The DU Lounge

I'm no fan of Ellison. I made the mistake of reading some of his work at one point or another, and found his description of this particular project to be dully mechanical, as if assembling a complete set of cliches constituted a sufficient basis for a TV series. Then he whined about how no one seemed to appreciate his genius (of course) in pulling off such a triumph.

The idea of a 'generation ship' goes back to Tsiolkovsky in the 1920's, and the idea of a societal breakdown on board such a ship has been treated multiple times. So Ellison's treatment struck me as just "here's an old idea, let's make a TV show about it" and not much more.

Having said that, reading the Wiki on the history of the show is discouraging. Failures in funding, special effects, even failure to rent sufficient space all proved injurious to the project. Perhaps the big mistake was attempting to go forward after the BBC expressed a lack of interest. It might have been better to sit on the project for a while, and try again later.

Reviews of the show are pretty mixed, with lots of good points and bad points standing out. Some interesting names show up, that's for certain.