#bfiscifi

Future Tense: British Science Fiction Television / August - December 2014

A series of six blog posts for Moviemail to tie in with the BFI's major retrospective and celebration of the science fiction genre 'Days of Fear and Wonder'.

As part of these celebrations, the BFI released a number of long-awaited television programmes from the archive, including a box set of the remaining Out of the Unknown episodes from the BBC anthology series of the 1960s; the fondly regarded adaptation of Peter Dickinson's The Changes and the striking version of Alan Garner's Red Shift first shown in the Play for Today strand.

The blogs tied into these releases and covered the major themes specific to British science fiction on television as well as providing a general survey of the some of the best dramas made between the 1950s and the present day.

The overarching theme in British science fiction of catastrophe and apocalypse was identified as well as the growing fears of technology, environmental collapse, dystopia and totalitarianism, questions about identity, gender and sexuality. Key programmes and writers included Nigel Kneale's Quatermass stories, Terry Nation's Survivors and Blake's 7 as well as the productions from Gerry Anderson and children's dramas such as The Tomorrow People, Children of the Stones, Sky and The Tripods.

The blog concluded with a look at how television production, economics and political changes affected the creation of new British science fiction series in the 1990s and the renaissance of the genre on the small screen with the arrival of the new series of Doctor Who in 2005.

QFT shows the very best in new and classic world cinema. QFT was the first cinema in Northern Ireland to install a digital projector, meaning that we can now screen state-of-the-art high definition digital films as well as standard celluloid films

This weekend the big sci-fi news was the first teaser for the first post-Lucas Star Wars film being released. 

It was nice with this overwhelmingly hyperbolic and personally uninteresting event at the centre of the culture to slink off to a corner - relatively speaking - and spend an evening with Lucas's first feature, a film which if nothing else is a reminder that he could make a good, interesting film rooted in ideas that are conjoined to a physical cinema. 

It's still a fascinating work. The screening I attended was part of a BFI Sci-Fi season I curated at a local art cinema space and was introduced passionately by a friend and colleague who discussed education, freedom and artistic vision, rebellion and stubbornness. The film is ambitious for an American film in its stubborn pacing and resolute lack of exposition elements Lucas would come to shun over time, inarguably for the worse.