> everyone tries to copy the dark, morally compromised, postmodern, realpolitik tone.

GoT was a late-comer to this. For me, William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_ (1984) was my first exposure to dark and morally-compromised Sci-Fi. I am sure it predates this in novels. _Neuromancer_ inspired a couple of movies in the 90s: The Net and Johnny Mneumonic come to mind.

In US TV shows, I think Babylon 5 started the lean into the dark tone, and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica of the 2000s is a better example than GoT.

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Sharlin 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Like 24 and several other shows, Battlestar Galactica is very 9/11 coded. Everything took a turn towards Darker And Edgier in the aftermath.

	▲	ecshafer 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Stargate SG-1 in their episode Wormhole X-treme, which released Sep 8 2021, so just before 9/11, made fun of the TV industry trend of pushing everything towards darker, edgier, "extreme" styles.

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IAmBroom 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Babylon 5, with the white-knight Rangers, the captain who single-handedly saved humanity in the war with the Minbari AND THEN went on to build friendships with them, and the completely monotonic, both-sides-of-the-coin moralities of the Shadows and the Vorlons?

Yes, the Narn and the Centauri were not so pure, but it reads as a pretty mythic Good V Evil world to me.