Aliens wish come for new episodes of old shows

[Akisa]

So after watching some Futurama, I was thinking what if aliens come to Earth and hopes to negotiate continuation of a semi recent canceled show like Firefly? The Aliens enjoy the show and wish to continue the show as it seems to have hug fan base on their home planet, but don't want to transfer technology or theories. How would Earth respond? How would Fox respond, how would cast of Firefly (or your favorite canceled show) respond?

[EmeraldRose]

That would be awesome! Maybe we should start sending signals out to try to precipitate this. :smallbiggrin:

[Mikhailangelo]

The aliens start an internet petition.

It's not very effective...

[Eldan]

We could offer a trade. They could sponsor the production, if it's important enough for them. I mean, just knowledge of star drives of some kind would probably buy a TV channel or two.

[Rodin]

Simple.




We feed them Fox executives until they get indigestion and go home to have a lie down.

[Senator Cybus]

The aliens start an internet petition.

It's not very effective...

Ah, but then the aliens try a Kickstarter campaign, headed by Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau...

...in years to come, it will be universally agreed that the thirty-seventh season was the best.

[Tengu_temp]

Frankly, I don't expect any show made under such pressure to be any good. And Firefly was good because it was short; you know that if it ran longer than 2-3 seasons, it'd run out of material and get much worse.

Just let it go. Let it go.

[Cuthalion]

Was there not something sort of like this in Galaxy Quest?

[Akisa]

Was there not something sort of like this in Galaxy Quest?

No, in Galaxy Quest the aliens thought the show was a documentary of events that has happened in the past. The return of the show was the result of the ship crashing into the convention center. It's likely that the government or private companies would wanted to restore the show to perhaps squeeze more technology from the Aliens, not provide entertainment and profit through ads.

[Rosstin]

If this was first-contact, I'm pretty sure that the huge excitement generated would cause the show to instantly restart. It would have, if anything, too much funding.

I'm not sure if it would be good or bad, but it wouldn't be through lack of trying. The goodwill of the aliens alone would justify any expense.

[sparky9042]

Here's an interesting problem: given that TV signals are transmitted at the speed of light, aliens are inevitably going to request shows that we cannot produce in their original forms. DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Majel Barrett are deceased, and every other TOS cast member is far too old to play their assigned roles in Star Trek. How, then, would one replicate new episodes of Star Trek? (And don't cheat and say using Chris Pine, CGI, and lens flare. The aliens will probably see through that one, and wonder why the new Kirk speaks in a different manner, the ship looks funny, and so forth.)

Aliens aren't going to request new episodes of Firefly. Firefly hasn't reached them yet, in all likelihood. They'll probably want shows we can't make in anything like their original form.

[Razanir]

I feel like this (http://xkcd.com/1212/) xkcd is in order:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/interstellar_memes.png

[Aedilred]

Aliens aren't going to request new episodes of Firefly. Firefly hasn't reached them yet, in all likelihood. They'll probably want shows we can't make in anything like their original form.
On the bright side, they might have had the foresight to make copies of all those shows that we didn't have the ability to record or the foresight to keep (Quatermass, Doctor Who, Not Only... But Also, Z-Cars, At Last the 1948 Show, etc.)

But realistically any aliens who have the technology to contact us would probably find our TV hilariously quaint and primitive. Moreover the chances are they'd be intelligent enough to work out that they were watching old broadcasts and that the shows might have completed their run, so the scenario as posited seems pretty unlikely even if we overlook all the basic issues.

[Kelb_Panthera]

We ask them what the devil they're talking about then, after a lengthy internet search regarding television history, inform them that the show they're talking about was cancelled decades, perhaps even centuries ago and all the actors are dead or soon will be.

Radio transmission is limited to the speed of light. The earliest television broadcasts only just recently reached the nearest star. By the time anything reaches a system inhabited by a species capable of interstellar travel it's -very- likely that everyone reading this will be long-since dead.

Kinda puts a damper on the whole thought experiment, huh?

[Akisa]

We ask them what the devil they're talking about then, after a lengthy internet search regarding television history, inform them that the show they're talking about was cancelled decades, perhaps even centuries ago and all the actors are dead or soon will be.

Radio transmission is limited to the speed of light. The earliest television broadcasts only just recently reached the nearest star. By the time anything reaches a system inhabited by a species capable of interstellar travel it's -very- likely that everyone reading this will be long-since dead.

Kinda puts a damper on the whole thought experiment, huh?

Well if they have interstealler travel it maybe possible that they have probes and ftl communications (think of Quantum entanglements, and/or communication based tachyons), or some other way to send information that we haven't thought of. They can put a small probe in the asestroid belt, monitoring radio signals coming from our planet, than send information over their ftl based communication.