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Amazon’s big content shift includes more kids’ shows about science — and science fiction

Amazon’s big content shift includes more kids’ shows about science — and science fiction

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2017’s fall pilot season continues the trend of progressive, diverse Amazon shows about STEM interests and education

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Early in September, Amazon canceled two pricey original dramas: Z: The Beginning of Everything (about Zelda Fitzgerald) and The Last Tycoon (based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel). The cancellations are part of a new programming shift at Amazon Studios, bent on emphasizing television series with “global appeal” — that is, finding the next Game of Thrones hit. But while Amazon Studios seems to be almost flailing with finding a cohesive programming slate, one aspect of the service is plugging along nicely: Amazon Studios’ children’s programming.

The majority of Amazon’s children’s series have been effortlessly progressive, with female leads and characters of color abounding. Some of them even feel revolutionary, like Danger & Eggs, created by a trans woman and set in a town where the mayor is a trans woman of color. Others, like Annedroids, actively promote young girls’ interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or the STEM curriculum. The majority of these series exist in that coveted sweet spot where they’re whimsical and silly enough for children, but still charming enough to not drive parents crazy. They’re casually educational, but not full of condescending, dry lectures. They tell engaging, character-driven stories for tweens. Any sense of agenda around the LGBTQ+ storylines, genderless robots, or the messaging about self-acceptance is meant to slyly slip into viewers’ brains without overt “The More You Know” teaching moments.

During Amazon Studios’ semi-annual pilot season, the site sends out pilot episodes for potential series, so viewers can rate and review them. That’s particularly helpful for parents who want to choose what their children should watch. What stands out about the programs that continue to full series — and two of the three shows from Amazon’s fall 2017 children’s pilot season — is how often they promote and champion “nerdy” children and the STEM communities, mostly through science fiction tales. That’s most obviously at play on the four seasons of Annedroids. (With 52 episodes, it’s the longest-running series on the network.) On the show, a young scientist named Anne and her friends (including humans and her own android creations) find STEM-based solutions for problems, in fun, often comical, always educational ways. It’s no surprise that Amazon Video would promote the show, given Amazon’s STEM subscription box for children three to 13 (separated into three different age groups). The show’s aim, besides entertainment, is to help nurture girls’ early scientific interests, and let them know these subjects are fun.

A program like Annedroids is especially important for young girls, considering the underrepresentation of women in STEM professions: although women make up half the college-educated workforce, they’re only 29 percent of the science and engineering workforce. Even more pressingly, as a Microsoft European study showed, girls tend to lose interest in STEM subjects around middle school — a target age for these Amazon Video series. The survey specifically cited age 11 as when girls tend to get most interested in STEM; 15 is when they lose interest. The reasons are predictable: they lose confidence, have a lack of women role models in the field, and internalize the ideas that subjects like math or science (or anything that leans more toward building and being “hands-on”) are for boys. Through Anne — intelligent, confident, and cool — Annedroids hopes to dispel those notions, and provide a role model.

More generally, however, Amazon Video’s children’s programming trends toward science fiction elements: robots, time travel, aliens, and the paranormal. Science fiction remains a popular genre for its simultaneous escapist qualities and its mirror of current reality. (Plus, CGI advances have made eye-popping, exciting visual effects much easier to achieve.) Children are inherently curious, and they gravitate toward mystery and excitement; they’re also less cynical than adults, and more likely to buy into the strange and impossible.

Amazon Studios

That explains the appeal of Skyward, one of Amazon’s fall 2017 pilots, which is basically X-Files for Kids. Skyward opens with a young girl and her best friend spotting something strange in the sky, and bonding over it. A few years later, at age 12, they co-host an anonymous podcast dedicated to exploring aliens and unexplained phenomena. Piper (Mia Sinclair Jenness) is a die-hard believer and unwaveringly intense; Curtis (Caleel Harris) is more skeptical, but is unyieldingly loyal to Piper. Uber-nerdy Ira (Griffin Kunitz) rounds out the group as an “intern” who brings in alien-hunting gadgets.

Throughout the pilot, the three wide-eyed children investigate a mysterious alien life form who scans people’s faces and, scratches women’s arms to collect samples. The alien’s motives become a major question. Skyward touches on age-old tropes of adults not believing children; the grown-ups always have a convenient excuse for anything eerie going on. Instead, the kids find solace in each other, and the strangers who call in to the podcast. Like other Amazon Video shows, Skyward uses science fiction to tell human stories. One long arc the full show might continue is about the death of Piper’s mother, the possible mysterious circumstances surrounding it, and how it affects her and her father. But the show is still meant to appeal to children, both to their sense of discovery and their sense of junior-league community and creativity.

Amazon Studios

Amazon’s pilot for Will vs. The Future operates in the same vein: it’s another science fiction show, but it’s more straightforward comedy. Average middle schooler Will Jin (Teo Briones) is coasting along with his badass-in-training best friend Hailey (Ashlyn Faith Williams) when his life is upended by time-traveling “rebel warrior” Athena (Lexi Underwood). The series hints at Will’s importance in a future that clearly involves science and technology: Principal Rhodes (Thomas F. Wilson) seems curiously invested in Will’s science-fair project, implying that he has specific knowledge about Will’s future.

Even so, Will is pretty shocked when Athena explains that he grows up to become a cyborg who “enslaves the whole planet.” (“I’ve never even got detention,” Will protests.) They fight — Athena was sent back in time to destroy Will, who clumsily defends himself — until they come to an agreement. They will spend two months trying to make Will into a better person, keep him on the right track, and overall teach him how to control his own future. That isn’t a subtle lesson, but it stays engaging throughout the pilot. (And yes, there’s another twist at the end.) But again, this is a science fiction series built around a personal story of growing up, while learning how cool science can be.

Amazon Studios has overall made progressive choices with original adult series like Transparent and One Mississippi, so it’s satisfying — and important — to see the company doing something similar with children’s entertainment. By catering to underrepresented subsets of kids, especially those who may be discouraged from exploring their interests, they’re reaching out to one of the niche markets that most needs its own content. In an increasingly competitive field of original streaming content, this may be one way for Amazon to corner a specific market, separate itself from contenders like Netflix and Hulu, and spread a positive message at the same time.