I’ve been watching Buffy, Doctor Who, and Torchwood (not at Angel in the Buffy timeline yet) for the first time, and one thing that strikes me is how a lot of contemporary/earth-centric sci-fi and fantasy like to go “all in” so to speak. It’s not enough to just have vampires and demons, or just have interesting aliens and time travel. Instead every single solitary myth and urban legend ends up being true. Maybe werewolves just exist, maybe werewolves are aliens. Those Yetis are just a family from another planet, aliens are just imps exiled from hell. It’s not just these series; Harry Potter does it, Halloweentown did it, and so on.
It seems to me that Sci-Fi taking from fantasy (i.e. “werewolves are aliens”) is generally more likely than fantasy explaining aliens. But in general it seems that universes that accept one supernatural element snowball and suddenly half of all myths in the history of humanity are true (oftentimes modified to fit the premise, i.e. all are alien activity, they’re all really manifestations of demons, etc).
There’s nothing wrong with it, and it works perfectly well if executed correctly, but I’m wondering what universes don’t do this. Are there any that say “Okay, so there’s witches. AND NOTHING ELSE.”
ETA: By “contemporary” I mean series that focus on a contemporary earth, not ones that were recently written.
I’m waiting for space aliens to show up in True Blood; it’s just about the only thing they haven’t done. Neither Firefly or Battlestar Galactica had aliens, but the later had mysterious being who worked for an entity that didn’t like to be called God :rolleyes: (but spent billions of years manipulating evolution on at least 2 different planets).
Secret Circle seemed to only have witches and the related witch hunters, from what little I watched. Possibly also demons, but that’s understandable with witches.
The Underworld series seemed to restrict itself to interrelated werewolves, vampires and hybrids of same.
Not so. Luna Lovegood’s crank of a dad publishes a newspaper filled with nonsense that other wizards recognize as such. Not every farfetched idea in the Potterverse is actually “true.”
I can’t remember its title, but when Buffy was on, there was a short-lived series about a secret police department that fought all kinds of magical creatures–but they made a point of the fact that vampires were a myth.
Also, Syfy did a movie in which supposedly werewolves were real, but nothing else, and another one like it for mermaids. Oh, and a few years ago there was one about dragons, too.
You neglected to mention a Scifi chow that goes all in: Stargate SG1. Unlike Doctor Who or Torchwood, it never switches to fantasy, but otherwise goes all in, explaining every myth except the Christian God.
I think you’ll find that this is uncommon in Scifi, which is why I am pointing it out. Most Scifi avoids the fantasy stuff.
Alien Nation had aliens, and that’s it. And, for the most part, they were just alien–not demonic, unless genetically modified, which doesn’t really count.
I’ll probably get lambasted by the fanbase, but to me, Star Wars was all explained by use of the force–there was no magic, no demons, no possession or vampires. Just psychic powers.
In the literary world, the Wild Cards series of collected anthologies posited a world where people were granted super-powers, some of which seemed to be magical, but were all just manifestations of psychic ability.
In the Watchmen, the only superpower was Dr. Manhattan, with no mystical anything (except for Ozymandias catching a bullet, and I think he had armored gloves).
In the comic, it’s a plot point that celebrity Robert Deschaines had bona fide psychic powers; he apparently never used 'em to fight crime or become a costumed villain, but near as I can tell things would’ve been different for humanity in general and “sensitives worldwide” in particular if he’d lacked those peculiar abilities.
(Note, too, that this means there really is a worldwide population of sensitives, who in fact react unusually when a psychic resonator amplifies a signal pulse.)
Anne Rice’s older books were pretty restricted when it came to supernatural species. Vampires and their equivilent of gods (and maybe the devil) in the Interview with the Vampire sequels. And with the Mayfair series it was just witches and taltos.
Nope, psychic powers were definitely in existence (or the Bad Event wouldn’t have worked).
And Ozy caught the bullet barehanded - I think he did it by lining up the “tube” of his closed hand precisely with the bullet’s path, since there was blood on his palm. But don’t try that at home.
Nobody mentioned Red Dwarf yet? A sci-fi show set way, way in the future in outer space, and not a single alien to be found in the whole series! Everything that they encounter in the show originally came from Earth or descended from something that came from Earth.
It always bugged me that on, say, The X-Files it was always true. You’d think a good quarter of the things they investigated would end up hoaxes or natural phenomena.
All I can think of right now is the outstanding counter-example: *Supernatural *goes out of its way to toss in everything anyone’s ever heard of including the proverbial kitchen sink. I love it 'cause you never know what’s next.
I always liked the fact too that even though thousands of species are living side by side, and obviously do have sex of a sort, there are no hybrids. Yea its absurd they would be able to live in similar atmospheres/food etc but it was refreshing coming from Trek where hybrids are common. SW has often seemed harder scifi than ST except for that whole psychic powers thing.