Any TV shows about space colonization?

[Jeivar]

I have a considerable interest in humanity's future in space, and space colonization.

Have there been any recent-ish shows about people settling on a new world?

[Kitten Champion]

Outcasts, a BBC SF series about humanity settling an alien world after an apocalyptic war on Earth that came out in 2011.

There's Firefly of course, which is all about space colonies in various levels of development.

Other than that, Earth 2 which was from the 90's and I've never seen.

[Peelee]

Ascension. Kinda sorta.

[An Enemy Spy]

Terra Nova.

[Zrak]

There's the TV adaptation of Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars Trilogy I see whenever I have a near death experience, but that might just be my personal heaven and not an actual TV show, now that I think about it.

Seriously, though, why isn't that a thing?

[ThinkMinty]

Star Trek. Quite literally, Star Trek.

[Ranxerox]

The Expanse will be starting soon on SyFy.

[Tyndmyr]

Star Trek. Quite literally, Star Trek.

Pretty sure that fails the "recentish" pretty hard.

[Ravens_cry]

Star Trek. Quite literally, Star Trek.

Really? I mean, sure, yes, it had space colonies, but I wouldn't exactly say it is exclusively or even predominately *about* space colonization, being, in my opinion, originally more an evolution of the anthology series, like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, but with a kind of continuity with the crew and ship. Deep Space Nine and Enterprise (the former especially) went for more a story arc style structure, but, even then, space colonization wasn't a big theme.

[Philistine]

Star Trek. Quite literally, Star Trek.

Star Trek is a setting in which interstellar colonization has taken place, but almost none of what we see on-screen actually has anything to do with the process of traveling to uninhabited worlds and founding settlements on them. Outside of DS9 (and occasionally in that show, too) the majority of the episodes boil down to one of a few simple formulae: "The Enterprise (or Voyager) encounters an anomaly in time and/or space! Peril ensues!," or "The Enterprise (or Voyager) experiences potentially (sometimes actually) fatal technical difficulties which seriously call into question the basic competence of the Federation's engineers!," or "The Enterprise (or Voyager) discovers a planet full of people with a "primitive" society and the crew are all smug and condescending, because "evolved humanity" has a lot to teach those poor saps (who 99% of the time are a thinly-disguised straw man meant to "illustrate" (or more accurately, caricature) some issue in contemporary society)!," or very rarely, "The Enterprise (or Voyager) discovers a planet full of people with a highly advanced society compared to which we are like unto an amoeba and the crew are still all smug and condescending, because those high-falutin' aliens have lost touch with the simple joys that make humanity the Greatest Thing Ever!" None of those really fit the OP's particulars.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Star Trek is anti-colonialist fiction (that's what the prime-directive is about) so of course you don't see much actual colonisation. Its hypocritical in its use of colonial tropes and narratives but its trying to be more modern.

[Wardog]

Star Trek is anti-colonialist fiction (that's what the prime-directive is about) so of course you don't see much actual colonisation. Its hypocritical in its use of colonial tropes and narratives but its trying to be more modern.

I presumed the OP was talking about colonisation in the sense of establishing a settlement on another planet, rather than in the sense of taking over and exploiting someone else's land.

[t209]

The 100 but the other way round with kids being recreation of Austrailia's initial colonization without overseers or army to control them.

[Ravens_cry]

I presumed the OP was talking about colonisation in the sense of establishing a settlement on another planet, rather than in the sense of taking over and exploiting someone else's land.

Aye, it was quite anti the latter but casually OK the former, accepting it as part of the setting.

[brionl]

Space: 1999.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Battlestar Galactica? It started with the 12 Colonies, and was about a fleet searching for another planet to colonize. They found one, but had to abandon it (was anyone left behind? I thought there was, but it's been a few years), before finally settling on Earth.

Then if you follow some of the "What Happened Next" theories, they all died out, to be replaced by our ancestors.

They found several habitable planets along the way, but a Cylon clean-up fleet would have easily eliminated anyone they found.

[t209]

Battlestar Galactica? It started with the 12 Colonies, and was about a fleet searching for another planet to colonize. They found one, but had to abandon it (was anyone left behind? I thought there was, but it's been a few years), before finally settling on Earth.

Then if you follow some of the "What Happened Next" theories, they all died out, to be replaced by our ancestors.

They found several habitable planets along the way, but a Cylon clean-up fleet would have easily eliminated anyone they found.

No, the fleet are the ancestors.

[Gopher Wizard]

Does Invader Zim count?

[brionl]

Battlestar Galactica? It started with the 12 Colonies, and was about a fleet searching for another planet to colonize. They found one, but had to abandon it (was anyone left behind? I thought there was, but it's been a few years), before finally settling on Earth.

Then if you follow some of the "What Happened Next" theories, they all died out, to be replaced by our ancestors.

They found several habitable planets along the way, but a Cylon clean-up fleet would have easily eliminated anyone they found.

They landed on Earth ca. 1980 AD. We've got video evidence.

[Kitten Champion]

Come to think of it -- there's Macross Frontier, Toward the Terra, Uninhabited Planet Survive!, Jyu-Oh-Sei, and a variety of Gundam series wherein space colonization is a central aspect of the setting and or plot.

[Rodin]

This thread's gotten me craving some colonization as well...any recommended books for the genre? I'd prefer more exotic than Mars/Moon stuff - more on the thrill of exploring another ecosystem and the troubles of building a colony on a habitable world rather than trying to build a fully enclosed habitat on an uninhabitable planet.

[Reddish Mage]

Star Trek is a setting in which interstellar colonization has taken place, but almost none of what we see on-screen actually has anything to do with the process of traveling to uninhabited worlds and founding settlements on them. Outside of DS9 (and occasionally in that show, too) the majority of the episodes boil down to one of a few simple formulae: "The Enterprise (or Voyager) encounters an anomaly in time and/or space! Peril ensues!," or "The Enterprise (or Voyager) experiences potentially (sometimes actually) fatal technical difficulties which seriously call into question the basic competence of the Federation's engineers!," or "The Enterprise (or Voyager) discovers a planet full of people with a "primitive" society and the crew are all smug and condescending, because "evolved humanity" has a lot to teach those poor saps (who 99% of the time are a thinly-disguised straw man meant to "illustrate" (or more accurately, caricature) some issue in contemporary society)!," or very rarely, "The Enterprise (or Voyager) discovers a planet full of people with a highly advanced society compared to which we are like unto an amoeba and the crew are still all smug and condescending, because those high-falutin' aliens have lost touch with the simple joys that make humanity the Greatest Thing Ever!" None of those really fit the OP's particulars.

I can see someone watched a lot of Star Trek for someone who is obviously not a fan

Star Trek is anti-colonialist fiction (that's what the prime-directive is about) so of course you don't see much actual colonisation. Its hypocritical in its use of colonial tropes and narratives but its trying to be more modern.

I think anti-colonialism is one reason colonization is not sun a theme in Sci-fi these days. Not much uncharted land out there. Not exactly sure what makes Star Trek "hypocritical" unless you think being "smugly superior" (I.e. The depiction of the crew as virtuous) is incompatible with thinking ...oh wait the whole first contact protocol followed by accelerating a cultures technological evolution by hundreds of years when Starfleet runs across a 20th century type culture that discovers warp drive...that's pretty much colonialism in a nutshell.

[Philistine]

I can see someone watched a lot of Star Trek for someone who is obviously not a fan



I think anti-colonialism is one reason colonization is not sun a theme in Sci-fi these days. Not much uncharted land out there. Not exactly sure what makes Star Trek "hypocritical" unless you think being "smugly superior" (I.e. The depiction of the crew as virtuous) is incompatible with thinking ...oh wait the whole first contact protocol followed by accelerating a cultures technological evolution by hundreds of years when Starfleet runs across a 20th century type culture that discovers warp drive...that's pretty much colonialism in a nutshell.

I was a fan, before Voyager. And at first, that show's tired repetition of TNG's formulae merely drove me away from it. But once I began to see the cracks in the facade, it became increasingly obvious that Voyager's flaws didn't exist in isolation - that many of them were in fact endemic within the franchise. So you see, it's not a matter of "watch(ing) a lot of Star Trek for someone who is obviously not a fan" but rather a case of "watching a lot of Star Trek is why I'm not a fan anymore."

You may be surprised to know that I wasn't talking about the Prime Directive when I described Starfleet crews as "smug and condescending." I was referring to their tendency to sit around patting themselves on the back for the Obvious Superiority of Federation Culture (there's not a "smallbarf" smilie) after being exposed to any non-Federation culture - even societies more powerful and/or advanced than their own. (And I don't think Closet_Skeleton was referring to anything actually in-show, but in a more meta sense to the way the franchise plays the tropes of colonialism completely straight while claiming to have an anti-colonialist message.)

But since you brought the Prime Directive into the discussion... Zounds, that went so bad in the TNG era. Or perhaps you want to sit there and argue that given a choice between allowing an entire civilization to die or saving them from extinction at the risk of "contaminating" their culture, the virtuous option is "Let 'em all fry?" Because in the TNG era, Starfleet officers - main characters on their respective shows! -claimed exactly that. On multiple occasions! The only thing worse was the nature of the justifications they most often advanced (and apparently found persuasive): obvious hooey like, "we'd be interfering with Nature's Plan," or "the species was naturally evolving toward extinction." Such arguments display truly stunning depths of both scientific ignorance and moral bankruptcy - especially for a bunch of people who so enjoy waxing smug about how enlightened they are. But wait, it actually gets better! Because there's one circumstance in which they can justify intervention, and that's when a member of the senior staff somehow has a personal connection to the victims of the oncoming extinction event. If you're looking for hypocrisy, that's a textbook example: "the rules apply in all cases except when they cause problems for us or someone we know." Sadly, this blatant hypocrisy seems to be the minimum necessary requirement to persuade Starfleet officers in the TNG era to behave morally. "Virtuous"? In the immortal words of Mr. Will Smith, "Aw, Hell naw."

[t209]

I was a fan, before Voyager. And at first, that show's tired repetition of TNG's formulae merely drove me away from it. But once I began to see the cracks in the facade, it became increasingly obvious that Voyager's flaws didn't exist in isolation - that many of them were in fact endemic within the franchise. So you see, it's not a matter of "watch(ing) a lot of Star Trek for someone who is obviously not a fan" but rather a case of "watching a lot of Star Trek is why I'm not a fan anymore."

You may be surprised to know that I wasn't talking about the Prime Directive when I described Starfleet crews as "smug and condescending." I was referring to their tendency to sit around patting themselves on the back for the Obvious Superiority of Federation Culture (there's not a "smallbarf" smilie) after being exposed to any non-Federation culture - even societies more powerful and/or advanced than their own. (And I don't think Closet_Skeleton was referring to anything actually in-show, but in a more meta sense to the way the franchise plays the tropes of colonialism completely straight while claiming to have an anti-colonialist message.)

But since you brought the Prime Directive into the discussion... Zounds, that went so bad in the TNG era. Or perhaps you want to sit there and argue that given a choice between allowing an entire civilization to die or saving them from extinction at the risk of "contaminating" their culture, the virtuous option is "Let 'em all fry?" Because in the TNG era, Starfleet officers - main characters on their respective shows! -claimed exactly that. On multiple occasions! The only thing worse was the nature of the justifications they most often advanced (and apparently found persuasive): obvious hooey like, "we'd be interfering with Nature's Plan," or "the species was naturally evolving toward extinction." Such arguments display truly stunning depths of both scientific ignorance and moral bankruptcy - especially for a bunch of people who so enjoy waxing smug about how enlightened they are. But wait, it actually gets better! Because there's one circumstance in which they can justify intervention, and that's when a member of the senior staff somehow has a personal connection to the victims of the oncoming extinction event. If you're looking for hypocrisy, that's a textbook example: "the rules apply in all cases except when they cause problems for us or someone we know." Sadly, this blatant hypocrisy seems to be the minimum necessary requirement to persuade Starfleet officers in the TNG era to behave morally. "Virtuous"? In the immortal words of Mr. Will Smith, "Aw, Hell naw."

Well, the Prme Directive was different in old Star Trek.
- Kirk crew did save primitive people from natural disaster, especially the one about asteroid that turned out to be a space ship.
- many Federation members traded with primitives but one turned into a proxy war with Klingon introducing muskets to rival tribes.

[Reddish Mage]

That's why Phillistine said "in TNG." in TNG the crew took the Prime Directive as a sort of core moral principle and agonized over every violation. Kirk would maybe mention it, maybe leave it to Spock, and pretty much ignored it or asserted "emotions" or "humanity" over it.

I would note the Prime Directive comes from Anthropology and other Scientific Explorers. It seems to fit in with the anti-colonial and multicultural message of non-interventionist policy. TNG merely dramatically takes it to its logical extreme, by having the crew feel compelled to ignore entire civilizations being exterminated.

The fact is, should Star Trek TNG actually pitted the crew against their own utopian society most every week for several seasons rather than showing us how those Star Fleet's principles led to a utopian space-faring society in the first place (or the consequences when one chooses to violate those principles in more normal circumstances).

A circumstance that has come up regularly in anthropology is when the explorer uses medicine or otherwise intervenes to save a dying person or one about to be executed...I recall Star Trek did those types of stories too...

I think the end message was a sort of basic liberal humanism or humanistic ties beats all those abstract moral messages. One to beam up.

::climbs on top his fiery chariot and ascends to the heavens::

[ThinkMinty]

Does Invader Zim count?

Yes. Yes it does.

It also gets bonus points for doing something original with the premise.

[Wardog]

I would note the Prime Directive comes from Anthropology and other Scientific Explorers. It seems to fit in with the anti-colonial and multicultural message of non-interventionist policy. TNG merely dramatically takes it to its logical extreme, by having the crew feel compelled to ignore entire civilizations being exterminated.

And then there was the Enterprise episode where they basically said "The Prime Directive doesn't exist yet, but it should. Therefore, we won't provide medicine that would save a sentient species from extinction, because that will deny another species the opportunity to evolve to replace them".

[Kitten Champion]

And then there was the Enterprise episode where they basically said "The Prime Directive doesn't exist yet, but it should. Therefore, we won't provide medicine that would save a sentient species from extinction, because that will deny another species the opportunity to evolve to replace them".

Well, evolution is a fundamental scientific principles and thus justifies whatever you want. It's a lesson everyone should take to heart, apparently.

[An Enemy Spy]

That may be the only show I've ever seen where the heroes let a bunch of innocent people die that they could have easily saved and then called themselves heroes because of it. Well, there was that time Riker let a little girl die because using his new powers to save her would have been wrong somehow.

[Reddish Mage]

And then there was the Enterprise episode where they basically said "The Prime Directive doesn't exist yet, but it should. Therefore, we won't provide medicine that would save a sentient species from extinction, because that will deny another species the opportunity to evolve to replace them".

sounds like the sort of thing that series did to get some sort of excuse for rehashing the old Trek plotlines rather than do something truly new and exciting in an Age that shouldn't have had a lot of the tech that existed even in TOS. Except it did...

Not that that is not partly Steve Jobs fault for introducing all of TNG's technology in the early 21st century.