# How could a Hard SF tv series work?



## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

How could a *Hard SF* television series about a colonized solar system work?

The draw would be to *only ever include very likely near future technology*, carefully vetted for scientific plausibility. Something you could watch and feel confident that everything in it is a future we can almost touch. No interstellar travel, warp drive, antigravity or teleportation, but we have colonies on every moon and decent sized rock, and trade between all of them.

I dont think the standard starfaring Science fiction episodic model works. You can't keep discovering new civilisations whose ancient legal system revolves around trial by combat or discovering totally new technology where team members swap bodies and hilarity ensues... 

Currently I am leaning towards a 'Cowboy Western' approach with many independent 'towns' mainly interested in survival and having to fend for themselves from various bullies, belters substituting for prospectors, megacorps substituting for railroad companies.. Another possiblilty is the age of galleons, were voyages typically takes months..

Any inspirations for a near future colonisation-heavy scenario *that could churn out an arbitrary number of episode plotlines*? Who would the characters be? What sorts of plots could you have within an episode and across an entire season?


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## Dave (Mar 11, 2007)

Do you mean like *Firefly*?

I guess not since it was cancelled.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

Yes I considered that. 
I really liked the way firefly did not have any warpdrive, instead it had a solar system with hundreds of moons, at least in the movie.
Actually I think firefly could and should have been based in our solar system, because we also have hundreds of moons.. well.. rocks anyway. Some of them may only be a few kilometers across, but most worlds only feel that big anyway in SF tv series.

Two things I think Firefly lacked from a marketing point of view were wrinkly headed aliens and science fiction scenery.

Winkly headed aliens COULD be incorporated in a hard SF near future: they could be humans who have elected to surgically or genetically adapt themselves for their environment. Personally I would be happy to stick with just people though.

In firefly everything looked like the wild west (whereas I was only using western as an analogy) A near future hard SF series certainly could allow for varied scenery. The scenery that our probes have sent back are dramatic and varied. Imagine looking out your window to views like that. Also there are all those 1970s style space habitats which we have yet to build.


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## Dave (Mar 11, 2007)

'Firefly' did have Reavers who (spoiler for Serenity) 



Spoiler



were Human.


I don't think everything in 'Firefly' did look like the wild west. They used guns not ray-guns, and they were living a rough existence on the edge of civilisation. Enough was shown of the Core Planets to see that there was a more prosperous region of the system. It was all meant to be within one solar system but somehow so many worlds seems unlikely to me.

I think the problem for a realistic near future scenario (apart from the lack of aliens) IS the lack of scenery. I don't see terraforming rocks and moons as they have in 'Firefly' as feasible, therefore you are limited to moonbases and zero-g space stations. This makes boring TV and film despite what you said about beautiful views. It worked as an environment for horror in 'Alien', but things such as the film 'Outland', and TV series 'Star Cops' were dull as dull can be. 'Space 1999' was a 1970's style space habitat yet they met new worlds and aliens every week!

I would like to see something along the lines of Larry Niven's stories of Belters from his Known Space series. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem likely since production of 'Ringworld' as a film has been stalemated for a decade or more.

When 'Stargate' began, what I liked most about it was the sticking to current technologies and use of real Air Force advisors. The Aliens were explained as stolen human slaves, the Goa'uld, as alien symbiotes. Somewhere along the road it jumped the shark and now has ray-guns, FTL, Transporters, all kinds of Star Wars like aliens, and is just like any other SciFi show.


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## j d worthington (Mar 11, 2007)

Frankly, I think the problem with any such show would be that the majority of the tv audience simply don't want to have to think too much. If you were to make a science fiction series that was genuinely thought-provoking, challenging, and rich in ideas... it would simply not have a large enough audience. That has inevitably been the case with such things; and why even the best sf magazines, for instance, publish a fair amount of formulaic stuff as well... consistently high quality is neither financially nor demographically viable.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

j. d. worthington said:


> Frankly, I think the problem with any such show would be that the majority of the tv audience simply don't want to have to think too much. If you were to make a science fiction series that was genuinely thought-provoking, challenging, and rich in ideas... it would simply not have a large enough audience. That has inevitably been the case with such things; and why even the best sf magazines, for instance, publish a fair amount of formulaic stuff as well... consistently high quality is neither financially nor demographically viable.


 
Yeah noone wants to watch 'spinach' tv. The show must be above all entertaining, not good for you. 

Clearly this can be done without violating obvious laws of physics, becauses every non SF/fantasy program manages this. 'Sopranos', for example, or CSI (debatably  ) War drama is another example, if you want lots of action and shooting.

Formulaic is fine! In fact in a way, a formula is exactly what I am looking for which is why I suggesten western.. for example I had a glance over a season sumary for 'bonanza' and I expect that could be made to translate quite well.. That ran for ages.

come on people! get creative!


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

Dave said:


> I think the problem for a realistic near future scenario (apart from the lack of aliens) IS the lack of scenery. I don't see terraforming rocks and moons as they have in 'Firefly' as feasible, therefore you are limited to moonbases and zero-g space stations. This makes boring TV and film despite what you said about beautiful views. It worked as an environment for horror in 'Alien', but things such as the film 'Outland', and TV series 'Star Cops' were dull as dull can be. 'Space 1999' was a 1970's style space habitat yet they met new worlds and aliens every week!


 
I dont think space colonisation will really take off until we have self-sufficient robot factories, but after that, our industrial might is going to grow exponentially. If a robot factory can manufacture all its own parts in a year, then it can increase a thousandfold in a decade (ie 2 to power of 10), 
(even if we only get a more reasonable tenfold increase every decade, that would still be a thousandfold ever 30 years) 
Basically any piece of architecture you can imagine could be produced, and in zero-g they could be far more impressive than anything on earth.

The views of the moons of jupiter are dramatic. and we would not need to peek at them through tiny portholes. entire walls could be displays of such quality they appear real even if you are behind meters of radiation protection.


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## Curt Chiarelli (Mar 11, 2007)

Kelvin:

Are you a television producer or writer?


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## Anomaly (Mar 11, 2007)

Without being too cynical, here in the States the big hits on reg TV are Fear Factor and American Idol, etc. This tells you where the large viewing audiences are. Frankly these shows are just trash as I think we would all agree.

I may be wrong, but the original Star Trek show struggled and was canceled after 3 years. Only in later years did it become cult like.

Think TV, Sci Fi hard core, might make it as a miniseries, but I don't know about a long running TV show. The weekly deadlines to keep rewriting plots becomes grinding and probably the storyline after awhile would suffer.
Plus the pressure to constantly get advertising and funding for production makes for decisions to put in dumb action or implausible situations for entertainment value.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

Curt Chiarelli said:


> Kelvin:
> Are you a television producer or writer?


 
no, sorry. However if you are asking 'Would I steal your ideas', yes, absolutely. Assuming I could be bothered.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

Anomaly said:


> Without being too cynical, here in the States the big hits on reg TV are Fear Factor and American Idol, etc. This tells you where the large viewing audiences are. Frankly these shows are just trash as I think we would all agree.
> 
> I may be wrong, but the original Star Trek show struggled and was canceled after 3 years. Only in later years did it become cult like.
> 
> ...


 
Im from NZ.. America comes here to _make_ their cheap tv. Apparently there was a scene from Xena where a monster rises out of the pond at Bastian point around the corner of where I live.

Potentially this sort of series could be shot moderately cheaply because you could rely heavily on bluescreening and hokie graphics rather than actual locations.

But really I am just looking for ideas that would inspire me to come up with a few episode storylines around this subject, possibly a proposal (but I am not a published writer)

I can come up with one off storylines easy enough, but I havent come up with a scenario that would generate arbitrary numbers of storylines the way that for example 'voyager' or 'CSI' trivially does.

Scenarios I can imagine:

'bonanza in space' A group of people pretty much in one place, occasional visits to the big city and others passing through all the time.. perhaps the main location could be a moon of jupiter or saturn so all the other moons are easily accessible.
'firefly-esque' adventures of a small crew.. but I am not sure how reasonable it would be in the future for a ship to fly around multiple locations rather than a fixed boring route. for starters you probably cant just choose to fly to a particular planet. there are launch windows and all.. and any trip could take months.
'trouble shooters' for a megacorp or some form of UN.. would have to be more about political infighting than alien infestations of course
A war between humanity and some external threat, perhaps an AI, but this topical aproach could mean the series never really explores a general overview of a colonization society
following separate threads.. ie certain main characters do not converse except by video mail but at least you can switch between different worlds at will.
following only one character as they hitchhike around the solar system? For some reason all SF TV (and come to think of it, TV in general) seems to revolve around groups now.. few 'knightrider' style single charactr approaches. Probably to appeal to a larger audience.
A 'Horatio Hornblower' type sailing ships and galleons idea could possibly be justified, where the chiefs of megacorporations have become like kings and queens whereas many others expect to live their entire lives on a single 25km chunk of rock.


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## Anomaly (Mar 11, 2007)

Xena?

Now that's different. Girls in tight fitting costumes that beat
the crap out of everyone? That's OK.
I know many teen age boys that faithfully watch Zena reruns.

Just joking.

And understand about your wanting some ideas.

For me some good hard SF is stuff that shows how social mores will change in the future. Aside from all the ships and aliens and monsters.

This could hold some viewer attention as most people can understand how something today might progress into something more tomorrow.

Good luck.


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## j d worthington (Mar 11, 2007)

The thing is, Kelvin... that's completely unethical within the business. You ask for ideas, you pay for ideas. No freebies. That's one of the few safeguards a writer has in a very, very venal business. So, if you're wanting ideas, then I'd suggest you find another way to come up with them, or find a way to compensate for those provided ... and the going rate for such isn't cheap and -- unless you are already under contract with a surety of payment for a certain number of scripts -- I doubt you'd be willing or able to cough up such sums.

This is meant as a friendly warning, especially if you're not a published writer: what you're doing here usually results in very costly lawsuits and ruined reputations, and writers' guilds don't just frown on, they abominate the practice -- and with very good reason.


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## ravenus (Mar 11, 2007)

I personally feel there's little harm in people casually throwing vague ideas around but yes, people should be aware that their ideas may be used by someone for economic benefit and they should be careful about what and how much they spill out to an unknown person on the internet. The possibility of someone benefitting by borrowed IP does exist if those ideas happen to get discussed in sufficient detail.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

Anomaly said:


> Xena?
> For me some good hard SF is stuff that shows how social mores will change in the future. Aside from all the ships and aliens and monsters.
> This could hold some viewer attention as most people can understand how something today might progress into something more tomorrow.
> Good luck.


I agree, but I dont know how to sell that vision.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

j. d. worthington said:


> The thing is, Kelvin... that's completely unethical within the business. You ask for ideas, you pay for ideas. No freebies. That's one of the few safeguards a writer has in a very, very venal business. So, if you're wanting ideas, then I'd suggest you find another way to come up with them, or find a way to compensate for those provided ... and the going rate for such isn't cheap and -- unless you are already under contract with a surety of payment for a certain number of scripts -- I doubt you'd be willing or able to cough up such sums.
> 
> This is meant as a friendly warning, especially if you're not a published writer: what you're doing here usually results in very costly lawsuits and ruined reputations, and writers' guilds don't just frown on, they abominate the practice -- and with very good reason.


 
You had to totally twist your head up to find a way to be offended at me.

This is a public forum on the internet. Anyone placing ideas here obviously cannot maintain ownership of them unless they are highly detailed AND you can prove identity. You could have interpreted my statement as a friendly warning but instead you made a choice to be offended.

The other thing you are doing is implying you are 'in the business'. Good on you. Please keep your highly valuable jewels of ideas.


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## Kelvin Zero (Mar 11, 2007)

MY GOD, PEOPLE!

So.. no one is in a brainstorming mood?


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## Dave (Mar 11, 2007)

Kelvin Zero said:


> Anyone placing ideas here obviously cannot maintain ownership of them.





Kelvin Zero said:


> ...if you are asking 'Would I steal your ideas', yes, absolutely.





Kelvin Zero said:


> So.. no one is in a brainstorming mood?


This surprises you, yet you maintain it is you who is being wronged. You are now skating on very thin ice here.


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