@8th_Note It used to be I could tell what books a writer had read by the references they made.

Almost every scifi screenwriter in the eighties had read Carl Sagan and anecdotes from his popular science books would turn up. Seth McFarlane's entire worldview is lifted from Sagan.

But now no one reads so you don't even get secondhand ideas, the media is based on earlier media. TBH George Lucas started this by basing Star Wars on Flash Gordon serials. But at least he was an educated man and threw some real ideas about cloning and robotics in there. Now there are generations of showrunners like J.J. Abrams with no contact with reality whatsoever.