Corridor!

[yendi]

So, shadesong and I are sitting down to watch the pilot of Stargate: Universe, and the first five minutes are basically a first-person view of a camera going down about seventy zillion of the most stereotypical sci-fi corridors imaginable. It's not the laziest sci-fi cinematography, but it's up there.

So we've decided that there needs to be a show called Corridor (possibly Stargate: Corridor, if that'll help it sell), featuring a ship with nothing but corridors. The bedrooms, bridge, mess hall, etc will all be corridors. Even the bathrooms. And the theme song will be Poe's "5½ Minute Hallway."

Oh, and every door would iris open and shut. And make really nifty swooshing noises.

Honestly, we wouldn't even need a plot. Forty minutes of moving through corridors is easily better than half of the CW's current lineup.

(We're only ten minutes into the show, so we've only really seen the corridors, the other corridors, the brief Lost-like clusterfuck, and the Last Startfighter rip-off, so no real opinion of the show overall yet, although it's certainly scoring high on the Sci-Fi Trope-O-Meter 9000.)

Comments

[fings.livejournal.com]

This guy would love your show: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/313130/in_praise_of_the_scifi_corridor.html

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That was the article that I thoght of, too.

And that article doesn't even have some of my favorite corridors, too -- Serenity, Borg ships -- heck, LOTS of Star Trek universe corridors . . .

[yendi]

That's a brilliant article! Thanks!

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Forty minutes of moving through corridors

Sorry, but Doctor Who already did that in the 1960s: 40 minutes running down the corridor is, like, every First Doctor serial.

[fings.livejournal.com]

Later Doctors replaced corridors with rock quarries.

[yendi]

Yeah, but this would update the corridor with high-end effects!

I could film this...

[gaelfling.livejournal.com]

also, Corridors:Pimp my Tardis
a seemingly endless show of walking down ever changing corridors, each week seems to bring new corridors to the unsuspecting audience
until the last corridor ends out into!
tune in next season for the exciting conclusion of Corridors:pimp my Tardis

Re: I could film this...

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

*applause*

Re: I could film this...

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I would totally watch "Pimp My Tardis."

[isis.livejournal.com]

I've been waiting to hear your feedback on the latest SG. I'm still trying to decide my feelings on it.

So I am waiting with baited breath (cause I am trying to catch your feed back! har har! ugh...sorry, I blame the flu on the joke there)...

[yendi]

Decidedly "meh" after the pilot, but I'll give it an episode or two more to see if it gets better.

[isis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was about my thoughts on it. I really want to like it cause, well...Stargate. But it seems really different from the other Stargates. There isn't the light campy fun to it. Darker? I do like the video game dork guy (but I agree with what you said below, it was stupid that nooooooooooo ooooooooooone solved it, yeah I liked it better as a recruiting tool...and the senator's daughter? yawn...your dad was minutes from dying, wouldn't you rather he saved lives? and Rush is sooooo one note so far), and it could get better, but just give them a damn planet and an alien team member and I'd be happier already... (ahh, I just saw before I posted it that you haven't watched SG before, heh...)

[tarpo.livejournal.com]

Of course all the Get Smart fans would be uppity.. and the MST3k people would just watch and wait for Cambot to get to the theater

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

I love this. How do I join the fan club?

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Start a Facebook fan page! :)

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I've heard designers on SF shows lament There are never enough corridors. The B5 people felt that early on and the Farscape people felt that early on. This sounds like...overcompensation. Makes me wonder what the corridors really mean...

Corridors really are very SF-friendly things. What sitcom was ever improved by corridors?

[yendi]

Not counting Red Dwarf?

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Didn't think of that. It just amused me to imagine the equivalent of Two and a Half Men dealing with the logistics of corridors. (I'm amused by odd things.)

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

(We're only ten minutes into the show, so we've only really seen the corridors, the other corridors, the brief Lost-like clusterfuck, and the Last Startfighter rip-off, so no real opinion of the show overall yet, although it's certainly scoring high on the Sci-Fi Trope-O-Meter 9000.)

And could there be any more of an obvious "Mary Sue" character than the gamer guy? He's unemployed, lives with his Mother and plays video games all of the time, and (of course) he's the only person who can solve the Ancient equation. Even with all of the resources that the SGC has available (including Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter, plus the new SG:U guy, Dr. Rush), no one can solve it but him. :)

[yendi]

Yeah, that's a little over the top. At first, I'd assumed that the puzzle was one that Rush had put it to get recruits in general, which I could buy (i.e., something that Rush himself could easily solve, but it would be the equivalent of a job interview). I'm also a little annoyed at the complete lack of real emotion on his part at the fact that he was completely fucking kidnapped to work on the project.

Also, is "Rush" Scottish for "Baltar?"

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Well, it's kind of what happened to Daniel Jackson in Stargate. They just didn't have beaming technology then. Also, if you were kidnapped by the US government to work on the coolest puzzle ever on a freaking starship with freaking beaming technology, would you complain?

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I just now got the Last Starfighter reference. It's obvious, yeah. I was just too busy going, "Oh, come on!" Plus I was trying to see how many other tv shows they could jam in between Lost, Voyager, and BSG.

It's really sad seeing characters who are so powerful now that their only challenge is going up against gods be seen as completely helpless for the sake of the plot of this new show.

[yendi]

*nod* The BSG and Lost elements are pretty huge (the Voyager ones were a given, in light of the premise). Having a morally ambiguous, arrogant, long-haired, European-accented, brilliant scientist stranded was a dubious move.

Since I didn't watch SG or SG:A, I've got no problems with the characters from those shows, as they're just generic folks to me (and will, I assume, not be appearing on the series from this point onward).

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Well, to give you a little bit of background, let's take Daniel Jackson. Daniel's job description for the past 12 years or so has been Xenolinguist/Archeologist/Adventurer/World Saviour. He's saved the Earth on multiple occasions (not to mention saving the whole galaxy), has discovered the origin of man, has ascended to godhood twice(!), and they make him record a crappy lecture video. The man should have a religion named after him. In fact, he probably does somewhere.

I'm protesting too much, of course. It's nice to see him in a cameo.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

"featuring a ship with nothing but corridors" at which point Paramount would sue...because you just described a borg vessel.

[yendi]

Yeah, but the Borg vessels don't claim to be anything else; Borg don't have bedrooms, mess halls, rec rooms, etc. I want to see corridor versions of those.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

True, those alcoves of theirs pretty much fulfilled all of the above functions...

Hmm.. in designer parlance, you're describing a post modernist open-plan design starship really...where all the spaces are contiguous, but functionally defined and blended together. Although really, topologically speaking, is there a difference between a wide corridor and a room with open archways for doors?

[swashbucklr]

I used to have a desk in a corridor. It's not that much of a stretch to put other things into corridors... I mean, we've already seen them used as living quarters by legions of refugees.

[davidlubar.livejournal.com]

I think they have those on Earth in the form of the New Orleans shotgun house. (Never been in one, but that's how they've been described to me.)

[yendi]

I've never seen one either, but they do sound similar. Although I'm thinking of something more corridor-like (as opposed to just small rooms back-to-back).

[bluegargantua]

"Let's walk and talk"

People would confuse it for a sci-fi version of West Wing.
Tom

[tnjade.livejournal.com]

First impression of SG:U? "The '72 hours earlier' trope is getting a bit old."

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, The Last Starfighter. I totally missed that, probably because I'd just read the Doctor Who novel Winner Takes All which used the same device.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, and every door would iris open and shut.

Telepathically! I have always loved that about SF doors, that they know in advance whether you actually mean to go through them, or whether you're going to stop and turn back, or whether you're just standing there for the moment, or...

(This is also true of the Stargate, of course, that it knows the instant the last traveller has gone through, and immediately turns itself off, however many there may be and however long it may have waited for that last one to turn up...)

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking of the doors in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Enjoy your trip through this door." :)