Although TV has had a long standing love affair with science fiction, it has generally avoided basing its SF shows on the works of bonafide science fiction writers as it has in the case of “FlashForward,” originally a book by award-winning SF novelist, Robert Sawyer. Rather than let the book stand on it own merits, the producers have warped it to make it to fit the Network TV mold, adding cops and bad guys, dumbing down the ideas, and perpetuating the TV stereotype that if a scientist ain’t a cop (e.g., “Numbers,” “11th Hour,” “CSIs,” “Fringe,” etc.), then he must be mad and bad.

The central FlashForward idea is somewhat consistent between book and TV show: it is a global phenomena that occurs when the minds all of humanity jump forward to the future, get a two-minute glimpse of what’s in store for them, then return to the present. In the book, the main characters are the two scientists who inadvertently cause the FlashForward. In the TV show, the main characters are two cops who investigate the cause of the FlashForward.

On TV, the FlashForward is six months into the future; in the book, it’s 21 years into the future. By shortening the FlashForward from years to months, the TV show mutes most of the interesting ideas explored in the book. In the TV show, little changes in six months except for the personal stories of the main characters. (A lesbian sees herself pregnant in six months; a doctor about to commit suicide in the present sees life as wonderful in six months.) I’ll admit, these make for interesting characters, but the book is really more about ideas.

In the book, the world is vastly different in 21 years, and Sawyer explores a variety of future scenarios and time travel conundrums: How long could China continue as a Communist regime if its people knew, 21 years hence, there would be a revolution? Could technologies evolve to make men immortal if seeing the infinite future were so disenchanting that most decided to forego the opportunity? If a man sought out a woman and married her because he saw himself married to her in the future, would that future never happen if seeing that future never happened? Or, by believing that the future is immutable, can a man exorcise his guilt for causing a future calamity (e.g., if it would have happened no matter what he did, why should he feel responsible for it)?

The few ideas the TV show does take from the book are what makes it watchable: the FlashForward, the character who finds out he is dead in the future and must find a way to prevent his death; how knowledge of the future changes characters’ perspectives on life in the present. Recent episodes have explored one of the book’s central ideas — can the future be changed — after a minor cop character who sees a terrible future for himself (as an accidental murderer) decides to kill himself to prevent that future from happening. That this character does change the future is a useful twist that enables all the surviving characters to wonder if they, too, can change their futures (e.g., prevent their deaths, avoid their infidelities, etc.). After being given hope that the future can be changed, however, they start to see events transpire showing those feared future events taking shape anyway. A wife, hoping to avoid the infidelity she sees for herself in the future, receives a sexy bra from her husband — the same one she was wearing when with another man in the future.

It’s also a clever idea having each episode be about a different clue the cop sees in his FlashForward when he envisions himself actually investigating what caused the FlashForward. In the future, he sees a wall covered with clues to the FlashForward, such as pictures of a doll’s head or a blue hand or an arm tattooed with three stars. In the present, as these clues reveal themselves to him, episode by episode, he investigates them to find out a little more about what bad guys caused the FlashForward.

For the most part, however, the show has been dumbed-down and made to fit long-standing formulas for so-called TV success. The mystery that the TV Show decided to make its central theme – who are the bad guys who caused the FlashForward – doesn’t exist in the book, where we know from the get go that the two scientists cause it. But the book doesn’t need a mystery to make it interesting. It’s 21 year breadth and the changes its characters undergo over that time make the initial FlashForwards make sense when they do or don’t come true without stretching credulity.  The TV mystery is, ho-hum, another extended global conspiracy plot arc, replete with an army of unnamed bad guys, as previously originated by shows like “24” and “X-Files,” and continued by shows like “Lost,” “Fringe” and now “V”. Limited to six months to make credible the changes the TV show’s characters go through in their FlashForwards, the show is already showing cracks in its logic and the believability of its characters’ behavior. On Thursday, one cop killed a man with a tatoo of three stars on his arm, thinking that in doing so he killed the man he saw hunting him in his FlashForward.  Could they really make him so stupid as not to foresee there might be an army of men with that tatoo on their arms??

And this is what’s most infuriating about the show: the idea that at least one of the scientists has to be a bad guy (played by Dominic Monaghan, a former “Lost” character, Charlie) and that they are part of a world-wide conspiracy. Why can’t scientists ever be portrayed doing what they really do: save humanity from their own stupidity?

Having read the book, I now find it more interesting to watch the show to see how far it will deviate from the book, and when or if it will return to the book’s more interesting plot elements. (I also enjoy watching Joseph Fiennes’ unbelievably pained expressions of betrayal at infidelities his wife has yet to commit. She happens to be played by Sonya Walger, who also plays a “Lost” character, Penny Widmore.) I’ll also watch because the infestation on Network TV of repetitious cop procedurals and medical dramas only leaves this type of compromised yet at least semi-original sci-fi show (and the likes of “Lost,” “Fringe,” “Dollhouse,” and “V”) to amuse me.

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