Sven's life in Oz

I recently read an article over at Airlock Alpha, where Tiffany Vogt bemoaned the cancellation of science fiction programming on American television, asking “Is This The End Of Sci-Fi On Television?”  In a nutshell, Vogt argues that audiences are too impatient to invest in a long-running story arc, demanding immediate gratification at the expense of good characterisation and turning off when they don’t get it. The catalyst for this is the refusal to re-commission Dollhouse and Defying Gravity – two US science fiction shows with failing ratings. They are the latest victims of our abhorrent behaviour, which, she claims, will eventually kill science fiction as a genre:

These days the viewing audience is simply too impatient to allow for proper “homebuilding” (e.g., storytelling). We are the children of the “Me-generation” and the “I want it right now” generation. No patience. It is all about instant gratification. But nothing worthwhile can be achieved so quickly or by taking shortcuts.

Recent examples would be the new television shows “FlashForward” and “V.” It is astounding how quickly viewers turned the channel once they realized they were not getting any fast answers. They wanted it right now, or they just tuned out. It is appalling.

In her article, Vogt quite rightly extols the virtues of characterisation and emotional investment in the story, and though I find her homebuilding analogy shaky, I agree with her assessment of what makes a good story. The problem with her argument is that none of the shows she mentions are any good. Her position seems based on a false premise – that science fiction is inherently good – and we all get the blame for murdering the genre. It gives me no joy to tell you the sad truth: there is a lot of bad science fiction out there, and some of it ought to be euthanised.

Science fiction has always had a tough time of it. Audiences must suspend their disbelief to a far greater extent than many other genres require. Basic premises must be explained in greater detail given that science fiction often happens in a reality beyond our normal experience. From a writer’s perspective, you are making the rules up as you go along, and that kind of freedom can be incredibly challenging. On a practical level, budgets for television are generally quite low and it can be difficult to create a convincing new universe on limited funds. Vogt’s statement that “this is a bad time to be a science fiction show” is tautologous: it’s always a bad time to be a science fiction show, or any show for that matter. TV is not gentle mistress for any programming, and sci-fi is no exception.

I love science fiction. I am an unapologetic sci-fi enthusiast, and I am not alone. If this is a bad time for sci-fi on tv, this is not symptomatic of a problem with the genre. In virtually every other medium sci-fi is excelling. Star Trek and Avatar are among the most eagerly anticipated and successful films of the year. (Avatar’s performance remains to be seen, but it’s a safe bet given the pre-release interest.) Science fiction in gaming is ubiquitous, and comics and graphic novels have never enjoyed a better reputation. The question is not why science fiction is failing, since all evidence points to the contrary. The question is why television can’t make it work. As the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd. I believe, and viewers agree, that science fiction shows right now are just bad tv.

Audiences are not goldfish-brained, explanation junkies. We are quite happy to invest time and emotion into a story that engages us and takes us somewhere. The staggering success of Battlestar Galactica is testament to the level of engagement good stories can engender, especially science fiction stories. The grand story arc in BSG took five years to resolve, and audiences were hooked from the very first moment till the end. Even non-genre audiences loved it – my sister, for example, loathes sci-fi, but watched that show like it was televisual methadone. People watched because it was not driven by science fiction: it was driven by characters. I cared about Roslyn and Adama and the Colonial Fleet. I can remember obscure facts about the characters because I was involved in their story. I can barely remember the names of some characters from FlashForward. Battlestar Galactica was the perfect example of the age-old writers adage: ’show, don’t tell’. We watched the characters, and we saw their story unfold. The series wasn’t about space, that was just where it happened. They weren’t telling us about their world, they were just letting us follow them around inside it.

People turn off their sets when Lost is on, or Fringe, or V, or Dollhouse or Heroes or any show you care you to mention from any genre, because these shows aren’t ’shows’ any more: they are ‘tells’. The island on Lost was mysterious when we were simply watching what it did. When we started being told it stopped being interesting. We enjoy a mystery, but we know that every week in FlashForward we will be fed a pre-determined piece of the puzzle in a pre-determined order. We are not being shown the clues, we are being told where to look. The characters are not individuals, they are orators for the plot. We aren’t in a theatre any more, we’re in a lecture hall. Same layout, different function. We don’t care about the bad fake science in Fringe, we care how the characters deal with life despite it. But you keep giving us more bad fake science, so we go elsewhere. People are interested in people. How did Galactica’s FTL work? Who knows? Now how about that Baltar, eh?

Science fiction is just a genre. It is not an end in itself. Given the choice, I would watch a show with spaceships or time travel or genetically engineered super-plagues instead of a period drama, because I am a sci-fi fan. But if the people fighting off the alien invaders are boring while the scullery wench and the footman are not, then I’m going to switch to bonnets and lace and get my sci-fi fix somewhere else. I want to be shown a good story, and if it’s got a particle energy supergun and a time-bending proto-spanner in it, so much the better; but the gadgets must always, always come second. Character must always be king.

It is rather churlish to blame audiences for turning off science fiction shows and killing the genre when writers and producers seem incapable of giving us what we want. Must we simply accept the B-grade story because that’s what comes with the genre? Are we wrong to expect some human interest in with our spaceborne shootouts and green-skinned women? Audiences vote with their feet and it is wrong to call us traitors to a genre for doing so. We are simply demanding better of our writers, producers and television stations. To continue to produce sub-standard science fiction television would be the real tragedy, and I welcome the cancellation of Dollhouse and Defying Gravity. Perhaps their budgets will be used for other, better, more worthy sci-fi endeavours.

We won’t watch sci-fi simply because it’s there; it must also be good. We may be geeks, but we have standards.