Where Are All The Far-Future TV Shows With Friendly Aliens?
I haven’t watched regular TV for awhile. I still watch Doctor Who and Red Dwarf when they’re on, so that means about 20 hours of TV per year (and even then it’ll be via ABC iview or some other non TV medium) Recently I’d got my schedules in order to actually have some chill-out time around 11pm. Of course, being a workaholic and never actually having any kind of ‘not doing anything’ time for years, I was at a loss.
After an hour of searching online for well-written science fiction TV shows with aliens that I hadn’t seen before, I slumped back in my chair frustrated, annoyed and disappointed. Reminding myself, once again, why I wasn’t actually watching TV.
Where are all the alien shows? I personally equate good science fiction with being set in the far future and having a lot of aliens about. Why is there this insane focus on human-only development set in the ‘not-to-distant’ future? Surely this has been done to death, and with so many apocalyptic shows out there, quite literally. Is it all about accessibility? The success of Star Wars proves people want series’ with aliens in them.
Dark Matter and The Expanse have garnered critical acclaim, yet they actually have no aliens. The most recent series with a plethora of aliens, not counting Doctor Who, was over 6 years ago, when Stargate Universe was put into terminal suspended animation. Even so, SG:U didn’t have that many anyway.
At the end of the year we’ll have a new series of X-Files, with mainly character pieces and some alienesque monster barely seen. We’ll finally get Star Trek: Discovery, but as it is set at the very beginning of humanity’s journey into space, I doubt we’ll see that many aliens in that either. Apart from the Doctor Who Christmas special (which, as the Doctor is an alien, kind of counts) the only real show we’ve got to look forward to with lots of aliens in it is ‘The Orville’, a Galaxy Quest style comedy series.
Even the new series of Red Dwarf won’t have aliens!
So, does anyone know of any other new series out there that has friendly aliens working together with humans set in the far future? Maybe even made by a non-English speaking country? I’d love to see it. Please leave a comment about your favorite show with aliens in it. I’ve probably seen it, but list it anyway. You might be helping out another reader find a series they’d never heard of before.
Otherwise, I’ll just have to wait for September 2018 for my next fix of aliens on Doctor Who. (Or finally get around to watching some episodes of Andromeda!}
