Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptation: Across the Screens

243 Pages·2011·1.7 MB·English

by  J. P. Telotte

Science Fiction Film,
Television, and Adaptation
Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies
1 Video, War and the Diasporic 9 Media Reform
Imagination Democratizing the Media,
Dona Kolar-Panov Democratizing the State
Edited by Monroe E. Price, Beata
2 Reporting the Israeli-Arab Confl ict Rozumilowicz, and Stefaan G.
How Hegemony Works Verhulst
Tamar Liebes
10 Political Communication in a
3 Karaoke Around the World New Era
Global Technology, Local Singing Edited by Gadi Wolfsfeld and
Edited by Toru Mitsui Philippe Maarek
and Shuhei Hosokawa
11 Writers’ Houses and the Making
4 News of the World of Memory
World Cultures Look at Television Edited by Harald Hendrix
News
Edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen 12 Autism and Representation
Edited by Mark Osteen
5 From Satellite to Single Market
New Communication Technology 13 American Icons
and European Public Service The Genesis of a National Visual
Television Language
Richard Collins Benedikt Feldges
6 The Nationwide Television Studies 14 The Practice of Public Art
David Morley Edited by Cameron Cartiere
and Charlotte Bronsdon and Shelly Willis
7 The New Communications 15 Film and Television After DVD
Landscape Edited by James Bennett and Tom
Demystifying Media Globalization Brown
Edited by Georgette Wang, Jan
Servaes, and Anura Goonasekera 16 The Places and Spaces of
Fashion, 1800-2007
8 Media and Migration Edited by John Potvin
Constructions of Mobility and
Difference 17 Communicating in the Third Space
Edited by Russell King Edited by Karin Ikas
and Nancy Wood and Gerhard Wagner
18 Deconstruction After 9/11 27 Violence, Visual Culture, and the
Martin McQuillan Black Male Body
Cassandra Jackson
19 The Contemporary Comic Book
Superhero 28 Cognitive Poetics and Cultural
Edited by Angela Ndalianis Memory
Russian Literary Mnemonics
20 Mobile Technologies Mikhail Gronas
From Telecommunications to
Media 29 Landscapes of Holocaust
Edited by Gerard Goggin Postmemory
and Larissa Hjorth Brett Ashley Kaplan
21 Dynamics and Performativity of 30 Emotion, Genre, and Justice in
Imagination Film and Television
The Image between the Visible E. Deidre Pribram
and the Invisible
Edited by Bernd Huppauf 31 Audiobooks, Literature, and
and Christoph Wulf Sound Studies
Matthew Rubery
22 Cities, Citizens, and
Technologies 32 The Adaptation Industry
Urban Life and Postmodernity The Cultural Economy of Literary
Paula Geyh Adaptation
Simone Murray
23 Trauma and Media
Theories, Histories, and Images 33 Branding Post-Communist
Allen Meek Nations
Marketizing National Identities in
24 Letters, Postcards, Email the New Europe
Technologies of Presence Edited by Nadia Kaneva
Esther Milne
34 Science Fiction Film, Television,
25 International Journalism and and Adaptation
Democracy Across the Screens
Civic Engagement Models from Edited by J. P. Telotte and Gerald
Around the World Duchovnay
Edited by Angela Romano
26 Aesthetic Practices and Politics
in Media, Music, and Art
Performing Migration
Edited by Rocío G. Davis,
Dorothea Fischer-Hornung,
and Johanna C. Kardux

Science Fiction Film,
Television, and Adaptation
Across the Screens
Edited by J. P. Telotte
and Gerald Duchovnay
NEW YORK LONDON
First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
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© 2012 Taylor & Francis
The right of J. P. Telotte and Gerald Duchovnay to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Science fiction film, television, and adaptation : across the screens / edited
by J. P. Telotte and Gerald Duchovnay.
p. cm. — (Routledge research in cultural and media studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography and videography.
1. Film adaptations—History and criticism. 2. Television
adaptations—History and criticism. 3. Science fiction films—History
and criticism. 4. Science fiction television programs—History
and criticism. 5. Motion pictures and television. I. Telotte, J. P.,
1949– II. Duchovnay, Gerald, 1944–
PN1997.85.S38 2011
791.43'615—dc22
2011008276
ISBN13: 978-0-415-88719-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-80572-5 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Across the Screens: Adaptation, Boundaries,
and Science Fiction Film and Television xiii
J. P. TELOTTE
PART I
Cross-Screen Dynamics
1 Domesticating Space: Science Fiction Serials Come Home 3
CYNTHIA J. MILLER
2 The Cinematic Zone of The Twilight Zone 20
J. P. TELOTTE
3 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Big-Screen Spectacle and
Compressed Television Images 35
MARY PHARR
PART II
Case Studies: Film to Television
4 Finding Sanctuary: Adapting Logan’s Run to Television 53
GERALD DUCHOVNAY
5 Stargate SG-1 and the Visualization of the Imagination 67
SHERRYL VINT
viii Contents
6 She’s Just a Girl: A Cyborg Passes in The Sarah Conner
Chronicles 84
LORRIE PALMER
PART III
Case Studies: Television to Film
7 Star Trek and the Birth of a Film Franchise 101
M. KEITH BOOKER
8 “I Want to Believe the Truth Is Out There”: The X-Files and the
Impossibility of Knowing 115
RODNEY F. HILL
9 Serenity, Genre, and Cinematization 127
J. P. TELOTTE
PART IV
Issues in Science Fiction Adaptation
10 Doctor Who: Adaptations and Flows 143
MARK BOULD
11 Déjà Vu All Over Again? Cowboy Bebop’s Transformation to
the Big Screen 164
MICHELLE ONLEY PIRKLE
12 Fan Films, Adaptations, and Media Literacy 176
CHUCK TRYON
Notes on Contributors 191
Selective Videography/Filmography 195
Bibliography 197
Index 201
Figures
I.1 Future television recalls the “age of windows” in the fi lm
Things to Come (1936). xviii
I.2 A demon comes through the rift in the British
series Torchwood. xxi
1.1 Youthful sidekicks, like Captain Z-Ro’s cadet, Jet, mirrored
a young audience’s “space fever.” 8
1.2 Space comes into the home, as audience members sport
uniforms and even sf insignia haircuts. 13
2.1 Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) as part of the rubble in the
post-apocalyptic world of “Time Enough at Last” on The
Twilight Zone (1959). 25
2.2 Andy Hardy’s Carvel redressed as The Twilight Zone’s
“Maple Street” (1960). 29
3.1 The Seaview surfaces at an impossible angle: Spectacle in
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). 38
3.2 The television Voyage turned to guest actors (here Eddie
Albert, along with series regulars David Hedison and
Richard Basehart) to bolster viewership. 41
4.1 Futuristic setting: inside the domed city of the fi lm
Logan’s Run. 56
4.2 The “hovercraft” that Logan, Jessica, and REM use for their
different adventures in the Logan’s Run television series. 59
5.1 The use of scale differentiates the fi lm Stargate from its
television adaptation. 70
5.2 The “event” of the stargate’s opening in a fi rst season
episode of Stargate SG-1. 71
6.1 The cyborg Cameron (Summer Glau) and Sarah Connor
(Lena Headey), absent the bodily brawn of 1980s movie
heroines. 85
6.2 Cameron (Summer Glau) defeats a Terminator to protect the
teenage John Connor 90
8.1 Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny)
ponder their futures in The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). 117