Does the TV scifi paradigm need to change?

[jdavis]

As far as Space Opera shows go I think they are a dying breed, in the seventies they were too expensive, in the eighties they were too expensive and in the nineties they got a lot of attention because they had been too expensive before but could be done on computers now. I don't think you can get the crowds you used to with crappy digital effects, so now we have higher expectations of what we wish to see, which makes them too expensive again. Occult Sci Fi still throws some good shows every now and again (X Files, Buffy) but there are only so many people out there who are good enough to produce watchable shows in that genre. The Mini Series is dead on network TV due to the cost (they are very expensive compared to how much air time you get out of them). They have found new life on cable and Sci Fi has used them pretty well to draw people in but the big mistake Sci Fi has made was they don't have any way to keep the viewers after the mini series is over. That little 2 minute commercial that aired before Galactica where they ran through the next years teasers was the most important part of the show, and they blew it (they went the reality show route about 2 years too late for it to look anything but desperate, and I can't even remember anything else they showed clips of). Galactica scored huge ratings for them but it failed to boost any other shows ratings at all and that's part of the reason of having big event mini series and stuff, to get attention for the network. They have the budget to do maybe two miniseries a year and they have to be huge events to pan out so they can't be very risky about what they do. They just don't have the budget for much stuff. How long can they continue to show 10 hours a week of Stargate SG1 before they burn that out, and what else do they have waiting? Sci Fi can't save science fiction because they don't even have a big enough budget to make good science fiction (and they are run by morons but that's a different discusion). I'm sure there will be more Bryant Gumbel UFO specials in the future from them though.

Another thing happening is that we are starting to see a negative backlash from cable saturation. The days of the big budget must see TV network show are coming to a end. It's very hard to generate the Nielson numbers like you could ten years ago, networks are starting to spend less on shows instead of more on shows. There is just so little return to be had on their investment anymore, instead of 3 or 4 shows they have to compete with at that time slot they now have to compete with dozens and dozens of shows. It's real hard to generate decent numbers for any show and Sci Fi has always been considered niche entertainment so it's a real risk. At the end Buffy wasn't doing all that great of numbers and it never really did standout numbers, there is no garantee it would of made it past the first season on one of the big networks. Star Trek always has done decent numbers but it's never done E.R. level numbers for any of the differetn series, heck it doesn't do Spongebob level numbers now. I can't think of a big science fiction hit since X Files. Science fictions biggest hope for the future is the same now as it has always been, feature films.

One area I think you will see a increase in is in imported Japanese Animation science fiction. It's a shame American television has never really embraced animation for serious shows (well not since the 60's when Jonny Quest was a prime time cartoon) as it is comparitively cheap particularly when compared to science fiction show cost and is very flexable. One of the best outlets for science fiction type shows right now is the action section of Adult Swim, it does great ratings (particularly in the 18 to 31 male demographic that is so important these days) and many of the shows are real standouts storyline wise (I'm real suprised there hasn't been a attempt to do a live action Cowboy Bebop series in America). Heck it was my love of science fiction that lead me to anime back in the 80's. Sci Fi really dropped the ball when they let the whole anime thing pass them by, they are the ones who should be doing the adult swim style programming block. It's a large crossover audience that they used to have a part of back in the mid to late 90's that has all but dried up now.

 

[WayneLigon]

Someone has to do a series of telemovies for James White's Sector General Hospital.
-Hyp.

Well, they tried Mercy Point; a hospital-in-space is something I think would still work. All-Souls was horror + hospital; also something you'd think would work. Never heard of either? Apparently, neither did anyone else.

Well, I started five or six times to post thoughts on the whats and whys of 'why we don't have a lot of good science fiction on TV' before I realized that I have no idea. What makes a show become a hit appears to be just totally random, to me.

Babylon 5 is probably the single best science fiction series ever produced, hands down. And yet through it's entire run it was barely noticed. When it looked as if it was going to be dropped from the FOX lineup here, we called the station and I talked to their programming guy; he pulled figures and told me that the show was placed in a good prime-time slot, and yet it was drawing only a 1.5 share (1.5% of the viewing public were estimated to be watching the show at that time). Reruns of Mama's Family routinely beat it into the ground, every single week.

Some easy answers occur to me, but none seem to fit. 'Too weird' is the most common thing I hear. 'Too cheap' or 'too cheesy' occur to me, but Hercules and Xena were about as cheap and cheesy as things get, yet they were very successful. Beastmaster is pretty cheesy, yet it's in it's third season. Not too many series can say that. Same thing for Mutant X.

The whys? I got nothing

 

[Atridis]

...Reruns of Mama's Family routinely beat [Bab-5] into the ground, every single week.

Some easy answers occur to me, but none seem to fit. 'Too weird' is the most common thing I hear. 'Too cheap' or 'too cheesy' occur to me, but Hercules and Xena were about as cheap and cheesy as things get, yet they were very successful. Beastmaster is pretty cheesy, yet it's in it's third season. Not too many series can say that. Same thing for Mutant X.

I've never taken a poll, but I wonder if sci-fi and related genres still have an image problem with the general public. "Too weird", as he said. Juvenile perhaps. Everyone who ever watched Buffy liked it, so far as I could tell, yet some people staunchly refused to even give it a whirl. I have a friend who loves the '60s Batman show, but didn't like the '90s cartoon because it was too serious. It wasn't that he doesn't like serious shows, it was that he couldn't handle Batman as a serious show (and that isn't a guess, he actually told me that). Shows like Beastmaster & Mutant X may be more acceptable precisely because they're cheesy. Even well-done shows like Hercules and Xena may have garnered an atypical audience because they were (intentionally) tongue-in-cheek.

Another big problem with shows like Buffy and B-5 is their ongoing, and often convoluted, storylines. One of my favorite shows right now - Alias - I cannot recommend to many people because it demands constant attention. Sit-coms are popular, in part, because they don't require such slavish devotion.

 

[Kesh]

I agree, Sci-Fi has an image problem. If you tell someone you have a new science fiction television series coming out, what do they think of first?

Star Trek (TOS)
Lost in Space
Buck Rogers

Old, low-budget, poorly acted shows with cheesy FX and (usually) silly stories.

The sad part is, I've got several ideas for how to make a decent SF series, but I'll never be able to break into the 'biz'. What's worse was reading this thread, and seeing people asking for the show ideas I've come up with three to five years ago!

I have:

• A Star Wars TV series outline, three to five years
• A deep space 'first contact' series (mostly 'hard science' sci-fi) loosely outlined
• A new Star Trek franchise that would work, and seems blatantly obvious to me...
• A detailed, five-year plan for a Werewolf: the Apocalypse show... that's basically pointless now that the Time of Judgement is upon us.
• A modified version of previously mentioned Star Wars series & Star Trek series, stripping out the setting-specific material and blending them into a new, generic SF series of my own. Since there's no way in hell I'd get either liscenced property to work with.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

One of the biggest problems with Sci-Fi in today's TV landscape is the economic aspect. Sci-Fi doesn't get great ratings, but it does get good ratings in some important demographics. Unfortunately, Sci-Fi shows are expensive, and the networks are seeing big profits from lots of reality shows that are very inexpensive to produce.

On the subject of mini-series vs. series, I think the mini-series are fine, but the reason producers want to go the series route is for the syndication payoff down the road. Most series lose money the first several years, but make a huge payoff once they hit the magical "100 episode" mark that is the norm for the syndication market.

The proliferation of networks is also a reason why Sci-Fi shows have gone down hill. ST:TNG, DS-9, and Babylon 5 were all first-run syndication shows that got their start when there were a large number of independent TV stations with time slots to fill and lots of money. In the mid-90's, most of those stations became WB or UPN outlets, which caused that market to dry up. Star Trek was one of the cornerstones of UPN, so that survived, but the others went down the tubes.

 

[Rackhir]

I would agree that costs are probably the main thing that is killing SF on TV. One of the main thrusts behind the "Reality" TV shows, is that you don't have to pay writers to do one or "name" actors. If the networks are so cheap that they don't even want to pay writers, something that requires expensive sfx really doesn't stand much of a chance.

Especially given the short term narrow mindedness that is rampant in hollywood and TV. Pretty much nothing is given a chance to grow and develop an audience these days and SF because of it's niche status is never going to attract big numbers right off the bat, barring some big name franchise being involved.

Also and perhaps I'm just getting older, very little seems to be done on TV especially in "SF" shows that shows much in the way of sentience. Most of what's been on TV has been the kind of junk like Mutant X or Beastmaster that seems to be aimed at pre/early teens. The market is headed steadily down hill interms of the average intelligence it's aimed at. If the presence of shows like "Beyond with John Edwards" (forget the actual title) or the increasingly sleezy and tawdry "reality" shows leave anyone with questions about that?

Finally, Fear Rules Hollywood and the Networks - The people in charge in the entertainment industry are those who have spent a lifetime working to get into a position of power with all the attendant perks and privileges, while watching rivals and friends loosing jobs at the drop of a hat or a single mistake. They are facing a shrinking fragmenting market, because of the vastly expanded market of cable channels and rise of other entertainment mediums (internet, video games, etc...), which means that the pressure is increased even more. They will do anything and listen to anything that seems to offer some measure of control and certainty over their future, while avoiding as much risk as is at all possible. Which is why there are 18 different shows based on Law & Order, CSI and 2000 shows which are variations on what was sucessful last season. Despite the success of SF at theaters, it is always going to be viewed as a niche market (especially on TV) and the people who are in charge of the networks don't understand it, aren't interested in it and don't want propose anything that puts them at risk.

 

[WizarDru]

Well, they tried Mercy Point; a hospital-in-space is something I think would still work. All-Souls was horror + hospital; also something you'd think would work. Never heard of either? Apparently, neither did anyone else.

Oh, I saw Mercy Point, all right. Not just bad, DOA bad. Bad medical drama, bad sci-fi...but the actors were young and sexy, so that makes up for it, right? Not to mention that we'd had hospital drama saturation, by that point. Between E/R, Chicago Hope had both been running for 7+ years by that point. All Souls wasn't nearly as bad as Mercy Point, but it still wasn't that strong, from what I've heard. Placing it directly opposite Angel's time slot wasn't exactly a smart idea, either. And considering it was brought to you by Stuart Gillard, well....his name isn't exactly synonymous with quality (though he's stumbled into some reasonable work from time to time).

Babylon 5 is probably the single best science fiction series ever produced, hands down. And yet through it's entire run it was barely noticed. When it looked as if it was going to be dropped from the FOX lineup here, we called the station and I talked to their programming guy; he pulled figures and told me that the show was placed in a good prime-time slot, and yet it was drawing only a 1.5 share (1.5% of the viewing public were estimated to be watching the show at that time). Reruns of Mama's Family routinely beat it into the ground, every single week.

Rod Serling's ghost is holding for you on line one. I love B5, but the fact is that it succeeded in spite of Warner Brothers handling of the show, not because of it. How often did you say advertisements for B5? Almost never. How often did it get moved from night to night, to differing time slots? All the time. B5 survived based on one important fact: JMS and crew knew how to make a show under-budget. That allowed them to keep the series afloat, even amidst mixed ratings.

That same fact played against the more successful Farscape. Scifi discovered that they could run a rerun of SG1 or some other shows, and get nearly the same ratings...for far less outlay of money. Remember, your attention is the product the TV station is selling to the advertisers. If they have you watching, they don't care about quality, necessarily.

One problem is that many SF shows...aren't SF. They have the trappings of SF, but they're really just zap-gun shows. I've only seen the pilot and a little of episode 2 of Jake 2.0, but it's basically just a superhero show. Which is fine...but unfortunately most of SF on television doesn't aspire to anything more. Jake's 'powers' could just as easily come from a magic thunderbolt, and his enemies might be trying to steal his magic necklace, and it functionally wouldn't be much different. One of my favorites ST:TOS episodes was based on a script for a WWII series. They merely changed the word "nazi" to "romulan" and "sub" to "spaceship", and left the script virtually untouched. Luckily, it was a great script. Most TV series equate special F/X with and flash with SF. If it turned out that Joan in "Joan of Arcadia" wasn't talking to God, but to an advanced alien being, what then? Was "John Doe" SF? 'Alias' or 'La Femme Nikita'? "Brisco County, Jr.?" Consider that the original Twilight Zone series still packs a punch, 40 years later. I watched a few episodes during the recent marathon...and it still bowls you over, with virtually no special effects or flashy visuals. Take a show like "Jeremiah": virtually no special effects, but it's a solid SF show.

"Alien Nation" didn't cost much more than a normal cop drama, and many episodes had virtually no special effects at all. When it first came out, I ignored it, thinking it was a cheap knock-off show. When I finally gave it a chance, I was suprised at the depth of the writing, or how they spent an entire season just exploring cultural differences between the characters...and still managed a decent buddy cop show in the mix. And, like most of the shows already mentioned, it failed.

Since SF shows are generally more expensive, they formulate a greater risk. Since SF fans are often perceived as fickle, as well, it means fewer shows in general. Remember, Star Trek: Next Gen was a syndicated program, as was DS9. And during it's first year, ST:NG's success was, by no means, a given.

I could rant some more....but it's lunch time.

 

[Umbran]

Suits seem to think that if a show is not successful right away, it never will be, so they cancel it and try something else.

Close, but not quite.

The suits know that shows that aren't immediately successful could become successful if given time. But the competition in the entertainment industry is pretty darned fierce. While the show may need time, the suits don't have the time to give. They are driven by their corporations to make money now, not in a season or two.

Let us remember that in commercial-driven TV, the stations don't answer directly to you. They aren't really providing a service to the viewer - they're providing a service to the advertisers. So, what you want is less relevant than what the advertisers want. The advertisers want more eyeballs on those ads, and they want them now.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I used to whine on and on about how my cable company wouldn't carry the sci-fi channel, now that they do and I've seen it I realize that it sounded cool but in actuality it was nothing like I thought. Nothing very interesting except Farscape. I do like the Dune mini-series though. I was over at my dad's one weekend and "Taken" must have been on 46.5 of the 48 hours I was there. There was a lot that horrible True or False show with J. Frakes from TNG. Ugh! What a waste of prime airtime! I guess I was just expecting too much wall to wall sci-fi goodness from them. I haven't had cable TV in five years and I feel like I haven't missed out on any good Sci-Fi becuase there isn't any out there on cable or network TV other than B5 and ST:TOS reruns. Now with DVD I don't need networks to watch those shows.

The thing that made Babylon 5 the best sci-fi show ever put to screen is the thing that may make it hard to get into...the long storylines. I'm so tired of Star Trek and the recycled drek that the franchise churns out and they way they write it. "Next week, another episode that rehashes another storyline from TOS and has nothing to do with the events of this epislode!" Blah! Actually the entire Star Trek franchise seems quite sad when I compare it to B5 except the last few seasons of Deep Space 9, which took the long story idea "from" B5 and did good things with it. The war with the Founders and whatnot. That wasn't bad. Enterprise I guess is trying to do that this season. But the highpoints of Enterprise so far have been T'Pal's decontamination scenes, not a good sign for a sci-fi show unless it's supposed to be about hot Vulcan chicks. Sci-Fi is in a sad state these days. And with our ever decreasing attention spans maybe it's done for good barring the show that panders to the LCD.

 

[Umbran]

Consider that the original Twilight Zone series still packs a punch, 40 years later. I watched a few episodes during the recent marathon...and it still bowls you over, with virtually no special effects or flashy visuals.

Hm. I don't fully agree.

I watched a good chunk of the recent marathon too, and I wasn't bowled over. Instead, I was struck by how trite most of the episodes seemed to be. The acting stiff, the dialog stilted, the camera work primitive. From the point of view of a modern sci-fi fan, the plots had all been done before. Now, that's because Twilight Zone had itself done many of them, and authors since then have taken TZ as an influence. But there's not much there to really hold a modern sci-fi viewer who isn't particularly looking to go on a nostalgia or historical binge.