Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I dunno, Palpatine aka Anubis in Stargate was genuinely a threat from what I can remember.

The Ori kinda looped round, being presented as soooooo much of a threat that the only way you realised the heroes could win was via deus ex machina.

 StygianBeach wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
but I like the scene where Londo is finally in charge on Centauri Prime and has Mr Morden brought before him and orders the Shadows off the planet; "what're you going to do, Mollari, huh? Blow up the island?" "Actually, ... now that you mention it ..."

This scene is exactly what I though of too...

and there is this scene from Babylon 5 where the Narn homeworld is bombed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCk-12UtYEI.
I always think of this scene when I am reading or watching Sci-fi and there is an inter-planetary going on.

I just watched that again. It's the culmination of two years of Londo's ambition. At the beginning of the series, he's a joke - a drunkard sent to a backwater post, and humiliated by the Narn Regime. Now, he's got what he wanted, the Centauri Republic is a force again in the galaxy and look at his face - it's all turned to ashes for him. The rest of the series is his attempt for redemption, and Peter Jurasik sells it all with just his face.

The entire G'kar/Lando story arc is just amazing, they both start out as very similar characters, and end up in the same place, but take...extremely different routes, and both Jurasik and Katsulas acted the hell out of those roles.

The entire finale arc to DS9. Forget the even-versus-odd-movies debate, DS9 7x16-7x26 is the finest of all Star Trek movies.

(Yes, I know it's 7.5hrs long and follows many, many plotlines, but you could snip any arc out of it (though my personal preference is the Cardassian rebellion) and end up with a great movie of more traditional length.)

(Honourable mention to Treachery, Faith, and the Great River for setting up a brutal/wrenching meditation on faith as the A-plot and a wildly comic Ferengi adventure as the B-plot, and not only avoiding giving the viewer whiplash but managing to thematically tie the stories together.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Going back to moments rather than large chunks of film the list gets rather long. Some highlights:

Awesome:
Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's appearance in the hangar: The doors opening on Maul and the lightsabers going on to the opening bars of Duel of the Fates is almost worth sitting through the gibberish that is the rest of the movie for.
Farscape, Liars, Guns, and Money: Talyn's arrival to bomb the Shadow Depository during the escape. Though this may have gotten stuck in my mind because it runs during the crescendo of the opening theme in the season 3 titles.
Serenty, opening of the final battle sequence: This entire movie the Operative has been a smug d***wad who's been a step ahead and supremely confident about it. Seeing the man go from smiling casually to pooing himself in the space of an instant as the Reaver fleet appears out of the cloud is supremely satisfying.

Comic:
DS9, The Magnificent Ferengi: Quark and Rom having a deadly-serious conversation about the situation with their mother's kidnapping while crawling through the station's ducts...and then popping out in Sisko's office. Utterly unexpected, and utterly brilliant.
Stargate SG-1, Window of Opportunity: The entire montage sequence. Particularly "In the middle of my backswing?!?"
Farscape, Won't Get Fooled Again: "You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney! If you cannot afford one, tough noogies!"
Stargate SG-1, Holiday. Teal'c and O'Niell coming out of the Stargate in the wrong bodies at the beginning. And the degree to which the actors could swap mannerisms so completely we get the entire flipped-body premise so clearly from eight words between them (RDA as Teal'c: "It did not go well, General." Christopher Judge as O'Niell: "Ya think?").

After yesterday, I'm tempted to add this:

https://shyfyy.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/kongskullislandimax.jpg

As a way of introducing your giant monster, it's hard to beat.

squidhills wrote:
I'm going to nominate the series finale of Blake's 7, simply titled "Blake". The whole series is great, except for one or two episodes (mostly in season 1 and 4) but the finale still gets talked about in scifi circles thirty-five years after it aired.

The bottom fell out of my world when I watched that as a kid, Especially the final exchange between Blake and Avon.

On a similarly downbeat note, I'd nominate the end of Sapphire and Steel. Bleak doesn't even begin to describe it.

Just in case this thread has inspired people to watch who haven't I'll spoiler them.
One of my all time favorite moments, and definitely a shining one in B5.


And one from Farscape.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Going back to moments rather than large chunks of film the list gets rather long. Some highlights:

Awesome:
Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's appearance in the hangar: The doors opening on Maul and the lightsabers going on to the opening bars of Duel of the Fates is almost worth sitting through the gibberish that is the rest of the movie for.

One little detail I like in that scene is when the barriers go up, separating the fighters from each other. Obi-Wan seethes with impatience to get back into the fight, Maul paces up and down like a caged predator, never taking his eyes off his prey, and Qui-Gon sits down and meditates.

 Elemental wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Going back to moments rather than large chunks of film the list gets rather long. Some highlights:

Awesome:
Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's appearance in the hangar: The doors opening on Maul and the lightsabers going on to the opening bars of Duel of the Fates is almost worth sitting through the gibberish that is the rest of the movie for.

One little detail I like in that scene is when the barriers go up, separating the fighters from each other. Obi-Wan seethes with impatience to get back into the fight, Maul paces up and down like a caged predator, never taking his eyes off his prey, and Qui-Gon sits down and meditates.

ooh that's a good one. Maul looked like a penned in tiger wanting to kill something. Probably the best scene in the whole damn movie.

As incredible as that fight scene is (and it is jaw dropping), it's always jarred with Vader and Kenobi's fight in A New Hope, which was more fencing than swordplay.

Whilst not necessarily Sci-Fi, I also have to nominate Rorscarch's demise in the otherwise pretty 'meh' Watchmen. Just the interaction between him and Dr Manhattan, particularly their mutual acceptance that Ozymandias was right (even if his actions were evil)....just a stand out scene. We see hidden humanity in both characters - characters which were otherwise the least human of the film.

 Elemental wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Going back to moments rather than large chunks of film the list gets rather long. Some highlights:

Awesome:
Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's appearance in the hangar: The doors opening on Maul and the lightsabers going on to the opening bars of Duel of the Fates is almost worth sitting through the gibberish that is the rest of the movie for.

One little detail I like in that scene is when the barriers go up, separating the fighters from each other. Obi-Wan seethes with impatience to get back into the fight, Maul paces up and down like a caged predator, never taking his eyes off his prey, and Qui-Gon sits down and meditates.

Well if you fast forward all parts involving kids, jar jar binks and his people (except the initial part where the battle starts and they are getting their teeth kicked in) its actually not bad. Of course its only about 30 minutes long.

For me, it's not the character of Anakin (though I feel narratively, Episode 1 wasted too much time), but the actor.

I appreciate Jake Lloyd was just a sprog at the time, but blimey - couldn't they have got him an acting coach?

And imagine if J**J** B**** had been from an actual proper warrior race, perhaps of a monastic 'we just want to be left alone' bent. That would've been far cooler.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For me, it's not the character of Anakin (though I feel narratively, Episode 1 wasted too much time), but the actor.

I appreciate Jake Lloyd was just a sprog at the time, but blimey - couldn't they have got him an acting coach?

And imagine if J**J** B**** had been from an actual proper warrior race, perhaps of a monastic 'we just want to be left alone' bent. That would've been far cooler.

Well imagine Phantom Menace with a different director.

*Gungans would have been Comanche like barbarian warriors willing to die for a cause.
*No cutesy freaking kids. Anakin would have been Angron a slave living a life of agony, finally freed and joins to serve a greater cause.
*the droids would have been terminator like soulless killing machines.

We could have ramped this up to an R rated Spartacus in space.

 Elemental wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Going back to moments rather than large chunks of film the list gets rather long. Some highlights:

Awesome:
Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's appearance in the hangar: The doors opening on Maul and the lightsabers going on to the opening bars of Duel of the Fates is almost worth sitting through the gibberish that is the rest of the movie for.

One little detail I like in that scene is when the barriers go up, separating the fighters from each other. Obi-Wan seethes with impatience to get back into the fight, Maul paces up and down like a caged predator, never taking his eyes off his prey, and Qui-Gon sits down and meditates.

Another detail in the grander narrative of SW (that I liked) is that Obi-Wan switched his fighting style after that fight. He was trained by Qui-Gon in the acrobatic style (too lazy too look up the name, it's the one Yoda is a master of in the prequels) and he realised that the Maul used that to his advantage (tiring them out and picking then off individually). He switched to the more patient defensive/counter-attacking style after Qui-Gon's death which was also lucky for him as it was the best option to dismantle General Grievous and his light sabre fans of death.

Greatest moment in SciFi? Right fething here!



But that's a movie, I suppose.

Greatest SciFi form a TV series? Right fething here!

Talk to that pile of oil, you fething Shakespearean Actor! Dance, mother fether!

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For me, it's not the character of Anakin (though I feel narratively, Episode 1 wasted too much time), but the actor.

I appreciate Jake Lloyd was just a sprog at the time, but blimey - couldn't they have got him an acting coach?

And imagine if J**J** B**** had been from an actual proper warrior race, perhaps of a monastic 'we just want to be left alone' bent. That would've been far cooler.

Well imagine Phantom Menace with a different director.

*Gungans would have been Comanche like barbarian warriors willing to die for a cause.
*No cutesy freaking kids. Anakin would have been Angron a slave living a life of agony, finally freed and joins to serve a greater cause.
*the droids would have been terminator like soulless killing machines.

We could have ramped this up to an R rated Spartacus in space.

That's a mighty find point right there.

I demand you award yourself a Bacon Sandwich as a reward!

Demand...accepted!