MovieChat Forums > Sanctuary (2007) Discussion > The Sci-Fi Channel has completely abando...

The Sci-Fi Channel has completely abandoned SCIENCE

posted 14 years ago by sethness
11 replies | jump to latest

Am I the only one bothered by the recent trend in programming on the Sci Fi Channel?

"Sci Fi" is short for "Science Fiction". The key word there is "science". It's not "superstition", "pseudoscience", "alchemy", "the war channel", "swords and sandals", "scientology", "faith-based programming", nor "magic".

It most particularly does not mean "faith-based programming". Faith is the antithesis of science. Science uses doubt and objectivity to find the truth. Faith pretends to know the truth despite the evidence.

Look at the number of shows in each non-science fiction category.
Here's a list of Sci-Fi channel shows. See how few actually put SCIENCE front-and-center in their themes.

CATEGORY ONE: SWORDS AND SANDALS

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1199099/ Merlin:
Magic. Swords and sandals. We don't even have a Connecticut Yankee to rescue this King Arthur's Court from sinking into a mire of superstition and magic. It's even bad history: No other Arthurian legend pretends that Merlin was young when he met Arthur, and no reasonably true-to-history show would dream of pretending that black people (no offense) were nobility in ancient England. Don't even get me started about the anachronistic English.

This show has less science and engineering than a Sunday morning episode of Davey and Goliath. At least when claymation Davey drops a hammer, you have a reasonable expectation that the hammer will obey gravity.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844653/ The Seeker, Legend of The Seeker, etc:
Magic. Swords and sandals. Men With Their Shirts Off And Women In Lacy Princess Dresses. Fantasy land with unicorns. No science. Same as Merlin, but without trying to describe any real historical era.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112230/ Xena, Warrior Princess:
Or, as I like to call it, "Conan the Barbie".

Swords and sandals...and makeup and magic. Greek gods, Roman gods, goofy made-up gods, & pig-people.

"Xena" makes zero science sense even in its own universe. Nobody except demons and pig people ever sweat, or carry water or a change of clothes. Xena never smudges her eye liner, and only bad guys have bad teeth. Xena's legs and armpits are shaved and her hair is freshly shampooed, even when she's on the road. She and her companion appear to walk everywhere, yet never get tired: Xena's always ready to do an unnecessary back flip while killing minions after a long hike. She never gets bicep or thigh scars, despite leaving those areas completely unprotected during countless fights. Hell, she doesn't even get mosquitoes buzzing around her and biting, during her long walks in the woods!

C'mon, Xena. At least get bugbites.

I can't believe that there was http://www.google.co.th/search?q=xena+planetoid a serious group of astronomers who wanted to name a newly discovered planetoid after Xena. Who gets that honor next? Goofy and Pluto? Oh... uhhh..never mind.

CATEGORY TWO: PARANORMAL/PSYCHIC
Parapsychology at this level is on a par with magic because there's no attempt to give it a scientific basis. We're simply asked to accept that he has this magical ability.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281432/ The Dead Zone:
Magical fortunetelling, without even a sugarcoating of pseudoscience. The main character is a modern-day man who has the ability to see the future and past of whoever previously touched an object that he's holding. He probably has a hissy fit every time he touches a public phone or a subway handrail, yet he doesn't even wear gloves, so deduct thousands of points for lack of internal logic in The Dead Zone's universe.

Ghost Whisperer:
Magical parapsychology. Like "The Sixth Sense", the main character sees dead people and helps them "toward the light". Once again, it's parapsychology and pseudoscience on a par with magic...but this time, stir in massive amounts of religion and superstition too.

Give it two plus-points for starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Her Two Large Pillowlike Dependents, but remove several million for putting superstition, magic, and religion on the Sci Fi Channel.

Medium:
Magical parapsychology. A housewife and Her Large Breasts who can see the future in dreams and thus prevent crimes. Errrmmm.... the **housewife** can see the future. Her breasts are, as far as I know, not unusually talented.

Tru Calling:
Magical parapsychology. A woman and Her Medium-Sized Breasts can talk to dead people, then travel back in time one day to prevent their murders. She just "can" do these things: we're given no science nor even pseudoscience to satisfy the "sci" in "sci-fi".

CATEGORY THREE: COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES

HEROES: OK, give it some half-points for mentioning DNA and occasionally pretending that there's genetic engineering pseudoscience involved. I'll even give it a half-point for using memorable characters like the Puppet Master, the pudgy psychic cop, and Hiro the Geeky Office Worker who are obviously not possessed of Large Breasts. Well... maybe the pudgy psychic cop does.

Take those half-points away, though, for making one of the central characters a frikkin' CHEERLEADER, and making every other female superhero a reasonably hot chick of model proportions and age. By the end of every episode, my brain is screaming, "Where are the superhero kids, the Janeane Garofalo supergal, and the Pregnant Pasta-mongering supervillain?

Also, we've got to subtract several gazillion points for the stupid pseudoscience. Why, for example, should we believe that **any** amount of genetic manipulation can cause these mutations? Sure, I'll believe in a DNA twist that causes super strength, but how can a genetic twist cause a man to travel magically backward and forward in time and space? Or fly without wings or any other visible physics? Or move faster than the eye can see, without pushing his guts out his backside, swallowing ten million "windshield suicide" mosquitoes, and setting fire to his hair?

This is junk science on a par with parents' explanation of Santa's one-night worldwide trek.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756509/plotsummary Kyle XY:
This is the lowest budget cartoon superhero show on the Sci-Fi channel. It's sort of like The Waltons, or Eight is Enough, if they'd gone wandering in the woods and found a teenager with no memory, poor social skills, above average athletic ability, and psychic abilities. And that's it.

I'll give it a handful of plus-points for not going to silly extremes with the physical abilities. Kyle is accurate with a basketball and can jump down from a 2nd storey roof without shattering his ankles, but we don't see ludicrous abilities like skin of steel, laser eyes, or flying.

We take those points away, though, because he has magical unexplained psychic abilities. "Paranormal" equals "magic", people. Even the rudiments of mind-reading, spoon-bending, and future-forecasting have never been proven in controlled lab conditions.

Mutant X:
Magic. Stupid kindergarten pseudoscience. Take the worst parts of "Heroes" and "The X Men", refuse to add any imagination, and reduce the budget to less than a stick insect supermodel spends on snack foods.

**Every** character is model-proportions and model-age. They wear high heels while running (guys too). They wear black leather form-fitting clothes for no apparent reason except product placement.

This show has the same shortcomings as "Heroes": Bad Science In Capital Letters. No amount of genetic manipulation can cause a man to, in midlife, generate and throw off lightning balls on command...without turning his own balls into "lightning balls". Or fly. Or rapidly change into another animal and back again without shaving and eating lots of calories, or be invisible.

C'mon, guys. If it's gonna be Science Fiction, it's at least gotta be possible.

HALLOWEEN:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0965394/ Sanctuary:
Magic and historical superstition. Not a smidgen of science. Set in modern times, but add in every superstition and Halloween story you can scrape off the dungeon walls. The main characters collect vampires, werewolves, Creatures From The Black Lagoon, mermaids, and ghouls. Immortality is a given.

The "science" in this Science Fiction Channel show is so bad that in the commercial trailer, the main character says "We protect the two dominant species from each other: humans and abnormals." OK, humans are a species. (A species is a group of beings genetically compatible to the point where their offspring are fertile.) "Abnormals", though... good luck trying to prove that a mermaid is sexually compatible with a werewolf or a vampire or lizard-boy, and hide the cutlery during their blind date.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162065/ Angel.
Vampires, demons, magic, superstition. Not a single copy of Scientific American nor Popular Mechanics has ever been seen in this studio. Angel is a spin-off of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". 'Nuff said.

CATEGORY FOUR: RELIGION MARKETED AS SCIENCE

Jericho:
Start off by giving this show several hundred plus-points. The characters live in a fairly realistic post-apocalyptic world where real physics and psychology apply. Happily, the show has no bad science or magic other than religion. Even the apocalypse is explained as a mere virus that wiped out all adults.

I'll even give out a few points for dirty collars, non-supermodel actors, and a distinct lack of Large Breasts.

However, we've got to withdraw 90% of those plus-points for two reasons.

Firstly, there's a year-long story arc involving a man who hears The Voice Of God. And people take him seriously. You know what they say in the REAL world: "If you talk to a god, that's prayer. If god answers regularly, that's schizophrenia." (No offense intended toward schizophrenics.) This guy gets more help from his invisible god, every day, than Jesus was supposed to have gotten in any given year.

So F U, Sci Fi Channel, for giving us "Jericho", a Sunday morning church meeting. Take your magic show and shove it onto some other channel.

Secondly, Jericho has an episode that is so apologetic to religion, I can readily believe it was written to pacify religious cultists. The episode starts by showing us a Raelian/Scientologist-style culture in which cultists are trekking toward the ocean, where they expect to be picked up by their god or spaceships. The episode ends with the titular Jericho standing on an empty beach (the Raelian/Scientologists have either walked into the ocean or been beamed up into spaceships-- we're not told which). On a rock nearby the cultists painted "BELIEVE" before they disappeared.

Every show afterward starts with a brief shot of the "BELIEVE" message in a montage of other show scenes. Once again, we have religion and faith deeply polluting a channel that should be the ANTITHESIS of believing-without-proof.

CATEGORY FIVE: SOLDIER STORIES ARE NOT SCI FI

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374455/ Stargate: Atlantis
War, war, and more war. Zero psychology, minimal fake science, occasional space travel.

Although this is set in the future with space ships and aliens, this is basically a war paranoia, hate-em-and-kill-em show. It's a soldier's story, plain and overly-simple.

The entire series relies on a story arc involving Fighting The Enemy, who are called "The Wraiths". These enemy, like all low budget aliens, look remarkably human. Unlike a believable alien, however, their psychology is as flat and unbelievable as the Sunday morning comic page in your newspaper. Their appearance is strictly guided by schlock shock motives. This is a bunch of bad guys dreamt up by someone who either never aged mentally above a nine-year-old's level.

There is not one single episode without a gun and an enemy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213327/ Andromeda:
OK, we've got spaceships, stars, and orbits that decay. But that's the full extent of the science fiction here. It's a soldier story starring Supermodels Without Chairs.

The commercial trailer for the show starts with "Every fight...". It's not always organized war, but there're plenty of barfights and mercenary and bounty hunter-type fights to fill in the show's quota of several killings per show.

Worse, inexplicably, "Andromeda" Almost. No. Chairs. Seriously. Even political meetings and long hours on the "bridge" command center are done STANDING. If there's a chair in any episode, or if a character sits down, it's because he's a) being tortured in the chair, or b) he's been shot. Funny, I thought standing around withOUT chairs would be torture.

All women are aliens or robots, but fall into the category of "supermodel" and one of the following two categories: "Large Breasted" or "Hot Asian Chick". All men are either fat stupid minion bullet bait or have a model's good looks and muscles.

All people must wear tight fitting dark leather clothes-- even the Large Breasted robots and Hot Asian Chick computer avatars. All non-people are fat male minions in stupid clothes, who can be mowed down without guilt.

Kings and "real" gods are okey-dokey. Nobody ever says "Hey, this supermodel chick has been on the run and thieving since she skipped high school ten years ago. Maybe ancestry shouldn't play a part in choosing our leader. She looks sexy in leather and no chair, but maybe she's not the ideal person to run our planets. Y'think maybe we could find a Yale grad or two and run an election?"

(Hey, why DO Americans constantly LIKE shows that support kings and nationalized religion? Did Americans rewrite the Constitution and forget the American Revolution?) All the sword-and-sandals shows, most Disney movies, and many of the others also support kings without mentioning democracies, but let's leave the politics for another journal entry. Today, let's just drill into the Bad or Absent Science in our Science Fiction.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/ "Star Trek: The Next Generation":
OK, I feel reeeeally conflicted about disrespecting Star Trek. Let's just say that they're better than half-bad. On the plus side, the original series starred Spock, a sci-fi mainstay. TOS also starred a black female communications officer, in a time when race was a huge issue-- and therefore went at least part-way toward explaining the huuuge scientific leap of being able to translate the language of aliens from their very first words during first contact.

At least half of the shows are true science fiction: they're based on medicine, exploring, astronomy, engineering, psychology, or cultural problems.

However, there are a lot of cons. They are constantly on the brink of war and shooting to kill. Their enemies include the Borg, who are as shallow and psychology-less as the Wraith of "Star Gate: Atlantis". It makes me weep to think that the Borg, being cybernetic half-machine-half-men, are the closest thing to "science fiction characters" in repeating roles.

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" dives deeply into in Klingon culture, which revels in war, subjectivity, bravado, and personal violence, rather than Vulcan culture, which revolves around science and objectivity.

There's a new gal in town. She's a "mind reader" and a counselor. Let's give a few points for Star Trek including a psychologist, but take away several hundred points for making her uniform the only low-cut one, revealing Large Breasts. Also, take away several thousand points for making her "psychic", though her powers are startlingly NEVER useful. She occasionally senses deception, but never at critical times...and apparently can't "see" anything in her mind's eye until it's almost stabbing the pupils in her face's eyes. She's as much a mind-reader as the minimum wage guy who bags my groceries.

Warf, the Klingon security officer, has appeared on more Star Trek shows (including the other spin-offs of the original series) than any other character, including Spock. Warf has also replaced BOTH the science officer and communications officer on the command bridge....and they took away his chair, so he'd be as grumpy as "Andromeda" characters.

They shoot new aliens with phasers and photon torpedoes more often than they shake hands with or invite new aliens aboard their ship.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/ Firefly:
Again, I feel divided about this show. At least half the episodes are about stealing or engine repairs, rather than killing. But...no, this one belongs firmly in the "kill'em dead soldier story" category. One crew member is a dedicated mercenary gun-toter, who is given a chair but kept permanently grumpy by calling him "Jane". All crew members carry guns and fire'em at least once an episode.

Notice I said "guns", not "phasers" or "lasers" or "photon torpedoes". Yup... set five hundred years in the future, surrounded by interstellar rockets, Firefly's universe is still using gunpowder. We don't WANT no science in our Firefly, I guess.

This must be the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish Amish corner of the sci-fi universe.

All these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism neo-Luddite crew save one are model-age and model-looks, and one is a psychotic waif teenage stick insect psychic supermodel who's trained to be a supersoldier. Hey, I ain't lying: she's the ultimate bad Su-F-U character, except for not dressing in Large Breasts and Leather. Those shortcomings are more than made up for by the chesty fashion-rack professional hooker character (hey, I swear I'm not making this up).

The one crew who is NOT supermodel age and looks is, sadly, a priest. He's called a "shepherd", which means that the faithful flock are sheeplike, giving up their powers of reasoning to follow the leader blindly. Nobody seems to mind being flocked by this guy.

[–] sethness 14 years ago

The List, continued...

(Firefly, continued: The Shepherd)
...They must be punch-drunk after a night with the hooker or ten rounds with Jayne and His Magical Warrior Waif.

The enemy has two faces, both with flat cartoon psychology and therefore impossible to feel objective about. There's a sinister government churning out preteen stick figure model/soldiers, and there's a vampire-like class of omnipresent cannibal space-psychos, who never seem to go down in population despite their lack of prey and dietary variability. One would expect that the cannibals would eventually be...errrmmmm... self-serving (?), with french fries on the side, and thereby approach extinction.

First Wave:
Magic and soldiering. Guided by the ancient prophecies of the blind religious psychic Nostradamus (church bells and alarm bells ringing, here), a man shoots every 2D alien invader he can find lurking in the general population. Are you laughing yet? If not, why not?

These cartoony cardboard-cutout alien invaders are called the "Gua", mainly because the names "Guano", "Grody", and "Goofy" were already taken.

Not surprisingly, for budgetary reasons 99.9% of the Gua look Just. Like. Us. Well... like the small percentage of "us" who are starving adult model/actors.

The main character is a male model with startlingly white teeth hidden by the glare of his blond hair. His sidekick is played by former porn star and struggling actress [link] Traci Lords and Her Large Breasts.

For half the series, the alien leader looks and acts like a cross between Skeletor and Darth Vader, complete with telekinetic throat-throttling powers which he exercises on badguy generals who display too little faith. For the other half of the series, the alien leader is a supermodel chick and the main alien pursuing Our Fortuneteller-following Hero is a black male supermodel with blinding white teeth but no blond hair.

At least two aliens die per episode. At least one example of magic, and no examples of good science, occur in each episode. Expect gunpowder and good looks, not good science fiction.

Battlestar Galactica:
Religion, Neo-con (Latin for "new con-job") politics and paranoia, endless soldiering, Hot Asian Chicks and Large Breasts.

I've saved the worst for last.

Believe it or not, the original series was written/sponsored by the Mormon Church (the Church of Latter Day Saints). This re-working of the series is, I assume, also being funded and guided by the Mormons.

It seems to be written by the most paranoid, gun-loving, supermodel-hiring, neoconservative, Constitution-burning segment of the Mormon church. Let me run down the offensiveness of this show point by point:

Supermodels. The guys are allowed to be old or fat or wimpy, but the women are all twenty- or thirty- or forty-something thin models (including the Commander and, worse, Starbuck who had a sexchange and got Large Breasts when this show got reenvisioned). Hell, even the evil enemy ROBOTS are some of the sexiest hot-Asian-chick and Large-Breasted women on the show.

Guns. Someone is shot in every show. The guns are both futuristic lasers and gunpowder-popping weapons that you last saw velcro-ed to the bikini of Miss June in the N.R.A. calendar.

Death to democracy. Elections are suspended during the war with the robots. Did Karl Rove write this script?

Paranoia. The bad guys look Just Like Us, and are practically undetectable, despite being robots and thoroughly evil. Sound familiar? That's because the Invisible Menace is just like McCarthyism's Invisible Red Revolution Menace, Reagan's Invisible Drug Dealer Invasion, Bush's Invisible Terrorist Threat, and Rush Limbaugh's Invisible Army of Mexicans sneaking across America's southern border to dilute "Real Americans' Economy and Language".

Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion. Just like elections are suspended "for the duration of the War on Drugs...uhhh...Red Scare... umm... War On Terror", Women's right to abortion is also revoked to keep human population high. Hey, good luck with that six-headed vegetable baby of a rapist. I'm sure that baby won't drag on morale or the economy.

Religion. Occasionally, these characters get inspired by religious revelations. Surprisingly, this doesn't happen often on this otherwise completely odious show.

Soldiers infiltrating government. The functional vice-president is a general. 'Scuse me for pointing this out, but a military organization is the very antithesis of a democracy. The "superiors" koff-koff decide what everyone else hears, eats, kills, and dies for. But... I'm getting off the point, which is "gimme SCIENCE in my science fiction".

Robots that can pass as human. C'mon... the engineering here is big nuts and bolts, and half the guns use gunpowder. Are we supposed to believe that his level of engineering can produce a robot that could pose as someone's spouse without detection? No, not possible even in a dark bar at closing time, baby.
.
.
.
And there you have it.

The Science Fiction Channel should be showing us realistic science fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey or exploring the deep ocean bottom (where, in real life, a new species is discovered on every dive).

Instead, they're like a tea party with Dolly Parton: lots of religion, lots of Large Breasts, maybe some sandals, an unbelievable magical gravity-defying engineering trick (if there's any engineering at all) and no sign of plausible science.

[–] evil_eldar_girl 14 years ago

"The Science Fiction Channel should be showing us realistic science fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey or exploring the deep ocean bottom (where, in real life, a new species is discovered on every dive)."
Are you high? The two key plot elements for 2001: A Space Odyssey were- a manned mission to Jupiter and a sentient AI following it's orders way too literally and trying to murder the crew. That's to say nothing of the Monolith which was technology so advanced you may as well call it magic.

That's not to say it's a bad book or movie. I'm just mystified at what your criteria for 'realistic' is.

[–] mikessler 14 years ago

For someone who claims to hate the SyFy Channel, you seem to know way more about their shows than the average TV viewer...

Welcome to the 21st Century.
"Even in the future nothing works." - Spaceballs

[–] Firefly69 14 years ago

Hmmmm... I Like a lot of these shows.

I have more issue with the fact that SyFy is now showing wrestling, then I do with any of the shows you mentioned.

I also don't care for the excessive showing of "Ghost Hunters".

These programs present more of a problem for me then the very long list you provided.

[–] Schmacky1 14 years ago

I honestly do believe you forgot the "fiction" part of "science fiction."

A lot of these shows I have not seen. Mostly in your swords and magic category. But there are some shows I have seen that I have to absolutely disagree with you when you say it isn't SciFi.

Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, ST: TNG...

Sure, these shows explored a lot of themes outside of science... but it also explored scientific basics and .. well, explored it. Fictionalized it. Time travel, space travel, technology.. those all are rooted back to science. There might be more fiction than science in the show but since when was there a rule that it should be 50%/50% or any other percentage?

To say ST: TNG abandoned Science Fiction is just straight up laughable. And the same goes for some other shows.

The thing about science fiction that I love is that they take real issues going on during the times these shows are created, add some crazy fictional element, and then truly explore and question the issues. Star Trek and the Cold War, Klingons and communism. Battlestar Galactica and the middle east, etc etc

Science fiction has always been a way to explore issues, question beliefs, and all that jazz. It isn't just science. And it's more than fiction.

But seriously though... you make me laugh.

[–] poizon-4 14 years ago

That is the longest, most poorly argued piece of crap and I refuse to read it, especially on a forum for Sanctuary which actually does involve a lot of theoretical science. You could argue that science is visible on every show on the station. Nobody said they have to be pigeon-holed into "strict" science with very little fiction.

SyFy is a channel owned by a company. Companies exist to make money. They are trying to entertain to meet that goal. If they show nothing but what you are suggesting, the station is gone.

Why don't you go watch National Geographic and and Discovery instead of complaining about an entertainment channel providing *gasp* entertainment!

[–] wickedobvious 13 years ago

You have a lot of hostility toward large breasts, don't you?

_________
"If I'm your mission, Shepherd, best give it up. You're welcome on my boat. God ain't." -Mal, Firefly

[–] revsolly 14 years ago

Whereas I agree that Sci-Fi Channel has lost its way, I don't see why you take this as an opportunity to attack faith and religion.

By they way, someone being a pastor or sheperd does not, as you mistakenly allude, mean that the faithful give up their power of reasoning. Any group that is to achieve anything, and not become a mere rabble, is going to have a leader figure. You see that in the military, as well as civilian life.

Obamunism! The death of the Republic! The price of Freedom is less than the price of Repression!

[–] aDingoEttMyBaby 14 years ago

You started to make some good points, but then you got bogged down by petty whining and crude irrelevant childishness. For instance, wtf does being a mother--she's not a HOUSEWIFE--or her boobs have to do with supporting statements that Medium not being science fiction?

I was barely able to skim your bloated nonsense, but was able to clearly see you violate your own claims to respect "doubt and objectivity to find the truth".

[–] benecere 12 years ago

OCD

[–] benecere 12 years ago

I see OCD