Fear of a Melmac Planet

In his Hugo-winning 1998 personal history of science fiction The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, Thomas M. Disch wrote “America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend to believe."

This observation rings troublingly true when it comes to immigrants and immigration. Science fiction has a long history of offering tales of lonely, lost aliens who build a new life for themselves on Earth and serve as thinly-veiled metaphors for foreign nationals who arrive at US borders.

Indeed, the lies some Americans tell about immigrants to their country can be seen writ large in their science fiction.

The sitcom Aliens in the Family featured an early
cameo by future star James Van Der Beek, who
ends up eaten by the family pet.
(Image via muppetwiki) 

There have been literally hundreds of published or performed stories about aliens lost on Earth, most of which serve as a parable about immigration in some way. Everything from The Cat From Outer Space, to the sitcom Aliens In The Family offers uncomfortable subtext about those uprooting themselves in search of a better life.

The trope has its origins in the late 1800s, with Thomas Blot’s The Man From Mars: His Morals, Politics and Religion, an odd little work that offers anecdotes about the strange customs of a highly advanced civilization. But the alien travellers of early utopian novels were generally used as a didactic tool to tell the reader what the “ideal” human society might look like. Just as importantly, these alien visitors were not planning to stay on Earth, and thus were portrayed as nonthreatening, long-term, to the country’s citizens.

Although not technically an alien, Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1963 Hugo winner Stranger in a Strange Land, was raised in a culture with different norms than those of contemporaneous Americans. Although some of the gender representation in the novel is highly questionable, the depiction of immigration is far more progressive than one might expect. Smith arrives on Earth, is relatively quick to understand local customs, and then offers valuable insights gained from his bi-cultural experiences.

Published just two years later, Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell To Earth also presents a parable about the threat of immigration, but interestingly the warning is about the danger to the immigrant. The novel portrays alien Thomas Jerome Newton as losing his culture, losing his way, and being utterly assimilated into a culture that consumes him. Likewise, Zenna Henderson’s “The People” stories, which feature a group of extra-terrestrial refugees living in an Anabaptist commune in Pennsylvania puts the focus on the difficulties these refugees face in their interactions with their Anglo-Saxon neighbors.

Every sitcom alien has a favourite
weird food. My Favourite Martian
ate gold.
(Image via moriareviews.com)

In more mainstream media, however, there are more troubling works. My Favourite Martian, which ran from 1963-1966, features a stranded extraterrestrial living in Los Angeles. The visitor, named Tim, leans into tropes that would become familiar in such sitcoms; weird foreign food, strange customs, and lack of understanding of normative US cultural practices of the era. Moreover, the series often features the extraterrestrial character only proving his worth through magical powers; leaning into the idea that a newcomer must go above and beyond to justify their presence and prove their harmlessness, or risk erasure.

Since the late 1970s, these stories have taken on a darker tone that aligns with right-wing narratives about migrants.

Depicting a lone alien stuck in Boulder, Colorado, the television series Mork and Mindy was one of the highest-rated comedies of the late 1970s. Featuring the late Robin Williams as the titular alien Mork from the planet Ork, much of the humour was derived from a sense of cultural dislocation. Although the series is gentler in its implicit xenophobia, it still depicts Mork the migrant as having less work ethic than his US counterparts, an inability to work well with authority figures, and difficulty understanding everyday life. It’s worth noting that Mork’s obsession with eggs may have been inspired by increased levels of migration from Mexico and Japan — those being the two countries on Earth whose citizens eat the most eggs per capita.

Another example of this type of narrative is The Brother from Another Planet, John Sayles’ 1984 cult classic about a Black-presenting alien fleeing from his erstwhile enslavers. Although the titular Brother is more of a refugee metaphor than an economic migrant like many of the others discussed here, the alien is presented as bringing value to the American community in which he finds refuge. Portrayed with empathy by Joe Morton, the alien Brother does not speak the language of his adoptive home, but the movie uses fewer problematic tropes than many contemporary works.

In the 1980s, prompted in part by the success of Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, there was a wave of stories about lost aliens on Earth. Given that it was a decade in which right-wing politicians weaponized economic uncertainty, job competition, and cultural change to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment, it is no surprise that many of these narratives display some degree of xenophobia.

(Image via alftv.com)

The television series ALF (an abbreviation of “Alien Life Form”) ran on NBC for four seasons from 1986 to 1990, with an additional television movie airing in 1996. Featuring an alien named Gordon Shumway from a planet named Melmac whose spacecraft crashes in California, the series focuses on the cultural clashes between Shumway and the family he ends up living with. Shumway becomes a safe proxy for otherness, allowing the show to make coded racist jokes without confronting prejudice directly. The alien is often depicted as lacking privacy boundaries, having a weird odour, and not always sharing American values — comedy that echoed the anti-immigrant talking points of xenophobic politicians like Jesse Helms. Notably, the alien’s culinary preference for eating peoples’ pets has a direct analogue in recent right-wing smear campaigns against immigrants in the Midwest United States. Much of the series’ framing normalizes exclusion while softening its impact through sitcom conventions.

It is worth noting however, that ALF does engage with the anxiety that many undocumented migrants face around law enforcement. A running theme within the series is that of a shadowy and malevolent government agency tasked with rounding up aliens and confining them in undisclosed locations under harsh conditions without benefit of due process. This fictional agency may have predated the real-world ICE, but it still resonates today.

As a story about an illegal migrant to the United States, the currently-airing series Resident Alien’s premise is steeped in xenophobia. The alien in question, Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk) is sent to Earth to destroy all human life. Although the protagonist eventually rejects his original mission, this set-up still mirrors the reprehensible claims made by pundits that all or most immigrants hide harmful intentions. This is a propaganda-based narrative that clearly continues to resonate in too many countries. Fans of the show will defend the character of Vanderspeigle, noting that he ends up trying to assimilate to the broader American culture, but the fact that he is the only non-aggressive member of his species brings to mind the old racist trope of calling someone “one of the good ones.” Interestingly, Resident Alien creator Chris Sheridan is himself an immigrant, having been born in the Philippines before moving to the United States as a child.

Much has been made in critical analysis of science fiction of the relationship between the word Robot, derived as it is from the Czech word robota — literally forced labour. But the etymology of the word “Alien” is equally revelatory about the subtext inherent in our science fiction. The word came to English from Latin (by way of French), based on the possessive form of the word alius, literally meaning “other.” It seems fitting, then, that the majority of such stories connote the othering of migrants.

Science fiction does not just echo cultural attitudes toward migration, it helps to construct and normalize them, wrapping suspicion and exclusion in the comforting guise of entertainment. If, as Disch suggests, the genre is uniquely suited to telling the lies Americans prefer to believe, then serious questions should be asked about what the genre suggests about those who come to this planet in search of a better life. We might also question why stories about successful and mutually beneficial migration, celebrating diversity and inclusion, seem less likely to be published and performed.

The Next Degeneration

Three months ago, right-wing billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance Media bought Paramount, the venerable and storied studio that is the home of SpongeBob SquarePants, Mission Impossible, and of course Star Trek.

As Variety has recently reported, Ellison’s short tenure at Paramount has already brought significant changes to the company. Management directives have included everything from hosting Mixed Martial Arts events on the White House lawn in celebration of President Trump’s 80th birthday, to firing executives who made the unforgivable mistake of being women, to blacklisting stars who have condemned the Israeli invasion of Gaza. 

New Paramount CEO David
Ellison is afflicted with resting
frat-boy face.
(Image via Paramount)

It is clear that Paramount now has a specific political perspective. It is also clear that the studio’s owner plans to expand their reach by acquiring additional intellectual property.

Given the long production schedules of television and cinema, the effects of this right-wing turn will likely not be immediately obvious. But it is likely that the next generation of Star Trek showrunners will be incentivized to curb the franchise’s progressivism, either directly or by the knowledge that advancing left-wing ideas is a career-limiting move in the company. Five years from now, it is almost inconceivable that whatever Star Trek is still being made by Paramount will depict labour unions or transgender characters without villanizing them.

Blogger Darren Mooney has ably pointed out that the series is not always as progressive as its reputational legacy, but recent incarnations such as Discovery and Strange New Worlds have certainly leaned into diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential elements of the franchise. This is in sharp contrast to the values of the franchise’s new owners, who have vowed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the studio.

We suspect that Star Trek is boldly going nowhere good.

The spectrum of political viewpoints expressed within canonical stories of a franchise that is considered to be acceptable exists within certain expectations governed by creators and owners. In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry was prohibited from depicting a labour union in The Original Series, but in the 1990s labour organizing became part of mainstream Star Trek politics. In the 1980s, David Gerrold quit The Next Generation because LGBTQ stories were prohibited on the series, but by the 2020s, such stories were an essential part of Star Trek. This is the Overton Window of the franchise; the spectrum of political storytelling that is considered canonical.

Star Trek Picard was not our favourite series,
but they do have to be given credit for being
pretty clear on their position on I.C.E.
(Image via StarTrek.net)

This window shifts slowly. It is unlikely that there will suddenly be a Star Trek: Neutral Zone Patrol show where Dean Cain and an alien hedgehog first officer are heroic Starfleet officers trying to prevent Romulan immigrants from stealing Federation jobs. But It’s more likely that the show will maintain a patina of progressivism, while airing an increased number of episodes that implicitly endorse warrantless wiretapping, right-wing military adventures, or racial profiling.

There is a faction within every fandom that embraces the franchise as part of their identity. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Dr. Who, they identify as a Whovian. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Star Trek, they identify as a Trekkie. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Mercy Point, they identify as a Pointhead. There is often in-group slang and a rejection of criticism of the franchise coming from those outside of the group. Once you have pledged allegiance to a specific intellectual property, the ability to assess its output becomes more difficult.

This type of fan loyalty is already big business, with media properties monetizing commitment to community through slapdash sequels and merchandise. The most die-hard fans will continue to follow the franchise uncritically even when intellectual property is owned by someone whose overt political agenda informs the end product. For a franchise like Star Trek, which has built an occasionally insular partisan core of fandom, the most fanatical group is fairly well established. It is conceivable that Trekkies who once celebrated inclusivity, exploration, and social critique may find themselves complicit in endorsing a vision they did not initially share, simply by remaining loyal.

Two years ago this blog predicted that within a decade, one of the major streaming services would lean into culture war divisions in an attempt to build a walled garden that appeals to the increasingly extreme right wing political identity. That prediction is coming true faster than we had anticipated. Paramount Plus is on its way to becoming the Fox News of entertainment content.

Declaring allegiance to a specific corporate-owned franchise effectively puts one’s loyalty up for sale; whichever media conglomerate owns the property has its hooks in the fandom. The transformation of Paramount under Ellison illustrates how corporate ownership might reshape both the content of a franchise and potentially its fandom.

When allegiance to a brand eclipses critical engagement, even the most idealistic communities risk being co-opted by forces that run counter to the values they once championed.

Bunker Mentality

(This is the second of two blog posts discussing nuclear war depicted in cinema and television. The other one is about a flourishing of Atomic War fiction in the 1980s and was posted simultaneously.)

From Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth (1964) to Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember (2003), post-apocalyptic narratives set in bunkers often reflect how humans create, respond to, and survive authoritarian control and the destabilization of shared truths.

Say what you will about the shadowy builders of
Silo 18, they had a flair for brutalist architecture.
(Image via Apple+)

So what does it say about our present moment that there are three major television series all playing with the same trope?

• On the Apple+ TV series Silo, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) slowly begins to realize that citizens of “Silo 18,” the underground bunker in which she lives, are being deceived and that a shadowy cabal is manipulating the populace. 
• Over on Amazon Prime’s Fallout, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) sets out on a quest to uncover a conspiracy surrounding “Vault 33,” the underground bunker in which she was raised. 
• On Hulu’s Paradise, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) investigates the mystery surrounding the construction of a post-apocalyptic bunker in which the last vestiges of the American government are now sheltering.

These fictional nuclear bunkers provide a relatively controlled environment for narratives about authoritarian systems of control being replaced by a more egalitarian system. These are stories in which protagonists live in a home that they did not choose, can not control, and from which they (at least in principle) cannot escape. Systems of coercion and control are baked into the very walls by which the citizens are surrounded, because those walls were designed and built at the behest of an unseen elite. Architectural features such as the levels of Silo 18 can be designed to keep one class of citizen separated from another class. Surveillance — either overt or covert — can both enable authoritarian policing and be used as a panopticon that motivates individuals to police themselves. 

Fallout depicts a society that relies on propaganda
and the manipulation of shared notions of history.
(Image via Amazon)

Fundamentally, these are all narratives about a distrust in institutions and in authority — and the hope that they can be overtaken and replaced with something that provides more integrity and more space for hope. The villain in Fallout isn’t the atomic weapons, it’s the shadowy elites who make decisions without regard to the consequences for the masses. This resonates with audiences living in an era of global declines in trust towards institutions, and each other. They can also be about the idea that mere survival isn’t enough, that we need to do better by one another even in the face of catastrophe.

In the modern context, these stories can serve as allegories for climate change. It’s been long observed that climate change affects those on the lower end of the economic spectrum more than it affects the more privileged classes and countries. Consequently, those making decisions at the top do not have as much skin in the game when it comes to dealing with carbon emissions, for example. Essentially, whether the world burns in nuclear fire or is cooked in a runaway greenhouse effect, those at the top of the economic pyramid will be able to hide away in their bunkers and preserve their privileged position. This is the narrative conclusion of Frederick Jamieson’s famous maxim that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism; the post-apocalyptic bunker story portrays the persistence of capitalism-derived hierarchies when all else is dust.

What makes these stories affecting is not just their dystopian premises, but how plausibly they mirror the realities experienced by today’s viewers. As climate anxiety grows and wealth inequality deepens, the idea that a select few might retreat into secured, climate-controlled sanctuaries while the rest of humanity suffers outside doesn’t feel like science fiction. Rather, it feels like a logical extension of gated communities and private police forces.

In Paradise, the connection between bunker and
gated community is made fairly explicit.
(Image via Hulu. 

You don’t have to look hard to find real-world parallels: from billionaire bunkers in New Zealand to Silicon Valley doomsday preppers investing in underground shelters, the fantasy of survival for the elite is already in motion. The bunker trope is a narrative reflection of this quiet but chilling shift in priorities for the privileged classes. Elon Musk’s pipe dream fantasies of building underground slave colonies on an uninhabitable planet seem strangely benign and kind when compared to the prepper billionaires preparing for the depopulation of our current planet.

Fundamentally however, the current crop of bunker-mentality television shows reflect a world where escape is privatized and survival is monetized. Perhaps audiences turn to these shows for a glimmer of hope, since they all seem to argue that those in power can not perpetually escape the consequences of their decisions.

American Cleon

There has long been a lapsarian strain in the American imagination, and that’s why Foundation is so

Hari Seldon never suggests making something
better than an Empire. He wants to make Trantor
Great Again. (Image via CNET) 

appealing — and so dangerous — right now. But unlike the fate of the Galactic Empire, the outcomes of the issues facing us today are not certain.

Books and articles about the decline of the United States and of what is called “Western Civilization” have populated bookstore shelves and magazine pages for more than a century, with such notables as Niall Ferguson, Chris Hedges, Emmanuel Todd, and David D. Schein contributing tomes to the pastime of prognosticating American eschatology.

But in the past decade, these types of predictions have reached a fever pitch. And it’s not difficult to see why. Factors such as political polarization, global warming, the decline of democracy, increasing resource scarcity and disparities between rich and poor, all seem to have clear and exacerbating trend lines. If there were one of Hari Seldon’s prime radiants, one could imagine these trends being plotted through the equations of psychohistory and seeing a definitive predictive answer that an unpleasant end awaits us all.

These are historical trends that seem inexorable; they seem as inescapable as “the known probability of imperial assassination, viceregal revolt, the contemporary recurrence of periods of economic depression, the declining rate of planetary explorations…” all of which afflicted the Galactic Empire during the reign of Cleon II.

It must be understood that Foundation reflects the argument made by Edward Gibbons in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; that decline was only in part caused by forces external to the empire itself, that a determinant of collapse was a gradual loss of civic virtue among its Roman citizens (Though by ‘civic virtue,’ some have suggested Gibbons meant ‘members of lower classes knowing their place’). Asimov had just finished reading Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when he began writing Foundation, but he was also writing in the immediate wake of the Great Depression, and a period of upheaval and uncertainty about his country’s future.

Some pundits have gone further back,
and compared present-day politics to
Asimov’s source material.

The idea of the United States as a “new Rome” has existed since shortly after the American revolution. It is communicated through the myth of manifest destiny and is encapsulated in the architecture of Washington, D.C. At various points through its history, American preachers have attempted to create historical narratives that cast the rise and fall of the country as divine prophecy (Just as one high-profile example, Latter-Day Saints founder Joseph Smith told his followers that the U.S. Constitution was a divine document, and that Jesus’ second coming would occur in Missouri).

Foundation as a narrative has to be understood in this context; Isaac Asimov’s understanding of history was informed by American exceptionalism, the influence of America’s third ‘Great Awakening’ of apocalyptic religiosity, the wake of the Great Depression, and of a period of upheaval and uncertainty about the country’s future. It might be asked why, after 80 years, the books are finally being adapted to the screen; is it perhaps because we are again in a period of upheaval and uncertainty?

While we should be aware that the original novel is a product of the ideas and concerns of the time it was written, the television show is a product of today and makes arguments about the world of 2021. We would suggest that the television series version of Foundation contains hints of Gibbons’ classism, echoes of Asimov’s concerns about America on the eve of the Second World War, but also reflects our own 21st Century concerns about decline.

Margaret Atwood has said that “Prophecies are really about now. In science fiction it's always about now.” And it’s really more about how people perceive the present, as today’s perceptions determine the actions of tomorrow. Apple TV’s Foundation series resonates because people perceive these trends to be inescapable, and determinative. This is underscored by science fiction’s ideas shaping powerful political forces.

If we accept that this new iteration of Foundation is indeed about the United States, those who take its core messages seriously may help ensure that decline is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problems facing the world are not insurmountable. There are policies and technologies that will mitigate climate change. Pressure on politicians can force them to behave in our best interest. These things are not easy but they are necessary if we want to avoid Seldon’s predicted outcome.

Inescapable doom can sometimes be more comfortable than faint hope; if the Empire’s going to collapse one way or another, then enjoy it while you can and let Raven Seldon worry about what comes next. If we, as citizens of the world, accept the metaphor presented by Foundation, it can inculcate fatalism about the very real problems we’re facing. As Florida International University professor of English Charles Elkins argued in his Marxist reading of Foundation, “Reading these novels, the reader experiences this fatalism which, in a Marxist analysis, flows from his own alienation in society and his sense of impotence in facing problems he can no longer understand, the solutions of which he puts in the hands of a techno-bureaucratic elite.”

Decline is a powerful idea, and one that rightly should worry us. Foundation suggests that individuals have little agency to affect real change. In doing so, it absolves us for doing nothing.

Going Back To The Same Well

The Best Dramatic Presentation (short form) ballot seems to indicate that Hugo nominators are a group that like to go back to the same well, year after year. This year’s shortlist, in fact, may represent the nadir of this trend.

The final episode of She-Ra and the Princess of
Power earned the show its first Hugo nomination.
(Image via she-raandtheprincessesofpower.fandom.com)

Consider that between the six finalists there are representative entries from the three of the screen franchises most-often represented on Hugo ballots: Doctor Who (six wins out of 35 nominations) Star Wars (three wins out of ten nominations) and The Good Place (three wins out of six nominations). Of the entire ballot, only the She-Ra and the Princess of Power episode “Heart” represents a franchise that has never won a Hugo Award.

To be fair, many of the entries on this shortlist are excellent representatives of their respective fictional universes. “Gaugamela” from The Expanse plays with tension without descending into melodrama; an extraordinary hour of science fiction television. “The Jedi” from Mandalorian tells a mostly self-contained story exceedingly well, all while teeing up the narrative arc for the rest of the season. While not as carefully structured as the other nominated episode from Mandalorian, “The Rescue” provides the payoff that longtime fans likely want. And the funny, charming, and genuinely surprising “Fugitive of the Judoon” might be the finest episode of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who.

As has been widely noted across the Anglosphere, there has been an increasing reliance among media corporations to lean on their franchises instead of developing new content. It is simply a safer bet for movie and television executives to invest in iterations of existing intellectual property instead of trying something new. To some degree, it’s disheartening to see that at least the majority of those nominating for the short-form dramatic Hugo are reinforcing this corporate risk aversion. It might be noted that only once in the past decade has there been a Dramatic Presentation Short Form shortlist on which a majority of nominees were from franchises that had not previously won the award.

Last year there were several excellent science fiction and fantasy television shows that might have benefited from the attention offered by a Hugo nod.

The Robbie Amell post-cyberpunk comedy Upload, the oddly compelling Japanese series Alice in Borderland, Alex Garland's meticulously planned out Silicon Valley fable DEVS, and the intricate and beautiful German time travel epic Dark come to mind.

Critically acclaimed SF horror Lovecraft County
creator Misha Green was blindsided by the decision
to cancel the program. It deserved a Hugo nod, 
as well as a second season.
(Image via NBCNews.com)

The abrupt cancellations of Lovecraft County, I Am Not Okay With This, Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist and Tales From The Loop (among others) seem to indicate that even the best-reviewed original (non-franchise) content is now in constant jeopardy. If we want to enjoy a mass-media landscape that continues to produce diverse, nuanced, and engaging stories, it will take concerted collective effort to ensure that such stories thrive. Hugo nods (and Emmy nods) may not be enough to secure a place for such works, but we’d argue they are at least a part of the solution.

It is interesting to note that in the prose fiction categories, Hugo nominators have long shown an aversion to recognizing licensed franchise works. It seems that the voting public is averse to recognizing such works — even critically acclaimed, fan beloved, and bestselling works such as Diane Duane’s Star Trek novel My Enemy, My Ally, and Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars novel Heir To The Empire. This is not a complaint on our part; we are entirely supportive of this unwritten rule to avoid franchize fiction in the prose categories, but it seems odd that other Hugo categories now embrace this sort of profit-chasing multimedia universe.

This year’s short-form dramatic Hugo ballot is one of the better ones in recent memory, with works that are at least mostly enjoyable delves into established (and perhaps somewhat tired) universes. If the nominees were all we watched this year, we’d be left wishing for new worlds to explore.

Divergent Evolution of Television

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, cable television systems moved to digital delivery and expanded

(Image via Pintrest) 

beyond their original constraints of 35 channels. Technological optimists began to dream of a 500-channel universe.

In 1979 alone, ESPN, C-SPAN, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel, and the USA Network all hit the airwaves. There was to be a channel for every audience, and an audience for every channel. In 1992, American science fiction fans received their own dedicated channel, while the Canuck equivalent began operations in 1996.

Many imagined that this fabled 500-channel universe would provide a practically unlimited number of high-quality television shows. We would be able to flip channels almost endlessly until we found the content we desired. In reality, and at its peak at the turn of the millennium, there were in excess of 68 million cable subscribers in the United States, and in most parts of the country consumers could access a roughly similar platform of 60 or more channels.

There is good reason why this stretch of time saw an equivalent diversification of genre fiction; almost three times as many prime time science fiction dramas premiered on television in the 1990s as had in the 1970s. Throughout this flourishing of genre fiction, the majority of it was broadly available to middle-income American viewers who had a basic cable package that included the Sci-Fi Channel.

Even a show on the Prime Time Entertainment Network (one of the most marginal networks of the day) reached enough viewers to garner a few Hugo Award nominations for J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5.

There were, however, inequities within this distribution model. People living in some remote areas might not have had access to Star Trek: Voyager when UPN started broadcasting in 1995. People living in Canada were largely unable to access the TV show based on the Jean Claude Van Damme movie TimeCop. Among English-language entertainment, British television series remained significantly less

Only nine episodes of TimeCop
aired before Universal decided
to #DefundTheTimePolice.
(Image via YouTube.)

accessible due to differing frame rates and lack of distribution outlets across the pond. Channels were usually bundled rather than being offered à la carte. If you were interested in The Secret World of Alex Mack, you might find that it was on a channel that wasn’t in the same bundle as the channel airing Weird Science: The TV Series.

But despite these relatively small gaps, for the most part there was a common technological platform, media provider, and billing system that handled all media.

The proliferation of streaming services that media consumers are now experiencing is fundamentally different from the growth of niche-content channels in the mid-1990s. It’s worth discussing these differences, as they could be seen to encourage compartalization, and perhaps even a sort of tribalism, across science fiction fandom.

These streaming services should not be compared to individual television channels, but rather to cable packages. Thus, we have not reached the fabled 500-channel universe, but rather a balkanized media landscape made up of a variety of 30-channel universes.

These 30-channel universes are not segmenting the market in the same ways that niche cable channels did; rather they are organized around broad-based appeal, each aiming to build momentum off the strength of three items: a tentpole science fiction series, a relaunch of a 1990s sitcom, and a buzzy prestige drama.

Disney+ was launched on the strength of a new live-action Star Wars show. Apple+ was launched by

How many goodly channels are there here!
How beauteous streaming is! O what a Brave
New World that has such content in it.
(Image via PeacockTV.com)

hiring an acclaimed Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica creative force to craft a much-hyped science fiction project. Peacock was launched with a high-budget star-laden adaptation of Brave New World. Every platform has a band of content for situation comedies, high-brow dramas, reality shows, superhero shows, and cop shows. It is not segmented by interest, but rather segmented by brands that are all trying to compete for all viewers.

It is not reasonable (or for most of us economically feasible) to subscribe to every streaming service that’s offering something we might want to watch. In an average American city, the combined price of Netflix, Hulu, Apple+, Disney+, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, basic cable, HBO Max, Showtime, FX, Peacock, and STARZ will exceed $1,300 per year. It is therefore likely that most fans will pick and choose their streaming services based on which tent-pole productions they are most interested in. If The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are must-haves, then Tales From The Loop and For All Mankind will likely fall by the wayside. It is a sad truth that many technologically adept fans may end up illegally downloading other shows when more moderate, collective pricing might increase both audience and corporate profits overall.

This fragmentation is compounded by the unrelenting deluge of content that is being generated every year.

Ignoring all reruns, in 2009 there were 210 scripted English-language prime-time television series on the air in the United States (a total that fails to include reality shows, daytime dramas, or children’s series). This is an enormous amount of content; it would take you 4,380 hours to watch it all. By 2019, the amount had more than doubled. (It’s worth noting that up until the Pandemic, this growth in high-budget content creation had been mirrored at the movie theatres, with the number of theatrically released movies increasing from 520 in 2009, to 792 in 2019.)

Looking just at science fiction and fantasy, the number of English-language genre shows premiering in a given decade has quadrupled since the 1980s, from 50 to more than 200. When we consider the increasing globalization of science fiction, and the need to include multicultural voices in the awards system, the numbers would be staggering.

The era of “Peak Media” presents a significant obstacle to those who wish to use the democratic forum of the Hugo Awards to celebrate the truly extraordinary storytelling achievements of this era of small-screen entertainment.

One of the great things about the Hugo Awards is the democratic nature of the institution. But access to information is a requirement of a functioning democracy … and in some Hugo categories, access is in decline.

There was a time when it was reasonable to assume that most Hugo voters would have access to a representative sampling of dramatic presentations, either by passive choice or osmosis. Today, it requires more effort, more attention, and more willingness to step outside of our comfort zones.

The increasing segmentation of the television marketplace into streaming fiefdoms is making it more difficult for a worthy series on a less-popular streaming service to break through to broader audiences. No matter how great a science fiction show might be, it has next to no chance of connecting with enough Hugo Award voters to get on the shortlist if it is a Peacock Original.

There is already a significant overrepresentation of well-established franchises on the shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). By our count in the past decade, more than 70 per cent of finalists in the category have come from long-running multimedia franchises.

It appears that Hugo voters will sign up to Disney+ to ensure they keep up to date on the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars Galaxy. There is reason to worry that the award could devolve into “the best show in the walled garden that most Worldcon people subscribe to.”

The evolution of television is diverging. Our collective imagination is the habitat of cultural myths, and as this habitat becomes fragmented, these myths might speciate.

Make Time For Years And Years

Russel T. Davies has usually been the wet firecracker of television writers. Despite this, he has given

Emma Thompson headlines a superb cast
in the BBC/HBO series Years and Years.
(image via iNews) 

viewers possibly the best science fiction on television in 2019 with his six-part miniseries Years And Years.

Over the course of more than 20 years writing for television, Davies has built a reputation as a capable writer who crafts diverse and emotionally compelling characters, builds suspense and tension effectively, and then pulls the rug out from under viewers through trite and banal endings.

This tendency was the signature aspect of his work on Doctor Who. As we have noted before, deus ex machina is his stock in trade. In the penultimate episode of DW’s Season 2 (The Sound of Drums), The Master is built up into an imposing and compelling adversary, but in the finale he’s defeated by people thinking happy thoughts. In Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks, the entirety of the plot of the two-part episode is undone in seconds through largely incomprehensible means.

His new six-episode series premiered on HBO on Monday night, shortly after completing its initial run on the BBC. True to his oeuvre, Davies’ sixth and final hour-long episode of Years And Years might not stick the landing, but the previous five episodes are compelling enough to make up for that.

The series chronicles the intertwined stories of a multi-generational family living in and near Manchester over the course of 15 years starting in 2019.

The four middle-aged siblings; Stephen, Daniel, Rosie and Edith Lyons, their grandmother, their spouses and their children provide viewers with different vantage points of a rapidly changing future that is marked with chaos and uncertainty. Woven throughout the series are the rise and ramifications of a far-right political figure Vivienne Rook, which give viewers cause for reflection on current populist political movements.

There’s a soap-opera nature to the series that occasionally feels improbable, but that same aspect

Russel T. Davies can't deliver a good
ending, but for once that doesn't
spoil the overall greatness of a show.
(image via BBC)

makes it easy to suspend disbelief about technological speculation while being pulled into the emotional lives of compellingly flawed characters. When banks fail and brownouts become the norm, you both see and feel the impact on consumers and homeowners. When medical technology advances and health care is privatized, you see and feel what it means for both the person affected and those close to them.

Some of the brilliance of the series is not even what it shows explicitly, but in what is implied in throw-away lines. Bananas are extinct? It’s not safe for U.K. citizens to visit the U.S. anymore? The Tower of Pisa is no longer leaning? There are so many details to appreciate.

The final episode is a disappointment in exceptionally predictable ways. Bad guys are defeated in a particularly trite (and improbable) ending that undermines some of the emotional weight of the series, though at least Davies has the courage to imply that the systemic issues that led to fascism have not been overcome completely.

Years And Years is a series that is more than the sum of its parts. No single episode deserves a Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form Hugo, but the whole should be seriously considered in the Long Form category. The continuous march of technology (and those who control it) – and the creeping rise of fascism – are examined in an engaging way by the birdseye view of years and years of development over the course of all the episodes.

Does Years And Years bear all the hallmarks of Russell T. Davies’ writing? In both the best and worst ways, it does. It may also be his masterwork. Years And Years deserves very serious consideration for a Hugo.

A Requiem To Counterpart

Three weeks ago with very little fanfare, the finest television show you weren’t watching went off the

J.K. Simmons absolutely crushes it
playing double roles in Counterpart.
(Image via theringer.com)

air for good.

Beautifully filmed, perfectly acted, and tightly written, Counterpart was a weird alternate history spy show that never found its audience — possibly in part because it was hidden away on a channel known more for historical dramas and classic movies. One hopes that like previous gone-too-soon shows like Firefly and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Counterpart will find an afterlife as a cult classic. 

There Are Two Of Everything

The set-up for Counterpart is deceptively simple: 35 years ago, German scientists accidentally opened a doorway to a parallel universe. When they discovered this alternate world, it was exactly the same as our own, but over the subsequent decades the histories of these two worlds have diverged in unexpected and chaotic ways. 

Today, there is a bureaucratic government organization that guards the doorway and regulates the transfer of information and people between the two worlds. Our protagonist, Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) exists as a low-level, mild-mannered functionary for the organization in our universe, while his mirror universe counterpart is a deadly spy. 

Mirror universes are a frequently visited trope in science fiction television, from Star Trek to Doctor Who to Futurama. What is often lacking in these alternates is nuance — Star Trek’s mirror universe is Manichean with evil bad guys and good heroes. Counterpart revels in the grey. 

The wall between worlds allows the show runners to tell a modern-day version of the classic Berlin Wall spy story. And on its surface, this is a first-rate spy thriller that would be comparable to some of Robert Ludlum’s best work. You’ve got secret agents, double-crossings, mole hunts, and moral quandaries, all delivered with a satisfying panache. 

But Counterpart also works in other ways. Beneath the spy surface, it’s a Philip K. Dick-style science fiction story about how fragile our socially constructed understandings of self actually are. Narrative framework is employed to explore how the decisions we make don’t just affect what happens to us, they fundamentally affect who we are. 

Berlin Reflections

Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons gives what may be the finest performance of his career as the twin versions of Howard Silk, making both characters believable, relatable, and distinct from one another. Given no other clues but how Simmons is acting, it’s possible to discern Silk Prime from his mirror universe counterpart. More interestingly, one can discern how the inner workings of these two people serve different motivations. 

Beyond Simmons as Howard Silk, there’s a deep bench of acting talent. Harry Lloyd (Viserys

Emily Silk (Olivia Williams) meets
Emily Howard (Olivia Williams).
(Image via TVLine.Com)

Targaryen on Game of Thrones) plays his conflicted boss, and sells the character’s growing sense of dread. Olivia Williams is impeccable as both Silk’s wife in the regular universe, and his ex-wife in the mirror universe. In the second season, Academy Award-winner James Cromwell joins the cast.

It is also worth noting that the show has a unique — and well executed — sense of visual style. First-episode director and co-producer Morten Tyldum (who was Academy Award-nominated for The Imitation Game) uses the looming brutalist architecture of the city to create the intended sense of place (either claustrophobia or intimacy, depending on scene) while numerous symmetrical shots suggest balance.

Unlike many shows that were cancelled too soon, Counterpart was given the chance to end things properly with a series two finale that wraps up every narrative thread nicely, and to sum up the primary themes and the thesis of the series. While some viewers might find the pay-off episodes slow to materialize, the conclusion is satisfying enough to be worthy of the journey.

Having aired on February 28, 2018, Season 1 Episode 6 "Act Like You've Been Here Before" will be at the top of our Hugo Nominations Ballots this year. It is also almost certain that next year, we will be using our nominating ballots on Season 2 Episode 6, "Twin Cities.”

Having lasted only two seasons of ten episodes each, Counterpart does not take an enormous burden of time, and provides far more intellectual grist than most shows that last ten times as long.

Consider nominating The Good Place

If the arguments on Twitter are any indication, the race for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic

The Good Place has a distinctive visual
style that reinforces both the comedy
and the morality of the series.
(Image via Netflix.com) 

Presentation Short Form may be shaping up as a battle of Orville versus Star Trek: Discovery.

We suspect that these two shows will garner most of the attention in this category during both nominating and voting. Which is a shame, because 2017 has been a spectacular year for science fiction and fantasy on the small screen, and some of it might be overlooked.

The Handmaid’s Tale should garner a nomination for its eighth episode “Jezebels,” American Gods fifth episode “Lemon Scented You” is excellent, and the sixth episode of Preacher’s second season “Sokosha” deserves strong consideration.

But most of all, we hope Hugo Award voters take the time to consider The Good Place, NBC’s sleeper hit about ethics and mortality. The show deserves at least a nomination for the first season finale “Michael’s Gambit” (which is already on Netflix, if you haven’t seen it yet).

When the show premiered in late 2016, it introduced viewers to a simple non-denominational afterlife

Lava monsters, angels, demons, and the
afterlife all make The Good Place
clearly eligible for Hugo consideration.
(Image via Netflix.com)

in which there is a ‘good place’ where good people go, and a ‘bad place’ where the not-good people go. In the pilot, the protagonist Eleanor (Kristin Bell) arrives in the good place and quickly realizes that she’s only there because of a clerical mistake.

The Good Place does not fit the traditional mold for a Hugo Award show. For one thing, no half-hour sitcom has ever won — and only a couple have been nominated — for a Hugo Award. In addition, the stories are not typical fantasy adventures. The show also uses few genre conventions, although the afterlife the protagonists inhabit is clearly a fantasy setting that would qualify for nomination, even if you never saw a lava monster.

Over the course of two very short seasons, The Good Place has managed to balance fleshed-out

Is there another show on television that
can make Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian
philosophy so interesting and funny?
(Image via Critical-Theory.com)

character arcs, absurdist humour, and explorations of philosophy. In most mainstream network shows, the exploration of philosophy would probably have been limited to name-dropping Jean Paul Sartre, or Jeremy Bentham. The Good Place manages to delve into some of these thinkers’ ideas — and it never seems forced or condescending towards the viewer.

The Season 1 finale “Michael’s Gambit” aired on January 19 of this year, and it is one of the finest half-hours of television in recent memory. Ted Danson deserves to win the Emmy for best supporting actor just on the strength of his performance in that episode.

Danson shines, in part, because of the excellent casting throughout the show. In addition to Kristen Bell, who plays a foul-mouthed party girl, William Jackson Howard’s role as straight-laced ethics professor Chidi, Manny Jacinto’s portrayal of enigmatic monk Jin-Yang, and Jameela Jamil as bubbly socialite Tahani are all perfectly cast.

Over the course of just 21 episodes (to date), the show has re-invented itself, completely changed

The cast of The Good Place.
(Image via Metro.co.uk)

courses, and on multiple occasions we have thought that the show was about to jump the shark. But it sticks the landing every time.

It’s also worth noting that not only is The Good Place good (as in of high quality), The Good Place is good (as in possessed of a certain positive moral tenor). This is not a grim-and-gritty show, but one that has a genuine positivity about it, and that’s refreshing.

Given its bizarre premise, overly cerebral aspirations, and moralistic underpinnings, The Good Place could have been a hot mess. But somehow, its writers have managed to craft one of the best fantasy shows on television.