Sci-Fi Saturday: We Are Of Peace -- Always
I spent the last week watching the two seasons of the ABC remake of the 1980's V series. I'm sure most people will remember this one -- reptilian aliens in human skin showing up on Earth in 50 giant spaceships scattered across our planet, claiming to come in peace (always), but really interested in stealing the Earth's water and using humans as a food source.
Once again, much like with Terra Nova, I find myself incredibly irritated at the decision of a network to cancel a sci-fi series just when it's getting exciting. And as with Terra Nova, Season 2 of V ended in a cliffhanger: the Fifth Column crushed, the death of three major characters, most of the human race under the influence of alien mind control, and the unveiling of a secret military program called Project Aries that has always doubted that the Visitors truly come in peace, always.
But we'll never know how the story ends because the series was cancelled and, as of now, there are no plans for Season 3. A fan-led campaign known as Project Alice has been endorsed by many of the show's actors, but has not been successful so far. And so we're left hanging.
After this happens enough, it shouldn't be a surprise if sci-fi fans decide to not even bother getting invested in new shows that won't even be properly concluded. And no doubt the short-sighted networks will take this as an indication that there's no interest in sci-fi, so it will all become one big self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unless, of course, this is all a marketing ploy to get fans even more invested in the shows and build anticipation for future seasons. If that's the case, I can forgive the networks because, hey, that's just really sound marketing.
In spite of a slow start and quite a few weak episodes in Season 1, the remade series has a lot going for it. In a lot of ways, I like it much better than the original, which, when you got right down to it, was just a combination of a World War II/Holocaust allegory and the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man".
Morena Baccarin (who many sci-fan fans will know as the human face of the Ori in Stargate SG-1) does a superb job as the psychopathic Visitor commander Anna and the rest of the cast is strong as well. Elizabeth Mitchell has some great performances as FBI agent Erica Evans, who is not only trying to balance single-motherhood with a full-time job, but is also leading a double life as a leader in the human resistance. The writers did an outstanding job with many of the scenes between Anna and Erica, where nearly every bit of dialogue was full of layers of subtext and double meanings.
We can only hope that a third season, a movie, or some other proper conclusion to the series comes along one of these days.
One thing that bothers me that's not just limited to V is the seeming obsession with torture by so many Hollywood writers, presumably because "we live in a post-9/11 world now" or some other such nonsense. V, like the remade Battlestar Galactica and several other shows, has multiple torture scenes. Aside from the obvious moral implications, it's almost taken for granted that no matter what the situation, torture is always going to be the best way of extracting information -- a basic point that expert interrogators know is completely wrong.
Even worse, the formula seems to be for one character among many to object to torture and this character is portrayed as hopelessly naive and his/her arguments as easily dismissed. With so many of these types of scenes in so many different shows, I worry that the public will not only become completely desensitized to torture, but also completely ignorant of the need to question it or to raise any moral objections.
This bothers me a lot coming from the sci-fi genre, because I've always believed that the purpose of science-fiction, besides entertainment, is to teach and to explore the human condition in a way that other genres can't.
For a non-science fiction example, take the movie Zero Dark Thirty, which portrays torture as having directly led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, even though, historically, that's completely inaccurate. When the compulsion to write torture scenes overshadows even the need to stay somewhat true to what really happened, I can't help but think that the obsession has become unhealthy. And lightly dismissing arguments against torture without honestly exploring the moral dimension is just lazy writing.
I find it ironic that 24, which has been bashed so much for its torture scenes right from the start, does a much better job of actually trying to explore the issue than all of these shows that just throw in gratuitous torture scenes that may not even be necessary to the story.
It's almost as if we've gone backwards as a society in a sick and disturbing way. For a long time in the wake of World War II (or should I say, a "post-World War II world"?), international action against torture was taken on a wide variety of fronts and it seemed that a consensus was slowly forming against its use. Now our attitude toward torture has become at best ambivalent and at worst accepting.
Perhaps the most depressing illustration of this "post-9/11 world" was that only one prominent person bothered to take a firm public stand against the inaccurate depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty -- Senator John McCain, himself a torture survivor.
Once again, much like with Terra Nova, I find myself incredibly irritated at the decision of a network to cancel a sci-fi series just when it's getting exciting. And as with Terra Nova, Season 2 of V ended in a cliffhanger: the Fifth Column crushed, the death of three major characters, most of the human race under the influence of alien mind control, and the unveiling of a secret military program called Project Aries that has always doubted that the Visitors truly come in peace, always.
But we'll never know how the story ends because the series was cancelled and, as of now, there are no plans for Season 3. A fan-led campaign known as Project Alice has been endorsed by many of the show's actors, but has not been successful so far. And so we're left hanging.
After this happens enough, it shouldn't be a surprise if sci-fi fans decide to not even bother getting invested in new shows that won't even be properly concluded. And no doubt the short-sighted networks will take this as an indication that there's no interest in sci-fi, so it will all become one big self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unless, of course, this is all a marketing ploy to get fans even more invested in the shows and build anticipation for future seasons. If that's the case, I can forgive the networks because, hey, that's just really sound marketing.
In spite of a slow start and quite a few weak episodes in Season 1, the remade series has a lot going for it. In a lot of ways, I like it much better than the original, which, when you got right down to it, was just a combination of a World War II/Holocaust allegory and the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man".
Morena Baccarin (who many sci-fan fans will know as the human face of the Ori in Stargate SG-1) does a superb job as the psychopathic Visitor commander Anna and the rest of the cast is strong as well. Elizabeth Mitchell has some great performances as FBI agent Erica Evans, who is not only trying to balance single-motherhood with a full-time job, but is also leading a double life as a leader in the human resistance. The writers did an outstanding job with many of the scenes between Anna and Erica, where nearly every bit of dialogue was full of layers of subtext and double meanings.
We can only hope that a third season, a movie, or some other proper conclusion to the series comes along one of these days.
One thing that bothers me that's not just limited to V is the seeming obsession with torture by so many Hollywood writers, presumably because "we live in a post-9/11 world now" or some other such nonsense. V, like the remade Battlestar Galactica and several other shows, has multiple torture scenes. Aside from the obvious moral implications, it's almost taken for granted that no matter what the situation, torture is always going to be the best way of extracting information -- a basic point that expert interrogators know is completely wrong.
Even worse, the formula seems to be for one character among many to object to torture and this character is portrayed as hopelessly naive and his/her arguments as easily dismissed. With so many of these types of scenes in so many different shows, I worry that the public will not only become completely desensitized to torture, but also completely ignorant of the need to question it or to raise any moral objections.
This bothers me a lot coming from the sci-fi genre, because I've always believed that the purpose of science-fiction, besides entertainment, is to teach and to explore the human condition in a way that other genres can't.
For a non-science fiction example, take the movie Zero Dark Thirty, which portrays torture as having directly led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, even though, historically, that's completely inaccurate. When the compulsion to write torture scenes overshadows even the need to stay somewhat true to what really happened, I can't help but think that the obsession has become unhealthy. And lightly dismissing arguments against torture without honestly exploring the moral dimension is just lazy writing.
I find it ironic that 24, which has been bashed so much for its torture scenes right from the start, does a much better job of actually trying to explore the issue than all of these shows that just throw in gratuitous torture scenes that may not even be necessary to the story.
It's almost as if we've gone backwards as a society in a sick and disturbing way. For a long time in the wake of World War II (or should I say, a "post-World War II world"?), international action against torture was taken on a wide variety of fronts and it seemed that a consensus was slowly forming against its use. Now our attitude toward torture has become at best ambivalent and at worst accepting.
Perhaps the most depressing illustration of this "post-9/11 world" was that only one prominent person bothered to take a firm public stand against the inaccurate depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty -- Senator John McCain, himself a torture survivor.