An Objective View of Characterization in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I grew up watching science fiction, mostly thanks to my dad. It was because of him that I was introduced to Star Wars and Star Trek at an early age and from there, I grew into the genre itself. It's half because of how wide the genre is and half because there is almost no limit to the breadth of the types of stories that can happen in space with various kinds of ships and peoples. Some stories within science fiction focus on one or two real staples of science fiction, being the unknown or the technology itself being the main two. But that was back in the 90's and since then, another piece that can make or break a story or set-up is brought into focus: the characters themselves.

What I'm not saying is that science fiction itself is devoid of characters, but what I am saying is that characters haven't been a large part of the spotlight in science fiction, not before the late 90's at least. Well, that I know of (even though I say I grew up on science fiction, I will mention now that my choices were rather limited up until I was a teenager and I can definitely say that my tastes have changed since my childhood and thankfully so, but different types of shows interest me and I'm more open to experiences. And even though my dad did like Star Trek, he didn't watch things like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or even Babylon Five and I find myself working on quite a backlog.).

I will also warn you, dear reader, that this is an attempt at being objective and this is only my opinion. Please don't take what I say as an ad hominem attack on your favorite show or me just being "close minded". I give everything a good solid try before deciding on whether or not I like anything. And yes, that does include Twilight.

The catalyst for this little piece was a facebook rant at how science fiction shows have become infested: "with crappy dialog about love affairs, power struggles over whos the boss, and children disappointed with their parental figures." And that the studios are doing this to "draw in the female market."

This looks less of a failure or mismanagement in trying to aim for a specific demographic and more like a failure in characterization. In this current atmosphere in television, if one makes content that is based on the characters themselves, the characters must fulfill many requirements:

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own. 
2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways. 
3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded." 
4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason. 

For this list, I merely fell back to my own general rules for when I'm writing. As a writer, I do what I can to follow these rules and above all, write characters that appeal to some sliver of myself. Whether these rules are incomplete or completely incorrect, well, I'm not perfect. But I feel that this list, for all intents and purposes, is just my general opinion as a writer.

So now, I think I should give you all an idea of when each of the four rules are upheld and broken and cite examples of it from their own shows.

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own.

For this example, I have several examples, but the one that really comes to mind is Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation). This is a character who can stand on their own, even in times of loss (Nemesis, anyone?) and still finds a reason to keep going. He's made mistakes (as seen in Tapestry among others) and learns from these while sticking to his morals even as the Federation is exploring many ethical and moral dilemmas (see Measure of a Man). Heck, he even learns to overcome such things as his thirst for revenge (First Contact).

One of the biggest failures of this in my mind is Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Stargate SG-1). This poor character comes off as if he's written to be a clone of a pre-existing character who was promoted (in other words, put on a bus) away from the SGC. It goes about as well as you'd expect. The failure isn't with the actor, but the writers as they tried to keep a cannon character around but with a new coat of paint. In the end, he never truly fully became his own character, but just "Not-O'Neill". The problem was less of a focus on the differences between the characters on top of just trying too hard.

2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways.

So many real possibilities, but I think I'm going to just pick a character out of the pile forming in my mind. I'm going to go with Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Star Trek). This guy is your typical snarky, somewhat-jerkish medical doctor character. But darn it if the character isn't likable in his own way. Heck, I could just say "every character on Star Trek and TNG" but I randomly picked from my own random list. Even if he is typically sarcastic, snarky, and can come off as a bit of a jerk, but the character has a lot of heart to him and cares about others (sometimes even to his own annoyance as seen in the 2009 movie). That's really all I can say without repeating the same old stuff that everyone knows.

The one that really stinks at this is Dr. Nicholas Rush (Stargate Universe). He does a lot of selfish things throughout the show (the whole list would take up most of a page and that's only of what I remember from the first season alone). And what's worse is that he causes a lot of people to lose their life directly or indirectly because of his selfish actions and motivations and what makes him really lose at this is the fact that the writers seem to not be able to make up their minds with this guy. They write him as a completely heartless monster yet shows that he still is human and in the end, they make him a confused character. It wouldn't bother me if they either made him more of a main character or more of an out-and-out villain. What I mean by this is that antagonists don't get as much focus as main characters for a reason, especially if they're of the Snidely Whiplash variety- because there's nothing else to them than the evil acts of evil. But even in shows where the villains are part of the focus (Dr. Horrible, Death Note), there's at least something about them that keeps the viewer interested/entertained. Heck, even the Goa'uld were entertaining because of how over-the-top they were. But this guy... he's just a complete monster of a human being who shows nothing but glee at everything and to me, he's just not likable at all.

3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded."

There's a lot of characters again that I can choose from, but this time, I think I'll go with Dr. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1). He began in SG-1 as literally the sole civilian on the team who serves as one of two scientifically-minded characters and the interpreter. However, he does more on the show than just that. He's also the moral/ethical voice of the team and in later seasons, really comes into his character, even being able to shoot as well as any member of the team, showing a nice evolution of his character.

And then there's Eli (Stargate Universe). He's literally there to explain math and to literally act out parts of old science fiction movies (mostly just the classic Planet of the Apes which to me, does get old and fast!) while babbling on and on about World of Warcraft. The way this guy is written, he is just about the kind of nerd that even the geeks would hit up for lunch money. And worse is that he just keeps being annoying. And in a lot of ways, he reminds me of the bad parts of Wesley Crusher on top of the general annoying-ness, which I guess is almost likable, but he doesn't evolve past the whole "I'm just here to spout math, Planet of the Apes quotes, and babble about WoW" stereotype. He almost makes me feel bad for being a geek.

4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason.

This is something I can't exactly cite a specific character on this because it's more of something where if the characters don't do this, no one notices, but if the characters fail in this, it's obvious. Kind of like sound editing- no one notices when it's done good, but heaven help you if you are off even a tad.

By "for no reason", I mean by "for no reason that the viewer can find which doesn't ruin the suspension of disbelief." If it shatters the viewer's suspension of disbelief, you royally screwed up and good luck stitching it back together. If the story falls apart or segues into another subplot in a way which doesn't shatter the fragile suspension of disbelief, you should be more careful. After all, each episode should be at most an "A story" and a "B story" that overlap in some way, typically not one after the other. When you finish the "A story" and go straight to the "B story", sometimes viewers get annoyed that you didn't just flesh out the two stories and have two separate but tenably linked episodes.

Outside of these rules, there's still a few things that can be found as annoying bits of characterization. One of which is when a character comes off overly emotional/depressed. This gets annoying because of such characters get old fast and when they get old, they become very cliched. What helps is if that's not one of the character's defining characteristic. It's completely fine for characters to be depressed or sad for a reason. But not for no reason other than to make the series seem "edgy and dark". When that happens, it's a sign of pandering to a specific demographic who doesn't understand what fine entertainment is. Kind of like Twilight. (I'm being serious. Twilight was specifically written AND advertised to pre-teen and teen girls. Why else would such a book which has many writers like Stephen King calling it not nice things while being hugely popular?)

Another thing to keep in mind, especially if writing for a novelization that can or is connected to Role Playing Games in general, what may be a very awesome character to readers and writers alike can become a bad thing. Case in point is Drizz't. For all accounts, I've heard that he's a good character who faces his own demons just by being a non-evil Drow. For us gamers, he's hellspawn because of his popularity spawning noobs and powergamers playing non-evil Drow en masse. Those of us who play DnD and similar games are still recovering from the ordeal. The message is "if a character is from a typically evil race of evil people, tread lightly. A whole community will thank you."

I honestly hope that I was objective in this (I really tried). If such pieces like this was entertaining/interesting, just let me know and I'll see about writing more on such topics that interest me. See ya later!