Darklight on SciFi next Saturday

[JohnL]

Sept. 18th, SciFi is airing a fantasy type SciFi original called Darklight. The previews show Shiri Appleby being covered in light and transforming into a CGI character, plus a lot of winged demon type creatures. Also stars Richard Burgi, and John de Lancie.

[nobody]

"Darklight" seems like a really lame attempt to rip off "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It's sure to be a bad movie.

[Mr. Hockstatter]

I loved Shiri in Roswell.  It'll be interesting to see how she does in this movie.  I'll be checking it out.  Hopefully all the way to the end ;)

[Ellie]

I just saw the previews to this movie..it will most likely be terrible. But I can always hope..

[BoyScoutKevin]

I have seen the previews, too, and it looks good. Well, at least better then the ususal SciFi film. Which, of course, is not saying much. Still, there is enough there to make me want to check it out.

[Fearless Freep]

...it will most likely be terrible

Check the URL..."badmovies.org" :)

I just sorta set, sorta slept through Dark Universe though, so what do I know?

[trekgeezer]

They actually had a write up with the director of this over at Comingsoon. net. These SciFi cheapies usually never make it onto real movie websites.  Who knows, it could actually be bearable.  (If I made it through Raptor Island this has got to be a cake walk)

[Sugar_Nads]

Man, is Sci-Fi really that bad? I keep hearing about how horrible it is and how they don't give a damn about their fans. I don't get that channel so I can't judge for myself...

You would think that they would know how to entertain their audience.

[trekgeezer]

SciFi is not that bad, they have some pretty good original  stuff (series wise). They often pick up shows to continue them when someone else has cancelled it (Stargate:SG-1, Sliders). They do have a reputation for cancelling stuff people like (i.e. Farscape) and their Saturday night so called original movies are really bad. Some of them are funny bad and some are boringly bad.

I think there are  several people here who like the channel, but  nothing is perfect.  I can't knock a  channel too much that is the cable home of the original  Star Trek.



Post Edited (09-19-04 17:00)

[JohnL]

>Man, is Sci-Fi really that bad? I keep hearing about how horrible it is and how
>they don't give a damn about their fans. I don't get that channel so I can't judge
>for myself...
>
>You would think that they would know how to entertain their audience.

SciFi has really gone downhill. Do you get USA Network? If so, SciFi is pretty much the same thing (they're owned by the same company), just with more emphasis on SF.

When our cable system first added it, SciFi was a great channel. They showed old kids shows in the mornings, like the Gerry Anderson puppet shows, cartoons like Robotech, etc. They had various SciFi oriented shows  that had interviews, behind the scenes etc. Each night during the week they would air episodes of older shows that didn't last long, like The Immortal. Plus they aired older shows that don't get aired much anymore, like The Time Tunnel and The Invaders, neither of which I had ever seen before we got SciFi. They also aired a lot of old B/W SF movies. Occasionally SciFi would also air oriinal movies, which were hyped months in advance, had decent casts and usually decent production values.

Now, except for Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, they've pretty much eliminated all the older shows and only show stuff from the 1980s or later and usually only the more popular stuff. They no longer show B/W movies and except for the occasional miniseries, all their "originals" are movies that someone else produced and they bought the rights to. You can tell this by the blanked out swearing, and the nudity (and in some cases, goes) being cut. In one case, I had seen one of their "originals" in a video store at least a couple years before they aired it.

Finally, there's one incident that illustrates just how arrogant they are and how little regard they have for their viewers; They picked up the cancelled series Night Visions (a Twilight Zone type show with two 30 minute stories in each episode) and started airing episodes of it. They aired all but a couple episodes of them. Then they announced a new anthology movie containing four stories. I thought the style of it looked familiar and when I went on the net, I learned that it was actually the stories from the unaired Night Visions episodes. They chopped off the intro/extro to each one, slapped their own titles/credits on it and called it an original movie. Eventually they did air the episodes in their original form, probably because a lot of fans were upset at what they did and they've never aired the "movie" again, as far as I know.

I had hoped that they would pick up and air show shows that didn't last long on the networks, like All Souls, The Others, Freakylinks, The Lone Gunmen, Special Unit 2, Dead Last, Sleepwalkers, etc, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen, since none of them have more than about 13 episodes (except for SU2). Instead, they're loading up the schedule with "reality" based crap like Scare Tactics, host Hunters, Proof Positive, etc.

[Mr. Hockstatter]

I like the Sci-Fi Channel.  Yeah, I can complain about it a lot, but as soon as you compare it to the garbage that's on the other 195 channels, it all of a sudden seems almost brilliant.  

I like the B-movie marathons they have almost every weekend.  I like the Indiana Jones trilogy they're showing this weekend.  When I'm flipping through channels on a Monday night, reruns of Stargate are infinitely better than anything else on TV.  They've still got Farscape and LEXX, if you don't mind setting your VCR to record them at 2 or 3 in the morning.  The Peacekeeper Wars looks like it will be pretty good.  During the day on weekdays they have marathons of Battlestar Galactica, Roar, the original Star Trek, Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, all sorts of good stuff.  And their new Stargate Atlantis is pretty good.

Sure, I've got my complaints.  If they ever show The Flintstones Viva Las Vegas again I'm gonna puke.  And why don't they ever show UFO or Space 1999?  I've seen about 1 or 2 episodes of those shows years ago on Sci-Fi, so I know they've got them.  I wish they were still airing Babylon 5, Dark Shadows, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and a lot of other shows.  But I guess they can't show the same shows over and over just because they're my favorites.  Most of their original movies are pretty bad (with the exception of Bone Snatcher, which was excellent), but quite often they're bad in a good way.  Sure, some are total crap, but so are the majority of the blockbusters hitting theaters every weekend.  And I don't like their stupid reality shows either.  But, what the heck, I just don't watch them.

Overall, all I can say is I watch Sci-Fi more than any other channel.  It ain't perfect, maybe it ain't even that good, but it's a lot better than anything else on TV.

As far as Darklight, I guess it was sort of good.  It was different - half the movie consisted of some shadowy subplot invovling medical research into the immortality of these demons.  They could have done a straight ahead action movie, which is what I was expecting, and it probably wouldn't have been very good.  But the weirdness of it was cool.  Shiri did a pretty good job with what she had to work with.  Which wasn't much.  I guess I give it 2 1/2 stars out of 5.

[Sugar_Nads]

Man, I can't believe I'm missing out on all that. I was complaining to my girlfriend the other day how none of the channels have what I want to see and there it is... missing from my cable line-up. I'm so angry I could vaporize a colony.

Anyhow, thank for the input... : (

[Fearless Freep]

I missed it last night, I was too busy at the time watching Olivier Gruner as "Caution Templar" in Mars

Anyone know whether that was good judgement or bad on my part?

[Dave Munger]

It bugs me when they put "reality" stuff or documentary type shows on the Sci-Fi channel. By putting something on that channel, dosn't that imply that it's made up?

[JohnL]

>And why don't they ever show UFO or Space 1999? I've seen about 1 or 2
>episodes of those shows years ago on Sci-Fi, so I know they've got them. I wish
>they were still airing Babylon 5, Dark Shadows, Voyage to the Bottom of the
>Sea, and a lot of other shows.

Because with the exception of Babylon 5 (which I think they still show occasionally during the week), all those shows are older than 1980, therefore SciFi considers them too old to interest today's viewers.

>I missed it last night, I was too busy at the time watching Olivier Gruner
>as "Caution Templar" in Mars

It's on again Thursday at 9pm (EST).

>Anyone know whether that was good judgement or bad on my part?

I kind of liked it. The CGI wasn't the worst I've ever seen and it was kind of interesting. Looked like the setup for a franchise. You know, "What do I do now?", "You have a destiny...". personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a continuation of it.

In the fun facts category, it was made by UFO Pictures and featured some scenes shot in the same cave as many of SciFi's other "originals" (the snake movies, Raptor Island, etc).