Does "Lost" = SF?

December 3, 2008 11:30 PM

Is the tv show "Lost" science fiction?

I was describing "Lost" to a friend who's never seen it, and I kept finding myself saying that the show was "sci-fi", but...it's not, not really. There are elements of SF, and there are fantastical elements to it as well, but it's not really fantasy, either. What genre would it fit in, or is it safe to say that something like "Lost" doesn't fit traditional genre categories? Or, that it's simply a hybrid of many genres. How would you describe the show to someone who's never seen it?

posted by zardoz to media & arts (24 comments total)

Weird drama. Like Twin Peaks but with more elements from adventure, mystery, suspense (and maybe a little sci-fi too). A little spiritualism, a little allegory, a little random mindfuck.
posted by fleacircus at 11:50 PM on December 3, 2008

I would say it's a hybrid, along the lines of what fleacircus said.
posted by Nattie at 12:02 AM on December 4, 2008

"Weird drama" implies an element of whimsy and quirkiness (Northern Exposure, and I assume Pushing Daises, might also be in that category), which Lost is completely devoid of.

Apparently the people at Wikipedia ultimately decided on "serial drama television series." I think what you used, "drama with elements of SF and fantasy" are as close as you can get. Early on there was more of an implied "sci-fi/supernatural" element (in that some of the weirdness could potentially be explained away), and it got less and less implicit as the series went on. One could argue it has action/adventure elements also. And yeah, mystery and suspense too. ...And comedy! And ro-mance!

It's definitely closer to the X-Files than Grey's Anatomy. I think the best analogy might be the Twilight Zone, which wasn't hard sci-fi either (although I suppose it was "fantasy."). Maybe "mind-messing" movies (to coin a euphemism) like Memento and Fight Club also.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:11 AM on December 4, 2008

I like "weird drama." I agree it spans many genres. But, as a huge fan from day one, a resident of "The Island," and a "LOST" blogger and podcaster, I'd have to say that if you had to put "LOST" in any one category, it'd probably have to be sci fi.

But it's stealth sci-fi. Or was.

The first season, which remains one of the best seasons of TV in recent memory (IMHO), was fantastic drama, character driven, hints of mystery. Science fiction themes were the most likely explanation for some of the goings-on, but at that point the story was so compelling you weren't overthinking it.

Well, fast forward to the most recent season, where frankly implausible events unfolded and time travel was introduced as a key concept... and I think basically the "LOST" creators have done a brilliant job packaging great science fiction in a rich, compelling universe that's still largely accessible. Are there mainstream fans that have thrown their arms up, upset that things have gotten suddenly... geeky? I suppose. But I think most fans left are willing to go along for the ride.

That said, the "LOST" creators have cited a library's worth of influences, of which sci-fi is only one aspect. Ultimately it's just good storytelling.

ETA here's a Q&A with the showrunners from just today where a question about this came up:

Q: The story has really arrived at a point where the science fiction and fantasy aspects can’t really stay in the subtext anymore, is this liberating for you guys as writers or do you wish you could go back to some of the science vs faith ambiguity of the earlier episodes?

Damon Lindelof: It actually IS liberating... but at the same time, the show constantly forces us to evolve. We CAN’T go back to the ambiguity of Season One because our characters have experienced so much since then. Carlton and I often talk about THE STAND -- how the story starts with something scientific, an epidemic that kills of 99 percent of the world’s population -- but [SPOILER ALERT] slowly and steadily transforms into a mystical tale where people are having prophetic dreams, and finally, LITERALLY ends with the hand of God coming out of the sky and setting off a nuclear device. Our story has always been about a journey, but just because we’re embracing some of the more fantastical aspects of the island, doesn’t mean we’re completely abandoning the science vs. faith of it all.
posted by pzarquon at 12:28 AM on December 4, 2008

No. SciFisploitation.
posted by fatllama at 12:28 AM on December 4, 2008

What's great about LOST is that it combines all genres. That's the fun! I'd say that now it's a Sci-Fi show, but the early seasons (which, presumably, you're pitching) consisted largely of flashbacks that were wildly diverse.... with Jack living in a prime-time hospital drama, and Kate in a Lifetime movie, and Sun and Jin in a soap opera, and Hurley in a funny Twilight Zone, and Claire in a spooky Twilight Zone etc. etc.... Lost is an action-adventure / romance / comedy / action / sci-fi / drama. I think the best way to pitch it - it worked for me - is to acknowledge that it looks stupid, and admit that it is sometimes ridiculous, and then humbly ask them to trust your representation that it is awesome and so it should be given a chance.
posted by moxiedoll at 1:01 AM on December 4, 2008

I've always thought of Lost as a "Surrealist drama". It could turn out to be sci-fi, it could turn out to be fantasy, it could turn out to be religious, but that isn't the point, and the show is more about how the characters react to the surreal situations they find themselves in than the why or how of it.

I should note that it is leaning more toward sci-fi with maybe a dollop of fantasy at this point, but I still think this captures the basic idea. And I know we won't get a satisfactory sci-fi or fantasy answer to everything at the end of the series. It's more about the characters and their journeys.
posted by mmoncur at 2:13 AM on December 4, 2008

What pzarquon said. It's science fiction, and most of us geeks could see it was from day one, and a lot of the non-geeks (ie; the 'mainstream') got reeled in as a result. Now that they got most everyone hooked and are 5 seasons in, the show is becoming unashamedly sci-fi.

Sci-fi by stealth is about as accurate an answer as you're going to get.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:04 AM on December 4, 2008

Yup, it's sci-fi, but disguised for several years because a vast number of people would never give something a shot if they perceive it to be SF. By the time they got to moving the island and time travel and all that, people were hooked.
posted by jbickers at 4:49 AM on December 4, 2008

Science fiction. Some of the best science fiction on TV is subtle and understated - it's not all space battles and cyborgs. See: Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Twin Peaks, X-Files, Strangeluck, Beauty and the Beast, Brisco County Jr.

And here's a gauntlet thrown in a larger arena - magical realism is science fiction.

So there.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:44 AM on December 4, 2008

I've also heard it called slipstream. From the wikipedia article:

Slipstream falls between speculative fiction and mainstream fiction. While some slipstream novels employ elements of science fiction or fantasy, not all do. The common unifying factor of these pieces of literature is some degree of the surreal, the not-entirely-real, or the markedly anti-real.
posted by burnmp3s at 6:22 AM on December 4, 2008

It depends on what definition of sci-fi you use and (according to some definitions) how the writers will end up explaining the phenomena of the show in the long run. I'd say that it's soft sci-fi.

I think that part of the problem is that people often don't want to admit that they're watching scifi. They'll end up back pedaling to try to nullify the nerdy implications of that. "It's good and I like it, so it's not sci-fi", etc.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:31 AM on December 4, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm comfortable calling it science fiction as well, even if that wasn't clear at the start of the series. But if you're not convinced of that, you might consider speculative fiction, which is a catch-all term for all genres which involve non-realistic elements: science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, horror, mythology, etc.

I'd love to pick up Slap*Happy's gauntlet but this thread isn't the place for that debate.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:41 AM on December 4, 2008

I'd call the most recent seasons sci fi. The first definitely wasn't though.
posted by valadil at 6:50 AM on December 4, 2008

Id describe it as sci-fi. If I stopped a random person on the street and said the phrase "mystery based serial drama with elements of surrealism" they probably wouldnt understand. If I said "sci-fi" they would instantly get it. In other words, know your audience. We have categories like drama, comedy, musical, sci-fi, etc because they are broad concepts that describe something very easily. A drama may have comedic elements or a comedy may have dramatic elements, but you really dont need a wikipedia like explanation to describe them. Sci-fi will do nicely.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:57 AM on December 4, 2008

'Twin Peaks' meets 'Survivor'
posted by mary8nne at 7:36 AM on December 4, 2008

I am not sure why there would be any hesitation at this point to call Lost science fiction.

The sf genre doesn't require all its fictional science to be perfectly explicable by what is known to contemporary science (hence the infamous gray area between science fiction and fantasy that drives compulsive fans crazy trying to define a border where none can really be rationally drawn). Initial mysteries (like those of the first season of the show) that seem like fantasy but later resolve themselves through "pseudo-scientific" exposition and revelations are par for the course in nearly all written and visual media sf. (And it becomes clearer with each successive season that they intend to "explain" all the mysteries with exotic if fictional science by the end.)

As one of many dramatic genres, there's no reason to question the genre of something like Lost because it contains moments of drama and comedy. That would be like saying because there is a romance or someone told a joke on CSI, it's no longer a crime drama. Also, I agree with the sentiments expressed upthread that the producers deliberately disguised the series' science fictional elements to do an end-run around the prejudices of viewers who don't know anything about good science fiction and only judge it on the basis of crappy "sci-fi" movies and tv shows and bad formulaic books.
posted by aught at 7:55 AM on December 4, 2008 [2 favorites]

Ummm, fantasy nerd here.

By my interpretation of fantasy (which is that it must involve magic, fantastical creatures, etc.), Lost is strictly sci-fi. So everyone stop saying it has fantasy elements, it does not! It has supernatural elements, but those are within the realm of sci-fi. Psychic powers, prophetic dreams, visions... those all can exist within both fantasy and sci-fi, but in Lost's case I would call it sci-fi since they live in a reality-based world, and a lot of the supernatural events have been explained (pseudo)scientifically within the show.

Now if it were set in semi-medieval times, in an invented land, and Locke were a dwarf and Kate an elf... then you could call it fantasy. ;)
posted by thejrae at 8:39 AM on December 4, 2008

The sf genre doesn't require all its fictional science to be perfectly explicable by what is known to contemporary science

This is kinda why I like LOST less now than I did at the beginning. Straight SF can get lazy and unfocused when the writers can just do anything.

I have no problem with the nerdy SF label. The X Files through Season 5 was my favorite show ever. Like "read the transcripts, read every post on alt.tv.x-files, know the titles of every episode" favorite. Every now and then I'll think of an episode or scene, or something will remind me of the show, and my heart will ache for that time when there were new, good episodes to look forward to.

I just wanted to half-heartedly defend those who don't, or didn't, want LOST to be SF. If the writers had to stick to contemporary (or at least plausible) science to explain the island's weirdness, they wouldn't be able to fall back on Science Fiction elements like [spoiler] the frozen donkey wheel that makes the island disappear into the middle of the ocean.
posted by peep at 9:01 AM on December 4, 2008

What is the game Myst? Whatever that is, Lost is, I think.
posted by nosila at 9:21 AM on December 4, 2008

Yes, its true sci-fi like Outer Limits or Twilight zone...at ComiCon in SD it is sold as Sci-Fi TV...not hard Sci-Fi, but nonetheless...

Best show on TV...easy....
posted by TeachTheDead at 12:00 PM on December 4, 2008

While sci-fi is not a bad label for Lost, I think mmoncur had the best term for it: Surrealist drama. There are too many "visions" in Lost that make the viewer ask "Is that real?" too often to just call it sci-fi.

Another take, maybe less accurate, is that perhaps nerds like sci-fi because it tends to answer questions (or at least posit answers), whereas Lost is quite happy leaving things unanswered. Lost tends to obscure realities, and I often think of sci-fi as explaning realities (yet unobserved or otherwise).

Or maybe I just don't understand the definition of sci-fi...
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2008

While sci-fi is not a bad label for Lost, I think mmoncur had the best term for it: Surrealist drama. There are too many "visions" in Lost that make the viewer ask "Is that real?" too often to just call it sci-fi.

See, to me, it's just not close enough to surreal to be considered "surrealist drama." It's not dreamlike or random or strange enough. I can understand how it looked that way during the first season (whoa, polar bears on a tropical island!) but the writers have gone out of their way since then to explain these elements in a way that's very grounded in the series' logic. The questions that haven't been answered--like the four-toed statue--are ones that the writers have claimed that they'll answer before the show's conclusion.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:38 PM on December 4, 2008

Thanks for the input--there's a lot of good answers here, not just the ones I marked. I think science fiction is the closest term for what "LOST" is, but when you say that it conjures up images of "Alien", "Terminator", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", et. al. There's a breed of SF in which the story takes place now, here on Earth.

There's also magical realism--a lot of magical realism on the show. Namely how everybody seems to have some connection to each other, or they had even met previously, all before the plane crash. That's not SF and it's not quite fantasy.

There are some aspects that could be fantasy, but are likely SF and the writers just haven't done the "reveal" yet. The smoke monster, or the bright light that Locke sees very early on in season 1.

Anyway, I could go on forever with this show's loose threads. It's a great show, and I'm glad to see fellow MeFites into it as much as I am.
posted by zardoz at 8:06 PM on December 4, 2008