Slashdot Mirror
Can Sci-Fi Fans Face the Future?
khendron writes "The Toronto Star has an article about sci-fi fans and their ongoing habit of protesting the cancellation of their beloved TV shows. From mailing bras to starting malicious Internet rumours, devoted viewers try all sorts of things to protect what they love. That's not always good news."
Ratings are the only things that matter. An OTA show has only one mission: to get people to watch commercials. If not enough people see the commercials, the show isn't doing its job, and it goes off the air. So if you want the show to stay on the air, the only real solution is to get more people to watch it.
[ home ]
TURN OFF YOUR TV!
The best sci-fi is in BOOKS not TELEVISION.
As long as corporate conglomerates control the airwaves, you won't get anything other lowest common demoninator "Popular Reality Show" crap.
Pick up a book, read some Philip K Dick, do something, just stop wasting your grey matter on tv shows!
>Yeah at least they are fighting for something they
>love...
Anyone else find it pathetic that, 50 years ago, when folks were "fighting for something they love" it was their country, home and family?
We can face the future better then most people. We can't stand the current shit on TV (DIY super celebrity magic flog it special!) and we want something which at least has something intresting in it.
The average beer swilling idiot would complain if you canceled whatever his favourite show was, it's just us geeks have a forum (the internet) and we can rally in huge numbers against things we hate.
I like muppets.
BRING IT BACK, damn you! I want to hear about how Fry and Leela fall in love! I want to see Amy and Kif raise a family of tadpoles! I want to witness Zoidberg's later career as a famous radio psychiatrist! I -- I want to hear how it ends!
HOW COULD YOU CANCEL IT, YOU BASTARDS? How _could_ you? I mean, how was any one individual physically able to say the words 'Let's axe Futurama' without their tongue turning black and their eyes bursting into flame and their skin blistering and peeling and bursting and their vile TV-exec brain crawling away across the floor? I don't understand how it's physically possible.
This, THIS is the proof that evil is built into mankind. This is the physical manifestation of original sin. This is the archetypal ur-mistake of which all other mistakes are just shadows, the womb of chaos from which springs a monstrous child, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young... *mumble mumble*
But! the people who watch Futurama aren't the kind of people who have nothing better to do than work with ratings agencies.
So, it has to go.
Why must everything beautiful be so brief?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Good sci-fi requires that one think ahead and imagine the future. The problem is our society now is so obsessed with present-day instant gratification that the concept of imagining a different world tomorrow is almost alien (no pun intended).
How many people look up at the stars anymore? How many people can even see the stars from big city lights? I think one reason why we have crappy sci-fi now is that it's not really science fiction; it's formulaic plot lines designed to distract someone in between ads for shampoo, pickup trucks, and diet pills.
You want to see good science fiction? Turn off your stupid tv and go out and look at the night sky away from the city; your imagination will be more entertaining than a thousand mediocre tv shows.
I mean, sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but both BSG and Firefly have been excellent in recent times.
Yes, there's great written SF that's far better than almost any TV SF, but it _is_ possible to produce good TV SF.
My Journal
If a series ends naturally, there is grumbling, but marching in the streets doesn't make sense. Enterprise and other shows that were pulled in mid-run make you feel cheated, and in fact, that is just what has happened. This is one of the reasons why television sucks big time compared to books: Imagine "Lord of the Rings" without the third book, and you get an idea of why people get pissed about these aborted seasons.
It's not a question of "Can Sci-Fi fans cope?" Sure, we can cope. We just have to put up with far more crap than any other kind of niche market. If there's a decent Sci-Fi show on the air at any given time, chances are it A) Isn't advertised, B) Isn't in a consistent timeslot, and C) Frequently gets preempted for other things (like sports - See Firefly, or actually, any Fox-based SF show for a good example).
This is largely due to the fact that TV executives don't like science fiction in the first place. Even the Sci-Fi channel has recently been frighteningly short on actual Sci-Fi, and pretty heavy on Monster-of-the-Week and Fantasy.
It's also a matter of the networks keeping their word. Farscape fans were particularly upset at the cancellation of Farscape because the fifth season was meant to be the final season. This was pretty clearly stated by Rockne & Co fairly early on, and cancelling at the end of the fourth season was a clearly antagonistic move. Firefly fans got ticked because the show was never given a fair chance at all (Ask Rupert Murdock why) despite excellent writing, effects, and direction.
Perhaps the best example of this problem was the Fox series Sliders, starring John Rhys-Davies as Professor Maximilian Arturo. The show was very clever and well thought out, right up until the third season, when each episode became a copycat of a recent movie. The writers were under pressure from the executives to tone down the science of the show, and amp up the "x-tremeness." So, midway through the third season, Rhys-Davies, disgusted with the direction the show was taking, wrote himself out, killing his character. Of course, the whole time, the show was struggling against poor budgets, floating timeslot syndrome, lack of public awareness, and constant preempting, and finally was canned a few episodes after Rhys-Davies departure. Then there was the SciFi channel's resurrection of the show, which is best left unmentioned.
The problem isn't that SF fans are obsessive. The problem is that the TV executives don't care about SF, don't understand or like SF, and generally aren't willing to put forth any effort to help SF.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Because all too often fans act like religious fanatics over mediocre drivel, which makes it easier for execs to dismiss the outcry when a truly great show like Firefly gets canceled.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
But that's kind of the point right? Sci-fi is a lot cheaper than your average sitcom. The actors tend to not be particularly well known (save perhaps a few shows like The X Files) so they are probably working for close to scale. It's not as though they are dumping that much capital into special effects. Yet they have a dedicate viewership.
And surely the mainstream market is going to be put off by sci-fi anyway if they don't like trek.
Well, the reason Rick Berman has been running Star Trek for 15 years is that he did have a formula for getting the "mainstream market" to watch the program -- something Next Generation was very successful with. There's not enough "sci-fi fans" or "trekkies" to keep this stuff on the air so you have to have cross-over appeal.
The eventual result was Voyager, where boring people in uniforms sat around and talked about their boring personal problems for the entire boring show with some boring bumpheaded aliens in the background. This idea had totally played itself out.
The problem is that by 2001 "Star Trek Fan" basically meant "Voyager Fan" -- everyone else had tuned out. So when "Enterprise" came out, they didn't go back and rethink the concept from the bottom up, they just produced rehashed Voyager episodes with a different cast. The Berman/TNG concept had totally played itself out.
Of course, there's lots of good "Sci-Fi" and "Trek" concepts out there. But nobody has any idea how to get the mainstream audience large enough to sustain the production budget.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.