There has been no greater escape offered to the viewing public than Sci-fi TV shows. These shows have always been great entertainment offering chance to look at our world by learning about other worlds that might exist. The wonderful draw of these fantasy genre shows is the opportunity to ask What if. We are relieved of the burdens of our world like time, gravity, dimension, and physics. We are allowed to explore worlds totally different from our own in order to seek a universal truth. A truth that is also unbound by those very attributes of our planet that we get to leave behind.
Sci-Fi TV shows, like most other TV shows, got their start in radio and then transferred to the new medium of television. The new theater of TV gave the science fiction writer new dimensions to work with and added another level to the stories they were able to tell. The stories were able to have a grander scale and be able to weave more intricate plots since the audience could be shown signposts for new locations, times, or characters. Sound effects were no longer the only narrative cues available. Characters could be better and more elaborately drawn allowing for expanded casts and more intricate plots and subplots.
The Twilight Zone is the classic example of the early Sci-FI TV shows. It remained episodic in format like its radio predecessors giving the audience a couple vignettes each time. Occasionally, the episodes were on a common theme and allowed the narrator to educate the public on the meaning of the stories. We were led to certain conclusions and assumptions by mankind that may not apply to the rest of the universe. Further, it was implied that those assumptions or actions shouldnt be applied here. The genre allowed the show to preach a bit about humanity without directly attacking anyone here.
Star Trek is another classic example of what Sci-Fi TV shows could do culturally. The crew of the Enterprise has become culturally iconic for entire generations. At the time, the show was cutting edge in terms of special effects and launched careers for several actors. The worlds explored on the show were more elaborate than those that came before, but the moral was always the same: this could be us; do we want it to be? The point was always to question what it means to be human and decide if that is the best we can be or is there something more.
Star Trek-The Next Generation was a spinoff of sorts during a time when TV was going very retro. The show came years after the original ended and brought with it even better special effects and far better acting. Like all improvements in this genre, it allowed for more intricate plots and more dazzling worlds to explore. This show was different, however. The difference came in the fact that many of the scripts had an internal focus on the characters interactions aboard the ship and not always so much on their interaction with the outside worlds. It became more pure drama.
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