Science fiction on television

Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the 1940s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality.

Science fiction television production process and methods

The need to portray imaginary settings or characters with properties and abilities beyond the reach of current reality obliges producers to make extensive use of specialized techniques of television production.

Through most of the 20th century, many of these techniques were expensive and involved a small number of dedicated craft practitioners, while the reusability of props, models, effects, or animation techniques made it easier to keep using them. The combination of high initial cost and lower maintenance cost pushed producers into building these techniques into the basic concept of a series, influencing all the artistic choices. By the late 1990s, improved technology and more training and cross-training within the industry made all of these techniques easier to use, so that directors of individual episodes could make decisions to use one or more methods, so such artistic choices no longer needed to be baked into the series concept.

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas." It usually eschews the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, historically science fiction stories were intended to have at least a faint grounding in science-based fact or theory at the time the story was created, but this connection has become tenuous or non-existent in much of science fiction.

Definitions

Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a wide range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "science fiction is what we point to when we say it", a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you do not know what it is, but you know it when you see it.

Science Fiction Theatre

Science Fiction Theatre is an American science fiction anthology series that aired in syndication from April 1955 to February 1957. It was produced by Ivan Tors and Maurice Ziv.

Overview

Hosted by Truman Bradley, a 1940s film actor and former war correspondent, each episode introduced stories which had an extrapolated scientific, or pseudo-scientific emphasis based on actual scientific data available in the 1950s. Typically, the story lines related to the life or work of scientists, engineers, inventors and explorers. The program concentrated on such concepts as space flight, robots, telepathy, flying saucers, time travel, and the intervention of extraterrestrials in human affairs.

Airing a total of 78 25–26 min. episodes, the series was also known as Beyond the Limits in second run syndication during the 1960s and alternatively as Science Fiction Theater.

Opposite to what happened in the 1960s, the first season was filmed in color, but to cut costs the second season was in black & white. The producers had originally thought that color TV would progress faster than it did.

Lists of television programs

This is a list of lists of television program articles.

Format

Television program formats:

Television program types:

and combinations thereof.

By genre