Five Tips For Getting Television and Science Fiction to Play Nice

Science Fiction (SF and SF/F – Science Fiction and Fantasy) on television has never been an easy sell. If you look at the history of the medium, you find few SF/F entries among those series that had a good run. Mostly it’s a road littered with what-might-have-been-if-onlies.

Why?

In short: quality and money. I’ll address the quality aspect in a moment. The money thing is easier to address. With some exceptions, a SF show will never be as inexpensive to produce well as a non-SF show. When you factor in props, sets, make-up, practical & digital effects, other CGI, and….well, you get the idea. This is stuff a lot of ordinary network dramas don’t have to deal with episode-in and episode-out. So, you’d think then that SF shows would be allotted commensurately bigger budgets. Sadly, that is rarely the case. Many times it’s the opposite.

The effect of this is a constant insistence to keep costs down: limit yourself to existing sets, tone down the CG, don’t go on location, and for heaven’s sake don’t blow so much stuff up! And so forth. Basically, the instructions are to do a standard drama and put in some SF “elements”. Surely that will be enough to appease the fanboys and fangirls.

The trouble is that’s like telling the producer of a hospital drama to not have any patients, and if you do, then for the love of all that is decent, don’t use any equipment not already in the property department. It’s like telling the producer of a White House show that you can’t ever show the Oval Office or any exteriors of the White House.

Honestly, I’ve been amazed at some of the quality that has been creatively eeked out of many shows given their proportionally small budgets. SF show audiences have gotten fat on theatrical-quality special effects. In a span of little more than a month, a SF television production puts on display stories that are arguably better than what appears on the big screen where they have a 1-2 years and a few hundred million dollars. When you figure that the equivalent of 11 movies are produced and aired in less time than it takes for one “blockbuster” to make it to your local theaters–and at a fraction of the cost–you start to wonder why SF gets such sort shrift on TV.

Often it’s as simple as misplaced vision. Historically (and currently), network and studio brass do not understand science fiction. Add to that the reality that many in these decision-making positions have never had to create the types of material they are signing off on (i.e., they weren’t actively involved in creating shows or movies as writers/actors/directors/etc.) and you have a formula for misunderstanding. They don’t understand the audience and they don’t understand how the story needs to be told. They just look at the spreadsheets.

But it isn’t just a boardroom thing. The perpetrators of the shows bear some responsibility as well. Let’s face it, too many science fiction shows are cliche and boring (to be fair, so are many conventional network shows). In SF especially, the plot/premise can be given much too much influence at the expense of character. The fact is that too many SF shows have totally screwed the pooch when it comes to creating the characters you want to root for week after week.

Tip #1: Shows must have an comprehensible premise with compelling characters.

That sort of seems like a no-brainer, right? Trouble is, too often it is destroyed by violations of the next tip:

Tip #2: The audience of a show and the characters & plot of the show must be treated with respect.

This one can’t be emphasized enough, especially when it comes to SF. Almost by definition you are creating a world that isn’t like the world of everyone’s normal existence. You are requiring some small effort by the audience to buy into the universe you are creating. It is then very important that you don’t alienate that audience.

SF audiences are alienated by flat characters, uninspired writing, and continuity gaffs. Even if a show does everything right, the “suits” in their desire to assure themselves a hit, try to be helpful (despite the fact that they don’t understand the genre — widgets are widgets, right?). The classic example comes from the adventures of FOX and Firefly.

Firefly was a show that was killed with network “love”. The network felt that the pilot episode wasn’t light enough and didn’t have enough action. They had Joss Whedon write a new 1st episode (over the weekend) and elected not to start the series by showing the pilot — the pilot that sets up the premise and explains who all the characters are. Even hard-core Whedonites like myself had to endure much confusion for the first three or so episodes because we didn’t know what the hell was going on with several of the main characters. By that time, and with the help of the fall-time baseball postseason pre-emptions, the show was toast — even though we “Browncoats” could now explain the series to others and get them on board. Oh, and did I mention that the network also showed several episodes out of order?

So yeah…don’t alienate the audience.

Tip #3: You need to be a little patient.

Genre shows, especially in the SF/F realm, are dependent on building an audience by word of mouth. The aficionados of these kinds of series have been burned so many times that they have become rather cynical about what they are going to see. If they like it, they will spread the word to their friends…even those who aren’t fans of the genre. That takes a bit of time–more time than is needed for an easily recognizable drama or sitcom.

For shows of this ilk it’s necessary for the number-crunchers to pay less attention at the beginning to the raw numbers and more to what’s being said in public forums on the Internet. SF audiences invest themselves into shows. If the favorable buzz isn’t trending upwards, then it’s time to worry. If it is, then the show needs the time for the audience to find it. This method is somewhat outside of what most network execs are used to, but SF/F is a different animal.

Tip #4: Thou shalt not make the show impenetrable.

This is for the show’s creative team and is related to Tip #3. Almost all shows evolve into more-or-less serial storytelling. As the backstory becomes “canon”, it informs what happens later. It’s the nature of long-form storytelling. There comes a point in this serialization that a show becomes difficult for those not already watching a show to join in.

While I’m not advocating a hard-and-fast non-serial rule for SF/F shows, I do think that care must be taken, especially in the early season(s), to make the show accessible to a wider audience. Part of this can be done with the title sequence entertainingly explaining the premise (e.g., Gilligan’s Island). Part of it is having the creative team take a step back every couple of episodes and asking themselves how confused people would be who haven’t been watching from the beginning. Catch-up webcasts might not be a bad idea.

Unless it’s a pure audience-participation whodunit, it is also very important to answer audience questions during the run of a season, not just during finales. Audiences tire of creative coyness and cleverness. They know when they are being played by giggling writers and producers. After a fashion, they’ll walk. Let the story, not (exclusively) the episode number, inform the releasing of information.

Tip #5: Buying Into It

This is one of those hook-line-and-sinker sort of deals. Everyone has to buy into making a project a success. Yes, it applies to all TV, but (again) SF/F is a little different. Just expecting the geeks/nerd/fanboys/fangirls/etc. to tune in just because “they don’t have a life” and you have spaceships or aliens or some fancy “papasmurferator” that “bojubs”  just doesn’t cut it. From the creative side you need strong acting and writing. The network side needs that patience I mentioned before, money for production, and a will to sell the product. Time and time again SF shows are lost on networks because after the pre-launch promo blitz you are (seemingly) never again reminded that the show is on the air–even when it changes time slots (often to Fridays).

I think the “buying into it” part of the exercise is tough for the networks because, as I said, they have trouble understanding SF/F. They don’t get it, and they don’t embrace the genre’s core audience. As a result the marketing effort goes wanting. With that lack of committed marketing, the shows — rather predictably — wither on the vine.