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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Pretty good, heavy on the military-ease, 10 May 2001
Author: nycovom1 from California, U.S.A.

This show had a fairly healthy budget by the looks of it, and also

had detailed writing. The computer-animated images were pretty

impressive for TV back in 1995(Lightwave 3D, anyone?).

The series really leaned heavily on all of the military jargon and

hardware, which reminds me of another good point: the sets,

such as the interiors of the ships, were first-rate. None of the actors who played the "Wild Cards" were really

well-known. I only saw fresh-faced Morgan Weisser in one other

program, an episode of Quantum Leap, in which he played an

aspiring rock guitarist in 1966 in a small town(check him out with

long hair!). I wished the writers had developed the "chigs" more. Those

bad guys didn't get a whole lotta background. Maybe said writers

would have if the show had lasted longer. Oh, well. The best TV

sci-fi show will always be the original Star Trek, in my opinion.

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1 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A promising show, cancelled too early...., 2 May 2004
Author: Rob Taylor (Rob_Taylor) from London

SAAB had enough story elements and character evelopment that the show could have gone a long way. I'm not sure quite why it was cancelled after only twenty-something episodes, but I suspect money was the main reason.

A shame really, as the show had great promise and much more believable characters than many other shows. What's more it was different from the run of the mill sci-fi shows going around at the time.

A lot of the actors from here can also been seen making guest appearances on the X-Files, not least because the producers of both shows were the same.

In the end, though, the ratings won out and the show was stopped. However, I suspect its one show that will be doing the re-run circuit for a very long time to come.

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2 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Like the opposing fire this show misses the mark, 18 August 2005
Author: Alien_Radio from United Kingdom

I was excited by the prospect of this show when I first heard about it, then I watched the pilot, I thought it was serviceable. As the weeks progressed I became more and more frustrated with a show that occasionally showed flashes of brilliance but more often was pointless, insulting and dull.

I Love Sci-fi, unfortunately there really isn't that much that's any good. I hated the X-files, after season 1 it began a long slow decline into repetition and self parody. Whoever held up Enterprise as an example of a good TV show should have their head examined.

Why this particular waste of time made it to a full season when Fox's Far superior, and 10 years ahead of it's time, Profit (written by David Greenwalt) got axed after 4 episodes I'll never know. (Probably because Fox was throwing money at Chris Carter and his posse, hoping for something that worked, it was a lost cause from the start, The X-files was terrible but caught the zeitgeist and had lead actors that appealed to a wide audience, the odds of that happening again were slim) That's not to say this show was entirely bad, there were those occasional flashes of brilliance I talked about, there were one or two excellent episodes "Who monitors the Birds" being easily the standout. It got right inside the head of a character who is effectively fighting a war that doesn't belong to him, it balanced dramatic tension (, not ACTION, which people seem to confuse with something actually happening, ) as Hawkes makes his way back to his egress from a solo assassination mission through enemy territory, with brilliant flashbacks examining what it meant to be a conscious being deprived of freedom just because of what you are. The resolution, where having engaged in this potential suicide mission he gets his discharge papers but destroys them, should have resulted in the character having a a stronger sense of self and dedication to the cause. Instead, in the next episode he returns to being a whiny pain in the ass.

That's the problem, the unbelievable aspects of the show (numerous as they are) pale in significance to the fact that every time they attempt character development it gets junked. Only two characters have anything like personality (apart from the brass, who have much less screen time), (Vance and Hawkes) two are utter ciphers, and after the first few episodes where they attempted to make West into a person by inserting that pointless and irritating subplot about his girlfriend, they realised he was dull and barely bothered.

For a supposed "War is Hell" show you never felt the lead characters were ever in danger, the unit was perpetually at a sixth of its strength(?) If someone did join the unit it probably only so they could die later in the episode. It was also terribly jingoistic, all "God bless America and Moms home made apple pie". Please. The Ending also disappointed me terribly, I thought they were going to do something clever perhaps put a twist in it, but no, everything was exactly what it seemed, and everyone died in the end, because the writers were lazy. I didn't care that they died because they were never in danger of dying before, and now their death was just convenient.

There was also the problem of weak sub plots borrowed from other series being shoe-horned into try and give it structure, (I half expected something from Morgan and Wong's other Job The X-files to turn up, given that they attempted a conspiracy sub plot).

There was nothing NEW here, elements had been copied from many places, and might possibly have worked if they'd been more inventive, but too much was clichéd resulting in a mishmash of ideas that didn't work together, that was every once in a while great, but ultimately was just not daring enough.

It gets 4 out of 10 possibly 3 for reminding me just how badly it squandered it's opportunities, with possible redemption for "Who monitors the birds" and the occasional worthwhile moment.

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6 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Dire, 27 September 2001
Author: motor89 from Lancashire, England

I watched this on its first UK run back in the late 1990s, and thought it was simply appalling.

The pilot episode is a bad (and I mean bad) mixture of Full Metal Jacket - it even steals the real star of that film: R L Emery - and Starship Troopers. It removes all the harshness and profanity, and substitutes it with dreadful dialogue and wretched acting. As for the 'Angry Angels' -- well, try 'Slightly Miffed Fairies'. Never has a squadron minced about the place so effeminately!

The one character/actor to emerge with any kind of merit is Rodney Bewes as the 'Tank' Hawkes. At least he has a little depth. The rest of the cast are poor shadows of real people. Vanson... text-book tough female, straight out of the 90s-writer political correctness manual. West is mopey and irritating. And so on.

Sadly, things don't get any better as the season goes on. It's a catalogue of bad writing, directing and acting. The final few episodes attempt to add some kind of conspiracy into the mix in a desperate attempt to add some interest. It fails miserably.

The whole show is a charmless mess.

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0 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent SHOW, crappy DVD set :(, 1 November 2005
Author: gynsusamatoshi (gynsusamatoshi@yahoo.com) from wisconsin

Like a lot of fans of SAAB, both myself and a friend each got this show through Best Buy. WERE WE EVER TICKED! His set had production errors on the first disc - the picture would freeze, then jump past entire scenes, and the macro vision on mine is SO heavy that I can't watch the set I bought! So far 20th century fox has avoided my complaints on the copy protection - which means more than likely I just wasted $42.00!

If the companies keep encoding the macro vision this heavily, they will not only lose sales but drive people to purchase bootlegs over official releases! After all, would YOU buy something knowing that you couldn't watch it?

FANS OF THE WORLD! UNITE AGAINST MACRO VISION!

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0 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
needed more of a chance, 19 January 2004
Author: Plumpkin from United States

I thought that the characters were at first rather two dimensional, but so are Star Trek characters at first. It takes some time for the characters to develop depth, and I think Space: Above and Beyond needed that chance. I thought Hawkes was the best developed character. I do get this show confused with some Outer Limits episodes dealing with a war between Earth and aliens (those episodes were chilling).

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1 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Need research before buying this series? Look no further. (slightly biased version), 23 May 2007
9/10
Author: knuckleheadz240

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I know you would not read this if I gave it a 1, so here goes...

You may see this relatively harmless looking DVD collection sitting on your local electronics store's bargain shelf. You may also be inclined to pick up it's nice shiny packaging and gape at the $40+ dollar price tag. Kinda pricey for a sci-fi show that came out in the early 90's, but in most cases this high retail price signifies a high quality program. In this case however, you'd be dead wrong.

The Plot (as is): In the not so far future, humanity has advanced to the point of off-world planet colonization and everything is looking good. That is until a rather over dramatized attack on one of the colonies by a unknown alien foe leads to a war of epic... er semi-epic proportions.

The main focus of the series is on one group of futuristic marines, and the story follows them from boot camp to the final confrontation, and spends a lot of time dallying in between. This squadron contains such colorful characters as Lt. Nathan West, Capt. Shane Vansen and my personal favorite, Lt. Paul Wang (Yes that's Wang folks). These fearless marine fight some furiously paced battles, bringing the fight home to the viscous alien Chig military machine. But mostly they just lie around and deliver things. Yes, things folks, not specified but just things. And someone tell me where in the future do they allow elbow pushing, bony crybabies into the marines?

My two favorite episodes (In no specific order):

Episode 18 "Pearly" The epic story of one man and his strange love for his armored personnel carrier. Or it would of been a story of one man and his strange love for his armored personnel carrier had not that one man been killed off in the first 8 minutes in a profoundly stupid way. The rest of the episode is killed off with some touchy feely scenes with everybody's favorite tortured bi-polar guy, Lt. Wang. Also at this point some robot guys show up as they do repeatedly throughout the series, not really sure what for. Add in some crappy lines and a crazy British guy, and you've got a instant classic.

Episode 9 "Choice or Chance" This episode is full of dramatic tension, or as most people call it, plot crap. Being captured by the silicates (just think long hair with bad skin conditions) our three heroes find themselves prisoner in a high tech security prison. Here Lt. West is reunited with his long-lost love, who after surviving a orbital crash in a can of a space ship, ends up in the exact same prison as her boyfriend. Oh wow! Lot's of clichés in this one, hidden tunnel, just in time rescue and yes, heinous brainwashing.

I'm sure there were other high parts to the series, but I cant's seem to remember them. Hmmm?

It's no surprise that this peach of a show failed what with the sheer stupidity of the plot coupled with the crummy dialog, it makes for a one two combo to make Don Knots blush in shame. Believe me I'm looking out for your best interest when I say spend your money elsewhere, it's not worth the pain and frustration that is....

SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND!

Final Thought on: SPECIAL EFFECTS None

Terrible, just terrible.

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1 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Maybe because...., 15 July 2003
Author: mdrost77 (mdrost77@hotmail.com) from Oegstgeest, Netherlands

Always, I hear that the show is too short.

But maybe because of that, it's worth watching. I've seen shows go on and on and on and on... And only the very few stay very good. Come to think of it only Seinfeld preserved some of its humour. The topics changed, but even!! Cramer started to annoy me after 180? of these episodes.

Example Frasier, great until Niles got his girl...and that had to happen. Now it's still very good but not exceptionally... etc.

Now I'm watching this show for the third time, and I have to say it is still good. And, thank you, short: so for me it's new all the time. This means more presents per show to discover. Also I think it's fun that there are a couple of things left for your own imagination.. You get to see the world but you don't get it's secrets.. and everybody loves a riddle (I hope)

From a fan who has recorded all the episodes

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1 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Average..., 18 November 2000
Author: nunyerbiz from Detroit, Michigan



Maybe for sci-fi freaks this was some kind of classic opus... but as far as I'm concerned this was merely an average, somewhat forgettable series.

The actors all did a good job, but the stories were not all that interesting. A sci-fi series needs to go out on a limb with the storylines. You need to be pushed to disbelief. This show was basically World War II in space. I thought it was far too vanilla. It didn't have the 'shakespearian' feel of Star Trek (TOS) or the 'life or death' feel of Battlestar Galactica. I would rather watch WW2 documentaries on the History Channel....

I give it an overall rating of 5/10. Enjoyble as a saturday morning rerun on the Sci-Fi channel, but I don't see how a cult following could have grown from this rehashed 'history' of very terrestrial wars....

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4 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
A god awful show that was finally put out of its misery, 12 February 2004
Author: journeyman968

How many war shows do we need, especially space war shows? We go back to the old "Earth fights off invaders" though this show doesn't explain how Earth can fight, toe-to-toe against invaders with the technology to fly all the way to Earth. Logic says, if they have the technology to get here they have the technology to completely wipe out the humans fighting on Space: Above and Beyond. And remember the creators and producers of Space: Above and Beyond calling out Star Trek creators and talking about how their show was so much better and putting down the Star Trek franchise as to peaceful and stiff while their show was about war and killing people? This was even published in the TV Guide. Yeah, they went over REAL well! The Star Trek producers and representatives refused to even respond to SAAB and laughed them and said that they were just trying to use the Star Trek franchise to help their show succeed, which was true. Where are those creators and producers that called out Star Trek now? Probably bagging groceries somewhere or putting out low budget, crap movies while Star Trek has wheeled out ANOTHER successful show in the long line of successful shows in the Star Trek franchise. Funny how that happens!

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