Real space on TV, anime, made-for-TV
& made-for-the-web,
movies, mini-series, documentaries, etc.
This section provides resources dealing with space
related television programs. We include sci-fi, non-fiction
historical dramas, docoumentaries and any other sort
of program involving space.
space1970
- Christopher Mills - "blog is dedicated
to the science fiction films and television series
of the 1970s - give or take a few years (say, 1969-1983)"
Solar Sci-Fi Television/Web
While there have been many valiant attempts, there
has yet to be a realistic style, solar system based
space sci-fi drama that has achieved long running success,
at least not in the US market.
The success, however, of the non-fiction From the
Earth to the Moon mini-series dramatization of the
Apollo program proved that contemporary space exploration
can in fact be made exciting and captivating.
So we have reason to hope that eventually a Roddenberry-type
visionary will come along with a series concept that
holds the right combination of a realistic, hard-science
scenario and likeable characters to create a successful
Solar
Sci-Fi TV series.
Made-for-Web
Space Programs
It is becoming increasingly common to see programs intended
not for film theaters or for TV but for web audiences.
Here are some with a space theme.
Space
Race - this on line program offers a high-quality
animation adventure/education series for kids.
L5
- "a hard science fiction dramatic miniseries for
online distribution" led by Stanley
Von Medvey. The plot involves a crew coming out
of suspended animation after the return from the first
manned mission to Barnard's Star. They hear no signals
from an apparently devastated and lifeless Earth and
come upon a giant O'neill cylinder-colony at the L5
Lagrange point that is empty and airless.
The project will use the social networking model for
funding via the Kickstarter
site. They "are seeking to raise $10,000 for the
pilot episode".
monochrom's
ISS - This program was created by the "art-technology-philosophy
group" monochrom.
ISS is
a ten-part improv-reality-sitcom about
living and working on the International Space Station.
The four actors playing the ISS crew must develop
strategies on the fly in response to surprise situations,
which are loosely based on actual ISS data uncovered
by monochrom. In space no one can hear you complain
about your job.
The ISS
webpage provides videos of the shows, images and
backgrounds of the "crew". The first episode was recorded
on
recorded in front of a live audience on March
16, 2011.
Actors: Jeff Ricketts (Star Trek: Enterprise,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly), Maciej Salamon
(Musicals: Barbarella, Tanz der Vampire, Sweeney
Todd), Claire Tudela (Carmen, Musical: The Producers),
Geoff Pinfield (Aoterroroa, Lovepuke)
Directing (aka live torture of actors): Johannes
Grenzfurthner and Roland Gratzer
Astronauts
Short-run British sitcom in fall of 1981 (6 episodes)
about the first British space mission. Two men, a woman
and a dog were living in a Skylab type spacecraft for
several months.
The
Cape
A 1995 weekly show based on the lives and adventures
of the NASA space shuttle astronauts and support crews.
Very much a near term, contemporary scenario. A medium
budget syndicated show, it nevertheless had fairly high
production values and a good cast.
However, with no space station, moon base or Mars missions,
the show struggled to come up with exciting plots that
involved just the shuttle going up, delivering or servicing
a satellite, and coming back down. The series only lasted
one season.
Several clips are available at Youtube such as this
one:
..
Escape from Jupiter Joint Australian/Japanese production 1994 about
the adventures of five children who try to make their
way back to earth on a dilapidated spacecraft after
their colony on the Jupiter moon IO is accidentally
destroyed. Thirteen 30 min episodes.
Jupiter
Moon
Highly realistic style space drama set in 2050 among colonies
and ships in the Jupiter system. Commissioned by British
Satellite Broadcasting in 1989, over 150 episodes were
made with high production values. It was quite popular
and the series has been run several times on Sci-fi channels
in Europe.
Mercy
Point
This ER in Space was a short lived series on
the UPN TV network in the US in 1998. Followed events
on the hospital space station Mercy Point, which
provided emergency care to space dwellers of all species.
Eight episodes were made but only 3 shown before it
was canceled. Later 4 episodes were aired.
Entry at SciFi2k.com
has pictures from the episodes.
Moonbase
3
A 1973 BBC series about a lunar colony in 2003. The
6 episodes explored both the technological and psychological
challenges of living on the Moon.
Salvage
1- George Leonberger
Salvage 1 was a short lived but interesting series from
the late 1970's. Andy Griffith builds a rocket to go to
the Moon to salvage equipment left by the Apollo astronauts.
George Leonberger has collected lots of info and pictures
about the show. Ultimate
Sci-fi
James
A. Michener's Space
1985 mini-series dramatized Michener's book Space
in 6 episodes. The realistic style novel depicted how
Apollo 18 might have gone if it had not been canceled
by Nixon's budget cutbacks.
Space Academy
Short lived series in the 1977 about spaceflight school.
Class was never this much fun at your school...the
students at Space Academy major in adventure!
Under the guidance of their instructor Commander
Isaac Gampu (played by Lost in Space's Jonathan
Harris), the young cadets attending Space Academy
in the year 3732 include Captain Chris Gentry,
his telepathic sister Laura Gentry, action-oriented
Tee Gar Soom, brainy Lieutenant Paul Jerome, and
the pretty, young Adrian Pryce-Jones. Joining
the Blue Team for learning and adventure are the
robot Peepo and the blue-haired mysterious orphan
Loki.
Airing on CBS in the 1977 season, Space Academy
was another ground-breaking live-action series
from Filmation Studios. With special effects by
some of the technical wizards who had created
Star Wars that same year, space Academy proved
popular with audiences both young and old. Later
rerun on the network and in syndication worldwide,
Space Academy also launched a line of character
dolls and other memorabilia, and a spin-off the
following season called Jason of Star Command.
Space
Island One
This British drama about seven people on a space station
lasted for two seasons (1997-1998). Said to have realistic
effects and plots with good acting.
Strange
Frame
This project started out with the goal of developing
an animated TV show. The scenario is set in the solar
system during the 29th century. Strange Frame
"follows the interplanetary flying hunk of junk
'The Lone Mango' as she hauls her musical crew to
explore the brave new humanity wrought by hundreds
of years of genetic engineering and biomodification."
In the spirit of Solar
SciFi , the program assumes no faster-than-light
travel or alien encounters. However, humanity and it's
genetically modified offshoots have spread throughout
the solar system and make it a very interesting place.
The diverse societies, lifestyles and conflicts that
the Lone Mango encounters will provide limitless possibilities
for exciting adventures.
The program's style is inspired by Japanese anime,
as well as graphic novels, and is aimed towards teens
and adults. See more in the press release.
By 2011 the project had reoriented itself towards an
independent film and a number of notables in the industry
were involved:
For a low budget indie film Strange Frame has an
incredible sci-fi cast. Actors doing voices include
Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show, Ferngully),
Claudia Black (Stargate SG1, Farscape), George Takei
(Star Trek, Heroes), Michael Dorn (Star Trek, Transformers),
Ron Glass (Barney Miller, Firefly, Serenity), Alan
Tudyk (Firefly, Serenity, Transformers), Juliet Landau
(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ed Wood), and Claudia Christian
(Babylon5)
Roger Waters gave them a Pink Floyd song because
the innovative combination of style and content resonated
with him.
Academy Award winner, Gary Rizzo (Inception, Titanic,
Star Wars, Dark Knight, and The Incredibles) is doing
the sound mix at Skywalker Ranch.
Anime
- Space
Anime is a distinctive Japanese style of animation. Some
of the anime programs have involved space stories plots
within solar system scenarios and depicted in a semi-realistic
manner.
Two globe-trotting adventurers join the international
effort to mine Helium 3, a new energy source discovered
on the moon. This near-future sci-fi series chronicles
mankind's struggle to conquer space.
Space
Patrol (in UK, in the US it was called Planet
Patrol)
Puppet style scifi in B&W that preceded
Fireball XL5 and Thunderbird
Early
Sci-Fi TV
Roaring
Rockets
Devoted to science fiction from the early days of
TV, especially the years 1949 to 1955, this fun site
was built by enthusiasts for shows like Captain
Video and His Video Rangers, Tom Corbett
Space Cadet, and Space Patrol.
Includes interviews, images, art-work, space toys
from the era, etc.
Solar
Guard
Devoted to "Space Opera", this site seeks
to "preserve some of the early history of Science
Fiction Television." Lots of resources about
popular sci-fi series of the late 1940's and early
1950s.
The
Space Explorers
Late 1950s/early 1960s cartoon series about space.
More info available in entry for the animated
film of the same name from which short
excerpts were extracted for this series.
Men
into Space
Hard sci-fi style drama made during the immediate
post-Sputnik period. Aired 1959-1960. Astronauts rode
X-15 style spaceplanes to orbit to build a space station
as a base for the going to the Moon. (That is, they
did it the way it should have been done!)
Destination
Space
A TV pilot from Paramount pitched to CBS but not taken
up as a series. Involved a space station damaged by
a meteorite and efforts to send a rescue mission.
The
Space Links - links to other sites that deal with
early TV sci-fi.
Galactic Space Programs HobbySpace is devoted
to space development that can happen in our own solar
system, in our own lifetimes. So this Space TV section
focuses on programs that had at least a near term focus
if not a totally realistic approach to spaceflight.
See the Solar
Sci-Fi section for futher resources along that line.
However, it would be a bit silly not to mention programs
like Star Trek that have had enormous impact
on popular attitudes towards space.
There is a whole universe of online resources related
to Star Trek and other popular sci-fi series. So I just
give some brief samples of online resources here.
Fan Fiction
- Creation of full-length videos made by amateurs
that emulate a particular show like Star Trek. Many
of these projects have become quite sophisticated.
Firefly
This was one of the best space-related sci-fi program
series ever made but unfortunately it didn't last even
a year. Despite very high production values, good stories
and well-drawn characters, it couldn't find an audience.
This had a lot to do with being placed on Friday nights
and having the sequence of shows scrambled by the network,
which made it quite difficult for viewers to understand
the basic scenario of the program and the background
and motivations of the characters.
Initially I thought it was fantasy space scifi but
it actually had many Solar
SciFi features:
No aliens
Not much in the way of magic technologies. E.g.
the weapons used are mostly the plain old bullet sort.
Some action occurs in a star system outside of Earth's
but this wasn't really emphasized. The colonies where
the episodes took place were said mostly to be on
terraformed moons. They could just as easily have
all been on planets, moons, and O'Neill
habitats within the solar system.
Defying
Gravity
A near future space sci-fi program set to air in the
summer of 2009.
"Plot Concept: The story is set in the near
future and revolves around eight astronauts from five
countries who take on a mysterious six-year mission
through the solar system."
The
Starlost - Wikipedia - a short lived series initiated
by Harlan Ellison about a gigantic colony ship on
a long term voyage from earth to another star system.
Rocket
Man - 2006 BBC drama about a man building
rocket to send the ashes of his late wife into space
Made-for-TV
Space Movies
A few non-fiction and solar
sci-fi style made-for-TV movies have appeared
over the years. (Unfortunately, many are very difficult
to find on videotape and even more so on DVD.)
The Space
Movies section gives brief descriptions of
the following:
Plymouth
(1991)
Moonbase scenario - the inhabitants of a small mid-western
town are hired by a larger corporation to move in
mass to a Moonbase to run their mining operations.
While countless space documentaries have
appeared on TV since the 1950's (see the Multimedia
section for sources of space documentary videotapes/DVDs),
there have been very few dramatizations of true life
space stories.
The 12 part mini-series From the Earth
to the Moon sponsored by the US HBO network partly
made up for this deficiency. Perhaps its success will
give rise to more such true story space dramas in the
future.
Produced by Tom Hanks, this was one of the most expensive
($68M) TV productions ever. Well worth the money, it
won numerous awards and attracted a high number of viewers.
Factual accuracy was very good and little was sacrificed
to sustain the dramatic stories and fascinating characters.
Each 1 hr episode had a different director 1998, HBO,
12hr.
Live TV from Space
While sci-fi writers and space advocates in the early
20th Century predicted human spaceflight and flights
to the Moon, few expected that the public would watch
the initial efforts on a home viewing device. The TV
broadcasts from US space flights, especially during
the Apollo moon missions, were one of the genuine "sci-fi"
features of the Space Age.
Here are some resources about various aspects of space
TV.
Carl
Sagan's Cosmos
The late planetary scientist Carl Sagan hosted this
13 part series starting in 1980 on Public Television.
With his eloquent writing and melodic voice, he presented
from a personal perspective the history, current development,
and future of astronomy, space science and cosmology.
Sagan became one of the most famous public figures in
science during the 1970s and 1980s, especially after
be became a regular on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
Disney
& Space The Disney Channel occasionally re-broadcasts the
programs in its 1950's space series: Man in Space,
Man and the Moon, and Mars and Beyond.
All three were made in collaboration
with Wernher von Braun and helped to influence in
a positive way US public opinion on spaceflight during
the 1950s. They also inspired the Tomorrowland section
of Disneyland.
Mars and Beyond was shone on the Disney
Channel Mar 29, 2001- Series/Family, 60 Mins."Legendary
Disney animator Ward Kimball directed this 1957 look
at space travel that includes a trip to Mars on an atomic-powered
spaceship."
Meteorite
Men - Hunting, collecting and selling meteorites
has become a worldwide industry. The new weekly program
on the Science Channel called , which follows professional
meteorite hunters Geoffrey Notkin and Steve Arnold
as they scour the world for extraterrestrial rocks.
Mars extravaganza from Discovery
Channel Canada that includes a 4 episode dramatization
of a manned mission to Mars and then a 6 episode
documentary for a total of 10 hours of programming.
The programs are narrated by William Shatner.
Space - a 6-episode documentary series by
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and The
Learning Channel. It is narrated by actor Sam Neill
and produced by Richard Burke-Ward. First broadcast
in 2001. Internet
Movie Database.
SpaceCasts
- the internet is becoming the major conduit for television
programming. See the SpaceCasts page for links to
current space related webcast streams.
Solar
Sci-Fi - resources for print science fiction with
a realistic, solar system focus
SciFi.com
/ Sci-Fi Channel
The home site of the Sci-Fi channel that is available
on cable and satellite Shows both original programming
and reruns of old sci-fi, including many space programs.
Spacecast
The online site for the Canadian Space Channel TV network.
Fan
Fiction TV Remakes
For decades the sci-fi fan-fiction phenomema
has grown into a vast subculture. Devoted fans of various
sci-fi and fantasy TV programs and movies write their
own stories, episodes, and whole books based on the
scenarios and characters in those dramas. Increasingly,
their efforts extend even to short films and full-length
movies:
Star
Trek: New Voyages (Also called Star Trek:
Phase II)
This group treats Kirk, Spock and McCoy as written
characters, such as James Bond, who can be portrayed
by different actors, each giving their own interpretation
of the particular character. So they don't do
impersonations of Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest
Kelly, etc.
Though still non-profit, the productions have
gotten increastingly professional in quality and
some top actors like George Takei and Denise Crosby
are taking roles in the episodes.
Star
Trek Horizon - " a feature-length fan
film made by a single filmmaker as a personal
passion project and love letter to Enterprise,
the fifth Star Trek series. Pre-production began
in December of 2012 and this 3-year-long odyssey
concluded on February 25th, 2016. It's been a
long road, getting from there to here."
Star
Trek Continues - Space: The Final Frontier...
- In Star Trek original series stye. High production
quaility. "The new Star Trek Continues Web
Series carries on the original 5-year mission.
Star Trek Continues begins right where the original
left off. Check out the rest of our website for
the latest news, photos and information surrounding
this ground-breaking series produced by Farragut
Films and DracoGen Strategic Investments."
Episodes
- 1 full episode and three "vignettes"
as of June 2013
Science
Fiction Television Series: Episode Guides, Histories,
and Cast and Credits for 62 Prime Time Shows, 1959
through 1989 by Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia - Links
The
Telefantasy List - This site seeks "to
provide a single reference to what is hopefully every
single English-language science fiction, fantasy,
horror and supernatural television programme from
1937 right up to the present day. Movie spin-offs
are also covered."
SpaceCadets
- "reality" show in which the participants
were tricked into believing they had received real
training and had actually gone into orbit. (They fell
for some silly explanation as to why they were not
weightless.)
Includes
Walt Disney's
Man in Space, Man and the Moon, &
Mars and Beyond.
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
Amazon: US
Analog Science Fiction and Fact contains compelling, hard-to-put-down
futuristic sci-fi stories and scientific features.
Sci-Fi Magazine
Amazon: US
What's hot in Sci-Fi movies, TV & games from the official Sci-Fi Channel
magazine.
by John C. Fredriksen (Dec.2012)
- Amazon
