Here's hoping Masters of Science Fiction gets better

Last night I made it a point to watch a new ABC series, Masters of Science Fiction. It's a Twilight Zone/Outer Limits-style sci-fi anthology hosted by- of all people- Stephen Hawking. Whether Hawking's own identity or the robot-like sound of his voice contributes more to the atmospherics of the show is- sadly- debatable; certainly nothing either Hawking himself or the story he presented last night had to say particularly participated in the kind of brilliance his name evokes.

The story was about as standard a piece of mainstream sci-fi banality as can be imagined. The President of the United States- portrayed by William B. Davis, the Cigarette-Smoking Man of X-Files fame- spent most of the program in teleconference with the leaders of the other great nations of the earth, trying to decide how to deal with the sudden appearance of "enlightened" aliens spouting out-of-context quotations from the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and other sacred texts to the effect that people really need to stop having wars and killing each other. The essential message of the aliens is that if humanity does not do so- and that right quickly- they will kill us.

Now, let's pause here for a moment. Can there really be anyone- no matter how sappy and sentimental and devoid of content their moral sense- who does not detect something just a little bit hypocritical in the aliens' position? Is their posture- no matter how one slices it- not just a tad lacking in the kind of overbearing moral authority the plot of the episode demands of it?

The leaders of the other nations of the world don't think so. Only the leader of that most nefarious of nations- the United States- is not instantly cut to the quick by the moral force of the alien threat. China, France, Russia, an unidentified Muslim power, and all the other nations whose leaders are in on the teleconference are not simply willing to disarm in the face of the alien threat, but threaten a concerted attack on the United States if President Cancer Man will not join them!

Fortunately, an advisor to the president is somehow possessed by the aliens, who manage to manifest themselves to POTUS and apparently possess him, too. He then orders the dwindling American nuclear forces (the aliens are for some reason disabling them state-by-state, with such slowness as to allow a window in which the American President has enough nukes to attack both the aliens and retaliate against the rest of the world) to stand down. Common sense and reason- or something- thus triumphs.

Actually, the lesson seems to me to be pretty much exactly the one the story is meant to dispute: that power grows from the barrel of a gun, and that whoever has the most and the biggest guns in this sad and sorry world get their way.

If Masters of Science Fiction is going to survive, or even be worth watching, it's going to have to do better than it did last night.

A lot better.

Comments

Eric Phillips said…
"If Masters of Science Fiction is going to survive, or even be worth watching..."

This phrasing suggests that you think it's much more likely that the show will be worth watching, than that it will survive. That's fascinating. It would seem the normal direction of approach would be, "If X is going to be worth watching, or even to survive [as ho-hum network filler]...." I guess you've been burned too often by the inexplicable death of fantastic shows. Are you a _Firefly_ fan, by any chance? Or a fan of _Space: Above and Beyond_?
Above and Beyond. Guilty as charged. To say nothing of Crusade.