For those who have been waiting for their next fix of sci-fi on TV, there is relief. Even light relief.
January saw the return of both “Primeval” and “Torchwood”. As each was new last year, their return is meant to offer both more of the same, and better…
Generally, so far, so good. There are still plenty of dinosaurs in “Primeval“, and this time they are getting to roam around larger venues: shopping centres, office complexes. I think there’s a theme park next week.
As a holiday company is supporting the programme through advertising – “holidays for you and your little monsters” – Dan and I are speculating whether the theme park is belongs to the holiday company and is therefore a further version of advertising…
Meanwhile, “Torchwood” seems to be aiming to be both darker and, well, lighter. Doing an adapted version for children so that it can be shown before the watershed, as well as the original after 9pm, it’ll be interesting to see what is offered in each version. I anticipate that the violence will stay, in most, but I don’t know quite how much of the relationship jumping between the characters will get to stay.
However, there is also monster-lite. Digital channels allow you to see ever increasing amounts of Star Trek, and all its variants. At the time of writing, you can watch Deep Space Nine at 8pm every day. With a repeated version at 9pm in case you got distracted the first time. Clearly you can tell I know whereof I speak, but we try not to base too much of our lives around this. Honest.
Why bother with monsters? There’s other sci-fi that refuses to use them – “Firefly” has just humans, and the only monster-like characters are gradually revealed to be humans that have gone bad at the edge of space. But there again, surely we have enough humans gone bad in real life?
It can be suggested (which really means I’m parroting a certain amount of writing about sci-fi in the newspapers) that when we have more ‘monsters’ around us in the world, we invent more in fiction or entertainment as a way of dealing with our feelings about the real-world ones. In this current climate, where working out who is a ‘monster’, and who is not, is getting harder to do, having more ’rounded’ monsters in film etc may be a way of dealing with the difficulties of this situation.
Perhaps the one certainty is our monstrous appetite for scaring ourselves – in a safe setting…Contradictory. But then, these days, so are the monsters. “Battlestar Galactica” has made a reputation out of developing the characters of sensitive ‘baddies’ and ‘goodies’ who are none too moral in their dealings with others.
And if monsters show us what we are capable of, with all our own contradictions, then perhaps we need to remind ourselves occasionally what that is. If only to fly our spaceships in the opposite direction.