Channeling the Future focuses on the disparate visions of the past, present,and future that the science fiction and fantasy genres have offered television audiences. It not only shines new light on often overlooked and forgotten series but also examines the “look” of science fiction and fantasy television, determining how iconography (spaceships, machines, technology), location and landscape (space, Earth, the city, the countryside), mise-en-scène, CGI and special effects, art and set design, props, costumes, lighting, and manipulation of visual and virtual space contribute to the creation of real, fully imagined, and often all-too-familiar future and alternate worlds.
Establishing how the medium of television can create a certain “look” for individual series leads contributors to discuss the cultural, historical, and political impact these series had on both the genre and wider society. However, the collection also locates their visual aesthetics within broader historical, industrial, and production contexts to fully understand their cultural value. Notions of history and historical periodization clearly influence how science fiction and fantasy television series were imagined by their writers and designers and received at the time of broadcast, but we must also consider how older series and their particular future visions are perceived and interpreted by contemporary audiences compared to the more modern series of today.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Future Visions
Lincoln Geraghty
Part I: America’s New Frontier
Chapter 1 Retro Landscapes: Reorganizing the Frontier in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone
Van Norris
Chapter 2 Irwin Allen’s Recycled Monsters and Escapist Voyages
Oscar De Los Santos
Chapter 3 The Future Just Beyond the Coat Hook: Technology, Politics, and the Postmodern Sensibility in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Cynthia W. Walker
Part II: British Dystopias and Utopias
Chapter 4 Pulling the Strings: Gerry Anderson’s Walk from “Supermarionation” to “Hypermarionation”
David Garland
Chapter 5 Farmers, Feminists, and Dropouts: The Disguises of the Scientist in British Science Fiction Television in the 1970s
Laurel Forster
Chapter 6 Secret Gardens and Magical Realities: Tales of Mystery, the English Landscape, and English Children
Dave Allen
Part III: Fantasy, Fetish, and the Future
Chapter 7 There Can Be Only One: Highlander: The Series’ Portrayal of Historical and Contemporary Fantasy
Michael S. Duffy
Chapter 8 Kinky Borgs and Sexy Robots: The Fetish, Fashion, and Discipline of Seven of Nine
Trudy Barber
Chapter 9 “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!”: Animating Science Fictions of the Past and Present in Futurama
Lincoln Geraghty
Part IV: Visions and Revisions
Chapter 10 Plastic Fantastic? Genre and Science/Technology/Magic in Angel
Lorna Jowett
Chapter 11 Remapping the Feminine in Joss Whedon’s Firefly
Robert L. Lively
Chapter 12 “Haven’t you heard? They look like us now!”: Realism and Metaphor in the New Battlestar Galactica
Dylan Pank and John Caro
Index
About the Editor and Contributors
Channeling the Future - Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television [ Download ]
