Is Religion Killing Good Sci-Fi Shows? [minimal politics]

[stj]

The dead coming back to life were presented as indistinguishable from hallucination. The black smoke was a physical phenomenon that could be defeated by sound. The struggle of good and evil as part of religion is assuming the conclusion that religion is a necessary part of life, implying science has good surrendering to evil.

For years, the characters in Lost found out nothing, not even from each other, much less from revelation. Locke made pronouncements about the Island's plans, but Locke was presented as kind of crazy. The initially cool dude was given a super-wussy backstory and his only friend was unceremoniously killed, in precisely a fashion as to indicate his faith was misplaced. It was years before an unambiguously supernatural event occurred.

The Cylons, however, at least had impossible powers completely irreconcilable with fictional reality (forget genuine reality!) Example: orgasm lights up their spine, yet they were indistinguishable from human beings.

 

[Deckerd]

(Btw, I like "mystical"; I kept fighting the urge to use the word "supernatural" to complain about elements I didn't like in a show that revolved around faster-than-light travel).

That's pure fantasy. I object to it being called science fiction since the 'science' in FTL, transporters, time travel, etc is non-existent.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Religion *is* the original SF, so... not really seeing a conflict here.

 

[JarodRussell]

Since Christianity is based on that storyline...

Christianity is based on the story of the Matrix? I must have the wrong Bible.

No, seriously, I think you'll get a lot of debate over whether the Matrix story is directly Christian-inspired or directly Christian-allegory. It can be seen as an allegory for other religions as well. Same with other movies, like LOTR and (as noted in the "cosmology" thread), Star Wars.

And if there's that much argument as to which religion a story represents, then it's questionable whether it represents a specific religious message at all.

Oh LOL. Maybe you missed it, but The Matrix was not the first story about chosen ones and prophecies.

Religion *is* the original SF, so... not really seeing a conflict here.

Without the science part. Religion is fantasy.

The Cylons, however, at least had impossible powers completely irreconcilable with fictional reality (forget genuine reality!) Example: orgasm lights up their spine, yet they were indistinguishable from human beings.

Would have made for an interesting episode. "We need to find the remaining Cylons. Let's have an orgy." - "So say we all!"

 

[Christopher]

The difference in all these is that they put it on the table. Issue 1 of Sandman, Morpheus is imprisoned by a magical circle. In Zauriel's first appearance in JLA, he's followed by the Host of Heaven who burn down half San Francisco and pull the moon out of its orbit. In the first episode of Evangelion, there's a giant alien angel that gets beaten up by a kid in a gross robot suit while he tries to go five minutes without masturbating. Probably. It's been a while since I've seen Evangelion.

The BSG miniseries, as I recall, was about robots who didn't like humans. Religion is mentioned, but treated as religion--as a piece of worldbuilding.

BSG did "put it on the table." Throughout the series, we were shown characters having mystical visions. From the beginning, the characters were guided by ancient holy prophecies that had a way of coming true. The evidence was clearly there all along, if we were willing to recognize it.

And no, it wasn't blatantly shown to us from the very beginning. It was insinuated into the story, presented ambiguously, challenging our expectations of what an SF show should be. And that's not wrong. It's not a bad thing to challenge your audience, to make them figure things out on their own rather than blatantly explaining everything up front.

I said it wasn't until the series finale that I really understood what kind of show BSG had been all along. But that's not to say that the evidence wasn't there. The evidence was blatantly there practically from the word go. I just didn't want to accept it for what it was. I saw it as an annoying intrusion into a show that I stubbornly persisted in defining as science fiction. But once I saw the finale, I realized I'd been wrong; that I should've recognized and accepted that the show was something different at its core than I wanted to believe it was. And no, they didn't tell me that up front, but it certainly should've been obvious by the end of the first season. There's nothing wrong with setting up a misleading first impression, so long as you subsequently give your audience the clues they need to figure out what's really going on. That's how mystery stories work, after all.

It's just that works, and genres, often create expectations in their audience, and to dash those expectations must be done with the greatest of care, if at all, and technically adroitly.

It's good to challenge the audience's expectations. Expectations are a trap. They narrow the mind. And it's the job of the storyteller to broaden and liberate the mind.

Besides, where's the fun in a story that has no surprises?

 

[Deckerd]

BSG was space opera rather than science fiction, since there wasn't any science.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Religion *is* the original SF, so... not really seeing a conflict here.

Without the science part. Religion is fantasy.

Speculative fiction, shall we say. In general religion was created to explain what man saw in the world, at a time when he knew little about it. Assuming that there must simply be a higher ranking power above humans as humans were above animals *was* science by the standards of the prehistoric peoples who first came up with the idea of gods and so on.

 

[stonester1]

Okay I wanted to post this in the The Neutral Zone and decided against it. In keeping to minimal politics let's discuss if shows content and storylines are being hurt by religion.
Airlock Alpha did an article on it today.

Religion and politics are the hot buttons in any society and using them as storytelling devices is risky. When used cautiously, both can be excellent tools to provoke debate and galvanizing story points. But when used with abandon and heedless of the consequences, they can completely derail or eclipse even the best of sci-fi shows.

Will the sci-fi community ever trust Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick to write a sci-fi show again? Has our faith in them been betrayed upon finding out that they were not actually writing sci-fi shows, but instead delivering pontification on their religious views?

Sure Star Trek TV series have religious aspects in stories but not in every episode.
Do you think there is too much religion in science fiction genre TV series?

Uh, no. Religion and spirituality is a vitally important part of culture, society and looking at the universe. IMO, you can't do without it.

 

[stonester1]

BSG was space opera rather than science fiction, since there wasn't any science.

AI, starship, robots. There was "science" there.

It's just that some science fiction fans want to define the genre too narrowly.

That only "x" is science fiction.

Which is, of course, nonsense.

 

[JarodRussell]

Okay I wanted to post this in the The Neutral Zone and decided against it. In keeping to minimal politics let's discuss if shows content and storylines are being hurt by religion.
Airlock Alpha did an article on it today.

Religion and politics are the hot buttons in any society and using them as storytelling devices is risky. When used cautiously, both can be excellent tools to provoke debate and galvanizing story points. But when used with abandon and heedless of the consequences, they can completely derail or eclipse even the best of sci-fi shows.

Will the sci-fi community ever trust Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick to write a sci-fi show again? Has our faith in them been betrayed upon finding out that they were not actually writing sci-fi shows, but instead delivering pontification on their religious views?

Sure Star Trek TV series have religious aspects in stories but not in every episode.
Do you think there is too much religion in science fiction genre TV series?

Uh, no. Religion and spirituality is a vitally important part of culture, society and looking at the universe. IMO, you can't do without it.

TOS, TNG, Stargate, etc... did fine without it.

Yes, Stargate uses religion in the way that every ancient God turns out to be an alien race having an influence on Earth, but that's not what jeferriestube8 meant, I suppose.

 

[Deckerd]

BSG ignored science altogether, right down to how they discovered any of it in the first place, in the same way that the word 'evolution' wasn't part of their universe.

 

[stonester1]

BSG ignored science altogether, right down to how they discovered any of it in the first place, in the same way that the word 'evolution' wasn't part of their universe.

They didn't "ignore" it, they just didn't go into the nuts and bolts of explaining it. And science fiction isn't just about the nuts and bolts of science. Science fiction is about taking esoteric ideas and exploring them...and the more interesting stuff, IMO, is focusing on the people in these fantastic settings and how they cope with all this.

Science fiction isn't just fetishizing and technobabble about nuts and bolts.

 

[stonester1]

Okay I wanted to post this in the The Neutral Zone and decided against it. In keeping to minimal politics let's discuss if shows content and storylines are being hurt by religion.
Airlock Alpha did an article on it today.




Sure Star Trek TV series have religious aspects in stories but not in every episode.
Do you think there is too much religion in science fiction genre TV series?

Uh, no. Religion and spirituality is a vitally important part of culture, society and looking at the universe. IMO, you can't do without it.

TOS, TNG, Stargate, etc... did fine without it.

Yes, Stargate uses religion in the way that every ancient God turns out to be an alien race having an influence on Earth, but that's not what jeferriestube8 meant, I suppose.

I noticed you left out DS9.

And yes, much of Trek gives the subject short shrift, but even they don't ignore it entirely. Nor should they.

Faith and spirituality has a place in any stories about sentient beings and their thoughts on the universe.

Any desire to retreat to science fiction as some kind of "religion free" zone is seeking to put some kind of artificial barrier, some kind of sanction on the storytelling that is simply unnecessary and does not at all reflect on the human experience.

What I want to know is why some science fiction fans feel the need to recoil at the idea that some DO take seriously the idea of diety/spirit/what have you.

 

[Deckerd]

BSG ignored science altogether, right down to how they discovered any of it in the first place, in the same way that the word 'evolution' wasn't part of their universe.

They didn't "ignore" it, they just didn't go into the nuts and bolts of explaining it.

In other words they ignored it. A people without any history. I think that's what bugged me more than anything else about BSG. They had 4 seasons to give these people some history and all they did was leaf through mythical books about prophesies and have flashbacks to when they had hair.

 

[stonester1]

BSG ignored science altogether, right down to how they discovered any of it in the first place, in the same way that the word 'evolution' wasn't part of their universe.

They didn't "ignore" it, they just didn't go into the nuts and bolts of explaining it.

In other words they ignored it.

Sorry, I don't accept that science fiction requires the "explanations".

 

[Deckerd]

In a movie I would agree with you but not in 4 seasons.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

^ Space Opera is a genre of science fiction.

I agree with stonester1. Despite the fact that the Cartwrights did not explain the physics of how their guns worked, "Bonanza" was still a western.

I love all the technical and scientific details described in Trek, but even when we don't have stressed engineers explaining the nuts and bolts of engines and warp fields, a battlestar can still jump. Heisenberg compensators are cool, but not needed to fly a story.

You might not care for the Battlestar Galactica flavor of science fiction, but it is science fiction. Maybe speculative fiction, the term Ellison likes to promote, is a better and more inclusive description, though, of all these stories.

 

[Nerys Myk]

In a movie I would agree with you but not in 4 seasons.

Not sure either format requires "explanations". Its nice when we get them though.

Nuts and bolts are an "extra" as well. Roddenberry famously said that the tech in Star Trek should be handled in a matter of fact manner. Just as when a Cop in a modern drama pulls a gun he doesn't explain how it works, neither does Kirk when he pulls his phaser. If anything the later Treks went too far in their technobabble explanations of the nuts and bolts.

I'm no fan of BSG, but I think they gave the characters and the society background and history. If only they had been likeable.

 

[Christopher]

Any desire to retreat to science fiction as some kind of "religion free" zone is seeking to put some kind of artificial barrier, some kind of sanction on the storytelling that is simply unnecessary and does not at all reflect on the human experience.

What I want to know is why some science fiction fans feel the need to recoil at the idea that some DO take seriously the idea of diety/spirit/what have you.

I think it should be pointed out that writing about religion is not the same thing as writing about divinity. Religion is a human institution revolving around the belief in divine entities or forces that shape our lives. It's certainly possible to write about a religion, i.e. a cultural institution, without postulating the reality of the things it believes in. So a science fiction story dealing with an alien religion or belief system is merely engaged in sociological speculation and worldbuilding, exploring what it is the alien society believes and how that belief affects their behavior and their lives. There's certainly no need to manifest those beliefs as concrete realities.

Alternatively, one can depict an alien religion built around something that has a secular, scientific explanation, as was done in Stargate and DS9 (though DS9 was a little more ambivalent about it toward the end). Again, just because the story depicts characters believing in something, that doesn't mean it's treated as objectively real (at least in the sense they believe) within the story.

Conversely, it's possible to write about supernatural forces without writing about religion -- because, again, "religion" means the cultural or individual practice of belief and devotion in those forces, rather than referring to the forces themselves. For instance, the recent Avengers short films that aired online as prologues to the new animated series included a couple of segments revolving around Thor and the Norse gods defending Asgard from Loki and the Frost Giants. It was a story about divinities, but it wasn't about religion, because nobody in the story was shown worshipping the Norse gods or practicing rituals in their honor.

 

[Deckerd]

In a movie I would agree with you but not in 4 seasons.

Not sure either format requires "explanations". Its nice when we get them though.

Nuts and bolts are an "extra" as well. Roddenberry famously said that the tech in Star Trek should be handled in a matter of fact manner. Just as when a Cop in a modern drama pulls a gun he doesn't explain how it works, neither does Kirk when he pulls his phaser. If anything the later Treks went too far in their technobabble explanations of the nuts and bolts.

I'm no fan of BSG, but I think they gave the characters and the society background and history. If only they had been likeable.

I didn't say I wanted explanations of how something worked, just some kind of background. I disagree with you that there was any background of substance beyond the odd flashback.