SNAPSHOT
Every episode of Popular Space Show: The Next Generation. I can’t believe I shaved my head for this. (synopsis via YouTube)
Watching science fiction, even the very best exponents of the genre, does involve a considerable suspension of belief.
After all, apart from rovers landing on Mars and probes hurtling out to the edges of the solar system where we have yet to see an extraterrestrial watching back at us, much of what we see and read is so far removed from our lived experience as to be, well, alien to us.
Sure, the good shows and books and movies tackle some fairly weighty here and now issues and do with narrative aplomb and a heady sense of emotional resonance, but they are also not quite what we know and that can lead, apart from the gee-whiz thrill of sci-fi imbibing, to some fairly big questions, such as:
(a) Is there up in space/ or down? And if there’s not, why do spaceships always appear happily horizontal?
and
(b) If a planet about to be destroyed, why don’t people want to leave it?
Thankfully as we’re asking those questions, British comedian and “dilettante animator and video game writer” Alasdair Beckett-King is answering a very plum Picard-ian accent and helping us to realise that maybe we are asking some fairly sensible questions, after all.
Because why sci-if something that should be taken seriously, it is also just a little bit silly at times – and I say this as a deep and abiding lover of the genre – and it’s fun to see someone parody the hell out of things in something like Popular Space Show: The Next Generation.
You might even want to “engage” with it … yep, sorry, best stop there … as you were …