Inspired by this thread , what’s the kind of sci-fi show you’d like to see on prime-time TV?
Here’s mine: A modern day team of detectives and forensic pathologists, a la CSI, travels through time and solves murders in various historical epochs. Their transportation would contain a full-size 2005-era crime lab and be bigger on the inside than the outside (a la Doctor Who) and the team would have little control over its movements, travelling seemingly at random to different places and times throughout Earth’s history. There may or may not be a story arc which explores the time machine and the motives of its maker.
I for one would like to see a SF spaceship-using series that was self-consistent with and cognisant of its fictional technology and didn’t commit grievous anachronisms like having a culture that has artificial gravity and faster than light travel but has people dying of cancer or confined to a wheelchair. I’d like to see it explore the cultural ramifications of things like implantable computers and nanotechnology. And most of all, I’d like one where the aliens didn’t look and think like humans in makeup.
I felt the book The Diamond Age did a great job of exploring the cultural changes nanotechnology would start. The story stank, IMHO, but the cultural nuances were quite interresting.
Well, Babylon 5 does a fairly good job of keeping most of those points intact, I think. With the exception of the Minbari and Centauri, the aliens actually look like aliens. Yes, most are still bipedal with two arms, but I’ll forgive that, since that’s how actors come. Aliens have tentacles on their mouths, many can’t breath a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and some we never really see the faces of. As for the technological anachrmnisms, well…the humans in B5 didn’t develop any faster than light travel OR artificial gravity. As a matter of fact, most races didn’t discover hyperspace on their own, they were pretty much all given it by a more advanced race.
The hard answer – I’d like to see something that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has fun within the constraints of being consistent. I would prefer something like say Wild Wild West ( the television show, not the Will Smith thing) that was serious fun and consistent, if not entirely beliveable. (Like Red Dwarf, only with better production values and a somewhat larger more interesting cast).
The harder answer: If someone could do something as engaging as Asimov’s original Foundation Trilogy or even his I, Robot (the real thing, not the Will Smith thing) that blended elements of SF in with L&O/CSI style drama, that would be Aces.
Of course there’s always room in my heart for a remake of Captain Nice.
I’d like to see a series like Firefly, with the same actors as Firefly, written/directed/produced/catered/whatever by Joss Whedon (creator of Firefly), and not abused by the network it airs on, as Firefly was.
But I would call it The Cap’n Tightpants and Kaylee Variety Hour or maybe Big Fat Real World Survivorzilla: Serenity.
I too would like to see a Foundation series, or moreso a group of miniseries. Covering not only Foundation, but going back and doing the Robot novels as well. Then after they run out of books to cover, start making stories up that take place in the Foundation universe.
