X-COM/XCOM and the "Ocean Girl" series

[Gemeaux333]

Have you watched the Australian series 'Ocean Girl" back in the 2nd half of the 90s and early 2000s ?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8J-rsJ_xhIIIsrBH6BOV0g

When I look at season 4, it pretty much remind me of Terror from the deep...

[Solarius Scorch]

I admit, it looks deliciously cheesy. 90's style.

[Warboy1982]

That show was pretty bad. interesting though that there were parallels with xcom.
source: was Australian in the 90s and early 2000s

[yergnoor]

I started watching this show, it was shown on Russian television. But for a long time I did not have enough interest. I watched part of the first season and a few episodes from the second, and then finally abandoned. But there were very interesting children's fiction series of Australian production! “Thunderstones”, “Magicians”, “Girl from Tomorrow” (Russian versions of the names may differ from the original ones) - the first thing that comes to mind from what I know and have seen before. Not always the best props and special effects, but very interesting scenes. But about the "Girl and Ocean" I can not say such a thing, unfortunately.

[Gemeaux333]

When I look at this series today, I see how premonitory it was, especially when you make the paralles with present days situations/themes and the situations/themes from "Ocean Girl"...

This is one of the first series of the australian producer Jonathan M. Shiff with Thunderstone, and the most intelligent with Thunderstone as well !

H2O (and possibly its spin-off Mako Mermaids) is the only over series from the producer to have had the same amount of success as Ocean Girl !... although The Burau of Magical Things could question that, and possibly the Ocean Girl sequel in preparation...

[Gemeaux333]

And since XCOM have got its reboot/reimagining in 2012, there are even more parallels:
-Julian, the artificial intelligence of the former XCOM base introduced in Shen's Last Gift, is just like HELEN 3000 which got updated in the 2nd half of the 4th season to become HELEN 6000+... and besides they tend to be both as sarcastic
-In both there are several mentions to a dark force seeking to destroy the universe and "the gift" which is supposed to prevent it (actually since the very end of the 2nd season to be more specific)

[LytaRyta]

I started watching this show, it was shown on Russian television. But for a long time I did not have enough interest. I watched part of the first season and a few episodes from the second, and then finally abandoned. But there were very interesting children's fiction series of Australian production! “Thunderstones”, “Magicians”, “Girl from Tomorrow” (Russian versions of the names may differ from the original ones) - the first thing that comes to mind from what I know and have seen before. Not always the best props and special effects, but very interesting scenes. But about the "Girl and Ocean" I can not say such a thing, unfortunately.

exactly, this!

..and then i remember yet *Under Mountain*  NewZealand´s  tv mini-series (~6 ~8 parts)
(..upon 1sci-fi novel by N.Z. writer Maurice Gee..

[Nikita_Sadkov]

I always thought TFTD devs were inspired by Ecco The Dolphin, which was released a year prior and also had that Lovecraftian theme going on...

If that is so, then TFTD unfortunatelly missed one of the most cornerstone Ecco's elements - limited air supply, which created some scary moments in the game, but yeah the game is hard even without that, and XCOM aquanauts are no Dolphins and can breath underwater just like fishes other potentially missing element is decompression sickness, which could have been also added to say differentiate higher difficulty modes, like Superhuman, with more content, instead of just fatter aliens.