Soaps vs. Sci-Fi

I am a big fan of science fiction and, I admit it, I'll watch good, mediocre & bad stuff. I also watch most mild horror stuff and, avidly, anything at all concerning vampires. My wife loves drama, talk shows (some of which are OK) and soaps (soap operas) and it is the latter, and science fiction oriented shows, that I wish to discuss.

There are three major British soaps showing on UK terrestrial TV at present: the BBC's "East Enders" (10 years plus); ITV's "Coronation Street" (20 years plus) and Channel 4's "Brookside."

I am a big fan of programs such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Babylon 5 ... my wife is not and will often leave the room when I am watching some of the stuff I like. Not, I stress, that I am any better!

One of the strongest features of British TV is it's ability to do gritty dramas, often set in run down tenements or northern housing estates and coming across as very real, very hard, very true to life. British soaps seem to have taken that grittiness on board and wound it into their storylines and characters. In many ways soaps purport to be a mirror image of our own ordinary lives. Reality Check! I live in the real world and the last thing I want when I get home from a hard day in the real world is more of it on my TV! I want to escape my ordinary life, I want super heroes and super villains, I want star ships & space battles, I want romance & laughter ... I don't want real life I want characters that are larger than the life I live! Don't get me wrong ... I love my life, I just don't want to see grotesque parodies of it on TV.

Some time ago I came up with the theory that my favourite series were just soaps set in a different scenario but over time I have come to realise that they usually are not. I don't watch the conventional "soaps" (the truth is I can't abide them) but recently my wife, possibly harking back to my older theory, referred to my viewing preferences as "soaps" in a different setting. This article represents an unashamed attempt to dissuade her (& me) of that.

We all know that TV drama formats vary so I have tried to define these basic formats as follows (the names are of my own devising):

Conventionally a series tells a story or a series of stories in a fixed length of time. It can do so in a chapter & book format i.e. a whole story may be broken up into episodic chunks to be viewed on a periodic basis until the eventual culmination of the tale. This can be viewed as similar to a film format except that the tale is serialised and tends to feature "cliff hanger" endings to each episode ... a good example of this might be "I Claudius".

A scenario may be set up with common characters where each episode has a different story but the basic characters and scenario remain unchanged. Each episode tends to be complete within itself and end up largely where it started i.e. every common character alive & well. A good example of this is "Star Trek" (both the original and Next Generation series).

There are two hybrid versions of these serialisation types:

Hybrid 1: The Novella Format
The "Novella" tells an episodic style story but with each tale told across several episodes (a kind on min-format of the storybook type complete with "cliff hangers" in the intermediate episodes and they end of story recovery to series standard. This format seems to be relatively rare but a good example would be the UK SF series "Dr. Who" where each tale was told, typically, across 4 episodes.

Hybrid 2: The 'Arc' Format
This format tends to be much like the Storybook format except that, while it may feature them, it does not necessarily require "cliff hanger" endings. Each episode will tend to tell a specific tale but running underneath these episodes there will exist a number of other threads and an overall thread for the series and possibly running across multiple series. These threads form a longer running story or 'arc' hence the name. Characters come & go within the series (quite possibly due to simple acting commitments outside of the series) and major characters may be killed off. Despite the length of such series it is always seen to be important to fully justify character changes within the series.

The primary example of this in science fiction terms is Babylon 5 but elements of this style can be seen in "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" and, particularly, in "Star Trek: Voyager". "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is also an example of this type ... despite each episode telling a definitive tale, elements of earlier episodes become important to the full comprehension of the overall tale later in the series and even across the series a s a whole. I also suspect that Michael Crichton's "ER" might qualify.

So what is a "soap"?

According to Webster's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary a "soap opera" is:

A radio or television serial drama performed usually on a daytime commercial program ["soap" derives from its frequent sponsorship by soap manufacturers]

Not being particularly interested in radio soaps the remainder of this article will discuss the TV offerings.

On the radio last night there was an article about soaps (my inspiration for this article) and it seems that the concept of what a soap actually is varies depending on world culture. In India it's based on the successful "Bollywood" format, in Brazil it's a magnificently told fairy tale but in Britain, the US & Australia they are similar in that they are principally unclosed tales of a group of peoples lives and how they relate to each other.

According to Chandler (1994) a serial has at least one storyline that is carried over from one episode to the next and are potentially endless. However a series is advertised as having a specific number of episodes. Whilst this is a good starting point I do not believe it is an accurate definition upon which to base a discussion of soaps versus other forms of drama.

One author defines a soap as "a show full of characters you care about and relationships that develop over years". Perhaps this is more accurate however in the UK, US & Australia the changing characters within the shows must make at least part of that definition dubious.

Another author states the most common characteristics as:

• A largely female audience
• An open-ended narrative (no expectations for a closure)
• A constant tension between realism and melodrama
• A central family or organization
• As much time as needed for an event
• Geographical sense e.g. Dallas, Melrose Place, Albert Square, Sunset Beach, Ramsey Street, Coronation Street, Brookside Close etc.

Soap operas can be seen not to fit into any of the "serialised TV drama styles" (defined above) as there is seldom any single tale told in an episode, characters tend to come & go at the storyteller's whim (I've noted that a number soaps have, several years down the line, few if any of the original characters within them) and characters personalities can be seen to change or "float" with the requirements of the story (consistency not being of prime concern). This "floating" nature of character styles is a particularly important element of western soaps as it aids the telling of the "story" and allows the storytellers to hype the excitement of the tale they are progressing. A good example of "floating" character can be seen in the characters Max (Brookside), Phil (East Enders) where the character personality varies from being perceived as "good" to being "bad" or "hard" or whatever is dictated by the given storyline ... it goes without saying that the less I know about Coronation Street the better! This kind of character "flotation" does not seem to occur within TV SF or horror or, if it does, the reason for doing so is explained and, within the parameters of the pre-established scenario, given good credibility.

Soap operas, by their nature, are character driven because the stories are somewhat irrelevant i.e. it is permissible in other forms of story to introduce a character, make the viewer care about them and then kill them off expediently at the end. In a soap this would be foolish because the reviews of the program and audience reaction to it tend to dictate which characters are liked or not. In effect this means that the audience write the story and tends to lead to a degree of "flakiness" and the "floating" of characters mentioned above. Characters in soaps tend to be rather briefly incorporated into storylines & dumped ignominiously when no longer needed band also, more seriously, tend to become "shoehorned" into whatever the plot demands.

A fictional soap opera creative meeting might go something like this:

And so on ....

Just so you know I'm not exclusively critical of soaps I once discussed with someone (on the Internet I believe) how Star Trek scripts are written by committee rather than single writers with some form of vision as to how the show will progress. I don't think for one moment that Trek is badly written but I do think it's committee style script writing design leads to more of the rough corners being "knocked off" and with them a few of the more innovative ideas.

There is, however, a plus side to letting the audience design the story ... whilst you undoubtedly get the lowest common denominator, bad writing and no confidence on the part of the producer if you happen to produce a "Wesley" (apparently a standard word in the trade for a character that "looked good on paper") you can still kill the character off with no regrets. In soaps there is little need to plan more than a few weeks ahead as the tales are not bound my normal serial rules and the need to produce an tale of overall coherency ... in a more conventional serial a poorly scripted character takes time & effort to "write out".

Soaps purport to concern themselves with everyday life and the science fiction/horror genre, quite evidently, does not however there's a problem with this. For a series to concern itself with everyday life implies it is "reality based" and if that is so one has to wonder exactly what reality the storytellers arise from. My wife has, on several occasions, pointed out that shows about vampires and spaceships have no appeal because they are not real or have no basis in reality but soaps do not reflect reality either. This can be said with confidence as, if they did reflect true reality, they would reflect the same terminally dull aspects of life the majority of us experience in some way every single day. I live in an real street in a real town and associate with real people not, at first sight, dissimilar to the characters featured in soaps but rarely do I see explosions, shootings, rapes, murders, drug dens, whore houses, drownings, fatal accidents, underage pregnancies, stabbings, disease, terminal illnesses etc. not to mention that I don't swap partners with my wife's friends and associate almost exclusively with the people in our street. And yet, on a TV street not dissimilar to the one I live in and for characters not dissimilar to people I know, all of these things will affect them on an annual basis.

Soap story lines exist to entice the viewer to return to the show but in introducing these story lines the soap loses touch with reality in the sense that no group of people in society will witness or be involved in such a concentration of events. In fact the tendency to over-hype the "reality" shown in soaps is increasing as each series competes with the others. Additionally, hugely increased numbers of shows (only two or three years ago 5 nightly soap specials were almost unheard of) & multi-hour "omnibus" editions are now routine as each channel battles for supremacy in the ratings war.

"Soaps" should not be confused with the conventional series, in which the main characters and format remain the same from program to program but where each episode tends to have a self-contained plot i.e. at least one point or story. The distinction between the two is slightly blurred by the fact that some serials tell a specific story over a specific number of episodes

SF and horror TV series tend to establish their scenarios very early on and deviate only rarely from them ... if they do, especially if that deviation is permanent, it is explained. Babylon 5 consisted of 5 series (known together as "the arc") and was, I understand, written with its Commander, Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) aboard as a permanent "fixture". For whatever reason O'Hare left at the end of season 1 and was replaced by Commander John Sinclair (Bruce Boxleitner) forcing a change in the series ... recovery occurs later in series 3 when O'Hare reappears in his old role) to provide the necessary links back to his old role and a justification for why the character was replaced. One unfortunate side effect of this and the series' intense character development that occurs as it progresses is that the prequel Babylon 5: In The Beginning should be viewed sometime after series 2 is finished and not where it would naturally sit at the beginning of the entire arc. ... a number of characters drop into the prequel in such a fashion that would be difficult to follow & explain if the viewer were not already heavily familiarised with the shows main characters.

Similarly in Buffy the Vampire slayer a new character is introduced as Buffy's sister (Buffy didn't have a sister in the first 4 episodes) in series 5 (she is firmly established as having been there for the entire time) and for several episodes you are left wondering what is going on but in a later episode it is written into, and done so in a superb fashion, the story.

Now I will be the first to admit that any SF or horror programming is not "real" but is it credible? This is a question that is harder to answer than it, at first, appears ... the very nature of science fiction tends to set it in a possible future and often at a location somewhere other than our Earth. Horror tends to deal with the supernatural and thus can be seen to be dealing with things that are natural and not normally considered to be a part of our world. But despite the "weirdness" of the scenario it is easy to argue that within the pre-established scenario they are self-consistent.

Star Trek is heavily criticised for what they can & do do with the characters and the series but it has to be born in mind that early on in the scenario it is established that the crew are some of the Federation's finest, that they are crewing one of the latest of their ships class and that they have an awesome advantage known as "the Reflector Dish" and as I like to say "have reflector dish do travel" ... and they do! Warp drive may not be real but within the Star Trek series it is established as being actual so once the viewer has made the required intellectual trade off by accepting the scenario as credible the rest of the series can be accepted with relatively little pain. All Star Trek series (except the original) & films can, of course, be seen to be further supported by the existence of series that preceded them.

Babylon 5 is, again, criticised (particularly by aficionados of Star Trek) for various aspects of the show but, like Star Trek establishes early on what can and cannot be achieved technologically and culturally within the series. Yet, in truth, the series within itself retains a remarkable degree of consistency and where it doesn't (like it's more popular stable mate) it can usually be forgiven. In fact concepts such as warp/transporter (Star Trek) and hyperspace/shuttle (Babylon 5) technologies can be seen as essential to the plot of such series as the telling of the tales involves the characters being at specified places at specified times usually impossible by conventionally understood concepts and in this respect could be viewed as basic plot devices.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer differs from Trek & B5 in that it deals with the supernatural. It is established early on that the dead can rise as vampires, that such creatures are incredibly strong but can be destroyed in various ways, that an alternative demon world exists, that the community (Sunnydale) in which this occurs exists upon a "hell mouth" and that this "hell mouth" attracts all kinds of ghoul to the area to kill and feed off the local population. It is established that not all demons & vampires are bad, that magic & alternative dimensions exist. It is also established that, despite the high number of deaths in Sunnydale, such deaths are not seen as strange by the community due to the mystical nature of the hell mouth over which it was built. It is established that the majority of demons and their activities are written about and prophesied but that the ancient writers weren't aware of the technological nature of our time. Any changes to the scenario are carefully written in and explained and, as in ST & B5, whilst a suspension of credulity is required to accept the scenario once achieved the resultant plot devices and stories are remarkably self-consistent.

Now, despite the fact that I loath soaps with a passion, and (like a friend of mine) will risk my wife's irritation by leaving the room when she watches one, I do appreciate the fact that they can be used to address topical social issues (something the original Star Trek was noted for). However, soap writers are always very careful when doing so to ensure that they do not alienate their viewers, so this leads to a reduction in the value of the coverage of such issues as they are very often softened and given a more acceptable face for the "moral majority". When have you ever seen the portrayal of racism between ethnic minorities, perhaps a look at the potential dangers of "positive" discrimination, or more relevant at the moment the impact of Sept 11th (a date I have not even heard mentioned in any recent soap)?

An interesting difference between soaps and other forms of drama (including the s longer 'arc' style stories) is that it is often very difficult to enter an 'arc' anywhere mid-point as the viewer will lack specific information to appreciate some of the subtleties and later storylines as they develop. This is not so for the "soap" as entry into the storyline is easy and within one or two episodes one can become entirely familiar, and indeed comfortable, with the major characters. The accessibility of soaps is demonstrated by the fact that I rarely, if ever, watch soaps but do, on occasion, catch small segments of them (a tenth, probably much less, of any given soap) yet I remain reasonably au fait with the overall plots. It can be seen, of course, that such "ease of entry" is essential to the "soap" as without it such a long running series would die.

However to conclude this somewhat lengthy discussion I think it is important to admit that televising SF & horror are not real but that, once the scenario is established and the viewer has taken the mental leap of imagination necessary to accept the scenario as credible for the duration of the episode, they tend to be self-consistent. By this I mean that the rules for the series are established early on (as are the characters and what they are or are not likely to do) and that any change within that scenario is explained either immediately or over the following episodes. It is also true to say that soaps, by virtue of setting their scenario within the "real world" and accepting the real world rules that follow from it, then proceed to break just about every one of them as a necessary method of keeping the tale going and attracting the required number of viewers. Not only do soaps act inconsistently with regard to the real world but they frequently act inconsistently and unexplainably within the niche scenario they have established as the setting for the stories they will tell.

I respectfully submit, your honour, justification for the claim that the TV genres known as "science fiction" and "horror" are superior forms of story telling than the genre known as "soap".

Notes

My thanks to Paul Hollings & Ben Slythe for their feedback & constructive criticism of this article.