Going into this class I assumed we’d be talking mostly about classic sci-fi stories and that my previous light readings of Clarke and Asimov would be most useful. Of course, we have read plenty of amazing classic sci-fi literature, but I’ve also been pleasantly surprised at the discussions we’ve had about more modern science fiction in TV and film. So, I thought, I’d revisit some old sci-fi shows that I’ve loved for a long time and see how people on the internet are thinking about them in terms of the genre.

The first is the show “Lost,” which I binged on Netflix during high school and therefore had a much different viewing experience than most of the audience. I had heard about the show before I watched it pretty much only in context of its infamous ending, but someone told me that the ending is NOT that they were dead the whole time, which intrigued me enough to start. Sure enough, 6 seasons later what I saw was an ending that was emotional and powerful, if a little bloated. But I was disappointed that such a fantastic show had been overshadowed by people’s interpretations of the ending who hadn’t even watched the whole thing. I’ve been interested in thinking about spirituality and religious ideas in sci-fi for this semester, and I think that stemmed from Lost in some part. There is an undertone of spirituality throughout the series, set from the first season with the theme of Jack (a “man of science”) vs John Locke (a “man of faith”). Locke is convinced that theres some meaning for the plane crashing on the island, that these people were meant to be together. While I’m certainly oversimplifying it, Locke turns out to be right – there’s deep meaning in the connections the strangers find with eachother, and in the end they find eachother in an ambiguous secular afterlife, “moving on” together. I think what I appreciated the most about “Lost” is that while it deals with many complex sci-fi ideas like time travel and parallel universes, it stays rooted in that search for meaning, and ultimately is about the characters.

I’m also looking at “The Leftovers,” a show I actually got into because its creator Damon Lindelof (who has now also done “Watchmen”) was a showrunner of “Lost.” The Leftovers has been described by some people on the internet as a more mature version of Lost, which I can agree with, in a sense. It maintains the focus on character-driven drama with a science-fiction backdrop, although the sci-fi is much more subtle. Most of the three seasons are more drama than sci-fi, but the show begins and ends with intriguing sci-fi concepts. In the first episode, you learn that on a day known as “The Great Departure,” 2% of the world’s population vanished into thin air. The series deals with those who were left behind (hence the name) and their search for meaning in the confusing post-Departure world. It’s extremely depressing, but also probably the best series I’ve ever seen. There are also some heavy religious/spiritual undertones, even more explicit than in “Lost.” One character, Matt, is a priest and has an episode focused on him each season, season 2’s being eerily similar to the Book of Job, and season 3’s including a conversation with a man posing as God. The main character Kevin, also discovers his ability to visit and return from a bizarre afterlife by singing Simon and Garfunkel, and becomes a Messiah of sorts, some believing he is the second coming of Jesus. It isn’t just Christian imagery, too – a season 3 episode focuses on one character’s journey through indigenous Australia in a search for meaning through Aboriginal myths. There’s so much more I could get into, but I’ve done some exploring on the internet regarding theories and interpretations of all the imagery and themes in “Lost” and “The Leftovers” (https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=ec22a0c23d3f662836b300c810b66fed)