Paranoia TV
Oct. 28th, 2010 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIt's like there's these two broad currents in SF:
On the one hand, boldly going and meeting new life and new civilisations and the solution to everything is making friends.
On the other, that whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers line, where the aliens look just like us and are secretly out to get us and you never know what they're really like inside.
It seems to me there's a whole lot of the second sort lately. Terminator and Battlestar/Caprica, yesno? Probably more.
Which show is seeking out the new and making friends?
We've got Doctor Who, and the Sarah Jane Adventures, but they mix in a bunch of paranoia with their new worlds. There's a lot of secretly-an-alien going on, like Slitheen and Androvax and Bane and Sisters of the Waters and probably a bunch more I'm not thinking of right now. Sometimes there's a trying to make friends because they're not so different really bit, or a secretly trying to save people bit, but then they're all backstab-y. I don't know, I like both shows, but I'm currently looking sideways at the mix.
I'm not saying Star Trek is a bastion of tolerance and embracing our fellow beings. Mostly they go around blowing stuff up. Enterprise was sort of about building the foundations of the Federation, but mostly about being paranoid about civilisations that later on were solid citizens. And with the Xindi the solution was making friends, but only with the squishy furry sorts, not the insect or reptile sorts. Then at the end they make the bad guys the Terran xenophobes... who by that point seem to have a bit of a point. But I think on balance there was quite a lot of making friends and communicating and stuff to go with the blowing stuff up.
Terminator didn't have them making friends with the Terminators, they reprogrammed them, which is rather a different thing. V seems to have some reptile dudes deciding humans is nice people, but thus far they're off on their own doing backstab-y things with other reptile dudes. Very high paranoia, not so very much friendship.
I'm not saying SF should be all hug and share, but you can get tension and drama into stuff and still end up making peace and allies. And you can get multiple races where lots of people get along with each other a lot of the time. And, I have at least read, you can have alien races with some internal variation in behaviour that doesn't just break down into dis/likes humans.
There are people that think different from you but just as well.
And we can get along with them.
SF can tell that uniquely well.
The dream of the Federation, of Babylon 5, of hard won peace and mutual understanding, that's a good dream. I kind of miss it.
On the one hand, boldly going and meeting new life and new civilisations and the solution to everything is making friends.
On the other, that whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers line, where the aliens look just like us and are secretly out to get us and you never know what they're really like inside.
It seems to me there's a whole lot of the second sort lately. Terminator and Battlestar/Caprica, yesno? Probably more.
Which show is seeking out the new and making friends?
We've got Doctor Who, and the Sarah Jane Adventures, but they mix in a bunch of paranoia with their new worlds. There's a lot of secretly-an-alien going on, like Slitheen and Androvax and Bane and Sisters of the Waters and probably a bunch more I'm not thinking of right now. Sometimes there's a trying to make friends because they're not so different really bit, or a secretly trying to save people bit, but then they're all backstab-y. I don't know, I like both shows, but I'm currently looking sideways at the mix.
I'm not saying Star Trek is a bastion of tolerance and embracing our fellow beings. Mostly they go around blowing stuff up. Enterprise was sort of about building the foundations of the Federation, but mostly about being paranoid about civilisations that later on were solid citizens. And with the Xindi the solution was making friends, but only with the squishy furry sorts, not the insect or reptile sorts. Then at the end they make the bad guys the Terran xenophobes... who by that point seem to have a bit of a point. But I think on balance there was quite a lot of making friends and communicating and stuff to go with the blowing stuff up.
Terminator didn't have them making friends with the Terminators, they reprogrammed them, which is rather a different thing. V seems to have some reptile dudes deciding humans is nice people, but thus far they're off on their own doing backstab-y things with other reptile dudes. Very high paranoia, not so very much friendship.
I'm not saying SF should be all hug and share, but you can get tension and drama into stuff and still end up making peace and allies. And you can get multiple races where lots of people get along with each other a lot of the time. And, I have at least read, you can have alien races with some internal variation in behaviour that doesn't just break down into dis/likes humans.
There are people that think different from you but just as well.
And we can get along with them.
SF can tell that uniquely well.
The dream of the Federation, of Babylon 5, of hard won peace and mutual understanding, that's a good dream. I kind of miss it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 06:27 pm (UTC)The other two I haven't watched, or watched much of.
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Date: 2010-10-28 06:24 pm (UTC)However, SF if always linked to the era of its production so apparently people right now feel surrounded by enemies and like most new things are probably bad things. And who could blame them in the current economy, paired with natural catastrophies and rising violence.