by Tenebris

Created on: April 16, 2008

The 1960s were a decade of optimism and turbulence, of mankind's first, tentative steps into the new frontiers unfolded by science and technology, culminating in millions being able to watch, live on television, as Neil Armstrong took mankind's first steps upon the moon. Science fantasy was becoming science fact almost faster than the publishing houses could process their writers' stories. Thus it is not at all surprising that some of the best science fiction/fantasy (SF/F) of the 1960s was written for that glorious new mass medium of sound and sight which had itself begun expanding its reach by leaps and bounds after its own first tentative public steps during the previous decade.

At the same time as technical innovation was redefining human limits almost on a daily basis, television altered the way SF/F was able to look at itself. In much the same way as the greats of Golden Age SF/F were beginning to develop short story concepts into full-length novels, SF/F television series were able, for the first time, to use a recurring cast to explore themes which stretched out longer than a single episode: in time, this would grow into the season-long story arc. So potent were the ideas that came out of this decade that one of its series has never gone out of syndication, and a good half of all active SF/F television today consists of remakes of the series of the 1960s and early 1970s.

'Lost In Space' (1965-8) is a family-oriented Swiss Family Robinson SF clone which transitions one of the staple subgenre of the western, the pioneer family, into a space environment. As such, it became a gateway show into the television medium for the SF/F genre as a whole.

One enduring theme of 1960s SF/F television was the alien as just another one of 'us'. Virtually every SF/F television series during this time touches on some variant on the theme, but it was the primary focus of an entire string of sitcoms beginning with 'My Favorite Martian' (1963-6), in which the resident alien, in this case Martin the Martian, continually tries to make sense of the human family (and by extension society) with which he resides. As with so many other 1960s series, this one became a film during the 1990s/2000s ('My Favorite Martian', 1999).

The longest running television series in history, the British series 'Dr. Who' began its original 698 episode run in 1963; to be revived in 2005 after a sixteen year hiatus. Its premise is deceptively simple: an alien of almost godlike (yet oddly limited) abilities

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