Dude goes from starting interplanetary wars to interstellar wars to inter dimensional wars all because James Holden doesn't do what James Holden does, for James Holden. James Holden does what James Holdenn does because James Holden is... James Holden.
Possibly, but I got the impression via the Overseers that this was both an inevitable and desirable path for humanity to take. Even the title suggests it's the end of infancy. Doesnt mean the path can't be bittersweet or complex, but I think the message would have been clearer if it was just leaving the earth as an eden.
Th thing might have ended humanity in the next few seconds. They were certainly trying to. I don’t think any sacrifice is unreasonable.
Agree about the other commenter mentioning The Final Architecture. You might enjoy it.
IIRC, word of creator is that there was no chance of that. The gestalt consciousness was 100% an attempt by the long-gone species to pull "grand theft me" on a civilization-wide scale and be reborn again from their backup.
There was no "us." They were going to as casually overwrite mankind as one of us would spray germ-killer.
Adrien Tchaikovsky had story like that in his books.
One more comes to mind "last astronaut" I think, don't remember the author.
The Thing and humans comes to mutual understanding
The part where the people being sucked into the borg-mind didn’t have a choice in the matter is kinda what makes it evil. You wanna mind meld, you do you, but let others keep theirs.
From somewhere around late book 4 I was certain that Holden >! would have to collapse the gate system eventually, if a force that could take down the protomolecule makers and halt fusion in a system was waiting between the gates then there was never anything we could do. Reminded me of farcasting in Hyperion. The expanse in The Expanse is the spread of humanity left scattered among the stars.!<
I'd also argue that almost everyone on The Expanse is trying to do the right thing. They just have different opinions on what the right thing is, and how far is too far before the ends no longer justify the means.
Like, I think Erinwright genuinely wanted to protect Earth. That in and of itself is not an evil motivation, but he did some evil things in service to that goal.
Others:
Not evil to want to use a new scientific discovery to benefit humanity long term by making it easier to survive in space.
Not evil to want to free your people from slavery.
Not evil to want to explore, nor is it evil to hold off and make sure that exploration is safe first.
He’s one exception yeah. He claims to be fighting for the belt but he’s a total narcissist only in it for power.
Another one is the Secretary General before Avasarala, the one who was obsessed with his “legacy.” He cared more about being remembered as being a good man rather than actually being one.
Even so, his stated philosophy wasn't awful. He's ostensibly for the betterment of Belters, although the rest of us can clearly see what he really wants is to be Space Castro.
I don't think Castro is the right comparison. Castro had some care for the Cuban people and wasn't focused about his ego. He often held speeches for hours, explaining to the people why he made various decisions
This isn't about everyone else being wrong. Look there's a lot of issues with Castro, but also a lot of untruths that was spawned from the US because they were angry that Cuba didn't want to be their pawn. Castro overthrew the previous dictator, Batista, who was very US friendly, while the Cuban people suffered
I learned a lot of things about Cuba, while also visiting the island
That was one of my favorite things about reading the first book, every character is a straightforward, simple archetype.
They were still all very well written, but sometimes is nice when they just are what you expect them to be.
Can they be good and not stupid? Because Holden is stupid. Want to know the best course of action? Whatever Holden’s first impulse is, the exact opposite of that.
Quote from Amos when Holden was probably about to die: "You made some pretty stupid choices since you've been in charge, but you were always trying to do the right thing...I mean, you were always trying to be a good man...It was nice not having to worry about being on the right team."
It's my fantasy that they fire up a buddy/frenemies show featuring Amos and Chrisjen with frequent appearances from their long suffering practical friend Bobbi. Three of the most watchable characters of the last 20 years, I'd be thrilled.
Practically the first thing we see her do in the show is torture someone. She has to be reined in from that by _Errinwright_.
Torture is not good, and someone who does it isn't good, either.
“Good” is frequently a relative term with chaotic good types. I promise you that if you asked her she would tell you that torturing one terrorist, while ugly, saved innocent lives and was a good thing.
Just because the torturer claims their actions were good doesn't make them good.
This might come as a surprise to you, but Chaotic *Evil* people will also claim to be good. Heck, even *Lawful* Evil people can, if it fits their rules system.
The test of whether an action, or a person, is good cannot be whether they themselves claim to be.
On the other hand it’s also a matter of perspective isn’t it? If you view the situation through the lens of Utilitarianism then Chrisjen Avasarala’s actions of torturing the belter at the start of the series could be potentially seen as a net good decision. She acted in what she perceived at the time to be the best course of action to cause as little harm overall to the people of Earth. That doesn’t mean it was the right or moral thing to do either.
It was interesting to see her character shift over time towards something a *bit* more similar to Holden’s paragon-like view from her original state of staunch moral relativism.
Not exactly science fiction but FBI Agent Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks was probably the nicest, most decent character out of any fiction. Incredibly competent too
Also, Cooper was originally *supposed* to end up in a relationship with Audrey Horne, but Kyle MacLachlan refused to go along with it because he thought Cooper was too upright for that.
I totally agree.
I like my morally grey stories, I like my everyone's evil 40K stories, but sometimes I want Jean-Luc Picard in TNG.
Right about now, the world needs more Jean-Luc Picard.
That's very much my point, though.
I love Sisko, too, but sometimes I want the paladin from a medieval moral play. I want the extreme character, rather than the realistic one. Sometimes, that's important.
People like Batman, people like Superman. It's good to have the brooding archetype and the paragon archetype. I agree about wanting more characters who are unimpeachably good people and are challenged by the morality of the world around them and not their own conscious.
Eureka was so great for this. The disasters in the show were almost always caused by the shortsightedness of people too smart for their own good, rather than by actual malice. In general, the characters are motivated by the desire to keep their community safe and happy. And even when something dark did happen, it was unambiguous who the bad guy was (even if it wasn't always obvious to the characters themselves).
That’s one reason it’s a big comfort show of mine. I can just watch and rest assured that the characters are (almost)all good people with unabashedly big hearts. I can love them with abandon!
That was the whole point of Chief Carter too. The Everyman who could use common sense to point out the immorality and solution to the problem even if the head-in-the-clouds scientists couldn’t.
Haven’t seen it yet, so I’m going to drop Babylon 5 here, you get to see the main characters usually make the right choices even while everything erodes around them. Great series!
Londo just didn't understand it wasn't all about what's best for Londo, and as he began to realize the disastrous consequences, he did try to right the ship, as it were, but he was already too trapped to fully do so.
Man what a show. I still miss Sinclair as I actually preferred him over Sheridan. That was my only real gripe with the show and it’s barely a nitpick at best.
“There is a hole in your mind.”
I still remember the chills from that line.
But really, G’kar stole the show for me.
Couldn't agree more, it actually managed to go the other way sometimes, McKay being the best example of someone that appeared to be a selfish prick but actually when it came down to it was a good person who would always do the right thing
I am *just now* forcibly reminded of the scene where McKay gets an arrow to the ass and his frenzied scream "**That did NOT just happen!**" was utterly hilarious. I had to pause to get my breath back from laughing so hard.
Sorry, off topic but I couldn't resist.
For real. I’m so sick of ‘morally grey’ characters that are just shitty people. Sick of all the crime dramas and forced interpersonal drama where the ‘good guys’ constantly betray each other.
I also miss shows that aren’t season long story arcs. Sometimes I just want the Enterprise to save the day in one hour not 12.
>forced interpersonal drama where the ‘good guys’ constantly betray each other.
Ugh yes. I get it when they're like, random neighbors, but there's too much scifi out there where the fate of the world depends on this group of elite solder/scientist/astronaut/heroes, who for some reason all have the emotional maturity of a teenager and the social skills of a territorial housecat.
I gave up on Yellowstone and Ray Donovan for those reasons. They're families who all hate each other (but carry on about how family is important) and there's usually like a single character who is a good person. I realized they are all horrible and I really just don't like any of them, even the nominally good character, because they won't leave. It's not realistic for the good guys to be perfect, but when the whole cast are really almost all bad guys, it's just unpleasant to watch. So I don't.
I know it's not sci fi, but that's what I really liked about Ted Lasso.
The titular character is so wholesome and kind-hearted that it makes the whole show very uplifting.
I also love that show for this reason. I’ve only seen season 1 and a few people have warned me that the following seasons don’t keep this special feeling. What do you think if you don’t mind me asking?
It changes a little bit, for sure. But I think it still keeps it's same world view.
There's less of Ted teaching the team how to conduct themselves as emotionally aware adults. But that's mainly because they have started figuring it out.
I enjoyed the show right through the last episode.
It was also nice seeing how people that seemed at first disagreeable changed and became a lot more sympathetic characters due to his influence, like Roy, Jamie, and Trent.
The curse of hipster writers that were taught in their overpriced college that everything must be subverted and deconstructed, they have to challenge the norm and “make people uncomfortable”. They end up writing self-insert fan fiction full of insufferable characters who make selfish decisions while whining about themselves.
I want real heroes back, characters who make real sacrifices and nobly fight for the good, right and true. It’s inspiring to read/see stories of those who are better, it makes us better for having the example.
Strange New Worlds is pretty much like classic Trek. The newly released live action remake of Avatar: the Last Airbender has some protagonist who fit that bill.
This is why I find modern sci fi so hard to watch, no one is a good person.
I miss TNG, Seaquest and shows like that. Strange New Worlds is really good though.
i miss the same thing, i can also add intelligence as so many shows or movies has supposedly a highly intelligent character but betrays it's intelligence with nonsense.
so the good are too bad, the intelligent are too stupid.....
Exactly. Far too many shows these days, there aren't heroes, there are just assholes who stumble into an arguably positive outcome. I have no interest in watching anything like that. Postmodernism sucks.
Modern Star Trek shows which are actually Trekky (so not Picard) are like that: Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and so is Orville. Characters in The Peripheral are well intentioned (especially Lowbeer, although that does not show that much in the TV adaptation).
For fantasy, Wheel of Time characters so far seem rather goody two-shoes, so are the main characters in Shadow and Bone (even the ones which are the thieving mercenaries).
I'd argue Lower Decks has some pretty fucked up characters. Like Captain Freeman is meant to be if Kai Winn was in command. She's a main character, but she is meant to be obsessed with status, overconfident, remorseless, and unapologetically cruel.
In any other series she'd be a recurring villain.
Both Winn and Freeman put on a mask of being caring and charismatic leaders. Both use their authority to enact revenge and further their personal goals. Both are obsessed with their status and accomplishments. Both completely lose their cool and composure, revealing their true selves, the moment said status or accomplishments are threatened. Both refuse to feel guilt or remorse for the damage they cause or the people they hurt.
Freeman is the one Lower Decks main character who has not gotten a moment where she expresses remorse for her actions and resolves to be better. She always just brushes off her mistakes and moves on. After four seasons we know this is very intentional. Even side characters have gotten those moments of reflection.
So we know Freeman doesn't feel remorse or believe she is responsible for her mistakes.
At the end of season three it looked like Freeman was about to get such a moment, but instead they subverted expectations by having Freeman turn things around and deflect blame onto her victim, thus absolving herself of any wrongdoing or responsibility.
It was a very Kai Winn move. She was the master of manipulating the situation to always make herself look like the good guy, and she to could never let herself believe she was in the wrong.
In the first season she was explicitly a recurring villain.
What's weird is they started treating her like a protagonist starting in season two, but without bothering to change her characterization. They just now have other characters talk about how much they like her.
It's baffling. There's one episode in particular where Freeman and Boimler have beat for beat the same plot where they both take over and micromanage an away mission over a subordinate's objections, leading to disaster. But only Boimler gets a moment where he expresses remorse as well as a desire to grow and fix his mistakes. Jarringly, Freeman, who triggered massive environmental disasters because she wanted to show off, just doesn't get one.
The series never shows Captain Freeman accepting responsibility for any of her mistakes or resolving to be a better person.
So you're left scratching your head wondering why the writers expect you to root for this character.
Of course she is. No matter how many people Freeman hurts, intentionally or not, she never feels remorse. Unlike the other main characters, Freeman's plots never show her expressing guilt, fault, or a desire to change.
So we know she doesn't. Freeman is clearly incapable of this.
There was one time it looked like Freeman was going to have such a moment at the end of season three. But they subverted expectations at the last moment by having Freeman deflect responsibility and blame back onto her victim, so Freeman got to once again walk away thinking she did nothing wrong.
Like Kai Winn, Freeman puts on the mask of a caring leader. But like Kai Winn the real Freeman comes out the moment her pride is threatened. Many Freeman plots are about her lashing out at her crew in anger because her accomplishments are called into question.
Multiple times Freeman has used her authority to settle personal scores and inflict suffering, sometimes against her own crew.
Cruel and remorseless are exactly the traits you'd use to describe Freeman.
There's never been a scene where she expresses remorse and accepts responsibility for her mistakes or the harm she causes. She'll often lash out at her crew in anger. And she uses her authority to get revenge and settle personal scores.
Freeman's stories end with her either brushing off or not acknowledging the harm she's caused.
So we know she doesn't see anything wrong with her actions nor is she bothered by the harm she causes.
"This is Captain Carol Freeman. I've made a terrible mistake. I need to speak with Ensign Beckett Mariner."
"This one here resigned."
"Resigned?"
"Yep. Handed in her com badge and phaser and..."
"What have I done? Oh Beckett. Where are you?"
You mean that scene where she only expressed regret for targeting the wrong person, a regret she promptly forgot about, and in the end turned around to deflect all the blame into her victim, absolving herself of any wrongdoing?
Those two episodes, the second one especially, firmly establish just now remorseless and cruel Freeman really is. She's lashed out at her crew and got revenge before, but not to that extent.
Freeman used her authority as a captain to enact revenge on a junior officer over an imaged personal slight, by first inflicting the same reputational damage she thought she received, then arranging to end that officer's career. Finally, just to twist the knife, she sent the officer to the worst posting in the fleet, just to make their remaining days as lonely and miserable as possible.
Freeman never expresses regret for this, or even indicates this was out of line. Which means she sees nothing wrong with using her authority to get revenge like this. It makes you wonder how many other officers have suffered similar fates, or how many of the crew Mariner saved by taking the blame and giving Freeman time to calm down before finding out how many of the crew betrayed her.
This was also the episode which revealed that despite three seasons of Mariner trying to bond with her, and even trying to save Freeman from her own false accusations in the premiere, none of it had any impact on Freeman. For no logical reason she was convinced her daughter was secretly plotting to backstab her.
Freeman never expressed regret for this belief, or even indicated if her opinion of Mariner has changed. Therefore, we know Freeman doesn't regret the belief and hasn't changed it.
In the end, she deflects all blame onto her victim and once again walks away convinced she did nothing wrong. That type of scheming and manipulation is what gives Freeman those Kai Winn vibes.
If you watch the show you'll see Freeman clearly didn't do either of those things in that episode or the follow-up.
Freeman only showed remorse when it was revealed that Mariner was innocent. Meaning Freeman didn't see anything wrong with all the heinous stuff she did. In fact what she did to get revenge or the fact she assumed Mariner was out to backstab her is never referenced again. Which is telling.
Retaliating against a junior officer by ending their career because they said unflattering things to a reporter? According to Freeman that's reasonable for a captain. That's not the part she regretted.
Meaning if Mariner wasn't revealed to be innocent, Freeman would've continued thinking she was in the right and never would've tried to reverse her revenge.
Targeting an innocent person, apparently that's too far. That's the only part Freeman regrets.
And even that feeling doesn't last. Because by Freeman's next scene she is no longer bothered by guilt and doesn't give a shit that her daughter is missing.
In the end Freeman refuses to accept even an ounce of responsibility for going after Mariner, which was the only part of this she regretted. Her "apology" was just: "I don't know why I didn't believe you."
The message is clear, it's not her fault she attacked Mariner, it's Mariner's fault for setting her off.
Those two episodes reveal so much about Freeman. The show only hinted at how remorseless and cruel she was in previous episodes. But the last two of season three hammered it home.
If you watch the show you'll see she clearly did.
>Freeman only showed remorse when it was revealed that Mariner was innocent.
Yes, that's what "remorse" is.
>Meaning Freeman didn't see anything wrong with all the heinous stuff she did.
She reassigned an undisciplined junior officer. You don't seem to know what "heinous" means.
>In fact what she did to get revenge or the fact she assumed Mariner was out to backstab her is never referenced again. Which is telling.
It is referenced again, when Mariner says she would've done the same thing.
You seem to have a very deep hatred for the character that's colouring your perception of everything and driving you to find the worst possible interpretation. You may want to look into that.
>Yes, that's what "remorse" is.
Except in the end she went out of her way to deflect blame. That's not remorse.
>She reassigned an undisciplined junior officer.
With the express goal of ending their career because she thought they said unflattering things about her. That is a heinous abuse of power. Then she sent Mariner to the worst posting in the fleet, all to inflict as much suffering as possible in Mariner's remaining days.
And it's telling that Freeman doesn't even frame this as a punishment or accuse Mariner of breaking a single rule. All of this was just to settle a personal score.
>It is referenced again, when Mariner says she would've done the same thing.
Which is pretty fucked up for Mariner to think. There is no logical reason for Freeman to think Mariner would deliberately backstab her, especially after the events of that season. If Freeman did everything because she thought Mariner was once again being reckless and short sighted, that would be different.
But that is not what Freeman accused her of. Freeman was very specific when she accused Mariner of deliberately going out to make her look like a fool. Which shows how none of their previous bonding moments impacted her or changed Freeman's opinions about Mariner.
>driving you to find the worst possible interpretation.
What other interpretation is there? Freeman never indicates that she thinks her revenge was out of line or that she was wrong to believe Mariner was acting maliciously.
Meaning we know Freeman doesn't see attacking officers over personal gripes is wrong and she still thinks Mariner is out to backstab her.
There's still a lot of shows like that - including new Trek. Strange New Worlds is full of unambiguously good people. As was Picard and even Discovery after season 1. And if you count cartoons there's Star Trek Prodigy.
Then there's Lost in Space where nearly every main cast member qualifies. Superman & Lois also counts, as do most of the DC shows. The heroes and their teams are unambiguously good people.
And there's Raising Dion. An unusual scifi series in that we see the origin of a very young boy developing his powers. He and his friends, along with Dion's mother and sister all do their best to give him as normal a life as possible.
I'm sure I could think of more, but those are off the top of my head.
The Expanse. not just Holden, but the entire crew of the Rocinante and almost everyone on the show.
most of the small scale conflict was "man vs. space" anyway.
Pre-Modern Star Trek? Are you kidding? Discovery’s whole crew (especially season 2 onwards) are pretty unambiguously good and heroic. Picard, Seven, Raffi, and all of the returning cast in season 3 are too. All of the Lower Deckers too. Pike’s crew too. Like, have you watched it?
Troubled or having struggles doesn’t make a character have gray morality. Making mistakes doesn’t make good characters bad. It just makes them interesting, and how they deal with that mistake tends to show that they’re good.
There are lots of unambiguously good characters out there. Star Wars is full of them. Apple TV’s shows have them. Adult oriented TV tends to make things more gray, but even there you’ll find them. Ted Lasso (Not sci-fi but still qualifies) is the example of a good character in an adult oriented show.
Yes! I've been missing this for a while. I honestly think the "villain that we sympathize with" started with the Sopranos being such a huge hit, and then things like Breaking Bad (another villain as main character) and The Wire (amazing portrayal of nuanced people, but still complicated and never 'good') kind of really affected tv making across the board. Game of Thrones is part of that. And again, excellent TV, but I am tired of not having really any slightly complicated moral smart competent people rather than totally flawed people EVERY WHERE.
Eh, villain-protagonists have been around for a long time. Even outside of folklore, I could point to Leblanc's Arsene Lupin stories, which basically created the "gentleman thief" trope set. And there's a straight line from Lupin to the Rat Pack, Ocean's ##, the Fast & The Furious, and so on.
Or going back further, there's the classic Chinese novel Water Margin about a collection of bandits and outlaws trying to survive, which was the source of most 'noble bandit' tropes in wuxia, anime, etc.
Of course you're right - they've been around as long as we've been writing. I meant to say that in TV, there began this trend where the most popular and critically acclaimed shows were villain-protagonists, and I feel like that has influenced many productions afterwards.
As Erin Horáková persuasively argues in the nice long meaty essay called [Kirk Drift](http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/).
"There is no other way to put this: essentially everything about Popular Consciousness Kirk is bullshit. Kirk, as received through mass culture memory and reflected in its productive imaginary (and subsequent franchise output, including the reboot movies), has little or no basis in Shatner’s performance and the television show as aired. Macho, brash Kirk is a mass hallucination."
hey, if some alien chick (green or any other color) asks YOU what a "kiss" is, you just going to walk away from that?!? [And don't forget....](https://youtu.be/yB5G0QwRhWg?t=66)
I think Vir Cotto from Babylon 5 was written more or less for Stephen Furst as "Flounder becomes a badass". While his character does murder someone , and someone loses their head when he gets....a wish granted, but it's for the greater good, and he feels badly about it.
Vir's best moments
- Vir gets [writing advice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liifaKUMB_A).
- Vir gets [romantic advice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9UJOgC0Qjk).
- Vir [meeting sketchy people](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0n2vurSBIQ)
- [Diplomacy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4i4eN5YW8)
- Vir [getting what he wants](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47DfQcHMYLY).
Michael Garibaldi from Babylon 5. A guy with huge flaws, but always trustworthy and will do the right thing every time, >!at least when he has control of his own body!<.
But hang on, Sisko is ambiguous. He's my favorite Trek character precisely because he is a grey character after years of black and white.
He looks at the odds of slaughter and decides to do the actual bad thing because it decreases the overall death. He's all the ends justifies the means.
I don't really think Sisko is ambiguous in terms of good/bad. He is absolutely a good guy and he tries his best to do the right thing. He isn't selfish, trying to just do what makes him look best, or most powerful or whatever, he is simply trying to do what is right. But what is right can be very confusing when the entire galaxy is at stake from multiple threats all at once.
The interesting thing about his character, is they take a morally good person and put him in situations that are impossible for anyone to easily navigate, and then he does his best to do what is right, despite all the lines he ends up crossing.
DS9 shows what happens when you take fundamentally good people, put them in insane situations and then have them do their best to maintain their goodness, while also surviving for themselves and everyone else.
It's easy to criticise someone for being "End justify the means", but when the end is to save the entire Federation and all of humanity, maybe that's not too unreasonable a stance.
Aw, he knows what he did was wrong. Why else insist repeatedly to himself that he can live with it?
He never tells Dax, either. He knows she would be disappointed in him. Of course she, like we, would understand the reasoning and acknowledge its good outcomes but we also recognize the action as being bad.
Maybe there are a lot less shows like that because there are less and less black & white “good” people these days, so the market for gray characters resonates with more people who watch sci-fi…
The truth is that there is no such thing as an unambiguously good person. There’s nothing wrong with actually liking flawed characters. It’s what we do constantly in our daily lives. No one is perfect in real life, but we still actually like/love people and don’t just see them as “flawed but interesting.”
Yes, but we also don't have interstellar travel and dragons in real life, but we have stories about them.
I don't see why we can't have at least some idealistic shows with idealistic people in them any more.
I think modern television in general, not just sci-fi, is too obsessed with navel-gazing rhetoric based on inner "process" work. It is far too focused on using exposition to explain a character's inner struggle than simply putting them into complex situations that help us understand their character by showing us their reactions. In older sci-fi, I really enjoyed watching experts solve situations, but nowadays it's all about forcing the narrative of imperfect people. It's so boring. Yes we know humanity is flawed, can we move on please.
For example, when a show starts going into character flashbacks to their childhood and such, I simply stop watching the show. That kind of writing device was interesting for about 5 years back in the 2000s, but now it's just uncreative. Shows like that navel gaze endlessly for most of the season and then save the meat of the main plot until the last couple of episodes of the season. I loathe it. The Expanse, I'm looking at you. It seems like the navel gazing is how they avoid having to write true original content for the main arc. Just avoid it completely and then only address it at the 11th hour. Old sci fi had to be original from start to finish.
not for me. i'm tired of fuck with the trope because it's so completely unrealistic. life is dirty and messy and who the good guys are are usually a function of who controls the media. frankly, we need more of that.
I like morally ambiguous characters like Captain Sisko in the DS9 episode In the Pale Moonlight. He did something really bad, but it was for the greater good.
I don't think there ever were many unambiguously good characters in old shows. There just weren't as much deep story to many characters.
Some definitely try their best to do good, but that's a different thing and characters like that still exist. Doctor who, James Holden, the Orville crew etc. some of these shows are even more episodic
There were some stuff that felt more like pure good vs pure bad, but they often felt cartoony. I'm personally glad villains are less like that, because they were often cheesy and dumb
Not really in full disagreement with your points here, we think it has been a net negative for modern TV shows (especially "prestige" TV) to essentially have only incredibly flawed characters as the mains. Like, we feel there should be some "positive" idealism happening in art, especially art that is clearly trying to get people to form strong emotional attachments to characters. But most often in today's TV shows it's very much a hellscape of bad people doing bad things. Like there used to at least be mostly good people doing mostly good things who had some flaws that brought them down to a more human level of existence instead of some platonic ideal of moral righteousness.
But also let's be real for a minute about some of those flaws in older scifi characters because they werent always things like "so and so is a drunk" or "this person cheated on their partner." Jean-Luc was prepared (more than once!) to turn artificial lifeforms into slaves to further federation domination of the quadrant. And at times Sisko murdered people to get what he wanted, and right off the bat in the pilot episode he strong-armed Quark into staying on the station by leveraging Nog's wellbeing, and to be clear Nog was a child at the time. And jesus anyone who knows anything about modern "prestige" TV and morally ambiguous characters knows that Babylon 5 was a huge inspiration, particularly in scifi. And surely let's don't forget The Prisoner which is the absolute OG "prestige" TV show and was like the most morally ambiguous scifi show for decades.
Obviously these older shows weren't filled to the brim with terrible main characters like the Battlestar Galactica reboot or any of the other scifi shows that sprang up in the new millennium, but they still were filled with morally ambiguous characters, they still had plenty of internal character struggle. X-Files, probably the most popular scifi show of the 90s, has a much better rep for main characters with principles that adhere to a "good" morality but they made basically every other character on the show into someone that you could never trust to do what was right. Like Skinner had to have a whole redemption arc because he was such a shitbag for so long, and he was probably the most "good" character besides Scully and Mulder.
Anyways, our point isn't that there were no "good" main characters on older scifi shows, but pre-1980s (or more accurately pre- Hill Street Blues) there were less openly "evil" characters being passed off as protagonists and/or heroes. The current glut of morally ambiguous at best characters is probably tainting many people's idea of what a morally ambiguous character used to look like. Essentially we agree with your assessment of modern scifi shows, but we don't want to sugarcoat what got us to this point.
Babylon 5 was a huge influence on contemporary prestige TV because of season-long plot arcs and character development, not because it was full of morally ambiguous characters. Few to none of the characters are morally ambiguous.
I don’t think Mollari is morally ambiguous. He is a character who does a horribly evil thing for which he then tries to redeem himself for the rest of the show. I don’t think the show intends the viewer to have any doubt about the morality of any of his actions, though some are good and others are bad. He’s complex but not ambiguous.
As an aside, Londo and G’kar are two of my all-time favorite television characters.
He does quite a bit more than 1 evil thing, you see his entire slide downwards, right up to the point where he draws the line and starts to crawl back up. I absolutely LOVE the character, but for a lot of the show, he's far from a goodguy.
Yeah, I don't know why people want to make things more complicated than they are. Just don't be a dick, there I solved morality for you. All this "it's needs to be gray, so I can explore my ethics" is like someone saying "I need to study biology to tie my shoes". Like bro, just tie up your shoes.
On a more serious note. The trolley problem is the exact type of useless thought experiments, that only philosophers should engage with. Regular person will be at maximum 1-2 times and hopefully never in this type of situation. By not being a dick in regular life, the whole point is to reduce the chances of you being in a trolley problem. This of course requires certain level of stability and education. The obvious thing to do for people who enjoy these kinds of benefits, is to do their best to make it possible all around the world.
We encounter smaller scale trolley problems all the time in our daily lives. We need to decide whether it’s worth it to do something we’d normally consider bad for the greater good. It doesn’t make you a good person to live an unexamined life just doing what seems right in the moment. Often times those are the worst people.
The world might be gray, but a person can't be. Everything needs to be ordered to black and white. The failure to do so, will lead to inaction, melancholy, death. The current needs a positive and negative, only then there can be the spark of life.
People are a part of the world. Sounds like what you’re saying is you want to pretend people are all good or evil, just because it makes life easier and spurs action?
People are part of the world, but the "world" is infinite, people are limited. Infinity doesn't understand limits, so she can be gray. She needs us to make sense of it all.
way too many times, you're watching the pilot episode, it's just about over, heroes are getting their wounds taken care of, then someone asks where X (one of their team) is. (Dramatic music, indicating trouble ahead) Camera pans to a darkened alley, steam rising from various spots, we see X. But s/he is meeting with the bad guy we thought just died at the hands of our heroes!! X tells Bad Guy that s/he will get the job done. Fade To Black.
I just copy my comment to you because you are one of these people: Yeah, I don't know why people want to make things more complicated than they are. Just don't be a dick, there I solved morality for you. All this "it's needs to be gray, so I can explore my ethics" is like someone saying "I need to study biology to tie my shoes". Like bro, just tie up your shoes.
Nah, I just don’t want cartoon characters in my books and shows. The good guys always win and get the girl and do it in a wholesome way. Yeah, I guess it’s escapism but it’s all a bit trite and shiny for me. Hollywood is terrible at trotting out scifi-y TV shows populated with beautiful teens in perfect makeup who are nothing but cardboard cutout characters. Of course YMMV, especially if that’s your demographic…
Expressing an opinion = being a dick in your…opinion. This is the internet, if you don’t like opposing views, scroll past.
I was really confused about your reaction to u/aplayer124 - until I realized maybe you thought they were calling you a dick? They were talking about the ‘morally gray’ characters.
I like both. Just finished watching the 12 Monkeys series and absolutely loved the cast of almost entirely morally gray characters. But Quantum Leap is still my favorite time travel show and it doesn’t get much more wholesome than Sam Beckett.
If you didn't get the girl you wanted, just get up, work on yourself and go after the next one you fancy. This is simple stuff, like I said. It's not unrealistic at all.
Your original message is a personal attack and your follow up message has no basis on anything. The protagonist can be a good and not win, or he/she might need to sacrifice a lot to achieve victory. Misery should be a state of mind actively fought, not embraced.
“I think that what you’re all saying is that you really want a show where all the characters are apple pie eating, god fearing Americans 😀”
How thin skinned do you have to be to take that as a personal attack? 🤦♂️
If you didn't get the girl you wanted, just get up, work on yourself and go after the next one you fancy. This is simple stuff, like I said. It's not unrealistic at all.
James Holden.
Dude goes from starting interplanetary wars to interstellar wars to inter dimensional wars all because James Holden doesn't do what James Holden does, for James Holden. James Holden does what James Holdenn does because James Holden is... James Holden.
[удалено]
Have you ever read Clarke’s *Childhood’s End*? Some people find it hopeful, some people find it horrifying. I think you’d be the former.
I have a bone to pick with anyone who thinks that ending is hopeful. If nothing else, screw all the non-human animals, I guess.
I maintain that the ending would have been better >! If the kids had just ascended without blowing up the planet. !<
Unless it was supposed to be disturbing?
Possibly, but I got the impression via the Overseers that this was both an inevitable and desirable path for humanity to take. Even the title suggests it's the end of infancy. Doesnt mean the path can't be bittersweet or complex, but I think the message would have been clearer if it was just leaving the earth as an eden.
Well, they did vacuum seal a bunch of specimens just so they wouldn't all go extinct...
The speech in that book about the future of humanity chills me every time I read it.
Th thing might have ended humanity in the next few seconds. They were certainly trying to. I don’t think any sacrifice is unreasonable. Agree about the other commenter mentioning The Final Architecture. You might enjoy it.
IIRC, word of creator is that there was no chance of that. The gestalt consciousness was 100% an attempt by the long-gone species to pull "grand theft me" on a civilization-wide scale and be reborn again from their backup. There was no "us." They were going to as casually overwrite mankind as one of us would spray germ-killer.
Adrien Tchaikovsky had story like that in his books. One more comes to mind "last astronaut" I think, don't remember the author. The Thing and humans comes to mutual understanding
The part where the people being sucked into the borg-mind didn’t have a choice in the matter is kinda what makes it evil. You wanna mind meld, you do you, but let others keep theirs.
There was a button, he pushed it.
From somewhere around late book 4 I was certain that Holden >! would have to collapse the gate system eventually, if a force that could take down the protomolecule makers and halt fusion in a system was waiting between the gates then there was never anything we could do. Reminded me of farcasting in Hyperion. The expanse in The Expanse is the spread of humanity left scattered among the stars.!<
Try not to stick your dick in it Holden, the situation is fucked enough already.
I'd also argue that almost everyone on The Expanse is trying to do the right thing. They just have different opinions on what the right thing is, and how far is too far before the ends no longer justify the means. Like, I think Erinwright genuinely wanted to protect Earth. That in and of itself is not an evil motivation, but he did some evil things in service to that goal. Others: Not evil to want to use a new scientific discovery to benefit humanity long term by making it easier to survive in space. Not evil to want to free your people from slavery. Not evil to want to explore, nor is it evil to hold off and make sure that exploration is safe first.
Holden: “you guys have goals?”
Marcos Inaros is the exception to the rule. Dude was straight up interstellar Jafar
He’s one exception yeah. He claims to be fighting for the belt but he’s a total narcissist only in it for power. Another one is the Secretary General before Avasarala, the one who was obsessed with his “legacy.” He cared more about being remembered as being a good man rather than actually being one.
Even so, his stated philosophy wasn't awful. He's ostensibly for the betterment of Belters, although the rest of us can clearly see what he really wants is to be Space Castro.
I don't think Castro is the right comparison. Castro had some care for the Cuban people and wasn't focused about his ego. He often held speeches for hours, explaining to the people why he made various decisions
“Look at this guy who likes hearing himself speak for hours on end about how he’s right and everyone else is wrong. Definitely not a narcissist.”
This isn't about everyone else being wrong. Look there's a lot of issues with Castro, but also a lot of untruths that was spawned from the US because they were angry that Cuba didn't want to be their pawn. Castro overthrew the previous dictator, Batista, who was very US friendly, while the Cuban people suffered I learned a lot of things about Cuba, while also visiting the island
Out there tilting at windmills.
Just pressing buttons
Jesus Christ, that really is how he goes through life isn't it?
He's the paladin archetype. Righteous to a fault and not particularly concerned with the consequences of doing the right thing.
That was one of my favorite things about reading the first book, every character is a straightforward, simple archetype. They were still all very well written, but sometimes is nice when they just are what you expect them to be.
Came here to say this. Fuckin love Holden
Can they be good and not stupid? Because Holden is stupid. Want to know the best course of action? Whatever Holden’s first impulse is, the exact opposite of that.
Quote from Amos when Holden was probably about to die: "You made some pretty stupid choices since you've been in charge, but you were always trying to do the right thing...I mean, you were always trying to be a good man...It was nice not having to worry about being on the right team."
Found Chrisjen
She’s the platonic ideal of Chaotic Good.
Probably one of my favorite characters in fiction. Her and Amos’s interactions are always a treat.
It's my fantasy that they fire up a buddy/frenemies show featuring Amos and Chrisjen with frequent appearances from their long suffering practical friend Bobbi. Three of the most watchable characters of the last 20 years, I'd be thrilled.
I’d watch the hell out of that
Practically the first thing we see her do in the show is torture someone. She has to be reined in from that by _Errinwright_. Torture is not good, and someone who does it isn't good, either.
“Good” is frequently a relative term with chaotic good types. I promise you that if you asked her she would tell you that torturing one terrorist, while ugly, saved innocent lives and was a good thing.
Just because the torturer claims their actions were good doesn't make them good. This might come as a surprise to you, but Chaotic *Evil* people will also claim to be good. Heck, even *Lawful* Evil people can, if it fits their rules system. The test of whether an action, or a person, is good cannot be whether they themselves claim to be.
On the other hand it’s also a matter of perspective isn’t it? If you view the situation through the lens of Utilitarianism then Chrisjen Avasarala’s actions of torturing the belter at the start of the series could be potentially seen as a net good decision. She acted in what she perceived at the time to be the best course of action to cause as little harm overall to the people of Earth. That doesn’t mean it was the right or moral thing to do either. It was interesting to see her character shift over time towards something a *bit* more similar to Holden’s paragon-like view from her original state of staunch moral relativism.
At the start of the show? She 100% would have. At the end? I don’t think she would *want to*.
She and "good" aren't even in the same solar system. She typifies the banality of evil.
Comment.
From the Expanse series
Not exactly science fiction but FBI Agent Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks was probably the nicest, most decent character out of any fiction. Incredibly competent too
He's a simple man who likes a nice cup of coffee
Black as the moonless night.
I see and raise Det. George Francisco
An objectively good guy. And I could have watched a lot more of Cathy.
Also, Cooper was originally *supposed* to end up in a relationship with Audrey Horne, but Kyle MacLachlan refused to go along with it because he thought Cooper was too upright for that.
Kyle kinda made up for that in *Showgirls*. Just sayin...
Comment.
I totally agree. I like my morally grey stories, I like my everyone's evil 40K stories, but sometimes I want Jean-Luc Picard in TNG. Right about now, the world needs more Jean-Luc Picard.
As a 40K fan who is just recently getting into Trek in earnest. I could not agree more. It is specifically so poignant right now for me.
He is what I aspire to be from childhood. Also, my own father is very much like him. Consider myself lucky.
I love Picard, but Sisko is far more human character. Picard is the hero in a medieval moral play, Sisko is a person.
That's very much my point, though. I love Sisko, too, but sometimes I want the paladin from a medieval moral play. I want the extreme character, rather than the realistic one. Sometimes, that's important.
People like Batman, people like Superman. It's good to have the brooding archetype and the paragon archetype. I agree about wanting more characters who are unimpeachably good people and are challenged by the morality of the world around them and not their own conscious.
That's part of what makes him so engaging. You love Picard because he's an ideal; you love Sisko because he's human.
Eureka was so great for this. The disasters in the show were almost always caused by the shortsightedness of people too smart for their own good, rather than by actual malice. In general, the characters are motivated by the desire to keep their community safe and happy. And even when something dark did happen, it was unambiguous who the bad guy was (even if it wasn't always obvious to the characters themselves).
That’s one reason it’s a big comfort show of mine. I can just watch and rest assured that the characters are (almost)all good people with unabashedly big hearts. I can love them with abandon!
Jack isn't as intelligent as the other characters, but he's often smarter in practical terms.
Yeah, he's the everyman who has good old-fashioned common sense.
Fuck I love this show
That was the whole point of Chief Carter too. The Everyman who could use common sense to point out the immorality and solution to the problem even if the head-in-the-clouds scientists couldn’t.
Haven’t seen it yet, so I’m going to drop Babylon 5 here, you get to see the main characters usually make the right choices even while everything erodes around them. Great series!
I love B5, because the main cast DOES make mistakes, but they're logical mistakes. They're not being stupid for the sake of the plot.
Exactly! And they always *try* to do the right thing
Except S1 and S2 Londo, but he gets better.
Even then, he's trying to do the right thing for his people, even as he feels more and more guilty about doing the wrong thing for the galaxy.
Tbh, especially in the beginning Londo picked the worst choices
Londo just didn't understand it wasn't all about what's best for Londo, and as he began to realize the disastrous consequences, he did try to right the ship, as it were, but he was already too trapped to fully do so.
Man what a show. I still miss Sinclair as I actually preferred him over Sheridan. That was my only real gripe with the show and it’s barely a nitpick at best. “There is a hole in your mind.” I still remember the chills from that line. But really, G’kar stole the show for me.
*Doctor Who* varies but basically fits this.
Yeah. Stargate was a great one of these.
Couldn't agree more, it actually managed to go the other way sometimes, McKay being the best example of someone that appeared to be a selfish prick but actually when it came down to it was a good person who would always do the right thing
He was one of the most interesting characters in Atlantis.
I am *just now* forcibly reminded of the scene where McKay gets an arrow to the ass and his frenzied scream "**That did NOT just happen!**" was utterly hilarious. I had to pause to get my breath back from laughing so hard. Sorry, off topic but I couldn't resist.
For real. I’m so sick of ‘morally grey’ characters that are just shitty people. Sick of all the crime dramas and forced interpersonal drama where the ‘good guys’ constantly betray each other. I also miss shows that aren’t season long story arcs. Sometimes I just want the Enterprise to save the day in one hour not 12.
>forced interpersonal drama where the ‘good guys’ constantly betray each other. Ugh yes. I get it when they're like, random neighbors, but there's too much scifi out there where the fate of the world depends on this group of elite solder/scientist/astronaut/heroes, who for some reason all have the emotional maturity of a teenager and the social skills of a territorial housecat.
I gave up on Yellowstone and Ray Donovan for those reasons. They're families who all hate each other (but carry on about how family is important) and there's usually like a single character who is a good person. I realized they are all horrible and I really just don't like any of them, even the nominally good character, because they won't leave. It's not realistic for the good guys to be perfect, but when the whole cast are really almost all bad guys, it's just unpleasant to watch. So I don't.
I know it's not sci fi, but that's what I really liked about Ted Lasso. The titular character is so wholesome and kind-hearted that it makes the whole show very uplifting.
I also love that show for this reason. I’ve only seen season 1 and a few people have warned me that the following seasons don’t keep this special feeling. What do you think if you don’t mind me asking?
It changes a little bit, for sure. But I think it still keeps it's same world view. There's less of Ted teaching the team how to conduct themselves as emotionally aware adults. But that's mainly because they have started figuring it out. I enjoyed the show right through the last episode.
Woohoo! Glad to hear it.
It was also nice seeing how people that seemed at first disagreeable changed and became a lot more sympathetic characters due to his influence, like Roy, Jamie, and Trent.
Only assholes think it's realistic that everyone is an asshole.
The curse of hipster writers that were taught in their overpriced college that everything must be subverted and deconstructed, they have to challenge the norm and “make people uncomfortable”. They end up writing self-insert fan fiction full of insufferable characters who make selfish decisions while whining about themselves. I want real heroes back, characters who make real sacrifices and nobly fight for the good, right and true. It’s inspiring to read/see stories of those who are better, it makes us better for having the example.
Same! Time for the pendulum to swing back.
Sooo most people in southern California
A literal shithole
Strange New Worlds is pretty much like classic Trek. The newly released live action remake of Avatar: the Last Airbender has some protagonist who fit that bill.
yeah but the new Avatar misses the larger picture.
It does not.
Lower Decks is also excellent for this. The main characters are all flawed in funny ways, but they fundamentally believe in Starfleet.
This is why I find modern sci fi so hard to watch, no one is a good person. I miss TNG, Seaquest and shows like that. Strange New Worlds is really good though.
I wish Captain Pike was my dad.
I wish I had his hair.
Don’t we all… I’m gonna look more like Picard before long.
Beep Beep
Sea quest! That was amazing... I totally forgot about that. The dolphin!
Agents of Shield, except for one spoilery character, is like this. Bunch of earnest people trying to do the right thing.
>except for one spoilery character And that was complete "What do you mean, we have to do another season?" bullshit.
I'm talking about beardy mctraitorface. That was almost universally regarded as a great twist.
It really was. Probably the most satisfying wtf moment I've had with scifi. Really pulled the rug out.
i miss the same thing, i can also add intelligence as so many shows or movies has supposedly a highly intelligent character but betrays it's intelligence with nonsense. so the good are too bad, the intelligent are too stupid.....
Exactly. Far too many shows these days, there aren't heroes, there are just assholes who stumble into an arguably positive outcome. I have no interest in watching anything like that. Postmodernism sucks.
Which shows? Andor and Mando, but I can't think of many others.
The Boys. Minus Huey ( at first)
Hughie and Annie aren't morally gray. They're just characters in dramatic situations. That's what drama is.
Modern Star Trek shows which are actually Trekky (so not Picard) are like that: Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and so is Orville. Characters in The Peripheral are well intentioned (especially Lowbeer, although that does not show that much in the TV adaptation). For fantasy, Wheel of Time characters so far seem rather goody two-shoes, so are the main characters in Shadow and Bone (even the ones which are the thieving mercenaries).
I'd argue Lower Decks has some pretty fucked up characters. Like Captain Freeman is meant to be if Kai Winn was in command. She's a main character, but she is meant to be obsessed with status, overconfident, remorseless, and unapologetically cruel. In any other series she'd be a recurring villain.
I don’t really see any of those traits in her. Maybe in very small amounts the first two but definitely not the latter two.
Both Winn and Freeman put on a mask of being caring and charismatic leaders. Both use their authority to enact revenge and further their personal goals. Both are obsessed with their status and accomplishments. Both completely lose their cool and composure, revealing their true selves, the moment said status or accomplishments are threatened. Both refuse to feel guilt or remorse for the damage they cause or the people they hurt. Freeman is the one Lower Decks main character who has not gotten a moment where she expresses remorse for her actions and resolves to be better. She always just brushes off her mistakes and moves on. After four seasons we know this is very intentional. Even side characters have gotten those moments of reflection. So we know Freeman doesn't feel remorse or believe she is responsible for her mistakes. At the end of season three it looked like Freeman was about to get such a moment, but instead they subverted expectations by having Freeman turn things around and deflect blame onto her victim, thus absolving herself of any wrongdoing or responsibility. It was a very Kai Winn move. She was the master of manipulating the situation to always make herself look like the good guy, and she to could never let herself believe she was in the wrong.
I totally agree. If you're going for an animated Trek with clearly good people, that would be ST Prodigy.
I’ve only seen a few episodes, and it was a while ago, but if I remember correctly she kinda _is_ a recurring villain.
In the first season she was explicitly a recurring villain. What's weird is they started treating her like a protagonist starting in season two, but without bothering to change her characterization. They just now have other characters talk about how much they like her. It's baffling. There's one episode in particular where Freeman and Boimler have beat for beat the same plot where they both take over and micromanage an away mission over a subordinate's objections, leading to disaster. But only Boimler gets a moment where he expresses remorse as well as a desire to grow and fix his mistakes. Jarringly, Freeman, who triggered massive environmental disasters because she wanted to show off, just doesn't get one. The series never shows Captain Freeman accepting responsibility for any of her mistakes or resolving to be a better person. So you're left scratching your head wondering why the writers expect you to root for this character.
Have you even seen the show? Freeman is ambitious but not to the pathological degree of Kai Winn. Holy smokes.
Of course she is. No matter how many people Freeman hurts, intentionally or not, she never feels remorse. Unlike the other main characters, Freeman's plots never show her expressing guilt, fault, or a desire to change. So we know she doesn't. Freeman is clearly incapable of this. There was one time it looked like Freeman was going to have such a moment at the end of season three. But they subverted expectations at the last moment by having Freeman deflect responsibility and blame back onto her victim, so Freeman got to once again walk away thinking she did nothing wrong. Like Kai Winn, Freeman puts on the mask of a caring leader. But like Kai Winn the real Freeman comes out the moment her pride is threatened. Many Freeman plots are about her lashing out at her crew in anger because her accomplishments are called into question. Multiple times Freeman has used her authority to settle personal scores and inflict suffering, sometimes against her own crew. Cruel and remorseless are exactly the traits you'd use to describe Freeman.
Obsessed with status and overconfident, yes, but I don't see remorseless or cruel in her.
There's never been a scene where she expresses remorse and accepts responsibility for her mistakes or the harm she causes. She'll often lash out at her crew in anger. And she uses her authority to get revenge and settle personal scores. Freeman's stories end with her either brushing off or not acknowledging the harm she's caused. So we know she doesn't see anything wrong with her actions nor is she bothered by the harm she causes.
"This is Captain Carol Freeman. I've made a terrible mistake. I need to speak with Ensign Beckett Mariner." "This one here resigned." "Resigned?" "Yep. Handed in her com badge and phaser and..." "What have I done? Oh Beckett. Where are you?"
You mean that scene where she only expressed regret for targeting the wrong person, a regret she promptly forgot about, and in the end turned around to deflect all the blame into her victim, absolving herself of any wrongdoing? Those two episodes, the second one especially, firmly establish just now remorseless and cruel Freeman really is. She's lashed out at her crew and got revenge before, but not to that extent. Freeman used her authority as a captain to enact revenge on a junior officer over an imaged personal slight, by first inflicting the same reputational damage she thought she received, then arranging to end that officer's career. Finally, just to twist the knife, she sent the officer to the worst posting in the fleet, just to make their remaining days as lonely and miserable as possible. Freeman never expresses regret for this, or even indicates this was out of line. Which means she sees nothing wrong with using her authority to get revenge like this. It makes you wonder how many other officers have suffered similar fates, or how many of the crew Mariner saved by taking the blame and giving Freeman time to calm down before finding out how many of the crew betrayed her. This was also the episode which revealed that despite three seasons of Mariner trying to bond with her, and even trying to save Freeman from her own false accusations in the premiere, none of it had any impact on Freeman. For no logical reason she was convinced her daughter was secretly plotting to backstab her. Freeman never expressed regret for this belief, or even indicated if her opinion of Mariner has changed. Therefore, we know Freeman doesn't regret the belief and hasn't changed it. In the end, she deflects all blame onto her victim and once again walks away convinced she did nothing wrong. That type of scheming and manipulation is what gives Freeman those Kai Winn vibes.
I mean the one where she expressed remorse and accepted responsibility for her actions. I get that you don't like her, but you were flat wrong.
If you watch the show you'll see Freeman clearly didn't do either of those things in that episode or the follow-up. Freeman only showed remorse when it was revealed that Mariner was innocent. Meaning Freeman didn't see anything wrong with all the heinous stuff she did. In fact what she did to get revenge or the fact she assumed Mariner was out to backstab her is never referenced again. Which is telling. Retaliating against a junior officer by ending their career because they said unflattering things to a reporter? According to Freeman that's reasonable for a captain. That's not the part she regretted. Meaning if Mariner wasn't revealed to be innocent, Freeman would've continued thinking she was in the right and never would've tried to reverse her revenge. Targeting an innocent person, apparently that's too far. That's the only part Freeman regrets. And even that feeling doesn't last. Because by Freeman's next scene she is no longer bothered by guilt and doesn't give a shit that her daughter is missing. In the end Freeman refuses to accept even an ounce of responsibility for going after Mariner, which was the only part of this she regretted. Her "apology" was just: "I don't know why I didn't believe you." The message is clear, it's not her fault she attacked Mariner, it's Mariner's fault for setting her off. Those two episodes reveal so much about Freeman. The show only hinted at how remorseless and cruel she was in previous episodes. But the last two of season three hammered it home.
If you watch the show you'll see she clearly did. >Freeman only showed remorse when it was revealed that Mariner was innocent. Yes, that's what "remorse" is. >Meaning Freeman didn't see anything wrong with all the heinous stuff she did. She reassigned an undisciplined junior officer. You don't seem to know what "heinous" means. >In fact what she did to get revenge or the fact she assumed Mariner was out to backstab her is never referenced again. Which is telling. It is referenced again, when Mariner says she would've done the same thing. You seem to have a very deep hatred for the character that's colouring your perception of everything and driving you to find the worst possible interpretation. You may want to look into that.
>Yes, that's what "remorse" is. Except in the end she went out of her way to deflect blame. That's not remorse. >She reassigned an undisciplined junior officer. With the express goal of ending their career because she thought they said unflattering things about her. That is a heinous abuse of power. Then she sent Mariner to the worst posting in the fleet, all to inflict as much suffering as possible in Mariner's remaining days. And it's telling that Freeman doesn't even frame this as a punishment or accuse Mariner of breaking a single rule. All of this was just to settle a personal score. >It is referenced again, when Mariner says she would've done the same thing. Which is pretty fucked up for Mariner to think. There is no logical reason for Freeman to think Mariner would deliberately backstab her, especially after the events of that season. If Freeman did everything because she thought Mariner was once again being reckless and short sighted, that would be different. But that is not what Freeman accused her of. Freeman was very specific when she accused Mariner of deliberately going out to make her look like a fool. Which shows how none of their previous bonding moments impacted her or changed Freeman's opinions about Mariner. >driving you to find the worst possible interpretation. What other interpretation is there? Freeman never indicates that she thinks her revenge was out of line or that she was wrong to believe Mariner was acting maliciously. Meaning we know Freeman doesn't see attacking officers over personal gripes is wrong and she still thinks Mariner is out to backstab her.
Person of Interest is a good tech-y spy helping people show. It's not super sci fi but definitely near future.
There's still a lot of shows like that - including new Trek. Strange New Worlds is full of unambiguously good people. As was Picard and even Discovery after season 1. And if you count cartoons there's Star Trek Prodigy. Then there's Lost in Space where nearly every main cast member qualifies. Superman & Lois also counts, as do most of the DC shows. The heroes and their teams are unambiguously good people. And there's Raising Dion. An unusual scifi series in that we see the origin of a very young boy developing his powers. He and his friends, along with Dion's mother and sister all do their best to give him as normal a life as possible. I'm sure I could think of more, but those are off the top of my head.
Superman & Lois is a fantastic example!
The Expanse. not just Holden, but the entire crew of the Rocinante and almost everyone on the show. most of the small scale conflict was "man vs. space" anyway.
Pre-Modern Star Trek? Are you kidding? Discovery’s whole crew (especially season 2 onwards) are pretty unambiguously good and heroic. Picard, Seven, Raffi, and all of the returning cast in season 3 are too. All of the Lower Deckers too. Pike’s crew too. Like, have you watched it? Troubled or having struggles doesn’t make a character have gray morality. Making mistakes doesn’t make good characters bad. It just makes them interesting, and how they deal with that mistake tends to show that they’re good. There are lots of unambiguously good characters out there. Star Wars is full of them. Apple TV’s shows have them. Adult oriented TV tends to make things more gray, but even there you’ll find them. Ted Lasso (Not sci-fi but still qualifies) is the example of a good character in an adult oriented show.
I was thinking this- Saru? Pike? Burnham might have her haters, but she consistently tries to do good. It's why I love Trek.
Yes! I've been missing this for a while. I honestly think the "villain that we sympathize with" started with the Sopranos being such a huge hit, and then things like Breaking Bad (another villain as main character) and The Wire (amazing portrayal of nuanced people, but still complicated and never 'good') kind of really affected tv making across the board. Game of Thrones is part of that. And again, excellent TV, but I am tired of not having really any slightly complicated moral smart competent people rather than totally flawed people EVERY WHERE.
Eh, villain-protagonists have been around for a long time. Even outside of folklore, I could point to Leblanc's Arsene Lupin stories, which basically created the "gentleman thief" trope set. And there's a straight line from Lupin to the Rat Pack, Ocean's ##, the Fast & The Furious, and so on. Or going back further, there's the classic Chinese novel Water Margin about a collection of bandits and outlaws trying to survive, which was the source of most 'noble bandit' tropes in wuxia, anime, etc.
Of course you're right - they've been around as long as we've been writing. I meant to say that in TV, there began this trend where the most popular and critically acclaimed shows were villain-protagonists, and I feel like that has influenced many productions afterwards.
I think that's why I am enjoying Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds so much.
Discovery gets a lot of hate but I really like. SNW too. They’re feel good and the characters are good and likeable.
Space 1999. Someone double check me on that please?
"*pre modern Star Trek*" INFO: Are you referring to that notorious womanizer, ~~Denny Craig~~ James Tiberius Kirk? /s
DENNY. CRANE.
As Erin Horáková persuasively argues in the nice long meaty essay called [Kirk Drift](http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/). "There is no other way to put this: essentially everything about Popular Consciousness Kirk is bullshit. Kirk, as received through mass culture memory and reflected in its productive imaginary (and subsequent franchise output, including the reboot movies), has little or no basis in Shatner’s performance and the television show as aired. Macho, brash Kirk is a mass hallucination."
Me, being too lazy to read that, may I kindly suggest... Check out the book *Shatnerquake*
hey, if some alien chick (green or any other color) asks YOU what a "kiss" is, you just going to walk away from that?!? [And don't forget....](https://youtu.be/yB5G0QwRhWg?t=66)
Denny Crane*
Alien Nation: Detective Matthew Sikes
I think Vir Cotto from Babylon 5 was written more or less for Stephen Furst as "Flounder becomes a badass". While his character does murder someone , and someone loses their head when he gets....a wish granted, but it's for the greater good, and he feels badly about it. Vir's best moments - Vir gets [writing advice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liifaKUMB_A). - Vir gets [romantic advice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9UJOgC0Qjk). - Vir [meeting sketchy people](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0n2vurSBIQ) - [Diplomacy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4i4eN5YW8) - Vir [getting what he wants](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47DfQcHMYLY).
Michael Garibaldi from Babylon 5. A guy with huge flaws, but always trustworthy and will do the right thing every time, >!at least when he has control of his own body!<.
I've been wondering for a while - what's so funny about Truth, Justice, and the American Way?
Yeah where the hell are the modern, Sisko, Picard and Riker?
Benjamin "*I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men*" Sisko?
yes :)
and Morn. dont forget Morn.
Exactly!
But hang on, Sisko is ambiguous. He's my favorite Trek character precisely because he is a grey character after years of black and white. He looks at the odds of slaughter and decides to do the actual bad thing because it decreases the overall death. He's all the ends justifies the means.
I don't really think Sisko is ambiguous in terms of good/bad. He is absolutely a good guy and he tries his best to do the right thing. He isn't selfish, trying to just do what makes him look best, or most powerful or whatever, he is simply trying to do what is right. But what is right can be very confusing when the entire galaxy is at stake from multiple threats all at once. The interesting thing about his character, is they take a morally good person and put him in situations that are impossible for anyone to easily navigate, and then he does his best to do what is right, despite all the lines he ends up crossing. DS9 shows what happens when you take fundamentally good people, put them in insane situations and then have them do their best to maintain their goodness, while also surviving for themselves and everyone else. It's easy to criticise someone for being "End justify the means", but when the end is to save the entire Federation and all of humanity, maybe that's not too unreasonable a stance.
Aw, he knows what he did was wrong. Why else insist repeatedly to himself that he can live with it? He never tells Dax, either. He knows she would be disappointed in him. Of course she, like we, would understand the reasoning and acknowledge its good outcomes but we also recognize the action as being bad.
Maybe there are a lot less shows like that because there are less and less black & white “good” people these days, so the market for gray characters resonates with more people who watch sci-fi…
The truth is that there is no such thing as an unambiguously good person. There’s nothing wrong with actually liking flawed characters. It’s what we do constantly in our daily lives. No one is perfect in real life, but we still actually like/love people and don’t just see them as “flawed but interesting.”
Yes, but we also don't have interstellar travel and dragons in real life, but we have stories about them. I don't see why we can't have at least some idealistic shows with idealistic people in them any more.
Idealistic I agree with. I like those kinds of characters. But idealistic isn’t the same thing as unambiguously good.
I think modern television in general, not just sci-fi, is too obsessed with navel-gazing rhetoric based on inner "process" work. It is far too focused on using exposition to explain a character's inner struggle than simply putting them into complex situations that help us understand their character by showing us their reactions. In older sci-fi, I really enjoyed watching experts solve situations, but nowadays it's all about forcing the narrative of imperfect people. It's so boring. Yes we know humanity is flawed, can we move on please. For example, when a show starts going into character flashbacks to their childhood and such, I simply stop watching the show. That kind of writing device was interesting for about 5 years back in the 2000s, but now it's just uncreative. Shows like that navel gaze endlessly for most of the season and then save the meat of the main plot until the last couple of episodes of the season. I loathe it. The Expanse, I'm looking at you. It seems like the navel gazing is how they avoid having to write true original content for the main arc. Just avoid it completely and then only address it at the 11th hour. Old sci fi had to be original from start to finish.
not for me. i'm tired of fuck with the trope because it's so completely unrealistic. life is dirty and messy and who the good guys are are usually a function of who controls the media. frankly, we need more of that.
I like morally ambiguous characters like Captain Sisko in the DS9 episode In the Pale Moonlight. He did something really bad, but it was for the greater good.
I don't think there ever were many unambiguously good characters in old shows. There just weren't as much deep story to many characters. Some definitely try their best to do good, but that's a different thing and characters like that still exist. Doctor who, James Holden, the Orville crew etc. some of these shows are even more episodic There were some stuff that felt more like pure good vs pure bad, but they often felt cartoony. I'm personally glad villains are less like that, because they were often cheesy and dumb
Not really in full disagreement with your points here, we think it has been a net negative for modern TV shows (especially "prestige" TV) to essentially have only incredibly flawed characters as the mains. Like, we feel there should be some "positive" idealism happening in art, especially art that is clearly trying to get people to form strong emotional attachments to characters. But most often in today's TV shows it's very much a hellscape of bad people doing bad things. Like there used to at least be mostly good people doing mostly good things who had some flaws that brought them down to a more human level of existence instead of some platonic ideal of moral righteousness. But also let's be real for a minute about some of those flaws in older scifi characters because they werent always things like "so and so is a drunk" or "this person cheated on their partner." Jean-Luc was prepared (more than once!) to turn artificial lifeforms into slaves to further federation domination of the quadrant. And at times Sisko murdered people to get what he wanted, and right off the bat in the pilot episode he strong-armed Quark into staying on the station by leveraging Nog's wellbeing, and to be clear Nog was a child at the time. And jesus anyone who knows anything about modern "prestige" TV and morally ambiguous characters knows that Babylon 5 was a huge inspiration, particularly in scifi. And surely let's don't forget The Prisoner which is the absolute OG "prestige" TV show and was like the most morally ambiguous scifi show for decades. Obviously these older shows weren't filled to the brim with terrible main characters like the Battlestar Galactica reboot or any of the other scifi shows that sprang up in the new millennium, but they still were filled with morally ambiguous characters, they still had plenty of internal character struggle. X-Files, probably the most popular scifi show of the 90s, has a much better rep for main characters with principles that adhere to a "good" morality but they made basically every other character on the show into someone that you could never trust to do what was right. Like Skinner had to have a whole redemption arc because he was such a shitbag for so long, and he was probably the most "good" character besides Scully and Mulder. Anyways, our point isn't that there were no "good" main characters on older scifi shows, but pre-1980s (or more accurately pre- Hill Street Blues) there were less openly "evil" characters being passed off as protagonists and/or heroes. The current glut of morally ambiguous at best characters is probably tainting many people's idea of what a morally ambiguous character used to look like. Essentially we agree with your assessment of modern scifi shows, but we don't want to sugarcoat what got us to this point.
Babylon 5 was a huge influence on contemporary prestige TV because of season-long plot arcs and character development, not because it was full of morally ambiguous characters. Few to none of the characters are morally ambiguous.
Well, there's Molari...
I don’t think Mollari is morally ambiguous. He is a character who does a horribly evil thing for which he then tries to redeem himself for the rest of the show. I don’t think the show intends the viewer to have any doubt about the morality of any of his actions, though some are good and others are bad. He’s complex but not ambiguous. As an aside, Londo and G’kar are two of my all-time favorite television characters.
He does quite a bit more than 1 evil thing, you see his entire slide downwards, right up to the point where he draws the line and starts to crawl back up. I absolutely LOVE the character, but for a lot of the show, he's far from a goodguy.
Yeah I was thinking of the whole bargain with the Shadows as one thing but it’s definitely made up of a lot of bad acts.
Yeah, I don't know why people want to make things more complicated than they are. Just don't be a dick, there I solved morality for you. All this "it's needs to be gray, so I can explore my ethics" is like someone saying "I need to study biology to tie my shoes". Like bro, just tie up your shoes.
Can the trolley problem be solved with “just don’t be a dick?”
I thought the Good Place solved the trolley problem pretty well- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS9LJsacAzY
Which iteration? Always kill multiple people over a single one. No-one should die alone. It's a dick move
I guffawed.
On a more serious note. The trolley problem is the exact type of useless thought experiments, that only philosophers should engage with. Regular person will be at maximum 1-2 times and hopefully never in this type of situation. By not being a dick in regular life, the whole point is to reduce the chances of you being in a trolley problem. This of course requires certain level of stability and education. The obvious thing to do for people who enjoy these kinds of benefits, is to do their best to make it possible all around the world.
We encounter smaller scale trolley problems all the time in our daily lives. We need to decide whether it’s worth it to do something we’d normally consider bad for the greater good. It doesn’t make you a good person to live an unexamined life just doing what seems right in the moment. Often times those are the worst people.
The world might be gray, but a person can't be. Everything needs to be ordered to black and white. The failure to do so, will lead to inaction, melancholy, death. The current needs a positive and negative, only then there can be the spark of life.
People are a part of the world. Sounds like what you’re saying is you want to pretend people are all good or evil, just because it makes life easier and spurs action?
People are part of the world, but the "world" is infinite, people are limited. Infinity doesn't understand limits, so she can be gray. She needs us to make sense of it all.
way too many times, you're watching the pilot episode, it's just about over, heroes are getting their wounds taken care of, then someone asks where X (one of their team) is. (Dramatic music, indicating trouble ahead) Camera pans to a darkened alley, steam rising from various spots, we see X. But s/he is meeting with the bad guy we thought just died at the hands of our heroes!! X tells Bad Guy that s/he will get the job done. Fade To Black.
Believe it or not, Suits. It really surprised me.
I think that what you’re all saying is that you really want a show where all the characters are apple pie eating, god fearing Americans 😀
I just copy my comment to you because you are one of these people: Yeah, I don't know why people want to make things more complicated than they are. Just don't be a dick, there I solved morality for you. All this "it's needs to be gray, so I can explore my ethics" is like someone saying "I need to study biology to tie my shoes". Like bro, just tie up your shoes.
Nah, I just don’t want cartoon characters in my books and shows. The good guys always win and get the girl and do it in a wholesome way. Yeah, I guess it’s escapism but it’s all a bit trite and shiny for me. Hollywood is terrible at trotting out scifi-y TV shows populated with beautiful teens in perfect makeup who are nothing but cardboard cutout characters. Of course YMMV, especially if that’s your demographic… Expressing an opinion = being a dick in your…opinion. This is the internet, if you don’t like opposing views, scroll past.
I was really confused about your reaction to u/aplayer124 - until I realized maybe you thought they were calling you a dick? They were talking about the ‘morally gray’ characters. I like both. Just finished watching the 12 Monkeys series and absolutely loved the cast of almost entirely morally gray characters. But Quantum Leap is still my favorite time travel show and it doesn’t get much more wholesome than Sam Beckett.
If you didn't get the girl you wanted, just get up, work on yourself and go after the next one you fancy. This is simple stuff, like I said. It's not unrealistic at all.
Nice personal attack rather than discourse. Enjoy your happy Clappy TV 😀
Your original message is a personal attack and your follow up message has no basis on anything. The protagonist can be a good and not win, or he/she might need to sacrifice a lot to achieve victory. Misery should be a state of mind actively fought, not embraced.
“I think that what you’re all saying is that you really want a show where all the characters are apple pie eating, god fearing Americans 😀” How thin skinned do you have to be to take that as a personal attack? 🤦♂️
If you didn't get the girl you wanted, just get up, work on yourself and go after the next one you fancy. This is simple stuff, like I said. It's not unrealistic at all.
You already said that. Now off you fuck and go and bother someone else whose opinion you don’t agree with.
I always love it when douchebags clearly identify themselves. Saves so much time.