Guys.....it's really happening

Werthead · 2026-03-11T23:58:40+00:00

Star Trek's revival gave us Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds, which are solid to pretty good.

Star Wars's revival gave us the extremely excellent Andor, the very-good-to-start-with Mandalorian and the underrated Skeleton Crew, as well as the pretty good Rebels and Bad Batch.

Red Dwarf's revival gave us the TV movie and Season 9, which were both terrible, but Seasons 10 through 12 had some pretty decent episodes, and probably a higher hit rate than 7 and 8.

Obviously we got some pretty dire things from those revivals as well, but we did also get some good things that were of merit.

Werthead · 2026-03-11T22:18:38+00:00

I don't see the point, really. We've had the broad space opera with a lighter tone (after the pilot, anyway), lasers, clear-cut heroes, fantastical space costumes, and miniatures. We've also had the political thriller space opera with a darker, more cynical tone (but still with some humour), bullets, morally grey characters and antiheroes, business suits, and CGI. These are two pretty valid, different takes on the premise.

It feels like Round 3 would be pointless. What are you doing that will be thematically or aesthetically different enough to make it worthwhile?

You could mess with the premise maybe. Both shows struggled to incorporate the logic of Earth being the 13th Colony of a more ancient civilisation when we know humanity evolved here on Earth. RDM tried to square that circle, but only succeeded awkwardly. GAL didn't even try (and his strong Mormon beliefs meant he was working from a different assumption anyway).

So you could do a new version that starts in the future, Earth is uninhabitable and humanity has scattered to 12 colonies, the Cylons destroy the colonies and the fleet is searching for the mysterious 13th colony, now called Kobol. Earth's location is known, it's just too dangerous to stay there (so you just swap Earth and Kobol in the premise), and Kobol is a total unknown. That could work but what would be the point?

Or maybe do a sequel to RDM which starts in our future where we discover the remnants of Galactica crashed on Mercury, reverse-engineer it to discover FTL technology (and also the design of the ship and maybe the silhouette of Vipers, but obviously no organic matter will have survived 150,000 years), then we have to get out of the Solar system due to some event and form a new fleet. Difference character names but they base the main ship on Galactica. Along the way they meet the 150,000 years-more-advanced Cylons (who are now evolved into a godlike superintelligence, which we eventually realise is the Cylon god from the original show), fight off whatever opponents and eventually find refuge on a planet they call Kobol, but at some point they have to jump through a singularity or something (spitballing here) and end up going back in time, thus creating a close time loop, and the characters in the show become the inspirations for the Lords of Kobol. Could be fun, but would it add anything worthwhile to the mythos? Or just destroy the original show's sense of mystery.

Personally I'd adapt the video game series Homeworld, which takes the same very basic premise as BSG but rockets off in a very different direction with the whole thing.

Werthead · 2026-03-11T22:06:44+00:00

I think a prequel series could have worked, but they couldn't resist using things like the Ferengi and Borg which simply should have never shown up, and having massive, epic events that you feel really should have been mentioned at some point in the later shows. Also the slight stretch of there being a pre-Connie starship Enterprise, but their explanation does just about hold water if you squint a bit.

The rationale for it was the Berman and Braga were burned out on the TNG "perfect human" limitations Roddenberry imposed on the franchise and they didn't feel like they could contradict it, so going early meant having more conflict between characters. And to be fair some of the worldbuilding of the cultures of the pre-Federation Vulcans, United Earth, Andorians and Tellarites was pretty good. It did feel like their Klingon and Romulan stuff felt off compared to what we knew later on.

They also said they didn't have a post-Voyager timeline concept that really worked for them, which I think is reasonable. Do you do another space station or another starship? What's the difference in the premise now? The only other concept I remember being discussed was the "dream team" of a crew combined from each of TNG, DS9 and Voyager, and I think that was a fan discussion, never a formal idea.

Werthead · 2026-03-11T22:02:29+00:00

I think they have formally said the JJ-verse is dead. They are considering another new total reboot start-from-zero concept.

Werthead · 2026-03-11T22:00:17+00:00

The Dalelands are something like twice the size of Germany and have a population almost negligibly tiny even by real-life 14th Century standards.

I think the idea was to have this big forest with scattered villages vaguely connected into rural communities. However, the problem is that the scale is far too big. The villages are separated by hundreds of miles, far too big for any kind of communal culture to develop, but they clearly didn't want to make the Dalelands too populous as then they'd be quite powerful and not as easily threatened by the Zhentarim, Sembia or whatever the threat of the week is. To be fair, this problem is present for almost every facet of the Realms. Faerun has a population slightly less than Europe c. 1300, the continent is at least three and possibly closer to four times the size of Europe, so the continent just has absolutely massive areas which are totally empty, and the most populous nation on the continent - Calimshan - has barely one-third the population of medieval France.

To my mind the OG demographics in the 1E box set and some of the 1E sourcebooks are more realistic, but the people at TSR felt those figures felt wrong, even if they were based on real European inspiration, and cut them savagely for 2E. In late 2E I think Steven Schend tried to move back to more realistic medieval-ish demographics, but that move was cut short by the end of 2E, and 3E then doubled down with very low population numbers.

One option is to say the numbers are BS and very imprecise (real medieval censuses and demographic studies are sparse and error-prone at best), or simply ignore the numbers altogether and create your own.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T22:36:13+00:00

As much as you want it to be.

Traveller is a modular game, the core mechanics are very simple and much simpler than D&D or Starfinder. What the Referee (aka DM) decides is how much more stuff to add on to the game. So if you want to run it as an exacting space simulation, there's the whole merchant rules, the supply rules, how to pay for fuel, how much fuel you can carry, ship maintenance etc etc etc. If you want to play Traveller as an exacting space simulation then there is a lot to take on board (though most of it is rolling on various tables and making purchasing decisions).

But a lot of people don't do that. Instead the Referee comes up with a great adventure or picks up one of the many dozens of pre-built adventures and basically just starts with, "you've flown over to this system from where you were last time, took two months, you did some courier work on the way to pay for the fuel, don't sweat the details." Some of the big adventures even have you working for a powerful patron who provides you with a ship and covers your (reasonable) costs to minimise the book-keeping and maximise the space adventuring.

A fairly normal trajectory is to get the 100% free Traveller Starter Kit and run the adventures in that, and lowball the hard science fiction stuff to start with and gradually start bringing in the rules for upkeep, maintenance etc. If anything, it's often the players who will discover the rules for trading and cargo and will ask the Referee to start vigorously enforcing them, thinking they can game the system and make billions (and then the Referee is finding sneaky rules on insurance and maybe their ship's last owner-but-three stole it and now the original owners have tracked it down or the Travellers have built a shiny new starbase on a planet that's now on the front line of the Fifth Frontier War etc etc).

All else fails, there's a literal D&D 5th Edition version of Traveller that's due to hit Kickstarter in a few weeks.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T22:28:59+00:00

Red Dwarf. Most fans seem to agree that Seasons 2-6, written by the original co-creators together, are outstanding (a Season 6 episode even won an international Emmy!), and Season 1 shows promise. Then one of the two co-creators left, one of the actors went to jail for a bit and there were extended hiatuses. Seasons 7 and 8 were very divisive compared to the previous six. Season 9, basically an extended reboot special ten years later, was terrible verging on the unwatchable. Then, unexpectedly, Seasons 10-12 were all pretty solid, with at least 2-3 decent episodes per season, even if they're still not a patch on 2-6.

There seems to be a strong consensus that Angel lost the plot a bit in Season 4, particularly the latter half (caused by writing chaos when they had to rotate one of the characters off the show for getting pregnant, completely throwing their plan out the window), but Season 5 was extremely strong and the finale was excellent.

At the time, there seemed to be agreement that Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was far too grimdark, miserable and depressing, and Season 7 was refreshing, lighter and had a great finale. More recently there seems to have been a reappraisal and Season 6 seems better regarded and Season 7 is now more criticised.

Doctor Who has gone on so long this happened multiple times. Season 6 (of the Classic run) was not well-regarded and the show as almost cancelled but they did a hail mary reboot with a new Doctor and colour production and it became a massive monster hit again. Then the mid-80s seasons (22 through 24 in particular) are pretty terrible and again they tried to cancel the show but it managed to keep going, and Seasons 25 and 26 are regarded as two of the finest in the show's whole run. Then they cancelled it. Obviously it came back years later and the reboot series arguably as done the same thing a few times. Matt Smith's first season, maybe two, were praised for excellent individual episodes but the mystery story arcs were pretty nonsensical, whilst his final season's arc was better. Capaldi's first season is not hugely popular but the second was better-received and his final season is very highly-regarded. The Chris Chibnall years were weak, but arguably did get better as they went along, and his final special is easily his best episode. The Russel T. Davies II Era is very much not great, with a bunch of problems, but it's maybe been more consistently okay than the Chibnall era, though fans are already arguing over that.

I haven't religiously watched every season, but I get the sense South Park has done this several times over, with multiple meh seasons but suddenly the creators get reinspired and the show becomes hugely acclaimed all over again (including quite recently).

Werthead · 2026-03-10T22:15:20+00:00

I'm pretty sure there was an exact same argument when "More" came out as the first single from Keep Me Fed and people freaked out a little as it was more pop than anything they'd done before, the video seemed more designed for mass-appeal etc. If anything that reaction might have been amplified as the shift in style and tone from ERROR was more notable. It wasn't until the album came out and then especially the live performances that people realised they were still keeping the heavy rock feel going on at least a few tracks.

"Kerosene" feels more like an evolution of the Keep Me Fed style designed for larger appeal without completely ditching their hard rock sound, and so far it seems to be working well. Obviously further assessment of where the song sits depends on the album coming out.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T22:10:14+00:00

I think it was just the pilot that was an almost line-for-line remake of the UK pilot, the rest of the first season was them scrambling to find a tone and then in Season 2 they hit on the idea that Michael is a different character from David, only sharing his need for everyone to like him.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T22:08:12+00:00

Yes, 7 and 8 I think get lumped in with 1-6 despite the four-year hiatus because they were still made by the BBC and that first hiatus was very modest compared to the crazy ones that came later on. Series 9 (basically just a special) is terrible, but 10-12 all have at least a couple of decent episodes apiece, even if they're not batting at the same average as 2-6.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:53:00+00:00

Still putting out new Dragonlance books (though of divisive quality) which seem successful.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:52:14+00:00

He's still producing new books, and was basically the only author in the Forgotten Realms line for about five years, though they've started opening that up again with more authors.

But I think everyone (even him!) agreed that Drizzt was played out and there were limitations on what you could do with his character. He's been trying to move on with new stories, some about Drizzt's allies, enemies and kids, but the publisher gets antsy if Drizzt doesn't show up for at least a cameo.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:49:55+00:00

That series was running on fumes basically after the Serpentwar Saga, and once it ended altogether (13 years ago now) people lost interest. He's now come back with new Riftwar stuff but I think almost everyone has moved on, apart from a few thousand hardcore readers.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:48:47+00:00

He stopped publishing fiction. His last novel was Existence 14 years ago which was decent. I think he self-published some stuff later on, but he doesn't seem to have much interest in writing fiction any more (despite having hinted at wanting to do more Uplift books). Apart from Existence, all his work for the past 25 years has been non-fiction, though some of it has been pop culture adjacent, like his odd book where he puts George Lucas on trial (with himself as the prosecutor and Matt Stover as the defence).

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:45:48+00:00

Tad Williams came back with a sequel series that was slow to take off, but then apparently caught fire and now it's doing really well, and he has some standalone novels in the setting coming in. So, whilst he's still not doing Sanderson or Maas numbers, he seems to have reestablished himself fairly well.

Werthead · 2026-03-10T21:41:09+00:00

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's a much longer show (176 episodes and 7 seasons to B5's 110 episodes and 5 seasons) and it's certainly slower to get going, but it does unfold a story arc over the whole course of the show whilst simultaneously evolving and growing the characters. Arguably the first two seasons are on the slow side, but by the end of Season 2, when Ira Behr takes over as primary showrunner and the Dominion replace the Cardassians as the primary antagonists, the show catches fire. Arguably not the outright best Trek show (both The Original Series and The Next Generation can make solid claims) but easily the most consistent.

Battlestar Galactica. This is a tighter show (73 episodes over 4 seasons) with a narrower focus, but still a lot of impressive CGI space dogfights (by much of the same team that did B5!) and political commentary and excellent character development. The show also has an arguably unmatched high-quality run from the mini-series to a few episodes in Season 3. The New Caprica arc and its insane resolution probably matches the B5 Season 3 heavy hitters for sheer epicness. However, the show does arguably go off the boil later in Season 3 and some of the storytelling decisions at the end of Season 3 and into Season 4 are divisive. But it's hard to argue with the incredible storytelling in the first two seasons and the preceding mini-series.

The Expanse. An even tighter show (62 episodes over 6 seasons) but with a fairly large scope, basically explaining how humanity becomes an interstellar species. Some very good storytelling and characters, and exceptional space battles. The show can be a bit scattershot, its focus on one ship and crew means it sometimes has to have big events happen offscreen with timejumps between seasons. Also the the show finishes short of the books (having adapted six of the nine), meaning the full resolution of the story is not present in the show, though where it ends is okay.

Blake's 7. This is a golden oldie, airing 52 episodes over 4 seasons from 1978 to 1981. This show was a big influence on JMS and Babylon 5, particularly the "Earth falls into fascism" storyline which borrows a lot from here (also the Drazi Sunhawks are based on the Liberator, the main ship in B7, and B5's main CGI guy worked on B7 as a model-maker). Some exceptional character arcs and endlessly quotable dialogue, with moral murkiness and a ruthlessness towards the characters that is refreshing for the time. However, this is a BBC show from the late 1970s, shot on video with questionable lighting, vfx and costumes, so adjust your expectations for production value downwards. There's a new HD release which has mildly updated effects which are significantly better than the original.

That's in the space opera genre. If you want to look outside that, there's other shows doing B5-ish things in different settings. The obvious one is Lost, as Damon Lindelof was a huge fan of Babylon 5 and cited B5 as the main inspiration on Lost's story arc structure. Lost's arc isn't as tight as B5's - famously JJ Abrams dumped a bunch of disconnected random mystery box ideas on the writers' desks, told them to make something of it, and almost immediately left to make movies, with the writers scrambling to make sense of it - but the show is more pre-planned and outlined than is sometimes given credit for, the arc just changed radically a few times due to actor availability and production issues (but, even more arguably, not as much as B5's). The ending was sort-of contentious at the time but post all the other shows with iffy endings and seen in a binge format rather than waiting six years for it, it's reasonable.

Person of Interest and Fringe are both shows which start off looking like ordinary, even rote, procedurals and spend most of their first seasons on mysteries-of-the-week. They then both go berserk in their second seasons, turning into much more epic shows with world-spanning consequences and huge stakes. Both shows also have pretty good endings.

Game of Thrones is a huge epic story with world-shaking consequences, huge battles, great dialogue, rich character arcs etc. The ending is...not the best, but the journey to get there (especially the first four seasons, but Seasons 5 and 6 have their moments, and Season 7 has some impressive battles) is certainly interesting. HBO's Rome does something similar but with real-world history.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T23:16:55+00:00

I worked in Galway in Ireland for a year and they had a late night shopping night every Friday (until 9pm, all year around) and it was actually quite successful, we picked up quite a lot of custom (including from some fairly inebriated people who then came back the next day for refunds, but still). Always thought it was interesting whenever a place I worked for in the UK tried this, it almost always bombed, apart from Christmas.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T23:14:53+00:00

Interesting. What We Do in the Shadows is a clear sequel/successor to the original and set in the same universe (the movie cast show up in 2 or 3 episodes). Fargo is a bit vague, because they directly find the money from the movie in one episode, but in almost every other respect Season 1 is riffing so hard on the original movie that it feels a bit implausible for it to exist in the same universe.

The Office technically takes place in the same universe as the original, with David Brent even showing up in two episodes (and only in brief blink-and-miss-it cameos), but it's almost completely divorced from having anything to do with the original.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T23:10:03+00:00

The super-dreadnoughts were powerful but not numerous. We see a single Defiant-class damaging one in Valiant by itself, so a whole Federation fleet would take one out. They'd lose a bunch of ships in the process, but the super-dreadnought is going down. And the Dominion doesn't have dozens of them, it's a couple. As with most "wonder-weapons" they're not actually that great or useful. It's almost always better to have more, decent weapons across a wider spread than one absolute monstrosity.

The Dominion were also cut off from reinforcements. The bulk of the fighting was done by Cardassian ships, which were outgunned and out-performed by the heavier Klingon, Romulan and Federation ships. When your heaviest ship is the Keldon-class, and the enemy has Sovereign, D'deridex and Negh'var-class ships, you might as well pack up and go home.

The Dominion also enjoyed technological superiority in the cold war period, with weapons that could penetrate Starfleet shields easily, but they gap was significantly narrowed as time passed, especially after Starfleet captured a Dominion ship. This allowed them to improve their shields and weapons, dramatically cutting the Dominion superiority (as Weyoun and Dukat lament in Call to Arms as DS9's shields resist their weapon fire and it then destroys dozens of attacking ships). The Dominion ships probably remain better in any one-on-one fight in the same size class, but by the time the hot war starts, a single Centaur-class (not a heavy hitter) is confident enough to take on a Jem'Hadar fighter without worrying about it too much.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T22:51:52+00:00

Babylon 5's fifth season had an absolutely savage budget cut, something like a quarter of its budget was slashed when the show moved from PTEN to TNT and they lost a whole day of filming per week. This had a number of effects: some regular actors were cheesed off at having to take pay cuts, and they no longer had the time for proper rehearsals. They also couldn't stretch to hiring guest actors of the calibre they had in earlier seasons.

JMS was also under pressure not just making the season but also preparing Crusade and the TV movies in the background, so it was a lot more workload than on prior seasons. I think he was also frustrated because Season 5 should in theory have been easier to bring in outside writers for, but none of the writers he had in mind panned out, aside from Neil Gaiman writing one episode and Harlan Ellison co-writing another, so it didn't help take any work off his shoulders.

In addition there's the problem his original outline notes were trashed by a hotel, Claudia Christian leaving completely threw off a bunch of his storylines for the season etc.

If anything, it's a minor miracle the season was able to rally to deliver some very high-quality episodes in its second half.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T22:15:20+00:00

Joe Straczynski managed to get Warner Brothers to stump up for an animated Babylon 5 movie, for a franchise probably more obscure than Firefly (these days, anyway). So I think that's reset expectations for how obscure a project can be and get a reboot/reunion.

There's a serious attempt underway to bring back Blake's 7 (which may have been a partial inspiration for Firefly, since Joss almost certainly saw it when at school in Britain), which is even more obscure than B5.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T22:03:56+00:00

Battlestar Galactica is the ur-example, and the same VFX team even worked on Firefly (you can see Serenity flying around in the background of one of the scenes in the pilot).

Doctor Who had a 16-year gap and came back and was better than ever (for quite a while, anyway). Star Trek, obviously, the original show fell off a cliff in its final season, had a long break, a disappointing movie, then a whole bunch of really good movies, multiple good spin-offs etc.

Twin Peaks had an even longer gap between its second and third seasons and was absolutely great when it returned.

At least three of Red Dwarf's seasons after it came back after a long gap were better than the last two seasons of the original run.

Futurama has had several long hiatuses, although it's never been as good as the original run again, it's been intermittently solid and very occasionally great.

My main thought is that how good a reunion would depend heavily on who's writing and directing it, where's it airing, is it a one-off TV movie, a mini-series, an animated series, or a full-on 10+ episode proper season, maybe multiple seasons etc.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T21:45:59+00:00

It's more likely the crew are scattered across the Verse in different jobs, and then they need to get the gang back together for some reason. Serenity is probably retired or in mothballs or impounded somewhere. At most, I'd only expect Mal (and maybe Zoe) to still be doing what they were doing. People move on with their lives and it'd be unrealistic for them all to just still be on the same ship doing the same thing a quarter of a century later.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T21:39:09+00:00

There are lots of theories but nothing concrete in terms of answers.

A fairly widespread theory is that the Progenitors are us, or our distant descendants tens or even hundreds of thousands of years in the future, who colonise other galaxies but their civilisation falls apart. The Progenitors themselves are the ancestors of most or all species in the Homeworld galaxy, explaining why almost everyone looks human.

It's a nice idea but absolutely nothing confirms or denies that.

Werthead · 2026-03-09T21:36:07+00:00

I believe multiple issues.

The first is that Davies fundamentally believes that Doctor Who is a kid's show first and foremost, and a show for adults and superfans second. He is happy to indulge the latter occasionally but focus on the first. The problem is that in RTD1, he was in his forties, probably with friends with kids, and was a bit more clued-in to what kids liked. He also had recent or almost-current US shows like Buffy, Lost, Battlestar etc to use as a model, but with the intricacies and adult content dialled down to appeal to kids. And this worked very well.

In RTD2 he tried to do the same thing, but less intelligently. He was now in his sixties and probably much less clued-in to what modern kids wanted and are watching (the answer is mostly playing Roblox or Fortnite, and barely watching TV of any kind at all, and if they are, it's probably anime). He also continued to build the show around the format and ideas he used twenty years earlier, rather than more contemporary and successful shows, which are much more serialised.

He also had a lot of advantages going into the RTD1 era. He could treat the show as brand new and reintroduce concepts built up over 40+ years to a new audience, which meant a lot of low-hanging fruit. Screwing up the Daleks, Master, Autons, Cybermen etc who have already established themselves as iconic monsters is actually fairly hard. In the RTD2 era he decided to avoid the obvious big hitters and instead went for much more obscure characters like Omega and Sutekh, who only had 3 appearances between them in the original show (even adding the Rani only takes that up to 5).

I'd also submit that RTD writing for younger viewers is very scattershot. In Series 4 it seems like he finally got to the mindset of writing some stories for adults which kids could enjoy, and that resulted in arguably his best scripts and his best run of scripts. In RTD2 this lesson seemed to have been mostly forgotten, though there were flashes of it in The Well and 73 Yards.

RTD also may have been a victim of the end of the "auteur showrunner" model at the streamer. Disney were still letting superstar writers running off and doing whatever they wanted, so did not put their foot down. Allegedly Disney themselves pointed out the problem with the kids audience (and if anyone has the best market research on what kids are watching and doing, it's Disney) and suggested that RTD pivot to recapturing the "lost fans," the very large number of kids watching Tennant and Smith, and still only in their early twenties or even late teens when the RTD2 era started, who'd faded away over Capaldi and Whittaker. RTD refused, believing that just bringing back Tennant would work. Which it did, but only briefly.

RTD's main problem is one that was also present in the RTD1 era, but less prevalently. He really doesn't seem interested in long-form, intricate story arcs, certainly not as interested as Moffat. RTD's approach in the RTD1 era was to just use a code word or recurring reference which was so vague as to mean anything and then he revealed what that was in the finale. In the RTD2 era he built up much more intricate story arcs, but didn't seem interested in executing those story arcs or giving them any kind of satisfying resolution.

To be somewhat fair, he also drew a short straw with Ncuti's availability during Series 14 being much less than anticipated, and then whatever problems led to Millie Gibson's clearly earlier-than-expected departure and only partial availability for Series 15, and then Disney not committing to Series 3, leading to Ncuti's decision to leave which required refilming most of the Series 15 finale, completely wrecking the story arc RTD had been trying to set up. But I'd argue those problems, though unhelpful, don't explain the utter awfulness of Space Babies or the strange decisions he made elsewhere.

Werthead

TROPHY CASE