20 Minutes into the Future

I don’t think people like shows set in the Near Future. I don’t know why, but they almost never make it.

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it has something to do with the setting being both too unfamiliar and too familiar at the same time. Even if the setting is basically “20 Minutes into the Future”, it still tends to confuse your average person.

I think too it’s because your average person will start dissecting the setting for plausibility. Every little piece of technology introduced into the setting will be dissected for its believability, and inevitably, something will come across as too unrealistic for your average person.

You don’t have that problem with shows set in the Far Future. In a hundred years, a thousand, it doesn’t seem weird to have ray guns or spaceships or telepathic people. But fifty years from now…it just doesn’t feel right to most people.

Of course, it’s all looking at it from the wrong angle. The premise of these Near Future shows isn’t to create a plausible future but simply to tell interesting stories with a few fantastic elements. I look at all stories set in the future to take place in alternate universes. No more relevant to the believability of what the future will look like than Middle Earth is to how the ancient world was. But most people can’t make that hurdle.

So Minority Report had a decent premiere episode, but I don’t think it’ll make it. If it was set in the now with a man who could see the future or set a thousand years from now, maybe, but 20 Mins into Tomorrow is probably too big a leap for the average viewer to make.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE