How to Do Science-Fiction Well

This is an older piece that I tried to place with a publication but that didn’t work out. And while it’s a bit dated because it’s point of departure is the show Russian Doll, I still very much like this piece, because, at heart, I think it’s a pretty sharp look at the use of artifice in science-fiction. I hope you enjoy it.

Russian Doll was released to almost unanimous praise, and it’s easy to see why. It offers an engrossing mystery, the characters are compelling (especially Nadia, played by Natasha Lyonne), and it paints a picture of the in-your-face NYC that many of us had forgotten still exists. But it’s also clear that it strives to be something deeper—it wants to be something really worth thinking about—and on that score it unfortunately fails. It’s sci-fi, but it’s just not very good sci-fi.

Science-fiction is often lumped together with fantasy and it is easy to see why, as both offer viewers and readers access to a world unlike our own. However, fantasy is often the more fun and escapist genre of the two, while science-fiction manages to compete with the very best you might find in modern film or literature. And at times, the unique features of the genre allow it to offer something more than a conventional film or novel can offer.

In offering a world different than our own, science-fiction is able to dramatize features of ourselves and our world in a way that is otherwise quite difficult. For instance, one of the works of science-fiction that Russian Doll brings to mind is Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception. Inception is not likely one of those works that will make it into the pantheon of great works of film, but it’s nonetheless a useful example, because what Russian Doll does wrong Inception does right.

The world that Inception offers is very similar to our own. It’s a slightly futuristic world in which corporations have even more power than they do now, but otherwise, this world looks much like the one we live in. The main difference lies in the major piece of artifice that the film introduces—dream technology. This technology, which is never really explained (and doesn’t need to be), allows individuals to construct dreams for themselves and for others, and in which it’s then possible to become a lucid actor in those dreams. What then follows is an extremely elaborate story that involves dreams within dreams within dreams.

For anyone who has seen this film (or any of Nolan’s sci-fi films), the internal logic is extremely complex. However, the real narrative arc of the film is psychological. The main character, Cob, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is struggling with unresolved guilt stemming from his wife’s suicide. And so, while the main plot involves a story of corporate espionage, the real dramatic arc of the film follows Cob as he overcomes the psychological hold that this guilt has on him. And as a work of science-fiction, Inception gets a lot right.

What it gets most right is that the sci-fi artifice it introduces is substantively connected to the story that the film is trying to tell. That is, Cob’s guilt has a deep subconscious hold on him, and the artifice of lucid dreaming allows Nolan a way of putting Cob’s subconscious on the screen. In other words, the film’s artifice is a way of objectifying our psychology—of representing it visually—and our psychology is the real story in this film. And when science-fiction really hits its stride, this is often what it’s doing. For instance, another similar work is Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which, unlike Inception, is likely a work that will stand the test of time. And this work similarly uses a piece of science-fiction artifice in order to represent an aspect of our internal reality.

In this case, A Scanner Darkly uses surveillance technology as a way of representing the endless activity of our self-consciousness. As Dick realizes, when we look at ourselves through a surveillance “scanner,” we are merely doing what our self-consciousness already does—“looking” at ourselves. But by objectifying a feature of our internal life through a piece of sci-fi artifice, it becomes easier to represent these internal features in a book (or the film that followed). And so, rather than delving into an internal monologue, for instance, we get an external representation of a purely psychological experience. And so, Inception’s dream worlds allows us to represent our subconscious on the big screen, while A Scanner Darkly does the same but for our self-consciousness. Rather than nebulous and difficult to represent internal phenomenon, well-crafted sci-fi artifice allows us the ability to objectify and represent these phenomena out in the world.

With all this said, this is precisely why Russian Doll has problems. Its artifice isn’t essential to the central narrative of the show. As with Inception, the emotional arc of the show is quite similar, as it follows two characters who have to learn how to overcome their past traumas in order to embrace the world again. And Russian Doll is actually quite good at telling this story, delving into Nadia’s childhood relationship with her mother, and how this led to the sort of noncommittal way she lives her life now. For Nadia, commitment leads to pain, so it’s better to live alone. And so, over the course of the show, Nadia finds the companionship of a fellow lost soul, Alan, and together they find the strength to live as open and caring individuals. As Nadia tells Alan in the last episode, she can’t promise him that his life will always be happy, but she can promise him that it will never be alone.

However, unlike Inception, in which the artifice of lucid dreaming allows the audience a way of seeing the main character’s subconscious, the artifice in Russian Doll—that the main characters keep dying and resurrecting to the same moment in time—is largely an inessential or arbitrary part of the story. That is, the artifice doesn’t represent anything that is otherwise difficult to see, so that little would be lost if the story followed a more conventional linear storyline. After all, as with Inception, the story is essentially the story of how we overcome our past. But unlike Inception, there is nothing about resurrection that helps us understand loneliness any better.

As a result, you could just as easily tell this story without the artifice, if the budding friendship between Nadia and Alan unfolded across sequential days rather than within one day that they live over and over. In fact, the only artifice that is really central to the narrative is wholly unrelated to the show’s main conceit—Nadia starts hallucinating. Starting in the sixth episode, Nadia keeps seeing visions of herself as a young girl which brings back the memories of the trauma that she’s experienced. But these hallucinations have nothing to do with her many resurrections. If anything, you could say that they’re the kind of hallucinations that people who experience PTSD often suffer. But as artifice, these hallucinations are actually useful to the narrative arc of the show, because they objectify Nadia’s subconscious, and her psychological development is the real story. In this way, her hallucinations function much like the dreams do in Inception. But Nadia and Alan’s repeated deaths don’t really advance the dramatic arc of the show in any essential way.

In this way, the work to which Russian Doll is most similar is the movie Groundhog Day. In that movie, the same artifice is used—Bill Murray is forced to relive the same day over and over again. But this use of artifice is different than the way that artifice is used in Inception, because we don’t actually learn anything through it. That is, the fact that Bill Murray lives the same day over and over again doesn’t reveal anything about his character that we could not otherwise see. Instead, the artifice serves as an artificial external provocation to the main character, so that we can watch as they grow and develop as a consequence of it. So, we merely have to accept the premise, as absurd as it might be, because the real story is about how it provokes character development.

In these two different types of examples, Inception and Groundhog Day, we therefore have two different uses of artifice. The first uses it as a device that reveals something essential to the story, while the second uses it as an arbitrary device to provoke character development. And each can be an extremely effective cinematic device in its own right. But this is where Russian Doll goes wrong. Its actual use of artifice is similar to Groundhog Day, but it treats the artifice as if it were Inception.

As a consequence, the first five episodes in the very short eight episode season treat the artifice itself as a mystery to be solved. So, we watch as Nadia acts the part of a sleuth and tries to figure out why she keeps dying and resurrecting. Perhaps it’s the drugs she took, perhaps it’s the fact that the building she’s in used to be a yeshiva, but regardless, she’s determined to find the cause. But because the artifice doesn’t really have any essential relationship to her psychology, the development of which provides the real narrative arc of the show, she treats this mystery as an external mystery to be solved. In other words, because the artifice is merely an external provocation intended to spark character development, discovering the cause of this artifice won’t (and can’t) advance the story. Yet, the show spends five eighths of its time doing just that. As a result, we don’t really learn very much about the real story—Nadia’s psychological development—in these first five episodes. Instead, it’s as if Bill Murray spent the first two thirds of Groundhog Day trying to figure out why he keeps reliving the same day over and over. But this would only postpone the real story, which is the story of how he grows and develops as a consequence of this inexplicable artifice, and which Russian Doll therefore has to pack into the final three episodes.

The comparison between these two goes even further, because Groundhog Day actually tells the story that Russian Doll only wants to tell but doesn’t. As we learn at the end of Groundhog Day, the artifice of the story is connected to Bill Murray’s narcissism, so that when he overcomes his narcissism, he is able to return to linear time. And this is identical to the story of Russian Doll, whose characters similarly have to overcome their own narcissism in order to return to linear time. But the story, in both cases, is about psychological growth, and the use of artifice is merely an artificial construct used to provoke it. Consequently, Groundhog Day never wastes any time asking why Bill Murray keeps reliving the same day over and over because the answer is merely that it’s a sort of fantastical premise that’s useful for provoking the kind of personal growth that is the true narrative of the film. In Russian Doll, this is similarly true, but five of eight episodes are devoted to finding the cause of an artifice whose real cause is merely that it was a useful device to tell a story.

However, the writers of Russian Doll aren’t satisfied with this banal answer (although, it’s only banal to them, because Groundhog Day demonstrates it need not be). Instead, they want to see something deep and profound in their use of artifice, as if it revealed something in the same way that Inception’s dream world does. But if it did, Nadia’s sleuthing around for an external cause of the artifice in the first five episodes would somehow advance the actual narrative, because, in learning more about the artifice, we would actually be learning more about Nadia’s psychology. And while we do learn a lot about her, understanding the artifice doesn’t actually help us learn anything about the psychological issues that are the real concern of the show.

With all that said, there actually is one way in which the show’s artifice is related to the narrative arc of the show—it offers the writers a way of saying that when we save someone from loneliness we are saving their lives. After all, because of the show’s artifice—in which the characters keep dying and being resurrected—when Alan and Nadia save one another from loneliness they are literally saving each others life. However, because the artifice isn’t related to the actual arc of the show, which involves Nadia and Alan’s personal growth, the show isn’t really able to demonstrate that there is a connection between saving someone from loneliness and saving their lives. After all, resurrection is a device that is arbitrarily introduced to provoke personal growth, and which is then removed just as arbitrarily when that growth is achieved. In other words, the reason their lives are saved is only because when they overcome loneliness, the writers no longer need the cinematic device of their deaths and resurrections.

When artifice is used in some essential way, the artifice acts metaphorically. For instance, the dream world in Inception represents the main characters subconscious, while the scanners in A Scanner Darkly represent the characters self-consciousness. In Russian Doll, however, we don’t find this type of artifice, but instead, the more arbitrary type of artifice that we find in films like Groundhog Day. However, in wanting their artifice to act metaphorically even though it’s the arbitrary kind of artifice, what we wind up with is not metaphor but simile. That is, resurrection doesn’t directly represent something else—it doesn’t help us see some otherwise hidden aspect of human life—but instead, resurrection is “like” something else. And as we have seen, what the writers want to say is that saving someone from loneliness is like saving their lives. But these things are only alike because the writers had the characters die when they were lonely and live when they were together, and not because of some essential relationship that resides in the nature of death and loneliness.

But this is just bad writing, because the artifice of the show doesn’t actually demonstrate the point—it doesn’t act metaphorically—because it’s a wholly arbitrary construct that is introduced to provoke the characters. If it weren’t, we could interpret the metaphorical nature of the artifice, in much the way we can interpret the artifice in A Scanner Darkly and Inception. But because it is arbitrary, the point has to be made explicitly—the writers have to stop their resurrections when they find one another—so that the writers can then say that the two things are like one another. However, without them explicitly orchestrating this point, the truth is that these things aren’t really like one another at all. If they were, we’d be able to see it; we wouldn’t need to be told.

Ultimately, the problem with this show is that it didn’t understand the nature of the artifice it was using, and this meant that there were two different possibilities for how the show could unfold. The first option was that that the show could have been about the artifice, with the characters pursuing the mystery deeper and deeper, and in which case much more thought would have had to go into the nature of the artifice, as it was the hallmark of the show. The second option was that the show could have been about Nadia and Alan’s personal transformations, in which case the cause of the artifice is largely irrelevant, because what is important is merely how it provokes their personal growth. However, what we got was a show that was confused about itself, that for the first half was one type of show and for the second half was another, and in which the pieces didn’t at all fit together. And they can’t fit together, because they’re two very different kinds of show.

Which is all to say that Russian Doll very much wanted to be Inception but it was really Groundhog Day. Both of these films are worth watching, but Russian Doll’s confusion means that when you finally open up that last Matryoshka doll, what you find is nothing.