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Airdate: The Real History of Science Fiction

A new sci-fi doco series has an all-star cast including William Shatner, Steven Moffat, Chris Carter, Ronald D Moore & David Tennant.

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2014-08-29_1016If you are a sci-fi fan then a new doco series The Real History of Science Fiction coming to SBS has an all-star cast of participants.

There are 4 eps in this BBC America Production.

From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who and everything in between, new documentary series The Real History of Science Fiction heads to the frontiers of space and science for the definitive television history of science fiction.

Narrated by Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer, actor, and co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock, each episode in the 4-part series boldly examines an enduring theme of science fiction: time travel; the exploration of space; robots and artificial intelligence; and aliens.

Speaking to those who have shaped sci-fi – and pushed its boundaries – the series reveals why it is not merely a genre for its audience, but a portal into entire new worlds of imagination and discovery.

The history of one of the liveliest and most stimulating genres in popular culture will be told through its impact on cinema, television and literature. Sci-fi’s’s greatest pioneers, the filmmakers, writers, actors, and graphic artists whose obsession and vision has taken them into the unknown reveal their inspirations and experiences.

Contributors include:
William Shatner (Star Trek), Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Richard Dreyfuss (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Chris Carter (The X-Files), Ronald D Moore (Battlestar Galactica), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, Schlock), David Tennant (Doctor Who), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner), John Carpenter (Dark Star, The Thing), Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Stardust), Ursula K Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness), and many more.

Episode 1 – Time – Monday 8 September, 8.30pm
What if we could travel not just through space, but through time itself? If you could travel through time, would you change the past or the future? What if you found it couldn’t be changed? What price does the time traveller — and the people they are closest to — pay?

This is a journey from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine through ideas like The Grandfather Paradox and The Butterfly Effect to the professional time traveller that is the ever popular Doctor Who.

8.30pm, Monday 8 September on SBS ONE.

5 Responses

  1. @dshan – Ursula K Le Guin? Thx, I missed that when I skimmed the press release. She’s a favourite of mine so this has gone from a definite maybe to definite.

    I agree with you regarding the vast gulf between SF literature and what is usually passed off as SF on the screen. I don’t even tell people that I like SF because they assume that I watch nonsense such as Stargate Atlantis or Babylon 5 (despite Gaiman having written a few of the scripts).

  2. Could be interesting. Unfortunately many such docos have problems with the vast majority of intelligent adult SF existing only in written form and so focus on the, usually dreadful, TV and movie elements of the genre.

    Still the fact that this one includes such luminaries as Ursula K. Le Guin and Neil Gaiman may be a good sign. Pity about Shatner though…

  5. Looks good – I will be watching it but may be a bit unfocussed as they have a lot of material to deal with if they are going to cover Movies, TV and books.

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