It seems we have another "accessible" sci-fi show coming to TV this fall: Shonda Rimes' Defying Gravity. Rimes is the creator of Grey's Anatomy, and the basic premise of Defying Gravity is that a bunch of astronauts live on a space ship in a Big Brother-type setting, and that their primary concern is not so much as their mission, or life on a space ship, but, rather sex. Yep, a "sci-fi" show whose press presents it as not only being entirely about sex, but about the juvenile, damaging, hedonistic, dangerously fantastical approach to sex as seen on Grey's Anatomy.
Honestly, when I first saw this trailer on the telly, I thought it was a prank. Most reputable sci-fi has a good love story, happy or sad. We all smiled or cried over Captain Kirk and his exotic alien babes, Picard and Crusher's unrequited love, Han and Leia, Sheridan and Delenn, Kira and Odo, Jack O'Neil and Samantha, John and Riley (ok, maybe not that last one, as no one watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)...but this is something disturbingly different.
Are Defying Gravity and Stargate: Universe indicative of what's meant by the SyFy channel's mandate of diversifying programming and making it more accessible (DG, for the record, is an ABC show)? I sure hope not, because anything associated with Grey's has a higher-than-average likelihood of being....um....bad.
Seriously, though. What happens when you take a genre - in this case, sci-fi - and relegate it to setting status, ignoring the philosophical qualities? Can it still be considered sci-fi if it adheres to the genre in letter (advanced technology; off-Earth setting) but not in spirit (no, "orgies in space" is not a standard sci-fi storytelling element)?
Hopefully, this is just the fad for a season or two. Every TV season has a fad, just like how every summer there are two or three movies with the same foundation, like Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998. In the meantime, if I find myself concerned about how people handle interpersonal relationships in space, I'll pop in a little TNG, or if romance isn't the concern of the day, 2001: A Space Odyssey..and pretend that Deying Gravity will never make it to air.
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3 comments:
Hmm, but if four men and women are stuck in the same small space capsule for four + years, wouldn't it be shocking and surprising, and even perhaps, dreadfully unrealistic if sexuality wasn't near the centre of the story?
Sexuality has been a key element in a number of sci-fi classics, Pohl's Gateway, and Haldeman's The Forever War and most recently in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I think in each case, what begins with a juvenile motivations has quite interesting results.
Defying Gravity may not follow this mold (I've never seen Grey's Anatomy), but given good writers and the right amount of peril, say a ship malfunction/accident that makes the return trip questionable, it could provide an interesting and honest look at human behavior.
You can't trust the pre-marketing to tell you anything about what the show is really about.
You make a good point, sir. And you are a fortunate man for never having seen Grey's Anatomy or its spin-off, Private Practice. And you have reminded me that Gateway is a stunner. I was introduced to it back in the day by playing the old PC game. Good game, good book.
I suspect most of my suspicion regarding Defying Gravity comes not so much from the released clips and point of origin as it does from the fact that I can't think up a sci-fi tv or film production with sexuality at its core that wasn't stupid or crappy. Some people people would say Solaris (either version) fits that description; I didn't care for it, but haven't seen anything better, either.
I think perhaps the show defies the gravity of the topic?
Above all, a genre is defined by the people who consume it.
The line is fuzzy, and is not exclusively a matter of setting or of plot. It's a matter of how many human guts cry out in truthiness, "This is," or "This isn't".
Sad to say, the definition of SF is held hostage by your peers. Either a comforting thought - or a terrifying one.
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