03 August 2014
TV: "The Great Martian War"
There is a sub-genre of sci-fi called "alternate history". It's usually stories based on ideas like "What if the Roman Empire never fell?" or "What if the south didn't lose the Civil War?". I've seen many alternate history books, but I don't know that I've ever seen a movie or TV show.
"The Great Martian War" is a TV-movie that aired on BBC-America. (It aired on the History channel in the UK & Canada.) It re-imagined the World War I as a war of humans against invading aliens.
It was done in the style of a documentary. It appeared as if they used a mixture of archival footage from the real war, archival footage with aliens CGI-ed in, and CGI footage. They also has "interviews" with "survivors" that were processed to look like they were shot in 50's, 70's, or 90's, depending on the age of the survivor.
All in all, it was quite well done, and much more entertaining than the scifi movies that SyFy airs. Which reinforces my opinion that the best channel for scifi/fantasy is BBC-America.
Labels: history, review: TV, scifi/fantasy
# posted by mamurd @ 10:37 PM 
