Science fiction stories.

I just tried to have this discussion with someone in my real life and they started talking with me about it then completely ignored me. They were doing something else at the same time.

Being disabled, unemployed. I don't have much opportunity to actually speak to people that will acknowledge my existence. It is what it is, it is no big deal. Even if I did have friends they would probably be stoners and such, being a millennial. I think this blog is partly a push against loneliness.  

But anyway, this is what I wanted to discuss. Science fiction shows. 

Maturation.

Fringe for me was a golden calf of brilliance. The first season, an incredibly mysterious opponent is set up. The Pattern. A group that for some reason, is doing random, very scientifically advanced, biological warfare on just random people often.  

The show sets up this kind of "pursuing the Illuminati" kind of system of deeply powerful clandestined groups. Similar to Alias in a way, but different. 

Fringe is good for a number of reasons and one of those is that the heirarchy in Fringe. The animalistic heirarchy. Doesn't place the toughest person at the top. Like a lot of those CSI types of shows. But, intelligent people. Walter and his son are given a lot of attention and reverence in the show. Since they are super high IQ people with a lot of skills in these clandestined areas. 

I watched it sometime in my twenties. Not even all episodes just about half the episodes in seasons 1, 2 and 3. It became mythologised for me as an amazing series that I wanted to watch all the way through. The reason for this, is that I wanted the mystery unravelled. I wanted to know what 'The Pattern' was really up to. Before I could learn that, I could not look at the entire show. I could not evaluate it because I wanted to see it through.

But now, I have watched it all. Yes, as you might have guessed from my write up here it was disappointing. 

J.J.Abrams. One of three writers of these shows. Is legendary for creating these absolutely amazing set ups. But his skill really ends there. One of the shows this was most true in which I have not seen is 'Lost'. Which had a lot of people so curious as to it's reasoning and then, the reveal was incoherent. This is a pattern within TV shows like this. Consider the mentalist. That set up one of the greatest serial killers of all time and unbelievably botched the reveal there. They later admitted the show had not actually decided who the serial killer would be very close to said reveal. 

The trouble with these shows is that when you set up a villain. You have no constraints. The bad character in the show 'Jessica Jones'. They enter the scene. They have all the resources available to them that the imagination and the audiences suspension of disbelief allows. 

But the show then goes on and any problems here. Anything that wasn't properly done or planned out. Becomes an issue. Because after that initial mystery. More constraints start to show up. 

If the show created a written alien language that cannot be deciphered. They have to work around actually suddenly deciphering that text if the plot demands it. 

If one of the negative characters showed a lot of intelligence. That intelligence has to be dampened for the good character to then win out. There often has to be emotional reasons that explain this intelligence deficit and these emotional reasons make no sense and are inconsistent. 

This happened strongly with Fringe. The reason that the pattern exists. I mean, it might make sense. It didn't to me. But the bigger problem was that in exposing the pattern. The original idea is that you are exposing a very powerful group. Filled with it's own processes, secrecy, huge amounts of money and competent employees. An organisation with many powerful individuals which would carry on even if one or more of it's powerful players was taken out. 

This is the kind of unearned sense of mystique that the pattern had from season 1. It was set up as this kind of organisation. But it needed to be taken down in two episodes or so, so all of a sudden it was just one ego maniac running it all from a warehouse. 

This... issue, has made me feel pretty crap about sci fi in general. The amount of planning needed to make a show that makes sense on this level. Surely it can be done? I think a part of the issue is that these shows have producers and things. So suddenly they have to finish up a show in a few episodes when they were not told that previously. Suddenly, due to ratings, a show will be cancelled. 

I suppose it is also a part of growing up. TV in some ways is a bit like 'intimate images'. It simulates human contact, but it can't go to actually provide meaningful human contact. Eventually, the limitation will become obvious. 

Two things I have done recently that have satisfied my need for sci fi from real life, not from a story. One is that I have been seriously reading and applying the Law of One. It has become a way of life. Two is that I have been having emotional shifts by paying close attention to philosophy. Philosophy is very 'adult emotions' linked. 

I can't see a solution to this. The 4400, Stargate, Star Trek. Almost everything has some kind of problem. Like I say, these things do not provide real human contact which is perhaps what is really needed. They do not satisfy curiousity either. Any real tools that provide evidence of something outside the mainstream have been rigorously suppressed in my view - there is no way to develop real psychic abilities personally. But at the same time we all do need a bit of chill time. Previously I have liked sci fi and people don't really change so perhaps this will not change either.