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by Rick Norwood
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SF on TV | |
How many fantasy, science fiction, or horror shows are there in the new Fall season? It
depends on how you count. If you include animated shows and comedies, at least
fifteen. If you only include live action shows with space travel, one: Doctor Who.
Television science fiction has largely come to mean a show set in the near future
with one big idea not very well thought out: aliens land, aliens destroy civilization,
aliens move in next door, there's a nuclear war, everybody gets a glimpse of the future,
a parallel world is discovered. These ideas, from past seasons, have gone nowhere and
are now ready to be forgotten. This season we have more of the same.
Revolution is about the world after electricity stops working. So why do our
brains, which are basically electrical in nature, still work? Don't ask. An evil leader
arises who hates the American flag and wants to take away our guns. The good guys try to
aid the real Americans and also restore power. The ambiance is basically Civil War era.
But the America of the Civil War was a civilized society, with a stable infrastructure of
farmers and towns to support the war. If electricity went away, civilization would
collapse. We have too large a population to feed by 19th century methods, and city dwellers
can't become farmers overnight. Even worse, Monsanto has genetically engineered seeds so they
won't sprout in the next season, so without Monsanto we all starve.
I ask: How do the characters stay so clean? Who does the washing? Where are all the babies
now that birth control is no longer available? Where are the diseases that ravaged the world
before modern medicine? Why do the characters still have all their teeth?
Revolution started with 12 million viewers, dropped to 9 million by episode two.
In The Neighbors, we have aliens in the suburbs. Not for me.
Last Resort sounds like a romantic comedy, but it is really a near-future political
thriller in which an American nuclear submarine is ordered to nuke Pakistan. When Captain Chaplin
refuses to carry out the order, his sub comes under attack by the forces of the United States.
Early in the show, Chaplin explains that the way Reagan beat the communists was by convincing
them he was crazy. Maybe, but I don't think it was really firing the air-traffic controllers
that did the trick. Now Chaplin needs to convince the US armed forces that he is crazy enough
to nuke DC if they don't back off.
The show doesn't make beans for sense, but it has a good cast, and is the only new show I'm apt
to keep watching.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sorry, you're going to have to watch that one
and let me know what you think.
Once Upon a Time. Probably the best of the returning US shows.
But Doctor Who: now that's what I call real science fiction.
SF on TV in October 2012
Doctor Who will be back in December with a Christmas special.
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Rick Norwood is a mathematician and writer whose small press publishing house, Manuscript Press, has published books by Hal Clement, R.A. Lafferty, and Hal Foster. He is also the editor of Comics Revue Monthly, which publishes such classic comic strips as Flash Gordon, Sky Masters, Modesty Blaise, Tarzan, Odd Bodkins, Casey Ruggles, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, Barnaby, Buz Sawyer, and Steve Canyon. Visit his web site at comicsrevue.com. |
Elementary isn't really sf. It's yet another modern day Sherlock Holmes with a
female Watson. It is fairly well done, but we've been down that road too many times before,
and it suffers by comparison with the much better Sherlock.
Monday, October 1
 
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