Ricki, Jerry, Jenny, Maury, or FOX 'reality' shows?

[Deja Q]

Poll question: Ricki, Jerry, Jenny, Maury, or FOX 'reality' shows?

Typical Ricki Lake episode: Drag queen competition. They're all men with shaved legs who could be spotted a mile away.

Typical Jerry Springer episode: Couples who cheat on each other and are asked to get drunk before the show so they can ham it up when the revelation is made. In recent years, guests are asked to strip nekkid and strut around for all to see.

Typical Jenny Jones episode: Secret crushes, including gay crushes that lead to people being murdered.

Typical Maury Povich episode: Is he the father of my child?

Typical FOX 'reality' show: Pull a contrived stunt in the name of reality, but with a twist that's destined to humiliate the 'winner' that the home audiences will love and want more of.

Then go watch the 1984 Doctor Who classic "Vengeance on Varos" and tell me if that British sci-fi series figured out what makes America tick?

Which is best?

[skooooo]

1. Why don't you tell us more about Vengeance on Varos?

...for those of us not familiar with it. How exactly did Doctor Who portray "what makes America tick?"

[Deja Q]

2. It's about

a society ruled by a puppet governor, with the corporate element pulling the strings to exploit everybody involved.

Its citizens, predominantly miners, work for little money and live under rations. "Prosperity" is not a word that describes what they society is, unless you're one of the elite. For entertainment they have only television. Television depicting gruesome and cruelness and meant solely to keep the people entertained, and not to think. (admittedly, it's a bit worse than American television currently is. But not by much, and given how America's "tastes" continue down the Road of Sleaze, I can easily see a time where our 'entertainment' would become that bad. Indeed, our movies are already at that point.)

Interestingly, Varos was colonized as a prison planet, where the current rulers kept using the same methods of control. (I don't think the writer cared much for Australia either, but Australia seems comparatively free to how bushco* wants to run America, even if they do want to ban gay marriages...)

The parallels are there and it doesn't take much imagination to see how the story is an allegory.

The one big difference is that the governor of the society has to bring all policies to the people to vote on (no congress or other time and money wasting dillydallying, the people get to choose.) Of course, if the people don't like what the governor has to say, he gets tortured in return.

And you'll never find this stuff on Star Trek... :-)

[skooooo]

3. Sounds like Orwell's 1984

I never had the chance to get into Dr. Who very much, but thanks for explaining it to me. He was quite popular in the 1980s with my college friends.