Visual Epic-ness In Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television

When you think of science fiction and fantasy as a whole,  one thing that binds them together is an expectation of a grand scale or scope.  You’re much more likely to find an epic clash of 500 spaceships or 50,000 knights there than in, say, a Nicholas Sparks novel. (Although, if there was a Nicholas Sparks novel called 500 Spaceships vs. 50,000 Knights, you’d better believe I’m picking that one up from the library).  But, television being what it is, the budget is rarely there to visually capture the epic-ness, visually speaking, of the titans of the movie world.  Point of the point: You don’t expect to see Avatar-level visual awesomeness on a television show.

So how do TV shows work around that?  How does a sci-fi/fantasy show capture that sense of huge, grand adventure that’s so indelible in the genre?  Even working with Styrofoam rocks and cardboard sets, Star Trek managed to capture the Spirit of Sci-Fi ™ on multiple occasions.  Other shows have managed it as well, and proved that bringing a an eye-gasm to audiences doesn’t have to break the bank.

Fire in the desert

Let’s start with the scene that inspired this article.  Perhaps it’s because I knew it was coming, and was eagerly awaiting it.  Perhaps it’s because it was built up so well in previous episodes. Or perhaps it’s because in a show that practically lives and breathes tragedy and Pyrrhic victories, this scene is such an unambiguous win for a character that we’ve been rooting for since Day 1.  For whatever reason, the “A dragon is not a slave” moment from Game of Thrones is a perfect example of this.  It does a lot with a little – the huge, pull-back shots where you see the huge army are caught in glimpses, and most of the action takes place close up.  But even in the close shots, there’s this sense of openness – big skies, tall walls, wide open spaces – that grants this scene an epic flavor.

(For some reason every single Game of Thrones video on YouTube has embedding disabled, so you’ll have to click through.  In the meantime, enjoy the following picture of a rainbow.)

Notice the little things – how Daenerys in blue is a sharp contrast to the light and dark beige around her.  How she’s frequently framed in the lower half of the scene in the first half, when it looks like she’s giving up one of her dragons.  And again, as she’s monologue-ing to the slaver – shot from below, so that the rows of spears behind her seem to go on forever.  The little things.

Delusional space poetry

Deep Space Nine broke the mold in quite a few ways – it was darker, more gritty, and less black and white than previous iterations of Star Trek.  It took risks, ran multi-season plot arcs, and threw huge space battles into a series that until that point had been the Enterprise and one other ship hanging motionless in the black going “pew pew” at each other.

Needless to say, going from that to the space battles in “Sacrifice of Angels” is a pretty big step forward.

Here’s the real poetry of this visually delightful space tussle: it’s so enthralling you don’t even notice how absurd it is until you’ve watched it.

It doesn’t take West Point graduate to a PhD in astrophysics to see that the concept of starships, equipped with faster-than-light travel, traveling through three-dimensional space, and then fighting each other by forming Civil-War style firing lines is… absurd.  For so many reasons.  The idea of “breaking through their lines” is patently ridiculous.

But none of that matters on first viewing.  Because if there’s one thing this scene does right, it’s this: provide context.  The shimmery, shiny space battle would mean nothing without the frequent cuts to the bridge for our heroes to get in some expository dialogue about how the battle is going.  But the visual is key: again, scope and scale matter a ton.  Simply seeing that many ships on screen, interacting, moving – it gives one a sense of the importance of the conflict.  And that’s something you can’t attain – viscerally, at least – with just the play-by-play.

The game-changing perspective

For something as epic and perspective-changing as having a gigantic spaceship jump into open atmosphere, this one actually skimps pretty hard on the epic visuals – there’s lots of shaky cam, lots of quick cuts, lots of close-up hard to follow action.  Which makes the crowning moment, when Tigh looks up and sees the Galactica jump in, work even better.  Because that shot lingers – it’s like a sword fighter striking a pose after a complex series of moves: the stillness accentuates the action.  Changing speeds, making bold visual statements like this, is another way a TV show can really get the most out of its budget.