Music in science fiction television [antikvár]

Preface The editors of this volume shared similar experiences as children. We were both fascinated at early ages by television SF programs and—most particularly—by the long-running BBC series Doctor Who. While the sets and props were often unimpressive, the conundrums of causality and fixity innate to time travel were vivid and compelling. Similarly, the politics and poetics of interaction between species were challenging and inspiring. Another aspect also struck us: the expression of drama, strangeness and futurity through music and sound. This element was as exciting, as modern and as experimental as anything going on in the wildest vanguard of progressive rock music of the time. The odd corner of TV that the program inhabited (implicitly "our" comer) was thereby a special space. While many of the programs discussed in this volume were initially conceived as somewhat lightweight genre products, they have prompted increased scrutiny and evaluation as the decades have passed. The programs analyzed in Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future belong to the broad genre of science fiction, which can be summarized as an aggregation of works substantially concerned with aspects of futurism, imagined technologies, aliens, and/or inter-planetarism. As a genre primarily defined in terms of iconography, locale, and thematics, the television programs analyzed in this volume also incorporate elements of the thriller, action, and comedy genres. In addition, their soundtracks also draw on related conventions. The proliferation of science fiction on television and the progressive "cult" status of old science fiction television shows have made the subject increasingly prominent. One area that allows a greater engagement with the specificity of the medium, and of its achievements, is genre studies. A genre studies approach allows particular cultural genres to be considered with regard to their operation across a variety of media and with regard to the differential articulations of genre in different production contexts. With regard to soundtrack studies, the body of work undertaken in film soundtracks provides a ready set of reference points and informative texts that television genre studies can be variously informed by and/or constructed against. The genre addressed in this volume —science fiction—has a substantial body of film soundtrack work on which