The Cassutt Files
The Whole Truthiness

As your humble columnist approaches the 100th installment of this series, it is natural to recall the original rules of engagement: I am to deal with the art and craft of writing sci-fi television and, if necessary, motion pictures. I am to look at overall trends in the business, to preview upcoming projects and take note of, er, notable ones.

I am not offering reviews. I was happy to accept this restriction on the column, for this simple reason:

I'm a working writer. Much as I enjoy playing pundit, most of my time and energy go to the creation of new scripts and stories.

And when you're a working writer in any field, but especially in the small town that is Hollywood, expression of opinion will affect your chances for employment.

Happy expressions can be helpful in the pursuit of new jobs—thus the famous lack of an "honest" negative response to any screening, no matter how awful. (There are, of course, genuine expressions of approval. I think back on the novel emotions I experienced at seeing the new Battlestar Galactica.)

To be fair, this isn't just a survival instinct. As Robert A. Heinlein once said through his character Lazarus Long, "Only a sadistic scoundrel—or a fool—tells the bald truth on social occasions." It is unseemly or downright rude to shake hands with a nervous writer/producer/director after seeing his or her hard work and say anything along the lines of "What a piece of crap. Better luck next time."

That said, you can be sure that even the hint of direct disapproval will be met with understandable anger and disappointment, emerging days, months, even years later when your name comes up for consideration as, say, supervising producer on a promising new pilot. "I don't think he's right for this," will be the words, but the phrase is code for "He said something negative."

This might be considered cowardly ... if so, paint me yellow.

When you go public, as into print or online, of course, you not only multiply your potential professional risks (note how many working scriptwriters double as reviewers and compare that to the field of fiction), you give them life eternal.

You also bear the additional burden of disclosing your biases to your readers. Reviews, by their nature, are not "objective news" but opinion. Nevertheless, one should expect them to be fair and free of undisclosed bias.

All of this preamble brings me to, yes, a brief review of Masters of Science Fiction. Because, dang it, everybody I know has been asking my opinion of the series. I feel obligated to respond.

And so I am. Suitably annotated.

Dated and disappointing

In August, ABC aired four one-hour episodes of an anthology series called Masters of Science Fiction, based on works by John Kessel, Howard Fast, Robert A. Heinlein and Harlan Ellison [1] and starring such notables as Brian Dennehy, Anne Heche, John Hurt, Sam Waterson and Judy Davis. [2]

Since the episodes were filmed in the summer of 2006 and scheduled a year later than necessary in the elephants' graveyard of network airtime—Saturday evenings at 10 p.m.—an objective viewer would have to conclude that ABC was burning off an unwanted commitment. Indeed, ABC President Stephen McPherson [3] intimated as much when he described the series as "uneven" prior to airing. By the standards of network puffery, where every series is "groundbreaking," at least until the first ratings arrive, this is the equivalent of a smiling doctor asking you to sign a do-not-resuscitate order prior to routine surgery. [4]

I found the four episodes to be uneven, liking "The Discarded" (script by Ellison & Josh Olson) most and "The Awakening" (script by Michael Petroni from a Howard Fast story) the least. The casting was impressive, but the production design looked cheap and uninspired.

Overall, the series felt slow and claustrophobic—slow in the sense that all four stories would likely have played better as half hours, claustrophobic in that they were limited to very few sets, all of them indoors, with the exception of some backlot or sad locations.

The most disappointing thing about Masters was, as a reviewer in the Los Angeles Times noted most articulately, the dated themes. For example, Michael Tolkin's adaptation of Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man" managed to be reasonably faithful to its source (with the exception of a bizarre swap of low-I.Q. robots for enhanced apes) yet failed for me as a piece of television drama. Was it the tone of the piece? The annoying robots?

Or was the story itself, with its take on civil rights, too dated to matter any longer?

You could ask the same of "A Clean Escape," the Kessel story (adapted by Sam Egan) dealing with nuclear war and its aftermath.

The thematic problems aside, the failure of MOSF—there's no other word for it—signals the end of the 60-year history of anthology series, kept alive the past generation only by sci-fi. [5]

What a tangled web ...

Now the whole truthiness.

[1] I know John Kessel, author of "A Clean Escape." I knew Heinlein and have been involved in a number of Heinlein adaptations. I consider myself to be good friends with Harlan Ellison, who, in fact, was the connection that led to the following:

[2] In the fall of 2005, I was hired to recommend stories for adaptation by MOSF—and later to adapt one of them—and worked with executive producer Keith Addis, co-producer Ben Browning and co-executive producer Sam Egan.

[3] The best script I ever wrote, a television pilot based on Clifford D. Simak's Way Station in the mid-1990s, was for a young ABC executive named Steve McPherson.

[4] Keith Addis disliked my script, an adaptation of John Varley's "Persistence of Vision," though others on the staff professed to disagree. In any case, it was not one of the six episodes filmed, out of at least a dozen scripts that were developed. And I really thought the Howard Fast story to be unworthy of a show in anything titled Masters of Science Fiction.

[5] I have worked on two sci-fi anthologies series and spent considerable time developing at least two others.

Given all these, how can I write a fair review? Obviously, I can't. I can only offer these biased opinions ...

... while betting that I will never work for Keith Addis or Sam Egan again.

And admitting that my editors, Scott Edelman and Craig Engler, were wise to keep me out of the reviewing game.