t's that time of year again. The threatened strikes by writers and actors did not take place (though I could probably argue that writers were locked out for the first few months of 2001), so studios and networks are opening their doors to new concepts, not only for feature films that might
be flooding the cineplexes of 2003-4, but for new television series for fall 2002.
And if—like me—you are a writer who wants to sell one of those movies or series, you are shaping your ideas and preparing to pitch them. And as you prepare, you look at what's playing on screens big and small, and ask yourself, have I been missing anything? Is there something about my ideas that somehow dooms them to insignificance? Or, to be charitable, that makes them more suitable for television than features?
It's not something I brood about. Much. I'm quite happy in television, to the extent that any writer is ever happy about anything for more than an afternoon.
But a question struck me just the other day, as I sat in my seat at my local cineplex, tub of popcorn on my lap, watching previews of upcoming features:
Why are sci-fi films always about princes?
The class warfare of classic SF
Of course, when I say "princes," I also mean "princesses." Royalty. Rulers of the blood. For American audiences, we will stretch the definition to include members of hereditary political dynasties like the Bushes or Kennedys.
And when I say "always," obviously there are exceptions in the pantheon of classic films, such as 2001 and Blade Runner (thought neither of them was remotely as successful as Star Wars, I might add, especially on initial release). And you could create a whole section in your local Barnes & Noble with the interesting novels that don't fit in the box.
Still, there's a lot of this love of royalty in sci-fi movies. It certainly seems to be the core of every fantasy film. Check out the titles of these recent animated fantasies: The Little Mermaid (starring the Sea King's daughter), Beauty and the Beast (the beast being a prince), Prince
of Egypt (say no more), Princess Mononoke (ditto). Even the plot of that wonderful Shrek is driven by a guy who wants to become a prince by marrying a princess--
Part of this is due to the very conservative nature of fantasy films, which often take place in worlds that are quasi-medieval and ruled by kings and such.
And part of it seems to be in the nature of the genre. I've already established—well, at least I've claimed—that a classic sci-fi story is usually a power fantasy designed to reassure 13-year-old boys (and sometimes girls) that they are actually potential rulers of the universe. (See "The Golden Age of Sci-fi—")
Prosecution cites award-winning and best-selling novels from Stranger in a Strange Land to Dune to Ender's Game, and movies such as Star Wars. And who is a ruler? A prince or a princess, right.
Aha, I thought. I was on to something.
Small screen
serfing makes sense
Then I looked at sci-fi television, which doesn't have as many princes or kings. I know that one tenet of every Twilight Zone story was that it show an extraordinary thing happening to an ordinary person. Most Outer Limits stories do the same.
Mulder and Scully are mid-level F.B.I. agents, for example. John Crichton of Farscape is an astronaut, but hardly the heir to a space dynasty.
Even Buffy is a teen-ager from the suburbs. (OK, she's a little princessy, but not in the royal sense of the word.) The star of every Trek series has been called "captain," but every action-adventure television series stars a detective, lawyer or doctor who can jump-start a story. And "captain" is a job title that each character has actually earned: not one of them was born with the title.
The leads of most sci-fi series are what used to be called working stiffs--ordinary people who have jobs. Who need paychecks.
It may be that a character who is "royal" doesn't work on a weekly basis. Once you've revealed your heroine's "secret" in the pilot, you still have 21 hours to fill. I suspect it also plays better with television's mass audience.
So here it was. I had, in my fumbling, bumbling way, discovered a secret that dozens of more successful writers learned years ago. (Maybe they were born with the knowledge. Hmmm.)
Of course, learning a secret means nothing if you can't make it work.
Thinking about that, I got depressed.
Close encounters with common people
I am a relentlessly middle-class person from the middle of the United States. If I look at my ancestors, I see farmers and peasants—people who were the ruled, not the rulers. If my descendants manage to get aboard the starship Enterprise, they'll probably be wearing red shirts.
The closest I've ever gotten to royalty is being occasionally mistaken for a Kennedy.
I prefer the characters in television series to those of the feature films I've described.
None of my favorite novels is about a prince. In fact, I can't think of too many great works of American literature that are. (Didn't we have a revolution about that issue?) Moby Dick. Huckleberry Finn. Any Faulkner novel. All of them have protagonists who are anything but royal. The Great Gatsby is very definitely the story of an extraordinary (though not remotely royal) character told by a fairly ordinary hanger-on.
Of course, all of these examples are from mainstream fiction. Sci-fi and fantasy films mean princes and princesses, right?
I began to feel I was doomed to a middle-class, mundane life in television.
Then again, I remembered Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whose main character is Roy Neary, a relentlessly middle-class guy who works for a power company. Close Encounters may be flawed (I still think there's too much of Neary making mashed-potato mountains), but it qualifies as a sci-fi classic. And it made a ton of money.
So maybe feature films aren't as restrictive as I thought. Maybe there is room for extraordinary things to happen to ordinary people. Maybe my analysis is flawed. (I'm a better writer than I am critic.)
And now I'm trying to figure out how to do a sci-fi television series about a character who was born to rule.
Michael Cassutt is busy writing scripts about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances for Nickelodeon, FBC and Sony. His new novel, Red Moon, will be out in paperback from Tor in January.
