he American writer and literary theorist Gertrude Stein is not often mentioned in sci-fi circles—this, in fact, might be the first time—but she coined a phrase that is especially relevant to the upcoming season of prime-time sci-fi television series.
Sometime around 1922 in Paris, she surveyed the collection of American expatriates at work and play ... their love affairs, their financial shenanigans, their consumption of alcohol and absinthe, their unwillingness to appreciate her genius ... and pronounced them "a lost generation."
The recipient of this observation was Ernest Hemingway (another writer not often seen around the sci-fi cafe), who used it as the epigraph for his novel, The Sun Also Rises (1929).
The fall 2005 network television season is, for sci-fi fans, a new "Lost" generation.
But I mean it in a good way.
Although Desperate Housewives gets more viewers and has generated far more magazine covers and related puffery, ABC's Lost was the big surprise of the 2004-2005 season. The tale of a group of plane crash survivors trapped on a mysterious island was an unexpected addition to ABC's schedule. Informed observers—which is to say, people like me—expected it to join the ranks of similarly ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful ABC efforts. (Veritas, any one?)
Lost surprised us all, with a terrific two-hour pilot that propelled the viewer into the series—and follow-up episodes that not only teased you with glimpses into the island's strange environment but explored and illuminated the lives and stories of the survivors before the crash.
Last summer's The 4400 was a similar mix of series and anthology—a serology?—but lasted only five weeks against summer competition. Lost went up against the big guns of reality TV and sweeps stunts, and more than held its own.
Wanting to be first to be second
Canny writer-producers and network development execs concluded that there was life in sci-fi yet—especially if a sci-fi concept could be given the Lost treatment.
At least 10 drama scripts with sci-fi or fantasy premises went into development for the new season, with an astonishing six being ordered to film.
And in a single week in May, five of them were picked up as series.
This is indeed the Lost Generation.
Several of the new series deal with alien invasions of one kind or another—one, in fact, is titled Invasion, from Sean (American Gothic) Cassidy and Thomas (West Wing) Schlamme for ABC.
Set in a Florida town isolated by hurricanes (not an unrealistic concept), Invasion centers on a family whose members start realizing that things around them are No Longer What They Should Be. It has the feel of Pat Frank's classic atomic war novel Alas, Babylon (1959), which is not, to my mind, a bad thing.
ABC also ordered a new version of the 1970s series The Night Stalker, from writer-producer Frank (X-Files) Spotnitz, who is a good choice to give this the Galactica treatment: X-Files creator Chris Carter was, er, frank in acknowledging his series' debt to the original Stalker.
CBS—long the network most resistant to sci-fi—committed to Threshold from writers Bragi (Season of the Witch) Schut, Brannon (Enterprise) Braga and David (Blade, Batman Begins) Goyer. Threshold also deals with an alien invasion of sorts—it has the feel of a 21st-century Andromeda Strain—but Goyer and Braga promise surprises.
NBC ordered Fathom, a series about oceanic-based creatures, from Josh and Jonas Pate (the recent Dragnet revival, features The Grave and Deceiver). Fathom has a strong team behind it, and an attractive cast, but series based on or in water are notoriously difficult.
The pilot that generated the most buzz, at least in my corner of the universe, was The WB's Supernatural, from writer Eric (Boogeyman) Kripke and supernaturally successful director David (X-Files) Nutter, about two brothers chasing bad creatures all over the U.S.
(If nothing else, this shows that you're most likely to have a sci-fi series on the air if you can put a recognizable parenthetical credit between your first and last names.)
The only one of the six "Lost Generation" projects not to make the schedule was UPN's Triangle, from the talented team of John Sakmer and Kerry Lenhart (Ed, StrangeLuck, the Mr. & Mrs. Smith series some years back). It dealt with a young doctor whose fiance disappears on a trip to the Caribbean. I'm only guessing, but Triangle might have missed the cut because it had the least emphasis on alien or otherwordly matters. In any case, the series is still a candidate for midseason.
Our time is now
OK, there's no space-based sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica seems to be the last, best hope for that genre, at least until George Lucas makes that long-rumored move into television with Star Wars.
But, in terms of sheer numbers alone, this is the most promising season of sci-fi or fantasy series I've ever seen. We should all be pleased. Even the most brutal odds—which predict failure for eight out of 10 series—suggest that one of the Lost Generation will survive.
One might even be next season's Lost, the show that gets everyone buzzing and blogging. ...
The danger, of course, is that all of these series will tank—and no one will be able to sell anything like them for an entire network development lifetime. (Which is two years.)
It's impossible to predict. All of these concepts have challenges—they all grapple with this essential question: What can you do with aliens that hasn't been done?
The lesson of Lost is that you don't. You look to the human beings in your sci-fi concept and tell their stories ... explore their reactions to strange situations.
Nevertheless, these are sci-fi series. Fans and viewers will have their expectations. Studios will have their demands. Networks will want that Halloween episode. It's got to be daunting for five brave writing staffs preparing to lock themselves into windowless rooms for the next several months. ...
The 4400 returned last weekend. Lost looms again this September, to explain what's really down the shaft beneath that exploded hatch. Galactica and the Stargates will have their new seasons.
In spite of the end of Enterprise, the lack of a new Buffy, it's a good time to be a fan of sci-fi television.
And who cares what Gertrude Stein would have thought?
Michael (Nothing Signature to Note Here) Cassutt has written 60 episodes for network television, along with 11 books, two dozen short stories and lots of stuff like this column. He is currently collaborating with David (Farscape) Kemper on a project for the SCI FI Channel.
