Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers: YouTube Should Become The Next Scifi Channel

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column above how much trouble it was to download episodes of the scifi TV series I had been missing. I predicted it would take at least a few years for the technology and business models to shake out so that viewing Internet video would be as easy as watching television.

That day is fast approaching.

The TV networks are falling all over themselves to push you to their websites to watch reruns of your favorite shows and broadband capabilities have expanded to make watching them more seamless.

I, myself, have more recently come into the Web video world myself as content manager of Energy Policy TV, a website that's sort of a CSPAN for energy and the environment. As both a consumer and distributor of Internet video I'm astounded on a daily basis on how this market is moving.

In the realm of science fiction, as with most scripted TV series, big studios still control the content. Episodes may now live on the Web, but if some Hollywood executive axes a series, that video will still certainly dry up and we fans are still on the outs.

The Internet offers a different approach, however. We've heard for years how scifi is mostly a "niche" audience. Fair enough -- the Internet is absolutely designed to serve such niches.

A couple of years at a scifi convention, author and one-time Star Trek writer David Gerrold was describing how the costs for professional-quality gear -- the cameras, CGI generators, etc. -- were coming down dramatically on the production side of the equation.

The rise of Internet video now puts the distribution side of the equation in more and more hands, as well.

Fans have already begun making use of this convergence, of course. Several groups have sprung up in recent years that produce fan-produced Star Trek episodes, with fans also playing the major characters.

These projects, however, are the video equivilent of fan fiction -- there is no profit motive in it.

But what if an entrepreneurial producer were to take this to the next step?

What if someone were to tap some forward-thinking investors to create a for-profit, original Internet scifi series?

The idea would be to avoid Hollywood altogether. Hollywood has no monopoly on talent -- either in front of, or behind, the camera. Hire a cast and crew -- not for blockbuster salaries, but enough to live on comfortably.

Create special effects are that aren't Lucasfilm-level, but are of good quality and are good enough. Then sell advertising around the whole thing to pay the bills.

Take the whole enterprise, so to speak, directly to the fans -- I think they would respond overwhelmingly.

This new Web series would find its fans, who would feel a direct connection and investment with this sort of production precisely because they are closer to it -- they will not be separated by huge corporate entertainment conglomerates.

And more good science fiction would find its way into the world.

Any takers?

A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance has been active with the USS Chesapeake Star Trek/scifi club for more than a decade.

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Emotional Resonance and Rocket Launchers: A Meditation on 'Lost'

By Scott Nance

It's long been said that religion and science don't mix. Religion and science fiction -- that's another story.

Scifi has been lifting religious themes and symbolism at least as far back as Leonard Nimoy's borrowing of a Jewish blessing to create the Vulcan salute for the original Star Trek series.

Often, science fiction has adapted concepts from Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. Imbuing an alien culture with Eastern, Buddhist-like trappings and whatnot has proven to be a quick and easy way to convey a sense of the exotic upon the fictitious culture.

These Buddhist attributes tend to be things like using meditation practice, incense or some similar embellishment as a story or plot device.

The "ascension" by the Ancients of Stargate SG-1, for instance, sounds a lot like an interpretation of Buddhist Enlightenment. (However, while the recent Stargate Atlantis episode "Tao of Rodney" postulated a technological path to Ascension, Buddhist Enlightment only comes from lifetimes of meditation and dedicated practice.)

But no recent series, anyway, has made such a concerted, albeit murky, connection to Buddhism than the ABC drama, Lost. The very name of the organization that runs the research stations on the mysterious island on which Lost is set -- the Dharma Initiative -- is an unmistakable Buddhist referrence. Among other inrepretations, the word "Dharma" most frequently refers to the teachings of the Buddha, or what is Buddhism itself.

If that wasn't enough, the survivors of Lost spent much of the second season of the series living down a hatch where they had to key a series of numbers into an old computer every 108 minutes to prevent catastrophe. The mumber 108 is a very significant one for Buddhists, as Buddhist rosaries, or malas, are made up of 108 beads which we use to count out our recitations of mantras.

All of these familiarities have gotten more than one Buddhist wondering what the real connection is -- beneath the many mysteries of Lost -- between our Dharma and the Dharma Initiative.

The Buddhist magazine, Tricycle, last year ran a story on the show and its continuing flirtation with Buddhism.

"Certainly at least one of Lost's writers seems to have some real knowledge of Buddhist practice," writer Dean Sluyter says.

I don't think we Buddhists are offended by the producers' use of at least the trappings of our religion on Lost. All of the fans of Lost are left to try to figure out the many questions and mysteries the series puts out there -- these odd references to our faith only present we Buddhists with just one more such puzzle to wonder about.


A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance has been author of the online Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers column for more than three years. He's also been a longtime member of the USS Chesapeake, an active Star Trek and science fiction club in the Washington, DC, region, and is the publisher of Life, The Universe Media. Email him with any comments.










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