This is not your grandfather’s Tom Swift
The first episode of the TV series version of Tom Swift, based very loosely on the children’s book series about a teenage inventor, violates the cardinal rule of TV and cinema by telling rather than showing. A voice-over states, “We’re not nerds; we’re Black nerds. Oh, and billionaires.” The voice-over goes on to assure the viewers, that they’re “not the Obamas,” and “not ballers.”
Some spoilers may follow.
Not being a family of politicians or professional athletes is a good thing. A brief shot of our hero, played by Tian Richards, on a magazine cover with the caption, “The Next Elon Musk” rams home the message that this is not your grandfather’s Tom Swift. This is a Tom Swift for the 21st century, not a blond-haired, blue-eyed, clean-limbed teenager, but a black, gay, cool dude who is a little older and went to MIT.
The Tom Swift books, which have been published in several iterations since 1910, were remarkably light on character development and story, but pretty heavy on technology and adventure. They were the perfect children’s literature for kids who might grow up interested in careers in the STEM fields.
On the other hand, some of the earlier books were incredibly racist, as reflecting some of the unenlightened attitudes of the time. That fact makes a black Tom Swift even more remarkable.
The Tom Swift TV show is the exact opposite in that it focuses on the main character’s development as a man and a member of an important family, with all that implies. He has a complicated relationship with his father, partly because of his sexual orientation (which is cloaked by the euphemism “sensitive.”) He is, using the stereotype of a genius, socially awkward. His best friend is an AI voiced by Star Trek’s LaVar Burton.
The science, sad to say, is somewhat lacking, at least in the first episode. The center of the episode involves Tom Swift’s father flying a spacecraft to Saturn, using an engine that his son invented that takes him to the ringed planet in just six months. By comparison, the Cassini space probe took just short of seven years to travel the interplanetary gulfs from Earth to Saturn. It would have been nice to find out what sort of sensible technology would have cut the travel time to such an extent.
The scene in which the father’s spacecraft in orbit around Saturn communicates with his family on Earth in real-time violates the laws of physics. A signal would take an average of 83 minutes to travel from Saturn to Earth, making real-time communications impossible, unless Tom Swift had invented some kind of Star Trek-style technology,
The episode also introduced the “Big Bad” in the form of an “Illuminati-style” conspiracy called “The Road Back” that opposes technological advances and would roll them back if possible. The conspiracy, which includes a United States Congressman who is posing as an ally of the Swift family, is against everything that the Swifts stand for.
It’s at least of minor interest that the opponents of billionaire tech barons like the Swifts are Luddites. In the real world, “democratic socialists” like Bernie Sanders and the Squad oppose real-life billionaires because they are alleged to not pay “their fair share of taxes.” However, one supposes that it is too much for Hollywood to depict the far left as the enemy in even a mediocre TV show.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.
