Funny Picture

A friend slipped me a copy of Ron Moore's pilot for PRECINCT 17. It's a cop show in a world where magic functions as tech.

And for this reason, I found it a bit tedious. The magic functions as tech. There is no mystery to it. Instead of cell phones, everybody has crystals that function, well, pretty much exactly the way cell phones do. The forensics is visually cool, but not really any cleverer than CSI.

I tend to think that what makes science fiction and fantasy resonate is a metaphor. The fantastic element speaks to something that is true in real life, but in a less graphic way. The werewolf represents our primal urges. The Frankenstein creature is technology run amok.

If there is no metaphor, and no mystery, then all you have is a corollary of Arthur C. Clarke's dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic: if magic is indistinguishable from advanced technology, then it stops being magic.

Also, as Gene Roddenberry pointed out, you can't hang the solution to a mystery on tech. There is a pretty big reveal at the end of Precinct 17 that would be satisfying if we knew the rules of the show's magic. But we don't. So there's just a surprise, divided between "oh, it's him?" and "oh, so you can do that in this universe?" And the latter takes the wind out of the sails of the former.

I would happily watch a cop show in a world where magic functions. But then give me myths that resonate. LOST GIRL, for example, had cops and fae. But each of the fae stand for something human. They are character-centered stories based on human sins and urges personified by fae who take those sins and urges to extremes. What makes LOST GIRL worth watching is that the solution to the mystery is something emotionally satisfying. It's not based on, "Look! We happen to have a Fingerprint Fairy here, and she can solve our mystery."

CAPRICA, also by Ron Moore, was all about tech, but it was first of all about characters and their relationships. A father with more money and genius than sense tries to bring his daughter back to life so he can understand why she belonged to a fanatical terrorist cult... and creates nemesis. The fantastical element was great. But the rest of the story was equally compelling.

So maybe I'm being a little too philosophical. Precinct 17 failed for me, ultimately, because I didn't care about any of the characters. I felt I'd seen them all in other cop shows. And their problems were uninteresting. Magic, alone, does not warrant a story.