Fatherhood in Sci-fi

Having been a father for nigh on 10 months now and discussing the impending fatherhood of a friend, I’ve come to the realisation that there are not many good dad’s in sci-fi.
You see, often when I’m faced with a new challenge in my life, I like to look to my idols in the science fiction world to see how they handle it. For instance, when cooking for myself was becoming in issue as I advanced through my teens, Captain Sisko of Deep Space Nine was a brilliant example. I always carry a screwdriver and make sure to leave my droids outside of bars. So naturally, when my wife was expecting, I turned to my normal array of science fiction TV and film for advice.

Oh dear…

So I began with Star Trek. There’s actually no fathers at all there, except for Kirk, who stayed away from his son until forced to meet him when Khan stole the Genesis device. Ok, no help there.

Ok, The Next Generation must be more help? Picard, no children, hates kids. Riker? Had an imaginary son and mainly tried to teach him the trombone. Worf? Oh, right, packs the kid off to his grandparents or if he can’t get away with that, pretty much leaves it to Troi. Data? Built his own daughter and has no emotions. Oh and had her working in a bar!

Let’s move on to DS9! Sisko! Brilliant! Sisko seems on the surface to be a good example. Until you factor in he’s dragged Jake to a backwater run down space station where the only schooling opportunity is a class of mixed ages run by a botanist?! No disrespect to botanists or their field, but he’s not getting a well-rounded education there. Plus it shuts down after a year! After being blown up! Still Sisko persists with keeping his son, now without any school, wandering around an increasingly dangerous space station as the area degenerates into a war zone. Finally, Sisko conceives a second child and promptly ups and leaves to be a prophet and live in a wormhole, abandoning both children. I guess there’s O’Brien, but… well his wife and kids are so annoying, I can’t. I just can’t!

Voyager has one father, Tuvok, who’s probably great, but we never get to see any actual parenting. And again, Enterprise has no active father. I think Phlox has children, but they’re not seen.

Forget Trek then, let’s move onto other areas…

How about Star Wars? Hm, actually, I don’t need to think too hard about this one do I? Me and my son would be happier not chopping limbs off…

It’s not going well so far is it? What about the Buffyverse? Well, Buffy’s dad left his family, her surrogate father, Giles, well I guess he’s pretty ok, but there was the time he drugged her so she lost her Slayer powers and locked her in a house with a vampire. And Angel? Well, he managed to lose his son in a hell dimension with his worst enemy.

Batman! Right, ok his Dad was shot and killed in front of him, causing severe emotional trauma. But Alfred was like his second father from then? And he’s… pretty much let Bruce’s trauma overwhelm him to the point he dresses like a bat and risks his life nightly fighting crime. Bruce’s own son is encouraged to follow the same path while fighting his upbringing as a cold blooded killer with a superiority complex. Not to mention Batman’s taken on three other kids and encouraged them all to wallow in their pain and grief to such an extent that they also feel the need to embark on a suicidal quest for justice while wearing silly costumes. I hate to say it, but Batman sucks! As a dad at least.

Superman? Sure, his biological father put his newborn child in an experimental rocket and blasted him into space, which I think is grounds for a referral to Social Services, but what about Jonathan Kent? He’s good right? Actually, he is! There’s pretty much no problem with Pa Kent! Except DC keep insisting on retconning Superman’s history to kill the poor guy off earlier and earlier.

Right, we have one good father! Surely, I can find more? Otherwise I’ll have to raise my child using my own judgement and common sense! My search continues…

Convenient Amnesia

Last week I was having a debate with a aficionado of the superhero world regarding the TV Series Smallville. Basically he banned watching of it in his house, due to it's 'factual inaccuracies'.

Factual Inaccuracies, I should clarify, refer to the differences between events portrayed in Smallville and ones portrayed in the comics. Or the movies.

Now I'm not always the biggest fan of Smallville. I found that the earlier series had a fairly poor 'monster of the week' format with the recurrence 'oh X found some Kryptonite and it mutated them with weird powers' kinda stories. While it grew out of that and improved greatly, I still tended to find the episodes a bit hit and miss in places. But overall I've found it generally annoying.

So I countered this statement of factual inaccuracies, by pointing out that Superman gets a new origin story pretty much every decade. Add to that the fact of the DC multiverse allowing for either infinite or at least 52 versions of Superman, can you not just let the differences in story slide and enjoy it as a different take on the Superman legend? I mean the basic key elements are there, he's from another planet, sent to earth when Krypton was destroyed, crash landed in Kansas and was raised on a farm. Sure, I guess that there's some character appearences that can feel a bit 'gimmicky' and don't always reflect the characters as we know them from the comics. Bart Allen's appearence as a superfast thief for instance. But then everytime Bane is portrayed by any Batman thing that's not the comics I get mad, so Smallville's transgressions in that area barely register.

So the following point of annoyance that was raised, is that why would characters like Lex Luthor not remember Clark and the odd occurances from their youth? Well, this is fine, assuming, that the grown up characters will revert to the accepted status of film and comics. Again, as an alternate reality, I'd argue that this Lex Luthor could concievably investigate Clark forever. But, and I liked this point, is that argument not just ignoring the concept of future storylines? They way that after the Phantom Menace came out, everyone cried out 'Why doesn't C-3PO remember all this stuff?' Ok, 'everyone' is an unfair generalisation, but I heard the question a lot. Did all those people forget that a trilogy means 3 films? Which, minus the one you just watched, leaves two more films to go? But surely a story which involved Threepio forgetting he knew Anakin and so on, would be a vast epic that could never be contained in a mere 2 movies? Oh, wait, they say at the end of Revenge of the Sith that they'll wipe his memory. Ok then.

In the same vein, I would imagine that there's scope in future Smallville storylines to have traumas occur that cause characters to forget key facts. Actually, now I think about it, that happens in Smallville every third episode doesn't it? How many times did someone find Clark's secret only to suffer conveniant amnesia 3 minutes before the end credits?

Anyway, it was a fun discussion. Right up till the point when someone said that Smallville using Green Arrow was good, certainly better than using Green Lantern. After all, what's the point of a guy with a magic ring that doesn't work against yellow?

And that's when I got mad...