Why is TV SF so bad? (And a modest proposal to fix it)

[Rigil Kent]

It's a matter of opinion, I guess. I've seen some people here gushing over Terra Nova and I checked out of that show after episode 4 because I really didn't like it (which is weird 'cause dinosaurs? Awesome.) Justified hits my buttons because, unlike most networks shows, actions have consequences in that series (which is a big continuity thing for me.) Take any procedural, for example: the Hero Maverick Cop who bends the rules to nab the bad guy never has to face the repercussions for what he did (sort of like how a Trek captain can do pretty much whatever he wants and never gets called on the carpet for it except in a single, dramatic episode and its promptly forgotten after that.) Justified, however, isn't like that - everything a character does affects what happens to them down the road.

The big advantage network shows have is generally number of eps. Season 1 of Justified was like 13 eps (like a show on HBO), where most network hour-longs have 20+ episode seasons.

But of course, I'm the last person to really go to for advice about what to watch. Apart from "Top Gear" and football, I'm really not watching much of anything anymore because my standards are well beyond what Hollywood is willing to dish out on a regular basis.

[Transwarp]

Here's an awful thought...

What if the suits are RIGHT?

What if the kind of program I'm advocating (with continuity and good science and adult plots and realistic characters) would be a big flop? What if it attracts a sum total of 237 fanatically loyal viewers and the rest of the great unwashed tune it out for the latest reality show (or whatever is hot these days.)

I have this horrible sinking feeling that maybe they're right and I'm wrong. How else to explain the utter lack of anything remotely resembling what we're describing on this thread?

Say it ain't so!

[Kotik]

I'm afraid your latest worries are quite justified. Apart from having a knack for waging war on our unsuspecting neighbours, Germany once had the image of being the land of poets and great minds, but when I look at the TV program these days, it appears that the majority of the German population commands all the intellectual capabilities of a loaf of bread.

It starts at 06am, when just about every channel runs "Breakfast TV" until 9am. Basically it's a bloated news program that repeats every 60 minutes - very challenging.
From 9am to 12pm you get a crapload of shallow dumbed-down soap-operas, which make the writing of ENT season 2 look like royal poetry. Then all hell breaks loose. The public broadcasters continue with the next bout of soap-operas and Lederhosen-TV series' targeted at the octogenarians and the mentally disturbed, while the private channels start an infernal 6 hour torture of reality TV shows and "talk shows", which are so abysmal that anyone, who has the mental capacity to tell his own arsehole from a hole in the ground, trundles off to do something more useful, like picking their nose, banging their head on the wall or licking windows.
At 6pm-8pm just about every broadcaster runs a "boulevard magazine", which are just what's written on the tin - TV editions of tabloid papers - lovely
8pm is news time and the only 15 serious minutes in German TV. 8:15pm prime time starts and each broadcaster shows a movie or one of the bigger series productions, except for the 2nd-tier private channels, who show B-Movies or 'Comedy shows' with all the hilarity of a family funeral.
10pm is wathershed, which means the private channels may now start showing tits - which they do. The 2nd tier channels start a string of softcore porn movies interrupted by regular ad breaks full of sex hotline adverts. The things you get to see in those are single-handedly responsible for the declining birth numbers. Once you've seen the clip that accompanies the line "Horny grannies are waiting for you. Call 0800..."
The public broadcasters and the "prime" private channels usually run late-night shows - bad copies of Letterman's original - until 12am after which they repeat the infernal program of 12pm-6pm until 6am. And then you have the real pinnacle of German TV - broadcasters like DSF (Deutsches Sportfernsehen = German Sports TV). They show sports all night long - performed by jolly young ladies in the nude - paradise for the sexually neglected. One could think this was meant to cure the men who lost their reproductive capabilities by accidental exposure to a "Horny Grannies" ad - but no - the jolly nekkyd lassies are regularly interrupted by aforementioned ads for grannies in heat and dominas ordering the peons to call them Welcome to the land of Beethoven, Bach, Schiller and Goethe


I'm not making this up. That's what the average German TV day looks like. Now, if you look at such a program, do you really think there is any place for a seriously written sci-fi series? Phat chance

[putaro]

Well, Kotik, there IS a reason why it's called the idiot box. It's not like American or Japanese television is any better.

I don't think that having poor continuity, stupid plots or implausible events is a requirement for a successful show. It's just that good continuity, good plots and plausible events are not a requirement for success either and it's easy to miss the continuity, it's easy to go to the cliched plots and it's easy to come up with implausible scenarios to generate excitement.

[WarpGirl]

The fact that in America Jersey Shore and Teem Mom make the regular news is enough evidence that our whole of human society is steadily regecting intelligent anything! I mean even a well written book is hard to come by these days. Authors who a few years ago turned out thought provoking material are now turning out drivel. Oh well, This is why as a rule I stick to the classics.

[Snorpenbass]

I'm studying, among other things, Dramaturgy (as in the *craft* of writing scripts), and one thing that gets hammered into us from the writer of the main course lit (Linda Seger) is that "No matter how great and continuity-laden and scientifically correct your script is, it *will* be mangled to bits by the constant rewrites any studio puts it through."

What I mean is, I don't think most writers are stupid or juvenile or anything like that, but I do believe that the major culprit in dumbing down and making stories horrifyingly inaccurate or continuity-less is the studio system in itself. See also Robert Altman's "The Player" and the movie "The Big Picture" with Kevin Bacon.

There's a common story that circulates among Hollywood and TV writers, and goes something like this: a writer watches a horrifyingly bad show, and goes "I can do better than *this*!", writes a great set of scripts, and goes to the producer of the show with them. The producer reads them, says, "These are awesome!" and then rejects them out of hand. The writer goes "Why? You said they were awesome!"
The producer replies, "Yes, but in order to survive the rewrites they would have to be legendary."

Note, I'm not defending the system, I find that it is what's crippling movies and TV across the board. Look what happens when a writer or visionary has full or near-full control of their material (whether through being famous or through making a low-budget thing), we get awesomely great shows that break stereotypes and becomes long-term cult hits. Then look what happens when a major *studio* has full control...

[WarpGirl]

Okay next time mom tells me write for TV my answer will be "heck no!" Here's my question... What makes these studio people not trust the talent they hire to write?

[Cogito]

What makes these studio people not trust the talent they hire to write?

Are you kidding? Those writers have no idea how to produce a TV show. The #4 film set is only 10m by 7m so where are we supposed to fit a spiral staircase, eh? We'd have to move to the #5 set which is an extra $5000 a day plus a week to move the sets over and where do you think that's coming from, hmmm? And we need an ad break at seven minutes which would be right in the middle of your pivotal scene so that'll have to go. And we need at least five minutes of CGI per half hour or people will forget they're watching Sci Fi so there isn't time for that romantic scene at the end. No, nobody will care next week when they seem to have forgotten all about each other. And no, you can't have an extra two aliens this week, it's going to take a month to work up the animatronics and the guys in special effects are already busy on that thing for episode twelve.

The nice thing about fanfiction is that we have an unlimited budget and we can have anything in the story that we can imagine. No studio deadlines, no logistical problems, no suits breathing down our neck and worrying about audience demographics and advertiser budgets and rubbish like that, just us and the story we want to tell. I do wish that the people putting so much effort into these TV shows did them with better story lines and better character development and more credible science, but I think the proportion of the audience who cares about that sort of thing is pretty small. I suspect most of us only tune on to see the fast ships and the sharp batleths and Jolene.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Look what happens when a writer or visionary has full or near-full control of their material (whether through being famous or through making a low-budget thing), we get awesomely great shows that break stereotypes and becomes long-term cult hits. Then look what happens when a major *studio* has full control...

Well, to be honest that's no guarantee either. For every J Michael Straczynski there's a George Lucas out there. And even JMS didn't have full control, or succeeded every time with B5. And Lucas could have benefited from external involvement when it came to the prequels - and even in RotJ.

[Snorpenbass]

Look what happens when a writer or visionary has full or near-full control of their material (whether through being famous or through making a low-budget thing), we get awesomely great shows that break stereotypes and becomes long-term cult hits. Then look what happens when a major *studio* has full control...

Well, to be honest that's no guarantee either. For every J Michael Straczynski there's a George Lucas out there. And even JMS didn't have full control, or succeeded every time with B5. And Lucas could have benefited from external involvement when it came to the prequels - and even in RotJ.

This is true. At least when it comes to Lucas (the *most* cringeworthy moments of Straczynski has generally come due to...you guessed it, editorial or studio interference, when he's actually bad he's usually just a little hammy). One thing to consider is that from what I've heard Lucas' chief film editor on A New Hope through half of ROTJ was his then-wife, and once she was out of his life (about halfway through Return of the Jedi IIRC) I guess there was nobody in his staff who would tell him "No, George, that's not a good idea." to his face anymore.

...but then, there's a story I heard that a lot of the boring parts of the prequels are stuff Lucas wanted to add in the first two movies and got advised against by his friends and his then-wife/girlfriend.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

One thing to consider is that from what I've heard Lucas' chief film editor on A New Hope through half of ROTJ was his then-wife, and once she was out of his life (about halfway through Return of the Jedi IIRC) I guess there was nobody in his staff who would tell him "No, George, that's not a good idea." to his face anymore.

Why am I not at all surprised!?

There's a reason why TESB is considered the best Star Wars movie. A lot of it was written by the late Leigh Brackett (finished by Lawrence Kasdan after her death), and it was not directed by Lucas.

[WarpGirl]

Oh please do not get me started on GL. I was a member of a fanatical SW's fandom long before I ever got here. Let's just say that his demi-god status is not appreciated in that neck of the woods.

My favorite author of all things scripted is Aaron Sorkin, in his TV series including the unfairly axed Studio 60 were brilliant explorations of character and wit. Even though he considers plot to be his "Achillies heel" he made sure his TV series had continuity and the dialouge rose above the level of American 10th grade.

Oooh there's an idea a sci-fi series headed up by Sorkin and the Wachowski Brothers!

About Cogito's points about producing and financing a series, I understand the difficulties but I don't see how it should inflence intelligent plots, well rounded sypathetic characters, and good dialouge. Certainly anyone who makes a living writing for TV would be aware of the budget constraints on the show they write for and should be mindful of what they can reasonably depict on screen with that limitation... If they can't do that why are they writing for TV?

[putaro]

The budget problems and limitations of the shoot could be blamed for some of the details not being right. A great director and writing team can work around those easily enough. I read once that they didn't have enough money to shoot the ending scene for The Untouchables the way it was scripted. Instead De Palma did a homage to Battleship Potemkin with a shootout on the steps of the train station. It's a great scene.

More often, though, it's the background details that are just given in dialog that are just plain wrong or destroy the mood. For example, Enterprise was supposed to be about exploration and everything being new and not well established. So for the first two seasons they never go anywhere the Vulcans haven't explored already! Every episode they're constantly asking T'Pol to look in the Vulcan database to find out what they're looking at. Where's the furthest they got away from Earth? Risa! And T'Pol looked it up in the Vulcan database like she was looking for a BnB in the AAA guide!

Other shows have some big problems too. Firefly, for example. There's a lot of things to like about Firefly. However, as far as I can tell, Joss Whedon never bothered to figure out, for the whole TV show, whether they were flying around inside of one solar system or whether they were flying between solar systems. It's not like that would be that hard to establish when you sit down to write the bible for the show.

The new Battlestar Galactica. I liked this show a lot, but the build up they did for the Final Five and the whole opera house thing just was way, way more than they could pull off for the finale. Would it really have hurt that much to have a plot outline for the whole show and how it would end?

One of the problems for SF is that great writers often don't have a strong science and math background. I do a lot of arithmetic in my head that other people say is very complicated (you know, things like if Risa is 90 light years from Earth, and Warp 4 is 64 times the speed of light, it's going to take you about a year and a half to get there! - take note fan fic writers who have Enterprise popping over to Risa for a little RnR on a casual basis). I notice many of the inconsistencies and the science boo boos without a lot of effort. However, I think that for many writers, who aren't that interested in science or math, but can write well, working through the science is hard. It's just like writers for cop shows who can't figure out what kind of gun to use or the writers for medical shows who can't get the right symptoms or treatments for diseases.

[WarpGirl]

The budget problems and limitations of the shoot could be blamed for some of the details not being right. A great director and writing team can work around those easily enough. I read once that they didn't have enough money to shoot the ending scene for The Untouchables the way it was scripted. Instead De Palma did a homage to Battleship Potemkin with a shootout on the steps of the train station. It's a great scene.

THAT SCENE IS AWESOME! Every time that movie is on network TV I watch and that is my favorite part.

More often, though, it's the background details that are just given in dialog that are just plain wrong or destroy the mood. For example, Enterprise was supposed to be about exploration and everything being new and not well established. So for the first two seasons they never go anywhere the Vulcans haven't explored already! Every episode they're constantly asking T'Pol to look in the Vulcan database to find out what they're looking at. Where's the furthest they got away from Earth? Risa! And T'Pol looked it up in the Vulcan database like she was looking for a BnB in the AAA guide!

For the sake of not getting kicked off of here all I will say is I concur VEHEMENTLY!

Other shows have some big problems too. Firefly, for example. There's a lot of things to like about Firefly. However, as far as I can tell, Joss Whedon never bothered to figure out, for the whole TV show, whether they were flying around inside of one solar system or whether they were flying between solar systems. It's not like that would be that hard to establish when you sit down to write the bible for the show.

When I saw Serenity (yeah I did the Firefly obsession backwards) it seemed like they were flying between solar systems.

The new Battlestar Galactica. I liked this show a lot, but the build up they did for the Final Five and the whole opera house thing just was way, way more than they could pull off for the finale. Would it really have hurt that much to have a plot outline for the whole show and how it would end?

To be completely honest I never even attempted to watch NuBSG every preview looked massively depressing.

One of the problems for SF is that great writers often don't have a strong science and math background. I do a lot of arithmetic in my head that other people say is very complicated (you know, things like if Risa is 90 years from Earth, and Warp 4 is 64 times the speed of light, it's going to take you about a year and a half to get there! - take note fan fic writers who have Enterprise popping over to Risa for a little RnR on a casual basis). I notice many of the inconsistencies and the science boo boos without a lot of effort. However, I think that for many writers, who aren't that interested in science or math, but can write well, working through the science is hard. It's just like writers for cop shows who can't figure out what kind of gun to use or the writers for medical shows who can't get the right symptoms or treatments for diseases.

Okay I can only speak for myself here, but I am terrible at math; however I was very, very, good at earth science and biology during school. I think it was because I was a good reader, and could absorb the information of the textbooks very quickly. I truly believe ANY person who even begins to want to write needs to be a good reader. If you are a good reader you can learn enough to write well about anything. Living in "the information age" where just about all knowledge is available instantly makes it possible to get your facts straight.

I use a calculator to convert to metric when I write fic because ST uses metric. Does it bug me? YES! I have enough trouble using the system I was raised with. But I do it anyway because I want to write a quality story. I don't see any reason writing for TV should limit a person's ability to get the basic facts about the subject they are writing about. ESPECIALLY when they write for the same show episode after episode.

That said, accurate science has never been on my list of priorities for entertainment. I think it's because my 9th grade science teacher gave me a B- when I got all A+'s on my work only because I couldn't attend class half the term. It spoiled me on the whole love of science. I did every assignment! It wasn't my fault I was so sick!

[putaro]

When I saw Serenity (yeah I did the Firefly obsession backwards) it seemed like they were flying between solar systems.

I think in the movie they actually said it was all in the same system, however I agree with you, because the way it was presented it looked like they were going between systems both in the show and the series.

truly believe ANY person who even begins to want to write needs to be a good reader. If you are a good reader you can learn enough to write well about anything. Living in "the information age" where just about all knowledge is available instantly makes it possible to get your facts straight.

I agree with you. I think a lot of writers, though, don't bother to check every number or every fact and if something doesn't strike them as wrong when they're writing it they'll just let it slide. The fact that their background doesn't make more of their boo boos pop out at them is reflected in the final product.