A sad day, being forced to choose one of the oldest sf tropes. Everything else sounds so much worse, even accepting the essential tongue-in-cheekiness of some of the concepts. What happened to imagination? And don’t these people read any modern science fiction?

Awww I voted for the Scientific Inquisitor, but I guess New Horizons and its promised SFX bonanza trumps all.

@ Eugene

Scientific Inquisitor is really good too, and it probably would be the most successful. However, I couldn’t help but think of Dan Brown’s novel, “Angels and Demons.”

I don’t know, I don’t see where you’d get more than three episode’s worth of plot for “Scientific Inquisitor”; I mean, how many politically inconvenient would-be saints are there? And would the Church really risk going out of its way to debunk miracles, when the same techniques could be used to debunk “approved” miracles?

New Horizons looks pretty awesome, though; it’s not just “existing show, with Science tacked on!” (though to be fair, that actually worked for The Big Bang Theory). It has the potential to have whole episodes revolving around the human drama of the situation, which means it won’t be relying on different science each week (since that sort of thing runs through the widely-palatable sciences quickly). I think it would share some tonal elements with the new BSG (drama in space!), while being a different enough premise to stand on its own. I’m not sure about swapping out the cast each season, though; if the starting cast consists of the 50s-ish main crew (who started the expedition when they were in their 20s-30s), and their now-twentysomething children (who were all really young or maybe not yet born when the mission started), I think there’d be enough generational drama to last more than one season with the same cast.

I went with The Parameters, since it can be interesting to see how things behave under parameter change. There is a Russian children novel that I read a long time ago, in which 4-5 high school students imagined/constructed a device that can change physical laws locally. They first reduce friction and found out they cannot walk and trousers cannot hold up, and then change the speed of sound, increase water density to save somebody drowning and so on. Finally they switched off the energy conservation law so almost destroyed the Earth, because a slight movement of theirs was amplified to move mountains.

Mr Tompkins in Dreamland was what I thought of, too.

The Scientific Inquisitor sounds like that film with … Antonio Banderas(?) as an organic chemist turned pastor – Stigmata, I think it was.

Wow, I really didn’t expect to see my show in the lead! Thanks everybody!

CW,

Well, the problem is that a lot of the “obvious” things that you’d think of to make for drama in a show like this are just exceedingly implausible. For a potentially Earth-destroying object, for instance, the only way they’d notice an asteroid or similar would be if they noticed it before leaving our solar system, and even then it’d be obscenely unlikely. The only sort of thing that they could notice a little ways out that might be threatening would be a brown dwarf or a black hole set on a collision course with the solar system. Though that’s exceedingly rare, and though the most they could do is send back a message to Earth saying, “Hey, it looks like you guys might get destroyed in a few million years,” this might be a good show starter: imagine if we found such an Earth-destroying object coming towards us but still a few centuries out or so. This might be the entire motivation for building the ship in the first place. Still, it’s an unlikely possibility, so it might sacrifice the science of the show.

So if the writers want to make the show interesting, but keep it close to the science, they’d have to be really careful to reign in their imaginations, and not let the influences of a few decades worth of science fiction creep in. Meeting up with a derelict or occupied alien vessel? That’s out: the ship would have no realistic way of stopping along the trip. We could imagine some interesting things once the ship reaches its destination, but I think most of the time these sorts of traditional sci-fi ideas would be tackled by the cast saying that those things just don’t happen in reality.

Thus, the writers/producers of such a show would have a choice: they could either stick to the science, and thus make it primarily a human drama with an interesting backdrop, where all of the conflict would have to come from the cast of the ship and the ship itself. Or they could abandon some part of the science and add in a few traditional sci-fi mechanisms, such as the ability of the ship to stop along the way to investigate strange things.

And I really do like the idea of recycling the cast every season or so. I thought that the miniseries Taken really used that to tremendous effect by swapping out the cast every few episodes.

As for some conflicts that would be very realistic, and could be quite interesting, here are a few ideas I have:

1. They don’t plan ahead far enough, and only take a few types of antibiotics on board. They have a rash of sicknesses early-on, and overuse the antibiotics. Once the early illness is over, they find that the antibiotics stop working, and they just don’t have the materials to develop new ones. Over the next few episodes, then, more and more people fall ill, and simple infections become deadly. Eventually the microbiology lab develops a bacteriophage treatment that essentially solves the problem.
2. Some people go nuts from the confinement. This should mostly be early-on, but we could have something fun like an otherwise normal, well-adjusted crew member develops a second personality that is quite destructive to the ship. His attempts at sabotage are partially successful, and he nearly destroys the ship (but is, of course, stopped). This could have a tie-in with the above situation where he is actually instrumental in exposing the bacteria to sub-therapeutic levels of the antibiotics, intentionally evolving their resistance.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for the moment, but if the show is to stick to the science as closely as possible, I think that the above is going to have to be the general direction: we have a group of people who are completely isolated. The fact that they’re in space sets the theme, but doesn’t have a whole lot of input into the plot. It’s mostly the complete isolation that does that.

I hope I haven’t damped anybody’s imagination too much

I think that “Scientific Inquisitor” sounds the best, but I also think that it would be better as a 10 episode (or so) mini-series, with each episode bringing a new “miracle” that the cardinal has to debunk.

It sounds like a very intriguing concept to me – far moreso than any of Dan Brown’s (rather similar) work. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone steals this idea and turns it into a book.

The Parameters – sounds like a combination of “Fringe”, “Primeval”, and “Eureka”, but with a slightly different setting. I’m not a fan of any of those shows, so this would be a no go for me. However, I can see how others might enjoy it.

New Horizons – sounds moderately interesting, but kind of slow and dull, rather like BSG2003. Still, there is a fairly large market for shows of this kind, even though they don’t appeal to me, personally.

Odd that there is so much good science fiction, yet very little good science fiction on the tube or at the movies. I fear none of the plots outlined caught my attention. Perhaps a show that presented a variety science fiction stories, rather than being stuck with the same formula from week to week.

Larry Niven’s “Tales from Known Space?”

A movie more firmly based on Harry Bates’ “Farewell to the Master?”

Clear skies, Alan
(Nervous about seeing the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” on Friday – the previous have not been promising, IMHO.)

And “the previews have not been promising, IMHO.”

Better go do something else!!!

Alan French:

I believe the Sci-Fi Channel had a series called (thinks back) Welcome to Paradox, which adapted a different short story every week, setting them all in or around the city of “Betaville” (a Jean-Luc Godard shout-out, of course). It didn’t last very long, but of course, that doesn’t say anything directly about the concept of an anthology show itself.

“The parameters” is obviously unscientific. How can the speed of sound change? It’s a dimensionful parameter.

Note: this is a joke.

My vote went to Apocalypse Tomorrow.

Three Geeks in Boston and Friends With Experiments have the potential to counter painful geeksploitation shows like Big Bang Theory, but these look like they’ll quickly fall prey to the tired tropes of tv comedy (“Friends” promises to do so!). When that happens the show isn’t funny or interesting.

The Parameters sounds ridiculous and amusing, but somehow sounds like the characters won’t have any room for development. Yet it isn’t really a pop-science show like mythbusters – it’s supposed to have some story. I don’t know, it just doesn’t sound appealing to me after a few episodes.

New Horizons sounds like a promising one! I like the idea of exploring the children’s perspectives. But what’s the scope of what the show can do? You’re limited to watching this one ship for at least a season! Concerning my personal preferences, it sounds like this show would be very stressful, and provide little room for wonder.

The Scientific Inquisitor also sounds very interesting! But as someone else noted, how are you going to make more than a miniseries out of this? Also, I think the audience will be about the same one that watched the (Fantastic) John Adams miniseries. This is too small an audience, and too short a show for CBS.

Apocalypse Tomorrow is by far the best. The concept of the show necessitates character development, and the world is wide and full of options. Moreover, the conflicts sound both extremely interesting and absolutely relevant! Our world is rapidly being transformed by technology, and readers of this blog are well aware of the anti-intellectual tensions raised by “Luddites”. The premise of this show provides a great opportunity to explore tensions with science and society, and the value of science. Along with “Inquisitor”, this show can present subtlety, but with a much less constrained plot (and larger cast, with more complex relationships). These are the two shows that can both reach the human heart and best reward the mind, and “Apocalypse” is best of the two for T.V.

My worries about New Horizons were connected to the idea that the ship and crew are smallish. Someone at the forum for Dresden Codak pointed out that I made that assumption without reason.

Then he mentioned some neat space habitats: The Bernal Sphere, The Stanford Torus, and The O’Neill Cylinder.

Space Engineering question for the CV readers: How big an effect would the shape of a large ship have on its speed and stability? There’s cosmic dust to deal with in the least.

Did I read Sean’s former post on The Elevator Pitch idea with great any great depth? Nope. Ddi I also read it slowly? Nope. Did I only read the first sentence, one middle sentence, then the last sentence just to get a jist? Yep. Should other people do this? Nope. Was it because I was in a hurry? Yep. Is this comment starting to resemble a flow chart? Yep…if no then go to…

New Horizons: immediately got my attention. But to make it an enjoyable show, the ship must be allowed to stop, so they could gather technology from the said alien vessel and it should be a bit more “fi” and less “sci”.

Three geeks in Boston: It’s too hard to find the balance between SF and sitcom IMO

The parameters: this is the direction Eureka should be heading. The premise is a lot more “fi” than “sci”, so would be the solutions, but the accurate physical description of the changes would be funny. Sonic booms caused by people talking and walking in the same time… clothes getting to be transparent… I’d love it.

The scientific inquisitor: either miniseries, or something should cause more and more “wonders” to happen.

FWE: See above (Three geeks in Boston)

Apocalypse Tomorrow: can be interesting, if the town would be very very mysterious. Also, devices left in the town by the mad scientist should turn on causing problems to solve.

I voted for New Horizons, but all of them sounds interesting, if they could find the balance between science, fiction and comedy.

@ Matt

My apologies. LOL I didn’t mean to disparage your suggestion by comparing it to a Dan Brown novel. I think it has the chance of being the most successful show, due to the popularity of similar-themed shows such as “The Night Stalker”, “X-Files”, and “Fringe” (the latter of which, almost has as much science as ‘Futurama’)

Good job PZ didn’t enter, what with his poll-busting skills and all that.
“In first place, with 147,346 votes – PZ Myers with The Octo-twins, in second place with 135 votes…”

I thought the simple tactic of entering as many times as I could would stack the odds, but rather belatedly now realise that 100 ideas just don’t add up to one good idea. On the other hand, you never know until aferwards, and 100 bad ideas is still probably better than no idea!

I vote for t-shirts for the top 3

(That last comment wasn’t left by me! Not that I disagree with the joke, but that was almost certainly Marc Humpert causing trouble.)

What about some adaptation of The Culture of Ian Banks? E.g. i’m sure that the novel “State of the Art”, where Culture Ship visits the Earth and crew members spend some time on the planet (and are generally appaled by our wicked ways), can be a base of a good TV serial.

Several Culture citizens – kind of human-like people with lots of extra glands and abilities that come from millenia of genetic tinkering – spend time on Earth living among us. Also, they regularly return to the Ship to take a rest, discuss things etc. Worth to note that Culture Ships are extremely powerful AIs and have rich personalities, usually viewing the Universe with sarcastic wit. Also they usually have funny names like “Oops i did it again”, “Don’t bother” or “I told you i’m a bad guy!” (warship).

Crew members have very different temperament, ideas about whether to involve Earth into some improvement program, level of antypathy towards humans etc. In the end the Ships is leaving solar system. One of the crew abandons his extra abilities and stays on Earth, the other is dead. The Ship decides to let Humanity evolve by itself.

Max Raabe version?

Hey,

Who ever wins this, well good for them. Lets hope it’s a hit!

I dunno, maybe astromcnaught’s idea is ok? Just… who ever, then that’s great news. I am just really no good at stories, especially SF or fantasy etc. Will keep an eye on the show!

Claire

I voted for Parameters, picturing the mechanics professor as a zany, Doctor Who-type character. Think of all the ridiculous scenarios the characters could get themselves into. =)