by Roy Barton

Created on: April 16, 2008

British television can boast some of the greatest and most original science fiction programmes.

Quatermass, created by Nigel Kneale began the mainstream TV interest in the late 1950's, sticking with the staple diet of alien invasion, but with the twist that the alien was not necessarily vicious or malevolent. It also had the staple science fiction idea that good sci-fi was inspired from current events, the cold war was undoubtedly hinted at as the real threat of the time.

Doctor Who began in the sixties and, although it was cancelled for several years, has come back and re-created its' original success. Able to travel through all of time and space, over the course of forty years it has established words in dictionaries and has brought to light some of the greatest science fiction writers around. Although it has generally avoided courting controversy, the mid-seventies brought complaints from independent viewers groups over the excessive violence that featured in it.

Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, went on to write seventies sci-fi Blakes Seven - a talking point over whether they were really freedom fighers or terrorists continues to this day.

The competing independent channel, ITV, created Sapphire and Steel in the seventies. Heavenly characters who came to Earth to fight against various fantasy villains.

Red Dwarf came about in the eighties, a sci-fi comedy set on a deep space mining ship, with the last human being, a hologram, an android and a creature descended from a cat. This comedy was so successful that the makers of Star Trek eventually admitted to stealing ideas for a couple of stories.

Since the return of Doctor Who in 2005, two spin off shows have emerged and continued the success of the parent programme. Torchwood deals with aliens entering the Earth through a rift in space and time and is aimed at an adult market. Sarah Jane Adventures is targetted to a younger audience and deals with similar alien invasions.

British science fiction has often been maligned for having low budgets and cheap effects, but the ideas that have contributed to the world of sci-fi, have quite often emerged from these limited resources.

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