DESPITE SOME B-grade acting and melodramatic character back stories which do not inspire me to take their emotional depths seriously …
20 Minutes into the Future
Weekly rundowns on the latest science fiction television series by Sherryl Vint
The Future, As Seen on TV
In 1982, cultural critic Fredric Jameson published “Progress verses Utopia: or, Can We Imagine the Future” which argued against the …
The New Posthuman: SyFy’s Helix
THE BIG NEWS in sf television this week is the premiere of SyFy’s Helix, from producer Ronald Moore whose reboot …
Who would win in a fight between Bad Robot and Mutant Enemy?
THERE IS NO QUESTION that two of the dominant forces in genre television right now are J.J. Abrams and Joss …
Back to the Present of the Future: Continuum and the War on Terror
By Jonathan Alexander I’LL BEGIN WITH A DISCLAIMER: as much as I love SF, time-travel stories are my least favorite. …
Robot Revolutions: “Almost Human”
THE LAST OF THIS YEAR’S new science fiction programs, Fox’s Almost Human, debuted this week, a co-creation of J.H. Wyman and J.J. …
Superheroes and TV IV: Possibilities and pitfalls of contemporary television
THE TERM TVIII has been used in television studies to describe the state of television in the 21st century. This …
Steampunk Dracula
SCIENCE FICTION television this season continues to work through the anxieties of our contemporary moment in coded ways, from Revolution’s …
One Season Wonders: “Outcasts” and “Terra Nova”
by Jonathan Alexander ONE OF THE PLEASURES of TV these days is the Netflixable delight of watching entire seasons in …
Men Behaving Badly: White Masculinity in Science Fiction Television
TELEVISION IS A PLACE where we work through our cultural anxieties and project idealized versions of our selves. Even if …