Why did Americans lose interest in space and space fiction in the mid 2000s?

[Christopher]

Maybe it just seems bad because of what Bonnie Hammer did and basically decided the Sci Fi channel wouldn't be about Sci-Fi and even had wrestling on it.

I am so sick of that myth. It's true that there was a phase when the network was light on space shows (nothing from the end of SGU and Caprica in 2011 until the debut of Dark Matter, Killjoys, and The Expanse in 2015, unless you count Defiance), and some people have a prejudice that it's not "true" science fiction without spaceships and aliens, but that's nonsense. A lot of quality SF over the decades has been in Earthbound or present-day/near-future settings.

And there was plenty of SF/fantasy programming on Syfy throughout the years when it also carried wrestling: the Stargate series, Eureka, Warehouse 13, Battlestar Galactica, The Dresden Files, Painkiller Jane, Flash Gordon, Sanctuary, Caprica, Haven, Being Human, Alphas, Lost Girl, Continuum, Defiance, Primeval: New World, Helix, Bitten, Metal Hurlant Chronicles. So it's strange that people have this perception that the network was light on genre shows in those years. The wrestling and the dumb-on-purpose monster movies were just how they paid the bills for all those other shows.

 

[Greg Cox]

And there was plenty of SF/fantasy programming on Syfy throughout the years when it also carried wrestling: the Stargate series, Eureka, Warehouse 13, Battlestar Galactica, The Dresden Files, Painkiller Jane, Flash Gordon, Sanctuary, Caprica, Haven, Being Human, Alphas, Lost Girl, Continuum, Defiance, Primeval: New World, Helix, Bitten, Metal Hurlant Chronicles. So it's strange that people have this perception that the network was light on genre shows in those years. The wrestling and the dumb-on-purpose monster movies were just how they paid the bills for all those other shows.

Amen. I get that the wrestling thing stuck in people's craw, but, honestly, it was only one night a week. Complaints that "all they ever show anymore is wrestling!" were always pure hyperbole.

 

[Alan Roi]

Indeed, I was just going to come here and post a list.
If you're not watching these shows, that's YOUR fault. (Not you Kelso, I meant anyone complaining.)

the list is even longer when you type it out this way:

The Expanse
Dark Matter
Star Trek Discovery
The Orville
Killjoys
For All Mankind
The Mandalorian
Lost in Space
Origin
Colony
The First
Nightflyers
Missions
Counterpart
Altered Carbon
Black Mirror
Twilight Zone
Love, Death + Robots
Agents of Shield
Mars
Critters A New Binge

That's just stuff that's aired in the past 2 or 3 years, but I'm sure I'm forgetting a show or four.

I liked Origin quite a bit, the spaceship setting was well utilized. Missions was decent, but wasn't there supposed to be a second season? And I love astronaut shows like For All Mankind and The First, they're reminders that going to space isn't easy, and we have to make some hard choices to do it. (But of course, we do it.)

And once again, that's just from the past few years.

And it's not even counting shows like Salvation, 8 Days, or Hard Sun, which are pretty much earth-bound shows where humans are worried about space. But if you want, that's another 3.

We're just about living in a golden age of sci-fi and space-based tv shows.

About half on your list is cancelled, though and add to that Worlds of PK Dick and SyFy's Deliverance & Krypton. Missions Season 2 was already released in France last September, not sure why its taking so long for subtitles to be added since Shudder supposedly cofinanced season 2.

I agree, golden age. There's practically enough out there and comming soon to run an entire a space opera channel.

Add for 2019 and upcoming:

Pandora (renewed)
Another Life (renewed)
Project Blue Book (space adjacent) on Season 2 shortly
Roswell New Mexico (space adjacent) on Season 2 and renewed
Star Trek: Picard (starting in a couple weeks, renewed
Avenue 5 (starting in a couple weeks)
Space Force (coming soon)
Consider Phlebas (coming soon)
CowBoy Bebop (coming soon)
Battlestar Galactica reboot (Peacock) (coming soon)
Foundation (coming soon)
Star Trek: Section 31 (coming soon)
Star Wars: Cassian Andor & Obi Wan Kenobi (coming soon)
Vagrant Queen (coming soon)
Resident Alien (space adjacent)(coming soon)
Dune:Sisterhood (coming soon)
Green Lantern (space adjacent)(coming soon)
Transmissions (quibi) (space adjacent)(coming soon)
Raised by Wolves (coming soon)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (coming soon)

 

[tomswift2002]

Even now I think one thing with Sci-Fi shows in general is that a lot of times I’ll find the show is more about the CGI than the actual story and plot. Back in 2002-2005 when I only saw about 18 episodes on a VHS that an uncle had taped off satellite for me, I found that there were a lot of recycled plots, or plots where 90% of the plot was used up in the first 5-10 minutes of the show or it seemed more like someone had dreamt of something that would look really cool in CGI, and they worked hard on the CGI parts of the show, but then forgot to incorporate them into a cohesive and well structured plot. It was kind of like “Star Trek: The Morion Picture” all over again.

But another thing that I found with Sci-fi show of the late-90’s even upto now, is the overuse of the season or series arc. “Babylon 5”, while it wasn’t the first show to present a serialized story on TV (I believe that honor belongs to Disney’s “Zorro” from 1957, where it’s Season 1 had 3 very well written and produced arcs of 13 episodes each, but the last 2 formed an even bigger arc over 26 episodes), Straczynski did engineer it before hand so that he knew where to put the major beats of the story (albeit the last ‘chapter’ of beats was thrown off by studio politics) since, as he described it, it was a “novel” on TV, or I like to think of it more as a 5-part series of novels on TV that tell a big story, just like you’ll get a trilogy, quadrilogy or quintilogy in prose with a story spread over 3, 4 or 5 individual books. Something that hasn’t been done in decades and was unique to 90’s North American TV. However, since then I’ve found a lot of shows have tried replicating it without success. “Smallville” for instance tried to tell the story of Superman’s teenage/college years however, the series was stretched out so long that the big plot points seemed to be thrown in here and there with no rhyme or reason, and you even got stalled character development. Seasons 1-5.5 seemed to develop Clark’s character, but then from 5.5 to Season 9, very little was done with Clark’s character after Jonathan Kent was killed off, and finally in Season 10 the producers seemed to bring back the idea of developing Clark just because the show was ending.

And even a few years later I was finding that “Fringe”, besides reinventing itself in the later seasons, also suffered from mediocre mid-season episodes. The first 4-6 episodes of a season would be good and would be about the overall arc, same too with the last 4-6 episodes, but then the episodes in between would kind of meander and not really develop the season narrative, or they would rehash stuff from the opening episodes, or try to run an entire episode on what might be part of the “C-plot” of the season without having the “A” & “B” plot even play a role.

But I’ve also been finding that sci-fi shows since the 90’s have also been trying to hard to put factual science in the stories. When I look at older sci-fi shows like the 1950’s “Flash Gordon” or “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger” or even in prose with “The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures”,
(Published 1954-1971) the stories didn’t try to explain how this invention or that device worked. (In the Tom Swift Jr. series there was a running joke with TSJR’s best friend Bud Barclay always interrupting him when TSJR was about to get real technical about a new invention, whether it would be how he planned to shield an atomic reactor pile that was small and light enough to fit in a regular car, or one that could fly). The authors did have some research behind the stories, but for the most part the invention or device worked because the story needed it to work; not real-life science. Over the past 10 years, I can’t recall how many times people have questioned how the Red Matter, from “Star Trek (2009)”, works or why it was even created in the first place and how the technobabble is missing from the film. And all that I can think of is that the producers and writers were taking a page from Sci-fi of the 1950’s to 1990’s and applying the ‘it works in the story, so why question it!’ approach.

 

[Christopher]

Amen. I get that the wrestling thing stuck in people's craw, but, honestly, it was only one night a week. Complaints that "all they ever show anymore is wrestling!" were always pure hyperbole.

Right. I mean, it's disingenuous to expect any commercial network to show only one kind of programming. It's got to fill up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so a lot of that is going to be filler -- infomercials, syndicated reruns, talk shows, whatever. Plus it only makes sense to offer a range of different kinds of show to appeal to different kinds of viewer and garner a larger audience overall.

And there have been so many niche cable networks that abandoned their original programming completely. A&E used to be Arts & Entertainment, devoted to fine arts, now it's just a generic cable network. Similarly, American Movie Classics gave up being a classic movie channel and is just AMC now. Discovery used to be a science channel, now it's "reality" crap. CourtTV used to be 24-hour legal and trial coverage, like C-SPAN for the court system, but then it switched to "reality" shows too and changed its name to TruTV. The Nashville Network abandoned its country-music focus and became TNN, then Spike, and I think it's now the Paramount Network. If anything, it's remarkable that Syfy has managed to maintain its primary focus and identity as a genre-focused channel for its entire lifetime, instead of changing completely into a more generic channel like so many of its peers.

 

[Alan Roi]

But another thing that I found with Sci-fi show of the late-90’s even upto now, is the overuse of the season or series arc. “Babylon 5”, while it wasn’t the first show to present a serialized story on TV (I believe that honor belongs to Disney’s “Zorro” from 1957, where it’s Season 1 had 3 very well written and produced arcs of 13 episodes each, but the last 2 formed an even bigger arc over 26 episodes), Straczynski did engineer it before hand so that he knew where to put the major beats of the story (albeit the last ‘chapter’ of beats was thrown off by studio politics) since, as he described it, it was a “novel” on TV, or I like to think of it more as a 5-part series of novels on TV that tell a big story, just like you’ll get a trilogy, quadrilogy or quintilogy in prose with a story spread over 3, 4 or 5 individual books. Something that hasn’t been done in decades and was unique to 90’s North American TV. However, since then I’ve found a lot of shows have tried replicating it without success. “Smallville” for instance tried to tell the story of Superman’s teenage/college years however, the series was stretched out so long that the big plot points seemed to be thrown in here and there with no rhyme or reason, and you even got stalled character development. Seasons 1-5.5 seemed to develop Clark’s character, but then from 5.5 to Season 9, very little was done with Clark’s character after Jonathan Kent was killed off, and finally in Season 10 the producers seemed to bring back the idea of developing Clark just because the show was ending.

And even a few years later I was finding that “Fringe”, besides reinventing itself in the later seasons, also suffered from mediocre mid-season episodes. The first 4-6 episodes of a season would be good and would be about the overall arc, same too with the last 4-6 episodes, but then the episodes in between would kind of meander and not really develop the season narrative, or they would rehash stuff from the opening episodes, or try to run an entire episode on what might be part of the “C-plot” of the season without having the “A” & “B” plot even play a role.

I personally would start with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers as the series arc originators. Yeah, they were played in movie houses, but movie serials were the TV of the times.

Since, like the original scifi serials, there are no 22 or so episode science fiction series these days (almost all now run in the 10-13 episode range) season arcs are really not much of an issue where it comes to mid-season padding., so IMO, serialization is no longer at risk of being poorly utilized where it comes to filling up a season run.

 

[Christopher]

I personally would start with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers as the series arc originators. Yeah, they were played in movie houses, but movie serials were the TV of the times.

There were many movie serials before those two; the first made in the US was Thomas Edison's What Happened to Mary in 1912, and there was at least one earlier German one in 1910. Before that, serialization was common in prose; many works of literature that we now regard as novels, such as the works of Charles Dickens, were originally magazine serials.

 

[Greg Cox]

There were many movie serials before those two; the first made in the US was Thomas Edison's What Happened to Mary in 1912, and there was at least one earlier German one in 1910. Before that, serialization was common in prose; many works of literature that we now regard as novels, such as the works of Charles Dickens, were originally magazine serials.

Trivia: What Happened to Mary is also commonly cited as the first-ever movie novelization, although it was originally serialized in a magazine before being collected in book form.

And when it comes to serial fiction, we should also remember the penny dreadfuls of the 1800s, like Varney the Vampyre and The String of Pearls, which existed alongside the likes of Dickens.

Closer to home, many classic SF novels were originally magazine serials or fix-up novels assembled from short stories published individually over the course of time: Tarzan of the Apes, Foundation, More Than Human, The Martian Chronicles, etc.

 

[kitik]

And there have been so many niche cable networks that abandoned their original programming completely. A&E used to be Arts & Entertainment, devoted to fine arts, now it's just a generic cable network. Similarly, American Movie Classics gave up being a classic movie channel and is just AMC now. Discovery used to be a science channel, now it's "reality" crap. CourtTV used to be 24-hour legal and trial coverage, like C-SPAN for the court system, but then it switched to "reality" shows too and changed its name to TruTV. The Nashville Network abandoned its country-music focus and became TNN, then Spike, and I think it's now the Paramount Network. If anything, it's remarkable that Syfy has managed to maintain its primary focus and identity as a genre-focused channel for its entire lifetime, instead of changing completely into a more generic channel like so many of its peers.

You forgot the old classic: "MTV used to play music."

 

[Alan Roi]

There were many movie serials before those two; the first made in the US was Thomas Edison's What Happened to Mary in 1912, and there was at least one earlier German one in 1910. Before that, serialization was common in prose; many works of literature that we now regard as novels, such as the works of Charles Dickens, were originally magazine serials.

I was referring to scifi visual media series comparable to modern TV serialization, but yes serial storytelling has been around for a long, long time.

 

[tomswift2002]

I personally would start with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers as the series arc originators. Yeah, they were played in movie houses, but movie serials were the TV of the times.

Since, like the original scifi serials, there are no 22 or so episode science fiction series these days (almost all now run in the 10-13 episode range) season arcs are really not much of an issue where it comes to mid-season padding., so IMO, serialization is no longer at risk of being poorly utilized where it comes to filling up a season run.

Sorry, but I’ve seen modern sci-fi series that are only 12 or 13 episodes long and they still manage to have filler episodes in the middle of the season (like “Star Trek Discovery”) that cause the season to sputter.

 

[Alan Roi]

Sorry, but I’ve seen modern sci-fi series that are only 12 or 13 episodes long and they still manage to have filler episodes in the middle of the season (like “Star Trek Discovery”) that cause the season to sputter.

OK, you don't like Discovery. But there aren't really any filler eps there. They all move either character, plot, or worldbuilding along, IMO.

IMO, with the exception of nostalgiafests like The Mandalorian or The Orville, precious few modern 10-13 scifi series have what's really 'filler episodes'. Even something on the low ends, such as Pandora or Another Life, the most episodic of the shows I watch, go to a lot more effort to use every episode it has to either move the overall arc or wordbuild in a way show from the episodic era didn't. You can't miss multiple episodes and have it not matter to your overall enjoyment of the series.

 

[Jayson1]

I think the wrestling issue wasn't so much that they had wrestling but kind of the symbolism of everything they were doing. Your getting ride of your space sci-fi at the same time. Plus lots of the sci-fi they were doing was earth based and grounded and also kind of the sci-fi version of a cop show. Farscape was especially bad one because it was very out their and weird and something clearly only a sci-fi fan would enjoy. Plus they also were going into horror as well more if I recall. You had the "Being Human" show and some other monster type of stuff.

Jason

 

[Christopher]

I was referring to scifi visual media series comparable to modern TV serialization, but yes serial storytelling has been around for a long, long time.

If you look over the list I linked to, there were a number of sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero-themed serials predating Flash Gordon: Homunculus in Germany in 1916, Harry Houdini's The Master Mystery in 1918, The Invisible Ray in 1920, etc.

I think the wrestling issue wasn't so much that they had wrestling but kind of the symbolism of everything they were doing. Your getting ride of your space sci-fi at the same time. Plus lots of the sci-fi they were doing was earth based and grounded and also kind of the sci-fi version of a cop show.

And as I already said, it's an ignorant stereotype that science fiction has to be set in space. That's like assuming that mysteries can only be set in Victorian drawing rooms and film noir doesn't qualify. It would be ridiculous to say that Alphas or Continuum wasn't real science fiction. Heck, I've said before that Eureka was, in a sense, more truly science fiction than most anything else in the network's history, because it was fiction specifically about scientists and their work. It certainly wasn't hard SF -- the science and tech were generally quite fanciful, although they got somewhat more grounded in later seasons -- but it was very much about the work and process of science.

Plus they also were going into horror as well more if I recall. You had the "Being Human" show and some other monster type of stuff.

So what? Science fiction, fantasy, horror, they're all part of the same family of speculative fiction, and they've never been strictly segregated in popular culture; indeed, they frequently overlap. The Aliens franchise is as much sci-fi as horror, Star Wars is as much fantasy as space opera, etc.

The idea that Syfy somehow stopped being a sci-fi network just because it shifted away from space opera is nonsense. It's an artificially narrow, exclusionistic, culturally illiterate standard for defining what SF is. That's what I'm saying. I don't need you to explain to me why people thought that. I've been fully aware of their position for a long time. But that position is fundamentally wrong.

 

[Jayson1]

If you look over the list I linked to, there were a number of sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero-themed serials predating Flash Gordon: Homunculus in Germany in 1916, Harry Houdini's The Master Mystery in 1918, The Invisible Ray in 1920, etc.




And as I already said, it's an ignorant stereotype that science fiction has to be set in space. That's like assuming that mysteries can only be set in Victorian drawing rooms and film noir doesn't qualify. It would be ridiculous to say that Alphas or Continuum wasn't real science fiction. Heck, I've said before that Eureka was, in a sense, more truly science fiction than most anything else in the network's history, because it was fiction specifically about scientists and their work. It certainly wasn't hard SF -- the science and tech were generally quite fanciful, although they got somewhat more grounded in later seasons -- but it was very much about the work and process of science.




So what? Science fiction, fantasy, horror, they're all part of the same family of speculative fiction, and they've never been strictly segregated in popular culture; indeed, they frequently overlap. The Aliens franchise is as much sci-fi as horror, Star Wars is as much fantasy as space opera, etc.

The idea that Syfy somehow stopped being a sci-fi network just because it shifted away from space opera is nonsense. It's an artificially narrow, exclusionistic, culturally illiterate standard for defining what SF is. That's what I'm saying. I don't need you to explain to me why people thought that. I've been fully aware of their position for a long time. But that position is fundamentally wrong.

I don't think it's ignorance so much as a preference. Some people just like the space stuff more than the earth based stuff. Clearly you can do both well and people can enjoy both. I'm sure many people who were complaining were also fans of the X-Files and Xena and Buffy as well. It's just maybe despite liking that stuff their just more of a spaceship or stuff in space type of person. Well that and maybe because spaceship stuff used to be more rare or feel more rare because you would have budget issues making it hard to do those kind of shows. So when one goes away you always worry you might not get another for awhile. Not so much a issue now but was one back then.


Jason

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it's ignorance so much as a preference. Some people just like the space stuff more than the earth based stuff.

People are entitled to their preference. They are not entitled to the egotism of assuming their own personal preferences are universal laws, that anything that doesn't cater exclusively to their tastes is objectively wrong. They are not entitled to confuse "That channel no longer carries my preferred flavor of sci-fi" with "That channel has no sci-fi at all anymore." That's just narcissistic and self-serving, and those of us who don't share their narrow tastes are 100% entitled to object to their assumption that we don't exist or don't matter.

 

[tomswift2002]

OK, you don't like Discovery. But there aren't really any filler eps there. They all move either character, plot, or worldbuilding along, IMO.

IMO, with the exception of nostalgiafests like The Mandalorian or The Orville, precious few modern 10-13 scifi series have what's really 'filler episodes'. Even something on the low ends, such as Pandora or Another Life, the most episodic of the shows I watch, go to a lot more effort to use every episode it has to either move the overall arc or wordbuild in a way show from the episodic era didn't. You can't miss multiple episodes and have it not matter to your overall enjoyment of the series.

Sorry, but Discovery does have filler episodes like “Into The Forest I Go” “Point of Light” “An Obol For Cheron” & “Saints of Imperfection”. POL, AOFC & SOI were overbloated and Tully’s storyline felt like a 1 episode story that was being stretched over 3 episodes. It might’ve been fine if it had started as a “C” plot in one episode and then became the “A” in the next. But it felt like SOI was created more to get the characters back into the CGI world of the spore drive, rather than having an interesting plot.

 

[Alan Roi]

Sorry, but Discovery does have filler episodes like “Into The Forest I Go” “Point of Light” “An Obol For Cheron” & “Saints of Imperfection”. POL, AOFC & SOI were overbloated and Tully’s storyline felt like a 1 episode story that was being stretched over 3 episodes. It might’ve been fine if it had started as a “C” plot in one episode and then became the “A” in the next. But it felt like SOI was created more to get the characters back into the CGI world of the spore drive, rather than having an interesting plot.

Except none of these eps you mention are filler episodes. Each have important season arc plot points, character arc points and worldbuilding points in them that would leave viewers scratching their heads in following episodes what is going on.

 

[JD]

Right. I mean, it's disingenuous to expect any commercial network to show only one kind of programming. It's got to fill up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so a lot of that is going to be filler -- infomercials, syndicated reruns, talk shows, whatever. Plus it only makes sense to offer a range of different kinds of show to appeal to different kinds of viewer and garner a larger audience overall.

And there have been so many niche cable networks that abandoned their original programming completely. A&E used to be Arts & Entertainment, devoted to fine arts, now it's just a generic cable network. Similarly, American Movie Classics gave up being a classic movie channel and is just AMC now. Discovery used to be a science channel, now it's "reality" crap. CourtTV used to be 24-hour legal and trial coverage, like C-SPAN for the court system, but then it switched to "reality" shows too and changed its name to TruTV. The Nashville Network abandoned its country-music focus and became TNN, then Spike, and I think it's now the Paramount Network. If anything, it's remarkable that Syfy has managed to maintain its primary focus and identity as a genre-focused channel for its entire lifetime, instead of changing completely into a more generic channel like so many of its peers.

They have actually started a new Court TV that is back to focusing just on trials. There were advertising it a bunch back a month or two ago.

 

[theenglish]

Personally, while I enjoy modern sensibilities on continuity and season story lines I really miss stand alone episodes. There are merits to stories told within single episodes and often these episodes are important to characterization and backstory.

The Marvel Netflix shows for example really suffered trying to tell season long stories. They also suffered from tying themselves to the same stories across multiple seasons. Iron Fist and Punisher particularly suffered from this. All shows would have benefitted from stand alone episodes.

Now that The Mandalorian is so popular we might see some changes to the format.