Contemporary sci-fi shows: The end of the future

[Ensign_Redshirt]

A common characteristic of current science fiction shows seems to be that they take place in our present day: the Stargate franchise, Lost, Fringe, V, Heroes, Torchwood and so on. And while at least Doctor Who takes us to the future occasionally, the Doctor and most of his Companians still hail from our time and many episodes take place "now".

We had an entire different picture five, ten, or fifteen years ago: TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, Babylon 5, Andromeda, Firefly, Space Above and Beyond, Earth 2, seaQuest, Dark Angel, even Earth: Final Conflict. The only recent "non-present day" series that comes to mind is the new Battlestar Galactica (which took place in our distant past instead of the future, but still...).

And what was the most recent TV show that was "permanently" set in the future? Could it be Star Trek: Enterprise?

So, what happened? Some theories (or at least that's what studio execs could be thinking):
1) Setting a show in the present day provides us with a setting and characters which are familiar to us and therefore ordinary viewers are able to identify with the premise more easily.
2) Our technology has evolved to a level that you can set a science fiction show in the present day without causing much disbelief. That's also why William Gibson "abandoned the future" and started to write novels set in the present.
3) And ultimately, setting a science fiction show in the present reduces production costs.

Are there currently any projects on the horizon which take us into the future again? Or have we have to wait until CBS decides to produce a Trek series set in the Abramsverse?

I guess the nuBSGverse will provide us with the closest thing to a "future" show again: While it also takes place in the distant past, the world of "Caprica" very much resembles a near-future Earth, maybe around 20 years from now or so (judging from the pilot movie).

 

[Kegg]

And what was the most recent TV show that was "permanently" set in the future? Could it be Star Trek: Enterprise?

ENT may have been the last show literally set in the future, bu nuBSG is, in a sense, set in the past in the same way Star Wars was: A long time ago, far far away, there were apparently people who had really advanced technology so they're sorta like us in a future society.

In that sense nuBSG - and presumably Caprica - deals with a 'future' society which also isn't a future society in the same way Charlie Jade did - where the 'future' society was actually contemporaneous to ours, but in an alternate universe. Distant past, alternate universe, whatever.

So, what happened? Some theories (or at least that's what studio execs could be thinking):
1) Setting a show in the present day provides us with a setting and characters which are familiar to us and therefore ordinary viewers are able to identify with the premise more easily.
2) Our technology has evolved to a level that you can set a science fiction show in the present day without causing much disbelief. That's also why William Gibson "abandoned the future" and started to write novels set in the present.
3) And ultimately, setting a science fiction show in the present reduces production costs.

This seems exactly right - although Gibson's conversion has more to do with cyberpunk than sci-fi in general.

Whether or not cyberpunk is still viable given the way our technology has advanced, we're still not yet beyond the ephemeral interstellar age of space opera lore, and may never get there.

However, Caprica from what I've read may well be a cyberpunk series, so I'm curious to see what it's like, and it's of course a theme Jade touched on in a roundabout way, so I wouldn't write that off just yet.

And the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation can surely not be considered incidental to the sudden upsurge of future-oriented shows in the 1990s. Certainly, Earth: Final Conflict at the very least came about as a result of this success, though JMS insists that if anything TNG made it more difficult for him to make his show rather than easier.

It's a shame, though, I'd like to see more crazy, outre space opera. I miss it sorely.

 

[Mutara Nebula 1967]

I say it all comes down to MONEY.

It's definately cheaper to do a few CGi shots of a mother ship over New York City in V...than exploding shuttles weekly on VOYAGER.

 

[Kegg]

I say it all comes down to MONEY.

But even space opera can be made on the cheap. And if anything, with the advent of CGI, doing even exotic space opera concepts is even more feasible on the cheap, however dodgy looking. Babylon 5 is a particularly good example of a cash-strapped epic galactic adventure, full of sudden cast changes, synth music and mid-90s CGI. Not all that good visually, but one can do much better CGI today for the same sort of money.

Money comes into it if you want to make a space opera that looks, well, good - like the new BSG, or the more recent Stargates from what little I've seen of them. That point would be conceded, but gosh it's a pity I'd take anything regardless of how crummy looking so long as it's entertaining (sigh).

 

[Mistral]

I think the execs have the word "edgy" rolling around in their otherwise empty heads-and they translate it as "current but ultra hip and cool, with some scifi elements thrown in". Hey, wait, that sounds like V, Fringe, Sanctuary, etc... I think I hit the nail on the head, there. I don't even think its production costs(although studio perception of what production costs could run on a "future" show may bias the situation) as clothing your studly hero in hip duds could cost more than making a "futuristic" outfit in Wardrobe from scratch. CGI can cover what used to be sets, and as we all know a fancy salt shaker doubles for a hi-tech gizmo quite nicely. Personally, I think the Xfiles colored a lot of thinking in televisionland and everyone is chasing the next trendy thing-and let's face facts, ST was fun and all but it was rarely "hip", being the perceived domain of nerds and mouth-breathers for far too long.

 

[Kegg]

-and let's face facts, ST was fun and all but it was rarely "hip", being the perceived domain of nerds and mouth-breathers for far too long.

The new Star Trek film was arguably 'hip,' but at most it might encourage studio execs to greenlit more space opera movies (this is apparently the case with the Bryan Singer BSG movie).

It seems unlikely that whatever trend that represents will trickle down into TVland, though, which is a pity. I wonder how well or how poorly the Star Wars live action series will do whenever (if-ever) it's finally released.

 

[Cutter John]

I think a lot of it also has to do with us evolving into a culture that doesn't really care about the future anymore. Give most people a cel phone and a celebrity scandal and they're pretty much happy with living each day as it comes.

All that boring space ansd science stuff is for nerds.

 

[Vendikarr]

3) And ultimately, setting a science fiction show in the present reduces production costs.

This is the winner. For the networks, it's always about the money first.

 

[Candlelight]

Yeah, you really need to have a show on cable these days to get any decent budget for 'space' drama.

Then again, it'll be gory and full of tits and bums...

 

[davejames]

I think a lot of it also has to do with us evolving into a culture that doesn't really care about the future anymore. Give most people a cel phone and a celebrity scandal and they're pretty much happy with living each day as it comes.

All that boring space ansd science stuff is for nerds.

Yeah, sadly the general public isn't nearly as excited by space travel as they once were.

TOS obviously benefited from the whole space race thing, and later shows benefited from the popularity first of Star Wars and then TNG. Nowadays, there isn't anything nearly as influential out there.

 

[sojourner]

I say it all comes down to MONEY.

But even space opera can be made on the cheap. And if anything, with the advent of CGI, doing even exotic space opera concepts is even more feasible on the cheap, however dodgy looking. Babylon 5 is a particularly good example of a cash-strapped epic galactic adventure, full of sudden cast changes, synth music and mid-90s CGI. Not all that good visually, but one can do much better CGI today for the same sort of money.

Money comes into it if you want to make a space opera that looks, well, good - like the new BSG, or the more recent Stargates from what little I've seen of them. That point would be conceded, but gosh it's a pity I'd take anything regardless of how crummy looking so long as it's entertaining (sigh).

LOL, your kidding right? B-5 scrimped and scrounged and was still an expensive show to produce compared to something like E:FC.
Why do you think TNT kept threatening to cancel? They didn't want to pay the price.

Anytime a show has to produce special props or CGI the cost is going to go up.

A sci-fi show that can be written to use real world settings is going to have much lower production costs and hence a much higher chance of being picked up.

I think given another 5 years and CGI may actually allow costs to come down. The big costs will still be in props for the show.

 

[Candlelight]

LOL, your kidding right? B-5 scrimped and scrounged and was still an expensive show to produce compared to something like E:FC.
Why do you think TNT kept threatening to cancel? They didn't want to pay the price.

B5 cost $90 million for 110 episodes. Not sure what the movies cost.

TNT only ran the fifth season and Crusade. The first four were run by WB/PTEN. But yes, it was a shit fight.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The added expense, however minimal, of bothering to come up with the sets, costumes, hair, makeup, art direction, CGI, etc for a future scenario is not offset by a larger audience. If anything the audience is smaller since future scenarios are off-putting to some folks.

The future is just not cost-effective.

Money comes into it if you want to make a space opera that looks, well, good - like the new BSG, or the more recent Stargates from what little I've seen of them.

To me, Stargate doesn't look "good." They haven't put the effort into the art direction to create a truly interesting future look. The costuming in particular is horrible. BSG pinched pennies effectively but they took lots of shortcuts, for instance just using everyday clothing and other elements like whiteboards rather than going to the expense of creating a future doppelganger for every M&M and paper clip.

 

[Harvey]

Stargate has had its moments of brilliance in design, but it's main fault is relying heavily on the re-use of designs. They built a wonderful mideval village set for season nine of Stargate SG-1 and then proceeded to use it over and over again, ultimately with little or no change, for a total of 120 episodes between Stargate SG-1 (seasons 9, 10) and Stargate Atlantis (seasons 2, 3, 4, 5).

Consider the surprising number of times the Atlantis expedition stumbled across cities just like their own! Yes, the rare, apparently important city of the ancients actually has a copy or two lying around the Pegasus galaxy. Empok Nor felt like enough of a cheat on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and that was a modular, mass-produced space station. Also, speaking on Atlantis: they travel across the Pegasus galaxy from one planet to another, but don't worry, they look exactly the same (read: they get to re-use all their old establishing shots).

Battlestar Galactica was rather smart, actually. No aliens (keeps the cost down), a mix of contemporary and retro aesthetics (again the costs are kept down), and a limited number of planets visited (so Planet Vancouver never feels old).

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

LOL, your kidding right? B-5 scrimped and scrounged and was still an expensive show to produce compared to something like E:FC.
Why do you think TNT kept threatening to cancel? They didn't want to pay the price.

TNT ran B5 for one year. For the first four, it was syndicated in local broadcast markets as part of PTEN.

It was a very inexpensive show as these things go, and the producers were proud of their frugality, feeling that shows with TNG were often profligate with money in ways that didn't enhance quality. TNT "didn't want to pay the price" because they were dead cheap, not because B5 was a budget buster in any sense.

 

[Harvey]

B5 was cheaper than TNG, but it was not cheap. An interview with Robert H. Wolffe from a while back had him bemoaning the fact that B5 had buckets of money compared to his space opera show, Andromeda.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

B5 was cheaper than TNG, but it was not cheap. An interview with Robert H. Wolffe from a while back had him bemoaning the fact that B5 had buckets of money compared to his space opera show, Andromeda.

It's all relative - B5 probably had "buckets of money" relative to Charles In Charge as well. Nonetheless, B5 was an inexpensive television series (generally estimated at under one million dollars an hour), especially for something that was intended to compete (in Warner Bros intentions if not those of the producers) with Trek.

 

[Kegg]

LOL, your kidding right?

Well, no. Honestly if B5 wasn't a cheap show they certainly succeeded in making it look like they weren't putting a lot of money on the screen.

B-5 scrimped and scrounged and was still an expensive show to produce compared to something like E:FC.

I only saw a couple of episodes from the first season, and that show didn't look half-bad for its budget. The alien makeup was nice, as were the strange ship designs, and the opening theme music was atmospheric and evocative in precisely a way that Franke's innumerable synth bombasts on B5 never were.

But then it was an Earth based show, that must have helped.

An interview with Robert H. Wolffe from a while back had him bemoaning the fact that B5 had buckets of money compared to his space opera show, Andromeda.

I'd read that interview actually, which was pretty interesting. But having buckets of money compared to Andromeda isn't saying much - and honestly, I was pretty content with Andromeda's handling of its budgetary problem in its first season. It could have used a better composer and it's true that the fight sequences and some of the aliens were cheesily made, but I could live with it.

So I'd still think space opera on the cheap is viable, especially if the effects need not be too convincing, only there (use of blue screen to create sets that would otherwise be built, for example.)

 

[Deckerd]

Stargate has had its moments of brilliance in design, but it's main fault is relying heavily on the re-use of designs. They built a wonderful mideval village set for season nine of Stargate SG-1 and then proceeded to use it over and over again, ultimately with little or no change, for a total of 120 episodes between Stargate SG-1 (seasons 9, 10) and Stargate Atlantis (seasons 2, 3, 4, 5).

Stargate went on for ten seasons? Bloody hell.

 

[DWF]

Stargate has had its moments of brilliance in design, but it's main fault is relying heavily on the re-use of designs. They built a wonderful mideval village set for season nine of Stargate SG-1 and then proceeded to use it over and over again, ultimately with little or no change, for a total of 120 episodes between Stargate SG-1 (seasons 9, 10) and Stargate Atlantis (seasons 2, 3, 4, 5).

Seeing as how the set cost somce 3 million dollars ans was a massive indoor set I can't blame them for using as they did.

Consider the surprising number of times the Atlantis expedition stumbled across cities just like their own! Yes, the rare, apparently important city of the ancients actually has a copy or two lying around the Pegasus galaxy. Empok Nor felt like enough of a cheat on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and that was a modular, mass-produced space station. Also, speaking on Atlantis: they travel across the Pegasus galaxy from one planet to another, but don't worry, they look exactly the same (read: they get to re-use all their old establishing shots).

Yeah a grand total of once, they ran into somebody with the same main tower but only the Replicators had a full copy of the city.