A
Disney Channel movie first aired in 1999,
Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century is set in 2049 AD, where Zenon Kar (
Kirsten Storms) is a 13-year old who literally gets grounded as she is forced to leave her
Space Station home and live on Earth.
Although it never became a series as expected, it did spawn two Made-for-TV sequels.
This film provides examples of:
- Almost Kiss: Zenon and Greg are sitting side-by-side, facing the same direction, with awkward silence. Zenon tells Greg if he wants to kiss her he should get over it and just kiss her. After a pause, they both turn towards each other at the same time - and accidentally smash their faces into each other.
- Artificial Gravity
- Beauty Equals Goodness: In the sequel that introduces aliens, Zenon deduces that the aliens are good, with no irony, because their spaceship is too beautiful for them to be evil (it looked like a rainbow butterfly thing). She was right of course.
- Bigger on the Inside: The station.
- British Rockstar: Protozoa.
- Colorful Song: "Super Nova Girl", "The Galaxy is Ours".
- Dramatic Alien VTOL: The aliens in the second movie have a very pretty space ship.
- Future Music: The movie focused heavily on the music of a band called Microbe. This being a 1999 Disney Channel movie, their biggest song sounds exactly like modern light tween pop, except with lyrics such as — sing along, contemporaries, you know the words — "ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM, make my heart go BOOM BOOM, would you be my Super Nova Girl?"
- Future Slang: A particularly memorable example. Cetus lapetus, guys! The movie is totally lunar!
- Not to mention an entire song whose lyrics include nothing but future slang (i.e. a bunch of unrelated scientific terms all jammed together).
- Sci-Fi Name Buzzwords: Most of the Future Slang is essentially a bunch of vaguely "space-y" terms blended together.
- Future Spandex: Many of the characters wear spandex and other form-fitting materials.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: Microbe, not sure that's a "good" name.
- Hollywood Science
- The Metric System Is Here To Stay: Zenon is from a space station, but when she arrives on Earth, she explodes a test tube because she was thinking in Celsius when all the instructions were in Fahrenheit. In a science class.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Nebula, Protozoa and the Microbes. The villians of the first and third movies aren't much better off really.
- Space Suits Are SCUBA Gear
- Standard Establishing Spaceship Shot: Space Station shot. There are a couple in all three movies.
- Zeerust: Just look at the outfit.