Why don’t the ‘suits’ get Sci-Fi?

[Klaus]

You know what's really annoying? When I go to the 2 1/2 Men BBS and go onto the art forum, where we've been trying to lock down the floorplan for the apartment, and have to deal with the people who won't accept that the couch is ONLY 4 3/4 feet long and is at a 23 degree angle from the door!

...and the answer to this thread's query is simple -- they're suits! They only do what their limited conception of the universe allows them to.

Expecting them to grok sf is like teaching the proverbial pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

 

[Hitman]

Suits have no imagination. That's a requirement for being a suit.

 

[Steve Roby]

Why don’t the ‘suits’ get Sci-Fi?

Used to be, saying "sci-fi" was how people outed themselves as newbies or outsiders rather than science fiction fans -- i.e., if you got science fiction, you called it science fiction, or SF for short. In 1977 it started becoming a signifier of media SF fans who didn't have much interest in SF books.

But on to the point:

You can make TV or movies as smart as the best SF lit, and even the people who like media SF won't bother with it because there's not enough explosions. What did better at the box office in the last ten years: Solaris, Children of Men, and A Scanner Darkly, or The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith? People loved the dumbed down stuff with the special effects, not the intelligent movies made for adults. What do you expect the suits to learn from that?

 

[RJDiogenes]

With classic high-quality magazines on the verge of cancellation, media tie-ins dominating the book market and dull gray pablum like nuBSG replacing the colorful exotic concepts of the past in the pop culture arena, it really makes me worry about the future.

If nuBSG is the future, I don't want to be right!


...wait, that doesn't make any sense.

Actually....

 

[MNM]

Why don’t the ‘suits’ get Sci-Fi?

Used to be, saying "sci-fi" was how people outed themselves as newbies or outsiders rather than science fiction fans -- i.e., if you got science fiction, you called it science fiction, or SF for short. In 1977 it started becoming a signifier of media SF fans who didn't have much interest in SF books.

Which was always a pretentious attuitude....

 

[RJDiogenes]

Believing that high standards are pretentious is what led to the current low standards.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Why don’t the ‘suits’ get Sci-Fi?

Used to be, saying "sci-fi" was how people outed themselves as newbies or outsiders rather than science fiction fans -- i.e., if you got science fiction, you called it science fiction, or SF for short. In 1977 it started becoming a signifier of media SF fans who didn't have much interest in SF books.

Which was always a pretentious attuitude....

And it's far from being a commonly accepted definition. The vast majority of people neither know nor care about such distinctions (it's like the Trekkie vs Trekker thing).

I have no interested in books based on TV or movie franchises, and I use sci-fi to describe everything under the general category of science fiction. But I also often say "sf/f" to avoid pointless quibbles over where the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy lies.

Believing that high standards are pretentious is what led to the current low standards.

The "standards" aren't the topic of discussion but rather the use of an arbitrary label to signify who is part of the "in-crowd," which is a sure sign of pretentiousness as well as idiocy.

It's not even a widely accepted distinction. I could call a cat a dog, but it doesn't make it so.

 

[RandyS]

What the suits do "get" is that the size of the audience that really likes "science fiction" in this sense and can be depended upon week after week is too small and the wrong type of people for most sponsors.

So the question is: Why don't the "fans" get that it's all about money?

What is this world isn't?

 

[RandyS]

"Suits" tinker with everything, crime dramas, comedies, medical shows...everything. It's only more noticeable in Sci-Fi because the fanbase tends to obsess over all the details of the show including the behind the scenes details. People that watch House only care about who the guest star of the week is.

This is a very solid assessment.

What the suits do "get" is that the size of the audience that really likes "science fiction" in this sense and can be depended upon week after week is too small and the wrong type of people for most sponsors.

So the question is: Why don't the "fans" get that it's all about money?

I think most do, but silence about what a bummer it is would constitute acceptance, and there's got to be more to it than money. I mean, Star Trek can itself be considered some kind of exception to this, considering that it was a canceled series that was resurrected into a profitable franchise—and largely due to efforts of fans.

Yes, but they saw the fans as a way of making money which is the bottom line.

Fanbase+viewers=profit.

That's the way it works.

 

[Morfius]

"Suits" tinker with everything, crime dramas, comedies, medical shows...everything. It's only more noticeable in Sci-Fi because the fanbase tends to obsess over all the details of the show including the behind the scenes details. People that watch House only care about who the guest star of the week is.

This is a very solid assessment.

So the question is: Why don't the "fans" get that it's all about money?

I think most do, but silence about what a bummer it is would constitute acceptance, and there's got to be more to it than money. I mean, Star Trek can itself be considered some kind of exception to this, considering that it was a canceled series that was resurrected into a profitable franchise—and largely due to efforts of fans.

Yes, but they saw the fans as a way of making money which is the bottom line.

Fanbase+viewers=profit.

That's the way it works.

And if 'suit' interference made shows last longer, then I might buy that argument. If dumbing down shows made them last longer, that would explain why the 'suits' can get away with it withont getting fired. Instead, the opposite is true! Many many shows were dumbed down before cancelation.
Two examples are Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict, both of which had horendous last seasons before cancelation.

(Enterprise, is the exception, where the reverse happened)

Another example: After Will Robinson, Dr Z, Gary Coleman's Character on Buck Rogers, Adric, Wesley Crusher, and mAnkin Skywalker the 'suits' still don't get that the public hates boy genius sidekicks!

 

[Klaus]

Another example: After Will Robinson, Dr Z, Gary Coleman's Character on Buck Rogers, Adric, Wesley Crusher, and mAnkin Skywalker the 'suits' still don't get that the public hates boy genius sidekicks!

But most of those shows and movies were quite successful in pure suit-bottom-line terms for at least a while, no matter how much we discerning fen know those elements are crap... so the lesson the suits draw from that is not going to be the same as the lesson for us. They'll look and see a fickle audience and limited crossover appeal to the mundanes ... The appeal of a core potentially-faithful audience is what draws them to try sf/f, particularly in the cable world where acceptable ratings are lower than the old-school networks, but the difficulty of most sf/f to translate into the Holy Grail mainstream appeal of a Trek/Tolkien/Potter vibe is what also drives them away in most cases.

Which is why they ride it as long as it works and drop it like antimatter when it fades, just as they do with everything else.

I don't think the suits treat sf/f any differently than they do anything else. We just care and pay attention in this case.

 

[Australis]

The best example to look at here is Farscape. We get it, because it's a fairly intense space opera with a lot of SF tropes built into it, but was always going to be limited because those tropes don't have a wide appeal to a mass audience. Star Wars, otoh, was structured around the Hero's Journey, in the individual movies and in Anakin's and Luke's story arcs, had 'magic' in the Force, had kewl explosions, and recognisable characters types seen dozens of times before, the feisty kid that has to grow up, the old wise guy, the smart mouth maverick with a heart of gold, the bossy girl who just wants a man, and the black hat who finds redemption.

Star Wars was not as original as Farscape, but it was definitely more accessible. The suits got it (eventually), where they were never going to get Farscape.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

"Suits" tinker with everything, crime dramas, comedies, medical shows...everything. It's only more noticeable in Sci-Fi because the fanbase tends to obsess over all the details of the show including the behind the scenes details.

Exactly what I was going to say. While I disagree that only scifi fans obsess over the details, they are the only ones who care when scifi isn't done right.

Scifi shows do tend to be more "special" than regular television. I don't know if its because good scifi is rarer, or simply that something like Firefly, once cancelled, will never be again. Whereas, when a crime show or doctor show is cancelled there will no doubt be something very similar just around the bend to make everybody forget about the cancelled show.

 

[stj]

Suits have money. People with money don't think the world will change. SF that assumes everything really stays the same is deeply stupid, and there's not much there to "get." Not getting stupid is nothing to be ashamed of, or be condemned for. The better SF, which assumes things will change, tends to be offensive. The suits get that real well. Getting something and disliking it are two different things, after all.

As to the money---if it was just all about money, they'd all be making porn.