Science fiction often gets things laughably bad when dealing with the entertainment business. No where is this more evident than the series Buck Rogers, which predicted that disco music would be the dominant art form in the 25th century and then further contended that it would be spread by sinister rock managers like Jerry Orbach! Yes, Jerry Orbach, the cop who is impossible to hate (well almost impossible).
Seriously, though, sci fi television needs to come up with a more biting critique of the entertainment industry which of course its not likely to do, being as it's part of the entertainment industry. Only Max Headroom came close to offering up a compelling portrayal of a media dominated, entertainment-saturated culture. But I guess it may be too much to ask entertainment to stop being entertaining in the service of being enlightening instead. So, for the foreseeable future, expect to see more space disco than you'll ever see Headroom-like shows again.
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I think we will only have entertainment media critical sci-fi series if the genre is right. Meaning this will only happen on a cyberpunk or cyberpunk derived or related show. That sort of criticism is only available to a near-future, self-reflective, self-critical setting like what is often seen in cyberpunk.
ReplyDeleteWe do get a bit of this in Doctor Who and I think maybe in Babylon 5. Dr. Who is cross-genre and can get into that cyberpunk territory (time and setting) if and when it chooses to. B5, of all series sci-fi, has probably the setting closest to what regular life is today.
Star Trek deals with ideals where people have moved beyond our addiction to mass entertainment.
BSG deals with a civilization's end, people struggling to survive and on the run don't have time for such nonsense.
Farscape is a setting where the human is the odd-man out alien. They are also itinerant fugitives.
Earth Final Conflict was ripe to explore this territory, but I don't remember the show going into it. A chance missed since it was the show best set up for it that I've seen. I guess they were too busy trying to get dirt on those Taelons.
I can't recall many (any) dedicated cyberpunk style, near-future television. I don't remember the series well, but I think a Canadian-produced cable-TV show from the late '90s called Total Recall 2070 might have potential. It is based loosely on the works of Phillip K. Dick, borrowing the look of Bladerunner and the marketing link to the movie Total Recall. It was short-lived, one season, so did not really have a chance to go anywhere before it was canceled.