The Sci-Fi Straight Man

If you’re familiar with comedy duos, you know that there’s usually a “funny man” juxtaposed against a “straight man”. The funny man is the usually over-the-top comedic character, while the straight man is the more composed, often exasperated, answer. This is a character paring that has been used in comedy for decades due to its effectiveness, but one place you see this kind of comedic balance a lot that you might not always expect is in sci-fi.

Beyond the concept of a comedic duo itself, the sci-fi straight man is a trope that’s almost omnipresent in popular sci-fi. I blame Spock.

I don’t know if Star Trek is exactly where this trope started, but I feel fairly confident saying that Leonard Nimoy’s subtle humor as the U.S.S. Enterprise’s science officer, Mr. Spock, is probably what popularized this trope. Spock, as you probably know if you have even a vague knowledge of Star Trek, is a character descended from a planet called Vulcan, most known for its people who have learned to repress their emotions and focus on living lives governed by logic. Vulcans still feel emotions, but do not express them- Spock himself though has a more difficult time with this due to having a human mother. He is a character whose logical, stoic side is at war with his feeling, human nature.

            Look at this character set up. Spock, by definition, is a fantastic straight man. Due to his Vulcan nature, he tends to be relatively stoic (although he’s definitely down to toss out some ruthlessly funny quip), which puts him directly counter to the sometimes brash and boisterous Captain Kirk (William Shatner). Nimoy’s performance though gives Spock an unexpected comedic nature with a dead-pan delivery and his classic eyebrow raise.

            What’s so great about this though is that after Mr. Spock hit the scene, almost every sci-fi show I can think of replicates him in some way. Most obviously, you have the other Star Trek spinoffs: Data (Brent Spiner) and Worf (Michael Dorn) in The Next Generation, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) in Voyager, T’Pal (Jolene Blalock) in Enterprise, Saru (Doug Jones) in Discovery, and- of course- Spock himself again (Ethan Peck) in Strange New Worlds. But you also have shows like Stargate with Teal’c (Christopher Judge) in SG-1 and Ronan (Jason Momoa) in Atlantis. I’m not sure who to identify as a Spock-like character in Stargate: Universe…my gut points to Rush (Robert Carlyle). Firefly has Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres) and The Orville with Isaac (Mark Jackson).

            Why does this trope work so well here?

The Fish-Out-Of-Water Type

Well, of the ten or so characters I just named, almost all of them are not human. Well, some of them are humanoids, but they’re not necessarily from an earth-based background, I mean. Having an alien- or more specifically, a character who’s an outsider to the norms of the other characters- automatically creates a situation where they’re maybe always a little outside their own element. You might normally hear this referred to as a “fish-out-of-water” kind of character. This can be a great ground for humor as you’re playing around with maybe things a character is not familiar with or different cultural backgrounds or interpretations.

For example, in Stargate: SG-1, Teal’c, who is the only non-human member of the SGC tends to be a reserved and stoic character much like Spock, although he has more of a warrior spin to him. This puts him counter to O’Neill’s (Richard Dean Anderson) wise-guy attitude and the two often have a funny rapport due to Teal’c adjusting to life on earth. It’s a running gag in the first season that Teal’c, who’s trying to appropriate earth expressions, never quite gets them right.

Having a character with a different background also allows a different take on observational humor. Data, an android, in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager both bring a bit of childlike wonder to things other characters in the series never consider or think about as they try to understand or reconnect with their own humanity. Data is notorious for his wonderfully perplexing, simple questions.

            Aliens in sci-fi have always been a metaphor for people of different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences coming together to better humanity, but their use in humor is an unexpected bonus. As stated, this most often tends to arise from characters being unfamiliar with the world they’re in- for example, commonly used tactics are misunderstood vernacular, technological differences, or cultural misunderstandings.

            This is also applicable to sci-fi’s sister genre, fantasy, as well. The series I’m currently reading, Alexandra Bracken’s The Silver in the Bone and The Mirror of Beasts, features characters from our “normal” world interacting with those from a different fantasy realm. When the fantasy characters end up in our everyday world, they’re either horrified or devastatingly curious about objects we take for granted like lamps, elevators, and emergency signage.

            The goal is to take a character that’s very different from your other leading characters and put them in a situation they’re not familiar with. How do they react to things? How do they adapt? What places can humor arise as they interact?

Personality and Interpersonal Relationships

            There is a different scenario as well where this stoic humor can also be part of a character’s general personality. One of the human characters I mentioned earlier, Zoe Washburne from Firefly, is the straight man to Captain Reynolds’ (Nathan Fillion) wise-cracking delivery. Due to their time in the war together, Zoe is a devoted member of Serenity’s crew, and tends to be a reserved, no-nonsense first mate that keeps the rest of the ship’s hooligans in line. That being said, Zoe has her own dry humor about her and is hilariously married to the ship’s pilot, who’s fantastically corny.

            See? We can have a character that’s the straight man with one character also be desperately in love with a total goofball. Think about your character and their background, as well as how they interact with other characters. Zoe is a stoic, good soldier who- let’s be real- has seen some crap in her backstory, yet when you see her with her husband, she’s always a little lighter and maybe a little more humorous than she’d be with another character.

            Your character can be one person with one character and completely different with another. Explain why they act differently around others. Do you have a character that can pull one element of someone’s personality out more than the others, like in this scenario? What are your character’s connections and how do they affect their behavior or that of others?

Tropes

            There is no doubt the original series of Star Trek is one of the most groundbreaking series ever created. It’s one of the most prominent sci-fi series to date, it included women working side-by-side with men, it featured the first interracial kiss shown on television, and its message of exploration, equality, and hope for humanity has spawned a tidal wave of repercussions for science and storytelling. This show had such an effect that Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, promoted NASA’s campaign to improve diversity among the astronaut corps for decades. Beyond that though, many shows and stories that came after Star Trek follow a similar format in how they tell their stories.

            Every subsequent Star Trek show after the original series, along with shows like Stargate and The Orville, follow a very specific pattern of storytelling. You have individuals tied to a larger organization going out into unknown territory and reacting to what unexpected things they find there. These stories are almost always about exploration and human connection and tend to be more plot-driven than character-driven. That’s not to say that you don’t focus on your characters and their connections, but they tend to be a little more slow moving than something focused solely on the characters themselves.

            Not to ignore the other mega sci-fi story in the room, but Star Wars is a little more plot and character focused than what I’m discussing which is more of the “Let’s go explore!” type of story. Star Wars also does have a bit of the funny/straight man duo with Han and Chewbacca or maybe even Han and Luke, but it’s not as prominent as the other stories I’ve mentioned.

            Long-running sci-fi stories also tend to cover just about everything trope-wise, so it is hard to play out some types of storylines without them seeming familiar. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stargate: SG-1 are literally the longest running shows in television sci-fi, and therefore do have a trickledown effect on similarly built stories or plotlines.

            Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s The Aurora Cycle series contains a lot of elements that make it similar to something like a Star Trek or The Orville. The Orville is basically a Seth McFarlane version of Star Trek, so humor-wise this story might fit more there. But among the characters in the Aurora Cycle, you still see common tropes: Kal, a lone alien that’s kind of a reserved warrior branded with a crest of the segment of his race he hails from; Finian, another alien whose body is affected by a former disease and has to wear a suit to help adjust to different gravities; Aurora herself, a girl waking up after an unexpectedly long nap in a cryochamber and has no clue about the future she’s woken up in, among others. These three are common targets humor-wise due to misunderstanding of culture, the passage of time, or human vernacular.

            This series is kind of a conglomerate of a lot of things. Kal always reminded me a little of Teal’c fused with a Vulcan or Romulan. Aurora kind of maybe has an Eleven sort of vibe like Stranger Things. Some of the language in the book is very similar to Firefly, which has a bit of a unique vernacular. It’s also filled with a million Star Trek references, so I have a strong suspicion the writers really love the show.

            As always, immerse yourself in the norms and tropes of your genre and see how you can break them. What things do you think work really well? What tropes are common and how can you break them? One of the funniest scenes in Kaufman and Kristoff’s Aurora Rising was a kiss-for-cover trope that got turned on its head. What do you want to see more of? Sci-fi has always been a genre ahead of its time, so have fun with breaking the mold.

            Got any favorite comedic sci-fi duos? Tropes you want to see more or less of? Let us know!

            Thanks for reading! Write on.

            -Kamryn