Geek the Tube

TV, Video Games, and Movies for Geeks

who the geeks are

The geeks behind the site are: Raymond Camden, Scott Stroz, Scott Pinkston, and others too afraid to speak up!

Required viewing for Geeks

I'm blogging this for Phillip Senn. He asked what folks would consider as required viewing for geeks. His list was:

STTOS, STTNG, STDS9, Voyager, Enterprise
Star Wars IV, V, VI, I, II, III
Battlestar Galactica Original and extra crispy
2001, 2010
Office Space

I'd add:

Blade Runner
Matrix
Tron

And probably a few others. Anyone else care to chime in?

Comments
Scott Stroz's Gravatar I still don't get why people consider Blade Runner to be good SCi-fi. To me it was barely a step above AI.

As for required viewing, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy has to be included.
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/13/08 2:24 PM
Raymond Camden's Gravatar +1 the LOTR reco.

I thought AI was good too - but I hated the Alien ending. To me - and this is a spoiler for some so consider yourself warned - when the movie had the boy robot waiting in front of the statue - just sitting there praying... to me that was _incredibly_ moving. I just pretend the movie ended there.
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 10/13/08 2:29 PM
Scott P's Gravatar Movies or TV shows?

TV - Lost, Firefly, heroes (season one), mythbusters

Serenity, Ironman, Pirates of Silicon Valley, Superbad, Antitrust
# Posted By Scott P | 10/13/08 2:33 PM
Matt's Gravatar Dr Who
SG-1
SG Atalantis
Eureka!

Gotta mention Ghost in the Shell (movies and tv) on the anime front.

Plus my geek side makes me record Nova on PBS
# Posted By Matt | 10/13/08 3:12 PM
Scott Stroz's Gravatar AI was the biggest piece of crap this side of Ishtar.

ou can almost tell the exact point in the movie where Spielberg took over. Dare I say, Bicentennial Man was better than AI.
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/13/08 3:17 PM
Scott Stroz's Gravatar Oh, and if Firefly is must see, then so must Serenity.
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/13/08 3:17 PM
Scott Stroz's Gravatar Jericho
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/13/08 3:18 PM
Scott Stroz's Gravatar All 3 X-Men movies
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/13/08 3:19 PM
Raymond Camden's Gravatar All 3? Meh. The last one was pretty sad. (In terms of quality I mean, not sad as in boohoo.)

Definitely +1 Firefly/Serenity and Dr. Who.
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 10/13/08 3:23 PM
Matt's Gravatar Everyone has seen the Matrix, LOTR, X-Men, and Terminators series. Shouldn't "Required Viewing" be a little more fringe or obscure so a Geek can be easily delinated from the general population.

If you took sides in the LOTR vs Star Wars arguement in Clerks II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0sc-gS9AqM), you're a Geek.

Can't believe I forgot Farscape and B5
# Posted By Matt | 10/13/08 3:30 PM
Raymond Camden's Gravatar Here's a good one for ya: Primer. And if you don't know it, turn in your Geek card. (To be fair, I finally saw this about two weeks ago.)
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 10/13/08 3:32 PM
Phillip Senn's Gravatar Thanks for all the good suggestions.
I was afraid that if I put a list together it would read like a geek list as of 25 years ago.
One of my students mentioned the move "Hackers", which I need to see.

I guess what I'm looking for is things that people quote that you should know if you're in the geek circle. Things like "a series of tubes", etc.
I forgot to mention Lawn mower man.
+1 for mentioning Nova.
My Extended Basic cable won't let me watch Tech TV any longer so I'm pretty bummed about that. Morgan Webb is hot Hot HOT!
I wonder if I can just pull it up in the tubes. It would be a massive amount of data.
# Posted By Phillip Senn | 10/13/08 3:55 PM
Andy Jarrett's Gravatar @Phillip Senn I love hackers ... but that's cause that was one of the first films I ever saw on the subject (and Angelina Jolie of course)

Though I gotta say how come no one on here has mentioned Wargames?

Notable mentions should go to: Sneakers, Swordfish, and Takedown
# Posted By Andy Jarrett | 10/14/08 7:24 PM
Rob's Gravatar I'll second Babylon 5, and add my votes for Firefly and Serenity.

Plus Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the crap movie). And am I really alone in missing the days when we could fill our evenings watching Hercules and Xena?

I'm also pretty partial to Dark Angel (and not *just* because of Jessica Alba ... well, okay, mostly because of Jessica Alba).

If we're going to get in the Way Back Machine and include Battlestar Galactica v 1.0, then we should also include Buck Rogers. Sure, it was cheesy, but come on, weren't most of them in those days?

Oh, yeah, and for an extra big helping of geeky cheese, there's Thunderbirds.

On the movie side, I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned Alien and Aliens.

And just about anything that involved Ray Harryhousen: the Sinbad movies, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, etc.

If we're not just interested in sci-fi, but rather the kinds of movies that geeks like to quote, then you have to include anything/everything Monty Python.
# Posted By Rob | 10/15/08 2:47 PM
Phillip Senn's Gravatar Oh, right! Monty Python! That's what I'm looking for!
I told the students that if there was anything in the common vernacular that everyone should know about, let me know. Phrases like "Rickrolled", or "All your base".

I'll have to start making some clips to show in class. "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" will have to be one of the first.
# Posted By Phillip Senn | 10/15/08 3:07 PM
Scott Stroz's Gravatar A true geek should also be able to name at least 3 of the Thundercats.
# Posted By Scott Stroz | 10/15/08 3:20 PM
Raymond Camden's Gravatar Why? Only Cheetara matters.
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 10/15/08 3:23 PM
Matt's Gravatar +1 on Python "Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, You know what I mean" - fell in luv with a girl when she responded correctly

No one has mentioned X-Files. My friends and I would spend the next day disstecting the show. It stunned the networks. It had a arching mystery storyline. And now we have Heros, Fringe, Lost, ....

Never watched Thundercats, but loved "Space 1999" with Martin Landeau.
# Posted By Matt | 10/15/08 3:49 PM
Andy Sandefer's Gravatar @ray and others
I'm very much in shock that none of you mentioned The Cube. Any programmer worth his salt figured out that this state of the art future killing machine was a giant multi-dimensional array with elements in motion before the opening credits were finished rolling. It totally qualifies as awesome SciFi - it even spawned 2 or 3 other installments that never lived up to the awesomeness of the original (that's the definition of SciFi)! You must now turn in your geek cards - you too Camden...
# Posted By Andy Sandefer | 3/15/09 11:19 AM