Take Me to Your Leader

In all my years of watching television I have been drawn to science fiction more than anything else. Science fiction is a bit of loose definition here because it does incorporate fantasy elements. Okay, the genre I am describing involves guys with ray guns and/or women in 18 century breast exposing neck lines.

My fascination began with programs like Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits. My parents made me stop watching the Outer Limits because it scared the living crap out of me. I gather I would demand the lights in my room and the hall adjacent to my room be left on because I did not want those giant ants crawling into my room. And then there was that really creepy “Don’t Open Until Doomsday”.

As I grew older my tastes followed those of the kids on the playground. We watched the Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea religiously unless it conflicted with some parent’s favorite (and boy did they hear about it if there program was in conflict). From the Time Tunnel the shift was to fantasy because I don’t think there was a kid in America who wasn’t familiar with the exploits of Angelique and Barnabas and Dr. Julia Howe on Dark Shadows. (CBS’s now cancelled Moonlight was just Dark Shadows with a hunkier but just slightly less conflicted vampire).

Yes I even watched Star Trek. But it didn’t capture my imagination as much. Clearly it beat the other stuff that was on but it was just too melodramatic most of the time. And how many times could I star at William Shatner being lured into the status of love slave to an alien femme fatale without feeling inadequate.

Then I quit watching TV for a number of years. I went to college, I discovered intoxication, I discovered women (okay I didn’t discover them, what is probably the better description is that a few of them took mercy on me).

Somewhat later post marriage when I had settled into the corporate grind there came the X-files to fill up Friday evenings when you were just too burnt to go out. Then Fox’s hoped for X-Files replacement Millennium came and thus began my commitment to a string of shows that if I watched them, they would die. Uh let us see, John Doe, Threshold, Firefly Journeyman shall I go on? Well just one more Dead Like Me. If you haven’t seen this rent both seasons on DVD. I particularly loved the yoga instructor’s demise.

Okay Buffy came along and the fantasy came back, for a while. What is it with vampires and all the sexual tension?

I don’t know why I like this stuff. My thought is that it is because such programming plays to our insecurities as to the meaning of life and death. This stuff is a guess at what lies at the edge of the possible. Nobody wants to be an existentialist. Most atheists want there to be something more than cold science that is our experience isn’t just a random collision of atoms then life, death and entropic atoms again.

On the other hand maybe it is just shinning stuff, buff babes and explosions that are nothing more than eye candy induce us to stare. Oh well for now I have got the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Reaper and Eureka. Trust me with my luck these will be gone soon. Watch ‘em quick before they go bye-bye if you like this kind of stuff.

Again most of this stuff is at www.hulu.com.