BBC & Sci-Fi, was it ever going to work?

Despite the BBC’s less than stellar reputation for providing good quality sci-fi to our screens, I still had a certain level of optimism for Outcasts. It looked good, had an impressive cast, well...Jamie Bamber was in it anyway, and there was just a hint of a decent plot.

In hindsight however, it seems that I have, yet again, fallen victim to believing a show will be good just by the trailer. When will I ever learn?

The signs were there before the first episode even started. It was initially scheduled for Monday night, 9pm, in the primetime slot. A slot usually reserved for some by-the-numbers medical or crime drama that, whilst lacking in all forms of originality, do bizarrely tend to bring in good viewing figures. To appeal to this core audience, the BBC were never going to go ‘all sci-fi’ in the same way as perhaps Battlestar Galactica or Lost as this, in their eyes, would have been too much of a risk. What they have instead chosen, is to take the plotlines you expect from a soap opera and stick it out on an alien planet with a crashed spaceship and hope people will like it. Examples of this are a woman trying to re-connect with her disobedient daughter, two colleagues in a will-they, wont-they situation, and a character who cheats on her absent husband.

The result of this is something of a mess.  It is not helped by the planet of Carpathia being totally devoid of any discerning locations and is seemingly a barren world. With no defining features, each episode effectively looking the same as every scene is limited to either the colony shanty town or the outside wasteland.

One of the advantages of sci-fi is that you are taken to new worlds, new locations every week as the characters are faced with new challenges. Not the same old same old. Limiting a show in terms of its locations does not always guarantee failure for a show however it must surely put it upon it the importance of plot and characters. It says a lot about the programme when the most interesting person in the show dies in the first episode. Bye bye Lee Adama...

The programme is also seriously hindered by the dialogue which takes cheese to a whole new level. The leader of the colony, Liam Cunningham, produces the kind of moral boosting lines you would expect President Bill Pullman to produce from Independence Day. The fact that these travellers are humanity’s last chance has clearly gone to their heads as us poor viewers are subjected to their pretentious ‘save the world’ ideologies. If anything, the poor dialogue highlights BBC’s lack of experience in the genre. Yes, sci-fi is about exploring the unknown but the days of Captains Kirk and Picard preaching to an alien culture about human values and culture are long in the past. The sci-fi viewer expects to be challenged, not suffer the ongoing monotony found in most tv shows currently at our disposal. In response to this, many shows have evolved into more complex, darker, and grittier products where the line between good and evil has become a blur, provoking more debate from their viewership.

Since Outcasts has not embraced these more recent values, it has a dated feel to it and it was no shock to see it relegated to a late night slot on Sundays due to poor ratings, the first episode brought in 4.5 million viewers but by the fifth episode this was down to 2.7 million. Such a move by the BBC was an open admission that they gave it a go and, sadly, failed. As much I, and many others, love sci-fi, I don’t think it’s harsh to say that it is not designed for prime-time television. If Outcasts was a show on perhaps BBC2 or Channel 4 then who’s to say it may have been better for it as it would undoubtedly have had more freedom in veering away from the norm.

An example of sci-fi in a prime-time slot, the final episode of Lost in the United States gained 13.5 million viewers. A recent episode of NCIS, in its eight season, had over 21 million. Sad, but true.

Outcasts eighth, and final, episode of the series was broadcast on Sunday 13 March with 1.56 million viewers and cancelled the following day by the BBC.


If you have any thoughts on this or if you wish to point out I have not included Dr Who in the blog, please leave a comment below.