Science Fiction

I just watched Star Trek: First Contact again, which brought back so many memories.

Lately I have been complaining of the quality of science fiction on TV. Unfortunately I don't get Space any more, so hard-core sci-fi is out of the picture. But of the much anticipated, general, crime-centred science-fiction shows, such a large portion is simply a waste of airspace.

Take Fringe for example. The premise cannot be more alluring: teleportation, talking to the dead, ... --fringe science, they call it. Has the show delivered its promise? Gee, I wonder if there were some profundity in microwaving a papaya, or keeping a large cow in the lab, or perhaps any one of the pee jokes. If the science is sound, all that would be permissible and filed under quirkiness of the ingenious mind, but sadly, there is very little science at all. No-one seems to know what is going on, and if someone did, they always fail to explain it adequately. The scientist is senile and his logic hops around more erratically than a drunken flea. The son, brilliant and handsome as he is, cannot stop rolling his eyes and dismissing his father's seemingly far-fetched ideas without even honouring them with a proper debunking. Agent Dunham is way too tense and has no sense of humour, not to mention any real grasp of anything scientific. So far the most lovable character is Charlie the FBI agent: at least he doesn't pretend to understand the strange happenings. For all the above reasons, I have stopped watching this show. It's a real pity because it has so much potential, yet so little substance.

What about the Eleventh Hour, featuring a representative of that beloved and awe-inspiring profession--biophysicist--oh right, and yet another FBI agent. ...Why is the FBI always involved in these things? Granted, Jacob Hood is a charming fellow (--there, see what's wrong already?) but how is he anything even close to a biophysicist? Are young people supposed to get the impression that biophysicists are often under the protection of a stunningly beautiful though trigger-happy blond FBI agent, and that the job itself involves knowing all kinds of obscure facts? It bothers me even more that the science is sometimes so far off course that I can't even take the show seriously. The last episode, which sparked tonight's rant, actually showed smallpox viruses under a compound light microscope in the same field as several red blood cells just for the sake of showing size comparison--that they're similar, except the virus looks cubical and yellow. --Are the writers out of their poorly educated minds? The diameter of smallpox viruses is on the scale of a tenth of a micron, whereas that of an RBC is around ten--that's a hundred-fold difference! You'd be lucky to even spot a shadow of it under the light microscope, not to mention that most microscopes don't show specimens in colour and certainly not that glossy 3-D computer-generated effect. It's not hard at all to find an existing image of a pox virus, so I can only assume that the show's producers were too lazy to look. And the maudlin conversations on the burden of being a scientist--just spare me! They overestimate the importance of the scientist! The weight of the world on their shoulders? They'd have to share that with the principal investigator, the collaborators, and all the graduate and (if they're kind enough) undergraduate student-drones in their labs--that is, IF they can get the funding to start with! But I digress. Don't believe everything you see on TV, kids: biophysics isn't that exciting at all.

These two failed shows bring me back to the point that the era of great science fiction is behind us. Imagination and educated creativity have given way to the glamour of computer-generated graphics and Apple Store veneer (see photos from the new Star Trek movie). Think back to the Next Generation (how ironic!) and the X-Files. The dialogue was well written, the characters multifaceted, and the science--oh the wonderfully probable science! TNG taught me the meaning and value of humanity through interactions with the not-quite-human, and the X-Files gave me something to research on every week, from vocabulary to Bible verses to "rational scientific explanations." Even the music inspired me, and lift my spirits still, with the wonder and the promise that science offers in the betterment of mankind, both through expansion and through inward reflection.

Gone are the days of Captain Picard and Agent Mulder. --Or, perhaps it is I who have changed. Perhaps I now know too much real science that I have become the skeptic, the lame co-star on the show who rolls her eyes at the puerile albeit passionate pursuit of the ever-expanding edge of the unknown. I would very much like a return to innocence, if only I could suspend my belief, and distance myself from the nagging pains and discomfort of this cold and unimaginative reality.