Classic Science Fiction Television Plots

Science fiction ranges from the fantastic to the oddly prescient, and often takes a left turn into the hackneyed. It's not always the writers' faults: reduced to its most basic elements, science fiction is about exploring the human condition in ways not possible with other genres, resulting in a series of iterative plots. If you've watched enough sci-fi, these basic set-ups and patterns become obvious.

Even if you can create an original story, in the case of television shows that's just one episode out of possibly dozens or hundreds. What about the next one? The massive franchise Star Trek is easily the most long-lived science fiction franchise of all time (with the possible exception, depending on your unit of measure, of Doctor Who), and so it not only has followed many sci-fi plots and tropes, but it also created just as many in its 700+ episodes.

Below are some of the often-used patterns and plots in science fiction television and movies. They have many names, but you'll more likely recognize them by the episodes and movies you've seen them in. Collect them all!

1) The Groundhog Day
As seen in: "I Do Over", Eureka; "Window of Opportunity", Stargate SG-1; "Cause and Effect", Star Trek: The Next Generation
The gist: In the classic film Groundhog Day (1993), arrogant weatherman Phil (Bill Murray) finds himself trapped in a small town, reliving the inane celebration that is Groundhog Day over... and over... and over. The film has Phil take advantage of his newfound freedom from consequences, then fall into despair over the endless looping, and then, by finding meaning in his life and winning the heart of his producer Rita, escaping the loop.

Science fiction series use the same premise, but usually ditch the relationships and focus on the actual act of the time loop. In some cases, the time loop is merely used as a way of propelling action and allowing us to see characters in different situations, but most often stopping the time loop is the central goal. In "Cause and Effect", the entire crew of the USS Enterprise-D is stuck in the loop when another ship falls through time and collides with their ship, ensuring its destruction. Only after many loops do the crew figure out how to send a message through time using the android Data, ensuring the ship avoids the collision and time is fixed. In "I Do Over" and "Window of Opportunity", only some of the characters are experiencing the time loop, forcing them to have to get incredulous colleagues to go ahead with their plans to fix the problem (in both of the stated cases, the time loops were caused by meddling scientists.)

2) The Killer Dream, or "Quaaaaid!"
As seen in: "Extreme Measures", Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; "Avatar", Stargate SG-1
The gist: The "Killer Dreams" plot offers a bit more leeway in the actual mechanics and scenarios, but the basic iteration is that characters have to enter the mind of others; the reasons for doing so vary. In "Avatar", Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) enters a computer simulation that friend Teal'c (Christopher Judge) has become trapped in; remaining in the scenario too long will cause both their deaths. In "Extreme Measures", Doctor Bashir (Alex Siddig) and Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) enter the dying mind of a secret agent to find the cure to their friend's deadly and engineered disease. Closely related to this set-up is...

3) The Fear Factor, or "I'm Tripping, Man!"
As seen in: "Pain", Stargate Universe; "Tapestry", Star Trek: The Next Generation
The gist: Hallucinations. So versatile. In a science fiction context, a dream or a alien gizmo-induced vision is such an effective method of plot launching I'm surprised they don't stock them on every street corner. This is a close relative to The Killer Dream, but in most cases there's no mortal peril in the dream itself (although some sort of deathly disease might bring on the hallucinations in the first place.)

As with The Groundhog Day, these hallucinations are often a chance to get inside the heads of characters or have them do or see something that would never happen otherwise; for example, in Stargate's "Pain", a tick-like bug causes those affected to have hallucinations based on their fears. One person thinks she has killed the man she loves (who basically dumped her in the worst way possible.) Another sees her dead father. In "Tapestry", Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is severely injured and will die because of a youthful brawl that left him with an artificial heart. The omnipotent Q (John de Lancie) gives Picard a chance to change history, but Picard realizes from seeing the results that the injury was necessary to be the man he is; his lesson learned, he wakes up and survives ye olde injury. Sure, Q could have altered the fabric of reality and changed the past, but the way the episode ends suggests that the entire thing might just have gone on in Picard's head, without any godlike manipulation. Speaking of manipulation, that brings us to the fourth and final plot in this article...

4) The Puppet Hand / "Excuse me, I've Lost My Mind"
As seen in: "Repression", Star Trek: Voyager; "Hathor", Stargate SG-1; "Devoted"/"Crimson", Smallville
The gist: We forgive you, Character X, because we know you weren't yourself. That is, you were controlled by aliens/alien brain-controlling parasites/human brain-controlling parasites/brainwashing machine/puppet strings/whathaveyou. The practical reason for this is often to have characters act in outlandish, ratings-goosing ways, but without real consequences. That way you can reset the character at the end of the episode and carry on without having to reference it later on (a good thing, since these episodes are generally so dreadful that the audience and producers alike want to forget they happened.

Take "Repression" from Voyager. Using messages from back home, a crazed lunatic controls the Vulcan Tuvok (Tim Russ), having him mind-meld with the other former Maquis resistance members on the USS Voyager to brainwash them and have them capture the ship. It was especially sad as the premise of Starfleet and Maquis crewmembers coming into conflict was an idea at the beginning of the series that they entirely abandoned, and brining it back in the seventh season was beyond forced. Perhaps worse still were the various brands of kryptonite cooked up in the soap series Smallville; they either made people sick or, more often, really, really lascivious. In many ways, the mind control plot branches here into a section of fan service, with sci-fi equivalents of "love potions" and the like. I have yet to see many such plots that are good.

These plots, of course, are just the beginning. Science fiction has a nasty habit of reusing the same plot devices and characters, leading to the genre being one of the best known for its overuse of cliches (see "The Worst Movie Cliches"). But while this mediocrity might turn people off from science fiction, at its best it is still some of the most thought-provoking entertainment out there. But be a smart consumer, and recognize the warning signs presented above!

Further reading
*"Speculative Fiction Tropes" at TV Tropes.
*"The Top 12 Sci-Fi Plot Devices Geeks Hate" at TechRepublic