A Better World SCI-FI envisions a more Hopeful, Progressive, and Positive Future — achieved through Advanced Technology or Social Progress, leading to a more fair and just, prosperous, or peaceful World for humanity.
Star Trek (1966-present)
Star Trek is an American SCI-FI TV series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) and its crew. It acquired the retronym of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began.
Storyline
The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, c. 2266–2269. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer and Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Chief Medical Officer Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Each episode starts with the “Where no man has gone before” intro.
The second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” introduced other main characters (besides Spock): Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lt. Sulu (George Takei), who served as a physicist in the pilot, but then became a helmsman for the rest of the series. Ship’s doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) joined the cast for the first season, and remained, achieving billing as the third star of the series. Also joining the ship’s permanent crew during the first season were the communications officer, Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), the first African-American woman to hold such an important role in an American TV series; the captain’s yeoman, Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who departed midway through the first season; and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), the ship’s nurse and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the second season.
Star Trek envisions an optimistic future where humanity has overcome poverty, war, and prejudice, thanks to technological advancements and collective wisdom, leading to a post-scarcity society focused on exploration, self-improvement, and unity within the United Federation of Planets. The franchise’s foundational humanist philosophy, promoted by creator Gene Roddenberry, emphasizes human potential and the rational, ethical application of technology for the betterment of all, creating an inclusive and hopeful vision of humanity’s future.
E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is an American SCI-FI film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an Extraterrestrial he names E.T. who has been stranded on Earth. Along with his friends and family, Elliott must find a way to help E.T. find his way home. The film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore.
Storyline
A race of diminutive Aliens visit Earth at night to gather plant specimens in a California forest. One of them, fascinated by the distant lights of a neighborhood, separates from the group, before U.S. government agents arrive and chase the startled creature. The Aliens are forced to depart before the agents can find them, leaving their lone member behind. While the agents search the forest, the creature takes shelter in a shed belonging to the family of ten-year-old Elliott Taylor (Thomas). Initially scared by the creature, who runs away, Elliott spends the following day leaving a trail of Reese’s Pieces to lure the Alien back to the Taylor’s home, where he hides the creature in his room. The following morning, Elliott feigns illness to stay off school and play with the creature, whom he dubs E.T. Elliott eventually introduces E.T. to his older brother, Michael (MacNaughton), and five-year-old sister Gertie (Barrymore), who agree to keep E.T. hidden from their hardworking single mother, Mary.
When the children ask about his origins, E.T. displays telekinetic abilities by levitating several balls to represent his planetary system, and later demonstrates other extraordinary abilities by reviving a dead chrysanthemum and instantly healing a cut on Elliott’s finger. As Elliott and the creature begin to bond, they start to share thoughts and emotions, the two being simultaneously startled when E.T. accidentally opens an umbrella in a different room. At school, Elliott becomes intoxicated because, at home, E.T. is drinking beer and watching television. Sensing E.T.’s desire to be rescued, Elliott impulsively frees the frogs about to be vivisected in his biology class, inspiring the other children to follow his lead, and romantically kisses a girl he likes because E.T. is watching John Wayne kiss Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man (1952); Elliott is sent to the principal’s office for his disruptive behavior.
Inspired by a Buck Rogers comic strip, depicting the character calling for help with a communication device, E.T. builds a makeshift device to “phone home”, using various parts around the Taylor home. E.T. also learns to speak English, and requests the children’s help to build the device. They agree to help find the missing components, unaware that agents are covertly searching for the Alien. On Halloween, the children disguise E.T. as a ghost and Elliott sneaks E.T. into the forest, where they set up the device to call E.T.’s people. Elliott begs E.T. to stay on Earth with him, before falling asleep and waking alone in the forest the next day. Elliott returns home to his worried family, while Michael searches for E.T., finding him pale and weakened in a culvert. He takes him home, where Elliott is also growing weaker, and reveals the creature to Mary (Wallace) just before government agents invade and quarantine the house.
The lead agent, Keys (Coyote), asks for Elliott’s help to save E.T., stating that meeting Aliens was his childhood dream and he considers E.T’s arrival a genuine miracle. However, E.T. dies while Elliott rapidly recovers. Left alone to say goodbye, Elliott tells E.T. that he loves him, so E.T.’s heart begins to glow and he is revived and restored to health. E.T. tells Elliott that his people are returning for him. Elliott and Michael flee with E.T. on their bikes, flanked by Michael’s friends who help them evade the pursuing authorities. Heading towards a roadblock, E.T. levitates the boys to safety and lands them in the forest. E.T.’s ship arrives, and he says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, who gifts him the chrysanthemum he previously revived. Elliott tearfully asks E.T. to stay, but E.T. places his glowing finger on Elliott’s head and tells him that he will always be there. The children, Mary, and Keys watch the ship blast off into space, leaving a rainbow in the sky.
Avatar (2009)
Avatar is an epic SCI-FI film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron. It features an ensemble cast including Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. (Distributed by 20th Century Fox, it is the first installment in the Avatar film series.)
Storyline
In 2154, Earth suffers from resource exhaustion and ecological collapse. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a lush habitable moon orbiting a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora, whose atmosphere is inhospitable to humans, is inhabited by the Na’vi, 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned, sapient humanoids that live in harmony with nature.
To explore Pandora, genetically matched human scientists control Na’vi-human hybrids called “avatars”. Paraplegic former Marine Jake Sully (Worthington) is recruited by the RDA to replace his deceased identical twin, who had signed up to be an operator. Avatar Program head Dr. Grace Augustine (Weaver) considers Jake inadequate, but accepts him as an operator.
While escorting the avatars of Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, Jake’s avatar is attacked by Pandoran wildlife and flees into the forest, where he is rescued by the Na’vi princess Neytiri (Saldana). Suspicious of Jake, she takes him to her clan. Neytiri’s mother, Mo’at, the clan’s spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society.
Colonel Miles Quaritch (Lang), head of RDA’s security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na’vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, under which is a rich deposit of unobtanium. Learning of this, Grace transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the tribe, and they choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer threatening a sacred Na’vi site, Administrator Parker Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed.
Despite Grace’s argument that destroying Hometree would damage the biological neural network that encompasses all Pandoran life, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na’vi to evacuate. Jake confesses that he was a spy and the Na’vi take him and Grace captive. Quaritch’s soldiers destroy Hometree, killing many, including Neytiri’s father, the clan chief. Mo’at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch’s forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch’s brutality, airlifts Jake, Grace, and Norm to Grace’s outpost, but during the escape Grace is shot and fatally wounded.
Jake regains the Na’vi’s trust by connecting his mind to that of the Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the Na’vi. Supported by Neytiri and the new chief Tsu’tey, Jake unites the clan, telling them to gather all the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a strike against the Tree of Souls to demoralize the Na’vi. Before the battle, Jake prays to the Na’vi deity Eywa via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls.
Tsu’tey and Trudy are among the battle’s heavy casualties. The Na’vi are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake’s prayer. Quaritch, in an AMP suit, escapes his crashed aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake’s human body, exposing it to Pandora’s poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to kill Jake’s avatar, he is killed by Neytiri, who saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time.
In the aftermath of the war, the RDA are expelled from Pandora; only some humans are chosen to stay, including Max and Norm. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls, Neytiri, and Mo’at.
Tomorrowland (2015)
Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film directed by Brad Bird with a screenplay by Bird and Damon Lindelof. The film is based on the themed land Tomorrowland from the Disney Parks and a story by Bird, Lindelof, and Jeff Jensen. It stars George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, and Keegan-Michael Key. In the film, a disillusioned genius inventor and a teenage science enthusiast embark to an intriguing alternate dimension known as “Tomorrowland”, where their actions directly affect their own world.
In drafting their story, Bird and Lindelof took inspiration from the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future, notably his conceptual vision for the planned community known as EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).
Storyline
Young boy Frank Walker attends the New York World’s Fair (1964) to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. He is approached by the young girl Athena (Cassidy), who hands him an orange lapel pin with a blue “T” embossed on it, telling him to follow her onto Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction at the Fair’s Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Frank obeys, sneaking onto the ride. There, the pin is scanned by a laser, and he is transported to Tomorrowland, a futuristic cityscape, where advanced robots fix his jetpack, allowing him to fly and join the secretive world.
In the present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father Eddie (McGraw), a NASA engineer, faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. Touching it, the pin transports her to Tomorrowland. Her adventure is cut short when the pin’s battery runs out, leaving Casey stranded in a lake.
With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. She then drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York. The now reclusive, cynical Frank (Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside his house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability.
Animatronic assassins arrive to kill Casey, but she and Frank escape, meeting Athena in the woods outside his house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland. Using a teleportation device, the trio travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison co-founded “Plus Ultra,” a secret society of futurists, creating Tomorrowland in another dimension, free to make scientific breakthroughs without obstruction. The trio use an antique rocket, called the Spectacle, hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower to travel to Tomorrowland.
There, they find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix (Laurie), Tomorrowland’s governor, greets them. They travel to a tachyon machine, invented by Frank, which accurately predicted the worldwide catastrophe. Casey refuses to accept the world will end, causing the future to temporarily alter. Frank attempts to convince Nix to listen, who refuses and intends to have the group leave Tomorrowland. Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront Nix, who admits he tried to prevent the future by projecting such images to humanity as a warning. Instead, they embraced the apocalypse, refusing to act to make a better future for their world.
Believing that humanity simply gave up, Nix has too and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so he can rebuild the world to his liking. Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to use a bomb to destroy the machine, leading to a fight with Nix. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning Nix’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by Nix, and she jumps in the way of his attack, mortally wounding herself beyond repair. Making peace with Frank, Athena activates her self-destruct sequence, destroying the machine, which falls on Nix, killing him.
In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.
Black Panther (2018)
Black Panther is an American SCI-FI film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film stars Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa / Black Panther alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. In Black Panther, T’Challa is crowned king of Wakanda following his father’s death, but he is challenged by Killmonger (Jordan), who plans to abandon the country’s isolationist policies and begin a global revolution.
Storyline
Thousands of years ago, five African tribes warred over a meteorite containing the metal vibranium. One warrior ingests a “heart-shaped herb” affected by the metal and gains superhuman abilities, becoming the first “Black Panther”. He unites all but the Jabari Tribe to form the nation of Wakanda. Over centuries, the Wakandans use vibranium to develop advanced technologies and isolate themselves from the world by posing as an underdeveloped country. In 1992, Wakanda king T’Chaka visits his brother N’Jobu, who is working undercover in Oakland, California. T’Chaka accuses N’Jobu of assisting black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue with stealing vibranium from Wakanda. N’Jobu’s partner reveals he is Zuri, another undercover Wakandan, and confirms T’Chaka’s suspicions.
In the present day, following T’Chaka’s death, his son T’Challa returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. He and Okoye, leader of the Dora Milaje, extract T’Challa’s ex-lover Nakia from an undercover assignment so she can attend his coronation ceremony with his mother Ramonda and younger sister Shuri. At the ceremony, the Jabari Tribe’s leader M’Baku challenges T’Challa for the crown in ritual combat without the benefit of the heart-shaped herb. T’Challa defeats M’Baku when he persuades him to yield rather than die.
When Klaue and his accomplice Erik Stevens steal a Wakandan artifact from a London museum, T’Challa’s friend and Okoye’s husband W’Kabi urges him to bring Klaue back alive. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia travel to Busan, South Korea, where Klaue plans to sell the artifact to CIA agent Everett K. Ross. A firefight erupts, and Klaue attempts to flee but is caught by T’Challa, who reluctantly releases him to Ross’s custody. Klaue tells Ross that Wakanda’s international image is a front for a technologically advanced civilization. When Erik attacks to extract Klaue, Ross is gravely injured protecting Nakia. Rather than pursue Klaue, T’Challa takes Ross to Wakanda, where their technology can save him.
While Shuri tends to Ross, T’Challa confronts Zuri about N’Jobu, since Erik wore a necklace that belonged to him. Zuri explains that N’Jobu had become disillusioned with Wakanda’s isolationism and planned to share Wakanda’s technology with people of African descent to help them overcome their oppressors, with Klaue’s assistance. Before T’Chaka could apprehend N’Jobu, N’Jobu attacked Zuri, forcing T’Chaka to kill him. T’Chaka instructed Zuri to claim that N’Jobu had vanished and to leave behind N’Jobu’s American son, N’Jadaka, to uphold the story. This boy grew up to become Erik, a U.S. black ops Navy SEAL who took on the nickname “Killmonger.” Meanwhile, Killmonger kills Klaue and brings his body to Wakanda. He is presented before the tribal elders, revealing himself as N’Jadaka and asserting his claim to the throne. Killmonger challenges T’Challa to ritual combat and kills Zuri; without the powers of the heart-shaped herb, T’Challa is severely injured and presumed dead after Killmonger throws him over a waterfall. Killmonger ingests the heart-shaped herb and orders the rest to be incinerated, but Nakia manages to extract one. Killmonger, backed by W’Kabi and his army, prepares to distribute shipments of Wakandan weapons to operatives worldwide.
Nakia, Shuri, Ramonda, and Ross flee to the Jabari Tribe for aid. They find a comatose T’Challa, rescued by the Jabari as repayment for sparing M’Baku’s life. Healed by Nakia’s herb, T’Challa returns to fight Killmonger, who also dons a nanotech suit similar to T’Challa’s. W’Kabi and his army fight Shuri, Nakia, and the Dora Milaje while Ross remotely pilots a jet and shoots down the planes carrying vibranium weapons before they can leave Wakanda. M’Baku and the Jabari arrive to reinforce T’Challa. Confronted by Okoye, W’Kabi and his army stand down. Fighting in Wakanda’s vibranium mine, T’Challa disrupts Killmonger’s suit and stabs him. Killmonger refuses to be healed, choosing to die as a free man rather than be incarcerated; T’Challa shows him the Wakanda sunset, and Killmonger dies peacefully.
T’Challa establishes an outreach center at the building where N’Jobu died, to be run by Nakia and Shuri. (In a mid-credits scene, T’Challa appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda’s true nature to the world.)
A Better World SCI-FI encourages us to embrace a Hopeful and Optimistic view of the Future — where people live in a more fair and just, prosperous, and peaceful World — usually achieved through technological advancement or social progress. So, what’s the hitch to all this?
We have to Believe it’s Possible … before we can make it a Reality.
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