Farscape is a very soft sci-fi, but it has a mostly consistent world that mostly follows its internal logic. It has muppet aliens and the supernatural along side more traditional TV space tropes, but the narrative makes sense as presented, and it doesn’t do much to hurt your suspension of disbelief.

Doctor Who is the opposite of consistent. It makes shit up as it goes along and isn’t even consistent in the kind of bullshit it’s throwing at you. It can be tropey nonsense, comedy overriding reality, fairy tale reasoning that breaks down when you try to think about it to much, or whatever other idiocy it feels like being today. Instead of building a world that you can understand, it basically just says “don’t worry about it, assume we already did the boring set up stuff, and just run with the fact that plastic can be alive and chasing after people because that’s what we’re doing this week.”

It now has a bonus against evil outsiders and undead.

Babylon 5.

I rewatch it every few years, this time with the SO who finally caved and decided to watch it with me. Despite having seen the entire series half a dozen times I’m still finding things I never noticed before. And while it’s always been rather timeless, a lot of its themes are so much more applicable now than ever before. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Other recent rewatches shared with the SO and found to have stood the test of time: Gargoyles, Batman TAS, Brisco County Jr, Daredevil, Star Trek TNG.

It seems odd to not even allow commenting, but I’m not seeing how this does any harm. If anything, I’d rather have access to it for those few situations where reddit is still the only good option to find what I’m looking for. Better than giving reddit any activity.

Plus, if this makes it easier to crosspost interesting content to local communities then I’d say it’s definitely a good thing.

I don’t pay that much attention to the latest gossip or trending scandals. And when I hear that there is a scandal, I refuse to jump on the bandwagon unless I take the time to get a clear understanding of the situation and the context, which takes time I may not have. Sometimes torches and pitchforks are clearly justified, sometimes they aren’t or it’s impossible to know.

If something is a big enough issue that I hear about it, and it turns out that the artist is a confirmed shit head, I’ll avoid giving them money. But generally speaking, it only taints their work if it reveals things you didn’t see there before. Sometimes that thing which can’t be unseen is significant enough to ruin the experience.

Then again, I also have no problem with consuming media that has objectionable elements to it, as long as I know about it going in. I’ve read Lovecraft knowing he was a racist and more, and yeah, it definitely shows (sources of terror: madness, the cold indifference of a harsh universe, immigrants, the working class, and race mixing). But while I’m not a huge fan and don’t actively promote his work, I’m glad I read what I did, and would advise anyone interested in Lovecraft to go ahead and read it, as long as they know what they are getting into.

So, while I can separate art and artist, I don’t know how often I really need to. I can think for myself, I don’t need to have my content sanitized, and I certainly don’t need to purge my library based on nothing more than an association with someone who did something bad at some point.

Gene Roddenberry was often a shitty person, but that doesn’t change the positive impact that Star Trek has had on myself and others. We could throw the whole franchise out, but it would be a terrible loss if we did.

Works for me on the standard view on lemmy.world, as well as the Alexandrite and Photon views. But they don’t work when using the old.lemmy.world view.

Standard

Old

Babylon 5.

It can be easy to dismiss it due to the 90s TV budget and effects, and there’s a little awkwardness in the first season as the show figures itself out. But once you get into it, it’s just amazing.

Every episode changes something about the status quo and usually advances the ongoing plots, avoiding the reset button so many other shows at the time would have, while still making each episode a satisfying story that can stand on its own, unlike a lot of modern serialized shows. It deals with timeless themes and ideas that echo history, a lot of which feels more relevant today than when the show was new. The writing is complex and nuanced, the dialog is snappy, the humor is fantastic, and the storylines are compelling.

But more than anything, it’s the characters that make the show such a treat. There is a richness to the characters, a complexity that allows them to have layers and go through significant changes as their arcs progress, while still feeling natural and consistent. And all throughout you can’t help but like and root for them, even when they are doing something misguided or horrific. Hell, you will often see conflict between two characters and find yourself wanting to root for both, no matter who (if anyone) is right or wrong. And when one of those big character moments hits, be it a man realizing the price of his obsessions, or a kind hearted doormat spitting in the face of a mass murdering power broker, when everything comes together and those characters get their chance to shine… *Chef’s Kiss*