Letters to the Editor

• The Best In 40 Years

  [Read the article: I Like to Watch]
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  The "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica knocks peoples socks off with its seamless combination of surreal plot twists and social commentary, coupled with the kind of realistic characters and development pioneered by programs like Hill Street Blues two decades ago. Although science fiction authors have been busily banging out complex characters for decades to populate fantastic plots and settings, filmed science fiction has been depressingly stuck in the 1930's, advancing little since the days of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Loaded with jargon-spewing archetypes and spandex-clad heroes, the only real advancement Hollywood has been willing to make has been the inclusion of the occasional actual actor – Alec Guinness or Patrick Stewart, for example – in the otherwise plastic casts of its various space operas.

  Oh sure, there have been sporadic exceptions, little fits of evolution, and many of these are now considered classics. In the '60s we had The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, both offering the public surreal little stage pieces on a weekly basis. And of course there was Star Trek, which likewise fed us stagy allegories with a cast of endearing continuing characters, while largely adhering to science fiction formulas already decades old. The Prisoner was the most adult, groundbreaking science fiction series of that era, accurately capturing the surreal zeitgeist while delivering scathing indictments of the current political and social culture. In the cinemas 2001: A Space Odyssey presented viewers with the ultimate trip. By the dawn of the '70s things seemed to be looking up for adult-oriented science fiction on film.

  The wonder of syndication brought us Space: 1999 – marked down as they said from 2001 – which flirted with presenting the lead characters as flawed, conflicted leaders and toyed with a nihilistic worldview (items then fashionable in literary science fiction as well) before being undone by the nitpickings of worried financiers and its own producers' limitations. At least the production values were good, though. 1999's production design – ships, sets, props – set a standard that still hasn't been bested on TV after 30 years, more testimony to just how clueless Hollywood is when it comes to genre television (suspension of disbelief, fellas – look it up!).

  But then along came Star Wars and it all turned back into a little boy's comic book, culminating in the trashy made for tee vee Star Wars rip-off Battlestar Galactica (which in spite of its massive budget looked as if it had been filmed in an unlit locker room by someone's dad) and finally by the return of Buck Rogers himself, discofied for the Me Decade.

  Come the '80s it was obvious televised science fiction was decades behind the times. Writers like Alice Sheldon had been turning out sexually explicit, unsettling work for over a decade at that point, yet televised science fiction hadn't advanced beyond big tits in Spandex. Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven had been spinning fantastic tales of space elevators, Ringworlds and encounters with diverse and mysterious alien civilizations for over a decade – tee vee gave us robot dogs & flying motorcycles. Dystopian writers like Gibson and Sterling were exploring cyberpunk and examining where communications technology and computers might be taking us – NBC brought us K.I.T.T., the talking car.

  Star Trek: The Next Generation made valiant attempts to break out of that rut toward the end of the '80s, and was occasionally successful thanks largely to its writers (including the new Galactica's Ron Moore), drawing viewers with the political intrigue of the Klingons, real character development thanks to Patrick Stewart's vivid performances, and even a touch of cyberpunk with The Borg. Unfortunately it was also weighted down by a rigid adherence to the Trek formula, B-Grade acting, technobabble and cruddy production design. The swanky Galaxy Class Enterprise sported interiors with all the futuristic zing of an Arizona shopping mall, recalling Hollywood's kitschy '70s take on Logan's Run, which actually was shot in a giant Texas shopping mall. And of course, the entire Next Generation cast ran around in Spandex underoos, better for us to see their tits, asses, crotch budges and padded, girdled abs. With the exception of Deep Space Nine, the remaining entries in the Trek franchise dispensed entirely with the elements that were fresh and new in The Next Generation, and instead concentrated solely on the technobabble and the bulges. Viewers fled in droves – apparently nobody at Paramount had heard of Internet porn.

  But the massive syndication success of The Next Generation (bested only by Wheel of Fortune and Oprah) spawned imitators. Babylon 5 featured what would have been great plotting in literary sci-fi, circa-1950 (think Asimov's Foundation Trilogy), and smartly cribbed from Tolkien as well. But B5 was also weighted down with cruddy production values, generally awful dialogue and often abysmal acting (save Peter Jurasik as Londo and Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar – B5 one-upped Star Trek: The Next Generation by having two great actors in the cast instead of one). The X-Files also obtained a loyal following by hiring two good actors and walking them thru spooky, relentlessly paranoid and occasionally sexually disturbing plots. It wasn't state of the art science fiction, but at least it was only a decade or two out of date and not half a century.

  This generally sad history of televised science fiction is why Galactica seems so shocking. Most folks have never seen characters with complex sex lives or destructive desires on a spaceship. They haven't seen a science fiction program where everything isn't back to normal by the next episode, let alone one where there's no normal to get back to. They haven't seen cyborgs who want to fuck us (then kill us), or human torturers who rape cyborgs. They haven't witnessed civilization tearing itself apart in flight, or a new leader crawling inside a bottle to escape this hell. They haven't been treated like adults by televised science fiction in almost 40 years. Is it any wonder viewers are stunned? This show is so alien to their expectations, it must seem like a transmission from another planet.

  Permalink Sunday, January 8, 2006 05:26 AM