Y'know, at its best, SciFi produces 'great entertainment with provocative & thoughtful commentary' but its most common TV representative is outer-space-dress-up (space-wear or rubber/CG-aliens) regurgitating bland action tropes emphasizing the chosen-people-righteousness & always-win-in-the-end-superiority of humanity ( perhaps this is spelled 'SyFy' ? No offense to the "Mansquito" or "OctoShark" art-films, of course )
Do you guys think the universal definition/meme for science-fiction is a "setting", as in futuristic-tech, robots, space-travel, etc? As if scifi doesn't require science, novel ideas, current speculations, just a "setting."
For any popular entertainment fiction, whether it be modern-action (24), historical-drama (Rome, Madmen), what is labeled 'science-fiction' (V, SG-U) or what is not (LOST, Fringe, The EvEnt), perhaps it'd be clearer if we dropped those labels and measured shows in terms of:
[] Good-Story/Writing = compelling characters with consistent choices, believable-turn-of-events, & satisfying-plotlines
[] Intriguing Ideas = speculative commentary about life today (Iraq-planet, religion, politics) or tomorrow (all the socio-enviromental whatifs...)
[] Audience-Appealing Setting = a place and time that thematically identifies the story...( Space-BSG turned off common folks, Mostly-Modern-Caprica turned off SyFy-setting-loving folks, Wild-Chinese-West-meets-Space Firefly turned off FOX Execs )
[] Plausibility = a measure of how possible the story is...from retellings of actual events ( JFK, W) to possible tech ( robots, virtual reality, genetic- ) to fantasy as we know it ( magic, Faster-than-Light-Travel ). ( Funny to consider that most spy shows, like James Bond are mostly science-fiction-setting in their spy-gadgets and fantasy in their bullet absorbing. )
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Caprica was definitely good & bad:
On the good side, the show had cool ideas about religion & 'virtual-heaven', the future of A.I., exploring how no-consequence virtual-worlds could become rife w/ deviant sex & violence, how uploading your mind lets you 'live forever' and the consequences of it, a society with prejudices that are mirrored but different than ours (not racial/sexual-orientation issues, Caprican-Tauran ones), how terrorist recruitment of kids happens so easily, and the story of how humanity's cylon children were born into slavery.
On the bad side, the dialog had a fair amount of cringe-worthy moments, lots of character-contradictions (Greystone), attempts to comment on virtual-violence/sex/obsessions lamely turned into showing it for too long, there really wasn't one character that was a 'good/decent' person...other than moments of Sam Adama's Halatha humor, i really didn't like anyone (although evil Sister Clarice was a memorable Attia-like villain), and its overall vibe was distilled depression.
Oh well, back to Fringe/SGU
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