Is There Room for an SF TV Show/Movie Optimistic About the Future?

[Andonagio]

One of the reasons I love Star Trek so much is the suggestion of a better, quasi-utopian future where Earth has resolved most of its planetary conflicts and is out exploring the galaxy. It's a celebration of human ingenuity and the power of science and technology if used property.

Yet so much of SF TV and films over the past ten years seems to enjoy painting darker, grittier futures. In Firefly, humanity has successfully colonized the cosmos but is now ruled by a totalitarian government. Civilization is all but destroyed in the new BSG (and it takes place several hundred thousand years in the past, anyway). Even Enterprise got into the act, blowing up parts of Florida in at the end of season 2 and then swerving into a lot of political and military intrigue. And I don't need to expound on films such as Terminator: Salvation, the Matrix franchise or even Avatar.

Do you think modern audiences would accept a new SF TV show or film that portrays a more utopian, hopeful future? A future where humanity has solved a lot of its social, military and environmental problems and improved itself through advancements in science and technology? Why? And why aren't there more shows/films like that on nowadays, anyway?

 

[RoJoHen]

Do you think modern audiences would accept a new SF TV show or film that portrays a more utopian, hopeful future?

Sure, as long as it's good.

And why aren't there more shows/films like that on nowadays, anyway?

Conflict is easier to write than non-conflict.

 

[Andonagio]

Conflict is easier to write than non-conflict.

Heh, well, you can't really have a story without some kind of conflict. Trek had plenty of that, even with its utopian future.

I'd just like to see more shows/films portray the kind of future that Trek portrays.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

One of the reasons I love Star Trek so much is the suggestion of a better, quasi-utopian future where Earth has resolved most of its planetary conflicts and is out exploring the galaxy.

Even William Shatner describes TOS during season 1 as not this.

interviews were taped just prior to Star Trek's NBC premiere in September 1966 on the set of the episode TOS "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

Rare 1966 Video Interviews with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy On The Set

Even Enterprise got into the act, blowing up parts of Florida in at the end of season 2 and then swerving into a lot of political and military intrigue.

The Second Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, AKA Operation New Dawn military campaign began on March 20, 2003.
Enterprise Ep.#226 The Expanse (blowing up parts of Florida and 7 million people on Earth aired on 5/21/2003 only two months after the start of that Gulf War which was very much a pro-America patriotic episode seed planting for the Xindi War in season 3. Just like the 1960's Cold War in TOS...
Surely the producers on ENT knew the Second Gulf War and troop occupation within the country would not be over during season 3 and it was planned this way. Hell if they made it a war specifically over Dilithium it would have been much more of a relation to oil as an energy source...

Do you think modern audiences would accept a new SF TV show or film that portrays a more utopian, hopeful future?

United States audiences did not accept one that aired on ABC in the Summertime focused mainly on a spaceship-based series with 8 characters going on a six year solar system mission. as I said last Summer about it:

Thank god for a spaceship-based television series on TV where there are not lasers, rayguns, phasers [I know it sounds sacrilige].

“Defying Gravity" 13-episode ABC sci-fi astronaut space series
which was cancelled after airing only 8 episodes. (An additional 5 episodes aired in other territories for a total of 13 episodes.)

There may be another TV show within 12 months and we'll see if audiences accept it:
"Plymouth Rock" series on CW for 2010


A more appropriate question would be Do you think modern audiences would accept a new SF TV show on cable TV starting in the Autumn that portrays a more utopian, hopeful future?

As far as movies. Since they are action scifi or horror scifi or scifi police procedural genres always mixed I don't think your futuristic description will fit.

 

[Greg Cox]

STAR TREK has always been the exception. When you look at most of the other major sf franchises: PLANET OF THE APES, TERMINATOR, ROAD WARRIOR, X-FILES, they've tended to the ominous . . . .

 

[Mistral]

STAR TREK has always been the exception. When you look at most of the other major sf franchises: PLANET OF THE APES, TERMINATOR, ROAD WARRIOR, X-FILES, they've tended to the ominous . . . .

Even B5, although optimistic in the end, ran a darkly themed approach. And BSG-well, if you've seen it, you know. Optimism is a rare commodity in the future, it seems...

 

[Andonagio]

STAR TREK has always been the exception. When you look at most of the other major sf franchises: PLANET OF THE APES, TERMINATOR, ROAD WARRIOR, X-FILES, they've tended to the ominous . . . .

Even B5, although optimistic in the end, ran a darkly themed approach. And BSG-well, if you've seen it, you know. Optimism is a rare commodity in the future, it seems...

I think this is a common trend in SF across the board. If you look at SF literature (especially postwar), a lot of it tended to be really dark and dystopian. Utopian stories (like those of Isaac Asimov) tended to be the exception rather than the rule. I'm sure there are numerous reasons for this, but that's a whole other thread (which I may start in the near future).

Star Trek was groundbreaking by portraying a better future during the height of the Cold War. Given the success of the franchise both then and now, I'm surprised more shows and films haven't picked up on this theme. It makes me wonder why there aren't more utopian stories out there and whether audiences would watch them if they were produced.

To take it a step further, I'd like to see utopian stories where the main cast is already united and cooperative. One of the things I loved about TOS and TNG is that so much of the conflict was between the crew and external antagonists, not between members of the crew. Sure, there was enough intra-crew conflict to keep things interesting, but it never evolved into the soap opera-style dramas that we see on a lot of contemporary prime-time television (SF and otherwise). Both generations of the Enterprise crew were usually very mature about how they handled things, which was a testament to humanity's growth since the 20th century.

 

[Trent Roman]

Writing dark is easy; writing bright (well) is hard. I'd like to think there's still a place for more upbeat (if not necessarily utopian) science-fiction, but who's interested in producing it? Even Trek, poster child of the better future it once was, has snubbed that approach. ENT had it's extended War on Terror analogy; the recent film reboot revels in casual genocide; Pocket's novel continuity is shattered by a devastating Borg invasion; Star Trek Online features a relentless war against Species 8472, etc. Trek or otherwise, it would seem we've reached the point where the only acceptable sci-fi is bleak sci-fi.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[scnj]

Trek was a utopia? I hate to say it, but while a future where everyone works for the betterment of mankind sounds lovely, people would still have to work really shitty factory jobs, and now for no money. Also, my species being represented by a military space fleet, which is kicked around by just about every single other species doesn't appeal to me either.

 

[Andonagio]

Trek was a utopia? I hate to say it, but while a future where everyone works for the betterment of mankind sounds lovely, people would still have to work really shitty factory jobs, and now for no money. Also, my species being represented by a military space fleet, which is kicked around by just about every single other species doesn't appeal to me either.

I think the idea in Trek was that technology had taken away all of the jobs that nobody wanted, although the franchise admittedly glossed over points like this. I think a new show could examine in more detail than Trek how a utopian future might actually work.

 

[xortex]

It's a well known fact that tigers (good writers with vision and no credits) are scared of tsetsie flies (your average credited mediocre writer) esp. when they gang up and become a cluster like bad robot. Mediocre writers do not like good writers.and vise versa.

 

[Greg Cox]

It's probably worth pointing out that STAR TREK is not and never was "utopian." It was optimistic, in that it portrayed a future that seemed to be going in the right direction, but it was certainly never meant to be a perfect world without drama, conflict, or heartbreak.

Moreover, the original series deliberately took place out on the "final frontier" where life was still difficult and dangerous, far from whatever peaceful and prosperous society had evolved back on Earth. "Utopia" was never STAR TREK'S subject matter. Progress and exploration were . . . despite the fact that humanity was still (as we were often reminded) a primitive and child-like species.

 

[stj]

Reactionary ideologies hold that human nature is sinful, whether they use religious terminology or not. They believe that there is no such thing as society, just the cumulative addition of individuals. And human nature is eternal. Therefore, the notion of social progress is a vicious delusion, pushed for self-interested individuals. The very effort to improve society leads to the greatest evils, in fact.

The term "utopian" (which means "nowhere" after all) prejudices discussion by presuming that progress is impossible. The misuse of "utopian" to describe something more like a millennial kingdom or heaven itself is a straw man argument. No utopian ever thought a better society would keep people from dying, which is quite enough to keep it from being heaven on Earth. In fact, most utopians are pretty cautious about suggesting that everyone inevitably finds true love in their utopia. (Well, excepting Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia.)

Star Trek was utopian, despite the militant efforts to deny the obvious. Berman's Trek was not.

Conflict is not drama. If it were, every horse race is a drama. Choice is drama.

There is no room for a progressive science fiction show. But there should be. Today's networks, broadcast and cable, are committed to purveying the acceptable ideology.

 

[Andonagio]

There is no room for a progressive science fiction show. But there should be. Today's networks, broadcast and cable, are committed to purveying the acceptable ideology.

Okay, okay, forget the word "utopian." Trek's future was at the very least optimistic about humanity's future and its ability to work together to explore the final frontier, something I'd like to see in more SF TV shows and movies.

And just what is the "acceptable ideology" right now?

 

[Mistral]

Trek was a utopia? I hate to say it, but while a future where everyone works for the betterment of mankind sounds lovely, people would still have to work really shitty factory jobs, and now for no money. Also, my species being represented by a military space fleet, which is kicked around by just about every single other species doesn't appeal to me either.

Are you sure we watched the same shows?

 

[T'Baio]

Trek was a utopia? I hate to say it, but while a future where everyone works for the betterment of mankind sounds lovely, people would still have to work really shitty factory jobs, and now for no money.

Replicators and transporters.

The utopian vision of Star Trek, at least TNG and beyond, relies on these two pieces of technology.

 

[stj]

Okay, okay, forget the word "utopian." Trek's future was at the very least optimistic about humanity's future and its ability to work together to explore the final frontier, something I'd like to see in more SF TV shows and movies.

And just what is the "acceptable ideology" right now?

Even forgetting the word itself, the animus against the notion of progress isn't going away. People are bad, life is a struggle, you have to be ruthless to survive. They set up cockamamie game shows where people are egged on to be at each others' throats and call it "reality!"

In Berman Trek, they imagined that in a world with replicators a father could still be a ne'er-do-well despised by his college educated son for his financial failures. This is crazy. (The idea the same man could still afford illegal genetic enhancement of said son was merely stupidity.) Families will still keep teen children around instead of letting them go on wanderjahr or move out, because they can't imagine ordinary people having such privileges.

Living memory tells us that things change, but in modern TV scifi, the important things (like social institutions,) never change. As in the example above, this is crazy. Perhaps calling this stolid denial of reality an acceptable ideology seems suspiciously political, but, like forgetting the word "utopian," what else could we call the lavish praise for and insistence on such nonsense?

 

[Ubik]

Do replicators and transporters clean toilets? Or build other replicators and transporters? Fancy engineers might design them, but there would still have to be blue collar workers to put everything together, just like today's cars and washing machines. We've seen no evidence in any Trek series that there are robots to build these things. No, Star Trek is absolutely not a utopia, although it is, admittedly, a more optimistic future than most filmed sci-fi.

As to the question of whether an optimistic sf series would work now, my answer is, no, probably not. What's the interest? Why should we want to see one? The best sf I can think of is used as social criticism, a warning, about what we are currently doing wrong. There is very little point in a tv show that tells us, "Don't worry, whatever we're doing wrong now, and we are doing many things wrong, at some point, in the far future, we'll get it right, and rather than showing you all the struggles we went through to finally get it right, we're going to skip all that depressing and realistic stuff, and jump right to afterwards, when everything is going great, and leave all those conflicts and struggles kinda vague, and then try to come up with some interesting stories." That may work for a Sunday morning kid's show, or a future sitcom or something, but not a show aimed at adults who are looking for intelligent social commentary.

That worked in Star Trek and Star Trek: TNG because it had never been done before. As Voyager and Enterprise and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have proven, you can never go home again. Deep Space Nine was the natural progression after TNG, a less optimistic, more realistic future. Literature naturally gets more complex and conflicted and dark as it matures, that's the natural direction for it to go, because life is complex and conflicted and dark, and the more mature a tv show gets, the more like real life it becomes.

Nah, I wouldn't want to see a purely optimistic future. That's childish. I want intelligent social commentary, imperfect humans, conflict, a REALISTIC future, and difficult moral issues - something to sink my teeth into. I loved Star Trek and TNG when I was 15. Now, I want more. As some sf critic once said, "The Golden Age of science fiction is 12."

 

[paudemge]

I think what trek showed more than a utopia, was simply we didn't kill ourselves during the cold war. In TOS there was virtually nothing shown about civilian life so it is hard to make any judgments on human civilization, all we had to go on was a ship full of professionals where there was very little "day to day" conflict between the crew.

But we can clearly see that prejudice still existed in the 23rd century, instead of prejudice against a different colored human, it is against a half human/half Vulcan. And other themes where likewise transferred from humans to aliens. Leaving the impression that humans lived in perfect harmony.

 

[stj]

DS9 was less realistic, made dumb social commentary, has fantasy figures for characters instead of real people (count the number who had some mystery connected with their birth and/or some unique destiny to fulfil!) As for being dark, nothing DS9 ever did was half as dark as Course: Oblivion.