Why is there no pure Sci-Fi on TV today? Part Deux

[jefferiestubes8]

He sums it up pretty good.

Matt Roush: Sci-fi traditionally is a tough sell for the mainstream networks, especially of the darker and meatier variety. Launching shows in this genre is an expensive and risky proposition, and as you'll see when you sample most of this fall's new output, risk isn't what the networks are particularly interested in right now. (NBC's The Event does have an element of the fantastic in its premise, so we'll see how that goes. It can't be worse than the last few seasons of Heroes.)

Otherwise, a partial list of sci-fi/fantasy titles in active development that have caught my interest includes: AMC tackling horror in a zombie series, The Walking Dead; BBC America's current success with Doctor Who and a second season of Being Human coming later this summer (which is being developed into a U.S. format by Syfy, and I'll reserve judgment on that until later), plus a new season of Primeval for next year as well as a bona fide sci-fi series, Outcasts, set on a remote planet; Torchwood's much anticipated new season, courtesy of Starz; HBO's epic fantasy series A Game of Thrones, also for next year. And with the exception of the morose Caprica (which is beginning to pique my interest), while Syfy has gone rather light as it aims for mass appeal in many of its sci-fi/fantasy series (Eureka, Warehouse 13, etc.), I'm intrigued by at least one title on their slate: Alphas, whose pilot will be directed by Lost's Jack Bender. Will any of these be as rich as Battlestar Galactica or as full of potential as Firefly or as peculiar and dangerous as Dollhouse? We'll see. But yes, let's hope it doesn't take too long to get Joss Whedon back doing TV, whether it's network or cable — or the Internet, for that matter.

June 20, 2010
http://www.seattlepi.com/tvguide/422082_tvgif20.html

Other upcoming TV sci fi are all mixed genre shows
“Murmurs” Sci-Fi time-travel drama by CBS in development

Unfinished Business

Alien Nation to be remade by TIM MINEAR on SyFy

'Gattaca' series on TV -as a dramatic police procedural


since the old thread Why is there no pure Sci-Fi on TV today? is from last July I thought I'd start a new one to continue the discussion.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Well, let's get some terminology straight. Science fiction and "sci-fi" are two seperate things. What SF fans call "sci-fi" shows are a mixture of SF and fantasy elements, like Star Trek. There is some sound science in Trek, but also fantasy, like time travel, FTL travel, and matter transporters. Whether or not you believe we may have these things one day, at this moment with what we know about real physics, they are pure fantasy. Traveling faster than light is about as realistic as traveling slower than stopped.

"Sci-fi," in other words, is fantasy dressed up as science fiction. That doesn't mean it can't be good, but "pure sci-fi" makes as much sense as calling something a "pure hybrid.". If you mean "science fiction" -- stories grounded in real science, stories which, given what we know today about science actually could happen in the future -- then I have an answer for why we don't see real SF on television. There isn't an audience for it.

Even back in science fiction's literary golden age decades ago, SF was always a niche market. Thousands of SF readers aren't enough to keep a real SF show on the air. Fantasy has always had a wider audience. That may not always be the case. As our knowledge and technology developed, SF will only become more relevent to our society. I'm hoping that starts to happen soon and we start seeing some attempts at real SF, because quite frankly, I'm sick of Vampire shows, and I don't care for more space opera a la Trek and SGU.

EDIT: It's been what... a year since Alien Nation was announced. Doesn't sound like much has happened on that front.

 

[Davros]

Just because all the science isn't sound doesn't make a story any less science fiction.

 

[Fist McStrongpunch]

BS. Science fiction is just a sub-genre of fantasy in which the fantastical elements are given some scientific or technological explanation.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Just because all the science isn't sound doesn't make a story any less science fiction.

That's like saying "just because there aren't any jokes in the film doesn't mean it isn't a comedy." Actually, it does. Science fiction does have a specific definition, as does any other genre. It's not an insult to say a show or film or book isn't science fiction if it isn't, in fact, science fiction.

BS. Science fiction is just a sub-genre of fantasy in which the fantastical elements are given some scientific or technological explanation.

Nope.

Fantasy stories in which the fantastic elements are given some science-y explanations are what's called "sci-fi," basically fantasy stories dressed up as science fiction.

SF and fantasy may fall under the blanket title speculative fiction. But SF and fantasy are distinct. If a story is governed by rules which remain consistent throughout the story but are not consistent with real life science, the story is fantasy. If the story is governed by rules which are consistent with real life science, the story is science fiction.
If the rules of story change based on the writer whim... well, that's just a badly-written story.

That's not to say one thing is better than another. But it's silly to pretend there's no distinction. A crime drama and a mystery may be classified under "police procedurals" and may be watched by audiences with similar tastes, but "The Untouchables" is certainly not a mystery, and no one's going to get bent out of shape if I or anyone else says so.

 

[Kelthaz]

Sci-fi is a short form for Science Fiction. They mean the same thing. The correct terminology would be hard science fiction and soft science fiction.

 

[Greg Cox]

Fantasy stories in which the fantastic elements are given some science-y explanations are what's called "sci-fi," basically fantasy stories dressed up as science fiction.

.

Except that, in the real world, and even in fandom, I don't think anyone uses those terms that way. You have very firm ideas on the difference between SF and scifi, but I'm not sure where those definitions were laid down as law--except maybe an article in a fanzine somewhere.

As I've argued before, any definition of "science fiction" that excludes, say, FLASH GORDON, STAR WARS, or STAR TREK bears no resemblance to the way the term is actually used in real life--in book stores, on video shelves, in libraries, in casual conversation.

Heck, that definition would probably exclude most of the works of H. G. Wells . . . .

 

[Hober Mallow]

A good roundtable discussion of science fiction vs. sci-fi.

 

[Caliburn24]

Sci-Fi, of whatever type, is generally expensive, thus you need a wider audience. But Sci-Fi particularly when it goes harder/darker/military becomes a largely male domain that essentially cuts off half the potential audience for the show and makes it even harder to get off the ground.

I'm not saying females do not watch Sci-Fi, many do, but the demographic is skewed heavily in favor of males.

The death of Sci-Fi on TV was the rise in power, size and importance of the female demographic!

Oh, and reality shows, they suck.

 

[Greg Cox]

A good roundtable discussion of science fiction vs. sci-fi.

Oh yeah, Harlan's been making that argument forever. But, in terms of the language, that battle was lost decades ago. "Scifi" has long since passed into the vernacular as a standard abbreviation for science fiction, and nobody but purists and academics would argue that BUCK ROGERS or STAR WARS aren't really science fiction.

It's like pedantically arguing that "gay" only refers to a carefree mental state. You can find an old dictionary definition to back you up, but that's not how anyone uses the word anymore.

(If nothing else, "scifi" serves a usual function because, unlike SF, it can't be confused with "San Francisco.")

 

[Davros]

Just because all the science isn't sound doesn't make a story any less science fiction.

That's like saying "just because there aren't any jokes in the film doesn't mean it isn't a comedy." Actually, it does. Science fiction does have a specific definition, as does any other genre. It's not an insult to say a show or film or book isn't science fiction if it isn't, in fact, science fiction.

No, it's more like saying just because you don't like all the jokes in a movie doesn't mean it's not a comedy.

 

[Rii]

Ten posts in and I already want to kill myself.

 

[stj]

BS. Science fiction is just a sub-genre of fantasy in which the fantastical elements are given some scientific or technological explanation.

I agree that's the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Limiting the science to real science pretty much makes the story ordinary realist fiction. If "bad" science is a hallmark of fantasy (as opposed to just plain bad writing,) then whether or not any given work depends upon the current level of scientific knowledge for society at large, the writer and the reader. That is not really a standard at all, being pretty much undefinable.

The fellow above who thinks time travel is fantasy seems not to know that currently general relativity allows in some solutions "closed timelike curves." Most scientists seem to assume that time travel is still impossible even in principle (the methods theoretically possible are practical impossibilities,) but they can't actually explain why. Is his error supposed to define some supposed genre? Nonsense.

But I have to disagree about calling science fiction a subgenre of fantasy. Neither science fiction nor fantasy are genres. Romance is a genre. Paranormal romance is a sub-genre of romance. Paranormal romances may creep into "scifi" shelves in bookstores, especially since science fiction has declined so much it's lost its exclusivity. But note that science fiction romances by authors like Justina Robson, Kage Baker and Catherine Asaro never get into the paranormal romance subsection of the romance shelves.

If the term "genre" is to mean anything, it should tell you what kind of story you get. Neither "science fiction" nor "fantasy" tell you anything except the story is not realistic, that there's something fantastic about it, like being set in a future no one knows anything about.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The death of Sci-Fi on TV was the rise in power, size and importance of the female demographic!

Sci fi has never appealled particularly well to the female demographic, yet shows with spaceships and aliens used to survive just fine with mostly male audiences. So what's changed?

This is what's changed: the balkanization of entertainment into smaller and smaller audiences. A small audiences may be really interested in, say, a sci fi show about the origins of the Cylons, but their increased interest doesn't make their eyeballs worth any more than the eyeballs of a bored channel-flipper.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who don't give a flying frak about the origins of the Cylons, assuming they've ever heard of them, aren't interested, so you have a tiny audience and a business model based on advertising, which is only really suited to the mass audience that TV used to have. Appealing strongly to a niche audience instead of sort of appealing to a large audience, isn't something anyone's figured out how to monetize well. How do you translate interest into dollars? DVD sales won't take up the slack and if the network isn't producing the show, they don't see the revenue anyway.

But the reverse strategy - make your sci fi as broad and bland as possible - also usually fails because the audience that is interested in sci fi of any kind wants their specific type of sci fi. You can see this phenomenon right here, where any new show is rejected by most of the people who try it. Caprica is boring. Lost is confusing. V is bland. FlashForward is dumb. Persons Unknown is even dumber. Everyone hates everything. No wonder the networks just churn out reality TV for the sheep who are too dumb to complain. We deserve to have nothing!

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Neither science fiction nor fantasy are genres. Romance is a genre. Paranormal romance is a sub-genre of romance.

I totally disagree.
Wiki defines science fiction as:

Science fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".

Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a wide range of subgenres and themes.

Paranormal romances may creep into "scifi" shelves in bookstores, especially since science fiction has declined so much it's lost its exclusivity.

I totally disagree. Imdb lists the Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock film The Lake House (2006) as

Drama | Fantasy | Romance.

It is a romantic dramedy as far as I'm concerned. It has one science fiction element of a mailbox that is a wormhole for small objects. That is the only thing that is science fiction about that film.
While offtopic it illustrates the point.

This is what's changed: the balkanization of entertainment into smaller and smaller audiences. A small audiences may be really interested in, say, a sci fi show

But the reverse strategy - make your sci fi as broad and bland as possible - also usually fails because the audience that is interested in sci fi of any kind wants their specific type of sci fi. You can see this phenomenon right here, where any new show is rejected by most of the people who try it.

You hit the nail on the head Temis the Vorta.
I'll address the other TV business model mentions on the What channel should a new Trek TV series be on? thread over in Future of Trek forum.

 

[stj]

Trying to define science fiction as a set of sub-genres and themes is impossible. That's because "science fiction" is a term like "prose" or "realistic." These terms tell us how the story is written, not what kind of story, i.e., genre. (Unless you use "genre" to mean the opposite of literary, or sensational, or melodramatic, or trivial, or stupid. But I think such usage of genre is wholly tendentious and should be opposed wherever possible.)

As to the notion that science fiction is a genre in the literature of ideas, specifically, the kind that examines the effect of scientific change on humanity, well, that seems to be a definition inspired by the thought there must be 1.)some weighty reason for the story, namely examining change and 2.) some unique purpose for the science, giving science fiction a justification for its existence. I don't agree with either proposition.

Entertainment is a valid purpose for fiction and drama. Criticism is concerned with why some things are regarded as entertaining, and may reject some forms of entertainment as inferior. This is not always very comfortable for us, which is why many people oppose criticism.

Science is about reality, which is interesting in itself. This is reason enough to include science in science fiction, or in principle, any fiction. The objection to labeling science fiction as just more fantasy is that this false distinction relieves the science fiction writer of the obligation to write good science fiction, where the science isn't (for my taste, boring) BS. Fantasy writers not only don't have to worry about reality posing any strictures as to what's good or bad fantasy, they get brownie points for ignoring it.

The wikipedia definition is useless in practice. The vast majority of science ficiton, good or bad, is in no way any part of a literature of ideas. It is also a bad definition in principle, because the part about "pure imaginative speculation" directly contradicts the part about scientific possibility. There is plenty of scientific speculation but if it's pure imagination, it's not scientific speculation. A theoretical definition that would exclude not just H.G. Wells but most of Jules Verne is useless.

It occurs to me that, while trying to clear the confusion re fantasy and science fiction and genre, that I omitted to plainly state that the reason there is no pure sci-fi on TV today is because there is no pure scifi. Scifi is a way different genre stories can be written, so we have scifi comedy, scifi action/comedy, scifi this and scifi that, but never pure scifi. The other way of reading the question, why is there so little scifi that tries to be well written scifi in which the "science" isn't just gibberish? There's very little of that because science fiction isn't very popular, fantasy is popular. Television is a very mass oriented medium and it will aim for the fantasy audience first.

Really, the question is why there's as much scifi on television as there is. Seems to me there's a higher proportion of scifi to fantasy on television than there is in bookstores. So-called hard SF is probably down to a dozen or so new titles a year by now. But television is especially conservative and the Star Trek effect is still with us.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think it was Damon Knight who said that science fiction was like pornography. You can't define it, but you know it when you see it.

 

[Mistral]

Ten posts in and I already want to kill myself.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Let's pop over to Misc.-I hear they split far fewer hairs over there.

 

[Hober Mallow]

It's funny that no fan of any other genre quibbles over the differences, yet when you suggest to an SF/fantasy genre fan that what they watch/read isn't SF, they sh*t a brick.

There are two requirements to science fiction: 1) The story must contain a fantastic element based on real science, and 2) that element must be so crucial to the story that without it the story falls apart.

TV sci-fi has made people think that that's science fiction. The people who read and write science fiction know there's a distinction.

The definition, BTW, applies to both "hard" and "soft" science fiction. "Soft" science fiction is when the science of the story is psychological or sociological rather than technological or physical, but it still must be based on real science.

I don't share Ellison's disdain for sci-fi, but there is a difference between that and science fiction. And as Ellison well knows, a story may be classified as science fiction and still be a bad story.

Going back to the point of this thread... I would love to see a real attempt at real science fiction on television, it's just a matter of doing it right. Science fiction really has never broken into television. If a good science fiction show could be produced and was successful, more would follow, but like I said before, science fiction has always been a niche market. My prediction is that the more we advance our knowledge and technology, the more relevent science fiction will become. I think it's inevitable that science fiction will get a wider audience. Just the fact that we continue to advance our understanding of the universe means we aren't going to run out of ideas. We can't possibly run out of ideas until we've reached the limits of our understanding. Science fiction would seem destined to not only be relevent, but important.

Ten posts in and I already want to kill myself.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Let's pop over to Misc.-I hear they split far fewer hairs over there.

If you think talking about the differences between the genres is splitting hairs, then what are you doing in a thread in which the title itself indicates a difference between certain genres?

 

[RoJoHen]

We deserve to have nothing!

I deserve something.

Remember The X-Files? Why can't we do that again?