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Sign Of The Times?

Fall TV full of sci-fi themes

Science fiction is coming back big. This fall will find more television shows with sci-fi/fantasy themes than audiences have seen in five years -- for reasons that may lie deeper than demographics.

Emboldened by the surprise success of ``Lost'' on ABC last season and other recent successes on cable, major networks are adding new shows covering an array of fantastical themes: alien invasion (CBS's ``Threshold,'' NBC's ``Surface,'' ABC's ``Invasion''), dead people talking (CBS's ``Ghost Whisperer'') and scary creatures of the night (a remake of ``The Night Stalker'' on ABC). These shows are being given prime spots and are being backed with sizable promotional budgets.

Over the years, sci-fi has proven a durable and effective vehicle for reflecting unease and uncertainty in the world, feelings being sparked now in a post-Sept. 11 climate where invisible enemies are seen as lurking among us, striking when we least expect it out of motives we don't understand.

``Science fiction had a big resurgence in the 1950s, the era of potential nuclear war, the Cold War and the Red Scare,'' said Rockne O'Bannon, a veteran of such sci-fi series as ``Farscape'' and the creator of a new miniseries, ``Triangle,'' set in the Bermuda Triangle, the Atlantic Ocean region where ships and planes have been reputed to have disappeared mysteriously.

``Here we are facing the same kind of questions and the same kind of uncertainties about how safe we are, how safe our children are going to be and what world is going to be like. It's something we haven't had to face in the post-Vietnam generation,'' O'Bannon said.

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But it's about more than big numbers. NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says that in choosing new shows for the fall, the network keenly was aware that ``these are paranoid times.''

``Look at what just happened in London and what's going on in Iraq and the West Bank,'' said David Goyer, who wrote ``Batman Begins'' and is executive producer of ``Threshold.'' ``People are scared.''

``Who's friend? Who's foe?,'' Reilly continued. ``What's in our interest in national security? You don't want to literally go at those themes because they make you uncomfortable. You want to kind of bring them out and manifest them in other ways, give us a way to work them out.''

Which means if viewers want to find larger, real-life meaning behind the ideas expressed in the new series, they will have to recognize the allegorical references.

``In science fiction, historically, you're telling allegorical tales,'' Goyer said. ``You're shining a light back on society -- what's happening now. It's a way to talk about what's going on, but from a sideways angle.''

Posted by Ithildin at August 19, 2005 12:34 PM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE