British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide

by John R. Cook (Editor), Peter Wright

From Doctor Who to Red Dwarf, Thunderbirds to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, some of the most memorable and cherished British television has been in the area of science fiction.This pioneering book, by leading writers in TV history and science fiction, offers for the first time a detailed national survey of this most well-loved of TV genres and provides in-depth reassessments of these shows, as well as others including Threads, Sapphire and Steel, Invasion: Earth and The Last Train. The volume argues that British science fiction television, too often in the past critically derided for the quality of its special effects compared to American equivalents such as Star Trek--deserves to be taken seriously as a legitimate object of cultural analysis, both in terms of its ambition and ideas and its value in illuminating wider aspects of recent social and cultural history. The book also features a contribution from an acclaimed biographer of the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as an exclusive published interview with Thunderbirds creator and producer Gerry Anderson.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 6, 2005

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See:

John R. Cook

Reviews

[Jared Hansen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The goal of the book is probably best described as 'lofty gentility', to try and nearly single-handedly bring us academic, intertextual and critical analysis and appreciation of the rather underrated realm of British science fiction TV. It's a collection of essays (for the most part) covering the niche in chronological order, from Quatermass to the scant few drama miniseries in the 90s, when the UK really surrendered the realm of sci-fi to the US (Red Dwarf was basically the only regular BBC sci-fi series during the 90s - meanwhile across the pond it looks like a renaissance with SG-1, DS9, Quantum Leap, Sliders, The X-Files, Farscape, and Babylon 5)

An immediate problem is that there seems to be some confusion over the tone and content style of the book. The pieces are drastically different in tone from one another - some are very broad pieces that chart the course of a work and draw conclusions, whereas others are overly analytical. Two in particular, covering comedy series are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum - MJ Simpson writes an 'essay' on the television adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Fair enough, I guess, it seems to be illegal for anyone else to write about the series) and the penultimate chapter is a truly bewildering article performing a feminist reading of Red Dwarf.

I referred to Simpson's piece as an 'essay' in quotation marks because, frankly, it is nothing of the sort. That doesn't mean that it is in anyway bad, he fills the pages with far more interesting trivia than any of the other pieces and it's very easy to read, but he doesn't really do anything much more than give us a potted history of the show. He seems to have been aware of his deficiency in terms of academic waffle, and so put a big heading reading 'CONCLUSION' before his last few paragraphs to fool us. He may as well have written 'DON'T PANIC'.

The Red Dwarf essay, however, demonstrates at the least that a feminist reading of anything is possible, although reading said feminist reading can often be difficult. The central premise isn't exactly false - the idea is that the crew, as apparently the last humanoids in existence, can easily subvert their gender roles and yet do not, and in fact allegedly behave with more machismo in their environment. However, while this is a fair point, it is utterly irrelevant to the story of the show, as it is the tiniest part of Red Dwarf's central absurdity - although society itself is extinct the main characters do not change ANY aspect of themselves whatsoever. Even though they have an entire ship to themselves, Rimmer and Lister continue to share the room they were assigned. Rimmer constantly pulls rank and is reluctant to fraternise even though he has nobody else to interact with in the entire universe.

Sometimes it is worth remembering that Red Dwarf was, after all, expanded out of a five minute sketch written for a radio sketch show, and that Doug Naylor and Rob Grant are very unlikely to have written with any great allegorical intent. Oddly enough, the one episode that explicitly addresses gender (until the real awful ones when Kochanski first joins the crew) wherein the crew meet female versions of themselves from a matriarchal alternate universe, is only acknowledged in a throwaway observation. I guess it spoils the fun if you don't have to scrape around for extremely well-hidden subtext?

Now, if you've read the previous two paragraphs and had no idea what I was blathering on about, that will be your experience for big chunks of this book if you're not very familiar with the source material they're discussing. Some of the essays, like Simpson's, are very readable. Others, like the Sapphire & Steel essay, seem to barely even mention the show aside from scant references - in its case while it discusses Thatcher's prime-ministership at ample length.

The books format is further confused, when it includes an interview with Gerry Anderson (creator of Thunderbirds) slap bang in the middle. This is actually a very interesting interview, but it begs the question... why just one? Why him? Why is it in the middle of the book and not an end note? Did they just need to fill pages.

The book is very much less than the sum of its parts, sadly. Rest assured some of the parts are very interesting, but most are less engaging. Definitely a library book.

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker’s Guide, edited by John R. Cook and Peter Wright, is part of the Popular Television Genres series. It covers most of the better-known series from the 1950s to today, although I was a little surprised to find no mention at all of Ultraviolet. Some of the programs included are ones I’m not familiar with (such as Survivors). The chapter on Sapphire and Steel as Thatcherite propaganda left me feeling rather sceptical – I can see how certain elements of the program could be interpreted in that way, but I’m not convinced that’s necessarily how they were intended. The chapter on Red Dwarf also worried me a little – it seemed to be so fixated on gender and race issues that the author overlooked some fairly obvious points (such as the fact that the Cat is in fact a cat, albeit a highly evolved one, and not a human being). The book includes an extraordinarily enthusiastic chapter on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series, but I’m afraid I’m still not convinced about that one. It’s a show that I found mildly amusing.

On the other hand the chapter on Blake’s 7 is superb. It’s also loaded with spoilers, so be careful if you haven’t seen the entire run of that series. The chapters on Quatermass, Doctor Who and The Prisoner are excellent, and there’s also an interview with Gerry Anderson. I really think Gerry Anderson deserved to have a bit more space allocated to him, considering the extent of his contribution to British science fiction television. A chapter devoted to UFO would have been nice. Overall the book is stimulating and very definitely worth getting if you’re a fan of British TV SF.

[Viktoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of good info about Doctor Who and other series.