ABC serves sci-fi stuck in the past

One “purpose” of science fiction, when it cares to take up the challenge, is to tell us something about the world we actually live in -- not a far future or far distant world, but the logical and proximate extension of what we’re up to now. It takes our follies, dreams, nightmares and gives them form, provides a way to talk about ourselves without exactly talking about ourselves.

Yet there is something strangely 20th century about “Masters of Science Fiction,” a sort of sequel to Showtime’s “Masters of Horror” series that will run Saturdays through August on ABC. Or perhaps not so strange, when you consider that, as an anthology show (a currently dormant form), it bears a distinct resemblance to “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits,” and look at the names of the masters: There are adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein (b. 1907), Howard Fast (b. 1914), John Kessel (b. 1950) and Harlan Ellison (b. 1934), who adapts himself with Josh Olson (“A History of Violence”).

Not that the issues of the last century -- or millennium, for that matter -- evaporated at the turn of this one, or that a 20th century person has nothing to say to the children of the 21st. But most of what’s presented here labors under the shadow of Hiroshima and the Cold War world: the possible end of all things, widespread sickness, genetic mutation, death from above, invasion, enslavement and the suspicion that our machines will be the end of us.

The famous synthesized voice of Stephen Hawking -- who has also appeared on “Futurama,” “Red Dwarf” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” -- introduces each episode, which gives them an air of class and importance. But the fact is that the series, of which only four out of a completed six are scheduled to air, has been lying around for a year in the ABC cargo bay, and that a network executive described the results as “very uneven” at the recent Television Critics Assn. conclave.

“Uneven” is not wrong. They are all over the place. The worst are undone by their own earnestness and the explicitness with which the dialogue presents the issues that the action should embody. Least successful is tonight’s opener, “A Clean Escape,” with Judy Davis and Sam Waterston in an overheated staging (directed by Mark Rydell) of a Kessel story about a psychiatrist and her amnesiac patient on a fast track to a Charlton Heston “damn them all to hell” moment.

“The Awakening” (Aug. 11), based on a story by Fast, is essentially a version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” with the mystical and religious elements amped up. Terry O’Quinn, that “Lost” true believer, gets to play the skeptic here, at least until the gods debark their chariots.

Much of the best speculative fiction has a strong strain of satire, and comedy often does the better job at imagining dystopia -- give me “Futurama” or “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” or “Sleeper.” (Indeed, comedy and science sci-fi work in much the same way, by taking ideas to the breaking point.) The best of the “Masters” episodes is also the funniest. Directed and adapted from a Heinlein short story by Michael Tolkin (“Deep Impact” is his space flick, though he also wrote “The Player”), “Jerry Was a Wise Man” (Aug. 18) offers Anne Heche as a rich woman of the future saving an android minesweeper from recycling; it plays a nasty twist on the idea of what it means to be human. Malcolm McDowell, the Peter Cushing of his generation, brings the sci-fi cred as the man in charge of the robots.

In Ellison’s “The Discarded” (Aug. 25), Brian Dennehy and John Hurt -- he played Winston Smith in “1984” (in 1984!) -- philosophize and spar on a space-borne shipload of outcasts from Earth, suffering from what might be called extreme leprosy -- to ensure you don’t miss the analogy, the script makes it for you. “Star Trek: TNG” No. 1 Jonathan Frakes directs, somewhat in the fantastic countercultural spirit of old Robert Downey Sr. movies like “Greaser’s Palace,” and although it goes nowhere much -- it ends where it begins -- it does have an old-school avant-garde charm.

More effective than any of these is BBC America’s limited series “Jekyll,” which also begins tonight. The always excellent James Nesbitt (“Murphy’s Law”) stars as a modern version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s man divided, with next season’s “Bionic Woman” Michelle Ryan the woman he employs to keep tabs on him. Stephen Moffat (“Dr. Who,” “Coupling”) is the writer. The suspense is awful, the dilemma engaging, the corners filled with interesting characters, the whole thing strangely believable.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Masters of Science Fiction’

Where: ABC

When: 10 to 11 tonight

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)