No, that would be scary and creepy. What I’d like is a weekly science and technology show that showcases what’s happening around the world. Is that too much to ask, or is the budget for endless costume dramas and Jonathon Ross at the BBC consuming their entire budget?
Obviously in retrospect 98% of it was completely bunk, but it was a curious entertainment of sorts. Retrospectively much of it appears to be a PR campaign to convince the general public that mad scientists were ‘nice’ or mostly harmless, rather than the architects of our ultimate destruction. Given the recent Cuban crisis, this was a thought that wasn’t far from many people’s minds back in 1965, when the show first appeared.
The way it did this was to offer the presenters as viewer surrogates, and make them appear as equally confused by the technology as we would be. Looking back now it all seems excessively twee and naive. Science was our friend and needed our support – even if it was being used to design new and better ways to kill us all.
Given these obvious failings why would I have it back? Because I’m desperate for some other platform for new technology to be presented and discussed than the horrific Channel 5 I’m- so-excited-playing-with this-I-just-wee’d-myself Gadget Show. Or the BBC’s excruciatingly painful technology-is-hip Click. These both present science in such a bland who-gives-a-stuff-how-it-works way that they make the very worst of Tomorrow’s World seem like a personal insight into special relativity given by Albert Einstein himself.
Therefore if we’re going to get a dumb science show I’d like it to be one I like, with people who’ve obviously no idea what they’re presenting or the implications of its introduction into society.
