A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Our televisions and movie screens lit up with the greatest science fiction media of all time. Star Wars. Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica. Doctor Who. All classic shows and movies before the word “franchise” only meant McDonalds restaurants.
Look, I love a good starship as much as the next person who almost named their dog “Spock.” As I write this on May 4th, Star Wars Day, I may be wearing a Chewbacca mask. But the current climate is less warp speed and get out and push.
Between the cancellation of Star Trek Academy and the shelving of any and all Star Trek movies and TV, the universe is running on a lunar-powered shrug. If you blinked, you missed the moment when the Enterprise turned in its application for a lifetime achievement award and was told to submit it under “miscellaneous already canceled projects.” The Mandalorian and Grogu—the upcoming new Star Wars movie—is expecting lower than expected box office totals. I’m told the numbers are so soft they’d fold like a wamprat under the heel of a bantha.
Even Doctor Who has apparently been “canceled” by the BBC after several woke choices for actors to play The Doctor. Yes, woke. The word that makes a certain demographic feel as if their TARDIS console suddenly turned into a typewriter with a broken space bar. But here’s the thing: science fiction and woke aren’t enemies. Woke is just fiction with the audacity to imagine different vertices of the same polygon. The whole point of science fiction is to show you alternative viewpoints of our own culture—like the first on-screen interracial kiss, or the first gay Doctor Who, or the Emperor in Star Wars based on an all-powerful person ruling the universe. Remind you of anyone? All that’s missing is Emperor Palpatine declaring a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Calling science fiction “woke” is hilarious. That’s the whole joke: if you can’t stand the idea of a starlit society where a doctor doesn’t look like a signor of the Declaration of Independence, maybe you’re just allergic to progress in a galaxy where progress occasionally carries a sonic screwdriver or a lightsaber.
Part of the problem is that there are no new ideas in Hollywood and you keep spinning off and rebooting science fiction ideas from the 1960s and 70s, it’s a law of diminishing returns, like microwaving a burrito for three minutes and pretending it’s a new cuisine invented by a council of elders who only speak in CSS code. There have been new ideas, sure, like the Ryan Gosling movie Project Hail Mary, but they are growing fewer and farther between than a fan club that actually remembers the plot.
My advice? New ideas, or at least pick new meat from old bones. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke are good places to start. If you’re going to rummage in the attic of human imagination, you might as well grab something that still keeps its eyebrows raised. Asimov wrote extensively on the dangers of AI and robotics. Clarke waxed poetic about a better future through technology. Maybe mix a little older coffee with a newer bean, see if the blend unlocks a plot that doesn’t collapse into a soft sigh after the first act.
Until then, I’ll keep faith with the old recommendation: borrow wisely, reboot sparingly, and above all, let the future—yes, the one that still believes in hyperspace and time travel—have its say. It’s the only department that still pays in possibilities.
And may the force be with you…always.
