alt Hacker NewsOne thing with some modern sci-fi shows is that it's more of a message with a disguise of a story rather than a story with a disguised message.
The writers justify the change by saying (correctly) that the message is important and that right now is the most important time to say the message. The message became more important than the vehicle that it travelled in so poor story writing is acceptable.
It's like Christian rock music, it's okay and if you are Christian you might enjoy it both for the message and the music but if you just want good music you are likely not going to enjoy it as much as regular "secular" rock.
But there's also rock music that everyone can enjoys which contains (not sure the word to describe it) non obvious but religious-adjacent themes.
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> It's like Christian rock music
its usually not good though. If it was good they would not market it as Christian. Lots of bands have Christian lyrics without Christian marketing - U2 for example. I suppose that is the equivalent of the SF story with the disguised message.
Please go back and re-read some pulp scifi from, say, 70 years back and then spend some time scrolling through microfilm copies of newspapers from the same era.
You will find that SciFi has been mostly social commentary for quite a long time; what tends to throw us is familiarity!
Sci-fi has always been political.
Star Trek exists because Gene Roddenberry's military drama was cut for making political statements[0], so he moved the political statements to be in space in the future.
[0] https://collider.com/gene-roddenberry-the-lieutenant-series/
As someone with "Don't Panic" tattoo'd on my left forearm, and as I pointed out in another comment: Adams' Magnum Opus is in no avoiding its messaging, the politics/author's opinion is extremely clear.
Can you give an example of the old, subtle (that's the word you were looking for, it's a subtle reference/theme) sci-fi show that was a "story with a disguised message" instead of the current "message with a disguised story"? I'm just trying to level set here.
Have you ever watched Star Trek? Either the Original Series or The Next Generation?
Because apolitical they were not. Like, emphatically. Sometimes they were subtle, other times they were pretty heavy-handed.
Sci-fi has never, ever, been apolitical.
Nah, politics in shows is great. It's like CGI. It can really make a show pop if it's well thought out, subtle, and feels realistic.
People complain about it when it seems to be used as an excuse for a lack other aspects of the show, or it makes everything seem unrealistic because they were more keen on putting it in than actually caring about whether it was realistic or at least made things feel realistic to the viewer.
The OG Jurassic Park had lots of politics and lots of CGI. No-one complained about it, because it was well done. If they had a jerkily animated raptor judo flipping a t-rex for no other reason than the director thought it would be cool to include then people would be saying the CGI was awful.