Tv shows or movies that would transition well to Sci-Fi elements being added?
- Thread starter Jayson1
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CSI: NY was practically science fiction. Robert Joy's character had what was basically a holodeck where he could do virtual holographic 3D interactive (enough adjectives!) autopsies. And by that time in the CSI world, DNA fragments could get you a full ID on a perp in about 5 minutes.
Bones did the most unwise crossover in TV history, when the show rooted in forensic science crossed over with Sleepy Hollow and brought the supernatural into the lab. WTF, Fox???
Bones did the most unwise crossover in TV history, when the show rooted in forensic science crossed over with Sleepy Hollow and brought the supernatural into the lab. WTF, Fox???
It's interesting how some authors write science fiction but manage to get their books put into the "respectable" mainstream fiction category instead of being pigeonholed with the dreaded "sci fi" niche label.That's because Crichton is considered a fiction writer.
Kor
STARSKY & HUTCH and McCLOUD both did "vampire" episodes back in the seventies. Technically, they were about nuts who only thought they were vampires, but I remember the McCLOUD ep added a coda that suggested that maybe, just maybe the vampire was real after all.
F TROOP and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND also did vampire eps, but in those cases the vampire turned out to be a misunderstanding or a dream, respectively.
That was a stock beat on shows back then -- debunk the supernatural element as a hoax, but hedge your bets with a tag suggesting that maybe it's real after all. MacGyver did it many times, which annoyed me in a show that was nominally about a hero who stood for science and reason. If you're going to take a stand that a thing is a hoax, have the courage to stick to your guns.
Hasn't every old show that has ever did a Christmas show have one of those "Santa is real or might be real" coda's as well? Which brings up the question. Do Christmas movies that revolve around Santa,Elves,Frosty and the whole bit count as a Sci-Fi or fantasy? I mean Santa does use magic sort of but his toy factory and sled could count as having unique technology that makes it all happen. Also Elves could just be seen as basically aliens on earth. A unknown species that the general public was never made aware of.
Jason
"A Christmas Carol" arguably beat it to the punch. "Are these shadows of what will be or may be?"
Scrooge is shown one possible future, which he is able to avert by changing his actions in the present. (Alas, changing his past was apparently not an option.)
I don't think A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life represent actual alternate timelines so much as divinely induced visions of what would occur under certain conditions. There's no evidence they had any objective existence outside of the perceptions of the viewpoint character.
So Scrooge and George Bailey had orb experiences? 
Though an argument may exist that divinely induced visions actually do involve visits to alternate timelines.
Not that it's any sort of arbiter one way or another, but the Wikipedia article for "It's a Wonderful Life" does describe what George sees as an alternate timeline.
(My music player decided to play the "What If?" cue from the newer "The Time Machine" while I was writing this post!)
Though an argument may exist that divinely induced visions actually do involve visits to alternate timelines.
Not that it's any sort of arbiter one way or another, but the Wikipedia article for "It's a Wonderful Life" does describe what George sees as an alternate timeline.
(My music player decided to play the "What If?" cue from the newer "The Time Machine" while I was writing this post!)
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No, what happened is "Newsradio" had two or three one-off's outside the continuity o the show. What if the building was a ship in outerspace in the future? What is the building was the Titanic?
Since we only perceive the story from the main character's point of view, there is no objective evidence to support such an argument. And I don't think the writers of those works were thinking in such science-fictional terms. As Greg said, Scrooge described his future experience as "shadows of... what may be" -- a visualized possibility, not a concrete reality. I doubt Charles Dickens had the slightest clue what the dickens an alternate timeline was; he was thinking in terms of supernatural visitations and prophetic visions. As for Wonderful Life, I checked a transcript, and it was presented as the granting of a wish -- which, in fantasy, usually means that the world is altered to fulfill the wish, not that the wisher is transported to a parallel world. I think describing these things as "alternate timelines" is improperly projecting a science-fictional concept onto works of fantasy that were not intended to depict it.
Brooklyn Nine Nine would work well on a starship.
He was steering straight for it to the point where I thought that’s what was going to happen and it would have made sense because they were setting that up since season 1. But I liked the way he ended it, it was the best way it could end and I’m glad I got to experience it.
Oh, I don't really think anyone in the discussed works was thinking in sci-fi terms either, it just amuses me to think of them in such a manner. I like telling people that IAWL is a sci-fi story, even if that may be a bit of a stretch.
Any idea what the first movie to legitimately deal with an alternate timeline may have been, then?
Well, of course the first works to deal with the concept would've been in prose. Movie and TV sci-fi tends to lag a couple of decades behind the literature. The archetypal SF treatment of parallel timelines is generally considered to be Murray Leinster's 1934 short story "Sidewise in Time." Some other early works are discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewise_in_Time#Influence
As for cinematic treatments of parallel worlds, I'm not sure what the earliest ones may have been. It's a theme The Twilight Zone visited on several occasions, e.g. "Mirror Image" and "The Parallel." Beyond that, the online lists I can find aren't helpful, since they tend to focus on more recent movies.
Let's see.My favorite non-SF shows.
CSI: They can basically do sci-fi stuff on the show already.But it would be interesting to see someeven more advanced tech.
Upstart Crow: When they get to The Tempest it might be interesting to see some fantasy. I can't remember if the stuff in A Midsummer Night's Dream was "real" or not. The last Christmas episode already had shades of this.
Arrested Development: Imagine this show with absolutely nothing constraining it to reality.
CSI: They can basically do sci-fi stuff on the show already.But it would be interesting to see someeven more advanced tech.
Upstart Crow: When they get to The Tempest it might be interesting to see some fantasy. I can't remember if the stuff in A Midsummer Night's Dream was "real" or not. The last Christmas episode already had shades of this.
Arrested Development: Imagine this show with absolutely nothing constraining it to reality.
Thanks!
As far as I'm concerned, CSI has always been science fiction. It's set in an alternate reality where forensic scientists actually do the detective work themselves and this is somehow not seen as an enormous conflict of interest. And where the forensic scientist-detectives are such celebrities that they periodically inspire serial killers to target them with murderous games.
More seriously, it's science fiction in the sense that it's fiction about scientists doing their work, and in which the process of doing science is integral to solving the problems that drive the plots. Which is more than can be said for a lot of the sci-fi on TV and film. Another good example was Eureka. I consider it one of the purest science fiction shows in TV history; while the science may have been fanciful, it was a show that was fundamentally about scientists doing the work of science, with both the crises and the solutions arising from scientific innovation.