Space Drama

I have problems with dramatic narratives. It’s not a problem between a love of comedy or drama. I don’t believe you can have one without the other. In fact, just saying I have a problem with all dramatic narratives is unfair. But, I don’t enjoy watching or reading drama for the sake of drama. I get bored fast while watching a cop show or a political thriller; they just seem so mundane to me. We experience all these things in real life, why would I want to watch a man struggle to rebuild his broken family when I lived through already?

But, I don’t think you can have a good story without dealing with basic issues of life and drama. So, how does this get fix? Simply put the drama is space.
Not a complete fix, I’ll admit but a very strong step. Political thriller with spaceships just becomes more interesting to watch then something in Washington. Space just allows for the mundane to seem less so and, in doing so, creates a sense of interest for me.

The visual aspect plays an important role, for sure. Space allows for us to see things that only it can show us; stars burning closer than we would want them to, nebulas in the distance coloring the blackness of space like our evening sunset, planets with terrain unlike anything we’ve walked on. The world our characters inhabit becomes a character unto itself. People don’t travel from meeting to meeting in their limousines or buses, but in ships sleeker than the newest beard trimmer. Suddenly, the drama becomes interesting to look at. This is to say that I think all drama should be in space for the visual aspect, as that would lead to a very shallow and mindless experience. There has to be more.

Characters become more interesting in space. A mayor is intriguing when he’s leading a town on a desert planet full of meteor strikes. Our heroes can come from places we’ve never heard of and can experience things that our Othellos can’t. A family trying to get over the loss of their son becomes much more involving for me when the family is doing so about an exploratory space journey.

The best thing about a space story, aside from it being in space, is that a good science fiction story is always another type of story. You don’t enjoy science fiction because it is just science fiction. You read “Starship Troopers” because it’s a strong military book. We watch “Blade Runner” because it’s a classic film noir. We memorize the lines from “Firefly” because it’s a western with intriguing cowboys. But, by bringing these genres into the vast frontier of the stars, we add an element of unknown and mystery a boot camp in California couldn’t provide.
The problem ends up being that, without a proper story or, more importantly, strong characters, the work becomes boring anyway. Space adds much to a piece of fiction but it isn’t magic (that would be fantasy; Star Wars being sci-fi fantasy) and it isn’t a cure all for bad story-telling. If a character isn’t strong enough that we wouldn’t care about him in France, we won’t care about him on Mars. Space allows us to see the human drama unfold in new ways, sometimes highly metaphorical, but with the heart remaining. The battle between man and machine in “Battlestar Galactica” is a basic story of humanity’s untrustworthiness and fear of the unknown. Isaac Asimov’s “Foundations” is a retelling of our growth as a society and the power of religion. These are the basic elements of any good dramatic story, but we read or watch them in whole new ways.

Perhaps this is just the musings of someone who wishes he could get off planet tomorrow and see what the rest of the universe has to offer. Sometimes I feel like I wasn’t made for this earth and I should be traveling the stars, dealing with growing pains aboard a starship surfing a dying sun. The human condition is something we have to deal with wherever we go, but I have to believe it’s a whole lot more fun working through it in space.