THAT i have
Crest of the stars is a strange beast, very slow story but at the same time very fast paced which should be contradictory.
gundam anything, some people like it i just get overly annoyed that the physics required for a mecha to have a higher outputting reactor as compared to a battleship is effing silly.
Macross transforming mecha, space, love, alien invasion and 80's pop music! whats not to like about it?

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 10:10 am
by Victor_D
Cthulhu wrote:While the Mars series are indeed very good books, I simply can't see them as a TV show. A film trilogy would be doable, but not a live-action show over the span of multiple seasons. There's not enough cheap drama or fast-paced action to make for a modern, "marketable" show. It's not nessesarily a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact, but I can see why the idea was abandoned.
I think it would be possible, but obviously with major deviations from and/or additions to the source material. I believed JMS could manage that with grace, but obviously in lesser hands it could become a terrible mess. In any case, I think the show was shelved due to "creative differences" with JMS (correct me if I am wrong), which probably means that the network wanted the things you mentioned, i.e. cheap drama and fast-paced action.
discord wrote:victor: given that B5 has been the gold standard that no other scifi show has come even close to since but the expanse is at least playing on the same play field.

altered carbon(very nice scifi action detective story? highly recommended)
I also recommend Altered Carbon, which is one of the freshest things I saw recently), but it is definitely not a "space opera" type of series. The same for Westworld – great series so far, but not a space opera in the slightest.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 10:27 am
by Zarya
Talking about space opera, I’m amazed that Larry Niven’s Ringworld / Tales of Known Space works, or - just to name another example - some of the hard-scifi works by Aussie writer Greg Egan didn’t make it to the streaming platforms or silver screen yet...

Perhaps there’s some resistance to a Hollywoodesque interpretation of their works, or the original works may be somewhat deficient in the romance department (welcome to science fiction in that regard).

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 11:14 am
by sunphoenix
Not wanting to get shouted down but SyFy does have ~ Dark Mater, Killjoys and sometime this fall Nightflyers... they are not great... but I find them passable... or at least interesting enough to keep watching.

CW on syndicated TV has some interesting story in such shows as the Flash, and Black Lightning ~ but not space opera.

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 11:47 am
by man_of_foul_tofu
I liked Dark Matter - it was limited, but I enjoyed a couple of the episodes greatly. I found it a far more satisfying version of cowboys n spaceships in space than FireFly.

Also stopped after 4 seasons. Accountants. They should be shot.

I found this ... https://tastedive.com/shows/like/dark-matter

Re: Sci-Fi/Space Opera Shows (Current or Upcoming) On Stream

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 11:49 am
by man_of_foul_tofu
Star Trek : Discovery was a far better Star Trek than I expected. I enjoyed that first season more than the first season of WestWorld - but I thought more about WestWorld than I did Star Trek : Discovery.

https://tastedive.com/shows/like/Star-Trek:-Discovery