A Second RIVERWORLD Last Night

[chas]

I saw the new TV version of Riverworld last night. This book series was one of my favorites, and we even made it a role playing game, back when I was a high school/college kid in the late sixties/early seventies. The author was Philip Jose Farmer, a guy who worked in horrible steel mills to support himself while writing SciFi, and who is now deceased, and hopefully resurrected somewhere along a fabulous river...

I'd give it a B, where the last attempt some years ago was about the same, although different in tone and execution. Why do they always have to insert a sappy modern hero (the decent actor who did Helo from Battlestar this time)? Do they think we can't empathize with the greatest souls of human history as the protagonists? Which is the whole concept.

The dramatic structure was well done, although its hard when they put an hour of commercials into a three hour show, but there were way too many host alien visitations, to show off special effects. And the characterizations were very uneven; my favorite being the lady samurai, the least being the blonde Old Girlfriend. They did have a cool Zeppelin as well as the Riverboat! But no Joe Miller. Why do these people always think they are better writers than the original author, who made the work in the first place? I don't mind some changes to fit the series into a limited time frame, but this one needed more work, especially when they made Burton (the original hero) into the Bad Guy. They did a better job of temporarily resolving the story (which Farmer never did finish), although both versions were/are probably meant to be the pilot for a TV series, which is probably why Farmer never did finish his either.

The definitive Riverworld remains to be made. Hopefully...

[Spartacus Maximus]

I watched a little. It was pretty interesting.

[Yodaking]

I watched some of it and thought it wasn't too bad. I knew nothing of the story line going in though. Just saw the ads for it and thought it looked interesting.