In the Tonight Show time slot just after the late-night news, the competition is this: David Letterman (CBS) and Nightline (ABC).  All the shows at that hour are basically budget shows airing 5 nights a week.

Shifting to the primetime slot, 5 nights a week, just before the late-night news, and the competition is: CSI Miami, Castle,  The Good Wife, The Forgotten, CSI: NY, Ugly Betty, The Mentalist, Private Practice, NUMB3RS, and 20/20.

Basically, by airing Jay Leno 5 nights a week at primetime, NBC mistakenly thought that they could create a low budget show every day that could compete with higher budget shows which longer production cycles.

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I’ve come up with 5 things that Stargate Universe must do in order to avoid disappointment.

1. Don’t become a Stargate meets Battlestar Galactica series. I very much appreciate the sentiment to make Stargate Universe a fresh spin on an old franchise, so don’t ruin it by becoming a Battlestar Galactica clone.  Already they’ve adopted the “lost in somewhere in the universe trying to find our way home” theme from Galactica, and when combined with many of the same lighting and camera shooting techniques as Galactica, it looks less original.  I would like to think that part of the reason that Battlestar Galactica was so good and popular (at times) was that it was a very fresh Sci-Fi show.  Copying something that was fresh doesn’t mean that it still is.  Stargate Universe must be its own show if it wants to succeed.

2. Don’t forget the Science in Science-Fiction. Although you air on a network which changed its name to SyFy, it doesn’t mean the science is gone from science fiction.  One of the things I really liked about Stargate SG-1 was that I felt that I could relate to it because it was set in present-time.  A problem for Stargate Atlantis was that the setting was to alien, and hard to relate to.  Too many times, including in the finale, Atlantis presented some miracle tech to save the day at the last moment.  Keep the Stargate Universe tech and science to a reasonable level that the audience can more easily relate to.

At the same time, don’t leave out the science and tech by making the series all character based.  I think audiences like feeling like they are learning, even if they aren’t learning anything real.  The first Jurassic Park movie was entertaining because they explained the whole cloning thing, while the sequels were just dinosaurs eating people.  Keep enough science involved so that people feel they are being educated a little bit.

3. Give the audience a hero. What made Stargate SG-1 fantastic, was Richard Dean Anderson’s role as Jack O’Neill, as well as the rest of the SG-1 team.  I believe that audiences want to cheer their hero on every week, although sometimes their hero wins or looses.  However, the hero shouldn’t betray his audience.

Stargate Universe characters need fans, just like athletic stars and Facebook.  Create characters worthy of having fans.

4. Don’t be depressing. I watched every episode of Battlestar Galactica right up to the point where I recognized that the show was making me depressed.  I talked to other former Galactica fans, who said they also stopped watching because the show got to dark and depressing.  Don’t let Stargate Universe find the same fate.

I feel this could be especially a trap for this show.  If too many characters become obsessed with, “We will never make it home, what is there worth living for?” the audience will adopt those sentiments with “What is there worth watching for?”

Relatedly, turn on the lights.  If the setting is always too dark, such as on your ship with little lighting, then it will feel more depressing.  Also, dark scenes don’t look as great when viewed on a low-cost home projector.

5. Give it a little humor. Stargate SG-1 was packed full of little humorisms.  I could feel that the actors really enjoyed the show.  Their enjoyment, when combined with little facts (Teal’c’s favorite movie is Star Wars) make the show very enjoyable to watch. 

Bonus.  Keep the camera shots stable. No one likes getting motion sick from a show where they couldn’t keep the camera still.

After just two weeks of tuning into Stargate Universe, I can’t quite claim that it is a winner.  I’ll keep tuning in, unless, of course, I feel like the show had betrawed my many years of Stargate fan-dom.

Stargate Universe airs Friday evenings on the SyFy channel.  (I still think the renaming of Sci-Fi channel to SyFy was dumb).

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In Fringe, a team composed of FBI agents, a mad scientist, and his son, investigate weirdphenomena categorized as both fringe science and terrorist activity.  Whether the team investigates weird paranormal activity, reads the mind of a dead person,  or hunt down people who can pass through solid walls, Fringe is a weird but intriguing mix of science, fiction, and crime drama.  Following the pattern of other J. J. Abrams television series, there are season long plots and unanswered questions, always haunting the viewer to watch more.  While a common complaint of Lost was that it was too complicated requiring full viewership, Fringe has a good balance of single-episode-resolution and series-long-mystery.

Peter Bishop talking with Phillip Broyles

From season one, we learn there is a series of weird activity happening over the globe referred to as The Pattern.  We learned that the bio terrorist group, ZFT, seems to be responsible for the strange occurrence, but their zealous attitudes have viewers questioning if they are really the good or bad guys.

Last summer I was traveling through Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada when I walked by some filming of Fringe on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.  Filming of Fringe moved to Vancouver for season two as a cost cutting measure.  I’ll be watching Fringe this season very closely to see if I can identify the scene of which I saw the filming.

The filming of Fringe behind me

You can buy the first season of Fringe at the Square Galaxy store.

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I have a Medion TV/DVD combo that I picked up at some black Friday sale a number of years ago.  It has been an OK TV, well used, with a few little quirks.

With the Digital TV conversion happening soon, I purchased an RCA DTV converter box and hooked it up to my Medion TV.  The problem is that the converter box came with its own remote and my TV wasn’t listed in its list of universal remote codes.

The universal remote codes in the converter manual were all three digits long, so I started putting codes into the remote starting with 001.  I eventually found a code that works sufficiently good; it works for the volume controls and the TV power button.

The code is 191.  It really only took me 20-30 minutes to get up that high, which especially wasn’t that bad because I was watching TV at the same time.  I’m just glad that it didn’t turn out to be a higher numbered code.

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Source: Wikipedia

Sci-Fi show, Stargate Atlantis, endured 5 seasons before it was canceled. While I felt slightly empty after its predecessor, Stargate SG-1, got canceled after 10 seasons, my reaction to the end of Atlantis was much more subdued. I never felt like Atlantis really got going as an excellent Sci-Fi series.

Much of the problems behind the show’s failure was that it seemed like the producers were trying to follow a Sci-Fi formula rather than breaking free and creating something original. I believe originality and exploration of new ideas is one of the attractive features drawing fans to Science-Fiction television. With various technologies, episode plots, and series developments, Stargate Atlantis followed more than it lead.

Another major problem was an inconsistency of cast. Of the 10 main characters listed on Wikipedia, only 3 of which were cast for all 5 seasons. The series saw two doctors, three commanders, and a replacement of one of the main military guys. Such cast turnover prevented fans from building a long relationship with the characters. Additionally, a few of the characters who transferred to Atlantis after the SG-1 series was canceled had major personality changes–again causing character inconsistencies.

Stargate Atlantis at times seemed to be “Science-Fiction, minus the Science.” One of Sci-Fi’s appeals is that it allows writers and viewers to imaginatively explore new ideas and concepts by setting the show in some technologically advanced state. Atlantis disappointed in this respect because rather than reasonably using technology to explore new ideas, the writers simply invented new technology or unrealistic events simply because they thought it would make the plot more interesting. For example, in the very last episode, the crew used a never-aforementioned “Wormhole Drive” to jump across the galaxy in a second to save the day

Stargate Atlantis, while at times was interesting and many episodes illustrated great Sci-Fi drama, the series as a whole slowly failed itself into cancellation because they forgot what it takes to be a great TV show, and what it takes to be a great Sci-Fi series.

Clarification: Some point out that a show that makes it 5 seasons isn’t a failure, which is probably right. I should have said something like, “Stargate Atlantis failed to make my list of all-time great Sci-Fi shows,” or “Stargate Atlantis failed to be as great as Stargate SG-1.”

You can buy the second, third, or fourth seasons on DVD at the Square Galaxy Store.

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Source: Wikipedia

Criminal Minds is another one of those TV crime dramas, not dissimilar to CSI.  However, in Criminal Minds, they use behavioral analysis to solve crime mysteries rather than lots of forensics like the do in CSI.

Initially, I was really interested in Criminal Minds.  I felt like I was learning about behavioral indicators and analysis.  However, I found that as the series, now in season 4, developed, it incorporates less science and more drama.

The typical episode goes like this: The Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI gets called into an area where there is some psycho serial killer on the loose and about to kill his next victim.  The FBI unit investigates the crime scenes and makes connections about victims to create a personality profile of the killer, which eventually allows them to find the killer just in time to save the next victim.

Some of the episodes are interesting– usually the ones that include new behavioral science or fresh plots.  However, I’ve been watching Criminal Minds less and less because the focus of the series has turned from behavioral analysis to the writers saying, “Lets see how creepy of a serial killer we can invent.”

While the plot sometimes seems redundant, the cast does a great job and the character development is rich and interesting.

Although some episodes are interesting, because of the sometimes gory or creepy nature of the show, I would not feel comfortable recommending it to my friends.

Criminal Minds airs on CBS on Thursday evenings.

You can buy the first season (the best season) of Criminal Minds in the Square Galaxy Store.

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I’m currently using Kubuntu 7.04.

When I first tried using the card, I saw somewhat of screwed up black and white video. I fixed it by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/bttv which contains

options bttv card=6 gbuffers=8 audiomux=0x0e,0x04,0x08,0x04,0 gpiomask=0x0f tuner=2 radio=1

This allowed me to get video in to xawtv. When I tried running scantv, I got an error message back about “vbi: open failed [/dev/vbi]” but then I ran it again with scantv -C /dev/vbi0 and it worked.

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The first step in blackmailing someone is to discover some incredible secret about them that they wouldn’t want revealed. This can be problematic if trying to blackmail someone who lives an open, honest, and simple life (unlike a politician). Finding something an open and honest person would be ashamed of can prove to be difficult.

In blackmail, releasing the embarrassing information to the public can also be a problem, unless done anonymously. See, in releasing the information, the blackmailer provides clues about how the information was obtained which can potentially be embarrassing to the blackmailer to have people find out their sneaky information obtaining efforts.

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