Space-themed TV shows (that care a little about realism)?

[Nikolai]

How about television shows that try to be accurate when it comes to what space travel is actually like?

Sadly -- especially considering how many TV shows my own country cranks out -- I can only think of Japanese ones:

* "Planetes" (and yes, there's an extra "e" in there). It's set in 2075, when space travel is much more routine, around a group of people whose job it is to recover debris in orbit to prevent it from becoming a hazard. They're so careful about the science that rocket engines are silent and laser beams (used for range-finding) are invisible, and one can hear occasional accurate descriptions in the background of "transfer orbits" and such. But it's not just for space geeks -- the main characters are very well developed, to the point that I was tied up in knots over the moral dilemma one of them found herself in near the end of the series.

* "Space Girls". Yes, it's another "Japanese school girls can do anything" show, but man, it's just *fun*. It revolves around a company who wants to send people into space from the Solomon Islands, but has to keep shaving its weight margins more and more until sending a full-grown adult is simply not an option. Yes, it's a far-fetched premise, but if you let that go, most of the rest of it is really solid stuff. It also succeeds as a whimsical comedy, and I genuinely enjoyed watching the main character go from a bit of a flake to a responsible mother hen (the company ends up hiring three teen girls as astronauts by series end).

Anyone else have recommendations for people eager to see something in realistic television shows set in space?

[Monkthespy]

Babylon 5. Of course it's over and it's from some time ago, but, it does care a bit about realism. The design of the station actually use gravity from spinning, other than artificially. Pretty cool stuff.

[Kreuzung]

Cannot find German or English playlist for both animes... need to search more I think, didn't watch a TV series for a year or so:sticktongue:

[Suzaku]

Lol, thanks for planetes, I'm watching it now. Pretty awesome.

[LukeTim]

Star Trek has some grounding in scientific fact. It's reasonably realistic. Just don't watch the The Next Generation movies, because they are stupid hollywood crap with virtually no realism.

I think Firefly is fairly realistic, too. Though I have never watched it so I don't know for sure.

[sal_vager]

Firefly has anti gravity, but no ftl, it is implied that all the action takes place in one single star system, and Star Trek First Contact was good

[Suzaku]

All the other shows being listed, I.E. Star Trek, Firefly, babylon 5, etc. Are grounded in the far future and have ridiculous technological advances and are extremely EXTREMELY inaccurate due to the lorentz doppler effect which causes time dilation. The only shows that have featured the lorentz doppler effect prominently that I can think of are Andromeda, Gunbuster (Main plot is the doppler effect), and Voices of a Distant Star.

So no, Babylon 5, Star Trek, and Firefly are not scientifically accurate, they just choose the science they want and ignore all the science that they don't like.

[RedDwarfIV]

BBC's Outcasts, which was sadly cancelled after a single series. Apparently the science degrades as the plot picks up, but it's a hell of a lot better than Star Trek did, because its set much closer to the present.

Story: Earth is consumed in World War Three, and it is clear that survival is a pretty meagre chance. The Earth Evacuation Programme is set up to get as many people off world as possible. We don't see any of this, but it's referenced a lot. By the time we see that characters, they've already been settled on their new planet - Carpathia - for ten years.

It follows the struggles of a human settlement cut off from the rest of the universe, as their Earth Beacon Mast has failed to pick up any signals for some time, and the implications of that are a matter of some discussion by the characters. These struggles can range from Whiteout Storms to C23/C24 outbreaks to Transporter-10.

Whether the transporter has artificial gravity isn't discusssed, but we don't see enough of them in flight to make a judgement on that. They are pretty much solely designed as a spaceplane capable of carrying as many passengers as possible. They are staged, with the second stage being engines - antimatter and nuclear. Antimatter for interstellar space, nuclear for in-system space. We don't see them decellerating, but that doesn't mean they don't. There are references to a 'five year trip', but we don't know how far Carpathia is from Earth. On the ground, a Transporter is just so much scrap metal with flats inside, so a settlement gets built around it - and that's Forthaven. Between orbit and ground, entry is handled realistically - you see friction plasma, and a Transporter with a damaged heatshield breaks up. A really nice touch, I think, is how the city is walled by shipping containers.

[Randox]

Babylon 5. Of course it's over and it's from some time ago, but, it does care a bit about realism. The design of the station actually use gravity from spinning, other than artificially. Pretty cool stuff.

What got me with this one was when the fighters are flying, the engines are on to get to speed, and then they turn off, because this show is the only one ever to awknowledge that leaving your engines on all the time results in constant acceleration (actually, stargate also does this. They turn their engines off to cost). Also, the ships turn by pivoting, rather than swooping around like planes in air that doesn't exist.

On the topic of time dialation due to speed, star trek actually does acknowledge this. If you ever wondered why they don't fly around at full impulse when fighting, this is why. The time dialation would give someone moving at only 1/4 a huge tactical advantage.

In Star Wars, ships traveling in Hyper space use a stasis field of some sort to keep themselves synced with real time.

Bablylon 5, like Firefly has no FTL drive. When they are in their hyper space, they are using their sublight engines at sublight speed, but the hyper space itself changes the distance between points allowing for FTL travel at sublight speeds.

Of course at the end of the day, all the shows are picking and choosing what they acknowledge and what they don't. I would consider Bablylon 5 to be one of the best of the bunch, though Star Trek goes to great pains to be at least explain everything if you know enough about the show, you just have to accept that technologies like gravity manipulation and warp drive work).

[Nikolai]

On the topic of time dialation due to speed, star trek actually does acknowledge this. If you ever wondered why they don't fly around at full impulse when fighting, this is why. The time dialation would give someone moving at only 1/4 a huge tactical advantage.

So why don't they fly around at 0.25 c while fighting? The tactical advantage someone might be able to get by moving slower isn't that much greater. Or even 0.01 c? (I assume they aim with computers or something, since aiming at something moving at close to light speed when you're traveling at 0.25 c would seem... difficult... otherwise.) Or do they just conveniently ignore that?

What about the "huge tactical advantage" created by the positional uncertainty involved when someone's traveling at close to light speed relative to you? Or do they just conveniently ignore that?

In Star Wars, ships traveling in Hyper space use a stasis field of some sort to keep themselves synced with real time.

This seems to be handwaving. "We know there's this problem with physics with what we're describing, okay? So there's this... *thing*... that takes care of it. See? No problem." Kind of like the "Heisenberg compensators" in Star Trek's transporters. I appreciate that they're throwing me a bone by recogizing that there's this apparently insurmountable problem in doing what they want the people in the show to be able to do, but let's not kid ourselves. They're ignoring physics when it's convenient to do so.

Bablylon 5, like Firefly has no FTL drive. When they are in their hyper space, they are using their sublight engines at sublight speed, but the hyper space itself changes the distance between points allowing for FTL travel at sublight speeds.

Hyperspace is more of this kind of handwaving. It allows them to circumvent a problem with physics by inventing a storytelling mechanism.

Star Trek goes to great pains to be at least explain everything if you know enough about the show, you just have to accept that technologies like gravity manipulation and warp drive work).

And sometimes, those technologies violate physics as we understand it. For example, Heisenberg compensators *should not be possible to make*. We're not talking about an *engineering* problem here, like "We can't imagine material strengths that could survive traveling through the atmosphere at supersonic speed." We're talking about a *laws of the Universe* problem here.

Think of it another way. Conservation of mass-energy is, as near as we can tell, completely inviolable. If a show existed that could, through some unexplained mechanism, violate conservation of mass-energy, allowing the characters to make golf balls by sneezing (in a plot and setting where golf balls are extraordinarily handy to have), would that seem to be an "explanation"?

Of course, I can enjoy these shows because I like the stories, even if they're physically impossible. But it's a mistake to think that, for example, Star Trek explains how stuff works in a way that's consistent with science and merely has more advanced (and currently inexplicable) technology.

Of course, it's completely possible that I've misunderstood your point. Please feel free to set me straight.

[Carthaginian]

I can't think of any near-future/current series involving space travel.

Honestly, a series set in that environment would be 'boring'- read: repetitive and uninteresting. There are only so many things that we can do with current technology: 1.) Earth-to-Orbit, 2.) Earth-to-Moon, and with some stretching* 3.) Earth-to-Mars. With #1 and #2 you run into the biggest problem of making an interesting 'present day' television series- situations I like to call the "Baa Baa Black Sheep Problem" (for #1) or the "Deep Space Nine Problem" (for #2).

The "Black Sheep Squadron Issue" I named for a series covering the misadventures of VMF-214 (The Black Sheep Squadron) during WWII. The actors were good, and the special effects were top-notch for the time period. The problem that killed the show was that there are only so many ways that you can shoot down a Zero, and there are only so many hooch-bars and nurses on one island in the South Pacific. Eventually, the show gets stuck in a rut and the audience will wander off to something less repetitive. Any 'Earth-to-Orbit' show will eventually hit this same wall- you can only launch a rocket into space so many times before it stops being interesting... heck, the actual Apollo program ran into the same issue!

Any 'Earth-to-Moon' show would hit the same sticking points as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine- namely, there's no place to go but where you are. You just sit in the same spot with the same problems occurring over and over. Sure, the locale is strange and interesting, and the problems are exciting and out of the ordinary... for the first season or so. Then you run into the same kind of repetition that any show with a fixed locale gets: your viewers get accustomed to the dangers and problems of this location and become inured- and your show gets boring. This is the very reason that DS9 had to add the Defiant to the 'cast of characters'; the ship gave them the ability to seek new problems other than what the show had already explored ad nauseum.

An 'Earth-to-Mars' show might make a good 'summer series' or 'mini-series' but would only turn into a 'soap opera in space' if you tried to hang on to it too long. You wind up with the 'M*A*S*H* Dilemma' where your show actually lasts longer than the event it portrays would! You would have to begin backtracking and doing 'prequel shows' and 'filler shows' just to try and make your third season. Then you get shows that are not in chronological order, or have flashback settings, or accidentally introduce continuity issues.

Right now, Science-Fiction is still the only really viable kind of space show- at least for something that's going to last a while.

*Biggest concern- radiation exposure. If people don't think its a problem, tell that to all the astronauts who had to have cataract surgery.

[maltesh]

Firefly has anti gravity, but no ftl, it is implied that all the action takes place in one single star system, and Star Trek First Contact was good

Firefly also had silent space.

[Nikolai]

Any 'Earth-to-Moon' show would hit the same sticking points as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine- namely, there's no place to go but where you are. You just sit in the same spot with the same problems occurring over and over.

I respectfully disagree.

Part of what makes space travel exciting is that it is a *hazardous environment*. The dangers of space travel need not be limited to (a) radiation and ( aliens with ray guns. The very fact that we need to rely on our cleverness and our technology to survive can be exciting in and of itself. It's not even the case that the *actual* space program was limited in problems to radiation, and our imaginations can come up with problems we never actually faced.

Your other point -- that TV shows tend to keep running until the ratings falter -- is, I'd argue, a weakness in the way we do many TV shows here in the States; it imposes limitations on *any* drama, not just realistic science fiction. (And novelty is not exactly a cure-all, either. There are countless shows that introduced a new cast member when the ratings were relatively strong and promptly lost their faithful audience.)

The fact is that accurately representing circumstances that are quite far removed from everyday experience is *hard* (never mind bringing your audience up to speed). I suspect this keeps more TV producers out of the subject than the limitations in setting.

EDIT: Everything below came from a sudden flash of memory.

Consider "Planetes", which I mentioned at the start. It's about a group of orbital debris collectors, and they're based on a space station, but they still find room for a lot of variety -- different locations on the (somewhat large) space station, visiting family back at home, taking a vacation to an underground Moon colony... and one of the main characters ends up training for the first manned mission to the Jovian system, so there's the training facilities, the ship's drydock in orbit, and on and on. Just because the series features main characters employed by a more robust space program than any currently on the planet doesn't mean that they were stuck with "sit[ting] in the same spot with the same problems occurring over and over".

Edited August 25, 2012 by Nikolai
Brainstorm... Didn't want to double post

[Suzaku]

To be honest, the most realistic albeit over the top deep space show I have ever seen was the original Gunbuster.

[RedDwarfIV]

My favourite episode of Outcasts was probably Whiteout, where the settlement is faced with possible destruction by a Whiteout Storm of epic proportions. However, something I'm wondering about - The characters state that Whiteouts are caused by Carpathia's moon system [it has at least three moons, often in the same shot.] Is this plausible?

[Johno]

So why don't they fly around at 0.25 c while fighting? The tactical advantage someone might be able to get by moving slower isn't that much greater. Or even 0.01 c? (I assume they aim with computers or something, since aiming at something moving at close to light speed when you're traveling at 0.25 c would seem... difficult... otherwise.) Or do they just conveniently ignore that?

They DO travel at 0.25c. However, in the Star Trek universe, that's called "Quarter impulse".

What about the "huge tactical advantage" created by the positional uncertainty involved when someone's traveling at close to light speed relative to you? Or do they just conveniently ignore that?

Look up the "Picard Manoeuvre". Ignore any references to grabbing your jacket and pulling it down.

[Carthaginian]

I respectfully disagree.

Part of what makes space travel exciting is that it is a *hazardous environment*. The dangers of space travel need not be limited to (a) radiation and ( aliens with ray guns. The very fact that we need to rely on our cleverness and our technology to survive can be exciting in and of itself. It's not even the case that the *actual* space program was limited in problems to radiation, and our imaginations can come up with problems we never actually faced.

Your other point -- that TV shows tend to keep running until the ratings falter -- is, I'd argue, a weakness in the way we do many TV shows here in the States; it imposes limitations on *any* drama, not just realistic science fiction. (And novelty is not exactly a cure-all, either. There are countless shows that introduced a new cast member when the ratings were relatively strong and promptly lost their faithful audience.)

The fact is that accurately representing circumstances that are quite far removed from everyday experience is *hard* (never mind bringing your audience up to speed). I suspect this keeps more TV producers out of the subject than the limitations in setting.

EDIT: Everything below came from a sudden flash of memory.

Consider "Planetes", which I mentioned at the start. It's about a group of orbital debris collectors, and they're based on a space station, but they still find room for a lot of variety -- different locations on the (somewhat large) space station, visiting family back at home, taking a vacation to an underground Moon colony... and one of the main characters ends up training for the first manned mission to the Jovian system, so there's the training facilities, the ship's drydock in orbit, and on and on. Just because the series features main characters employed by a more robust space program than any currently on the planet doesn't mean that they were stuck with "sit[ting] in the same spot with the same problems occurring over and over".

War is a 'hazardous environment'- in the end, it gets boring... both on TV and in real life. After the 200th convoy escort of the dozenth time you have to go kick in a door or drive through an unmarked minefield... well, the only thing you can think besides 'God, don't let me screw this up' is 'what, again?' That's why combat and cigarettes go so well together- they give you something to do while you are bored stiff waiting to be scared out of your wits again!

And while you are indeed right that it isn't literally the 'same problems' occurring over and over, the problems will be very expected and formulaic. Just like with a sci-fi drama they will fall into three major categories: 1.) problems from the environment, 2.) problems from inter-personal strife, and 3.) problems from equipment. Even if the actual thing going wrong varies from a solar flare, to an affair among the crew, to an oxygen generator failure... well, in the end, it winds up being the 'same thing going wrong.' When you are dealing with sci-fi shows, there are infinitely more things that can go wrong, in far more interesting environment, and at least the 'bug-eyed monster of the week' and 'undiscovered phenomena' can be added to the lists of potential problems.

No show that is truly realistic ever survives contact with a test audience.

[Carthaginian]

Look up the "Picard Manoeuvre". Ignore any references to grabbing your jacket and pulling it down.

That, gents, is a dedicated Star Trek fan.

[RedDwarfIV]

I knew about it.

I haven't watched that much Star Trek.

[silent_prtoagonist]

**spoiler warning**

As has been mentioned, Firefly has no ftl, everything happens at sublight (albeit probably very high, by modern standards) speeds, so relativistic effects don't apply. I also have to give Firefly props for having no sound in space, and requiring ships to rurn around to slow down/change direction. It even has reentry heating

Where Firefly gets it wrong is anti-gravity, propulsion systems that are "optimistically efficient" at best, and the general "space is bigger than you think" problem, among others. However, I usually tend to forgive live action tv shows for having artificial gravity, since most don't have anywhere near the budget necessary to make every single interior shot an effects shot, just to make the characters float (but props to Babylon 5 for doing AG right).

As for the propulsion systems, the "firefly drive" is apparently ridiculously efficient, since Serenity isn't a flying gas tank...even assuming that 500 years in the future, we are capable of building such a drive that doesn't instantly vaporize itself with waste heat, you still have to deal with the problem of thousands of private ships flying around with weapons of mass destruction on their tails (but at least the show does acknowledge this in the pilot )

Finally, there are a couple of occasions in the show when the writers forget just how big and empty space really is...most notable in the pilot when the ship "just happens" to have a close call with a Reaver ship. The chances of such a close encounter happening by chance in interplanetary space, or even cis-lunar space, without one or both parties trying specifically to make the rendezvous, are astronomically low (literally)...

[Randox]

Why assume that artificial gravity will never be possible? Or do you know something I don't...

And while we're at it, I'm pretty sure the main engine of the firefly is a gravity drive.

[RedDwarfIV]

Main engines, plural. No idea what the fast speed engine is though.

[Nikolai]

They DO travel at 0.25c.

Travel at, sure. Why not fight at those speeds? On the show, I rarely see them fight while moving faster than a few meters per second, never mind tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second.

Look up the "Picard Manoeuvre".

I'm familiar with it. But one maneuver doesn't impress me all that much. Why not explore the logistics of fighting where both spacecraft are maneuvering at higher fractions of light speed?

This changed warfare in the air. In WWI, fighters generally got into a furball with perpetual shooting until someone went down. WWII saw the advent of faster and faster fighter craft, and this changed dogfighting into cycles of encounter-maneuver-encounter-maneuver, with the "maneuver" cycle lasting longer and longer as planes got faster and faster. Missiles changed the game again, and if it ever came down to a dogfight (missiles having been expended), the speed of jet aircraft meant that there were often minutes taken up with the "maneuver" cycle. (Planes fighting it out over Korea had to be careful not to overshoot the country's boundaries!)

Now, in the future, you have faster and more intelligent computers (which would doubtless be incorporated into the weaponry) and much faster starships. Starships equipped with inertial dampeners, yet, if we're willing to be handwave-y with the physics. It seems to me that this would change the game yet again. Still, the kind of battle tactics I see have more to do with ancient Roman naval warfare than anything that helps us to realize just how different the environment we're talking about is.

Just like with a sci-fi drama they will fall into three major categories: 1.) problems from the environment, 2.) problems from inter-personal strife, and 3.) problems from equipment.

Well, if we're going to be that general, why not point out that all conflict falls into broad categories and is always boring? "Oh, it's another 'man vs. man' plot, followed by another 'man vs. nature' plot, followed by another 'man vs. self' plot, and finally, a 'man vs. society' plot. Can't they come up with anything original?"

Part of the problem, I think, is that we're not used to things having consequences for more than one episode for anything other than interpersonal conflict ("soap opera plots"). But it doesn't have to be that way. Conflicts are not frequently resolved quickly in the real world, and even whether or not they are resolved can be an open issue.

Consider Apollo 12 (the actual mission). They had a problem on launch (the rocket was struck by lightning twice during ascent), and they were unable to check whether or not the pyros that would open the parachutes were still in working order. They knew that when they brought the crew back, there was a chance that they would fall into communications blackout and never come out (hitting the ocean at high speed). That's kind of an extreme example, but it's the sort of thing that generates dramatic possibilities for more than one episode. But we're not used, as an audience, to having technical conflicts that have lasting effects. I disagree that keeping things realistic forces us into a repetitive corner.

(Of course, one can always say "And then what?" until creative ideas are exhausted, but I maintain that that's true for any genre; it's not a particular weakness of realistic science fiction.)

At the end of the day, my point is not to bash anyone's favorite sci-fi franchise. It's to point out how difficult this is, but that it's clearly not impossible (since examples do exist, and I'm always hoping someone has found more that I'm not aware of), and to bemoan the fact that there aren't more of them (to scratch my particular geeky itch -- my brain likes to be entertained, too, really).

[maltesh]

Ah, the Picard Maneuver. All species involved had possessed both FTL travel and FTL sensors for centuries, and yet, using FTL tactically is suprising. And for some reason, a widely-known tactic with no known defense isn't used in every single combat situation until someone comes up with a defense for it.

[comham]

Planetes is pretty much the king of the hard-sci-fi TV world.

Defying Gravity might have been a good western live action competitor but the script and general plot was awful.

Oh, and there was a docudrama about a manned solar system explorer a few years ago. That was quite good if I remember correctly. Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets.