Not that I have anything against Nicole Kidman.

I haven't purchased TV Guide for decades, so when I tuned into Space ("The Imagination Station") tonight it was purely on spec. Now, for a relatively small Canadian channel, Space generally does an acceptable job of keeping on top of things: both Battlestar Galacticas, SG1 and Atlantis, the inevitable Star Trek reruns and so forth, and generally they display a healthy respect for the science fiction and fantasy fan base. However, for no good reason that I can figure out, on a far too frequent basis they show movies that have NO science fiction or fantasy elements that I'm aware of. Tonight, it was Dead Calm, and I knocked off the following gently critical e-mail.

Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:12:43 -0700
To: space@spacecast.com
Subject: "Dead Calm"?

I realize that the mandate from the Space FAQ is a broad one (“Science Fiction, Science Fact, Speculation and Fantasy”, but I have to say that I don’t think that Dead Calm, currently showing on Space, really fits any of those categories.

Surprisingly, there’s a lot of other channels that are showing things that fit in perfectly with your mandate – CBC is showing Sliding Doors, a parallel universe story, YTV has Lost in Space, Innerspace showed up while I was channel hopping, and Spike is showing Kung Fu Hustle, which is arguably a fantasy film. One of the Seattle affiliates – I’m in Vancouver – is showing The Fisher King, which is only fantasy at the widest definition – but it’s certainly closer to the mandate than Dead Calm!!! I’ve also seen Daylight (with Sylvester Stallone) and Backdraft show up on the playlist, and I think it would require a spirited defense to fit either one of those into your mandate.

You know what I haven’t seen for years? The Quiet Earth. Marvellous odd little movie. Lessee...The Rocketeer - fine, it’s a Walt Disney movie, I’m not sure about distribution on those, but a fun little sort-of-superhero film. Time Bandits, The Abyss, Outland, Swamp Thing, The Terminal Man, Andromeda Strain, the original War of the Worlds movie, Day of the Triffids, either the movie or either of the BBC adaptations – hey, speaking of John Wyndham books, there was a 1960 movie adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos called Village of the Damned that I’ve NEVER seen. (I’ve never seen the 1995 version either, not sure I’m desperate to, actually.) Logan’s Run, The Omega Man, currently remade with Will Smith, Silent Running - there’s a French film called Le Dernier Combat, Luc Besson’s first film, no need for subtitles because there’s only one word of dialogue (“Bonjour”, if I remember correctly) in the whole movie. Runaway, with Tom Selleck...okay, maybe I don’t need to see that one again.

Fantasy films are harder to come by, but I haven’t seen Willow anywhere for a while, Jason and the Argonauts is probably one of the best Ray Harryhausen films, The Beastmaster, Legend, The Sword and the Sorcerer, which couldn’t be funnier if they’d tried – ha, Michael, with John Travolta.

I realize that there are financial issues as well as issues of availability, and I don’t claim that the movies I’ve listed were all Academy Award nominees, but I think that it demonstrates that there’s a lot of lesser-known SF and fantasy movies that would be a better fit for Space than Dead Calm.

Sincerely yours,
Sid