vhsiv
02-25-2004, 05:40 PM
Sci Why?
Does reality belong in your science fiction? The Sci-Fi Channel thinks so.
http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/tube_2004-02-26.cfm
by Bill Frost, Salt Lake City Weekly - 02/26/04
Network names don't necessarily have to reflect their programming, but you used to know what you were getting from the reliable ol’ Sci-Fi Channel, and it certainly didn’t include reality-TV shows—hysterically horrible movies and long-ago-canceled series no self-respecting network this side of Spike would touch with a plastic light saber, sure, but not reality.
No, the last thing you’d expect or want from your sci-fi TV programming is reality, even if the "science" does get preferred billing over "fiction". Then again, remember how the “M” in MTV used to stand for "music"? Or how the "L" in TLC used to mean "learning"? Or how the “U” in USA didn’t always signify “un-freakin’-believable number of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns every day from here to eternity"? Things change.
The Sci-Fi Channel stepped/stumbled into the reality game last spring with the introduction of Scare Tactics (season premiere Thursday, March 4), a paranormal Punk'd hosted by ex-90210/Charmed star and reputed psycho Shannen Doherty. During that first magical season, unwitting marks lured into inspired-by-sci-fi-and-horror-flick scenarios were frightened senseless by fake aliens, ghosts, zombies, monsters, cannibals and, most bowel-evacuating of all, the prank-finale sight of Doherty’s asymmetrical smirk. Zoinks!
The paranormal twist and $65-per-episode (rounded up) budget made Scare Tactics an odd-but-natural fit for the Sci-Fi Channel, and it even became something of a hit (compared to Knight Rider 2010 repeats, anyway). After the realization set in that a reality series is cheaper to produce than a single Farscape hairstyle, the network’s next semi-logical step from a hidden-camera prank show was a Real World-style household voyeurama—but how to make it sci-fi? Lock a group of pretty 20-something Arizona State party hounds and ’hos in a space station as host Stephen Hawking quizzes them on astrophysics and dials down the oxygen supply with each successive wrong answer? Oh, joygasm!
Well, not quite: Mad Mad House (debuts Thursday, March 4) shacks up "a Wiccan, a naturist, a modern primitive, a voodoo priestess and a real-life vampire" with 10 average folks who'll compete in and be eliminated by various challenges concocted by the Freak Five, one ultimately winning a $100,000 prize and a deeper appreciation for "life around the edges". Apparently, that college “experimentation" didn’t count—oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Mad Mad House's five hosting "Alts" (as in, "alternative lifestyles") are supposed to come off as more enlightened and accepting than their square guests—especially the obligatory reality-show Christians—but they’re mostly just the same kind of condescending prigs you’d run across in any campus coffee shop or Burning Man support group. House vamp Don Henrie, a flouncing poseur who looks like Marilyn Manson’s valet and, as it turns out, never played drums for the Eagles, is the worst of the lot; Avocado (that’s his handle), the always-naked naturist, is the least annoying. Like the aforementioned college experimentation, Mad Mad House is fun for about five minutes before it becomes painful even with the aid of a beer bong.
There is one nonreality entry in the Sci-Fi Channel's new Thursday-night ramp-up, a computer-animated space lark called Tripping the Rift (debuts Thursday, March 4) that looks like the unnecessary bridge between Heavy Metal and Jimmy Neutron—and, thanks to a token sex-slave android breathily voiced by Gina Gershon, maybe even Stripperella.
Tripping the Rift follows the slacker misadventures of a starship crew who spend half their time avoiding two warring intergalactic factions, The Confederation and The Dark Clowns (of which Don Henrie is also not affiliated with). The other half is spent proving what Futurama might have been like if that show were free of decent writers and animators—although the captain, a three-eyed sleezy alcoholic purple blob named Chode (voiced by Stephen Root), does have some hysterically insightful moments nearly worthy of Bender: "Just once, I’d like to time-travel and not see Nazis".
Time-travel, visit Utah, write a TV column, it’s all reality-relative.
Does reality belong in your science fiction? The Sci-Fi Channel thinks so.
http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/tube_2004-02-26.cfm
by Bill Frost, Salt Lake City Weekly - 02/26/04
Network names don't necessarily have to reflect their programming, but you used to know what you were getting from the reliable ol’ Sci-Fi Channel, and it certainly didn’t include reality-TV shows—hysterically horrible movies and long-ago-canceled series no self-respecting network this side of Spike would touch with a plastic light saber, sure, but not reality.
No, the last thing you’d expect or want from your sci-fi TV programming is reality, even if the "science" does get preferred billing over "fiction". Then again, remember how the “M” in MTV used to stand for "music"? Or how the "L" in TLC used to mean "learning"? Or how the “U” in USA didn’t always signify “un-freakin’-believable number of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns every day from here to eternity"? Things change.
The Sci-Fi Channel stepped/stumbled into the reality game last spring with the introduction of Scare Tactics (season premiere Thursday, March 4), a paranormal Punk'd hosted by ex-90210/Charmed star and reputed psycho Shannen Doherty. During that first magical season, unwitting marks lured into inspired-by-sci-fi-and-horror-flick scenarios were frightened senseless by fake aliens, ghosts, zombies, monsters, cannibals and, most bowel-evacuating of all, the prank-finale sight of Doherty’s asymmetrical smirk. Zoinks!
The paranormal twist and $65-per-episode (rounded up) budget made Scare Tactics an odd-but-natural fit for the Sci-Fi Channel, and it even became something of a hit (compared to Knight Rider 2010 repeats, anyway). After the realization set in that a reality series is cheaper to produce than a single Farscape hairstyle, the network’s next semi-logical step from a hidden-camera prank show was a Real World-style household voyeurama—but how to make it sci-fi? Lock a group of pretty 20-something Arizona State party hounds and ’hos in a space station as host Stephen Hawking quizzes them on astrophysics and dials down the oxygen supply with each successive wrong answer? Oh, joygasm!
Well, not quite: Mad Mad House (debuts Thursday, March 4) shacks up "a Wiccan, a naturist, a modern primitive, a voodoo priestess and a real-life vampire" with 10 average folks who'll compete in and be eliminated by various challenges concocted by the Freak Five, one ultimately winning a $100,000 prize and a deeper appreciation for "life around the edges". Apparently, that college “experimentation" didn’t count—oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Mad Mad House's five hosting "Alts" (as in, "alternative lifestyles") are supposed to come off as more enlightened and accepting than their square guests—especially the obligatory reality-show Christians—but they’re mostly just the same kind of condescending prigs you’d run across in any campus coffee shop or Burning Man support group. House vamp Don Henrie, a flouncing poseur who looks like Marilyn Manson’s valet and, as it turns out, never played drums for the Eagles, is the worst of the lot; Avocado (that’s his handle), the always-naked naturist, is the least annoying. Like the aforementioned college experimentation, Mad Mad House is fun for about five minutes before it becomes painful even with the aid of a beer bong.
There is one nonreality entry in the Sci-Fi Channel's new Thursday-night ramp-up, a computer-animated space lark called Tripping the Rift (debuts Thursday, March 4) that looks like the unnecessary bridge between Heavy Metal and Jimmy Neutron—and, thanks to a token sex-slave android breathily voiced by Gina Gershon, maybe even Stripperella.
Tripping the Rift follows the slacker misadventures of a starship crew who spend half their time avoiding two warring intergalactic factions, The Confederation and The Dark Clowns (of which Don Henrie is also not affiliated with). The other half is spent proving what Futurama might have been like if that show were free of decent writers and animators—although the captain, a three-eyed sleezy alcoholic purple blob named Chode (voiced by Stephen Root), does have some hysterically insightful moments nearly worthy of Bender: "Just once, I’d like to time-travel and not see Nazis".
Time-travel, visit Utah, write a TV column, it’s all reality-relative.