List of dystopian music, TV programs, and games

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This is a list of depictions of dystopian themes in music, TV programmes and games, including computer games and role-playing games.

Contents

[edit] Music

[edit] Television

  • Blake's 7, BBC, 1978-1981. An Orwellian space opera created by Terry Nation.
  • Doctor Who, BBC, 1963-present. The series has featured many storylines set in dystopian times and places, ranging from the war-torn planet Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks (1975) to the world of Terra Alpha in The Happiness Patrol (1987) in which sadness is punishable by death, ironically by the ingestion of sweets so tasty they are deadly. A more recent example occurs in The Long Game (2005), which features centralization and falsification of news for the purpose of keeping humanity frightened, ignorant and enslaved.
  • Charlie Jade, South Africa, 2004 A private investegator from an alternate universe controlled by a global corporate state discovers that the corporation vexcore has opened a link to two alternate universes to exploit their resources, being trapped as a fish out of water in our own universe in the process.
  • Sliders, Fox, 1995-1997, Sci Fi Channel 1998-2000. Team of three or four people travel ("slide," hence the title) between dimensions, to alternate Earths, where history has taken a slightly different path. Most of these alternate Earths were, in one way or another, dystopian.
  • The Prisoner A man attempts to escape his idealistic yet confining artificial town, while authorities attempt to hunt and recapture him.
  • The Twilight Zone Many episodes are set in futuristic and dystopian settings, as a warning to viewers about the dangers of certain aspects of modern society or culture.
  • V, V: the Final Battle, V: the Series NBC, 1983-1984, based on Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here.
  • Dark Angel, Fox, 2000-2002. James Cameron and Charles Eglee created a dystopian world set in Seattle after terrorists have set off "The Pulse," an electromagnetic bomb which caused all electronic devices to stop working, disrupting financial institutions and life as we know it. There is a huge rift between the lives of the wealthy and the poor, and Seattle has been divided into "zones" which are carefully guarded by a militaristic police force. Jessica Alba plays Max, who is a bike messenger in her day job at Jam Pony, but doubles as a super-soldier created by the government who escaped from a military training school ten years earlier. She works with a character named Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly) to correct the wrongdoings in their society, with varying degrees of success.
  • Firefly, created by Joss Whedon, takes place in a solar system under the control of the Anglo-Sino Alliance. It follows the crew of a ship struggling to make a living on the very fringes of the system, where lawlessness has a greater control over peoples' lives than the Alliance. In stark contrast to the central worlds of the Alliance, the outer rim of the system lives in constant fear of a Reaver attack, cannibalistic sub-humans that no-one admits exist.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender. The city of Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Earth Kingdom (one of the four nations of the fictional world), has a very strict class system. Also, even though there is an ongoing war that has lasted for one hundred years, nobody in the city is supposed to talk about the war. If they do, they are captured by special forces known as the Dai Li and are hypnotized until they believe that there is no war. When the heroes of the show meet Long Feng, the true ruler of Ba-Sing-Se (the king is just a figurehead), he claims that Ba-Sing-Se is the last utopia in the world.

[edit] Games

  • Paranoia (1984) by West End Games, which features every aspect of the above list of things typical of dystopias except for a protagonist who feels something is wrong.
  • A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) by Infocom
  • Warhammer 40,000 (1987) by Games Workshop features intergalactic races which are cruel and heartless. The Imperium of Man, for example, forces the worship of The Emperor, who binds all of humanity to his will. Any dissent is regarded as heresy, and is harshly dealt with.
  • Syndicate (1993) by Bullfrog Productions. In the future, after the collapse of government, the world is harsh and polluted - corporate crime syndicates rule in place of national governments. The population of the world are fitted with "Utopia Chips" to mask the misery and squalor of the world around them. The player controls cybernetically-enchanced agents, out to further the cause of the syndicate. The sequel Syndicate Wars was similar.
  • Beneath a Steel Sky (1994) by Revolution Software
  • Beyond Good & Evil (a title which is a reference to the existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche) by Ubisoft is an action-adventure game conveying the grim world of Hillys, which has become an epicentre for capitalism and idealism forced onto its inhabitants by means of propaganda, censorship, and limited travel at the hands of its militant group, the Alpha Sections.
  • Final Fantasy VI, AKA Final Fantasy III in the USA; (1995) by Squaresoft, wherein a powerful empire led by a cadre of deranged madmen seeks to enslave the world with magic, one of whom partially succeeds in destroying the planet.
  • Final Fantasy VII (1997) by Squaresoft features a world in which a company called Shinra controls most of the inhabited world through its “Peace Keeping Forces.”
  • Fallout (1997), and Fallout 2 (1998) by Black Isle Studios. Narrative takes place in a post-apocalyptic world of the near-future.
  • Deus Ex (2000) by Ion Storm. The game features a world with overpopulation when a virus began to kill people, while only politicans and rich persons were given the antidote. Later it is revelaed that the virus is actually artificial and is produced by the same company that produces the antidote.
  • Deus Ex 2, in which a religious group fights against the WTO. Later it is reavealed both are a branch of the Illuminati who have control over the world.
  • Half-Life 2, which has an evil alien race known as the Combine ruling over the earth.
  • Oni by Bungie. The plot is quite similar to Syndicate's. The player controls Konoko, a female rogue agent subjected to an extreme experiment: an enhanced twin version of her was implanted in her body so that every time she gets hurt her "chrysalis" grows and makes her stronger. In her world the criminal organization Syndicate opposes the all-powerful government hiding the truth about the world outside the cities. Her mother died outside the areas protected by government, inhabited by deadly mutant creatures created by pollution.
  • Mega Man Zero series (2002-2005 by Capcom). A resistance force against a dystopian society called "Neo Arcadia," resurrects an ancient fighting robot called "Zero" to help them.
  • Jak 2 (2003 by Naughty Dog In this game Jak, a young boy, is sent from his peaceful world (setting for Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy)to the future, where the entire world is covered by wastelandand the only civilisation left is Haven City. Haven City is ruled by the oppressive and murderous Baron Praxis who enforces his crazy and strict rules. He keeps authority with an elite military group under his control, the Krimzon Guard and puts on the show of protecting Haven City's people from their enemies, the Metal Heads, but he is actually selling them the energy source, eco, in return to let them invade his city.
  • Dystopia Mod (2005) by Team Dystopia is a modification for Half-Life 2 (2004).
  • Metal Gear Solid Series (1998-2007) by Kojima Productions features a military being controlled by Outer Heaven, the parent company of the five largest PMC's in the world.
  • Oddworld, a quintology by Oddworld Inhabitants (1997-2005).

[edit] See also

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