Odd thing for a guy who works in TV to say, especially as I also think we've had some of the best entertainment TV produced lately since the medium began. (And I'm not alone in that.) But that may very well be the problem.
I think the problem is twofold: The "Star Trek" problem and the "House of Cards" problem.
The "Star Trek" Problem
In the 1950s and 1960s, everything seemed to be looking up.The reach out of the atmosphere was on everyone's mind, from the 1957 shock of Sputnik to the 1969 landing on the moon. One can place this all in the context of superpower competition, but let's stick with popular interest. Even "Toy Story 2" centered its main plotline on the public's fascination with things space.
The 1960s also brought space drama to TV with shows like "Lost in Space" and "Star Trek." Even comedies like "I Dream of Genie" had a space subtext. Then it faded with the counterculture, Vietnam War protest, and the feeling that reaching to the stars was somehow indulgent with so many problems on Earth. Science Fiction would not regain its popularity for a decade, with the arrival of the space fantasy of "Star Wars" (which had a counterculture element to carry its plot, but let's not get distracted).
"Star Wars" brought, along with a renewed interest in science fiction programming and the accompanying profits, the start of a great leap forward in special effects, leading to a computer graphics revolution making not just space drama but earthly adventures have SFX scenes that were indistinguishable from reality, as well as making a revived "Star Trek" financially practical.
And all this brings me at last to my main point: now that we have all seen on television -- through "Star Trek," "Battlestar Galactica," "Babylon Five," and any number of other shows, reboots, and revivals -- the sights of the universe and a few fantastic versions of it, we are left with the emotional impression that we have all been there and done that.
As Mercury and Gemini entered orbit, we had some early movie visions of what Earth orbit looked like, but we had never really seen it before. And as for landing on the moon, Hollywood gave us "Destination Moon," written by the respectable Robert Heinlein and backed by real science. But it looked like this in 1950:
By 1969, we knew it looked like this:
And indeed, now the special effects wizards have real images of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and so on, not to mention spectacular Hubble telescope imagery of distant stars and nebulae.
So now, our science fiction, even the minimally science-based stuff like "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," looks more real than ever. Thus, I think, somewhere back in our subconscious, back in that part that makes us want to go places and see things, we feel no need to go to space. We feel like we have already been there.
The "House of Cards" Problem
I wish I had a better example for this, but I believe the Netflix version of "House of Cards" is the most applicable. (I much prefer the deliciously malicious British original version, but moving on ...)
Politics now is in chaos, with previously understood standards kicked aside at regular intervals. During the 2016 campaign, Trump campaign aides met with a Russian lawyer offering "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign. What exactly this means legally remains to be established, but let me go on.
As part of the investigation into Russian election meddling, congressional committee chairman Devin Nunes said he had come to the White House to see secret evidence, only to be so embarrassed by the clumsy circumstances and statements around the event that he eventually had to step back from his committee's work.
Having grown up in Washington, watching the Watergate scandal progress as I was in middle and high school as the wily Sam Ervin ("I'm just a simple country lawyer") slowly worked his select committee, watching able parliamentarians like West Virginia's Robert Byrd and petty tyrants like House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills (finally brought down by a drunken escapade with a stripper) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Tower (served cold karma by his former colleagues when rejected the post of Secretary of Defense), this all seems like the blundering, ham-handed work of amateurs.
And I think it is. The Trump campaign is a prime example.
Organized and mostly run by Trump and his business associates, bringing in politically experienced professionals now and again, but always under their control and often fired arbitrarily, depending on the atmosphere of the moment, the campaign lacked any real foundational feel for politics, either how it is done on the campaign trail or in practice in government. Public revulsion over politics-as-it-is in America made this very appealing, but it also made the campaign then and governance now the amateur hour, reeling from crisis to crisis.
I think the core to understanding this is "House of Cards." The cynical fantasy of "how Washington really works," based on the even more cynical British approach, is like most political drama exaggerated to the point of fantasy. But these people think that's how it really works, and thus thought it unremarkable, if not expected, to take a meeting with representatives of a foreign government offering "dirt" on a political opponent, and then to be disappointed when there was nothing to offer. Not that long ago, a much less egregious dirty trick resulted in the FBI being called in ... by those who would have benefited!
The same could be said of Congressman Nunes, seeing himself as a real-life Frank Underwood, quietly maneuvering his allies and opponents like a spider pulling the threads of his web, headed off to secret meetings revealing dark truths. Real life is both not that interesting and much more complicated.
It's enough to make one wish for the days of Richard Nixon, a man who had spent decades in politics learning the dirty tricks then far more prevalent than now, until he too fell for playing his hand too broadly in changing times. But at least he knew what he was doing.
