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By Root 2115 0

uncritical TV series and ‘specials’ - on ESP, channelling, the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, ancient astronauts, Big Foot, and the like - have been spawned. The style-setting series ‘In Search of...’ begins with a disclaimer disavowing any responsibility to present a balanced view of the subject. You can see a thirst for wonder here untempered by even rudimentary scientific scepticism. Pretty much whatever anyone says on camera is true. The idea that there might be alternative explanations to be decided among by the weight of evidence never surfaces. The same is true of ‘Sightings’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ - in which, as the very title suggests, prosaic solutions are unwelcome - and innumerable other clones.

‘In Search of...’ frequently takes an intrinsically interesting subject and systematically distorts the evidence. If there is a mundane scientific explanation and one which requires the most extravagant paranormal or psychic explanation, you can be sure which will be highlighted. An almost random example: an author is presented who argues that a major planet lies beyond Pluto. His evidence is cylinder seals from ancient Sumer, carved long before the invention of the telescope. His views are increasingly accepted by professional astronomers, he says. Not a word is mentioned of the failure of astronomers - studying the motions of Neptune, Pluto and the four spacecraft beyond - to find a trace of the alleged planet.

The graphics are indiscriminate. When an offscreen narrator is talking about dinosaurs, we see a woolly mammoth. The narrator describes a hovercraft; the screen shows a shuttle liftoff. We hear about lakes and flood plains, but are shown mountains. It doesn’t matter. The visuals are as indifferent to the facts as is the voice-over.

A series called ‘The X Files’, which pays lip-service to sceptical examination of the paranormal, is skewed heavily towards the reality of alien abductions, strange powers and government complicity in covering up just about everything interesting. Almost never does the paranormal claim turn out to be a hoax or a psychological aberration or a misunderstanding of the natural world. Much closer to reality, as well as a much greater public service, would be an adult series (‘Scooby Doo’ does it for children) in which paranormal claims are systematically investigated and every case is found to be explicable in prosaic terms. The dramatic tension would be in uncovering how misapprehension and hoax could generate apparently genuine paranormal phenomena. Perhaps one of the investigators would always be disappointed, hoping that next time an unambiguously paranormal case will survive sceptical scrutiny.

Other shortcomings are evident in television science fiction programming. ‘Star Trek’, for example, despite its charm and strong international and interspecies perspective, often ignores the most elementary scientific facts. The idea that Mr Spock could be a cross between a human being and a life form independently evolved on the planet Vulcan is genetically far less probable than a successful cross of a man and an artichoke. The idea does, however, provide a precedent in popular culture for the extraterrestrial/human hybrids that later became so central a component of the alien abduction story. There must be dozens of alien species on the various ‘Star Trek’ TV series and movies. Almost all we spend any time with are minor variants of humans. This is driven by economic necessity, costing only an actor and a latex mask, but it flies in the face of the stochastic nature of the evolutionary process. If there are aliens, almost all of them I think will look devastatingly less human than Klingons and Romulans (and be at widely different levels of technology). ‘Star Trek’ doesn’t come to grips with evolution.

In many TV programmes and films, even the casual science -the throwaway lines that are not essential to a plot already innocent of science - is done incompetently. It costs very little to hire a graduate student to read the script for scientific accuracy. But, so far as I can tell, this is almost