Why We Need A Jedi TV Series Set In The Modern World

Now Star Wars films are falling from the sky like a meteor shower of Force-inspired entertainment, maybe Disney will unleash Star Wars in an alternative universe, and modern urban setting.

KPop group EXO released the single Lightsaber in 2015, a collaborative project with Disney promoting Star Wars II The Force Awakens. In the music video cool Jedi youths roamed the streets, visited a bar, ran into a slick Sith, and were just hip AF with lighsabers on hand.

I found these minutes of footage way more interesting than all recent Star Wars films combined. The idea of Jedi and Sith gangs roaming the streets, fighting to rule the underworld or maintain the law… Could anything be cooler?

Transplanting Jedis into the present day or near future offers a host of fabulous storytelling and aesthetic opportunities. Forget maintaining the timeline, or keeping visual consistency. Restrictions are minimal. Instead, go wild creating a fresh, dark, street style infused Jedi world.

And the stories! The same kind of tale that inspired the original Star Wars can easily be put in play. Ruling party corruption, dodgy officials, power struggles, and arguments over belief systems—the list of potential plot points is endless. But modern aspects can easily be integrated too, so the take is familiar yet fresh.

Lightsaber fights in a location that is a tad Blade Runner would be brilliant. Forget bikie gangs, mafia families, and fighting for thrones now the Jedis and Siths are in town. An urban Star Wars TV show would be lit (pun intended).

An alternate reality means different drugs, wilder music, and a new world order. And the robotics! With the right production team, this could be a seriously creative explosion of small screen storytelling.

Come on Disney. Be bold. Use the Force. Seize the day.

Note: You can watch the music video for Lightsaber by EXO on the SMTOWN YouTube channel.

TV's Obsession With Women In Their Underwear

There are whole days and nights in my life where I've had clothes on. But in TV Land (and film for the sake of argument), it's almost an impossible ask for a female character.

A few years back I started realizing how many scenes female talent are asked to do in underwear. Now it's getting ridiculous. If it were a drinking game, every night spent watching TV would leave viewers a drunken mess.

Someone told me all these underwear scenes are actually empowering. Apparently if the underwear isn't lacy, it's a girl power moment. And when lacy, a woman is owning her hotness. I disagree on all fronts. I think it's still sexualization, glossed with a feminist sheen.

Representation of women on television has always been tricky, and an uphill battle from the early days of the small screen for women to be presented as complex, nuanced characters. Now they're complex, nuanced characters—who don't always get to wear clothes.

If you're unclear on what I'm talking about, here are a dozen recurring women-in-her-underwear onscreen scenarios. It's becoming the norm for women to act without clothes on. In a lot of cases a stretchy singlet replaces a bra but I'm counting it as underwear. I think it's meant to stop anyone from calling out the sexualization but in fact it's preferred cause it shows more nipple.

While I think it's fine for the occasional dash of realism, it's unrealistic—if not downright ridiculous— for so many scenes to be done without clothing. In today's world, it would be great if female actresses got to be dressed as often as their male counterparts. Wild idea, right?

1. Morning Undies

You see this a lot in "serious" television. Like procedurals, and legal dramas. A female character wakes up, and gets out of bed. We get an underwear and bra or singlet shot, and then she dresses, usually pulling on jeans.

Thing is, the male characters more often start the day wearing a t-shirt in bed. Then it's a cut to the breakfast table. Or we meet them coming downstairs of a morning, or in the car on the way to work.

Why do women have to begin the day with a gratuitous flesh shot?

Once you see this pattern, you can't unsee it, and it will really annoy you.

2. Argument Undies

No idea why, but female characters on TV love to save their argument scenes for when they're in their underwear. 

I don't know about you, but I like to fight with my clothes on. 

3. Underwear And One More Drink

Apparently women without (most of their) clothes and booze go hand in hand.

When men on TV drink alone, it's usually in a t-shirt or shirt, and they have a beer. Or when they've had a hard day at work, they pull off their tie, undo a few buttons, and go the hard stuff like scotch or whisky.

Female characters on the other hand, like to drink at home in their undies. Usually it's wine, but if they're hardcore in a down to earth way they wear a singlet instead of a bra with their pants, and drink beer from a bottle.

The funniest version is when it's cold so they wear a jumper or a wrap while they drink. In their underwear.

Still unclear why women can't get drunk with their pants on.

4. Locker Room Dresslessness

This one is especially true for high school dramas but pops up anywhere with change rooms, like the gym or the workplace. The girls pause and have a conversation in bras and undies. 

Guys, however, usually don't have a top on, but they are wearing pants. The least they wear are boxers. Why is that?

5.  Undies In Space

Storytelling in outer space offers endless opportunities for women-in-underwear scenes. 

A lot of the time this is presented as authenticity because the female characters are in no-nonsense undies and singlets. Thing is, I follow NASA on Insta and female astronauts seem to be doing a-okay in t-shirts and stuff.

On TV women prefer to fly their ships in as little clothing as possible. And when they wake up from stasis, they rarely get dressed. Likewise if they live and work in space, they just stick to boy short panties. Apparently this is clothing in orbit. Maybe the lack of gravity does something to the brain.

6. Type This

If you want to read emails or find information online, you do it in your underwear. Most googling in TV Land is done wearing undies, whether lying on the bed, sitting at the desk or relaxing on the couch. 

Do search engines work better when women are unclothed? It's a question for the ages.

7. Prison Slash Experimental Facility Undies 

When a character wakes up in prison, especially a futuristic one, she is usually in pants and the singlet alternate version of a bra. Are coveralls or even a shift too much to ask for?

Same for when she's being experimented on, or used for organ harvesting. She's stripped down to her undies. I don't know why she wouldn't be in a hospital style gown, or alternately just naked.

Maybe a bad guy can explain.

8. The Underwear Dance

Television insists that when women bop around at home to pop music, they can't put pants or a skirt on. Or shorts. Or even a wrap.

You get the drift. 

It's still not clear why a female character can't dance around the house dressed.

9. Underwear/Makeup/Conversation Combo

This one is so popular and legit drives me up the wall.

Women on TV put makeup on before clothes. I understand if the fashion has to go over their head but usually it's a shirt. And they're often applying lipstick so it won't make a difference?

Also they have a female friend or gay male friend over, and they drop a heap of exposition. In their bra. Once again I'm a weird person who usually has clothes on before chatting with friends, whatever their sexual orientation.

10. Undies 'n Ugly Crying

Men on television rarely curl up in a ball of despair against the wall in their undies but this is a standard TV show move for female characters. Whether drinking, just having gotten a phone call that was basically A REVEAL, or dealing with a wild plot twist, women will slide to the ground in their underwear and have a meltdown.

Are they supposed to look more vulnerable this way? Is it another opportunity to bring the sexy back? Or a little of both?

11. Answering The Door In Your Undies

Many times on television, female characters answer the door in their undies. (Sometimes they have a gun, but that seems like a sub-category,) The front door, the back door, the side door, and the door to the basement—is this is going to a weird place? And now I'm multi-punning.

Sometimes they throw on a jacket or dressing gown but leave it hanging open which seems pointless.

I asked a friend if she'd ever answered the door in her underwear and she looked at me as if I were crazy. "So that's a no?"

12. Undies And The Apocalypse

When the world ends and things get weird with bunkers and roaming militia, we're back to the singlet-as-bra and undies combo. 

I feel like when times are tough, I'd at least want a nice cardigan. 

The Politician

When the American presidency becomes an incomparable farce, creators of fictional worlds have to bend and twist their tales to avoid the lure of entertainment breaking in the face of hypnogogic reality.

And so new Netflix series The Politician kicks off, fittingly, with the lives of the one percent characters so rich and lost they live like caricatures. And they seemed familiar.

When I was little, I used to play with Barbie dolls. My cousin and I would eat tea biscuits covered in pink icings and sprinkles while Barbie lived a wealthy life. Lots of afternoon teas, and outfit changes. She was beaten, chased, raped and had sex with every other doll on the bus. Occasionally, she murdered Ken, and her fellow Barbie doppelgangers. There were drugs, alcohol, dramatic arguments and weird stilted conversations both profound yet empty, entertaining yet hyper-real. We didn't understand the context of anything we were acting out. Like sponges we soaked up elements of the dramatic, with no true understanding of meaning, but disturbing in retrospect.

Welcome to the wealthy leads of The Politician. They say glib, clever things, like shadows of profound thought. Ludicrous exaggerations in an era where exaggeration is sometimes accurate. Like my Barbies, they enact outrageous plotlines without hesitation because the acts lack engagement. These teens possess only a bare inkling of the oddness as they go through the motions. But by graduation, they, too, look back with a matured awareness of the disturbing nature of the incidents at play. At play itself.

Payton wants to be student body president. That is the seam of gold we chase with him. Each season of this series will follow an election. But the vote they're truly chasing is the viewer's. Onscreen and off, the hope of adoration: simpatico. And therein lies the ugly beauty and the beautiful art that is the structured falsity and fractured genius of these storytellers at play. The Politician is an entertainment sell as clear and deliberately murky as any political campaign in the real world.

Payton's team has evaluated modern politicians to work out a plot, if you will, a strict regime of self that ends with him becoming the American President. Some critics have pointed out the present day situation ruins the premise, but why not view the current presidency as a statistical anomaly? That denial in the script is not a flaw, but a reflection. The great wish of the American people. A hope that seems crass in the face of a crass presidency. In a fictional reality, reality could become less than fiction. True crime, while still in play.

In Payton's world, politics is perception. Even inside the screen, reality remains in flux. To describe the pace as erratic is to misunderstand the intent. The erraticism matches a world off-kilter, where pace and predictability can give way to the unexpected and surreal at any moment. People who live their lives like characters in a drama are watching characters in a drama live their lives. In a modern world no fictional writer could compete with, the imagined must become real. Su-rreal. SO REAL.

The Politicians is very, very clever in an era of sometimes rampant, often veiled anti-intellectualism. Where those who cling to traditional hierarchies of critical thought save their judgment almost exclusively for clever fare, as if threatened by the ideas of others, and betrayed by the powers giving them a platform. A quick search of online reviews shows the compliments are mostly begrudging, like sugar-free sprinkles.

And they, too, become part of the story: the expected statistics. Criticism outside the screen, yet representative of the culture of criticism inside the screen. How we judge defines us. What we judge, defines us. In judging such a program, the clueless become another exaggeration. The premise disarms critiquers of their power. But television that challenges is used to being railed at. A recalcitrant child who keeps misinterpreting the instruction "be good".

The storylines amplify and distort. They steal from the rich(ness of the real world) and give to the poor (onscreen lives). But what they steal was often already stolen. An ouroboros between 3D and 2D living. Television incarnate. A kind of demented Robin Hood reworking through an entertainment filter. Even as the characters grow, they evolve into variations of other caricatures. Carrying their old caricatures inside them. Like costuming that survived a set upgrade.

Everyone is real. Everyone is not. Everyone is aware entertainment is reality. Everyone is aware reality is entertainment. The filters are endless. The kaleidoscope is made of gold, like the toilet rejected by Trump's White House. Like an Instagram account that is live, forever.

The characters try to earn points with wokeness, to be seen as seeing the unseen. But every gesture is a pose in a funhouse of mirrors. A litany of inauthentic reflections more solid than the person found in the center, written to the core. We wander from episode to episode. We run. We watch them follow the patterns of wealth. We watch them follow the patterns of poverty. Everyone is not real. Nobody's pain is of value. Everyone is in pain. The colors are saturated, but neatly contained. We laugh at tragedy, and it's tragic, how we laugh. Nobody can control the humor. We are all here, together, on the Barbie bus. Popular culture, twisting the knife.

Payton wants to be student body president—so he can be an American president. Because the fictional character has found a pattern in the non-fictional, who present as fictional in a non-fictional world. The Politician is like a YouTube channel that opens toys so we can see inside the box. Except the box contains another box, and in a scathing indictment, the toys are crying. Laughing while crying. Payton sings to cry. His tears are in tune. We are all in tune.

We are amused, we are endlessly amused.

By the pain. Bothered by the pain. Both real, and unreal.

Science Fiction TV Turns Toward Biology

Rather than the coldness of computers, imaginative organic science has been popular in scifi TV recently, the prevalence of machinery giving way to a more biological interpretation of the mysteries of the universe. To put it bluntly, spores, trees and fungi infect our perception of the future.

Imagining Future Science

What will science allow humanity to do in the future? That is the core of science fiction. For many years the focus was on projecting a version of current technology. Yet recently it feels like a more imaginative interpretation is happening.

Plants and organisms, even if they're made of light and data rather than solid matter, are everywhere. Has the way we think about what is possible, changed?

Contrary to popular belief, science isn't linear. It experiences trends. One recurrent theme has been time, or the manipulation of time, and that has bled into our entertainment, bringing with it an almost spiritual aspect.

Below are some popular television shows that include an organic element (for want of a better term). Perhaps organisms are the ultimate storytelling metaphor for life and a sense of mortality. Maybe, like time, they are symbolic of the boundaries that fascinate humanity the most.

12 Monkeys

The red forest is an integral part of this show's mythology.

12 Monkeys is a beautifully written series. Time travel is a twisting concept and it can be difficult to maintain a narrative hold. The show begins with the character of Cole being sent back in time to stop a plague that wipes out humanity. He partners with the virologist Cassie, and they encounter resistance from a group called The 12 Monkeys.

The 12 Monkeys are revealed to be fanatics dedicated to bringing The Red Forest into existence. The red forest exists beyond time. At certain points characters drink tea made from leaves sourced in the red forest, and experience visions.

The scenes in the red forest are eerie and compelling. They tie in with science but seem to speak to a primal part of the mind.

Star Trek Discovery

A recent addition to the Star Trek television universe, Discovery moves beyond the standard ways of navigating through space that have been created by Star Trek over the years, and introduces the Spore Drive.

You'll see a lot of debate online regarding the plausibility of this tech. The Spore Drive takes the ship from one place to another in an instance. Basically the idea is the technology utilizes a network of spores to move across the galaxy.

Rather than arguing the logistics or potentiality, my interest is focused on the fact it is a spore-driven concept: modeled on an organic idea. That at the heart (or should that be seed) of Star Trek's greatest engineering technology, are spores.

 The OA

An alternate reality thriller, The OA follows a lead character that inadvertently travelled across dimensions, a journey kick started by a series of body motions that need to be carried out by a group.

The recent season introduced the idea of a giant tree network that spreads across dimensions. The tree communicated with our lead. Seeds and branches are utilized as a way of explaining a complex multiverse reality. The tree also represents a continuing thematic thread for the show: that community is essential to survival.

The OA is at heart a series about alternate realities but it uses this exploration of a possible corner of science to also explore the concept of self. The OA appears to blend science and the spiritual, but it's interesting that a large reveal in regards to interdimensionality takes science to an organic place.

The Expanse

A brilliant example of science fiction TV, one of the story cornerstones to kick start the show is Detective Miller's hunt for a missing woman. By the end of the first season we see that she has been taken over by a seemingly sentient organism.

The Expanse includes a lot of political drama. Conspiracies abound, thanks to a book series that provides fantastic fodder in terms of complex narrative. But it was the futuristic organism (I've seen it referenced online as protomolecule) transforming people that cements an organic element within a series that prides itself on scientific accuracy.

Aliens are behind the infectious construct. The plot is quite complex and becomes more so when it's revealed humanity has begun its own experiments using the protomolecule. But a protomolecule that manipulates biomass, with references to seeds and infections, makes it a great example of an organic representation of futuristic science.

In conclusion…

What messages are currently echoing across small screens in the science fiction genre?

Perhaps that everything in the universe is interconnected. That our minds relate to plants and living organisms as representations of life and death, themes that are always a human preoccupation even when we're travelling the stars.

It's interesting to see where our cultural imagination takes us. Here's to constantly intriguing unfolding scifi stories on the small screen.