SciFi TV and psychics

Jan 02, 2011 13:11

The injection of psychics and psychic phenomena in nearly EVERY SciFi TV series drives me fucking nuts ( Read more... )

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dvandom January 2 2011, 21:24:12 UTC
Well, Luke was having psychic flashes in Empire Strikes Back, so it's not like the element was introduced by Clone Wars TV. And Eureka has skirted the psychic thing with Kevin's interactions with the artifact, or with the "regrets come to life" episode. They just dress it up in more sciencey stuff. Of course, Warehouse 13 and Eureka are in the same universe, so if psi exists in the one, it exists in the other.

Here's a few more scifi or semi-scifi series with psi: Heroes (Matt the telepath), No Ordinary Family (the daughter), Hero Prep (the main protagonist has "preflexes" which are slightly preminotory, his roommate has moderate mind control), Space Cases (telepathic communication across dimensional boundaries between Catalina and Suzie, Suzie's own possession powers).

I don't recall if Quark had any psi, but since they were lampooning SF tropes in general, it's probably in there somewhere.

Thing is, if you're going to have any "people who can do superhuman things" in your show, some flavor of psi is almost inevitable. Sure, you might be able to get away with just super-soldier types or cyborgs like in...um, well, I can't recall the titles because they lasted something like six episodes each, or less. But diversify even a little, and the psi comes in.

Why? Three main reasons. One, they're generally cheap on the effects budget. Spock's psi abilities used no effects at all, just acting. Two, it plays into people's belief in what's plausible. A lot of people believe psi powers exist in real life, and a many others think that they're at least possible even if no one has demonstrated them yet. So you're not breaking SOD as badly as if you have someone tossing cars around. Three, it's a standard category of superhuman abilities. You might as well complain that every scifi show has at least one character who's stronger than humanly possible, or is a supergenius scientist. If the show lasts long enough to diversify, it'll get something in every batch.

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