I'm currently getting through the first season of The X-Files (slowly).

The episode "Space" is about a space shuttle being sabotaged. And damn, people really did think it was the end of history in the 90s, didn't they? The episode starts with Scully asking Mulder "Who would want to sabotage the US space program? The Soviet Union is gone." And Mulder is like "Maybe terrorists. The space program represents the superiority of American progress. Or maybe it was sabotaged by people who hate technology." And then he talks about maybe its about hiding aliens because it's Mulder and of course he would say that.

And here I am thinking about the current state of US Space exploration and Space X, and how naive people were in the 90s. They really thought the US was funding space research because they cared about human progress.

They really thought that this was it. That the US had won and capitalism had won and that it could only get better from here. They didn't realise that the Soviet Union was the only reason the US was pumping money into Space exploration. It wasn't about progress to the US oligarchs, it was about propaganda. That's why it took Sputnik to really get US to really try and catch up.

Once the Soviet Union broke up and "Space race" propaganda glow wore off, they didn't have to compete with Soviet science anymore, so the funding slowed down now the whole thing is gradually becoming a privatised mess whose progress pales in comparison to Soviet or 70s NASA.

Now all they have to do for space propaganda is get Elon to dance around and send a car or some billionaires into orbit on a piss leaking shuttle now and again.

The West in the 90s had no idea just how screwed they were about to be, now that capitalism no longer felt threatened by a scientific communist superpower.

Holy shit Dirt_Owl it was just a throw away line in the X-Files what is wrong with you. bird-screm1

  • someone [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    3 months ago

    One that's aged pretty well is Babylon 5. The show's creator also wrote like 95% of the episodes. He was much more cynical and suspicious of "end of history" narratives than most showrunners of the era. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the plot details. But let's just say that his opinions about fascism and fascists are crystal clear: "must be stopped by any means necessary" and "shoot them early and often" respectively.

    • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Writing nine episodes of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe while it's turning into even more of a hyper-capitalist action figure commercial hellscape will do that to you.

      Edit: No, seriously, why did they feel the need to churn out "meteor that transforms into a wooly mammoth" as a He-Man toy?

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I'm not so sure, he also wrote Superman: Grounded where Superman was a weird, condescending Randian dick. Although that comic did switch writers at some point, so I'm not sure how much of that was JMS.

      Babylon 5 had some awful filler episodes (TKO being the prime example) which never should've been made.

      • someone [comrade/them, they/them]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Babylon 5 had some awful filler episodes (TKO being the prime example) which never should've been made.

        This is true. But that was mostly in the first season where quite a few episodes were written by others, and JMS didn't yet have the clout to fend off the worst of studio meddling.

        I do always tell first-time watchers of B5 to just skip TKO. Thankfully it has nothing to do with the overarching plot.

        Update, I just looked up the writer of TKO. Several of the earlier weaker episodes were his. He also wrote Born to the Purple, Deathwalker, Eyes, A Spider in the Web, GROPOS, and Knives. Some good concepts, but definitely not series highlights because of the clumsy writing. Frankly I'd put them all in the bottom 10% of the series.