Currently in its second season on Action X, ReGenesis is a Canadian television show centred on the North American Biotechnology Advisory Commission (NorBAC) in Toronto.
This may be a fictional institute, but the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) isn’t. It is one of six genome centres across Canada, helping oversee a $500-million portfolio of 33 leading-edge genomics and proteomics research projects, as well as a world-class technology platform at The Centre for Applied Genomics (TCAG) in Toronto.
So what does this have to do with a television show about sexy scientists tracking down unsexy bugs and stopping global pandemics in their tracks?
Well, OGI publishes fact sheets on its Web site at http://www.ontariogenomics.ca/ on every single episode. These fact sheets highlight all the technical and/or medical information in a particular episode.
For example, in episode three, ‘The Cocktail’, a subplot featured two NorBAC scientists investigating a school where children had consumed chicken laced with prions, and were now experiencing unusual IQ spikes. (OGI offers no comment on the fact that the research brings the two scientists so close together that they fall into bed. Oops. Pesky things – prions, not scientists.)
The fact sheet provides easily understandable facts about prion disease, including links to more detailed information. This provides an invaluable educational tool that could get schoolchildren excited about science and motivated to become scientists or researchers.
That is, if the bulk of schoolchildren in South Africa, particularly in the rural areas, had access to the Internet, of course. Which is an entirely different petri dish of prions, to coin a metaphor.
So while the educational aspect of ReGenesis is unfortunately limited in a South African context, what the show does highlight is the incredible potential of television in terms of interactivity.
Just as we love to read about celebrities and their shenanigans, why can’t we generate a culture of curiosity not only about science, but politics, news and social issues in general? (Hey, I’ve just described TVSA in a single sentence!)
South Africa is faced with a serious skills shortage in all areas of science. Well, slap a PC with Internet access in every classroom in the country, and show them ReGenesis (as well as CSI to promote interest in forensic science, for example).
When I was in matric, all my friends wanted to become lawyers. Why? Because L.A. Law was the hit show at the time, and Harry Hamlin cut such a dashing figure we all wanted to be like him. Which gets me thinking: thank God there hasn’t been a telly show about sexy dentists …
I suspect many people will dismiss ReGenesis as being science fictional. But it represents a particular form of SF known in the literary canon as ‘hard SF’ due to its close association with actual science.
ReGenesis has a team of advisors and experts to check up on the writers, and all the science used in the show is both practical and plausible. This is so unlike the Star Trek version of SF, where many syllables strung together are used to defy the laws of physics. And often common sense.
ReGenesis, however, takes interactivity to a whole new level. It has been hailed as ‘an international pioneer in integrating interactive media elements’. The first successfully-deployed Alternate Reality Game (ARG) paired with a major television broadcast was called the ReGenesis Extended Reality.
This has already won the Canadian New Media Award for Best Cross-Platform project of 2004, and an FITC Design & Technology Award for Excellence in Convergence. Last year the ARG won the Banff World Television Festival Award for Interactive Television, and a Gemini Award for Best Cross-Platform.
An exploratory game, the ReGenesis ARG draws viewers into a conspiracy weaved from the fabric of the television series itself, using the Internet, e-mail and other media to ‘immerse’ the viewer, thereby blurring the line between fiction and reality. ReGenesis: ReMixed is a series of podcasts featuring the music of the series, as well as interviews with the people involved in putting the show together.
More recently, popular shows such as Lost have also been using cross-platforms to elaborate upon its increasingly extensive mythology. This is already old hat in Hollywood, with The Blair Witch Project being a spectacularly successful example of such interactivity. However, I believe television is more suited to being combined with the Internet to provide different focal points and info portals for viewers so as to enhance their viewing and learning experience.
In terms of marketing and advertising, the possibilities seem endless. In the past, ads were restricted to artificial breaks inserted into the actual programmes themselves. Now marketers have a much wider platform to focus upon, extending from the television to the Internet itself.
What really impresses me about ReGenesis is that, while being scrupulous in its approach to science, it is neither dull nor pedantic. Instead the show takes an impassioned stand on such issues as HIV/Aids and the developed world dragging its collective feet on finding a cure.
With such issues as bird flu and SARS hitting global headlines, the benefit of ReGenesis is that it takes the fear out of these alien diseases. It also reveals the scientific and political process embarked upon to galvanise the world into action. (Often the scientific and political processes mix as well as oil and water, which is where much of the show’s polemical fervour is derived from.)
And therein lies the show’s greatest gifts: hope and wonder.