uture Fantastic--originally produced as a 1996 British television series that later aired in the United States on The Learning Channel--has been repackaged as a two-cassette home video set with the premise that the fantastic predictions of science fiction are coming true today.
Hosted by The X-Files star Gillian Anderson (apparently slumming from her day job), the cassettes contain five of the nine 50-minute broadcast episodes. The first, "Alien," explores the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Featuring interviews with scientists and SF writers--including Arthur C. Clarke--it retreads the well-known history of Roswell, SETI and alien abductions, as well as touching on the recent discovery of possible fossilized bacteria in Mars rocks.
It also ventures into territory that's pretty familiar to Anderson fans: Is there a massive government conspiracy to conceal the existence of extraterrestrials? To answer this question, Future Fantastic turns to conspiracy theorists like Glen Campbell and revisits Area 51, perhaps the most famous "secret" U.S. government base in history.
A second episode, "I Robot," looks at one of SF's hoariest icons and examines how the real machines compare with their fictional counterparts. It begins with archival footage of Isaac Asimov, the father of fictional artificial life forms, and Joe Engelberger, the inventor of the industrial robot. It goes on to review SF depictions of human-like machines from Metropolis to Terminator and then looks at the amazing machines that are on the horizon.
The episode also resurrects clips from the '70s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man as a lead-in to a look at real-life "bionics," including artificial limbs.
Subsequent episodes cover futuristic transportation and teleportation ("The Incredible Shrinking Planet"), the colonization of outer space ("Space Pioneers") and the extension of human lifespans ("Immortals"). SF authors from John Clute to Bruce Sterling are featured in interviews.
Tomorrow's news today
"If you've ever wondered whether the science of tomorrow can fulfill the spectacular promises of today's science fiction, then welcome to Future Fantastic." This is the come-on Anderson delivers, trading on the coolly brainy persona of her X-Files character Dana Scully. It's a tantalizing lure. But the show itself offers little more than the usual tabloid television sensationalization of paranormal phenomena and superficial surveys of otherwise fascinating technological advances.
Like other non-fiction SF TV before it, Future Fantastic relies mainly on talking-head interviews with experts (astronauts, scientists and authors), news footage, video inserts, computer animation and clips from SF shows and movies. The episodes tend to range widely over their purported subject matter. The "Alien" installment covers not only the UFO phenomenon, but also everything from alternative energy sources to the reality of ESP. In this, the episodes sacrifice depth for breadth, treating their subjects in the most superficial manner possible.
When the show sticks to the facts--as in "I Robot"--it's a modestly interesting documentary on new technology, even if that technology is disappointingly primitive compared with SF creations like HAL 9000 or the T-1000. When Future Fantastic ventures into more speculative realms, it begins to look like other tabloid television programs on paranormal phenomena: short on skepticism and long on credulity.
There are things to like about this series. Some of the information is current, even three years after the show was shot, and there is a guilty pleasure in viewing clips of cheesy SF from British TV and 1950s B-movies. And Anderson is a pleasantly understated presence who anchors the fantastical subjects with as much dignity as can be expected.
