Welcome to The Multiverse, a new column where'll you'll find Ars' explorations and meditations on the world of science fiction. The Multiverse covers things we love, the things we hate, and the things we do not yet understand from source materials new and old. Send questions, tips, or just say hi to The Multiverse's writers at themultiverse@arstechnica.com.

PLEASE NOTE: This article contains minor spoilers throughout.

It's an annual spring traditional on par with baseball's opening day and the first burger off the grill. Every year around May, sci-fi fans brace themselves for a cancellation kill-fest that sees the genre's few mainstream TV offerings dwindle further. 2014 featured NBC cutting ties with Revolution and JJ Abrams' and Alfonso Cuarón's Believe. CBS stopped Intelligence. FOX even continued to troll its Firefly fans by canceling the network's latest sci-fi attempt, Almost Human, after a single season. Add to that the inevitable end of some long-running SyFy staples (farewell Warehouse 13), and it's hard to know where to turn for a sci-fi fix in the current TV landscape.

This task only gets harder because perhaps the best current sci-fi series continues to masquerade as some uber-stylish, period piece prestige cable drama. But after its latest half-season brought us all seven episodes away from considering the show as a whole, it's time to again reflect: Is Mad Men science-fiction?

It’s a question that’s been hinted at after various plot points on the show. A deceased secretary was eulogized as an astronaut during an episode named "To The Moon." Copywriter Michael Ginsberg once referred to himself as an alien, and that launched think pieces on the show’s many “others” from Megan Draper to Lane Pryce. On several occasions outside of that pair, Mad Men has even made direct reference to sci-fi. Ken Cosgrove penned sci-shorts under a pseudonym; Paul Kinsey wrote a Star Trek spec script about race relations; Peggy Olsen once declared her love for Galaxy magazine; Megan Draper auditioned for Dark Shadows, and her agent namedropped Rod Serling.

But the question of whether or not a show is truly sci-fi should start with content beyond surface reference. With Mad Men, look no further than its main character. Don Draper largely fits the profile of an old sci-fi trope, the human alien. On a basic level, this archetype centers on someone with other worldly abilities (and often similarly foreign eccentricities, weaknesses, and customs) who either resembles or takes the identity of a human in order to assimilate into Earth culture. “Human alien” by this definition can encompass everyone from Dr. Who to the “people” the Men in Black monitor, even Superman (who is, coincidentally, a popular Jon Hamm casting wish of the Internet).

Let’s get the easy stuff from the alien checklist out of the way. Draper does not fit in with this foreign world around him. His appearance is slightly off (particularly in California during later seasons—and does this man age?). His worldview is unconventional (see his tendency to at least side initially with the right side of history on all social issues). And although he has weaknesses, the issues are in areas others don’t seem to suffer from—mainly an unrelenting inability to relate to others (albeit lovers, family, friends) and an inability to stay satisfied.

But the real case for Draper as alien comes from his powers. The Draper origin story began when the feeble and fractured Dick Whitman “died” in the war, an experience aptly described in plenty of other places as travel to another planet. Back to Earth—for Mad Men, that’s New York—came Don Draper. And right from the start, Draper demonstrated a super-human ability to connect to people. It’s not ESP per se, but he understands humanity and can evoke emotional responses from humans unlike any other character on the show.



Over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons, Draper’s used his advantage largely for good. Mad Men has toyed with a popular sci-fi plot in this regard—humans needing aliens (Dr. Who is again a good example, but John Carter or even something like the Harry Potter series may qualify). Draper’s supreme skill has saved his colleagues from doom (professional irrelevance) time and time again—securing a new persona for his agency by tapping into the public psyche on cigarettes; earning an opportunity to pitch car companies and therefore growing through a merger; and most recently doing the same thing with a national fast food client.

“But Peggy Olsen delivered that pitch. And didn’t she come up with the idea?” Yes, but Peggy is your token lone human who can relate to the alien. She's Elliot to Draper’s E.T. Peggy can be elevated by this special relationship (if she was Roger Sterling’s secretary at first, does she get noticed and eventually promoted?) or empowered directly (see the Burger Chef pitch), but the symbiosis can also be detrimental. That drawback is largely explored in season six as Draper and Peggy are separated for the most part. In only the darkest of many instances over the course of the series, Draper berates Peggy during that season after learning she's leaving and he's unable to convince her otherwise. “Let's pretend I'm not responsible for every single good thing that's happened to you, and you tell me the number and I'll beat it,” he spit. After the separation, again like Elliot and E.T., her suffering seems to mimic his while they’re apart—they’re both alone in a relationship-sense and extremely dissatisfied professionally. Only this past year have these two seemed to regain their mojo… and, surprise, they’re working in tandem again.

Sci-fi isn’t sci-fi for its characters alone, however. There are both thematic and aesthetic tendencies associated with the genre, and Mad Men can raise its hand here too. On a thematic level, the best science fiction uses far off worlds to discuss the timely issues of today. Watching Mad Men can serve as a modern crash course on family, women’s issues (whether in dating, family, the workplace), race, sexuality, media consumption, and more. And while it’s easy to say this idea holds true for any period piece—by tradition, it's a show type that looks at another time frame to demonstrate how little things have really changed—Mad Men has taken artistic liberties within its period and stretched into the hyper-real. To name just a few examples: An unrelenting woman magically reemerges in Draper’s room and he murders her by hand. Roger Sterling's then-wife looks like a Star Trek temptress as they talk the 1919 World Series in a bathtub (after his hair was alternating colors in a mirror). A dead man is seen one scene later singing and dancing. It’s not life on Mars, but Mad Men’s version of New York is often another planet.

On top of all this, perhaps the most compelling case for Mad Men as science fiction has nothing to do with what’s on the screen and everything with what’s off it. Series creator Matthew Weiner is an on-the-record, self-anointed sci-fi nerd. There’s a reason that an episode from this year was named The Monolith and the first shot of said episode is identical (see the 20-minute mark of this discussion) to an iconic frame from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or when Kinsey’s Star Trek script is brought to TV man Harry Crane, Crane sidesteps it by remarking on the show’s terrible time slot and unproven audience. Weiner knows his sci-fi.

“There are certain times when I key into things. The amount of UFO sightings in New York City from 1959 to 1970 are huge,” Weiner told Hitfix.com TV writer extraordinaire Alan Sepinwall. “Science fiction starts in the 50s and it's always seen as a Cold War phenomenon, but it really comes into fruition and reaches the mass culture—look at Star Trek getting on national TV—in the mid-'60s. It's something we found that was everywhere. And it was a way for people to talk about very profound things."

Another fact Weiner has never shied away from—he agrees with all this. Back when Mad Men was getting started in 2007 and Matthew Weiner was still press friendly, he needed to actually discuss his show and make meaningful comments about it. Among the first ideas Weiner would emphasize again and again in the press was how he perceived his show. It came up in a conversation with critic Bernie Heidkemp of Alternet.com, as Heidkemp wrote:

Matt Weiner describes his new show, Mad Men (Thursdays on AMC), as "science fiction"—but in the past. What he means is that, just as science fiction often uses a future world to say things about the present you can't say directly (it's both figuratively and literally ahead of its time), his show uses the overtly sexist and racist atmosphere of a 1960 New York advertising office to talk about issues that persist today but that we are too "polite" (to use the words of Alan Taylor, one of the show's directors) to talk about openly. To say this strategy is brilliant is an understatement.

If a show can look like sci-fi, act like sci-fi, and talk (about itself as) sci-fi, don't let the amount of well-tailored suits throw you off. Mad Men has more in common with the Battlestars of the world than it ever will with those other period pieces.