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

[scnj]

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.

This I can agree with.

To answer the original question, no there isn't. Not right now at least. Since the success of NuBSG, audiences have wanted their sci-fi dark and gritty. While optimistic sci-fi may come back in the future, it's not what people want right now.

 

[Greg Cox]

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.

Well put, although I never got the impression that humans lived in perfect harmony. Starfleet types debated amongst themselves, sometimes passionately, plus you still had all sorts of con men, pigheaded politicians and bureaucrats, romantic disappointments and rivalries, rough-and-ready mining colonies, reckless scientists, disgruntled saboteurs, etc. Not to mention all the Starfleet commanders who went rogue or cracked under the pressure.

Certainly, the implication was that significant progress had been made on many big social evils, that nobody back on Earth was suffering from starvation, poverty, civil wars, or pollution, or whatever, but the fundamentals of human nature hadn't changed. We had just managed to get our house in order a little more. And managed to avoid being conquered by apes or computers.

It was NextGen that tried to put forward the idea that future humans had involved beyond interpersonal conflicts, but pretty much everybody quickly realized that was a mistake. Trek writers have been backing away from that notion ever since.

 

[Andonagio]

Well put, although I never got the impression that humans lived in perfect harmony. Starfleet types debated amongst themselves, sometimes passionately, plus you still had all sorts of con men, pigheaded politicians and bureaucrats, romantic disappointments and rivalries, rough-and-ready mining colonies, reckless scientists, disgruntled saboteurs, etc. Not to mention all the Starfleet commanders who went rogue or cracked under the pressure.

Certainly, the implication was that significant progress had been made on many big social evils, that nobody back on Earth was suffering from starvation, poverty, civil wars, or pollution, or whatever, but the fundamentals of human nature hadn't changed. We had just managed to get our house in order a little more. And managed to avoid being conquered by apes or computers.

Well, yes, this is what I was driving at in the OP. None of the Treks imply humanity is perfect, but they DO imply that we make a lot of progress over the next four hundred years. A more optimistic future doesn't mean that we won't have human conflict and culture clashes, but that conflict would be handled more maturely than the childishness we see on a lot of soaps.

Future-based SF tends to come in two flavors: utopias give us hope that we can achieve a better future, and dystopias warn us of the dangers we could face if we don't try to make a better future. Both types are healthy to the cultural psyche, but the latter seems to be much more prolific than the former. Ideally, SF would have an equal balance of the two, and I'm looking to understand why this isn't so.

It was NextGen that tried to put forward the idea that future humans had involved beyond interpersonal conflicts, but pretty much everybody quickly realized that was a mistake. Trek writers have been backing away from that notion ever since.

I think TNG has a lot of interpersonal conflict. Look at the postwar tensions with the Cardassians, or Picard's conflict with Bok, or Troi's antagonistic relationship with her mother, or Q, or Sela, or Gowron...The list goes on.

What TNG shows is that humanity was more mature in how it handled interpersonal conflicts. There isn't a lot of screaming, crying or cowering in fear. Emotions aren't bottled up for years only to be released in one explosive moment. Sure, things are tense at times, and emotions often run high, but the crew acts like adults through it all.

Take "Bloodlines," for instance. Picard thinks he has a son that he didn't know about. There's a lot of tension between him and Jason, and they have to deal with some very complex emotions, but never once do they raise their voices or snub one another. There's strong communication between the two from the beginning, and much of the tension comes as the two try to move forward with this new revelation instead of harboring resentment. It's a testament to humanity's growth that these two handle the situation so well. Why can't characters in other shows display this level of maturity?

 

[stj]

What are "the fundamentals of human nature?"

Isn't there a whole series, Mad Men, devoted to showing how "human nature" has changed in living memory?

Science fiction is not prognostication, so failing to predict the new "human nature" is not a failing. But babble about the superior writing that adheres to the "fundamentals of human nature" is merely a way of saying, conforms to prevailing ideology.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

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.

The bleeding heart liberals of Hollywood dislike this story type, because it seems to endorse a militaristic us-vs-them mentality that has fallen out of fashion, at least with them.

(But with the general American public, my hunch is that a sci fi show based mostly on us-vs-them conflict would sell. If I were attempting to seriously bring space opera back to TV, that is exactly the tack I would take.)

Just look at the BSG reboot. You can't come up with a more us-vs-them conflict than "killer robots attempt to exterminate humanity." Yet, the bleeding heart liberals producing the show felt compelled to devise ways to excuse the Cylons' behavior, even if that required tying the plot logic in knots and turning the story into a joke.

Isn't there a whole series, Mad Men, devoted to showing how "human nature" has changed in living memory?

Mad Men demonstrates how much cultural mores have changed, something that is a lot more on the surface than human nature, which as far as I can tell, is exactly the same today as in the era depicted on Mad Men.

What TNG shows is that humanity was more mature in how it handled interpersonal conflicts. There isn't a lot of screaming, crying or cowering in fear.

Which is why TNG is such a snooze. On TOS, the characters do have strong emotional reactions - they are afraid, angry, confused, despairing - but since they're Starfleet officers, they have to repress their emotions and behave in a professional manner.

If you want Starfleet folks to behave professionally, that's fine; they should be doing that. But even Spock isn't emotionless, and characters who don't visibly struggle with their emotions - even if the audience has to be observant to see that struggle - are a bore.

The best Star Trek series is DS9. That's the type of drama that sci fi stories need - characters who deal with extreme situations and strong emotions, and visibly struggle to maintain their professionalism and, for the most part, decorum.

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.

QFT.

 

[Trent Roman]

Utopianism isn't intelligent social commentary? Somewhere in a vault in St. Dunstan's Church, Sir Thomas More's head is spinning in its niche. Utopia is nothing but social commentary, as it is an exercise is social creation--what constitutes the ideal society, how is it governed and organized, what values does the author uphold and what is discarded as counterproductive, and so on and so forth. These sorts of fantasies are treasure troves of cultural information.

I wonder if it's a conflict between comparison and contrast. Most of the popular sci-fi seems to operate by comparison; i.e. "our situation is analogous to..." 9/11, or the war on terror, or environmental depredation, etc. Now, I do not want to dismiss that approach--there is great value in using the alienation of the speculative genres to get us to look at the familiar from a new perspective. But in many ways, it is easier, and more direct, than what utopianism does, which is present a society that is not like ours, that has come to some important distinction in the mind of the creator(s), and the appeal lies in that very difference between the contemporary and the projected. In many ways, it requires greater creativity--from both the producer and the audience--and is perhaps why it has fallen out of favour to scenarios and characters who are just the same as today gussed up with some sci-fi trappings that they try as hard as they can to ignore. I wonder why they even bother sometimes--just give each new cop show differently coloured uniforms and be done with it, instead of pretending to differentiate them with an element of genre.

Realism becomes a problem when taken too far--as I daresay tends to be the case. There's a reason why fiction means something that is NOT reality. We have to deal with reality and real people day after day--why, then, want entertainment that simply regurgitates the same crap back at you? If I want to watch reality, I'll put a chair at my window. When I turn to fiction, I want difference--something that makes me think. This is not as it is. Which do I prefer? Why do I prefer it? How is this arrived at? What are the likely consequences? What I most assuredly do not want is listening to more whining about how someone's wife/boyfriend/investment partner/tranny hooker/furry little creature from Alpha Centuri is cheating on them.

And blaming human nature only extends so far. For one thing, 'human nature' is itself a cypher; people tend to load onto it whatever they don't want to take actual responsibility for. It used to be thought that things like racism were simply human nature, but like much else, it is far more dependant on nurture than nature. We have--at an admittedly glacial pace--been evolving a more ethical society. What was commonplace one hundred years ago is intolerable today, and the same them by comparison to their forebears a hundred years previous. We have a hard time learning from these lessons, as our tendecy to have a civil rights debate with every fucking time an ostracized group mainstreams shows; I'm not looking to deny that people, generally speaking, are fucking morons. But we do progress. The victories of those who want us to be better gradually become crystallized in our culture and institutions, and suddenly the next generation aren't raving bigots about whatever their parents were raving bigots about (though they may yet find something else to be raving bigots about--like I said, morons.) What something like Trek shows is that this process of accumulation goes on, and though it can never achieve perfection, is is possible to be better--quite better!--in the future, just as we now are better than we were in the past. An awful lot of science-fiction completely ignores the social aspects; they just transpose modern-day people (and quite often the dregs at that!) into a new context and never bother to ask themselves how people might have changed in addition to the technology, etc. Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune... these people do not think as we do, and it is an amazing experience to get into that mindset.

What TNG shows is that humanity was more mature in how it handled interpersonal conflicts. There isn't a lot of screaming, crying or cowering in fear. Emotions aren't bottled up for years only to be released in one explosive moment. Sure, things are tense at times, and emotions often run high, but the crew acts like adults through it all.

Yes, this, absolutely. I've said it elsewhere: it puzzles me that shows described as more 'mature' actually tend to be about adults behaving like infants. That's not mature; it's pathetic, excreable, the kind of people you want out of your life, not import more of. The reason why Picard is a character that has never been equalled is because he embodies these notions of a truly mature humanity (recent misguided efforts to turn him into a gibbering imbecile notwithstanding), knowledgeable, refined, dignified, passionate and compassionate without letting those characteristics hijack his reason; a man who is a byword for gravitas. Something to strive for.

Watching some of the other stuff that makes it to our screens large and small, and it seems like drama has been wholly replaced with melodrama, nigh-psychotic people jumping about and yelling, with acting and ideas subsurvient to a kind of emotional spewdom. It sometimes feels like one is watching a barely concealed version of the Jerry Springer show. "Tonight--'Is your baby mama actually a crazy homicidal Cylon bitch?' And after the break, 'My superhero boyfriend is too busy saving lives to give me the lovin' I need.'"

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Ubik]

Utopianism isn't intelligent social commentary? Somewhere in a vault in St. Dunstan's Church, Sir Thomas More's head is spinning in its niche. Utopia is nothing but social commentary, as it is an exercise is social creation--what constitutes the ideal society, how is it governed and organized, what values does the author uphold and what is discarded as counterproductive, and so on and so forth. These sorts of fantasies are treasure troves of cultural information.

I wonder if it's a conflict between comparison and contrast. Most of the popular sci-fi seems to operate by comparison; i.e. "our situation is analogous to..." 9/11, or the war on terror, or environmental depredation, etc. Now, I do not want to dismiss that approach--there is great value in using the alienation of the speculative genres to get us to look at the familiar from a new perspective. But in many ways, it is easier, and more direct, than what utopianism does, which is present a society that is not like ours, that has come to some important distinction in the mind of the creator(s), and the appeal lies in that very difference between the contemporary and the projected. In many ways, it requires greater creativity--from both the producer and the audience--and is perhaps why it has fallen out of favour to scenarios and characters who are just the same as today gussed up with some sci-fi trappings that they try as hard as they can to ignore. I wonder why they even bother sometimes--just give each new cop show differently coloured uniforms and be done with it, instead of pretending to differentiate them with an element of genre.

Realism becomes a problem when taken too far--as I daresay tends to be the case. There's a reason why fiction means something that is NOT reality. We have to deal with reality and real people day after day--why, then, want entertainment that simply regurgitates the same crap back at you? If I want to watch reality, I'll put a chair at my window. When I turn to fiction, I want difference--something that makes me think. This is not as it is. Which do I prefer? Why do I prefer it? How is this arrived at? What are the likely consequences? What I most assuredly do not want is listening to more whining about how someone's wife/boyfriend/investment partner/tranny hooker/furry little creature from Alpha Centuri is cheating on them.

And blaming human nature only extends so far. For one thing, 'human nature' is itself a cypher; people tend to load onto it whatever they don't want to take actual responsibility for. It used to be thought that things like racism were simply human nature, but like much else, it is far more dependant on nurture than nature. We have--at an admittedly glacial pace--been evolving a more ethical society. What was commonplace one hundred years ago is intolerable today, and the same them by comparison to their forebears a hundred years previous. We have a hard time learning from these lessons, as our tendecy to have a civil rights debate with every fucking time an ostracized group mainstreams shows; I'm not looking to deny that people, generally speaking, are fucking morons. But we do progress. The victories of those who want us to be better gradually become crystallized in our culture and institutions, and suddenly the next generation aren't raving bigots about whatever their parents were raving bigots about (though they may yet find something else to be raving bigots about--like I said, morons.) What something like Trek shows is that this process of accumulation goes on, and though it can never achieve perfection, is is possible to be better--quite better!--in the future, just as we now are better than we were in the past. An awful lot of science-fiction completely ignores the social aspects; they just transpose modern-day people (and quite often the dregs at that!) into a new context and never bother to ask themselves how people might have changed in addition to the technology, etc. Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune... these people do not think as we do, and it is an amazing experience to get into that mindset.

What TNG shows is that humanity was more mature in how it handled interpersonal conflicts. There isn't a lot of screaming, crying or cowering in fear. Emotions aren't bottled up for years only to be released in one explosive moment. Sure, things are tense at times, and emotions often run high, but the crew acts like adults through it all.

Yes, this, absolutely. I've said it elsewhere: it puzzles me that shows described as more 'mature' actually tend to be about adults behaving like infants. That's not mature; it's pathetic, excreable, the kind of people you want out of your life, not import more of. The reason why Picard is a character that has never been equalled is because he embodies these notions of a truly mature humanity (recent misguided efforts to turn him into a gibbering imbecile notwithstanding), knowledgeable, refined, dignified, passionate and compassionate without letting those characteristics hijack his reason; a man who is a byword for gravitas. Something to strive for.

Watching some of the other stuff that makes it to our screens large and small, and it seems like drama has been wholly replaced with melodrama, nigh-psychotic people jumping about and yelling, with acting and ideas subsurvient to a kind of emotional spewdom. It sometimes feels like one is watching a barely concealed version of the Jerry Springer show. "Tonight--'Is your baby mama actually a crazy homicidal Cylon bitch?' And after the break, 'My superhero boyfriend is too busy saving lives to give me the lovin' I need.'"

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

Yes, utopian literature is primarily social commentary, but it's also primarily awful fiction. Thomas More's Utopia is a slog, as are most of H. G. Wells' various late-career attempts (I thoroughly enjoyed Shape of Things to Come, but it contains no cohesive narrative). In fact, I can't offhand think of a single utopian piece of literature that really works as literature. Dystopias, yes (1984, Fahrenheit 451, Man in the High Castle, etc). But utopias? Not really.

Also, if you have a problem with adults in fiction acting like adolescents, then I'm afraid you have a problem with real-life people too. Yes, Picard is a compelling character, but he's a completely unrealistic ideal. So are all the characters on TNG. People blathering on and crying and screaming and hating themselves, as you sort of describe it - well, that's people. That's everyone. If television, in general, is trying to get closer and closer to some kind of accurate mirror to reality (but heightened), then you're going to see more and more adults acting like adolescents (ie, real people), not less.
You may call it melodrama if you like, but then I'd say most real people's fights and conflicts with themselves, coworkers, friends and family members would appear to be melodrama as well. That's just how people are.

 

[Christopher]

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.

Actually the idea in Firefly/Serenity was that the Alliance government was no better or worse than the United States government. To most people in the core worlds, like Simon, River, and Inara before they left for various reasons, life would've been prosperous, safe, and reasonably free. But the show was told from the perspective of the outsiders, the libertarians, the people who were suspicious of central government control and preferred their independence. It wasn't meant to be a cliched good-vs.-evil space opera, but a more nuanced depiction of a world like ours, a world where both the government and those who oppose it have good qualities and bad qualities.

One way of thinking of FF/S is that it's like a Star Trek series told from the perspective of the Maquis. Most people who live in the Federation see it as a peaceful, benevolent society, but the Maquis saw it as a hypocritical one that abandoned people in need for the sake of political expediency, and saw Starfleet's efforts to contain the Maquis as the government using the military to impose its unjust will. Something like Serenity, which exposes a strain of corruption and conspiracy within this basically democratic government, is akin to a story in which a band of Maquis freedom-fighters discover and expose something horrible that Section 31 has done. If we'd only ever seen the Federation from that perspective, we'd probably think it was totalitarian. Conversely, if we'd seen a series set in the FF/S universe but from the perspective of people living on the prosperous core worlds, we'd probably think the Alliance was a benevolent, freedom-loving society and that the Browncoats were a bunch of dangerous renegades and criminals who needed to be stopped.

After all, the Operative in Serenity clearly wasn't a cruel or malicious man. He sincerely believed that his society was good and benevolent and that it required him to do unsalutary things that would render him an outcast from that good society in order to preserve its safety so that it could get on with being good. But when he discovered the deep-seated corruption he was unknowingly defending, he turned against it. A man like that would not have served a government that was totalitarian. The only way the story makes sense is if the Alliance government was basically benevolent, or at least as much so as any realistic government ever gets, but had become rife with corruption.

Besides, come on, it's a Joss Whedon series. Ever since Angel, Whedon's oeuvre has increasingly questioned and rejected the standard notions of good and evil. In Angel, the idea of a straightforward conflict between right and wrong was increasingly deconstructed, the lines constantly blurred, until the final season where the good guys were actually working within the evil organization. In FF/S and Doctor Horrible, the protagonists are criminals. Dollhouse takes it the furthest -- none of its major characters are really good or evil, but are highly flawed characters making horrible compromises and rationalizing horrific actions in the name of what they convince themselves is necessity or the greater good. For that matter, you could say the deconstruction of good and evil in Whedon's work goes back to Buffy, where the lines got increasingly blurred as we got more sympathetic or reformed demons, as the origin of Slayers was revealed to have a dark side, as the good witch Willow turned evil, etc. So any analysis of a Whedon show in terms of a simple good-vs.-evil or freedom-vs.-totalitarianism narrative is simply missing the point.

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?

It's worth pointing out that there's a new anthology of prose SF, Shine, which is dedicated to breaking with the similarly dystopian trend of prose SF and focusing on optimistic near-future tales. I gather it's gotten a pretty good critical response, and it's exposed that a number of SF editors feel there's too great a lack of optimistic SF in prose. Maybe this anthology is the start of a trend in the other direction, and maybe that trend will extend to film and TV as well.

It's also worth pointing out that Shine got so many submissions that the editor had to start an online magazine for the overflow, a free blog called DayBreak Magazine. And it just so happens that the next story to be published on DayBreak, debuting this Friday, is "No Dominion" by yours truly. It's free, so I don't think I'm violating any board rules by mentioning that.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Utopias are dull, undramatic and ultimately nonsensical. As someone once observed, "all utopias begin with the assumption that everyone will be satisfied with 'their share' and then devote great detail as to whether that share will be delivered by motorcar or helicopter."

Trek became a bore when the producers began taking the utopianism seriously.

A show like Firefly is, IMAO, enormously optimistic - it assumes that people who share values we currently consider important will exist in hundreds or thousands of years, that they'll be free, live in a world of relative wealth and be capable of exploring space, etc. That kind of story is fundamentally different from a real dystopia, like 1984.

Unless, of course, by "optimistic" one actually means "clean, colorful and well-lit."

 

[Mistral]

Christopher-bookmarked! Looking forward to Daybreak Mag.

 

[Christopher]

And it's important to clarify that optimistic SF isn't the same as utopian SF. Indeed, utopian SF is often deeply cynical. The thrust of the stories in Shine/DayBreak is that we can make things better, but it will be hard and prolonged work and will create new kinds of problems. They aren't about a perfect world, they're about the struggle to build a better world.

 

[xortex]

Well star Trek has liberated holograms cleaning their toilets and Star Trek had important social commentary, imperfect Humans - Harry Mudd, conflict, esp. with admirals and difficult moral issues - a Private little war.
There's no doubt our flaws will get greater but that might just make them easier to solve.

 

[Anwar]

To answer the OP's question:

Yes.

 

[stj]

Strictly speaking, "utopian" isn't the same as "optimistic" but the irresistible tendency is to criticize optimistic as fundamentally utopian, while actually meaning millennial.
I have no idea how someone could somehow think the existence of "rough and ready mining towns" is incompatible with a utopian society, unless they have some wacky straw man ideal of a perfect world. In practice, it seems to be some sort of religious ideal used to condemn the whole notion of a better society as inevitably imperfect.
To me, it's childish to insist happiness means indefinite bliss, or true love is endless romantic ecstasy, and therefore there's no happiness or true love. "Optimism" is not a synonym for Pollyana's view of the world but the people committed to condemning human nature are driven to condemn the very idea of progress, and hence, optimism.

The problem of course, is that no one knows what the fundamentals of human nature are. Conservatives look in their navels and find the fundamentals of human nature. (Which tends to be what they thought the world was in their Golden Age, i.e., twelve.)

Ordinary folk bereft of the divine revelations can only see the superficial social mores, the fundamentals of human nature being visible only to those who peer into the soul. But looking at such foolishly insignificant things as how people actually behaved, no one would be fool enough to take seriously a Mad Men where the men and women acted like those today. Somehow, though, if you stick today's men and women on a spaceship, they can act any damn fool way the writer wants and someone will hail it as fidelity to the fundamentals of human nature! I suppose this kind of sophistication is to be expected from someone who seems to take moronic phrases like "bleeding heart liberals of Hollywood" seriously. The need to pretend that reactionary science fiction is somehow more realistic comes from embarrassment. Have the courage of your convictions!

The excuses made for the various absurdities of the dark and gritty AKA reactionary school are so flagrantly tendentious as to give the game away. The notion that the Alliance government in the Firefly universe isn't "totalitarian" (a propaganda term that gives away a lot about the user,) is ridiculous. The Alliance government's command is so total that they can disappear millions of colonists and a whole planet down the metaphorical memory hole! This is 1984 with a vengeance. The general defense that Joss Whedon eschews simplistic good vs. evil scenarios is too obtuse to note that everyone being evil is also simplistic. Choosing between two goods has dramatic tension, but such is never (and will never be) the story for these writers. Their work is about reaffirmation of the immutability of sinful human nature and the hopelessness of change. At least, until the final episode, when everything dissolves into a bath of sentimentality.

Everyday, billions of people are in fact satisfied with their share. They don't rob, don't murder, don't burn down the houses of the rich, don't lynch the rich, and even pay more taxes than the rich, while peaceably abiding by the laws. It takes extraordinary arrogance to be so ignorant of the world about you. The fool who spouted that tripe about how utopias ignore the question of how people are to be satsified with "their" share blindly assumed that the greed of the owning class was human nature. It is exactly the same as those stupid "reality" shows which deliberately arrange things so people are in conflict. Isn't it sad when reality game shows embody your world view?

 

[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. 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.

more than just the past 10 years. Try 20.
I came across a quote this morning from Roddenberry's son:

Trek Nation Director Scott Colthorp :

...many of our interviewees commented that Star Trek began to lose much of its optimistic tone after Gene’s passing in 1991.

from a Wired.com article last month:
Q&A: Trek Nation Director Scott Colthorp on Star Trek, Optimism and Dissed Fans



​

 

[xortex]

You, have you ever kissed a girl? I didn't think so.

 

[Ubik]

Strictly speaking, "utopian" isn't the same as "optimistic" but the irresistible tendency is to criticize optimistic as fundamentally utopian, while actually meaning millennial.
I have no idea how someone could somehow think the existence of "rough and ready mining towns" is incompatible with a utopian society, unless they have some wacky straw man ideal of a perfect world. In practice, it seems to be some sort of religious ideal used to condemn the whole notion of a better society as inevitably imperfect.
To me, it's childish to insist happiness means indefinite bliss, or true love is endless romantic ecstasy, and therefore there's no happiness or true love. "Optimism" is not a synonym for Pollyana's view of the world but the people committed to condemning human nature are driven to condemn the very idea of progress, and hence, optimism.

The problem of course, is that no one knows what the fundamentals of human nature are. Conservatives look in their navels and find the fundamentals of human nature. (Which tends to be what they thought the world was in their Golden Age, i.e., twelve.)

Ordinary folk bereft of the divine revelations can only see the superficial social mores, the fundamentals of human nature being visible only to those who peer into the soul. But looking at such foolishly insignificant things as how people actually behaved, no one would be fool enough to take seriously a Mad Men where the men and women acted like those today. Somehow, though, if you stick today's men and women on a spaceship, they can act any damn fool way the writer wants and someone will hail it as fidelity to the fundamentals of human nature! I suppose this kind of sophistication is to be expected from someone who seems to take moronic phrases like "bleeding heart liberals of Hollywood" seriously. The need to pretend that reactionary science fiction is somehow more realistic comes from embarrassment. Have the courage of your convictions!

The excuses made for the various absurdities of the dark and gritty AKA reactionary school are so flagrantly tendentious as to give the game away. The notion that the Alliance government in the Firefly universe isn't "totalitarian" (a propaganda term that gives away a lot about the user,) is ridiculous. The Alliance government's command is so total that they can disappear millions of colonists and a whole planet down the metaphorical memory hole! This is 1984 with a vengeance. The general defense that Joss Whedon eschews simplistic good vs. evil scenarios is too obtuse to note that everyone being evil is also simplistic. Choosing between two goods has dramatic tension, but such is never (and will never be) the story for these writers. Their work is about reaffirmation of the immutability of sinful human nature and the hopelessness of change. At least, until the final episode, when everything dissolves into a bath of sentimentality.

Everyday, billions of people are in fact satisfied with their share. They don't rob, don't murder, don't burn down the houses of the rich, don't lynch the rich, and even pay more taxes than the rich, while peaceably abiding by the laws. It takes extraordinary arrogance to be so ignorant of the world about you. The fool who spouted that tripe about how utopias ignore the question of how people are to be satsified with "their" share blindly assumed that the greed of the owning class was human nature. It is exactly the same as those stupid "reality" shows which deliberately arrange things so people are in conflict. Isn't it sad when reality game shows embody your world view?

Sorry, I'm trying to sift through your wordiness here to make out some of your points....

Number one, you seem to be interpreting darker television sf as being hopeless, or condemning of human nature. I think you're wrong there. I have never seen an sf show, no matter how dark and gritty it gets, which is actually nihilistic, that actually hates humans, has no hope for them, and expects no progress ever to be made. BSG, for example, regardless of how dark the material got, was always an inherently optimistic show. It presented us with an extremely difficult situation, in which most human beings would probably have mostly succumbed to despair and given up, and allowed them to find their way to survival without giving up that thing, that ethical system, that makes them human. Of course they made mistakes along the way, which is realistic and dramatic, but ultimately these were still people we could hope for.

I'm not sure what you're advocating for, when you say that having to choose between 2 goods contains dramatic tension. Are you arguing that there should be no serious stakes if a wrong choice is made? For there to be dramatic tension, the consequences for a wrong choice need to be disastrous, catastrophic. The choices that characters face must have the potential to lead to tragedy. That's why, in no matter what imagined future world, there must always still be evil in the world. That's also realistic. There always has been evil, and there always will be. That is not to say that humanity will never improve - it has improved reasonably over the millenia, if not significantly enough to get excited about, and it no doubt will continue to improve at the same slow rate. But it will never eliminate greed, selfishness, apathy, or ambition. So, any future world imagined on an sf tv show must still contain these elements.

Last, just because people don't revolt does NOT mean they are satisfied. That's just silly. They may be too afraid, or too beaten down, to revolt. Or, they could be victims of propoganda that tells them they should be happy with their lot. None of that implies that they are, in truth, satisfied. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of people on this planet are deeply dissatisfied with their lot - and rightfully so, considering the horrendous discrepancies between rich and poor on this planet (discrepancies which have been there for thousands and thousands of years, and yes, will probably be there for thousands and thousands more.)

 

[Christopher]

I thought that BSG for most of its run was far too cynical and pessimistic. In real life, disasters and struggles for survival bring out the worst in many people, yes, but they bring out the best in others. For every story of cruelty and venality and selfishness and suicidal despair, you can find stories of incredible kindness and bravery and hope and humor. I felt BSG dwelled unrealistically on the negative side, with only a very few characters representing the positive and even them being increasingly compromised.

However, the series finale made the whole thing look more optimistic to me, because it was revealed -- not sure there's any point in spoiler-boxing this, but I'm going to anyway -- that

Spoiler: end of BSG

the "human" race of the Twelve Colonies was fundamentally flawed and unable to break free of the pattern of destruction until it merged with the equally incomplete Cylons, thereby creating a new race -- us -- that combined the best of both and had the potential to overcome that fatal cycle that trapped our forebears. So the series wasn't really saying that humans are scum who will almost always default to the worst possible decision or reaction -- rather, it was saying that the reason these characters were so royally screwed-up is because they were less than we are, that they were missing something crucial that could only be gained by transcending the limits of Colonial and Cylon and creating something new and more complete, our own human race. And that means that we have the ability to break the cycle and become something better. We are the goal the characters were striving for, the answer they needed all along. And that's an extremely humanistic message.

 

[stj]

Sorry, I'm trying to sift through your wordiness here to make out some of your points....

Those were comments on at least four different posts. The remarks on each are fairly short but it does add up, sorry.

Number one, you seem to be interpreting darker television sf as being hopeless, or condemning of human nature. I think you're wrong there. I have never seen an sf show, no matter how dark and gritty it gets, which is actually nihilistic, that actually hates humans, has no hope for them, and expects no progress ever to be made. BSG, for example, regardless of how dark the material got, was always an inherently optimistic show. It presented us with an extremely difficult situation, in which most human beings would probably have mostly succumbed to despair and given up, and allowed them to find their way to survival without giving up that thing, that ethical system, that makes them human. Of course they made mistakes along the way, which is realistic and dramatic, but ultimately these were still people we could hope for.

Religous people get a great deal of satisfaction in condemning sinful humanity while still loving themselves. They may relish dreams of apocalypse while still investing in stocks and real estate. Amour propre dislikes flagrant nihilism. Such writers always find the people in the mirror exceptions to the rule.

The thing is, most of the supposedly realistic science fiction of this sort imagines the people as being more like us than the people in Mad Men or any other competent historical work (or for that matter, any foreign fiction or drama.) The only way these people could claim it's more realistic is, they mean more realistic about human nature, which in their view, cannot change. Again, "optimistic" is used largely as meaning "utopian," which is to imply "impossible," without troubling to sustain the charge. As to whether this is typical, you cite a counterexample in the new BattleStar Galactica.

In the miniseries, Adama made a speech suggesting humanity may not be worthy of survival, an expression religious condemnation of humanity. (It's true fans tacitly interpret it as a liberal comment on US policies creating the enemies who perpetrated 9/11, but they insist BSG is not to be intererpreted as a 9/11 series. Since the series never showed the Cylons as oppressed in any fashion such interpretation is untenable.) Sure enough, the show ended with the humans abandoning their entire civilization as a failed experiment, and they all die. Only some DNA is passed along. Insofar as the human Cylons are people, they are completed annihilated at the hands of God, except for the few in love with Baltar, Helo and Starbuck. And they will all die too. I really can't see that you're making a case.

I'm not sure what you're advocating for, when you say that having to choose between 2 goods contains dramatic tension. Are you arguing that there should be no serious stakes if a wrong choice is made? For there to be dramatic tension, the consequences for a wrong choice need to be disastrous, catastrophic. The choices that characters face must have the potential to lead to tragedy. That's why, in no matter what imagined future world, there must always still be evil in the world. That's also realistic. There always has been evil, and there always will be. That is not to say that humanity will never improve - it has improved reasonably over the millenia, if not significantly enough to get excited about, and it no doubt will continue to improve at the same slow rate. But it will never eliminate greed, selfishness, apathy, or ambition. So, any future world imagined on an sf tv show must still contain these elements.

If there is a meaningful choice to make, there is dramatic tension. If one choice is catastrophic, the choice is a no brainer, which is the opposite of dramatic. You're talking about melodrama. As to the certainty that there will always be human evils such as "greed, selfishness, apathy or ambition" ignores the existence of natural evils. It also assumes that social evils are either nonexistent, or merely are sums of individual' evil. These are the politically correct ideological assumptions and they do indeed say there is no place for "optimistic" (about human nature and society) science fiction, which is what I've been saying. Except I regret and resent this.

Last, just because people don't revolt does NOT mean they are satisfied. That's just silly. They may be too afraid, or too beaten down, to revolt. Or, they could be victims of propoganda that tells them they should be happy with their lot. None of that implies that they are, in truth, satisfied. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of people on this planet are deeply dissatisfied with their lot - and rightfully so, considering the horrendous discrepancies between rich and poor on this planet (discrepancies which have been there for thousands and thousands of years, and yes, will probably be there for thousands and thousands more.)

The implication of that smug BS about utopia ignoring how people wouldn't be satsified with their share assumed that people would rise up against the fraudulent utopia that didn't pander to every whim of the voracious masses. In other words, that human nature would keep a "utopian" society from working, because its human nature to want more, and more, and more. The low standard of satisfaction as expressed by not rising up in revolt is sufficent to refute that canard. As for their happiness, well, money can't buy you happiness, but poverty is generally blessed with unhappiness. This is unfairly asymmetrical but seems to be true. As for the notion that there has to be a ruling class suppress the mob, well, people in the past were sure some had to be slaves while others were owners; some had to be serfs while others were aristocrats; some had to be the commoners while one was king. The grotesque thing about conservatism as a political ideology (as opposed to temperament or moral ideal,) is that it is the one ideology that really has been exploded time and again.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

[ I think a new show could examine in more detail than Trek how a utopian future might actually work.

Check out Wednesday's article:

Trek was (and still is really) the only sci-fi product to give us positive reinforcement. It was the only sci-fi concept that, instead of showing the future as some bleak, horrific, cannibalistic anarchy, it reflected us as a people who really did learn from our own mistakes. It gave us a reason to think we would be rewarded for evolving.

"The Next Generation" took a lot of crap for being too “politically correct.” I mean, didn’t Roddenberry and CBS know that the sky was falling! How dare they be so positive?!

And yet, Gene Roddenberry stuck to his guns and made writers stay positive when it came to depicting the future of humanity. Why? Because in my opinion, he was assuring that his creation stayed true to what actually defined it.

But if there’s ever going to be a new Trek television show, I would hope The Powers That Be remember that when times are tough sometimes a teeny-tiny, yet blatantly obvious message of hope really can blossom into a mega-million dollar, 40-years-and-counting, thriving franchise.

it could be a good show right now for the very same reasons it was a good show back then -- because the lessons and the morals are still necessary for us to hear.

Was Trek only viable during 'The Good Ole Days'?
Jun-9-2010