Science Fiction Theatre

Praise for Science Fiction Theatre

"J. P. Telotte is the dean of science fiction scholarship. His work is as readable as it is insightful. Science Fiction Theatre is an immensely enjoyable book that combines a history of early television with an analysis of a show that initiated all the TV and streaming sci-fi that came in its wake."

—Robert P. Kolker, coauthor with Nathan Abrams of Kubrick: An Odyssey

"At a moment when televised science fiction is experiencing its latest golden age, J. P. Telotte’s media-savvy study returns us to one of its most important origin points, revealing Science Fiction Theatre as the unrecognized and underappreciated ancestor of everything from The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror to Star Trek and The X-Files."

—Gerry Canavan, managing editor of Science Fiction Film and Television

"In J. P. Telotte’s Science Fiction Theatre, our most accomplished scholar of science fiction film examines the anthology series that paved the way for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. Telotte excels at connecting the circumstances of production—economic, political, social, and technological—with the images and ideas that made their way onto TV screens and into the national consciousness."

—Brian Attebery, author of Fantasy: How It Works

"A deeply researched and accessibly written account of a pioneering television series, locating Science Fiction Theatre in the contexts of postwar popular culture, the science fiction genre, and the American television industry."

—William Boddy

Science Fiction Theatre

TV Milestones

Series Editor

Barry Keith Grant, Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series.

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu.

Science Fiction Theatre

J. P. Telotte

Wayne State University Press

Detroit

© 2024 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.

ISBN 9780814350294 (paperback)

ISBN 9780814350300 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023937192

Cover art from Modern Electrics, vol. 4, no. 11, February 1912. Document scan by Syracuse University Libraries.

Published with the assistance of a fund established by Thelma Gray James of Wayne State University for the publication of folklore and English studies.

Wayne State University Press rests on Waawiyaataanong, also referred to as Detroit, the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Three Fires Confederacy. These sovereign lands were granted by the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot Nations, in 1807, through the Treaty of Detroit. Wayne State University Press affirms Indigenous sovereignty and honors all tribes with a connection to Detroit. With our Native neighbors, the press works to advance educational equity and promote a better future for the earth and all people.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Science Fiction, Television, and the 1950s

2. Syndicating Science Fiction: Ziv’s New Kind of Program

3. Memetic Thinking: Key Themes / Concerns of Science Fiction Theatre

4. Significant Episodes

5. The Legacy of Science Fiction Theatre

Notes

Works Cited and Bibliography

Videography

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Twenty years ago I had the opportunity to lead off Wayne State University’s new TV Milestones series with my volume Disney TV. I want to thank the press, and especially series editor Barry Grant and senior acquisitions editor Marie Sweetman, for being receptive to and indeed encouraging the idea of my authoring a second TV Milestones book. Let me also express my appreciation for copy editor Jude Grant’s deft touch, which has made the book a more pleasing read. Providing valuable assistance to my research were the staff members at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, particularly Mary Huelsbeck and Lisa Marine. Finally, I need to thank my wife, Leigh Ehlers Telotte, for her support and advice throughout the writing and production process. This book is dedicated to her.

1

Introduction

Science Fiction, Television, and the 1950s

The title of the 1950s program Science Fiction Theatre suggests that any consideration of it should start with its generic context—as one of the many science fiction (SF) series that, reflecting a postwar upsurge of interest in science and technology, appeared in the early blossoming of US broadcast television. But in light of the shared influences on much US television in this developmental stage, I want to propose a broader approach, that we begin by seeing the series as part of what Matthew Fuller terms a complex medial system—that is, as a dynamic structure made of multiply connected media components (4) that together ‘cooperate’ to produce something more than the sum of their parts (6). Certainly, one of the most important of these parts is the SF genre, which in the decade of the 1950s saw an unprecedented proliferation in both film and television. But the significance of the series, as something more than another component of this sudden genre explosion, comes into focus only when we also frame it in terms of the larger system in which it was enmeshed: the other types of programming that dominated broadcast television and helped shape early television narrative; the system that created it, particularly the rise of syndicated production companies that generated a variety of shows to compete in the broadcasting environment that was taking shape; and the recurring concerns or themes that illustrate its contribution to SF television’s maturation. This book argues that because of its place within this greater system, Science Fiction Theatre represents a significant landmark in early television, as well as important territory for media SF that has never been properly surveyed.

For many people, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959–64) is the bellwether of adult SF television, offering compelling and well-written narratives that definitively broke with the juvenile shows that dominated early television SF. Certainly its mature subjects—for example, atomic apocalypse, cultural paranoia, and the fragile nature of the modern self, explored in episodes such as Time Enough at Last, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet—attest to its efforts to move the genre in an adult direction. But prior to The Twilight Zone’s appearance, Science Fiction Theatre had already established a format and focus on which Serling’s show would capitalize. Mirroring other serious dramas of the period, it was a hosted, anthology-type show created by Ziv Television Programs, a subsidiary of the Frederick W. Ziv Company, which was the largest and most ambitious producer of syndicated radio and television programs through most of the 1950s. Initially broadcast from 1955 to 1957, the series ran for a total of just seventy-eight episodes, but because of its syndicated source, that two-season initial run does not accurately measure its presence, endurance, and impact. As this book’s second chapter chronicles, it was extensively sold on the just developing international market, being dubbed, subtitled, and broadcast in a variety of foreign languages, making it, when measured by the global marketplace, the most widely available early SF television programming. Moreover, as a syndicated offering rather than a regular network series, it continued to be aggressively sold and to play in the United States and abroad for many years, at times under the title Beyond the Limits. This syndicated life ensured Science Fiction Theatre’s influence well beyond its original circulation and also casts a revealing light on the shifting fortunes of syndicated television production in this period.

While the first years of US television saw other, very different competition in the SF market, mostly aimed at a different sort of audience, Science Fiction Theatre staked out a more mature territory for the genre that shows such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (1963–65) would further mine. And the Ziv series’ efforts in this direction were well received, with an initial review in the industry paper Billboard lauding it as unique and very exciting (Ziv-TV Unveils 1). Moreover, it was quickly recognized in several categories of Billboard’s annual TV Film Program and Talent Awards. Among these industry-voted honors, Science Fiction Theatre was named one of the top-ten overall programs in the category Best TV Film Series; among non-network programs, it earned the top spot as both Best New Series and Best Dramatic Series; and it took fourth place overall in the Best New TV Film Series classification (Billboard’s 3d Annual 4–5). Offering a more specific appreciation of its different character, a Variety reviewer remarked on Science Fiction Theatre’s off-the-beaten-track nature and its singular ability to escape from the unbroken line of clichés that typified much of its television competition in the genre (Chan 43)—a characteristic that Ziv’s promotional material pointedly played up by advertising the show as A Big, New Idea in SF.¹

Part of that initial success was indeed due to this new emphasis, as in trying to differentiate Science Fiction Theatre from previous SF programs, Ziv aimed for a fresh approach to the genre, one that, its advertising claimed, was Amazing Because It’s Science and Gripping Because It’s Fiction! This combination was part of the formula for a science factual type of narrative that would mine the wondrous character of science that was already being pushed by several popular educational series, most notably The Johns Hopkins Science Review (1948–55), The Nature of Things (1948–54), and Science in Action (1950–66).² To that end Ziv announced that the show would rely heavily on the appeal of scientific and technological fact, drawing on a hefty research budget of $75,000 and on the studio’s arrangements with six leading universities—UCLA, University of Southern California, MIT, Johns Hopkins, California Institute of Technology, and University of Pennsylvania—to serve as consultants, along with several other scientific institutions and industry specialists (Ziv Enlists 47). As a piece in Variety reported, Ziv executives emphasized that the show’s scripts would be drawn from actual scientific problems, tempered by an understanding that the technical backgrounds . . . must be believable to hold scripts together logically (Ziv Enlists 47).

Figure 1.1. Ziv publicizes its new hybrid of science and fiction.

While Variety speculated that Science Fiction Theatre’s scientific and technological thrust might partly reflect a ‘gotta be different’ trend among syndicators (Science Fiction 48), there were certainly many other factors involved in