LogFAQs > #967070140

CynicalZealot posted...

Full on comedy sci-fi is nearly impossible to pull off well. Even Red Dwarf couldn't manage it for its full run - and it only really succeeded in the first place because it started out with a creator pairing where one creator was focused on the sci-fi aspects and the other was focused on the comedy bits (and when the pairing split the show suffered).

I mean, hardly anything longer than a single episode manages to be 100% comedy, regardless of what other genres it works in there. Even sitcoms have to break things up with a bit of drama here and there to keep things from being too one-dimensional, no matter how funny they are, and that's become even more true in the modern world of direct-to-streaming series that people binge watch, as opposed to only watching one episode a week. By definition, sci-fi needs to spend some time on social commentary (specifically, exploring what a hypothetical future would mean for humanity), which is inevitably going to pull the mood down at times and is at odds with making people laugh, but at a fundamental level that's not that different from what other genres have to deal with.