he networks announced their fall lineups last week, and I was disappointed to learn how little new science fiction and fantasy will be waiting for us on the other side of summer. Last fall brought us enough freshman shows that two of them—Tru Calling and Joan of Arcadia—survived, and will be brought back for second seasons. But the pool from which this year's possible successes might spring seems awfully small.
Many genre series for which pilots had been made and which seemed a lock for the fall schedule ended up missing in action, such as Dark Shadows and The Robinsons: Lost in Space, both produced for The WB. So—what shows did make it the cut?
NBC offers Revelations, in which a skeptical scientist teams with a nun to thwart Armageddon, and Father of the Pride, which for our purposes we'll consider fantasy due to its cast of talking felines. ABC will be presenting the desert-island drama Lost, and while this show, about the survivors of a plane crash, is not overtly SF, it promises the same sort of edgy mystery we've come to expect from Alias creator J.J. Abrams. Jack & Bobby, from The WB, is a present-day tale of two teen brothers fated to become presidents someday; since some scenes are to be set in the future in which they've achieved their destinies, perhaps we'll be able to claim this one for our side as well. We'll have to wait and see.
As for the other networks—CBS, UPN and Fox—there's nothing new there for fans of the fantastic.
Nielsen knows all
Why so little fresh sci-fi meat? One reason may be that though the risks are more or less equal for all shows (though the special-effects budgets of many genre shows can change the equation), Nielsen tells us that the eventual rewards can be greater for those series that step outside of genre.
Even when sci-fi shows are network hits, they're hits on their own terms, never hits on a par with the more "realistic" series. For example, a look at last week's ratings shows that Charmed drew 4 million viewers, Enterprise 5 million, Smallville and Angel 7 million apiece and Joan of Arcadia 9 million. But compare that to the
35 million people who watched ER and 53 million who tuned in for Friends in the same week.
Unlike the big screen box office, where sci-fi films continually top the charts, on the small screen, doctors, forensic detectives, soap-opera families and friendships of all kinds rule.
But why must it be that way? I see no reason why sci-fi can't have its own Friends ruling the water cooler gossip. In a world in which Star Wars, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, multiple Lord of the Rings films and Jurassic Park grace the list of top 10 highest-grossing films, there just has to be a place for a genre show to break out and become a blockbuster on the order of Friends. I keep hoping for a show that's not just for us, but for the world. It's just a matter of time.
And when audiences finally tire of those Friends reruns, believe me—to paraphrase that show's theme song, sci-fi'll be there for you.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His most recent short story appears in the new anthology Quietly Now: A Tribute to Charles L. Grant.
