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Hugos
This year's Hugo nominations are out.
I haven't stayed current in SF; there's just too much of it for the combination of my reading speed and available time. But I've heard good things about several items on the list, so it's probably not too wacky or anything.
But.
Let us talk about the "dramatic presentation (short)" category, and specifically the two nominated episodes of Enterprise. Now, Enterprise is a much better show than Voyaer was, but on the whole is not up to the levels set by Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Each of those series scored one Hugo nomination in their entire seven-year runs. Granted, back then "dramatic presentation" hadn't been split into "short" and "long", so TV shows competed against movies directly.
But I still find it a little hard to believe that these two episodes were serious candidates for "best hour of SF TV last year". One of them, "A Night in Sickbay", was horrid in my opinon, and scored very low in the Usenet ratings. Was there really nothing better on, or were the better shows victims of insufficient visibility? (For those who don't feel like following the link, the other three nominees were one each from Angel, Buffy, and Farscape.)
Curious about how something that bad could make it onto the nomination list, I looked at the statistics. In that category, 284 people nominated a total of 176 items. You get, I think, 5 nominations per category, so that's a possible field of 1420 nominees if there were no overlaps. Distribution and other stats aren't available, but it's entirely possible that something could get onto the list in this category with about 10 nominations. This strikes me as peculiar somehow.
I haven't stayed current in SF; there's just too much of it for the combination of my reading speed and available time. But I've heard good things about several items on the list, so it's probably not too wacky or anything.
But.
Let us talk about the "dramatic presentation (short)" category, and specifically the two nominated episodes of Enterprise. Now, Enterprise is a much better show than Voyaer was, but on the whole is not up to the levels set by Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Each of those series scored one Hugo nomination in their entire seven-year runs. Granted, back then "dramatic presentation" hadn't been split into "short" and "long", so TV shows competed against movies directly.
But I still find it a little hard to believe that these two episodes were serious candidates for "best hour of SF TV last year". One of them, "A Night in Sickbay", was horrid in my opinon, and scored very low in the Usenet ratings. Was there really nothing better on, or were the better shows victims of insufficient visibility? (For those who don't feel like following the link, the other three nominees were one each from Angel, Buffy, and Farscape.)
Curious about how something that bad could make it onto the nomination list, I looked at the statistics. In that category, 284 people nominated a total of 176 items. You get, I think, 5 nominations per category, so that's a possible field of 1420 nominees if there were no overlaps. Distribution and other stats aren't available, but it's entirely possible that something could get onto the list in this category with about 10 nominations. This strikes me as peculiar somehow.
no subject
Angel, Buffy, and especially Farscape have far exceeded Enterprise in quality. Farscape actually exceeded anything that I have seen in a long time. (But it was an extrememly narrative driven show... which is why I liked it and why it got canceled.)
John Doe is right on the edge of Science Fiction and (again) far better than Enterprise. (I can think of one episode in particular that really, really stood out.)
In long form, I doubt it will happen, but Minority Report deserves the Hugo.