Greatest Science Fiction Film Tournament – Round 5, Week 39
The latest round of voting is here. The brackets are here, with two statistical upsets last week. It’s true: Star Trek: The Original Series is out of the tournament, falling before Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
16 replies on “Greatest Science Fiction Film Tournament – Round 5, Week 39”
I’m like the biggest DS9 fanboy around here and even I’m unable to process that. I totally expected (and was OK with the fact) that DS9 would go down to TOS.
But now I just…I can’t…huh…
I need some quiet time to ponder upon this.
Though I just realized, it’s too bad the brackets are arranged how they are. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the last round be DS9 vs B5? Maybe in the semi-final, at least.
Yup, DS9 beating out TOS is just wrong. But newer series always have an advantage in voting like this. I would have liked to see Twin Peaks make one more round.
I agree that B5 getting a chance to defeat DS9 would be great (biased a bit, am I?), but I don’t think they’re the best two shows ever, so they don’t deserve to be the final. Seeing that Firefly, Doctor Who (2005), Babylon 5, and Star Trek (TOS) are all on the right side makes me think the brackets are a bit skewed.
It might have made sense to intentionally set it up so that the franchises had to battle out a single representative early on instead of letting each stand on their own (and get killed off by something else).
There’s also a difference between franchises where the shows are all in the same universe (e.g., Doctor Who, B5, and Trek), vs. franchises where the shows are reboots (e.g., Battlestar Galactica and Twilight Zone).
Knowing Blaine’s love of all things mathematical, I’m fairly certain he built the bracket with random sorting. Any “stacking” is accidental.
No random sorting of any kind. I sorted them according to their placement in round one. Without wildcards and with everything playing out exactly as the Bayesian statistics predicted from round 1, it would have been #1 vs. #128, #2 vs. #127, etc. in the second round, #1 vs. #64, #2 vs. #63, etc. in the third round, #1 vs. #32 in the fourth, #1 vs. #16 in the fifth, #1 vs. #8 in the sixth, #1 vs. #4 in the seventh, and #1 vs. #2 in the final round. If there are N contenders in a round, then the initial ranks of the two titles going head to head add up to N+1. Wildcards were inserted after #64 in the sequence, with #65-120 being treated as #73-128, and the wildcards filling out #65-#72 were sorted according to IMDB scores from highest to lowest.
If anyone can think of a more fair system to suggest for the next tournament, please feel free to do so here.
That’s right. That’s pretty standard for these bracket-type tournaments. But the point I was going for was that it wasn’t a single person’s whim as to the standing.
I’m good with this methodology.
It’ll do until I learn PHP and convince Dave to add a huge amount of data to each user account, allowing for IRT-based dynamic responses that also predict your ratings of material you haven’t seen yet.
Acting and production-wise, DS9 is the better show (and we’ll ignore the first season),
In terms of iconic characters, influence, and actual SF scripts (and we’ll ignore the third season, mostly), TOS is far superior. But a tournament will have its upsets.
Well, we are trying to apply rigorous mathematics to something very subjective. It’s not like there are any voting guidelines that say what “better” even means, much less a way to enforce them. So, yeah, weird stuff will happen.
Agreed on DS9 vs. TOS; no way was I expecting that result, even though I don’t actually rate TOS all that highly as a show in it’s own right it was much more innovative than DS9. Maybe the younger generation just see it as very cliché, despite the fact it the first time many of those clichés and tropes were being shown on primetime TV?
Re. the franchise placement, I would assume that is just a statistical quirk. If all the shows from the same franchise came out in either odd or even rankings based on the original criteria then they would end up on the same side of the bracket.
The DS9 win is surprising but not entirely unexpected to me. There are a lot of people who didn’t care much for TOS (like me). It was good for what it was, and for what it pioneered, but I prefer TNG and DS9 to TOS.
And as much fun as a rousing Trek debate is, I’m still riding the high from watching Guardians of the Galaxy last night and more eager to talk about that. Holy cow was it good. But off topic yet. :-)
My ticket to “Guardians of the Galaxy” is for a screening three hours from now. I’ll come directly home to write and post the review.
We’re targeting a rural drive-in an hour away that’s playing it tonight and we’re hoping for the best. Otherwise, we’ll see it next week.
I haven’t been to a drive-in since high school. I was largely unaware they still existed.
We have one left here in Denver and they’re fighting to keep it open. The wife and I went once and it wasn’t the best experience. Too many kids running around, people talking, and tons of smokers.
Was pretty surprised by the number of kids there, we saw two R-rated movies (Scary Movie and Hollow Man).
Needless to say, the “experience” left me wanting. Now the local Alamo Drafthouse….THAT is a moviegoing experience.
I’m like the biggest DS9 fanboy around here and even I’m unable to process that. I totally expected (and was OK with the fact) that DS9 would go down to TOS.
But now I just…I can’t…huh…
I need some quiet time to ponder upon this.
Though I just realized, it’s too bad the brackets are arranged how they are. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the last round be DS9 vs B5? Maybe in the semi-final, at least.
Yup, DS9 beating out TOS is just wrong. But newer series always have an advantage in voting like this. I would have liked to see Twin Peaks make one more round.
I agree that B5 getting a chance to defeat DS9 would be great (biased a bit, am I?), but I don’t think they’re the best two shows ever, so they don’t deserve to be the final. Seeing that Firefly, Doctor Who (2005), Babylon 5, and Star Trek (TOS) are all on the right side makes me think the brackets are a bit skewed.
It might have made sense to intentionally set it up so that the franchises had to battle out a single representative early on instead of letting each stand on their own (and get killed off by something else).
There’s also a difference between franchises where the shows are all in the same universe (e.g., Doctor Who, B5, and Trek), vs. franchises where the shows are reboots (e.g., Battlestar Galactica and Twilight Zone).
Knowing Blaine’s love of all things mathematical, I’m fairly certain he built the bracket with random sorting. Any “stacking” is accidental.
No random sorting of any kind. I sorted them according to their placement in round one. Without wildcards and with everything playing out exactly as the Bayesian statistics predicted from round 1, it would have been #1 vs. #128, #2 vs. #127, etc. in the second round, #1 vs. #64, #2 vs. #63, etc. in the third round, #1 vs. #32 in the fourth, #1 vs. #16 in the fifth, #1 vs. #8 in the sixth, #1 vs. #4 in the seventh, and #1 vs. #2 in the final round. If there are N contenders in a round, then the initial ranks of the two titles going head to head add up to N+1. Wildcards were inserted after #64 in the sequence, with #65-120 being treated as #73-128, and the wildcards filling out #65-#72 were sorted according to IMDB scores from highest to lowest.
If anyone can think of a more fair system to suggest for the next tournament, please feel free to do so here.
That’s right. That’s pretty standard for these bracket-type tournaments. But the point I was going for was that it wasn’t a single person’s whim as to the standing.
I’m good with this methodology.
It’ll do until I learn PHP and convince Dave to add a huge amount of data to each user account, allowing for IRT-based dynamic responses that also predict your ratings of material you haven’t seen yet.
Acting and production-wise, DS9 is the better show (and we’ll ignore the first season),
In terms of iconic characters, influence, and actual SF scripts (and we’ll ignore the third season, mostly), TOS is far superior. But a tournament will have its upsets.
Well, we are trying to apply rigorous mathematics to something very subjective. It’s not like there are any voting guidelines that say what “better” even means, much less a way to enforce them. So, yeah, weird stuff will happen.
Agreed on DS9 vs. TOS; no way was I expecting that result, even though I don’t actually rate TOS all that highly as a show in it’s own right it was much more innovative than DS9. Maybe the younger generation just see it as very cliché, despite the fact it the first time many of those clichés and tropes were being shown on primetime TV?
Re. the franchise placement, I would assume that is just a statistical quirk. If all the shows from the same franchise came out in either odd or even rankings based on the original criteria then they would end up on the same side of the bracket.
The DS9 win is surprising but not entirely unexpected to me. There are a lot of people who didn’t care much for TOS (like me). It was good for what it was, and for what it pioneered, but I prefer TNG and DS9 to TOS.
And as much fun as a rousing Trek debate is, I’m still riding the high from watching Guardians of the Galaxy last night and more eager to talk about that. Holy cow was it good. But off topic yet. :-)
My ticket to “Guardians of the Galaxy” is for a screening three hours from now. I’ll come directly home to write and post the review.
We’re targeting a rural drive-in an hour away that’s playing it tonight and we’re hoping for the best. Otherwise, we’ll see it next week.
I haven’t been to a drive-in since high school. I was largely unaware they still existed.
We have one left here in Denver and they’re fighting to keep it open. The wife and I went once and it wasn’t the best experience. Too many kids running around, people talking, and tons of smokers.
Was pretty surprised by the number of kids there, we saw two R-rated movies (Scary Movie and Hollow Man).
Needless to say, the “experience” left me wanting. Now the local Alamo Drafthouse….THAT is a moviegoing experience.
It’s up to the weather, now.
Just make sure your theatre has the right movie!
WHY, OH WHY, ARE YOU SADISTIC BASTARDS FORCING ME TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THESE SHOWS?!?!?!
Doctor Who is the only show I’m able to vote for without any internal conflict.
We revel in your suffering. :::evil laugh:::