MovieChat Forums > Bugs (1995) Discussion > Bugs

Bugs

posted 9 years ago by ewaf58
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I used to love this series when I was young. I've just watch episode one again on YouTube. Obviously some of the 'high tech' does look somewhat dated and the very 90's humour is a but off the mark but it was still very enjoyable.

To be honest a lot of the techy gear hasn't changed that much (err well no flat screens) and the cars do look a bit past it except the never aging Range Rover. Another thing is that London looked a lot newer as the Docklands railway had only just opened and the area around it had only just been developed (except for the road to nowhere)

It reminded me of a sort of precursor to Spooks - not quite as refined - but still good.

Now Spooks has sadly finished (except for the film version) time for a new series.

[–] gregforttmags 9 years ago

To be honest a lot of the techy gear hasn't changed that much (err well no flat screens) and the cars do look a bit past it except the never aging Range Rover.

Beckett's off road vehicle was actually a Jeep (with the bad girl in the pilot episode having a Rover) but I agree that, while some of the vehicles and fashion looked like late 80s/early 90s hangovers, a lot of other stuff looks not much different to today (just more basic and unrefined next to today's technology operating on the same principles) and flat plasma/LED screens turn up in the later two seasons of Bugs (and Jean Daniel is using a touch screen in his S1 lair). I can see precursors to today's self-driving cars, widely used Internet, Google Earth, and smartphone cameras in many episodes. It was looking ahead fairly accurately, but also a bit quaint at the same time.

Another thing is that London looked a lot newer as the Docklands railway had only just opened and the area around it had only just been developed (except for the road to nowhere)

I guess it all looks a bit more seedy and desolate in the past 5 or ten years (and much of it gets featured in Primeval as well). Where did they film the more rural locations?

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Yes some things stay approximately the same outwardly (The Jumbo jet - Range Rover) but it's inside where the big changes are in terms of processing power and what they can actually do.

Arthur C Clarke once wrote ( in one of his novels)that once they'd reached their most efficient design some things just did not change but they somehow looked old fashioned.

You're right in what you say that precursors to contemporary technology are on display and I was quite surprised at how 'modern' some of the stuff looked.

I suppose it must be remembered that a lot of these things were thought of and developed in the 1950s and 60's

MIT had a light pen working by 1951 - 52 and Ivan Sutherland had computer graphics which could be manipulated by 1962.

I'm not sure where they filmed the more rural locations.

As a footnote I've often wondered what it would be like if I shut myself off from all media in say a remote part of Scotland (or even Alaska) and then re-emerge after 20 years.

Would I be greeted by a World of technological wonders or be crushingly disappointed by the lack of major changes.

What I'd like to see.

Nuclear Fusion providing cheaper and clean electricity
Maglev trains everywhere linking major European cities
High density fast charge batteries giving cars a range of 400 miles
Intelligent robots
4k and 8k ultra high definition TV with holographic projectors
Man on Mars
Exploration of the moons of gas giants
A cure for baldness

However more likely:

Another failure to get fusion commercially viable
Power cuts
The Golf Mark 13
Robots on strike over low pay
Highly expensive petrol with electric cars making too many demands of our generating capacity
Mars landing cancelled due to lack of funds
Star trek 11 (of the new film series) with the aging crew singing 'Row row row the boat' while eating beans around a camp fire
Still a demand for toupees.

[–] gregforttmags 9 years ago

The helicopter chase was filmed around Plymouth. And the 1990s (or the early 2000s) is not that much drastically different looking to today (with only the then infant internet going mainstream, comparatively basic phones evolving desktop computer functions, and the essential extinction of tape since then being the most drastic changes).

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Let's reconvene for a chat in 2035. I somehow feel things are going to be a lot different - however these changes will have been forced upon us and not bought about by steady incremental progress.

[–] gregforttmags 9 years ago

The 1990s to 2010s was more the refinement/improvement and mass marketing of pre-existing computer and cellphone technology featured in Bugs (like Jean Daniel's brother talking to one of their victims over a mid 90s prototype of today's Skype) rather than ground up invention (and in the earlier seasons of CSI it leaps out at me when they're using disposable cameras, organisers and floppy discs).

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] rika1 8 years ago

I used to love this series when I was young. I've just watch episode one again on YouTube.

Same here, but I watched the whole series again. Thanks to whoever uploaded all four seasons.

I was reminded how unfair it was to end the show like that.

When I watched the first few episodes, everything looked old to me too. But in later episodes, it was fine. The cars looked old, but not that old. Especially Beckett's Jeep. I laughed when they talked about what a GPS is, though.

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