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'cause I really love Eleventh Hour. (The British version, with Patrick Stewart. I hear that they're making an American version, and I really wish they'd stop doing that. The British version is fine, guys, it's just fine.)
1) It's a pretty bold genre. Billing itself as science-based rather than science-fiction, it aims to produce shows looking at scientific problems as they exist today.
This is HELLA COOL.
I'm a sci-fi junkie, from space opera/science fantasy all the way up to Dragon's Egg-style hard SF, and I still think this is hella cool. Or perhaps that's why I think this is hella cool. Of course, it's subject to the lensing effect where the more rigorous they try to me, the more sensitive I am to things that don't seem *quite* right, but it's a show that tries, at least, and manages to make running around after scientific things pretty gritty and gripping. How many of my nerd buttons don't get pressed, there?
2) It's adorably idealistic about science, even when it's being gritty with its dark lighting and its (quite good, actually) dramatic music and cinematography. The main character, Professor Ian Hood, will stop to explain scientific concepts to his bodyguard in a way that shows passion and respect for the field and isn't at all hokey. (Or maybe it's a little hokey. Any time you have someone stand there and exposit, it's hokey. But it's hokey in a way that makes me think that the writers, the actors, and their expected audience really want to know about this science and are eager to share it.
I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was adorably idealistic itself. It focused more often on social and political issues, but that sort of real care about real things in fiction is still my intellectual comfort food. (And then Star Trek slowly became less and less about the ideas and more and more about the franchise and the action, and... I died a little. But this! This is good! And I am grooving on it SO HARD right now!)
3) It's incredibly well put-together. I may complain about the official procedure and how a few of the incidental characters seem more useless/to know more than they should or that it really doesn't feel like appropriate precautions are being taken in this situation or that, but the plots are tightly-woven and well-layered and even if I can predict a twist or two, I feel rewarded. I caught two of the twists in episode 3 before, Kryptos, before they were revealed, and BOTH TIMES I reacted not with a groan but with a "You clever BASTARDS!". The ways in which plot elements are introduced and recur are an absolute joy to watch.
Add that with the direction, cinematography, and music, and WAH. I'm hooked. I love it. It's polished in exactly the ways I like it to be. (Though I will maintain that the lighting of the hospitals and clinics in the first episode was patently unrealistic, even if the visual effect was pretty nice.)
4) Patrick Stewart.
...what? I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm pretty sure I said this. And I ♥ Patrick Stewart a great deal from those days.
I had a conversation with my brother once about people who got into arguments about things like how Sisko (Deep Space 9) could beat up Captain Picard (The Next Generation). But that was the thing. Picard never needed to beat up anyone. There were other options available to him.
I love that this is the kind of person Stewart plays. In Eleventh Hour, he's the scientist. Science is the Cause for which they fight, and it's that which leads to the resolution. Science is worth fighting for. It's worth drama. It's worth having a show made about it, and Stewart infuses that role not only with the high notes of passion and drama, but with the sort of presence that says he believes that, too. And... ♥. Just ♥. ♥ forever.
1) It's a pretty bold genre. Billing itself as science-based rather than science-fiction, it aims to produce shows looking at scientific problems as they exist today.
This is HELLA COOL.
I'm a sci-fi junkie, from space opera/science fantasy all the way up to Dragon's Egg-style hard SF, and I still think this is hella cool. Or perhaps that's why I think this is hella cool. Of course, it's subject to the lensing effect where the more rigorous they try to me, the more sensitive I am to things that don't seem *quite* right, but it's a show that tries, at least, and manages to make running around after scientific things pretty gritty and gripping. How many of my nerd buttons don't get pressed, there?
2) It's adorably idealistic about science, even when it's being gritty with its dark lighting and its (quite good, actually) dramatic music and cinematography. The main character, Professor Ian Hood, will stop to explain scientific concepts to his bodyguard in a way that shows passion and respect for the field and isn't at all hokey. (Or maybe it's a little hokey. Any time you have someone stand there and exposit, it's hokey. But it's hokey in a way that makes me think that the writers, the actors, and their expected audience really want to know about this science and are eager to share it.
I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was adorably idealistic itself. It focused more often on social and political issues, but that sort of real care about real things in fiction is still my intellectual comfort food. (And then Star Trek slowly became less and less about the ideas and more and more about the franchise and the action, and... I died a little. But this! This is good! And I am grooving on it SO HARD right now!)
3) It's incredibly well put-together. I may complain about the official procedure and how a few of the incidental characters seem more useless/to know more than they should or that it really doesn't feel like appropriate precautions are being taken in this situation or that, but the plots are tightly-woven and well-layered and even if I can predict a twist or two, I feel rewarded. I caught two of the twists in episode 3 before, Kryptos, before they were revealed, and BOTH TIMES I reacted not with a groan but with a "You clever BASTARDS!". The ways in which plot elements are introduced and recur are an absolute joy to watch.
Add that with the direction, cinematography, and music, and WAH. I'm hooked. I love it. It's polished in exactly the ways I like it to be. (Though I will maintain that the lighting of the hospitals and clinics in the first episode was patently unrealistic, even if the visual effect was pretty nice.)
4) Patrick Stewart.
...what? I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm pretty sure I said this. And I ♥ Patrick Stewart a great deal from those days.
I had a conversation with my brother once about people who got into arguments about things like how Sisko (Deep Space 9) could beat up Captain Picard (The Next Generation). But that was the thing. Picard never needed to beat up anyone. There were other options available to him.
I love that this is the kind of person Stewart plays. In Eleventh Hour, he's the scientist. Science is the Cause for which they fight, and it's that which leads to the resolution. Science is worth fighting for. It's worth drama. It's worth having a show made about it, and Stewart infuses that role not only with the high notes of passion and drama, but with the sort of presence that says he believes that, too. And... ♥. Just ♥. ♥ forever.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 07:38 pm (UTC)From:Because, EEE, SCIENCE!
I'm not a science geek. I never have been. What I am is a science fangirl. I can't wrap my brain around chemistry, for instance. Failed it in high school, beat my head against things, and it was horrible in that it was the first subject that didn't come easily to me. (And at some point, I may have to revisit chem, just because not understanding something annoys me, and I want to fix that.)
But I don't have to have an aptitude for something to find it incredibly cool. Science is AWESOME. And the idea that science is worth fighting for? Oh YES. A thousand times, YES.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 07:54 pm (UTC)From:Let's all go back to the days when science was hella cool and famous scientists would do demonstrations open to the public. Can we do that? Please?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 08:36 pm (UTC)From:And YES. DO WANT.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 07:44 pm (UTC)From:Also, AMEN on the whole Picard never needed to beat people up thing. Because that's what made him COOL. And that's why I like him better than Kirk too, beyond the whole "LET'S SCREW EVERYONE" factor. I like Picard because he didn't NEED to kick ass. He knew there were other ways.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 08:01 pm (UTC)From:One of my all-time favorite Picard moments is in (I believe) The Ensigns of Command, where Picard's finally woven a net of wit and the same legalities the Shelliac have been using to harry the Enterprise for the entire episode, and snares them in it. And then hangs up on them at the peak of his advantage. They hail the Enterprise again to concede, and Picard...
Sits there for a while. Gets up. Strolls slowly over to the ship's plaque. Tests it for dust. Strolls slowly back to his seat. Makes himself comfortable.
"On screen."
And it's such a satisfying moment, because that was him winning, and winning like WHOA, through cleverness without ever having a shot fired.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-18 02:08 am (UTC)From:I am, also, going to add you to my dreamwidth! Hi, this is Rizzy!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-18 02:13 am (UTC)From:(O hai!)