on scifi tv: where have all the space operas gone?

Or rather, how come the best scifi I can find on Western TV these days is in kids' cartoons? This isn't a total problem for me, because as you know I have an undeniable adoration for silly kids' superhero cartoons (my brother and I are possibly the only people over 30 in the world who get excited about new eps of Ben 10. But it's so much fun!) But it gets frustrating because there are no fandoms for these to speak of. The cartoons based on existing properties like Marvel and DCU have followings, but not the original stuff.

Which is a shame because I just got into Generator Rex and want fic for it and there is none to speak of, because it is a silly kids superhero cartoon. (But it is a silly kids superhero cartoon with Agent Six and César!! Sigh...) It's also got some of the better scifi I've seen on TV in a while - super-mad-science technobabble-laden scifi, little to do with realism (except when it has a space elevator, which was pretty much spot-on, down to the mobile base station) but everything to do with the intriguing possibilities of humans intersecting with technology (it's set in the near-future, five years after the nanite-pocalypse, in which every living thing on the planet was infected with nanites that usually are dormant but occasionally get activated and mutate their hosts into nightmarish monsters. Yes, it's very anime, down to the hero's pre-canon amnesia, though the characters and general sensibilities are much more American superhero.) It makes me miss scifi shows - especially space shows; with BSG and SGU off the air, as far as I know there are no TV shows currently set in space, no Star Trek, no Farscape or Firefly. (Doctor Who only halfway counts, because it's not always in space and not always in the future.) I like fantasy too, don't get me wrong, but I miss my space future shows something fierce.

The brother hypothesizes that procedural dramas have primed audiences to expect "realism" in their TV - the sort of plausible semi-pseudo-science that sounds convincing, that can be hard to write. Scifi shows couldn't get away with just crying "tachyons!" and having time-travel, in the current TV environment. gnine suggests that it's due to reality outpacing the past's vision of the future. We don't have a moonbase or FTL, but a lot of the trappings of classic space opera, the giant computers and video phones and such, have become ordinary or even quaint in this age of ever-advancing electronics. So a modern space opera would have to reinvent the old tropes, and maybe no one's figured out a good way how yet, or no one's dared to take a risk on a show that might have. Except on kids' shows where realism isn't considered a concern - and cartoons can more easily present futures anyway, when all sets and such are drawn from scratch anyway.

Personally I really want the USA network to do a sci-fi show - I doubt they'd have a budget for space opera, but maybe a smaller show, set it on a colony world - Mars? - in the nearish future (say a century ahead?) - and in keeping with their other shows, character-focused rather than f/x, mostly small enclosed sets. Make it a crossover-genre, perhaps, cops, or doctors, or whatever - but show me the future, show me where we could be going, the endless possibilities humanity has to look forward to.

Meanwhile, at least I've got my silly kids' cartoons! (I could also ask why American kids' cartoons are doing better than most TV on the race front - the eponymous hero Rex is a fairly obviously non-white Latino, though I'm pretty sure the toys are marketed to any kids that'll buy 'em - can't figure out if that's because it's a kid's show and they think kids won't care, or because it's a cartoon so they they think no one will notice, or something else, but kids cartoons are still some of the only non-specific-racial-demographic-targeted American TV in which the lead character isn't always white?)