Science Friction

Keeping one foot in reality while also pushing the boundaries of imagination

By Matthew Hays

One of the best stories about an audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief comes out of an advance screening of one of the Star Wars movies. Set in a galaxy far, far away, the movies were predicated on wild notions of advanced space travel, hairy-critter sidekicks and wisecracking robots. Apparently, one person piped up after the test screening was over: “I have one question,” they announced boldly. “How does Darth Vader go to the bathroom through that suit?”

Why audience members are willing to suspend their disbelief for some things and not for others remains a mystery–and certainly not a reliable, tried and tested scientific theory. But what screenwriters do know is, if they’re setting things in the present or near future, they’d better get the basis of their premise correct. If things are too far-fetched, credibility will slip away at about the same moment the audience will. At the same time, the writers’ job is to keep things far-fetched enough so as to grab the spectators’ attention. It’s one gargantuan balancing act.

And it’s a balancing act not lost on Tom Chehak, showrunner for the speculative fiction series ReGenesis, an hour-long drama running since 2004. “Finding the right tone for the show was always crucial,” notes Chehak, arguing that the show has found the perfect pitch between “ethics, drama and science fact, rather than science fiction.”

Being scientifically sound

Since the show launched, the writing team has taken on a series of topics, from bio-terrorism to genetic engineering, among numerous other contentious topics. But amid it all, Chehak contends that everything “had to be scientifically sound. We had one major go-to guy in terms of our ideas and how probable or improbable they were–that was Dr. Aled Edwards at the University of Toronto.” Chehak says Edwards’ expertise in the area of proteins and the human genome meant queries could always be bounced off him to test their feasibility. “If we ever went off base, he could tell us point blank, ‘That ain’t possible.’”

Sometimes, Chehak says, there is a connection between the imagination of a fiction writer and the reality of the rapidly-morphing scientific milieu. “At one point we wondered about the possibility that someone might actually come up with a vaccine for the Spanish Flu. We were jumping years ahead, of course. But our experts confirmed that it could possibly happen. We did the show. And it turned out to be gratifying, because we were just on the leading edge. In Finland, some scientists did put together the genomic structure of the Spanish Flu. I guess at times we feel like, if it can happen, it probably will. If it’s possible, we’ll write about it.”

But an intriguing thing happened on the way to the show’s drawing board, recalls Chehak. A back-and-forth began to occur between the scribes and the scientists, a kind of symbiosis that helped the creative spirit behind each season. Early on, Chehak says that part of the popular mythology that needed to be broken down was that of the image of the scientist themselves. The TV image of the scientist, he points out, usually involves someone looking very serious in a white lab coat in front of a counter; behind them are a series of beakers containing boiling blue liquid. Rarely, if ever, does this image reflect anything remotely resembling reality.

“One of the first things we did was to go over to the lab and watch what Edwards was up to. A lot of the work is meticulous and quite tedious."

Throwing wild ideas at the expert

The goal of the writers, then, was to come up with the most wild ideas they possibly could and test them on Dr. Edwards. Among them? The concept of parasites that could enter the brain and then control it. Or what about genocide through infecting the food supply with something similar to mad cow disease? “At a certain point, we wanted to draw on the scientists for ideas: tell me the scariest thing going on right now in the scientific community. Tell me about the accompanying ethical problems.”

These conversations led to some of the most engaging episodes of ReGenesis, reports Chehak. Now, some scientists are pointing to the very real possibility of identifying and isolating which genes may determine a person’s sexual orientation. This led to an episode of ReGenesis where each character, through fantasy sequences, was forced to reckon with this possibility and deal with it. The writers also delved into the topic of sex change operations, seeing as some doctors are now providing them to patients in their teen years. And then, of course, there’s the promising arena of stem cell research.

The toughest part in all of this? “It’s not understanding it, nor researching it,” says Chehak. “It’s not taking sides. To some, stem cell research is the greatest stuff in the world. You’ve got to divorce yourself, you’ve got to see things from the other side as well.”

Exaggerate, don’t fabricate

For Simon Racioppa, who co-developed (with Richard Elliott) and writes for the children’s series Grossology (currently airing on YTV), the challenges and dilemmas he faced were similar, but with some key differences. The show is based on a series of popular children’s books by author Sylvia Branzei. For the uninitiated, the Grossology books offer a broad range of statistics and factoids about humans and animals (number of sweat glands in a person, for example) and delivers them to children readers in a fun and accessible way.

“From the beginning,” recounts Racioppa, “our idea was always to exaggerate, don’t fabricate.” Similar to ReGenesis, the program had to be rooted in fact, but still bust out of the parameters of reality and get into the outer limits of imagination. (In fact, all of the writers interviewed for this piece echoed the famous statement made by Hitchcock, in which he said great drama was simply reality with all of the boring bits taken out.)

But there was also a crucial difference: Grossology is a children’s show. While the books had been full of fun ideas and knowledge for young ones, the trick with the show was to shift the concept into the dramatic. That meant introducing actual characters, maintaining ongoing tension and conflict from episode to episode, while also including loads of science. To use entertainment to pull children in to the topic of science–often thought of as one epic drag by this demographic–was a challenge the show’s creators were always conscious of. “We did extensive research, and then we had our go-to guys as well, people we’d consult just to see if we were even remotely on track. If we had giant leeches or insects, for example, we’d need them to be huge for the show–but they’d still have to act like insects.”

Racioppa says consultants for Grossology have varied. During one show, they were dealing with evolutionary science. “I have a really good friend who teaches evolutionary psychology at Cornell University–his name is Pat Barclay. We took him the premise and ultimately the script, and asked, ‘Does this basically fit?’ He was such a great help that one character who appeared in that episode we named Pat after him.”

Sometimes, the original Grossology creator and author Branzei proved a help. “We had written an episode about ultrasonics, in which we imagined that insects were drawn towards ultrasonic frequencies. In fact, Branzei pointed out, many insects are repulsed by ultrasonic frequencies.” This, naturally, led to changes in the script.

See the Spring 2007 issue of Canadian Screenwriter for the complete article.