Genre Television: The Best of the '90s

By: Frederick C. Szebin
Date: Monday, February 07, 2000

If we took our Wayback Machine to the last decade of the 1990s to check out their popular culture, we would notice that the primitives of that time had a virtual explosion of science fiction, fantasy and horror on their 2-dimensional television receivers. The first big blast came from the continued growth of Gene Roddenberry's little cult. STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION continued to grow in quality and size until it burst from the small screen altogether, but not before spawning STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. An almost excellent show, DS9 constantly built up its mythos with a mixture of action and character-driven adventures, slipping up when it didn't appear brave enough to take chances that would make their main characters look less than morally perfect. STAR TREK VOYAGER began slow, almost afraid to touch anyone in any way in the dark days of 1990s political correctness. VOYAGER tried to be vanilla to everyone when viewers preferred chunky stuff in the mix. Finally the show began to find its voice and came up with some endearing episodes, sometimes for the fun of it, other times just to kick some butt.
Just to prove that STAR TREK wasn't all there was, THE FLASH was brought forth on CBS for an all-too-brief run that cut the very expensive show off at the knees just as it was finding its voice. Producers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo began the series as the first Tim Burton/Batman rip-off to utilize rubber superhero suits, and soon turned to the comic books for inspiration. Such Flash villains as Captain Cold, the Mirror Master and The Trickster (joyfully played by comic book buff Mark Hamill) began to show up when CBS got tired of merely shifting the program from one time slot to another and finally just took it off the air, which was a shame because it wasn't a bad show. John Wesley Shipp was a fine Flash, exuding charm and strength in what had to be a very uncomfortable suit.
The Flash used new CGI techniques to show its hero's powers in action, but that was nothing compared to HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS and XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS, which brought feature film-quality computer effects to the small screen, though not always successfully. These shows have to be honored for what they tried to do, rather than for what they actually accomplished. Both started well within their action formats to give us Ray Harryhausen-inspired creature- feature adventure in a weekly format, but HERC and XENA quickly degenerated into self-parody and obnoxious silliness that made them virtually unwatchable to anyone with a brain in their head.

Superman also came to TV again, in the form of LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN with the focus more on Lois and Clark (a barely amusing play on words which should have warned us of what was to come) and less on the superheroic daring do of this most legendary character. Although it fared better in the ratings than THE FLASH, this incarnation of the Man of Steel was a far lesser program creatively, and the only surprise is that it lasted so long.
CBS offered yet another promising show, this created by Shawn Cassidy (yes, the Da Doo Ron Ron heartthrob of the 1970s) in a very well-written and finely acted chiller called AMERICAN GOTHIC, which at times played like Tennessee Williams through Rod Serling's eyes. Suffering the same fate as THE FLASH, this very good horror program was bounced around the schedule when it was allowed to air at all until the so-called Tiffany Network just dropped it, which is a shame. Not since DARK SHADOWS had a multi-cast, multi-layered series touched those dark places so well. It was all just too much for CBS, which has a reputation for hurting itself in its misguided efforts to redefine its audience.
And then there was Fox, which gave California surfer dude Chris Carter free reign to create THE X-FILES, the single most influential television show of the decade. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but all imitators just didn't have the creative strength to follow Mulder and Scully's act. Carter proved that even he couldn't quite match this show's excellence with MILLENNIUM and HARSH REALM. HR was simply another VR story telling us that there was a copy of the entire world in some military computer, and good riddance to it. MILLENNIUM, however, had a stronger foundation in the paranormal powers of Frank Black, but the serial killer of the week format just didn't work in the long run, although individual episodes could be quite good. To finish MILLENNIUM's storyline, Carter had to turn to his first and best, THE X-FILES which, after a couple lackluster seasons, is back on its feet with some creepy tales, even though because of its ever-increasing mythos, it may have run its course a couple years ago.
In syndication was J. Michael Straczynski's BABYLON 5, which debuted with a fizzle, but grew in stature to become one of the very best science fiction shows in TV history until moving to TNT, where it was allowed to whimper to death under budget cuts and poor ratings. Excellent CGI effects melded with fine performances and usually very good scripts to create an action-oriented, character-driven program, the kind of thing SF fans had been screaming for over the years.
Not to be outdone, cable television, particularly in the form of Showtime, gave genre-hungry audiences some very good shows, particularly STARGATE SG1 and the remaking of THE OUTER LIMITS. As with any anthology, some of the episodes range from startlingly good, to okay, to downright embarrassing, but the good far outweigh the bad, with thoughtful scripts and excellent CGI effects. POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY, using only the title of the cinematic series, developed into a mini-X-FILES with a secret society that investigated supernatural goings on and dealt with them accordingly. The difference here is that the supernatural was a given to the characters in this handsome show that also used CGI to create its spooks and ghosties.
The decade also saw the rise of quality animation on TV, as broadcasters realized what Ralph Bakshi had said years before, that animation is not necessarily a children's medium (just ask Chuck Jones), but can be used to effect some very adult concepts. From the satiric truths of THE SIMPSONS and FUTURAMA, to the guerrilla comedy of John Krisfalusi's REN AND STIMPY, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's SOUTH PARK and Seth MacFarland's THE FAMILY GUY, animation truly grew up in the latter tenth of the 20th Century. The birth of the Cartoon Network, which some saw as the opening of the seventh seal, continued John Krisfalusi's new view of animation through outright copying (COW AND CHICKEN) to spring-boarded inspiration (JOHNNY BRAVO, DEXTER'S LABORATORY, POWERPUFF GIRLS). These occasionally gentler shows freely ran through the holes Krisfalusi kicked through Standards and Practices' hitherto unassailable walls. Genndy Tartakovski, Craig McCracken, Robert Alvarez, John McIntyre and Paul Rudish began to remold classical views of children's TV, starting with Krisfalusi's template, but finding their own voices that, particularly in the cases of Tartakovski and McCracken, began with the grandiose shouts of 1970s comic books and pop culture.
BATMAN and SUPERMAN faired very well in their animated series, as did THE TICK in a very funny program that was deemed so good that during its last season on Fox it was run simultaneously on Comedy Central. THE CRITIC was a thoroughly excellent, short-lived, terribly overlooked series utilizing the comedic voicings of Jon Lovitz in a show that was as inventive and superior as THE SIMPSONS continues to be a decade after its beginning. DUCKMAN, which thankfully is rerunning on Comedy Central, was another of those rude, boisterous, adult-oriented animations that deserves to find a larger audience, if that audience can stay awake late enough to watch it. Jason Alexander's edgy voice gave words to the sexually frustrated duck in a series of hilarious adventures that involved a two-headed son (alternately voiced by the late Dana Hill and Elizabeth Daily), a fat-thighed sister in law (nicely voiced by Nancy Travis) and Dweezil Zappa's air-headed Duckman off-spring, Ajax, as well as Cornfed, a Jack Webb-type detective (spoken by Gregg Berger) whose personal perfection was always a thorn in Duckman's feathery side.
If individual creative forces are to be given any credit at all for the genre-based horn o' plenty that was the 1990s, let us give notice to Chris Carter, John Krisfalusi and J. Michael Straczynski for their lasting visions of what the medium could achieve when put in the proper hands. Carter and Krisfalusi in particular have been copied to the point of cliché in a very short period of time. Within another decade or so, their original contributions may even fade into the blur of their infringer's work, and that would be a shame. These were men with original visions that shaped the media of a generation. And like Gene Roddenberry, Norman Lear and Steven Bochco before them, the originators of style and substance should be remembered above all, and their work placed above anything lesser.