MickeyA Bigger Stick
Weapons have been around since the first caveman realized that holding a rock during a fight increased the impact when he hit an opponent. Weapons of various types have been resolving various situations since long before recorded history. Given that so many of our TV heroes lead such interesting lives, it's no wonder they would tend to be packing...
By the time TV was invented, guns had largely supplanted knives and swords, due primarily to the longer range that bullets travel. Cops, private eyes, crime scene investigators, reporters covering the "crime beat," just about everyone even remotely associated with law enforcement carries a gun on the job. The one exception I recall offhand is Peter Falk's Columbo. Detective Columbo has been known to miss the required time on the firing range; his weapon of choice is his brain- which has often been shown to be somewhat superior to the guns used by several murderers on the show.
Of course there are the traditionalists who prefer the older weapons- particularly the traditionalists that are old enough to remember them, like 400-year-young Duncan MacLeod on Highlander. MacLeod carries a Japanese katana, a blade strong enough to not be the one that breaks in a fight. Since MacLeod and his fellow Immortals usually fight to the death, this is kind of important for him.
TV shows us at least as many futuristic weapons as ancient ones; the "ray gun" has had a long and storied past. In the early planning stages for Star Trek Roddenberry had his heroes carrying laser weapons, but mindful of how fast technology (and technological sophistication) was progressing he didn't want the tech-savvy people likely to watch a sci fi show to laugh at lasers doing patently unlaserlike things, and thus the term "phaser" was born. The neat features of the phaser were they could change settings from "stun" to "kill" to "disintegrate," and they came in two models: A palm-sized weapon that could be unobtrusively tucked away on diplomatic missions, and the more noticeable phaser pistol.
Ten years later, our adventurers on Space:1999 were back using laser weapons- though like everything else on Moonbase Alpha, they were designed to look really cool. Instead of the traditional barrel, these had a vertical bar holding four beam emitters- though for simplicity's sake the top one was the only one ever needed, either for the "stun" or "kill" setting. And yes, I knew that lasers didn't have a "stun" setting, but I still enjoyed the first season of the show.
Like everything else in TV and sci fi, weapons development follows the times. Concerns over biological weapons helped inspire the skrills of Earth: Final Conflict, symbiotic creatures that attached themselves to the host Protector's arms and drew their power from the host. Concern over terrorists getting WMDs surfaced in Jericho, when moving vans became the delivery vehicle of choice for nuclear warheads. No doubt some series soon will follow up on the burning ray the DoD has recently unveiled for crowd control.
Hopefully they'll even remember that the guns, however cool and techy-looking, are just props. If the characters and stories don't interest us, then there won't be any audience left to watch the weapons fire.
By the time TV was invented, guns had largely supplanted knives and swords, due primarily to the longer range that bullets travel. Cops, private eyes, crime scene investigators, reporters covering the "crime beat," just about everyone even remotely associated with law enforcement carries a gun on the job. The one exception I recall offhand is Peter Falk's Columbo. Detective Columbo has been known to miss the required time on the firing range; his weapon of choice is his brain- which has often been shown to be somewhat superior to the guns used by several murderers on the show.
Of course there are the traditionalists who prefer the older weapons- particularly the traditionalists that are old enough to remember them, like 400-year-young Duncan MacLeod on Highlander. MacLeod carries a Japanese katana, a blade strong enough to not be the one that breaks in a fight. Since MacLeod and his fellow Immortals usually fight to the death, this is kind of important for him.
TV shows us at least as many futuristic weapons as ancient ones; the "ray gun" has had a long and storied past. In the early planning stages for Star Trek Roddenberry had his heroes carrying laser weapons, but mindful of how fast technology (and technological sophistication) was progressing he didn't want the tech-savvy people likely to watch a sci fi show to laugh at lasers doing patently unlaserlike things, and thus the term "phaser" was born. The neat features of the phaser were they could change settings from "stun" to "kill" to "disintegrate," and they came in two models: A palm-sized weapon that could be unobtrusively tucked away on diplomatic missions, and the more noticeable phaser pistol.
Ten years later, our adventurers on Space:1999 were back using laser weapons- though like everything else on Moonbase Alpha, they were designed to look really cool. Instead of the traditional barrel, these had a vertical bar holding four beam emitters- though for simplicity's sake the top one was the only one ever needed, either for the "stun" or "kill" setting. And yes, I knew that lasers didn't have a "stun" setting, but I still enjoyed the first season of the show.
Like everything else in TV and sci fi, weapons development follows the times. Concerns over biological weapons helped inspire the skrills of Earth: Final Conflict, symbiotic creatures that attached themselves to the host Protector's arms and drew their power from the host. Concern over terrorists getting WMDs surfaced in Jericho, when moving vans became the delivery vehicle of choice for nuclear warheads. No doubt some series soon will follow up on the burning ray the DoD has recently unveiled for crowd control.
Hopefully they'll even remember that the guns, however cool and techy-looking, are just props. If the characters and stories don't interest us, then there won't be any audience left to watch the weapons fire.
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