Century City - An Improbable Hybrid

Century City is a new mid-season replacement series that tries to combine two genres in hopes of creating something new and different. It's Yet Another Law Drama, but it's set in the year 2030, for a Sci-Fi spin. Unfortunately, it isn't a particularly remarkable example of either genre.

The Law Drama aspect features an assortment of partners in the law firm, including the idealistic young associate, the seasoned senior partner, the hottie and the nebbish who has the hots for her, etc. Nothing terribly new or interesting there.

The Sci-Fi angle tries to take advantage of the genre's ability to comment on current issues under the pretext of looking at issues of the future or another society. Unfortunately the issues don't derive from the setting. Instead they're contrivances that seem unlikely to come out of nowhere as precedent-setting cases 25 years from now.

It's a bit like when Star Trek has tried to do legal episodes, establishing for the first time questions that would have to be settled long before the episode in question. Like, they've got a sentient android enlisted in Star Fleet, but nobody's established yet whether he has the same rights as any other sentient being. Yeah, right. And in the year 2030 they're just starting to wrestle with the legal standing of a cloned embryo and whether it's a "son" or a "brother" of the donor? I don't think so. Or a boy band who were on the charts in the 1980's, and still look twenty-something and doing a reunion tour (except for the one member who didn't get the anti-aging treatments)... but the lawyers are taken completely by surprise by it? Um, sure. And the young lawyer who was the product of substantial genetic engineering... which, if you do the math, would have to be taking place right now? Er, no.

The series seems to have it's heart in the right place, trying to put quesions like cloning into some context, free of the current debates. But between the unrealism of its portrayal of the legal profession, and the Very Special Episode theme of every week's cases, it's not something I'll be making a big effort to watch.