If Only We Were Smarter!
One of the things that makes being a fan of science fiction a little difficult is the traditional absence of creativity in Hollywood products. That is, even on the rare occasions when Hollywood tries to do science fiction, they don’t generally try very hard to make it good or interesting. An even worse problem is the traditional ignorance of science in Hollywood and journalism. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is that staple of TV science fiction: The Genius.
Notice that the word is capitalized. Not mere genius but more like Super Genius. The person with an intellect so enormous that he (usually, though sometimes a she, as characters Amanda Tapping played very well in Stargate: SG1 and much less convincingly in the deeply inferior Sanctuary) is a master of every science and all technology. Often these people are so brilliant they not only understand everything, they go far beyond what the rest of the world knows, inventing whole new sciences and extending existing ones to unimagined new heights.
In stories, these people have two functions. Those are to explain what is going on to the audience (and incidentally to the folks around them) and to come up with the one great idea that can save the day, or save the world, or at least save the story from a depressing ending.
The third, often unintended function, is to annoy the living hell out of the audience, especially those of us who know that that’s just not the way things work.
The Genius is an easy gimmick that dates back at least to the golden age of science fiction when Doc Savage was still a new character and John W. Campbell was writing his stories of over-the-top heroism in the face of universe-sized threats. For the last 4 decades or so, the quintessential Genius has been the comic book character Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. This is a guy who can develop a portal to open up a portal to parallel universe before lunch, then reprogram an alien robot to turn on its creators (who, except for their easily hacked robotics, are much more technologically advanced than Earth people), thus saving the world by dinner.
Famously, these geniuses who can do anything are often insane and horribly evil. Dr. Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime comes to mind. And, of course, Dr. Doom.
It’s always amazing how very much these lone geniuses accomplish that involves more than just thinking. Dr. Doom invented a time machine. Currently, there is no working theory of how one of those would be made. Time, so far as we know is one-directional (it may have to do with quantum forgetting| ). But even if we had a good theory of time travel, someone who has spent decades learning the math and physics to develop the theory has not also spent decades learning how to build the equipment, or earning the money to buy the parts (and the electricity!)
Often what these geniuses do involves other genius things first. Building an android sounds simple on paper:
- Build robot
- Make robot look and act human
- Send robot to conquer the world, Pinky!
But in reality, there are dozens of lesser problems involved in building a robot, and making it look human, and making it act human. Computers that can interpret pictures well enough to be considered able to see do not yet exist, despite some brilliant people working for years to develop them. It turns out, vision is a hard problem.
Thinking is a hard problem too (for robots I mean. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out I walked into that one. Just let it go). So is walking. Just ask any 8-month-old.
Talking is a problem. Sure, robots can repeat noises like any myna bird but connecting complex ideas (like “kill the master” or “Build me a girlfriend”) to complete sentences is really hard. Just ask any College English professor how many students have mastered this. Then drink heavily to counteract the depression.
Even if you could figure out how to build an android, it would take one person years to type out the software to solve all the attendant problems!
That’s one of my main points. That even for geniuses, turning an idea into reality is hard. Teams of brilliant people worked together for years to come up with technological advances like the microwave oven or the TV or the personal computer. These things don’t spring full grown from one person’s brain. They take work!
But TV, movie and comic book geniuses always skip past such difficulties without even noticing them. Then, more often than not, they get in trouble because it never occurred to them to check and see if the bad guy was still breathing after the monster robot stepped on him. Somehow, that force field that saved his life last week never comes to mind when wondering what’s going to happen this week.
And this is one of the serious problems with having supposed geniuses being written by people of average (or, judging from the quality of most of television, far below average) intelligence. Fictional entertainment is overpopulated with idiots of near infinite intelligence who can create technological wonders beyond the wildest dreams of Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein but still only survive because the equally brilliant nemesis forgot to lock the door, or some such idiocy.
The other day I found a funny and sickening blog post that explained part of this problem. Basically, on some allegedly science fiction shows, the writers simply insert place holders for high technology and let someone else fill in the details. “We’ve built a [fill in technological words here] to beat the aliens!” The genius problem in reverse: People who’ve spent years learning to write for TV haven’t learned enough about technology to write even bad techno-gibberish – which is about all they usually end up with anyway (It’s a very funny and informative post. Read it here).
The new show StarGate: Universe has a slightly unusual approach to the genius problem. In recognition that no one genius can solve all the problems there are (or more likely because they thought the character mix needed a likable computer geek), they have two. There’s the older, grouchy and sinister genius and the young, innocent, kind of dorky but friendly and likable genius who is probably smarter than the old guy but is too naive and inexperienced to know it. If this sounds like Dr. Smith and Will Robinson, it’s a pure coincidence. They’re on a ship they can’t control, careening around a universe they don’t understand, but they aren’t lost in space. They’re just misplaced. And they don’t have a robot (yet).
The older genius solves all the simple problems like how to stay alive. The younger one finds and miraculously understands the alien technology that just happens to be what they need right now. More importantly (from the point of view of the writers), the younger one will almost certainly act as the older one’s conscience, since it’s so hard for the Great One to relate to mere humans.
The blog post I referred to above laments the use of technology as a sort of substitute for divine intervention, to be called up to get them out of problems and otherwise ignored. In most stories, genius is pretty much the same. It’s a magic wand to call up miracles when needed and otherwise hide away, affecting nothing. It has no consequences of its own, has no influence on the characters (no, being obsessive about working in the lab or uncomfortable with members of the opposite sex are not consequences of genius. Those are just stereotypes). It means nothing.
Where genius is concerned, sloppy, uncaring writing is the norm. It’s no surprise then if the rest of the show seems a bit lost in stereotypes too.
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Stargate is probably the best science fiction series after Firefly. Nice visual effects too.*::