smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Michael over at Binary Bonsai notes that Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying ‘Sci-Fi is Dead’:

Strong words, sure. But wrong? I can’t quite disprove his accusations as such. Consider after all Hollywood’s output of sci-fi over the last decade, and the words ‘questionable quality’ comes to mind. Summer blockbusters like Transformers, sure, but not since The Matrix, has there been something which truly boggled the mind.

This is instinctively up there with print being dead in the misunderstanding of use versus must-be-dead stakes.

Sci-Fi isn’t dead. It is still very much a misunderstood genre by a great many of the studios that release it.

Have we exhausted a lot of ‘pop culture’ sci-fi favourites such as Star-trek and Star-wars? Sure.. they’re a bit tired now.. but what about Robert A Heinlein’s material as an example? And there is a metric ton of fresh and new material being generated daily.

It’s not that Sci-Fi is dead, rather Hollywood is fast running out of material to endlessly re-re-cycle. They are deathly afraid of “new” and “different”. Let’s not forget how badly Blade Runner did on first release - it wasn’t as well-known a story then:

Sir Ridley was pressurised into altering his original vision for the film after it tested badly with preview audiences. At the behest of the studio he introduced a voiceover narration to explain the story to audiences and tacked on a happy ending. #

Let’s also remember why Firefly failed to ignite. The network killed it by playing episodes out of order and failed to allow time for it to breathe and gain a following, despite early reviews being positive in the main. The same following that has now manifested itself regardless and is far far stronger than the entire time the show originally aired.

Like Blade Runner it was perhaps a little ahead of it’s time. It has also in part primed an audience that “different” is OK, leading to a resurgence in Sci-Fi with shows like Battlestar Galactica being relaunched in its wake. And what about Lost? That quirky little show that crossed a Gilligan’s Island concept with the slasher genre. And went on to be a massive hit. Isn’t that also within the Sci-Fi genre? And it’s not exactly a carbon copy of older shows, is it?

Despite an audience ready for and craving something new the edgier, less well known pieces are, no matter how well written, often discarded in favour of yet another remake of the same thing that’s been done multitudes of times previously. Galactica and, to a lesser extent, Lost are the (very) rare exceptions.

Going back to Star-trek as an example, the franchise¹ ultimately fizzled out because networks were afraid to let new stories air. And when they finally took that risk ((the last season of Enterprise was stunning in comparison to the prior seasons)) it was already too late.

The world has begun to move on from wanting to see the same arc-less-repeated-story-in-a-box recycled endlessly. And it seems apparent that the industry is afraid to follow us blindly into unknown territory. They don’t have metrics on probable viewer counts — how do you market advertising spots to an entirely new series running on a previously unused story arc? Or plan the sales pitch for an entirely new Major Motion Picture?

They panic and often drop an idea well before it has a chance to prove them wrong and pick the safer known option; yet another sequel of some cute story about a kid forgotten and left behind at home to cause mayhem when the baddies try to break in.

So much so the latest Babylon 5 releases are all direct to DVD. The original series has a cult following and there have been numerous attempts to kick-start another series. Relatively speaking the universe had barely been scratched and there was and is a lot left of Straczynski’s vision yet to be told. And he’s going to tell those stories regardless — even if it’s via direct-to-dvd.

Ultimately then the industry just isn’t at a place yet where it can embrace “new” and give it life and that is most pronounced in motion pictures where multi-million dollar investments are at stake. They’re too busy milking the past and too afraid to invest in the future, something Sci-Fi is foundered on. And it is a very rare instance of late that such a film is given the green light to proceed.

1. like many other Sci-Fi greats (↩)