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| Dominic Sandbrook: does he know how to drive the TARDIS? |
On tv, no one can hear you scream.
Or at least that’s what it seemed like last night,
as I screamed enthusiastically at historian Dominic Sandbrook’s presentation of
Tomorrow’s Worlds: the Unearthly History of Science Fiction, on BBC Two.
Dominic did a reasonable job of guiding us through
the science fiction of space, the first theme of this four-part series. But as his focus was film, I felt his
theories were left a little lacking in leaving out a lot of the fiction that
had inspired the movies.
Witness Dominic’s account of the roots of sci-fi. The origin of it all, he says, comes from
tales of trips to the Moon, from the likes of Jules Verne. You can see why Dominic took this tack. Verne’s book was very influential on one of
sci-fi’s first ever films - Le Voyagedans la Lune, a 1902 French silent movie, directed by Georges Méliès.
And yet the first Moon stories of sci-fi were published
in the 1630s, over two centuries before Jules Verne, and way before the days of
cinema. Both Somnium, by Johannes Kepler, and The Man in the Moone by Francis Godwin (the Bishop of Llandaff in
Cardiff!) were lunar journeys that involved meetings with alien life. Dominic says the cool thing about Jules Verne
is that he got the maths right. Well,
Johannes Kepler was Imperial Mathematician to the Pope! Kepler really
got his maths right. He was the man who
gave us the laws of how the planets move in orbit about the Sun!
Perhaps the programme’s biggest problem was
ignoring the influence of that Shakespeare of sci-fi, HG Wells.
Dominic suggested that Star Trek was Victorian in its attitude to other peoples and
nations. But, that most influential of
the Victorian writers, Wells had warned against such an attitude with The War of the Worlds, a cautionary tale
about empires swanning around as if they owned the place.
The programme also suggested that Victorian sci-fi
had put man at the centre of the Universe.
And yet, the era’s most influential work, The War of the Worlds did exactly the opposite; humans are faced
with the technologically superior and invading Martians (I suspect Dominic is conveniently
keeping this Wells tale for the next episode on ‘Invasion’).
Next up, Dominic introduces the movie masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s author, Arthur C Clarke, was determined
to move humans from their assumed centre of the cosmos, according to Dominic. And yet Clarke’s entire approach was greatly
influenced by Wells who had quoted Kepler when he said of alien life, “But who shall dwell in these worlds if they
be inhabited? … Are we, or they, Lords of the World? … And how are all things
made for man?” In other words, who’s
boss of the Universe?! Clarke was
following a line started by Kepler, and carried on by Wells.
Still, even though the programme missed out on this
longer fictional view for the sake of film, it was nonetheless thought
provoking.
The link between the sea and space was conjured up
in the programme’s account of the James Cameron movie, Avatar. The film’s main
planet, Pandora, presented an ecology very reminiscent of deep sea ecology on Earth. This is no doubt influenced by Cameron’s journey to the Mariana Trench; he’s the first person ever do a solo descent to
this deepest part of the ocean.
Science fiction began in the days of Shakespeare. It was Kepler who had first encouraged the
building of ships fit for space. In the
last few minutes of the programme, Dominic claimed the desire for space has
fizzled out. No doubt the script was written
and filmed before the ESA Rosetta mission successfully plonked a lander on a
comet speeding at 40,000mph, much to the adoring delight of the world on social
media!
