Braga Discusses 'Threshold' Paranoia

[Qasim]

http://www.trektoday.com/news/251005_02.shtml

Brannon Braga believes that it's mostly coincidence that paranoid '50s-style science fiction is predominating on the television network this fall, but he adds that "it's important to note that science fiction and horror usually reflect something going on in the national psyche."

Speaking to Newsday, the former Star Trek: Enterprise executive producer and other science fiction writers spoke of the fears of terrorism that may have helped fuel not only Braga's Threshold on CBS but NBC's Surface, and ABC's Invasion, each of which has also been compared to ABC's sophomore mystery-thriller Lost. "Aliens in our midst, insinuating their godless thoughts into our brains, commandeering our bodies. Paranoia lies like a poison fog upon the land," wrote Neil Holston in his summary of body-snatching TV extraterrestrials.

[skritsys]

I would much rather watch Invasion than watch a new show by Braga.

[Ponchoandy]

Braga's an idiot. Since when should anybody take what the moron says at face value (or any value at all for that matter)?

[MarshAngel]

So alien threats are a metaphor for terrorism? Doesn't quite work for me as an explanation and gives way too much credit to pop psych, which I sometimes find annoyingly oversimplistic. I'm sure that may be a part of it but I think it has more to do with the time finally being right. I suspect many scifi series ideas may have been floating around out there but the networks were'nt willing to take the risk given the expense and the high likelihood of failure. Lost probably opened the door and allowed them to find a way they could bring scifi back to TV in a way that the audience could buy without freaking anyone out too much.

I think Lost reminds me of movies like The Sixth Sense and The Others. You know there are supernatural aspects to it but you could sit there and watch the show with all the drama and intensity of just good story-telling for a good long while and the supernatural, scifi aspects were more like icing on the cake rather than the real focus; which is very different from shows like Star Trek and Farscape which while good, not everyone will warm up to with aliens in full makeup.

Threshold seems to try and present itself as an investigative drama first and scifi second and that seems to be the running theme this season.

[skritsys]

Proof positive that crap gets made a lot faster than good scifi.