American Science Fiction Television and Space: Productions and (Re)configurations (1987-2021) 3031105273, 9783031105272

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American Science Fiction Television and Space Productions and (Re)configurations (1987–2021) Edited by Joel Hawkes Alexander Christie · Tom Nienhuis

American Science Fiction Television and Space

Joel Hawkes  •  Alex Christie Tom Nienhuis Editors

American Science Fiction Television and Space Productions and (Re)configurations (1987–2021)

Editors Joel Hawkes University of Victoria Victoria, BC, Canada

Alex Christie Brock University St. Catharines, ON, Canada

Tom Nienhuis Camosun College Victoria, BC, Canada

ISBN 978-3-031-10527-2    ISBN 978-3-031-10528-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: jvphoto / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

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Like Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard standing on the bridge of the Enterprise, we live lives mediated through the screen. Our screens and Starfleet’s show images taken from communications and sensors, augmented with stored libraries of materials. Starfleet’s displays enable them to explore and colonize outer space, while ours allow us to access a multiplicity of virtual, physical, social, and imaginary spaces beyond the screen, from social media and work spaces, to shopping platforms and video streaming services— spaces we inhabit, explore, create, and reconfigure. The screen is not only a staple of a Science Fiction (SF) imaginary characterized by Rod Serling1 as “the improbable made possible,” but also a science fictional technology that has transformed SF storytelling and the world we inhabit at the beginning of the twenty-first century. A proliferation of screens and SF narratives allows Sean Redmond in his Preface to Liquid Metal (2004)—a collection of influential essays on SF film and television from the past 30 years—to suggest we live in a “science fiction textured world,” our buildings, technologies, news media, and everyday conversations colored by the “spectacular,” “futuristic,” and “mysterious” (ix–xi)—those very things that help define SF. If the world around has been transformed through SF narratives, it has equally been produced and reconfigured by the television screen on which we consume much of its storytelling. Even as SF remains fictional, the production  Serling’s definition appears in the introduction of Twilight Zone episode “The Fugitive.” Beaumont, C. (Writer) & Bare, R.L. (Director). (1962, March 9). “The Fugitive.” (Season 3, Episode 25). The Twilight Zone. Cayuga Productions, CBS Television Network. 1

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methods and technologies underpinning such fictions have shaped our actual technoculture, from screen technologies to computer-generated interfaces. The spatial implications of this transformation are multiple. The (television) screen as a science fictional technology has reframed our world, while at the same time made more accessible the very SF narratives that reimagine the world we inhabit; as a result, we increasingly read, imagine, and access the world through an SF lens. As part of this process, SF television has become ever more popular, moving from the margins of cultural consumption to the mainstream just after the turn of the century—in other words, SF television has been centered (a spatial and cultural reconfiguration). This reconfiguration has been led by the US, in terms of number and impact of shows produced, and the creation and ownership of streaming services. And this (contested) hegemonic nature of American SF television increasingly helps delineate a nation that has significantly been understood, even “produced,” through the television screen. American SF shows are concerned not only with outer space (e.g. Star Trek: The Next Generation [TNG]),2 but with the inner space of the mind (e.g. Westworld),3 and our own cultural spaces—shows have, for example, been greatly effective at considering the culture and technologies of our own time (e.g. Black Mirror).4 In this same period, the so-called “spatial turn” across academic disciplines has influenced (and been influenced by) popular culture, and now finds a contemporary society increasingly conscious of the spaces it creates and inhabits—with population growth, technological development, and the increasing threat of ecocide just some of the processes impacting our use, understanding, and construction of spaces (physical, social, and imagined). Ours has in many ways become a space-conscious age. At the same time, new technologies, social media, and video streaming platforms have made the world “smaller,” busier, and more connected. The proliferation of television (and other) screen technologies has played a large part in this reconfiguration of social and 2  Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., Hurley, M., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount Television. 3  Abrams, J.J., Nolan, J., Joy, L., Weintraub, J., Burk, B., Lewis, R.J., Patino, R., Wickham, A., Stephenson, B., Thé, D. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Westworld [TV series]. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television. 4  Jones, A., Brooker, C. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Zeppotron, Channel 4 Television Corporation, Babieka, Gran Babieka.

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physical spaces. SF author and essayist William Gibson reads the rise of television as an acceleration of a project that began with the first cave paintings, proto-screens on which we displayed images constituting a “prosthetic memory” (2012, 60) that extended the limits of our experience by, in essence, collapsing time and space onto the screen. Images from the past could “speak” to the present about events, even those that occurred in distant places. Watching SF programming at the dawn of the age of television, Gibson opines, he was taking part in the process of collective shift toward radical connectivity: “I was becoming part of something, in the act of watching that screen…The human species was already in the process of growing itself an extended communal nervous system” (248). This “system” (film, television, and radio) produces social spaces that connect viewers across time and space; viewers become “aspects of the electronic brain” forever “augmented” and incorporated into what Gibson calls the “world’s cyborg,” a human species merged fully with media it produces (249). That cyborg lives on today. Donna Haraway anticipated its coming, a “hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (2004, 158), and with good reason, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, claimed in 2016, “life and art just happen on a constant continuum now and are played out through television” (quoted in Butler). These various spatial concerns seem at times like SF narratives themselves, as we confront transformative technologies and transformations of societies, bodies, and planet. Again, SF television has been particularly prescient of these complex spatial productions and (re)configurations, with shows increasingly preoccupied with visions of our present early twenty-first century experiences (Booker 2004, 150)—none more so than Black Mirror. We are a space-conscious age, our lives mediated through the (science fictional) technology of the screen. These various “spatial” concerns collapse then into the medium of the television screen—a veritable heterotopic device and experience that transforms our world in the tradition of SF storytelling. With these complexities of space (and time) in mind, this edited collection examines the (television) screen and the SF genre as the most transformative of heterotopias—“emplacements” imagined by Michel Foucault as being formed from “bits and pieces” of time and space. Heterotopias draw together and juxtapose multiple incompatible spaces/locations, simultaneously reflecting and contesting those spaces (Foucault 1997, 354). For Foucault, and many others who have applied his work, heterotopias disrupt the frames of reference we use to understand spaces and their relationships to us (and to

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other spaces). Both familiar and alienating, heterotopic space undermines our understanding of all spaces because it “draws us out of ourselves” (Foucault 1986: 23). With good reason, Foucault highlights the heterotopic nature of the (cinema) screen: in its ability to destabilize space around it, the heterotopia becomes a site of invention that accommodates radical, creative work unfettered by real-world spatial relationships that constrain or foreclose certain lines of thinking (Johnson 2013, 281). At the same time, this heterotopia impinges upon the rest of the world, the screen transforming the spaces around it. The modern interactive streaming screen not only extends the heterotopic capability of Foucault’s cinematic screen; it also develops into what might be the apotheosis of the heterotopia. The screen becomes an ideal frame for SF storytelling, itself heterotopic (Miller 2012; Akhmedov 2020) as a narrative space of radical invention free of the “real-world” dynamics of time and space. It is here that this collection of essays begins, (em)placed between SF stories and the science-fictional technology of the screen—caught between two heterotopias that collide and transform our world. This relationship between SF genre and TV medium is in part a relationship between textual and physical heterotopias brought together through the processes of television production. While this collection then takes its cue from Michel Foucault, it also frames chapters through Henri Lefebvre’s theorizing of space as social “production” (75). Lefebvre’s much referenced tripartite structuring of spatial production, or practice, opens up this idea of produced space: 1. Spatial practice (of the movements, flows, and conflicts within the spaces we inhabit—walking, reading, living). 2. Representations of space (planning, theorizing, and political structuring of the spaces we inhabit—city planners, engineers, and politicians). 3. Representational spaces (coded and symbolic production of space—everyday living but also artistic production [Lefebvre 33–39]). Useful here, as a way to transition into the production of SF television space, is The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture, and Outer Space (2016) and its framing of different “social construction[s] of ‘outer space,’” (3) through Lefebvre’s Production of Space, with Outer spatial practices (e.g. satellites and more recently space tourism [SpaceX and Virgin Galactic]), Representation of Outer Space (“modern scientific cosmologies,” often enabled through outer spatial practices), and Outer space as a representational space (imaginings of outer space, especially through SF) (Dickens and Ormrod, 2016a, 20–22). Outer space as representational space is of course important to SF television—a dominant imaginary

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on our small screens—but there are other spaces, including various degrees of what we might term inner space, of planet earth, mind, and, increasingly, cyberspace (which, as Steven Jones [2006] has argued by way of William Gibson, no longer exists inside the screen but has “everted” to become part of the physical world around us). These various inner and outer SF spaces might also be understood through Lefebvre’s tripartite model: the SF space as representational space. SF television practices would then include the various processes of production that bring the show to our screens—for example, writing, filming, acting, and CGI post production. Representation of SF television space might include an industry knowledge of SF narratives and TV production—a knowledge that feeds back into further development and evolution of SF television and its technologies. Representation would also include academic books, like this one you now read, which theorizes SF TV space. And the intertextuality (the referencing of other scholars) of this collection further speaks to this type of production. The technology, or space, of the (TV) screen itself complicates this triparted structuring of SF space. The screen of course shows more than just SF television productions. But as Tom Gunning highlights, it was the early cinematic technologies that were advertised as the “marvels,” not the films (1986, 66). The technology was the science fictional experience, and in a sense, anything screened on it became part of that experience. And as J. P. Telotte (2001) more recently notes, SF film “seems to be about the movies precisely because of the ways in which its reliance on special effects implicates both the technology of film and the typical concerns of most popular narratives” (25)—the SF screen is about the SF screen and its technologies; or, it is about the television production of an SF space, made possible, ultimately, through the screen. The screen technology is Darko Suvin’s novum, making SF narratives possible and through them a “cognitive estrangement” (Suvin 1979, 15) that makes our world a science fictionally textured space (Redmond 2004, ix–xi). The SF screen and show then reflect the “difference” of “contradictory space” that Lefebvre associates with a space conceived on a “global (or worldwide) scale on one hand and its fragmentation by a multiplicity of procedures or processes, all fragmentary themselves, on the other” (355). We see such production processes play out in the various forms of television production, access, and consumption in spaces both “prohibited (holy or damned heterotopias)” and “open access” (294). It is, appropriately, this sense of the “social” that film scholar Vivian Sobchack picks up in her understanding

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of the SF genre—“a poetic mapping of social relations as they are created and changed by new technologies of ‘being-in-the-world’” (229). The screen offers such a technology and reconfiguration of “being,” which is always in and of space. We suggest then that the television screen offers a hyper-produced (social) space, as its various forms of production collapse into and help produce the almost impossible space of the heterotopic screen. Here the textual heterotopia of the SF narrative (text that Wesselman suggests is the only possible form of an otherwise “impossible” heterotopia [2013]) is given form through film sets and sound stages; these spaces in turn produce the “text” (and more than text) of the show that plays on the very physical heterotopia of the screen. This collection, somewhat playfully, looks to be a heterotopic production itself, with different chapters and “spaces” (of genre, production, mediums, technologies, homes, bodies, etc.), reflecting, refracting, and colliding in the pages to come, grouped and intersecting at times in odd ways, offering insight into these various spatial relationships and their implications for a society that increasingly inhabits the world through the space of the screen, and for a world being reconfigured through the screen.

Boldly Moving Forward from 1987 We begin then in front of a screen, watching Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) watch a screen—a suitable entry point into the heterotopia of American SF television, and an interface through which we access this collection of essays. TNG for many epitomizes SF storytelling, an icon of the popular imaginary of the genre played out through the exploration of outer space (produced by such iconic writers as Isaac Asimov). TNG is, of course, about more than just outer space, but then SF always is. TNG is itself an extension of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS),5 which its creator Gene Roddenberry imagined as a kind of Gulliver’s Travels, the 1726 cultural satire penned by Jonathan Swift—Captain Gulliver’s adventures at sea encountering a series of fantastic lands. Show and book are both explorations of political, social, cultural, and imaginary human spaces, reflective of an SF genre that has (despite distinctions between literary, film, and

5  Roddenberry, G. (Executive Producer). (1966–1969). Star Trek: The Original Series [TV series]. Paramount.

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television and their many approaches to storytelling) always been about space. To examine SF’s “space credentials,” you need only carry out a quick search online (on the screen in front of you) to discover numerous academic and popular culture definitions of the genre. The repeated employment of the phrases “speculative fiction” and “advanced technologies” dominate, but their prominence owes much to more particular definitions, such as that of SF author Robert A. Heinlein, who suggests SF as a “realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method” (1959). Academic Darko Suvin’s much quoted definition from 1979 outlines SF as a “genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment” (Suvin 1979, 20). The need to offer some kind of definition of the genre early in this book speaks to the broad, amorphous, and ever-evolving nature of SF (“constantly shifting ways of producing, marketing, distributing, consuming and understanding texts as SF” [Bould and Vint 2011, 1]). But in both definitions given here, the importance of space is clear. Both writers highlight the need for a “knowledge of the real” world, while Suvin then suggests a cognitive estrangement from this. Knowledge of the “real” world is always a spatial knowledge, and the estrangement that takes place is also spatial (though it can be mediated through time; time travel, for instance, is still an exploration of a slightly reconfigured space—thus demonstrating Henri Bergson’s [1965] critique that time is represented in spatial terms). It is no coincidence that confronted with the term “science fiction,” the popular imaginary often conjures images of outer space and other planets—cognitive estrangement is more easily and concretely understood in these spatial terms (and this particular imaginary has been made even more popular through the screen). For our purposes, we might say the SF genre explores a dissonance between time, space, and body, often brought about through the use of a transformative technology. The science fictional space then pushes its constructed worlds beyond the boundaries of the possible. Even in a narrative that looks to move beyond spatial forms, we are made aware of space by the narrative’s attempts to imagine its absence—as readers and viewers, we are never really out of space. On an elemental level, SF explores the difference between familiar spaces (what can be empirically observed)

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and unfamiliar spaces (that which can only be imagined), or between home (in the broadest sense of the word) and that which lies beyond the boundaries of home, comfort, and belonging. As Kitchin and Kneale note, “SF becomes a useful cognitive space, opening up sites from which to contemplate material and discursive geographies and the production of geographical knowledge and imaginations” (2002, 9; our italics). TNG speaks to this sense of “discursive geographies,” with the Enterprise functioning like Foucault’s heterotopia of a ship at sea, moving between other heterotopic locations (Kilgore 2003; Dickens and Ormrod 2016b), but the show itself has also functioned this way, in a sense moving between and within other shows. Through its success, TNG made possible the production of similar shows, including others in the Star Trek franchise, Deep Space Nine,6 Voyager,7 Enterprise,8 Discovery,9 and Picard,10 but also Andromeda11 (based on unused ideas from Gene Roddenberry),

6  Berman, R., Behr, I.  S., Fields, P.  A., Piller, M., Wolfe, R.  H. (Executive Producers). (1993–1999). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [TV Series]. Paramount Television. 7   Berman, R., Biller, K., Braga, B., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1995–2001). Star Trek: Voyager [TV series]. Paramount. 8  Berman, R., Braga, B., Coto, M. (Executive Producers). (2001–2005). Star Trek: Enterprise [TV series]. Braga Productions, Paramount Network Television, Paramount Television, Rick Berman Productions. 9  Fuller, B., Semel, D., Roddenberry, E., Roth, T., Goldsman, A., Kadin, H., Berg, G.J., Harberts, A., Kurtzman, A., Osunsanmi, O., Siracusa, F., Weber, J., Lumet, J., Paradise, M. (Executive Producers). (2017–). Star Trek: Discovery [TV series]. CBS Television Studios, Living Dead Guy Productions, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. 10  Roddenberry, E., Roth, T., Duff, J., Stewart, P., Kadin, H., Goldsman, A., Chabon, M., Kurtzman, A., Matalas, T., Aarniokoski, D., Massin, D. (Executive Producers). (2020–). Star Trek: Picard [TV series]. CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. 11  Eastman, A., Barrett, M., Firestone, J., Haight, A., Gold, E., Sorbo, K., Engels, R. (Executive Producers). (2000–2005). Andromeda [TV series]. Fireworks Entertainment, Tribune Entertainment, BLT Productions, Global, MBR Productions Inc.

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Babylon 5,12 Farscape,13 Firefly,14 and Battlestar Galactica15 (from the creator of DS9, Ronald D. Moore). Perhaps the most peculiarly suited to our discussion of heterotopic spaces is the recent The Orville,16 Seth MacFarlane’s homage to, and parody of, TOS and TNG, with many guest stars coming from Trek shows,17 considered by many fans to be more in the spirit of Star Trek than recent additions to the franchise (Discovery and Picard). Within this show other Trek and SF spaces collide; a location more accessible to fans of Trek, it becomes a mirror of the Star Trek universe, one that changes fandoms and, in the process, becomes (a “truer version” of) Trek itself—and perhaps a kind of home. It is, though, rather fittingly, the Star Trek–inspired Black Mirror episode “USS Callister”18 that truly implicates viewers in the heterotopic SF narratives and science fictional screens by which we access them. In the episode, digital clones of programmers for a computer game design company are imprisoned on the deck of a digital Enterprise-like ship. Telotte draws attention to our own “multiple, and multiply broken, media frames” (2021, 1) the episode seems to reference (2021, 1), and the “fragmented—or

12  Netter, D., Straczynski, J.M. (Executive Producers). (1994–1998). Babylon 5 [TV series]. Warner Home Video, AOL Time Warner, Babylonian Productions, Time Warner, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television. 13  O’Bannon, R.S., Halmi, R.A., Kemper, D., Henson, B., Manning, R., Blake, J., Noble, K., Perth, R., Shankar, N. (Executive Producers). (1999–2003). Farscape [TV series]. Jim Henson Productions, Hallmark Entertainment, Jim Henson Television, Nine Film & Television Pty. Ltd., Nine Network Australia, The Sci-Fi Channel. 14  Whedon, J., Minear, T. (Executive Producers). (2002–2003). Firefly [TV series]. Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox Television. 15  Moore, R. D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV Series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios. 16  MacFarlane, S., Braga, B., Goodman, D.A., Clark, J., Favreau, J., Heldens, L., Cassar, J., Chevapravadumrong, C., Griffith, H. (Executive Producers). (2017–). The Orville [TV series]. Fuzzy Door Productions, 20th Century Fox Television. 17  Star Trek guest stars include Marina Sirtis (Diana Troy, TNG) who appears in an Orville episode directed by Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker, TNG), Robert Picardo (The Doctor, Voyager), Tim Russ (Tuvok, Voyager), and John Billingsley (Doctor Flox, Enterprise). Regular cast member Penny Johnson Jerald also played Kasidy Yates on DS9, while the show’s creator MacFarlane played Ensign Rivers in several episodes of Enterprise. 18  Booker, C., Bridges, W. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017, December 29). “USS Callister.” (Season 4, Episode 1). Black Mirror. Zeppotron, Channel 4 Television Corporation, Babieka, Gran Babieka.

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shard-like—subjectivity” they produce in us (13). Telotte is describing a heterotopic experience. The production of TNG is, however, also a kaleidoscope of characters, guest stars, stories, and genres—reflective of SF more broadly, which, as K. J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward (2013) point out, can (and we would suggest increasingly does on the television screen) “[exist] as part of broader aggregations of genre” (xv). In other words, SF television assembles in a “single real place different spaces” that are “incompatible with each other” (Foucault 354). Here there are a series of “real” spaces holding the SF spaces: from television studio, through screen, to room in which viewers watch. Played out over 178 episodes, TNG firmly establishes itself as an SF and TV heterotopia, holding much in common with the transformative holodeck technology on board the Enterprise, which similarly allows a reconfiguration of physical and narrative space that gestures to the behind-the-scenes television production and to an audience conscious it is watching a show—a space in a sense spilling out from the holodeck, and then through our screens. Janet H.  Murray has tellingly considered the holodeck (a “universal fantasy machine”) a reflection of the late twentieth-century “multiform narratives” in book, film, and video game formats. Murray goes on to suggest, “To be alive in the twentieth century is to be aware of the alternative possible selves, of alternative possible worlds, and of the limitless intersecting stories of the actual world” (1997, 37–38). This is truer two decades into the twenty-first century, where, as Ted Sarandos suggested, these possible selves and narratives are playing out through the television (quoted in Butler 2016). Murray and TNG in many ways anticipate our streaming services and screens—the next generation, if you will, of multiform narratives. Intriguingly, streaming services in this new age of television have allowed for a rediscovery of TNG (a kind of movement back in time, to borrow a popular SF narrative) and provided a new method of consumption—a more immersive binge watching (or fuller immersion in the heterotopia/ “holodeck”). This repositioning of the show also functions as a reconfiguration of the show, placing it on the same platform alongside other Trek offerings—allowing access to the expanded universe. Audiences are able to move between DS9, Enterprise, and Voyager at will (on Netflix), while also accessing a vast catalog of past SF and an ever-growing catalog of new shows, some like

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Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018),19 which offers an interactive experience, where viewers make decisions for characters. In many ways, the holodeck of the Enterprise anticipates this entertainment heterotopia. In a more traditional embodied (rather than virtual) way, the franchise has also been effective at transforming space beyond the screen, in large part through committed and active fandoms attending and organizing conferences, role playing events, and creating fan literature and film. The scope of this world has though been massively enlarged through a proliferation of screens and social media at the beginning of the twenty-first century, where even the most obscure SF shows quickly gain committed and often vocal fandoms (especially when shows are threatened with cancellation), and it is here we further see the modern proliferation of SF that Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, among others, see “across media … outside traditional venues” (2011, 202). Screen and social media are new entry points into, and offer greater interactivity with, the heterotopic space of the SF screen. Beginning this study with TNG and the year 1987 (in which the show first aired), might, like any beginning, seem an arbitrary point in time and space, but the series as veritable heterotopia anticipating our streaming screens, while finding new life on those screens, also connects past and present (SF) television to help us delineate the spatial concerns of SF programming as it developed in the late 1980s and beyond, a development taking place in large part through the evolution of new filming and broadcasting technologies—in other words, developments in the (American) television production of space. Airing between 1987 and 1994, TNG was not only a recovery of the Star Trek universe but a recovery of American SF television programming more generally. After the cancellation of the original Star Trek series in 1969 and two seasons of Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974),20 American SF television slipped into a relatively fallow period. Higher production values and more complex storylines on TNG reinvigorated the franchise and transformed the Star Trek universe.

19  Slade, D. (Director), Charlie Brooker (Written by), (2018). Black Mirror: Bandersnatch [Film]. House of Tomorrow, Netflix. 20  Roddenberry, G., Fontana, D.C. (Executive Producers). (1973–1975). Star Trek: The Animated Series [TV series]. Filmation Associates, Norway Productions, Paramount Television.

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For our purposes here, this 1987 development in the production of television space also finds a symbolic counterpoint in the 1989 cancellation of the British show Doctor Who,21 after 26 seasons—A British focus on time (travel), with a character opposed to the military, gives way to an American focus on space, situated within a military-like community. It is interesting to see a focus on law enforcement and conflict and military structures play out in a host of American SF, through Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond,22 Dark Skies,23 V,24 The X-Files,25 and Battlestar Galactica. Might we identify an American SF-military industrial complex at the center of American SF TV? And though mostly of stand-alone episodic design, TNG’s increased budget and its building of a complex universe around returning characters and developing storylines also anticipates the huge-budget, labyrinthine American SF shows that have proliferated on screens and streaming services around the world in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. When Doctor Who returned to our screens in 200526 with a much-increased budget, its storylines, aesthetic, arguably a “space” over “time” focus, and the introduction of gun-wielding “cowboy” time traveler, Captain Jack Harkness (played by American actor John Barrowman) revealed the influence of American television. This collection’s focus on American SF television sets a useful boundary for discussion but also allows for an important political consideration of SF and screen technology. As Foucault and Lefebvre would agree, any consideration of space necessarily includes a consideration of politics and capitalism—a question of who controls, produces, and regulates space. Through Hollywood and some of the largest television networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), the US has dominated global TV and film production  Letts, B. (Executive Producer). (1963–1989). Doctor Who [TV series]. BBC.  Morgan, G., Wong, J. (Executive Producers). (1995–1996). Space: Above and Beyond [TV series]. Village Roadshow Pictures, Hard Eight Pictures, 20th Century Fox Television. 23  Parriott, J.D., Zabel, B., Stern, J. (Executive Producers). (1996–1967). Dark Skies [TV series]. Bryce Zabel Productions, Columbia Pictures Television, Columbia TriStar Television. 24  Rosenbaum, S., Peters, S., Hall, J., Simoneau, Y., Pearlman, S., Bell, J., Bordson, N., Hodder, K., Mulholland, S. (Executive Producers). (2009–2011). V [TV series]. Paramount. 25  Carter, C., Goodwin, R.W., Gordon, H., Spotnitz, F., Gilligan, V., Shiban, J., Manners, K., Morgan, G., Wong, J., MacLaren, M., Watkins, M.W., Greenwalt, D. (Executive Producers). (1993–2018). The X-Files [TV series]. Ten Thirteen Productions, 20th Century Fox Television, X-F Productions. 26  Moffat, S., Davies, R.T., Gardner, J., Collinson, P., Minchin, B., Strevens, M., Chibnall, C., Wenger, P., Willis, B., Irving, B., Skinner, C., Young, M., Penhale, F. (Executive Producers). (2005–). Doctor Who [TV series]. Bad Wolf, BBC Wales. 21 22

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generally, and with it the production of SF television. American companies have also had success with marketing these products abroad, and SF blockbuster films have been some of the most successful, looking great with their multitude of special effects on a big screen. Such films and shows have also made for successful soft-propaganda abroad (though not always subtle—some flag waving has taken place); this, coupled with higher quantity and quality of production has made SF film and TV a popular lens through which to imagine America. As Scott Bukatman (1999) has suggested, SF seems at times like such a “deeply American genre” because it is often reflective of American history and politics (265), as well as technological productions. For example, The X-Files taps into a growing paranoia and mistrust of the American government in the 1990s, while Battlestar Galactica reflects upon a post 9/11 world. The politics of American SF plays out in new ways with the advent of streaming services: services make material more available to a global audience, while positioning US shows as competition alongside productions from many other countries. However, while streaming platforms have offered access to many non-­ English language shows and non-US content, the major platforms, including Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and Hulu, are American corporations. The structuring and regulations of these new heterotopic science fictional spaces (or platforms), like the bridge of TNG, are indeed international, but they often retain an American imprint. The chapters in this collection recognize this spatial politics—a question of geographical and cultural borders and influence not only in terms of American SF but American television and streaming services. The (contested) hegemonic nature of American SF television is an essential part of a nation that has significantly been understood, even “produced,” through television and its component industries.

Productions of Science Fiction, Space, and Screen Sitting in front of our streaming screen, we also look back in time. The lineage of SF storytelling and its relationship to the screen is ever present, a kind of ghost (or ghosting) in the (production) machine—part of the reflection and refraction of the heterotopia. Again, TNG is our access point. Though the show’s higher production values and more complex storylines anticipate the larger budget, labyrinthine SF series that have proliferated on streaming services (on which TNG has also found renewed influence), TNG also has much in common with earlier incarnations of SF

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programming, indeed one of the earliest shows, Captain Video and his Video Rangers (1949–1955) on the DuMont Network.27 Captain Video is another transformational point in SF storytelling, and might be read as an “earlier” access point into the heterotopic space of American SF TV.  Suitably, “entry” to these episodes is today itself restricted (like Foucault’s heterotopia): the surviving 24 episodes are held UCLA Film and Television Archive (19 of these accessible only there), while short clips of the show haunt the Internet. Captain Video’s futuristic outer space setting, though, has become the standard time and space imaginary of SF television and some of its most beloved shows, like the Star Trek franchise, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica. The show, which began it all, explores the relationship between home and outer spaces, and conflicts between good and evil, as the captain, with his team, fights “agents of evil everywhere … as he rockets from planet to planet.” The captain, proclaimed the “master of space” in the opening of each episode, is positioned at the center of an exploration of space in its various configurations. Very low budget production rates, poor scripts, and a live-action format drew attention to the show’s production—this was very much a produced space. Though a cheap and incoherent space at times, well-known SF authors also penned scripts for the show, including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and James Blish (who would later write Trek novels). Ten minutes of every 30-minute show also cut to cowboy movie clips, which had been purchased for airing before Captain Video began production—material spliced into the show so that DuMont did not waste money on broadcasting rights. The clips, introduced by one of the Space Rangers as information from Earth, add to the contorted, surreal nature of this SF space (an incongruous mix of genres), but also gestures to Space Opera’s Horse Opera origins and anticipates the western’s continued influence on American SF, from Star Trek, which Gene Roddenberry described as “Wagon train to the stars,” exploring “Space, the final frontier” (our italics; William Shatner puts his emphasis on “Space”), to, many years later, Firefly, which Joss Whedon sold as Stagecoach28 in space. We might add to 27  Druce, O., Brock, M., Caddigan, J., Lowe, D., Opperman, H.J., Telford, F. (Producers). (1949–1955). Captain Video and His Video Rangers [TV series]. DuMont Television Network. 28   Douglas, G. (Director), Joseph Landon (Screenplay), (1966). Stagecoach [Film]. Twentieth Century Fox, Martin Rackin Productions.

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this list the popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian,29 whose titular character was conceived of as “a deconstruction of Clint Eastwood in ‘The Man with No Name’” by series creator Jon Favreau (Connelly et al. 2019). In between, TNG continued what Captain Video had begun, a military-­ style crew was still led by a strong male hero (Captain Picard) and followed (mostly) episodic storytelling, and despite its higher production values, the show retained something of the hokeyness of early SF productions. Most importantly, perhaps, it continued to offer a positive vision of humanity’s future. In a sense, TNG is caught, rather fittingly for an SF narrative, at a point in between, in terms of time and space: a turning point in the lineage of SF storytelling and, more specifically, of SF television, and its exploration and configuration of space or spaces. If Captain Video highlights SF TV as a produced and heterotopic space from the beginning of broadcast SF content, the show and the Captain’s title clearly indicate the importance of the new television medium that was transforming production and consumption of SF.  The genre had long imagined and interrogated a technologically revolutionized society, but with its migration to a new medium, the genre now took part in the restructuring of time and space that SF storytelling often explored. Indeed, Asimov’s definition of SF is ideally positioned to describe this television revolution: a “branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology” (1975). Not only did the quick proliferation of televisions in American homes during the 1950s bring about a spatial-temporal change to everyday life (with Americans transformed into “viewers,” who spent hours in front of a screen, learning how to consume a new visual method of storytelling and information while beginning to access a global community), the television also offered a new home for SF, and new subjects and methods for its storytelling. SF television’s spatial concerns have very much been shaped by the medium of the television screen. Indeed, medium and genre might be seen to have evolved together. Screens have long been part of a book, television, and film imaginary, from the flat screen displays in William Cameron Menzies’s 1936 film, Things to Come30 (adapted by H. G. Wells 29  Favreau, J., Filoni, D., Kennedy, K., Wilson, C. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Mandalorian [TV series]. Fairview Entertainment, Golem Creations, Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Studios. 30  Menzies, W.C. (Director), H.G.  Wells (Screenplay), (1936). Things to Come [Film]. London Film Productions.

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from his own 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come) and interactive large screens in every home in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 (and adaptations in film, TV, and video game) to touch screens in Stanislaw Lem’s novel Return from the Stars (1961), and the TV show Quantum Leap (1989–1993).31 Screens (utopian and dystopian in their effect) have been a transformative technology—a new way to inhabit and remake the world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, after almost 100 years of broadcasting—WRBG in the US claims to be the oldest television station in the world, first broadcasting January 13, 1928—a proliferation of screens seems complete, the long-anticipated SF moment made manifest in a world of “multiply-broken media frames through which we see our world and ourselves” (Telotte 2021). This development in screen technologies runs parallel to a development in television production technologies. Again, TNG is a useful starting point: its success helped initiate a wealth of SF shows in the 1990s (Geraghty 2009, 95), with television the “principal medium” of the “Third Generation” of the SF genre, according to Stableford (1996, 322). This is an increased production of SF spaces at a time when developments in special effects technology were making it easier to bring spectacular imaginaries to the screen. A significant development in production comes with Babylon 5, which pioneered CGI technology, enabling the grand space opera narrative imaged by its creator, Joseph Michael Straczynski. CGI has redefined film and television, and especially SF storytelling since. Actors now regularly play their parts in front of green screens, the spaces they move within and the aliens they fight “fantoms” added later by an army of computer programmers. The latest innovations in CGI (from famed visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic) combine technologies from the film and gaming industry to create dynamic CGI sets that interact in real time with actors and cameras. In essence, the CGI is brought into the physical space of the stage (dubbed The Volume) (Holben 2020). These CGI elements are filmed alongside the actors and physical set pieces, creating visuals that feel more “real,” regardless of how alien or impossible they may be. Paradoxically, then, the greater “unreality” of this produced space engenders a greater sense of reality on our digital screens. The worlds of SF TV have never seemed more real; we can more easily “inhabit” these fantastical SF locations through our screens, 31   Bellisario, D.P. (Executive Producer). (1989–1993). Quantum Leap [TV series]. Belisarius Productions, Universal Television.

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and they more readily encroach upon our physical “everyday” world. This immersive experience was enabled (and enhanced) by the switch to a digital broadcasting signal (a switch begun in the US around 2010) and the large smart flat-screen digital televisions we now own. Outer space SF TV has never been more operatic (visually that is) or more space conscious. Recent shows like The Expanse32 and Foundation33 (like the recent film Dune)34 have become more visual still, offering a kind of “space porn,” shots lingering on highly detailed images of spacecraft and, well, (outer) space. In approaching this “digital age [of] science fiction film and television,” Sean Redmond (2017) suggests a metaphor/technology/space of liquidity. Drawing inspiration from Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity, of a dis-embedded state in which “transience” is celebrated (Redmond 2017, 9; Bauman and Tester 2001, 89, 95), Redmond claims “we live in the age of the liquid screen, with science fiction its watery engine exemplar” (10). This liquidity plays out through our “augmented” lives and screens (which in turn augment our lives) (2) and the ease with which we use these technologies (8), but also through the production of SF: Its use of digital technologies: the use of multiple cameras, with film easily and quickly reviewed, edited, remixed, and modified (10–11). Redmond is outlining hyper-produced SF spaces but also a hyper-­ consciousness of this production, with fans encouraged to marvel at the technological wonders that help create the shows they love. A useful example from Redmond of this so-called liquid social experience mediated through our screens comes in the show Sense8,35 in which the show’s “characters embody” an “experience of digital deterritorialisation,” by which we have lost a relationship between culture and its place of production—“the time of a cultural artefact and the environment from which it was first made are both conflated and extended so that one 32  Shankar, N., Fergus M., Ostby H., Daniel S., Brown J.F., Hall S., Johnson B., Kosove A., Lancaster L., Abraham D., Franck T., Nowak D., Roberts B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 33  Goyer, D.S., Ellison, D., Goldberg, D., Bost, B., Asimov, R., Ross, M., Friedman, J., Welsh, C. (Executive Producers). (2021–). Foundation [TV series]. Skydance Television, Latina Pictures, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Phantom Four. 34  Villeneuve, D. (Director), Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth (Screenplay), (2021). Dune [Film]. Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment, Villeneuve Films. 35  Hill, G., Wachowski, L., Wachowski, L., Straczynski, J.M., Holland, C., Friedlander, P.  Duncan, T., Nayar, D., Clarance, L., Rosen, M., Toll, J., Delahaye, L. (Executive Producers). (2015–2018). Sense8 [TV series]. Anarchos Productions, Georgeville Television, Javelin Productions, Motion Picture Capital, Studio JMS, Unpronounceable Productions.

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e­ xperiences culture all at once, from anywhere in the world” (2017, 66). In the show, characters can communicate with each other psychically around the world, sharing skills and each other’s experiences. But, as Redmond notes, each group member still experiences “isolation, trauma, and anomie” (67). This is not a utopic experience, rather a heterotopic one, again taking inspiration from our contemporary experience of interface, with each other and through our digital screens. A more telling example of a heterotopic show aware of its own production is another Netflix series, The OA,36 which taps the current trend for multiple-universe storytelling. The high-concept SF sets into motion various puzzles for its characters and viewers, as again individuals must work together to access abilities, which here help them transition into other realities, and other versions of themselves—they leave their own bodies behind. In Season 1, characters are confined to a basement prison where a scientist experiments on them, studying near-death experiences. Season 2 sees the group in a new reality, imprisoned in a mental institution run by the same scientist, while others try to navigate a mystical house. A big-tech company interested in dreaming states has created a computer game to lure people into the house to help reveal its transdimensional secrets. The house acts as a heterotopia par excellence, shifting fragments of time and space, recalling Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, “The Aleph” (1945)—the Aleph, a space through which viewers can see all other space in the universe from every angle at the same time. The show holds many similarities to Borges’s story, but in the final scene of Season 2 as the characters leap to another reality, they find themselves on a film set, having leapt into the bodies of the actors who star in The OA. They have simultaneously leapt in and out of the TV show we watch on our screens. When the show was canceled after two seasons, fans thinking through the show online, across platforms, circled back to the same idea—the third (canceled) season was actually playing out in our world right now—for “real.” The show is not only aware of the heterotopic nature of the screen and its own television space but also the production of these and their effect on our everyday world, even as we step away from the screen in front of us.

36  Marling, B., Batmanglij, Z., Pitt, B., Gardner, D., Kleiner, J., Esberg, S., Sugar, M., Engel, A., Fetter, B., Wolarsky, N. (Executive Producers). (2016–2019). The OA [TV Series]. Plan B, Anonymous Content, Netflix.

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It is with this show that we leap into this collection of essays, which begins to explore the many spaces and productions of the heterotopic SF screen.

Screens, (Re)configurations, and Productions In the spirit of the SF screen heterotopias explored in this collection, chapters are entitled “Productions” and grouped in four sections, called “Screens.” Productions intersect, overlap, reflect, and refract, and even contradict one another within their Screen. Perhaps you read Productions that do not seem to belong together in one Screen? Each Screen section begins with a short introduction, a “(Re)configuration,” which broadly speaks to the grouping of Productions, but also looks to forward more specific arguments about their intersection, and how these pieces of the collection might be rearranged in different configurations. Citations appear parenthetically in the text, but those for television shows, their episodes, and for films appear with fuller detail as footnotes. We playfully call these “Credits.” They look to emphasize the “produced” nature of the shows discussed, and the many people involved in their production, while also creating a “space” at the bottom of the page that intersects with, but also disrupts, other parts of the book and the spaces discussed on the page—part of the heterotopic design of this critical study of American SF television. Part I, Contested Habitation: Enclosed, Encoded, and Reordered Spaces groups chapters that explore, broadly, the politics and conflicts of habitation (of space)—a thread running through the entire collection. Habitation is multiple, playing out through physical, social, political, and imaginary spaces, and of course through the space of the screen. Chapter 1. “Occupied Space: The Contested Habitation of Terok Nor/ Deep Space Nine,” by Ina Rae Hark, considers Deep Space Nine and examines the show’s exploration of “legitimate habitation” against Henri Lefebvre’s theories of capitalist state space. Hark suggests that from within the disorienting political encounters and wars fought over habitation, the DS9 station “points to a liberatory social space along the lines that Lefebvre posits,” one that might be interpreted as a “corrective” for twenty-first century nativist and capitalist coopting of Lefebvre’s theories of spatial flows. This chapter introduces an important question at the heart of this edited collection: How do we inhabit space? In Chapter 2. Welwala at the Borders: Language, Space, and Power in The Expanse, the writing collective of Matt Barton, Sharon Cogdill, Michael

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Dando, and Edward Sadrai (St. Cloud State University) approaches the habitation of space through language. This chapter considers the constructed Belter language of the show through Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “las fronteras” (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), a place and people susceptible to hybridity. Here we see how space is shaped by language, and in turn how language is shaped by the spaces in which we live and work. Phevos Kallitsis’s (University of Portsmouth) Chapter 3. “You’ve Seen One Post-Apocalyptic City, You’ve Seen Them All”: The Scales and Failures of the Right to the City and the Science Fiction Production of Space in Love, Death & Robots37 wanders into the post-apocalyptic city to consider a favorite ruined SF space as emblematic of the SF city imaginary more generally. Kallitsis identifies this city imaginary not only as a trap in the vein of the neoliberal city (via Lefebvre) but as an overused and now unimaginative SF space that imprisons the show’s creators and its audience. In Chapter 4. “Heaven is a Place on Earth”?: Configuring the Horizon of Queer Utopia in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero”, Orin Posner (Tel-Aviv University) gets lost in the truly heterotopic space of the town San Junipero, a digital reality and afterlife. Posner’s reading privileges the transformative qualities of queer time over that of the SF novum, pushing back against common readings of a happy episode, questioning SF’s ability to imagine a queer utopia. Chapter 5. “SVOD: A Place for (Outer) Space?,” by Andrew Lynch and Alexa Scarlata (University of Melbourne), outlines the rise of subscription video on demand (SVOD), tracking the increased production of SF content for this platform, wondering if SF television has (in a very SF narrative kind of way) finally found its home as Prestige TV on SVOD but at a cost—that SF TV is changed by the experience of a new home that seems to insist on a certain adult, violent form of the genre. Part II, Mirroring Screens: Reflections, Refractions, and the “Real World” collects chapters that consider more fully the television as a mirror onto the “real world,” as it refracts and reflects upon politics, war, and conflict. In Chapter 6. The Wars of Ronald D. Moore: Terrorism, Insurgency, and News Media in Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica, Benjamin Griffin (Fort Leavenworth) examines the two shows as spaces allowing viewers to think through the conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s, in Iraq and a post-9/11 world. Griffin identifies the experience of war in this period as increasingly a media phenomenon, with 24-hour news cycles 37  Miller, T., Donen, J., Fincher, D., Miller, J. (Executive Producers). (2019–2021). Love, Death, & Robots [TV series]. Blur Studio.

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developing alongside DS9 and BSG, and together changing the public experience of modern warfare. Edward Guimont (University of Connecticut), in Chapter 7. “To ensure the safety of the Republic, we must deregulate the banks”: A Social Democratic Reading of Star Wars: The Clone Wars,38 reads the animated series as the “bright center” of the Star Wars franchise/universe in its anticipation of the culture wars to come and exploration of Obama-era neoliberal politics, through an examination of Season 3 episodes focused on banking, “deficit reduction, tax breaks, deregulation, privatization, globalization, war spending, and their impact on the welfare state.” The analysis opens up the entire Star Wars universe while reflecting upon a small moment within it. In Chapter 8. Enclosing and Opening the Spaces of Embodied Modernity in The Expanse, Edward Royston (Pfeiffer University) delineates the broader spatial implications of modernity and their reconfiguration of social space in The Expanse. Royston plunges into the “churn,” or maelstrom, of change brought about by modern technology in the show’s technological conceit of the alien protomolecule, arguing the show is “concerned with how humans produce and are produced by modern social space.” Part III, Intersecting Media: Text, Television, and Streaming Services, holds together chapters concerned with different mediums and configurations of SF—novel, TV show, and Prestige TV—as these forms interact, manifest, and transform on the screen—a collision of SF spaces on science fictional technology. In Chapter 9. The Year Everything Changed: Babylon 2020, Alex Christie (Brock University) looks back on Babylon 5’s revolutionary production technologies and its use of screens within the show to create a series of non-localized spaces that foresee a future experienced through the heterotopic screens of 2020. In Chapter 10. Prestige TV and the Corporate Long Con: Disembodied Spaces of Westworld, John Bruni (Grand Valley State University) draws parallels between the narrative deferral technique that has come to define Prestige television storytelling, the capitalist long-con that plays out in the first two seasons of Westworld, and the show’s philosophical deferral that asks “what happens to us if there is a consciousness that surpasses human thinking?” Bruni suggests the show here disappoints on its promise, “inevitably adher[ing] to traditional criteria about what was/is/can be human.” Chapter 11. Memos from the

38  Filoni, D., Lucas, G., Winder, C. (Executive Producers). (2008–2014, 2020). Star Wars: The Clone Wars [TV series]. Lucasfilm Animation.

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Novel’s Author: Adaptation of FlashForward for Television,39 by Ellen Forget, brings together memos sent from the novel’s author, Robert J. Sawyer, to the show’s production team in an experimental examination of adaptation, which identifies the memos as an entry point into a heterotopic intersection of adaptation, production, narrative, and viewer experience. Part IV, Transformed Communities: Technologies, Bodies, and Viewers focuses on the bodies that create, inhabit, and are transformed by the various spaces explored in this collection. In Chapter 12. Pushing Through Networks and Media Spaces in Stranger Things,40 Nicolas Orlando (University of Florida) explores the gothic Upside Down realm of the show as a dark reflection of the algorithmic media spaces we inhabit today. He suggests such Upside Down/virtual online spaces, rather than being seen as a threat, should be read as an opportunity for connectivity, but only if we can find an empowering user interface to enable an embodied practice of space. Finally, Chapter 13. The Boys Keep Swinging: Celebrity Bodies in and between Space41 sees Sean Redmond (Deakin University) examine the superhero/celebrity body as a “fleshy heterotopia.” In this popular sub-category of SF, the superhero narrative, The Boys offers empowered, celebritized, politicized bodies that “engage in ‘perverse’ acts and perversely fail, opening the notion of the self to alternative forms of identity […] opening identity to a liminal gaze, to queer becomings,” and to Donald Trump. The SF productions to follow demonstrate a pivotal aspect, for this collection, of heterotopic space. Heterotopias produce the difference they describe; thus, a heterotopia is both an object of study and a generative mode of study (Johnson 2013). Texts that include heterotopias encourage viewers to consider how spatial relations are disrupted and examine the new possibilities generated by the disruption. Taken as a whole, all the 39  Braga, B., Goyer, D.S., Guggenheim, M., Borsiczky, J., Gerardis, V., Vicinanza, R. (Executive Producers). (2009–2010). FlashForward [TV series]. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment. 40  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 41  Kripke, E., Rogen, S., Goldberg, E., Weaver, J., Moritz, N. H., Shetty, P., Marmur, O., Trachtenberg, D., Levin, K.  F., Netter, J., Rosenberg, C., Sgriccia, P., Sonnenshine, R. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Boys [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

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contributors to the volume have come together to produce a heterotopic scholarly inquiry that could not have been accomplished through any single voice; this output thus leverages the generative power of the heterotopia to create a varied and multifaceted inquiry into SF television that remains open to still new inroads—that is, to you the reader. Victoria, BC, Canada St. Catharines, ON, Canada Victoria, BC, Canada

Joel Hawkes Alex Christie Tom Nienhuis

References Akhmedov, R. (2020). Social and Philosophical Ideas Through Heterotopia: Asimov, Dick and Mieville. Global Journal of Humanities 3, 32–39. Asimov, I. (1975). How Easy to See the Future! Natural History. Bergson, H. (1965). Duration and Simultaneity: With Reference to Einstein’s Theory. (L. Jacobson, Trans.). Bobbs-Merrill. Booker, M. K. (2004). Science Fiction Television. Praeger. Bukatman, S. (1999). The Artificial Infinite: On Special Effects and the Sublime. In A.  Kuhn (Ed.), Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema (pp. 249–275). Verso. Bould, M., & Vint, S. (2011). The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction. Routledge. Butler, B. (2016, November 22). Is Netflix Doing Nostalgia Better Than Anyone Else Right Now? The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com Connelly, C., Reigle, A, & Rivas, A. (2019, November 15). ‘The Mandalorian’ Creator Jon Favreau Talks Show’s Inspiration, ‘Personal Connection’ to Filmmaking. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/ mandalorian-­c reator-­j on-­f avreau-­t alks-­s hows-­i nspiration-­p ersonal/ story?id=67023193 Dickens, P., & Ormond, J. S. (2016a). Introduction: The Production of Outer Space. In P. Dickens & J. S. Ormond (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture and Outer Space (pp. 1–43). Palgrave Macmillan. Dickens, P., & Ormond, J. S. (2016b). Conclusion: The Future of Outer Space. In P. Dickens & J. S. Ormond (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture and Outer Space (pp. 445–464). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Donnelly, K. J., & Hayward, P. (2013). Preface. In K. J. Donnelly & P. Hayward (Eds.), Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future (pp. xiii–xviii). Routledge. Foucault, M. (1997). Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (pp.  350–356). Routledge. Geraghty, L. (2009). American Science Fiction Film and Television. Berg. Gibson, W. (2012). Distrust That Particular Flavor. Putnam. Gunning, T. (1986). The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde. Wide Angle, 8(3–4), 63–70. Haraway, D. (2004). A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. In S. Redmond (Ed.), Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader (pp. 158–181). Wallflower Press. Heinlein, R. A., Kornbluth, C., Bester, A., & Bloch, R. (1959). The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism. University of Chicago, Advent Publishers. Holben, J. (2020, February 6). The Mandalorian: This Is the Way. American Cinematographer. https://ascmag.com/articles/the-­mandalorian Johnson, P. (2006). Unravelling Foucault’s ‘Different Spaces.’ History of Human Sciences, 19(4), 75–90. Johnson, P. (2013). The Geographies of Heterotopia. Geography Compass, 7(11), 790–803. Jones, S.  E. (2006). The Emergence of the Digital Humanities (as the Network is Everting). In M.  Gold & L.  F. Klein (Eds.), Debates in the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press. https://dhdeb a t e s . g c . c u n y. e d u / r e a d / u n t i t l e d / s e c t i o n / 0 9 e f e 5 7 3 -­9 8 e 0 -­4 a 1 0 ­aaa3-­e4b222d018fe Kichin, R., & Keale, J. (2002). Introduction to Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction, R. Kichin & J. Keale (Eds.). Continuum. Kilgore, D. D. (2003). Astrofuturism: Science, Race and Visions of Utopia in Space. University of Pennsylvania Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (D.  Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell. Miller, G. A. (2012). Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan. Murray, J. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Free Press. Redmond, S. (2004). Preface to Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, S. Redmond (Ed.) (pp. ix–xi). Wallflower Press. Redmond, S. (2017). Liquid Space: Science Fiction Film and Television in the Digital Age. I. B. Tauris.

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Stableford, B. (1996). The Third Generation of Genre SF. Science Fiction Studies, 23(3), 321–330. Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Yale University Press. Telotte, J. P. (2001). Science Fiction Film. Cambridge University Press. Telotte, J. P. (2021). The Fractured Frames of Black Mirror. Science Fiction Film and Television, 14(1), 1–19. Wesselman, D. (2013). The Highline, ‘The Balloon,’ and the Heterotopia. Space and Culture, 16(1), 16–27.

Contents

Part I Contested Habitation: Enclosed, Encoded, and Reordered Spaces   1 1 Occupied  Space: The Contested Habitation of Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine  5 Ina Rae Hark 2 Welwala at the Borders: Language, Space, and Power in The Expanse 21 Edward Sadrai, Michael Dando, Kyoko Kishimoto, Matt Barton, and Sharon Cogdill 3 “You’ve  Seen One Post-Apocalyptic City, You’ve Seen Them All”: The Scales and Failures of the Right to the City and the Science Fiction Production of Space in Love, Death, & Robots 39 Phevos Kallitsis 4 “Heaven  is a Place on Earth”?: Configuring the Horizon of Queer Utopia in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” 55 Orin Posner 5 SVOD:  A Place for (Outer) Space? 71 Andrew Lynch and Alexa Scarlata xxxi

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Part II Mirroring Screens: Reflections, Refractions, and the “Real World”  95 6 The  Wars of Ronald D. Moore: Terrorism, Insurgency, and News Media in Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica  97 Ben Griffin 7 “To  Ensure the Safety of the Republic, We Must Deregulate the Banks”: A Social Democratic Reading of Star Wars: The Clone Wars119 Edward Guimont 8 Enclosing,  Opening, and Redefining Modern Space in The Expanse145 Edward Royston Part III Intersecting Media: Text, Television, and Streaming Services 163 9 The  Year Everything Changed: Babylon 2020167 Alex Christie 10 Disembodied  Spaces and Cyborg Utopias in Westworld191 John Bruni 11 Memos  from the Author: Adaptation of Flashforward for Television209 Ellen Forget Part IV Transformed Communities: Technologies, Bodies, and Viewers 225 12 Pushing  Through Networks and Media Spaces in Stranger Things227 Nicholas Orlando

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13 The Boys Keep Swinging: Celebrity Bodies in and Between Space251 Sean Redmond Post Production: Screening Futures—From Scarlet to Ebon267 Index277

Notes on Contributors

Matt  Barton  is a professor of English. His research interests include rhetoric, popular culture, and professional communication. He is the author of Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games (2019) and four other books on video game history and culture in addition to articles in Computers & Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Game Studies. He also produces Matt Chat, a YouTube series featuring interviews with notables from the games industry. Mark Bould  is Professor of Film and Literature at the University of the West of England. Recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts’ Distinguished Scholar Award, he was the founding editor of the journal Science Fiction Film and Television and now coedits the monograph series Studies in Global Science Fiction. His most recent books are M. John Harrison: Critical Essays (2019) and The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021). He is currently co-­ editing This is Not a Science Fiction Textbook and The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, as well as writing Climate Monsters, Carbon Monsters. John Bruni  teaches at Grand Valley State University. His book, Scientific Americans: The Making of Popular Science and Evolution in Early 20th Century U.S.  Literature and Culture, which explores the biopolitical dimensions of the frontier, was published in 2014. His article, “Illusions of Individuality: Old Frontiers and New Forms in Meek’s Cutoff and Certain Women” examines how these films rethink the Western genre by xxxv

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revealing its capacity for enabling a critical-historical analysis of American expansion; it was published in 2020. He is currently revising a book on John Cassavetes’s film Husbands. Alex  Christie is Associate Professor of Digital Prototyping at Brock University’s Department of Digital Humanities. His research interests include spatial humanities, the digital humanities, modernist studies, textual studies, and digital pedagogy, with publications appearing in Digital Humanities Quarterly, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and Reading Modernism with Machines, among other venues. In addition to creating warped 3D maps of literary spaces (z-axis research) and an online platform for sharing humanities open educational resources (pedagogy toolkit), he is currently completing a monograph on modern manuscripts and humanities computing. Sharon Cogdill  is Professor Emerita of English. Her research interests focus on nineteenth-century British popular culture, especially newspaper reportage of social events. Recent projects include “‘As it was not ungrammatical, though of a chatty tendency, it seemed to please’: Lady Violet Greville, ‘Aristocratic Lady Journalist’ of the 1890s” (2017); “‘Unparalleled Magnificence and Splendour’: The Morning Post and the Duchess of Devonshire’s Fancy-dress Ball, July 1897” (2016); “For Isis and England: The Golden Dawn as a Social Network” (2015); and Wikiversity entries for Social Victorians and Devonshire House Fancy Dress Ball, 2 July 1897. Michael  Dando  is an Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Literature. His research examines ways youth employ various cultural forms, including Afrofuturism, hip-hop culture, and comic books to create social, cultural, and political identities that generate educational opportunities for sustained, critical, democratic engagement for social justice. His work has been featured in various academic journals including Kappa Delta Pi Record and Learning, Media and Technology. Ellen Forget  is a PhD student at University of Toronto in the Faculty of Information and the collaborative specialization Book History and Print Culture. Their research work focuses primarily on the contemporary publishing industry with interest in accessible book production, speculative fiction genres, and small-press publishing. They are a graduate of the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University and work as a freelance fiction editor.

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Ben Griffin  is an officer is the US Army currently assigned as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History of the United States Military Academy. He is a National Security Fellow with the Clements Center for National Security and holds a PhD in History from the University of Texas and an MA in International Security Studies from the University of Arizona. Ben is also the author of “Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency.” He is an avid science fiction fan and greatly enjoys bringing that passion into his historical approach. Ben lives in West Point, New York, with his wife, two children, and a dog. Edward  Guimont is assistant professor of world history at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts, a member of the steering committee of the Virtual History of Science Technology and Medicine Group, and cohost of The Impossible Archive podcast. He is currently finishing a coauthored book on H.  P. Lovecraft, astronomy, and space opera, and has also published work on cryptozoology, colonialist conspiracies, and the history of the Flat Earth movement. Ina Rae Hark  is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina and has been writing academically about Star Trek since 1978. She is the author of the BFI TV Classics volume on the series, and another dozen articles and chapters. She has published more broadly on science fiction television and films and on-screen masculinity, historical epics, and Hitchcock. Joel  Hawkes  lectures in English at the University of Victoria, Canada. His research examines the practices and performances that create the physical and literary spaces we inhabit. His work is increasingly interested in how (television) screens shape our world. Recent papers appear in Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture, Critical Approaches to ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ and Screening American Nostalgia. Interdisciplinary Team  from St. Cloud State University. Recent relevant projects include “‘Am I Real?’: Hybridity, Multiplicity, and Self-­ Actualization in Star Trek: Picard (2021); “The Queen Speaks English: The Universal Translator, Hybridity, and ConLangs in Star Trek” (APCA/ ACA conference 2020); “Elvish, Belter, Dothraki, Klingon, and Wakadan: ConLangs, Superfans, and Rhetoric” (GPACW 2019).

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Phevos Kallitsis  is an architect and senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth’s School of Architecture. He has worked as an architect, a cinema critic, and a set and exhibition designer. His research focuses on the interconnectedness of cinema, urban and architectural space, with a particular interest in horror, urban fear and safety, and urban regeneration. He also works on queer studies, sexuality, and urban space. He is teaching architectural design, interior design, and queer theories on urban and architectural space in the UK and in Greece. Kyoko Kishimoto  is a Professor of Ethnic Studies in the Department of Ethnic, Gender, & Women’s Studies. Her research interests include antiracist pedagogy within and beyond the classroom, women of color in higher education, and popular cultural representations of race. Recent works include “The Impact of Language Brokering on Hmong College Students’ Parent-child Relationship and Academic Persistence” (2019) and “Anti-racist Pedagogy: From Faculty’s Self-reflection to Organizing Within and Beyond the Classroom” (2018). Her work has appeared in Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, Multicultural Education, Feminist Teacher, and other publications. Andrew Lynch  teaches cinema and screen studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. His research examines topics including “Quality” television, genre development in sci-fi, horror and fantasy television, and the diverse approaches of niche streaming services. Andrew’s work has appeared in several edited anthologies and leading refereed journals including Television & New Media, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Senses of Cinema, and Adaptation. He is the author of Quality Telefantasy: How US Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids into the Mainstream, published by Routledge in 2022. Tom Nienhuis  is a lecturer in English at Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia. His research has focused on contemporary American fiction, religious experience, and theories of the sublime. His love of science fiction developed early, thanks to films like Blade Runner, TV series like Star Trek: The Next Generation, and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer. Tom’s interest in sci-fi, particularly the short-lived cyberpunk sub-genre, remains strong, and he hopes to explore cyberpunk’s depictions of religious/supernatural experiences in future projects.

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Nicholas Orlando  is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Florida (UF). His research focuses on the intersections of film and media studies, critical theory, and the aesthetics of information and technology. As such, he places the politics and sensory mediation of epistemology at the center of his investigations of American moving-­image culture. For his master’s thesis, he reconceptualized David Fincher’s film Zodiac (2007) as a melodrama of failure, arguing for a revisioning of failure as a productive social medium. Now, at UF, he is critically tracing the development of the information economy and the resurgence of fascist politics through contemporary American moving-image media. His other work can be found in Excursions Journal, CEA Critic, and ImageTexT. Orin Posner  is a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, writing her dissertation on the topic of novel urban spaces in science-fiction literature, their narrative representations and effects on subjectivity. She is a co-editor of the 2019 collection New Forms of Space and Spatiality in Science Fiction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), to which she contributed a chapter on posthuman architecture in SF narratives. Her research interests also include narratology, gender and queer studies, and ecocriticism. Sean Redmond  is Professor of Screen and Design at Deakin University. He is the author of Celebrity (Routledge, 2019), Liquid Space: Science Fiction Film and Television in the Digital Age (I.B. Taurus, 2017), and The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood (Columbia, 2013), and editor of Breaking Down Joker: Violence, Loneliness, Tragedy (Routledge, 2022). He is the founding editor of Celebrity Studies, short-listed for best new academic journal in 2011. Edward Royston  is an Assistant Professor of English at Pfeiffer University in North Carolina. He earned his PhD at Texas Woman’s University, where he focused on rhetoric, narratology, and genre fiction. He has presented at national and international conferences on the border allegories in William Gibson’s Peripheral and the nature of language in Frank Herbert’s Dune, among other topics. He has written on the affective significance of Rose of Sharon’s smile for The Steinbeck Review. He has forthcoming works on the meta-narrativity of Dune in Discovering Dune and on the rhetorical poetics of time travel fiction in Frontiers of Narrative. Edward Sadrai  is an Associate Professor of linguistics in the Department of English. He regularly teaches English Syntax, American English,

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Semantics & Pragmatics, Codeswitching, and Theories of Second Language Acquisition in the TESL/Linguistics program. His research interests are in information structure and codeswitching. Alexa  Scarlata  is a research fellow in the Media and Communications department at RMIT University, Australia. Her research is concerned with the introduction and dynamics of online TV, the resulting impact on local production, the implications of the platform ecosystem enabled by smart TVs, and the subsequent development of media policy in these areas. Alexa is the Reviews Editor of the Journal of Digital Media and Policy and has published in journals such as Critical Studies in Television, Continuum, and Media International Australia.

PART I

Contested Habitation: Enclosed, Encoded, and Reordered Spaces

(Re)configuration Must the science fiction (SF) imaginary of space always reflect our own experiences of lived space—that is, our habitation of physical, social, and cultural spaces, and the conflict of power structures within them? The chapters in this section ponder this question in different ways and explore our habitation of space as it plays out through the SF shows on our screens. Ina Hark with the (Star Trek) Deep Space Nine space station and Phevos Kallitsis with the postapocalyptic city, in Love, Death, & Robots,1 ask questions through the specifics of Lefebvre’s theory of the production of social space—Who orders, encodes, and controls meaning? And is there an alternative? Dynamics of power and habitation are explored through language in Sadrai, Dando, Kishimoto, Barton, and Cogdill’s examination of the Belter language in The Expanse.2 The authors remind us, with reference to Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “las fronteras,” of the heterotopic nature of these produced SF spaces as they reflect and refract our own hybrid social spaces. The heterotopic implication of habitation of space through the SF genre and screen is more explicitly explored in the other two chapters.  Miller, T., Donen, J., Fincher, D., Miller, J. (Executive Producers). (2019–2021). Love, Death, & Robots [TV series]. Blur Studio. 2  Shankar, N., Fergus M., Ostby H., Daniel S., Brown J.F., Hall S., Johnson B., Kosove A., Lancaster L., Abraham D., Franck T., Nowak D., Roberts B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 1

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Orin Posner’s discussion of Black Mirror’s3 “San Junipero”4 examines the possibilities and impossibilities of a queer techno-utopia, while Andrew Lynch and Alexa Scarlata’s chapter explores Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platforms as a new home for SF television, a home that shapes a new gritty Prestige television form of SF. Here we might locate another similarity between these chapters—they all allude to the idea of home and a search for belonging but also to the troubling question of how far any form of “habitation” is possible through the typical SF spaces of 1. space station, 2. outer space, 3. postapocalyptic city, 4. techno-utopia, and finally 5. screen technology. These are ultimately all heterotopic spaces that offer at best a problematic sense of dwelling/ habitation as their images flicker across our screens. All these chapters thus implicitly adopt the question posed by Phevos Kallitsis in his discussion of the SF imaginary of the city in Love, Death, & Robots: Does SF television ultimately fail to imagine a different space, something different from the everyday world we inhabit? We might follow this line of thinking further still: If a sense of “estrangement” defines SF storytelling [Suvin 1979, 20]), then does it always engender a sense of not-belonging for viewers of SF shows? And if, as Sean Redmond (2004) suggests, we now live in a “science fiction textured world” (ix), is our everyday world a similar space of estrangement? Ultimately, can the medium of the screen itself, rather than the SF narratives it streams, reconfigure our habitation into something we haven’t yet imagined? This particular heterotopic grouping of shows and arguments certainly transcends this section; we might reconfigure these chapters with others in this collection. Chapters 3 and 4, examining postapocalyptic city and techno-utopia are more particularly concerned with the human body—an embodied sense of habitation that also concerns John Bruni in Chap. 10. Prestige TV and the Corporate Long Con: Disembodied Spaces of Westworld.5 These three chapters might usefully be reconfigured into the 3  Jones, A., Brooker, C. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Zeppotron, Channel 4 Television Corporation, Babieka, Gran Babieka. 4  Brooker, C. (Writer) & Harris, O. (Director). (2016, October 21). “San Junipero.” (Season 3, Episode 4). In Brooker, C., Jones, A. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Zeppotron, House of Tomorrow. 5  Abrams, J.J., Nolan, J., Joy, L., Weintraub, J., Burk, B., Lewis, R.J., Patino, R., Wickham, A., Stephenson, B., Thé, D. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Westworld [TV series]. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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final section this collection, Part IV, Transformed Communities: Technologies, Bodies, and Viewers, which currently holds Chap. 12. Pushing Through Networks and Media Spaces in Stranger Things6 by Nicolas Orlando and Chap. 13. The Boys7 Keep Swinging: Celebrity Bodies in and between Space. These two chapters also, of course, ponder how we inhabit the world.

References Redmond, S. (2004). Preface to Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, S. Redmond (Ed.), (pp. ix–xi). Wallflower Press. Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Yale University Press.

6  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 7  Kripke, E., Rogen, S., Goldberg, E., Weaver, J., Moritz, N. H., Shetty, P., Marmur, O., Trachtenberg, D., Levin, K.  F., Netter, J., Rosenberg, C., Sgriccia, P., Sonnenshine, R. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Boys [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

CHAPTER 1

Occupied Space: The Contested Habitation of Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine Ina Rae Hark

Introduction Had human beings adopted the principle that anyone present in a given space at a given time qualified as a legitimate inhabitant of that space, history would have recorded far less suffering and death. Conflicts over the right to claim space as one’s own have instead existed throughout collective memory. Legitimacy may hinge on who occupied the space first, or the longest, or the most recently, on whose numbers are greatest or weapons most powerful. Arising from these battles to assert a right to habitation, categories such as native, resident, citizen, migrant, alien, colonist, conqueror or occupier, slave or subject, emerge. Borders are drawn and redrawn, existing inhabitants displaced. Such geopolitical issues are a central preoccupation of the third live-action Star Trek television series, Deep Space Nine (DS9, 1993–99).1 This chapter will examine how the series  Berman, R., Behr, I.  S., Fields, P.  A., Piller, M., Wolfe, R.  H. (Executive Producers). (1993–1999). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [TV Series]. Paramount Television. 1

I. R. Hark (*) University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_1

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defines legitimate habitation, particularly by reading it against the theories of state space articulated by the influential Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre writes extensively on how state power demarcates, constructs, and constrains the spaces people inhabit; he counters the practices he observes with a liberatory concept of social space that is dynamic and unfixed to specific geolocations. Within the politics of Occupation that DS9 observes among intergalactic planetary rivals, its eponymous space station points to a liberatory social space along the lines that Lefebvre posits. As twenty-first century globalization has seen Lefebvre’s spatial flows co-opted by capitalism and resisted by nativist movements, these more hopeful late-twentieth-century models provide a possible corrective. DS9 begins and ends as long-term occupying powers withdraw after succumbing to a determined resistance. The pilot episode, “Emissary,” takes place just after the Cardassians have abandoned a brutal colonial hegemony over Bajor that commandeered its resources and inflicted millions of deaths on starved and conscripted Bajoran laborers.2 The finale, “What You Leave Behind, Parts 1 and 2,” concludes as the besieged Dominion, Cardassia’s one-time allies in a war with major Alpha Quadrant powers, turns on a now-restive Cardassian population and enacts a genocidal retreat, killing even more Cardassians than the Cardassians killed Bajorans—“poetic justice,” as the Klingon Martok (J.G.  Hertzler) observes.3 Although these two Occupations differ in their motives and means, they share elements the series wishes to foreground about the meaning of such takeovers. Occupations are illicit deprivations of sovereignty, involve physical presence on a planet of those not native to it, result in rule by exploitation, intimidation, and murder, and inevitably provoke resistance. Prematurely anticipating victory, the Dominion administrator Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs) muses that to hold a “prize” like the Federation will require “a massive occupation army” and “constant vigilance”; he suggests a preemptive annihilation of Earth, where rebellion is most likely to begin.4 The series sees no shades of gray when it comes to annexations of others’ homelands. Occupiers never have the right to inhabit territory to which they are not indigenous. They are temporary occupants, not 2  Piller, M. (Writer) & Carson, D. (Director). (1993, January 3). “Emissary.” (Season 1, Episode 1). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 3  Behr, I.S., Beimler, H. (Writers) & Kroeker, A. (Director). (1999, June 2). “What You Leave Behind.” (Season 7, Episode 25). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 4  Behr, I.S., Beimler, H. (Writers) & Kroeker, A. (Director). (1997, November 3). “Sacrifice of Angels.” (Season 6, Episode 6). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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permanent citizens, the implication being that their rule must at some point collapse under the weight of its unjustness, even if it takes fifty years, as is the case with the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. Such a paradigm, to be sure, lacks nuance. Nations don’t divide neatly into occupiers and occupied. Lefebvre notes that “A space that is dominated may itself be dominant in another space. We know that the spatial hierarchy presents itself as an entwining or imbrication of dominant/dominated spaces” (2010, 245). Tanisha Fazal’s study of “state death,” how nations lose sovereignty, lists colonization, annexation, and prolonged military occupation as principal means of such sovereign collapse but sees gradations in the atrocities that might then ensue, such as placing an annexed territory under “protectorate status” (2007, 19–20). She would agree with Weyoun that “direct rule typically requires a significant troop and administrative presence,” but she notes that this is why annexers often prefer not to occupy: “It is always cheaper to rule indirectly than it is to rule directly” (2007, 39). Finally, her research reveals that nationalist resistance increases the likelihood of “state resurrection” but does not guarantee it (2007, 231). The Occupation narrative is complicated by the fact that DS9 is not set on either Bajor or Cardassia Prime, but on the space station Terok Nor, built by the Cardassians to process and export valuable iridium ore extracted from its subject planet. And the controlling point of view is that of the United Federation of Planets, whose Starfleet personnel arrive at the request of the Bajorans to administer the abandoned station (which they rename Deep Space Nine) amid the chaos of postcolonial Bajor. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and his crew are neither occupiers nor inhabitants; Deep Space Nine has no ground or territory, being a wholly constructed space floating in space. Lefebvre uses the notion of occupied space more neutrally than the occupations of Bajor and Cardassia illustrate. (These are to Lefebvre part of a particularized subset of occupations of space under capitalism that prioritize politics and history and in which “violence is inherent” [2010, 203]). He differentiates between a natural space he calls “earth,” which “is always and everywhere characterized by particularities (climates, topologies, etc.),” and everything humans layer over it, which he calls “world.” Looking into the future from the vantage point of the 1970s, Lefebvre finds that the current adherence to the urban capitalist model occupies space “totally covered by exploitation and domination” (2010, 202); “The most cultivated of people find themselves in the situation of peoples

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who have been dispossessed (alienated) through conquest and colonization” (2010, 200). In response, he predicts that a spatial revolution will displace capitalist space with social space: “social bodies (including classes, institutions, etc.) occupy space and make (produce) space, with occupied space and produced space not coinciding” (2010, 201). This future space will operate in an economy of flows and will abandon fixed geolocation for connections among all sizes of social units, from the local to the interplanetary (2010, 194). Science fiction gives us not only the interplanetary but also the interior spaces that traverse outer space. Lefebvre’s theories are pertinent to an analysis of Terok Nor/DS9 as an occupied space without a natural ground, as a nexus for all sorts of flows, and as a produced space that could serve as a precursor to the revolutionary possibilities Lefebvre postulates. The station does this specifically by reversing the usual Occupation narrative that privileges an originary homeland and valuing an evolving social space that never codifies itself as possessed habitation.

This Land Is Your Land/This Land Is My Land The first mention of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor occurs in the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG)5 episode “Ensign Ro.”6 Broadcast near the end of the first intifada, the episode is a clear allegory of the Israeli annexation/occupation of former Palestinian homelands. Once the Cardassians became the continuing adversary on DS9, the writers dropped their alignment with American ally Israel, ironically by turning the Cardassians into an analog to the Nazis (Booker 2018, Kapell 2000). One episode, “Duet,”7 riffs on The Man in the Glass Booth (Shaw 1968), a play about a concentration camp survivor who may actually be a Nazi; the Federation renegades who oppose Cardassian malfeasance on newly established borders call themselves the Maquis, after the Resistance fighters who operated in Nazi-occupied France. David K. Seitz insists, however, that the Bajorans “reflected sympathy for a diverse range of colonized or 5  Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., Piller, M. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount. 6  Piller, M. (Writer) & Landau, L. (Director). (1991, October 5). “Ensign Ro.” (Season 5, Episode 3). Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paramount. 7  Fields, P.A. (Writer), & Conway, J.L. (Director). (1993, June 13). “Duet.” (Season 1, Episode 19). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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stateless people—Palestinians, Kurds, Jews, Haitians, Indigenous peoples” (2017, 405). Moving away from the Israeli/Palestinian parallels eliminates an extended examination of occupations that occur because both sides at one time or other have exercised sovereignty over the territory, and people of both ethnicities have had long-standing habitations there. DS9 has several other occupation narratives to hand, however, and connects them to analyze the various occupiers’ cultures. All of them, based in different relations to “earth” and history, then provide context to the wholly constructed and only decades-old world of the station. The Cardassians hoped to institute settler colonialism on Bajor, but as onetime Prefect of Bajor Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) says, forty years into the Occupation, the planet “still wasn’t ready for full-scale colonization” (“Waltz”).8 Nor does the Dominion come to Cardassia to subjugate the Alpha Quadrant out of aggressive empire-building impulses. Both species’ expansionist actions derive from their inherent vulnerabilities. The original Cardassian civilization, the Hebitians, “due to strain caused by decline of the planet’s natural resources … disintegrated, causing millions of its members to starve, almost driving the population to extinction. Surviving members of the society turned to military action and exploration to perpetuate the continuation of their species” (Gunderman 2017, 57). The Founders created the Dominion because their nature as liquid, linked, shape-shifting beings leaves them open to persecution from those they call “solids.” They respond by bioengineering a race of dependent soldiers, the Jem’Hadar, and cloning an existing species, the Vorta, to serve as their administrators. Thus armed, they demand absolute allegiance from every species within striking distance, destroying any that do not capitulate. George Gonzalez describes the Dominion’s goal as “pre-emptive empire” in that “conquest/destruction could be cast as self-defense” (2015, 121). Their militant annexations of others’ space never totally obliterate the weaknesses that compel the Cardassians and the Founders to undertake them. Cardassia cannot finish off the conflicts they start. The Resistance’s opposition forces their retreat and they sue for peace after an inconclusive war with the Federation. The Cardassians then proceed to cheat and manipulate, often preferring to achieve their objectives by deceiving

8  Moore, R.  D. (Writer) & Auberjonois, R. (Director). (1998, January 8). “Waltz.” (Season 6, Episode 11). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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others to do their dirty work for them (cf. “Ensign Ro,” “The Circle9/ The Siege,”10 “The Maquis, Parts 1 and 2”).11 They also begin the occupation of Bajor by stealth, claiming to offer help for the planet’s further development. Despite their allied military might, the paranoid Founders also often work covertly to achieve their aims, using their skills as Changelings to infiltrate their adversaries’ ranks in order to spy and sabotage. Their alliance with Cardassia results from a fortuitous intersection of both peoples’ histories. The Klingons defeat the overmatched Cardassian military in a devastating war a Changeling infiltrator helps foment. Desperate and humiliated, Dukat negotiates an alliance with the Dominion, not having learned the lesson of what happened to Bajor when it let his troops in to “help.” At the same time, all the Jem’Hadar in the galaxy cannot combat the Founders’ intrinsic vulnerability. The Federation’s black ops unit, Section 31, introduces a fatal virus into the Great Link that nearly accomplishes a more thorough genocide than either the Cardassians or the Dominion enacted upon the peoples they occupied. Section 31’s actions are only one example of how DS9 is at pains to point out the reasonableness of Bajoran liaison Kira’s (Nana Visitor) initial fears that by calling in the Federation, the planet’s provisional government has exchanged one set of occupiers for another. The Federation may use soft power, but it does desire to annex Bajor to its ranks. As the undercover Maquis operative Security Chief Eddington (Kenneth Marshall) asserts, “The Federation are worse than the Borg. … They assimilate you and you don’t even notice” (“For the Cause”).12 In episodes like “Homefront13/Paradise Lost,”14 “In the Pale Moonlight,”15 and “Inter 9  Fields, P.A. (Writer) & Allen, C. (Director). (1993, October 3). “The Circle.” (Season 2, Episode 2). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 10   Piller, M. (Writer) & Kolbe, W. (Director). (1993, October 10). “The Siege.” (Season 2, Episode 3). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 11  Behr, I. S. (Writer) & Allen, C. (Director). (1994, April 24 & May 1). “The Maquis,” parts i and ii [TV series episodes]. (Season 2, Episodes 20 & 21). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 12  Moore, R.D. (Writer) & Conway, J.  L. (Director). (1996, May 6). “For the Cause.” (Season 4, Episode 21). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 13  Behr, I.  S., Wolfe, R.  H. (Writers) & Livingston, D. (Director). (1996, January 1). “Homefront.” (Season 4, Episode 10). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 14  Behr, I.S, Wolfe, R.H. (Writers) & Badiyi, R. (Director). (1996, January 8). “Paradise Lost.” (Season 4, Episode 11). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 15  Taylor, M. (Writer) & Lobl, V. (Director). (1998, April 15). “In the Pale Moonlight.” (Season 6, Episode 19). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount

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Arma Enim Silent Leges,”16 DS9 demonstrates that, facing an existential threat, the Federation’s moral compass strays from true North quite quickly. Thus, although readying Bajor to join the Federation is Sisko’s first and most urgent mission, Bajor remains unaligned in the series finale, a sign that its full sovereignty is at last secure. The Cardassians stick close to home, relatively speaking, preferring to exploit resources of much less powerful peoples and hold sway within a modest sphere of influence. Once they run up against Federation space, they sue for peace in return for free rein over the planets they claim. When the treaty’s new borders trap some of each power’s colonies on the wrong side of the line, the Cardassians, who play the border game skillfully, nibble at the edges for advantage but have no apparent designs on the larger Federation. They realize that “geopolitics informs where borders are drawn, and popular geopolitics informs how we perceive those borders, as well as how we view the populations associated with those borders” (Gunderman 2017, 54). The Dominion, on the other hand, has expansive aims as far as influence and control but no need to amass colonies and resources. Their strategy to dominate the Alpha Quadrant involves intimidating many species to sign nonaggression treaties in order to focus resources on those who resist them. Because the Founders’ true home is the Great Link, the planet whose surface it covers being irrelevant, and because Cardassia Prime cannot successfully support its inhabitants, these two fascistic regimes don’t venerate a homeland, the soil of “blood and soil,” as much as they do their people, their blood, wherever they may be. They privilege Lefebvre’s “world.” The Bajorans, by contrast, have deep ties to the planets they live on, their history and traditions. They experience the diaspora the Occupation forces on many of them to be as painful as the enslavement forced on those who remain on Bajor. They value the planetary “earth” equally to whatever spaces accumulate above it. One other significant power plays a role in the Occupation dramas involving Bajor, Cardassia, the Dominion, and the Federation; it, however, operates on a totally distinct order of geopolitics. Unlike all the other competing peoples, the incorporeal aliens located within the artificial, stable wormhole that connects Bajoran space with the Gamma Quadrant have no concept of “earth or “world.” They exist simultaneously throughout time, not producing spatial habitation at all. This condition causes the 16  Moore, R.  D. (Writer) & Livingston, D. (Director). (1999, March 3). “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.” (Season 7, Episode 19). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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Bajorans to venerate them as divine and construct their entire religion around the “Prophets” who live in the “Celestial Temple.” Because the Prophets glimpse the future as easily as the past and present, they have an estimable record on foreknowledge, relayed through a number of Orbs they dispatch to Bajor, the planet they originated on. The Prophets’ space/time relationships differ sharply from that of humanoids, whom they find mystifying because of their “linear” existences. Within the wormhole, these aliens escape the conditions Lefebvre assigns to modernity: Space is a use value, but even more so is time to which it is intimately linked because time is our life, our fundamental use value. Time has disappeared in the social space of modernity. … Economic space subordinates time, whereas political space eradicates it, because it is threatening to existing power relations. The primacy of the economic, and still more, of the political, leads to the supremacy of space over time. (2017, 191)

The juxtaposition of the wormhole to the station involves a symbiotic relationship between conventional and radical space/time, especially as the Prophets select its commander, Sisko, as their emissary to linear lifeforms. Simultaneously, Deep Space Nine’s position as gateway to the Gamma Quadrant transforms it into a bustling, galactically significant, and strategic space as opposed to its purely local function as Terok Nor, although it also renders the station a buffer state of the kind that invites renewed colonization efforts (Fazal 2007, 231). Terok Nor negotiates what Lefebvre calls “qualitative demands concerning space (transportation, ‘habitat,’ everyday life)” (2010, 204), modeled on the Cardassian system. Its residents live in a workplace, not a home; it has a relatively brief history—twenty-three years from construction to abandonment—and one not marked by wider cultural complexities. It is essentially a synecdoche of the Occupation itself. The station, built by Bajoran slave labor, receives the very soil of Bajor, its minerals mined and processed by the planet’s inhabitants, and ships the finished product out to Cardassia. The occupiers retreat, having stripped the planet of all resources, just as they took everything of value from the station and then trashed its infrastructure (“Emissary”). When the Cardassians leave, Terok Nor is, as Seitz eloquently puts it, a “colonial ruin, reinhabited with the hope of a difference, transforming it … into a postcolonial port” (2017, 403–4). On the surface this looks

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like a simple duality, the Cardassians as ruinous colonialists, the Bajorans as transformative postcolonial natives. But because of its reliance on the Federation for protection and aid, the station never becomes fully independent. Postcolonial Bajor, moreover, is riven by factional disputes, with the result that the scheming narcissist Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher) becomes its spiritual leader. Cardassia remains intent on reoccupying Bajor—until the alliance with the Dominion flips the paradigm and these aggressive occupiers become oppressed colonialist subjects. And in the end, it is Cardassia that is left a colonial ruin. The early episodes often assert that the station is sovereign Bajoran territory, that the Federation administers it under Bajoran laws and regulations. The station, however, moves from having a Cardassian name to a Federation designation. All such installations in the Trek universe bear the “Deep Space” descriptor, as Cardassian space stations bear the “Nor” label (cf. “Empok Nor”).17 If the station ever has a Bajoran name, we do not hear of it. Moreover, by the end of the pilot Deep Space Nine ceases to orbit Bajor and has moved close to the entrance of the wormhole. Occupations of shorter duration within the series also do not treat Bajor and the station equally. When an extremist “Bajor for Bajorans” group attempts a coup, it forces all non-Bajorans to leave (“The Siege”); when the Dominion begins its war on the Alpha Quadrant, it establishes a base on renamed Terok Nor, while the Federation evacuates and leaves behind a ruin once more. Yet the Dominion honors a nonaggression treaty with Bajor itself, although its Cardassian allies push to annex the planet as well.

Cardassians Built Your Home If the transformations necessary to enable Seitz’s postcolonial port are thus not wholly in service of Bajor, they do work consistently to efface the original Cardassian nature of Terok Nor’s produced space. As a Lefevbrean world lacking any grounding in a natural earth, the station provides a focused look at the nature of “world” while also prefiguring a revolutionary social space. It contains most of the elements of any urban environment. There is a manufacturing district, residences, capabilities for the import and export of goods, a transit hub, an entertainment and mercantile district, a military base, medical and law enforcement facilities, and a 17  Beimler, H. (Writer) & Vejar, M. (Director). (1997, May 19). “Empok Nor.” (Season 5, Episode 24). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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centralized city government. Under the Cardassians, all these sectors supported the mission of the occupiers. A metal fence patrolled by armed soldiers divided the station between areas reserved for Cardassians and their Bajoran collaborators and those for the Bajoran slave laborers. Illumination was dim and the heat oppressive, in accordance with the needs of Cardassian biology. Elim Garak (Andrew J. Robinson), the only Cardassian to remain on the station after his species abandoned Terok Nor, complains that the temperatures are always too cold and the lights too bright after it has been adapted for Bajoran and Federation needs (“The Wire”).18 As the station becomes more hospitable to other species, it also adapts to its new status as a waystation for passengers on ships traversing the wormhole and as a commercial hub for merchants whose wares are no longer dedicated to the purposes of the Occupation. Computer systems are made compatible with those of Federation design. The repurposed spaces also receive names that may be holdovers from the Terok Nor days but serve mainly to provide alternative designations to such spaces found on the starships in all the other Star Trek series: Operations (“Ops”) instead of the bridge, the infirmary instead of sickbay, holding cells instead of a brig, holosuites instead of the holodeck. A space with no directly corresponding area on ships and a name one cannot imagine being part of a Cardassian vocabulary, the Promenade, provides the principal social flow on Deep Space Nine. In another sense, however, Deep Space Nine never entirely effaces Terok Nor. Its Cardassian origins repeatedly reassert themselves. However much retrofitting occurs, there is no neutral natural space upon which occupants can produce and modify social space. All produced space on the station has the foundation of the initial architectural features laid down by its Cardassian designers. These extend from the three pylons bisected by the oval docking ring that resemble the towers seen on Cardassian buildings on the home planet to the distinctive door entry pads of the interior. Herman Zimmerman, the series’ production designer, recounts how the Cardassian culture implied in the diegesis inspired the station’s sets: “The Cardassian mind prefers balance to symmetry, ellipses to circles, angles to straight lines and hard metallic surfaces and dark colors. … They don’t like ninety-degree angles” (“Inside Deep Space Nine” 2018). Additionally, 18   Wolfe, R.H. (Writer) & Friedman, K. (Director). (1994, May 8). “The Wire.” (Season 2, Episode 22). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount

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nearly every flat surface on the station has some bas relief of shapes and patterns. This aspect of the sets supported the design team’s theory “that the Cardassians were big on structure and if Cardassians felt structure was of vital importance, they would keep it on the outside.” Zimmerman visualized a space station of which the basic framework was not concealed, but “where all supports and structures were visible” (“Inside Deep Space Nine,” 2018). Overall, the design combined “the desired crustacean look with the heavy-handed impressiveness of fascist architecture for the show’s sets” (“Inside Deep Space Nine,” 2018). As such, it stood in stark contrast to the sleek, egalitarian functionality of the starships on the contemporaneous TNG and Star Trek: Voyager.19 The outer docking and interior habitat rings promise such egalitarian spaces, but the core of the station, like the pylons, is all about verticality and hierarchy, with Ops and the Promenade at the highest levels and less prestigious workplaces or automated functions below. The station commander’s office sits atop all, a fact remarked upon in “Emissary.” It serves as a panopticon, fitting for a repressive but also paranoid regime: “Given the Cardassians’ militaristic nature, Zimmerman designed their Operations Center in such a way that the commanding officer can look down on it and see everything that is going on. There are literally windows everywhere in the office, so that the commander would have had no blind spots” (“Inside Deep Space Nine,” 2018). The architecture is not the only factor that renders Terok Nor’s past as “not even past,” in the Faulknerian formulation. It intrudes into many present-day episodes via various forms of mediation: in “Necessary Evil,”20 a straightforward flashback to an unsolved murder; in “Things Past,”21 a hallucination about a miscarriage of justice that occurred when Odo (Renế Auberjonois) ran security for the Cardassians; in “Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night,”22 a vision Kira receives from the Orb of Time that allows her to interact with her mother, Meru (Leslie Hope), who was taken as a comfort woman and became Dukat’s mistress thirty years in the past; and, 19   Berman, R., Biller, K., Braga, B., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1995–2001). Star Trek: Voyager [TV series]. Paramount. 20  Fields, P.A. (Writer) & Conway, J.L. (Director). (1993, November 14). “Necessary Evil.” (Season 2, Episode 8). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 21  Taylor, M. (Writer) & Burton, L. (Director). (1996, November 18). “Things Past.” (Season 5, Episode 8). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 22  Behr, I.S., Beimler, H. (Writers) &. West, J. (Director). (1999, April 1). “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night.” (Season 6, Episode 17). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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in the alternate “Mirror” universe from the original Star Trek series, a Terok Nor where a Cardassian-Bajoran alliance has occupied Earth and enslaved humans, first shown in “Crossover.”23 Yet it does not require actual or virtual time travel or universe-hopping for Terok Nor to resurface like the return of the repressed. In “Civil Defense,”24 a move to repurpose the ore-processing machinery triggers an old Terok Nor security program intended to prevent any revolt by the conscripted Bajoran laborers. The program interprets each success the current personnel have in countering it as a dangerous step in the rebels’ quest to take over the station. Beginning as a lockdown of every separate space on the station, its endgame is to blow up Terok Nor, killing all Bajorans in residence. Dukat “stars” in the admonitory videos, his pre-­recorded voice and image appearing on viewscreens throughout the station, in the same way that Big Brother-style giant screens dominate the Cardassian capital. Dukat also has the codes to end the program and beams down to use this as leverage to reestablish a Cardassian military presence. He tries to transport back to his ship when Kira refuses the offer, only to have the program read this as an act of desertion, deserving of the death penalty. In the midst of the crisis, Starfleet Doctor Bashir (Alexander Siddig) laments that all his efforts to feel at home on Deep Space Nine seem to be for naught. “Your home was built by Cardassians, doctor. Never forget,” Kira admonishes him. In the end, Federation, Bajoran, and Cardassian officers combine their efforts to block the self-destruct command, prefiguring the final series plot arc in which Kira, the veteran Resistance fighter against the Occupation, is seconded to the Federation in order to advise the Cardassian rebels in mounting a resistance to the Dominion.

No Fixed Abode The concept of home preoccupies the characters on DS9. Odo longs to discover where he came from, while the exiled Garak yearns to return to Cardassia. A two-part time travel episode, “Past Tense,”25 reveals that, in 23   Fields, P.A., Piller, M. (Writers) & Livingston, D. (Director). (1994, May 15). “Crossover.” (Season 2, Episode 23). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 24  Krohn, M. (Writer) & Badiyi, R. (Director). (1994, November 7). “Civil Defense.” (Season 3, Episode 7). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 25  Wolfe, R.H., Behr, I.S., Echevarria, R. (Writers) & Badiyi, R., Frakes, J. (Directors). (1995, January 2 & January 9). “Past Tense,” parts i & ii [TV series episodes]. (Season 3, Episodes 11 & 12). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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2024 San Francisco, homeless people are imprisoned in detention camps euphemistically called Sanctuary zones. And, at the end of the series, several featured characters leave the station to return to their home planets (see Hark 2008, 114–15). Such repatriations are rare in the Trek series, in which visits to the native planet are usually brief occasions for working through familial dysfunction before Federation personnel rejoin their true families aboard ship. Indeed, the Trek verse complicates the very notion of indigenousness in the TNG episode “The Chase.” It reveals an originary, single humanoid species that seeded multiple habitable worlds with its members, letting evolution account for apparent species diversity and providing an in-story justification for Trek’s allegorical representation of aliens on other planets as akin to Terran humans of various races on different continents. The unusual emphasis on attachments to ancestral homelands on DS9, in the face of the usual Trek emphasis on Starfleet as a multicultural, supranational organization, perhaps reflects its planetary narrative’s emphasis on overturning illicit occupations of legitimate habitations. Life on the station, I would suggest, provides a counternarrative, one in which occupation in the more general sense produces a more progressive social space than habitation. The concept of a homeland, after all, implies a dichotomy of native/alien, often leading to inclusive/exclusive and sovereign/dominated spaces. The station’s two commanders’ conceptions of it as a habitation illustrate the two narratives. Dukat imagines Terok Nor his to possess and control, the legitimacy of its inhabitants his to determine. His is the present state space Lefebvre describes. Sisko, on the other hand, considers Deep Space Nine as a more fluid social space, a community in which he participates, not a collection of subjects to be ruled. His is the future space Lefebvre envisions. Dukat’s obsession with claiming and controlling Terok Nor, despite its dual Cardassian/Bajoran origins, is an object lesson in how wrong attachment to a home can go. He takes every opportunity to remind Sisko that he preceded him as station commander and therefore Dukat, rather than this Federation usurper, implicitly belongs there. He complains about being on “the other side of the desk” from where he used to reign over Terok Nor (“Emissary”). He sneaks aboard the station and into Sisko’s quarters, bragging about his detailed knowledge of Terok Nor’s spaces and protocols that allows him to evade security (“The Maquis, Part 1”). When he arrives with Dominion forces to reclaim the station, he strides down the Promenade, taking everything in, as if deriving a life force from

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the place (“A Call to Arms”).26 Dukat had always wanted to render the Cardassian/Bajoran duality moot by convincing the Bajorans to accept him as their natural ruler; after suffering a psychotic break when he loses command once more, he eventually has himself surgically altered to look like a Bajoran. Sisko, by contrast, maintains a deep and continuous sense of belonging on Deep Space Nine without requiring his physical presence within its spaces. His baseball represents his notion of habitation. Love for the game of baseball, despite the disappearance of the sport in the mid-twenty-first century, is a crucial part of Sisko’s identity. He uses the game as a metaphor to explain to the Prophets how humanoids experience linear time: Each pitch can result in countless futures until the play forecloses all but one, only to have the next reinstantiate them. The Federation designator for the station rhymes with one of baseball’s key numbers: nine innings in a game, nine players on a team, the square of the other key number of three (strikes/outs). When Sisko and a Vulcan commander stage a game in the holosuite, the home team of course calls itself the Niners (“Take Me Out to the Holosuite”).27 Most significant for my purposes, baseball players score each time they successfully leave home and return again. During a first season episode, “If Wishes Were Horses,”28 a Gamma quadrant alien takes the form of a baseball star, Buck Bokai. Sisko idolizes Bokai, despite his having died 200 years earlier; the alien impersonator tosses the Commander a baseball to keep as a souvenir of their encounter. He places it on his desk in Ops and it comes to symbolize that Deep Space Nine is Sisko’s world—the spherical shape helps—no matter where in the galaxy Sisko physically resides. Every time he must surrender control of the station, the person who takes over finds the baseball on the desk and feels compelled to pick it up. Dukat verbalizes its inherent meaning: “It’s a message from Sisko. … He’s letting me know he’ll be back.” When Sisko does indeed return, as the Federation retakes Deep Space Nine, Dukat hands the baseball back to its owner.

26  Behr, I.S., Wolfe, R.H. (Writers) & Kroeker, A. (Director). (1997, June 16). “Call to Arms.” (Season 5, Episode 26). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 27  Moore, R.D. (Writer) & Chalmers, C. (Director). (1998, October 21). “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.” (Season 7, Episode 4). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 28  Crawford, N.M., Crawford, W.C., Piller, M. (Writers) & Legato, R. (Director). (1993, May 16). “If Wishes Were Horses.” (Season 1, Episode 15). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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Faux Bokai remarks that he finds it most astounding that Sisko can feel such intense affection for someone he never met. The baseball thus ties in with the notion of presence-in-absence that characterizes Sisko’s spatial habitation of Deep Space Nine. In the end, when he has gone over a precipice to prevent Dukat from destroying the Prophets, they take him in as one of them, allowing him to experience their radical space/time. As he tells his wife Kasidy (Penny Johnson Jerald) in a vision, he will come back to her, perhaps in a year, perhaps “yesterday” (“What You Leave Behind, Part 2”). At the victory party to celebrate the end of the Dominion War, held appropriately in the virtual holosuite space of Vic Fontaine’s Rat-­ Pack era nightclub, Sisko tells the assembled guests that “No matter what the future holds, no matter how far we travel, a part of us, a very important part, will always remain here on Deep Space Nine” (“What You Leave Behind, Part 2”). Like him, they will always have a home there regardless of the physical spaces they subsequently occupy, without home requiring ownership and domination to count as home. Deep Space Nine itself, to be sure, hosts a produced space that is far from revolutionary. Lefebvre’s economy and politics still have a foothold there. The ultimate capitalist, the Ferengi Quark (Armin Shimerman), has longer continuous residence than any Bajoran, Cardassian, or Federation citizen. His bar operated during the Occupation and is still going strong as the series ends. In addition to housing a bustling shopping mall, the station remains a military base, operating according to a Starfleet hierarchy. But in its privileging of flow as social space, its essence as a transition point to the even more profound transition through the wormhole, the station provides those who pass through with the ability to transmit the seeds for change, much as Odo does literally when he passes along the cure for their disease to the other Changelings in the Great Link.

Conclusion Read against Lefebvre’s theories of spatial politics, DS9 offers a site to examine a particular space common to Science Fiction (SF) television, spaces constructed in “outer space,” such as stations and starships. Because they are without a natural ground, they differ from planetary or lunar sites. In turn, this mitigates the possibilities for considering them homelands, places tied into the notions of blood and soil that have spawned so much carnage throughout history. Capable to be sure of contestation and illicit occupation, they can achieve a balance as habitations, places in which

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people establish homes as psychic realities even as they physically transition to and from them. That’s why the quarters on Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine are located in an area called the Habitat Ring, where those who reside for a day or a lifetime are, during their stay, equally invested in the station’s citizenship. Thus, spaces in outer space offer potential to provide a utopian politics, and this case study opens up further possibilities to explore this phenomenon as it occurs across SF television.

References Booker, M. K. (2018). Star Trek: A Cultural History. Rowman & Littlefield. Fazal, T.  M. (2007). State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation. Princeton University Press. Gonzalez, G. (2015). The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future. Palgrave. Gunderman, H. C. (2017). Blurring the Protagonist/Antagonist Binary through a Geopolitics of Peace: Star Trek’s Cardassians, Antagonists of the Alpha Quadrant. The Geographical Bulletin, 58(1), 51–62. Hark, I. R. (2008). Star Trek. (BFI Television Classics). Palgrave. “Inside Deep Space Nine.” (2018, December 8). Forgotten Trek. https://forgottentrek.com/designing-­deep-­space-­nines-­interiors/ Kapell, M. (2000). Speakers for the Dead: Star Trek, the Holocaust, and the Representation of Atrocity. Extrapolation, 41(2), 104–114. Lefebvre, H., Brenner, N., Elden, S., & Moore, G. (2010). State, Space, World: Selected Essays. University of Minnesota Press. Seitz, D. K. (2017). Second Skin, White Masks: Postcolonial Reparation in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 22(4), 401–419. Shaw, R. (1968). The Man in the Glass Booth. Grove.

CHAPTER 2

Welwala at the Borders: Language, Space, and Power in The Expanse Edward Sadrai, Michael Dando, Kyoko Kishimoto, Matt Barton, and Sharon Cogdill

Speaker: So, the next time you look in the mirror, say the word: Slave. Every time we demand to be heard, they hold back our water—owkwa beltalowda— ration our air—ereluf beltalowda—until we crawl back into our holes— imbobo beltalowda—and do as we are told! … Speaker: Hey, you, Badge. Day’s coming soon, keya? And when the blood is on the wall, sasa ke which side you’re on? Miller: Yeah, I’ll know. Speaker: See you then, welwala. (Makes hand gesture)

E. Sadrai (*) • M. Barton (*) • S. Cogdill (*) • M. Dando (*) Department of English, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] K. Kishimoto (*) Department of Ethnic, Gender, & Women’s Studies, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_2

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Havelock: What is welwala? Miller: Traitor to my people. (“Dulcinea”)1

Introduction The italicized portions of this dialogue are examples of Belter Creole, a language created by linguist Nick Farmer for the science fiction (SF) series The Expanse.2 What makes it stand out from other popular conlangs3 like Klingon or Dothraki is that, rather than attempting to sound “exotic,” with a totally invented vocabulary and unfamiliar grammar, Belter Creole strives to sound like real languages that have undergone normal language-­ change processes (Colbert and Peterson 2016). Belter Creole plays an unusually important rhetorical role in The Expanse because the series centers language itself. Throughout the series, Belters use their spoken language and its gestures4 as a critical act of resistance. Belters use language to develop and maintain subject positions—to resist unequal power structures, constructing a semantic space like Gloria Anzaldúa’s frontera. The Expanse begins by quickly locating us in the narrative and defining the political and social terms it addresses. The title sequence takes us on a tour of the solar system: first Earth (including a futuristic but recognizable Manhattan), then Luna, Mars, Ceres and the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, and finally Saturn, where James Holden floats in a space suit. Earth, Luna, Mars, and Ceres all have human habitats. These images are followed by expository text outlining the tense political backdrop for the story: It is the 23rd century. Humans have colonized the solar system. The U.N. controls Earth. Mars is an independent military power. The inner planets depend on the resources of the Asteroid Belt. Belters live and work in space. 1  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & McDonough, T. (Director). (2015, December 14). “Dulcinea.” (Season 1, Episode 1). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 2  Shankar, N., Fergus, M., Ostby, H., Daniel, S., Brown, J.F., Hall, S., Johnson, B., Kosove, A., Lancaster, L., Abraham, D., Franck, T., Nowak, D., Roberts, B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 3  The term conlang comes from constructed language. Analogizing from conlang, we use the word concreole (con-creole). 4  Belters often work in space where radio communication may not be always possible, where the gestures are as important as the spoken language. In “Nemesis Games,” Naomi, in her space suit, uses gestures to communicate to Alex when her communication device isn’t working—Abraham, D., Franck, T., Shankar, N. (Writers) & Eisner, B., (Director). (2021, February 2). “Nemesis Games.” (Season 5, Episode 10). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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In the Belt, air and water are more precious than gold. For decades, tensions have been rising. Earth, Mars, and the Belt are now on the brink of war. All it will take is a single spark. (“Dulcinea”)

The opening titles and authoritative exposition provide the political framing: Humans are colonizers, and it will soon become apparent why “tensions have been rising.” The most crucial event for our purposes takes place on Ceres Station in a marketplace called the “Medina,” a suggestive name: In the historical context of twentieth-century colonization, it refers to “the non-European section” of a town, according to the OED. As the camera takes us on a rapid tour of Ceres station, we see the spatial inequality (a lush, sunny utopia on the surface for privileged Inners and a dark, grimy dystopia for the Belters) and hear an Outer Planet Alliance (OPA) broadcast in which a man protests the exploitation of the Belters by both Earth and Mars: “Belters toil and suffer, without hope and without end. … To them, we will always be slaves. That’s all we are to the Earthers and Dusters. … In their eyes, we’re not even human anymore” (“Dulcinea”). At this point, the camera has positioned us at eye level among a crowd of onlookers in the Medina attending the speaker. As detectives Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane) and Dimitri Havelock (Jay Hernandez) monitor the situation, the speaker continues: “So, the next time you look in the mirror, say the word: Slave,” a word he emphasizes with a forceful, crossed-fist gesture (“Dulcinea”). As SF, little about the rhetorical vision of The Expanse here—ruthless capitalist exploitation is wrong—is especially novel. But what makes the series special is its sophisticated use of a conlang in and around its depiction of the unequal power relations that are central to the narrative. The protestor continues: “They hold back our water, owkwa beltalowda, ration our air, ereluf beltalowda, until we crawl back into our holes [crawling hand gesture], imbobo beltalowda, and do as we are told,” ending with yet another dramatic hand gesture before singling out Miller and calling him a welwala or “planet-lover,” a traitor whose loyalties lie with the inner planets (gravity wells) instead of other Belters. Here a character makes not just linguistic but also rhetorical choices, alternating to Belter to reinforce and amplify his claims. When he says, “our water, owkwa beltalowda,” he is challenging not just the Inners’ claim to these resources but the very words used to name them.

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Of course, the switching back and forth between English and Belter makes it easier for English-speaking audiences to follow the speaker and even pick up a few Belter phrases. A discerning ear (or eye for those reading the captioning) may also notice a similarity between Belter words and Spanish (owkwa/agua), English and German (ereluf/air + luft), and Zulu (imbobo/imbobo). Beltalowda, repeated three times in the speech, means “all the people of the Belt” and is derived from the English words Belt and load of. It is no coincidence that the Belter language borrows significantly from our world’s major languages. Belters are the descendants of the original colonists sent to mine Ceres and other large “rocks” in the Asteroid Belt. Ceres is governed remotely by Earth. In a situation suggestive of the Middle East and Africa, the natural resources of the Belt are indispensable to the solar system’s major powers, but the profits from this lucrative trade have not benefited the average Belter. Indeed, the harsh conditions of the Belt, including malnutrition, radiation, unsafe equipment, and lack of gravity, have altered the Belters’ bodies. Older Belters have deep scarring on their necks caused by shoddy space suits; younger generations mimic them with tattoos as homage to their sacrifice (and a way of signaling their own Belter status). As a result of this exploitation, most Belters see both Martians and Earthers as more privileged and powerful “Inners,” while they view themselves as exploited and less powerful “Outers.” Though the series’ opening may suggest a simple “good vs. evil” narrative with clearly defined sides, the geo- or helio-politics of the series are much more complex. The resources of Earth, Mars, and the Belt are widely unequal. As Brent Bellamy and Sean O’Brien (2018) argue, “The series’ focus on the scarcity of habitable environments in space indexes an already emerging reality here on Earth, from lack of access to clean water in Flint, MI, and many First Nations reserves in Canada to severe desertification across sub-Saharan Africa” (518). The Expanse shows what will emerge if current environmental, political, and economic policies and conditions do not change: Earth is heavily polluted, with stinking oceans and a veritable caste system. Compared to the other planets, however, Earth is still a world of abundance, offering the resources and conditions humans need to survive. Furthermore, its enormous wealth and influence allows the U.N. to control Luna, Ceres Station, and other settlements, as well as the largest fleet in the system (the U.N. Navy). Despite its harsh environment and lack of resources, Mars is a power second only to Earth because of their advanced technology, which allowed them to embark on a massive

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terraforming project made possible by strip mining the Belt of the majority of its water. Belters labor endlessly to mine their invaluable water and other resources for the benefit of everyone else in space. Earth and Mars vie with each other for control of the Belt with their powerful navies and private security firms like Star Helix. Meanwhile, the Belt’s most significant political body, the Outer Planets Alliance (or the OPA), is a loosely organized movement condemned as a terrorist network by both Inner powers. In the first episode, U.N. Deputy Under-Secretary General Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) accuses the Belter she is torturing with gravity of being “an OPA terrorist” and carrying “contraband stealth technology” (“Dulcinea”).5 She is homogenizing Belters here, assuming they all have the same ideas and motivations. As noted by Bellamy and O’Brien (2018), the OPA’s insignia “resembles the anarchist circle-A, but the OPA is clearly a conglomerate of nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors, incorporating elements of insurrectionary anarchism, workerism, and anticolonial movements” (526). Composed of over a dozen disparate factions spread out over considerable distances, the OPA strives to unite the Belters into an alliance capable of resisting the Inners. Entangled with these spatially determined power relationships are the languages the characters speak.6 As colonizers, Martians and Earthers are monolingual, speaking varieties of English closer to “Standard” English (SE). Conversely, the colonized Belters, who must take measures to communicate with the more powerful in order to survive the hegemony, often 5  While he has tattoos and may in fact be a terrorist, we do not trust Avasarala in this scene because the location is described as a “black site” and she is there to torture a prisoner. Part of her development as a character is shown when she says in the fifth season that not all Belters are extremists. She opposes acting U.N. Secretary General David Paster, who wants to bomb civilian Belters in retaliation for one OPA faction’s attack on Earth (“Winnipesaukee”)—Abraham, D., Franck, T., Shankar N. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2021, January 26). “Winnipesaukee.” (Season 5, Episode 9). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 6  The peoples of The Expanse speak a wide variety of extant languages, suggesting that the writers have not assumed that all humans of the future will speak the same language: we hear and see bits of Chinese, Hindi, French, and Russian in addition to several major dialects of English. Though linguists assume that all languages change, The Expanse makes no attempt to predict how differently any of these languages will sound in 300 years. Assuredly, any English speaker living in 2350 would sound at least as peculiar to us as we would have to Crispus Attucks in 1750.

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speak both SE and their own language—lang Belta, or Belter Creole, as it is usually termed by official and fan sources. Like early scholarship concerning creoles and pidgins, popular theories of creole are still fraught with overt racism. Creoles are full languages capable of accommodating the full range of human expression; any value judgments on dialects are socioeconomic judgments. Creoles and concreoles like Belter inhabit spaces of marginalization and subordination—but also of resistance—a reality explored at length by Anzaldúa in her book Borderlands/La Frontera. Nick Farmer, the creator of Belter Creole, argues that creoles emerge as the result of language-change processes that occur in “extreme” language contact situations. The producers asked Farmer to create “a language that sounds like it belongs to an international working class … People who have been taken advantage of” (Colbert and Peterson 2016; emphasis ours). However, any theory of language that assumes the sounds of a language (phonemes) are determined by the socioeconomic status of its speakers is as linguistically improbable as a Universal Translator. Instead, Farmer created a creole that is a combination of elements of Chinese, Romance languages, Hindi, Slavic, Bantu, and English (2016). Lang Belta is more than words, however: it is language, gesture, and accent, and often the characters who speak Belter use a mixture of the creole and SE. In The Expanse, the extreme language contact zone from which the creole emerges is the Belt. Indeed, if Star Trek conceives of space as the “final frontier” explored by the “United Federation of Planets,” The Expanse instead presents Anzaldúa’s la frontera, a “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition” (1987, 3) and, as we see from the very beginning of the series, conflict. Conflict fills the solar system: Earth and Mars are “a single spark” away from war, and various factions of the Belt are continuously fighting for rights and representation. Borderlands themselves are never static because of the constant power struggle between the center and the margin. Initially located spatially in the Belt and shifting when alien technology known as the Ring appears, la frontera is a linguistic and political space—the contact zone where languages and power relations meet and where people speak Belter as part of their resistance to subjugation. In The Expanse, Belter Creole is looked down upon by Inners. Even those with close connections to the Belt, like Fred Johnson (Chad L. Coleman), dismiss it as mere slang. This common attitude denigrating

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the creole arises from ideas about race and power. Anzaldúa, who writes movingly on this theme in many of her works, describes how many from outside and even within her community are critical of Chicano Spanish, which she argues is not “incorrect” or “corrupt” Spanish, nor merely an “accent” or “dialect,” but rather a language worthy of respect on its own.7 As Anzaldúa so poignantly puts it, “If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (1987, 59). Historically, the most stable creoles “arose far from the centers of social control. … They [are] crystallized, one might say, in conditions of ‘anti-prestige’” (Weinreich 2010, 105–106). Like creoles in the real world, Belter developed far from the center of privilege and power, and Belters who can speak only the con-­ creole would be the furthest from privilege or prestige.8 However, though creole languages and ethnic identity are often “twins” with subordinate status, the semantic space they create can also be sites of powerful resistance against the hegemony of the dominant group.

Lang Belta As Resistance Unlike the conlangs in previous SF series, like Klingon in Star Trek, which are mobilized as an index of “otherness” or futurity, lang Belta in The Expanse functions as an explicit means of cultural and political resistance in that speakers intentionally create a sense of belonging, solidarity, or at least insider status—purposefully inaccessible to Inners—through a mutual, fluent use of the concreole. Belters’ use of the concreole is associated with their political identification as Belters and an index to their radicalization. When speaking to each other about politics and Belter identity,

7  Similar arguments address the different varieties of African-American English (AAE) positioned against Standard English (SE). Readers are encouraged to consider, for example, the foundational works of Geneva Smitherman, including Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (1985). 8  Realistically, there would presumably be plenty of people who speak only lang Belta in this universe, but they would be isolated as they would not be able to find jobs with the Inners. These concreole-only speakers are rendered invisible, not even present in the program: this series is about borderlands.

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Belters codeswitch and their accents become stronger.9 We hear our first words of lang Belta from the mouth of a heavily accented street protester: “Owkwa beltalowda” [our water], “ereluf beltalowda” [our air], and “imbobo beltalowda” [our hole]. The protest manifests a Belter collective cultural identity; through language, “Belter” is constituted as a subject position, making Belters a group with agency, a group who can own the materials around them, rather than a frontier to be exploited. Even when Belters are not fully communicating in the concreole, their language marks their cultural identity. As important as the use of the actual conlang itself is, then, much more common in the series is the accented English that Belters use to speak to other Belters as well as to Inners. The audience is helped when Belter characters speak English, but at the same time we are reminded of their Belter subjectivity because of their accents. When Belters Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper) and medical tech Lucia Mazur (Rosa Gilmore) discuss their difficult pasts and their thoughts of suicide, their dialogue is in English for the audience but with a stronger accent to signify Belter identity and positionality (“Oppressor”).10 Dominique Tipper, who plays Naomi, says that rather than always speaking with the same accent, she varies Naomi’s accent depending on context: “It’s a survival instinct for her to not sound like a hardcore Belter, because across the universe, again, I almost feel like sometimes it’s being like a Black person. You don’t want to show you’re too ‘hood’ in certain spaces, because somebody may not give you credit” (Gates 2021). As Tipper suggests, the accents the Belters speak vary from situation to situation and from character to character. When Miller’s partner Dmitri Havelock attempts to learn the concreole, we see how lang Belta is more than mere words and gestures: It signifies both resistance to subjugation by Inners and the expression of cultural identity. Havelock’s experience illustrates the importance of locating language in a political context. In “Remember the Cant,” a vulnerable Belter

9  Codeswitching is the alternating use of two (or more) language varieties by the same speaker. When characters mix Belter and SE, the codeswitching is meaningful, translating sometimes for other characters and often for us, to reduce distance between us and the Belters. 10  Abraham, D., Franck, T. (Writers) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2019, December 12). “Oppressor.” (Season 4, Episode 5). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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sex worker named Gia (Sara Mitich) coaches Havelock in Belter.11 Because Havelock learns Belter from Gia, lang Belta is associated with criminality, poverty, and danger—with marginalized and powerless people whose relationships with Inners and the police is difficult and tentative at best. (These coaching sessions are also secret, looking from the outside like meetings for sex.) Havelock wants to learn how to say (and gesture) expressions that would ostensibly be useful in his police work, but learning Belter also requires understanding the language’s socio-political contexts. Like all oppressed groups, Belters must learn the language of the Inners, but like all oppressing groups, Inners do not need to reciprocate, which is what makes Havelock’s attempt to learn Belter sympathetic. He really tries to get it right: Havelock: Stay calm and everything will be okay. Gia: No, no. Like this. Stay calm, unte kowlting gonya gut, to pochuye ke? Havelock: Stay calm… Gia: [clicks tongue] Hands big, and when you talk, in and before is weak.

While this privileged Inner learning Belter is not wrong, Havelock’s use of Belter is problematic because it obscures the power that comes with his identity as an Inner and his role as a police officer working for Star Helix Security. Indeed, he is clueless about it, imagining himself tolerated or even liked by Belters despite the warnings of Gia and his partner, Miller. As the creator of the walls that separate spaces, the dominant group can cross between the center and the margin, but their power stays intact. Havelock’s ignorance of his position and relationship to Belters is revealed when he patronizingly warns Gia to “stay off the streets today, okay? It could get dangerous out there,” as if he, a recent arrival to the station and an Inner, is in a position to give her advice. Gia returns his own advice back to him: “Maybe you, too, Earther.” Havelock is later confronted by a group of Loca Greiga Belters. Before being nailed to the wall, literally, he tells the Belters facing him to “stay calm, okay? Just go home,” to which the dockworker angrily responds, “Milowda be home” (“Remember the Cant”). The dockworker chooses a Belter word, reminding Havelock that Ceres is their home and that he is the outsider. The Belters see Havelock’s attempts to speak their language and perform its 11  Veith, R. (Writer) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2015, December 22). “Remember the Cant.” (Season 1, Episode 3). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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gestures as a failed attempt to pretend he is a sympathetic equal. For both writers and characters of the series, leaving Belter untranslated is an act of political resistance and an expression of solidarity with Belter ideologies. Havelock’s violent encounter with the Loca Greiga illustrates the importance of the concreole in The Expanse. He can navigate most spaces of Ceres freely, but he cannot enter the semantic and political spaces constructed by lang Belta that work to destabilize the inequities of this particular frontera and resist the exertion of Inner power. While the power of an Inner who learns to speak lang Belta stays intact, Belters speaking the concreole and working in the center never gain central power. However, in the context of colonialism, speaking Belter (and not accommodating the colonizer), especially in the spaces owned or controlled by Inners, is a resistance to power.12 Some Belters choose to accommodate the Inners by speaking English and translating Belter phrases, repeating them for the benefit of the Inners (and the audience) while still continuing to speak Belter—a different kind of political act as well. In the very opening of the series the OPA speaker translates his Belter phrases as he identifies the Inners’ oppression of Belters (“Dulcinea”). In another scene, OPA leader Anderson Dawes (Jared Harris) intervenes in a conflict between Inners and Belters, giving both English and Belter versions of the same sentence: “Gif im fo imalowda xitim. Treat them the way they should treat us” (“Remember the Cant”). As a bilingual Belter, Dawes translates strategically to establish his Belterness as well as to claim competence in the non-Belter world. Ultimately, it is up to the bilingual Dawes to bring together the different worlds and to use his linguistic proficiency to resolve contradictions in this semantic frontera. An important survival strategy, translations resolve conflict and at the same time accommodate the dominant group, placing a disproportionate burden on the marginalized. Dawes, however, is also strategically translating his Belter to further the OPA agenda, resisting Inner hegemony. The series often uses the Belter concreole to sharpen our sense of the difference between Inners and Belters and to keep the audience aware of the Belters’ subject positions. When Belter dialogue is not translated for

12  As Anzaldúa writes, “as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate” (Anzaldúa 1987, 59).

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the Inners and the audience,13 we are left out, but our relationship with the Belters is not the same each time. In “Remember the Cant” in Season 1, in which Miller and Gia talk to each other in Belter, for example, we see what it is to be Havelock and not be able to understand. In Season 4, on Ilus, however, untranslated Belter is used differently.14 The conflict between Inners and Belters is marked by the name of the planet they are on (Ilus to the Belters, New Terra to the Inners). Once Adolphus Murtry (Burn Gorman), another official working for security for the Inners, arrives, the conflict extends from the practical questions of governance to the hegemony of Standard English (“New Terra”). Murtry continually seeks to subjugate the Belters and is perfectly happy to use extreme violence to do it. In the typical mix of lang Belta and English, a Belter with a gun uses an Inner to stop the aggression against a Belter resister: “Na wanyado that, unless you wanyato see the inside of his head” (“Oppressor”). In this case, the untranslated Belter, which is not all that difficult to understand, centers the perspective on the Belter: We are on his side. In another moment, we watch Murtry shoot a Belter and we watch him die, but not from Murtry’s perspective: The scene goes black and ends when the Belter dies, his subjectivity structuring this moment as well (“Jetsam”).15 The concreole requires viewers to piece together meaning using the fragments of Standard English they can understand and the similarity of some Belter words to those they might know in other languages (owkwa, for water, for example). These moments resist the usual power dynamics in a dominant language, eroding the privilege of the Standard-English-­ speaking viewer, for whom communication is usually tailored. Viewers, like the Inners with whom they share a language, are called to acknowledge Belters’ semantic spaces as legitimate and as spaces of resistance against the unequal power structure. Again, giving semantic space to the Belters by not accommodating the viewers and Inners gives Belter language and perspectives legitimacy. 13  The Expanse never translates Belter in the subtitling or closed captioning. Sometimes the closed caption says, “Speaking in Belter creole,” or the dialogue is written in lang Belta with no translation provided for non-Belter speakers. 14  In one scene, a Belter calls to Murtry: “Hey, Pampa! Hey, ju ru ranu!” (“New Terra”). These phrases are untranslated; we don’t know what they mean—Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2019, December 12). “New Terra.” (Season 4, Episode 1). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 15  Marks, L. (Writer) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2019, December 12). “Jetsam.” (Season 4, Episode 2). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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Some Belters can enter Inner spaces as “outsiders within” because of their roles in the power structure. In Black Feminist Thought, Collins describes how the dominant group creates the center and margin, which are separated by porous boundaries. Her “outsider within” is a person from the subordinate group working within the dominant power structures but not really in the center, and “being in outsider-within locations can foster new angles of vision on oppression” (Collins 2009, 14). This position is unstable and dangerous because it requires a constant choice between being seduced and co-opted by the power (i.e. being a welwala) or using the position to make power more equitable. The unique vantage point creates possibilities for change within the center. Though “outsiders within” are vulnerable to becoming gatekeepers for the center, those who are not co-opted have the chance to build a different configuration of power. “Outsiders within” exist at the site of the struggle for power in the center. If they are conscious and deliberate about their power, as Collins argues, their position can challenge and subvert the hegemony of the dominant group and make a third space or frontera in which power can be negotiated and change enabled. One such “outsider within” in The Expanse is Miller, a Belter working for Star Helix. Miller’s identity as a Belter is rarely indicated—only when he is called welwala, when he is speaking in Belter to Gia, when we see his Belter haircut (which is often hidden under his hat), and when we see the spurs on his neck resulting from the gravity-enhancing drugs he was given as a ward of the state (“Dulcinea”). In some ways, especially early in the series, Miller is both co-opted and working against the power of the center. For example, even as Miller is at work as a detective for Star Helix, he is carving out oppositional space by speaking with the murder witness Gia not in Standard English, but in Belter, which is not translated for his partner Havelock or for viewers. In semantic spaces expressed through the concreole, Belters can negotiate the borders determining centrality and marginality in the fictional world of The Expanse. Other Belters who work as “outsiders within” include Naomi Nagata and Camina Drummer (Cara Gee),16 possibly the most important characters in the construction of Belter subjectivity because of the way they evolve in the narrative, their relationships with other Belters, and their visions of new, possible 16  Naomi (who is in a relationship with Earther James Holden) and Drummer (who is approved by Earth to become the captain of Medina Station that controls entry of vessels into the Ring) are Belters trying to create a structure with equal power relations.

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relationships with Inners. The productions of semantic space center Belter subjectivity and the Belter perspective in the narrative; viewers (and Inners) are on the outside looking in at a Belter story. Later, we see Miller not promoting the Belter (or OPA) political agenda but using his detective position to investigate the origins of the protomolecule that may impact the survival of the larger universe. Miller uses the knowledge he gains about the protomolecule as an “outsider within” to do work that benefits both Belters and Inners. As a Belter outsider within the Inners’ policing structure, Miller’s place on the spectrum of Belter politics—and even the spectrum itself—reveals a much more complex epistemology than the binary between Inners and Outers ever would. The existence of multiple epistemologies itself destabilizes hegemony, which depends on a “single story” (Adichie 2009). These epistemologies are more than political opinions: they are based in analyses of reality and specific understandings of how power works. For example, in this conversation Anderson Dawes17 analyzes Earther centrality for Diogo (Andrew Rotilio), a young OPA activist: Dawes: Do you know how old you are? Diogo: Nineteen, I think. Dawes: Earther years. Even our sense of time comes from them. The time it takes the Earth to spin on its axis The Earth to go once around the Sun. [Chuckles lightly] On Jupiter, you’d be celebrating your first birthday. It’s hard to feel we matter out here, isn’t it? The distances are so vast. It’s hard to believe that we can make a difference. (“The Seventh Man”)18

Dawes is educating Diogo into an “authentic” Belter analysis of the ways Inner (and specifically Earther) language controls how Diogo imagines himself. As the dialogue between Diogo and Dawes shows, the Belt is not simply a frontier for Inners to exploit and dominate, complete with unassailable boundaries that preserve Inner hegemony. Rather, it is la frontera, a political space, an intercultural contact zone in which power is contested by heterogeneous groups of characters occupying a range of subject 17  Dawes is persuasive: He convinced Earther Fred (who “butchered” thousands in a counterinsurgency move when he worked for the U.N.) to switch sides and become the face of the OPA. 18  Lee, G. (Writer) & Fink, K. (Director). (2017, March 8). “The Seventh Man.” (Season 2, Episode 7). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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positions with respect to the power of the center. Even resisting Inner hegemony, Belters are not a homogenous, unitary people. The OPA is divided into factions that have different ideas about resistance to Inners and visions for the future of the Belt. At times these multiple epistemologies lead to schisms between Belters. The power of racism is exerted both through the structural walls that the dominant group creates and also through the internalized racism that socializes marginalized groups into the racist system. As Anzaldúa writes, “The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior; these habits and patterns are [for people who are marginalized] the enemy within” (1987, 79). Calling, for example, Miller, Naomi Nagata, Camina Drummer, and Klaes Ashford (David Strathairn) welwala is a manifestation of what Anzaldúa calls the “enemy within,”19 which reflects the internalization of an essentialized notion of Belters (and Inners) and the rigid Inner/Outer binary. That binary, one of the “entrenched habits and patterns,” dictates that anyone not expressly anti-­ Inner must be a gatekeeper working for the Inners. Internalized racism is, though, the fault of the racist system and not the subordinate group. The Inners construct such rigid boundaries and intentionally exploit this division among Belters to maintain Inner dominance.

Toward Mestiza Consciousness Those in the margin struggling with the power of the center and the power of the “enemy within” learn “to juggle culture,” “operate in a pluralistic mode,” and embrace “divergent thinking, characterized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes” (Anzaldúa 1987, 79). The “enemy within” can prevent Belters from developing, in Anzaldúa’s words, a new mestiza consciousness, a “massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consciousness” (80). Anzaldúa characterizes the new mestiza—an Aztec term meaning “torn between ways” (78)—as “a source of intense pain,” yet one whose “energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm” (80). And for Anzaldúa, “The future will 19  It is important not to conflate Collins’ “outsider within” with Anzaldúa’s “enemy within.” The “outsider within” is a marginalized person working in the center. The “enemy within” is the racism a marginalized person has internalized.

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belong to the mestiza” (80). The strategic use of lang Belta as well as Belter accents, and the multiple epistemologies and factions that defy the monolithic representation of Belters, indicate the development of the mestiza consciousness—a new consciousness that refuses to maintain or simply invert the unequal power relations constructed by the Inners. Every major Belter character in the series occupies a slightly different place on the spectrum of Belter politics, which ranges from those who desire to create new, more equitable power relationships with the Inners to those who would overthrow and subordinate the Inners. As Belter leaders and gatekeepers in the new alliance, Drummer and Ashford work within an old hierarchical structure to begin to create a new world order in which they have more power. Naomi Nagata and Drummer use their outsider-within status to create a different, more equitable structure. All factions of the OPA resist being maneuvered into their mined and colonized position. Opposite Naomi and Drummer on the Belter political spectrum, the radical Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) attempts to take control of all OPA factions and invert the hierarchy through the subordination of Inners. The range and evolution of positionalities that constitutes Belters’ mestiza consciousness challenges Inners’ monolithic portrayal of the marginalized as “other” and “terrorists.” Like Naomi and Drummer, another character who evolves is Ashford, whose positionality develops over time from aligning with radical OPA leader Dawes’ vision of Belter domination to Drummer’s vision of an equitable future for Belters. Trapped in the cargo bay of the Behemoth, Drummer and Ashford talk about their pasts, the importance of not encouraging the Inners to treat them as homogenous, what the future of the Belters should look like, and how to deal with radical OPA factions. In this scene, Ashford shifts ideologically toward Drummer’s position, having begun by defending the uniforms he has designed: Ashford: Oh, when the victim becomes the victorious, they adopt a uniform to show that they are now one warrior. Individuals can be divided and conquered, but symbols … endure. Drummer: [shakes head] We are who we are. That’s what make us Belter. That’s the way the Inners need to see us. Ashford: Yeah, well, they will in time. But right now they need to see us as one. Now I have no desire to look like anyone other than myself, but I will

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sacrifice my pride—to make something better for the future. I hope that one day, that what make us Belter. Drummer [starts singing the song Ashford was singing “The Ballad of Captain Kidd”].20 (“Fallen World”)21

To accommodate the audience, almost all the dialogue in this scene between these Belters is in English, influenced by Belter morpho-syntax and accents, reminding us that their experiences, identity, and enduring political resistance to Inner hegemony are those of Belters. In short, then, Belters challenge the dominant/subordinate binary and their homogenization by Inners by speaking lang Belta in the presence of Inners and developing and maintaining a “strategic multiplicity” of positions within the Belter identity (Kishimoto et al. 2021 passim). Characters’ locations in the range of Belter subject positions are represented by the language they speak and the strength of their Belter accents. Inaros, Dawes, and Ashford always speak with a heavy Belter accent, signifying Belter identity as well as their more radical resistance to Inner dominance. That is, even when Belters speak English to each other, their accents indicate their Belter identity, their position on the political spectrum, and their relations with one another. In these examples, the use of the concreole creates semantic spaces in which Belters develop a mestiza consciousness as Beltalowda.

Conclusion From the earliest moments of the show, linguistic markers serve as signifiers of group membership in the Belt. Belters use language to resist the dominant group, mark their cultural identity, and stake out their own borders. As such, lang Belta and the Belter accent are what Anzaldúa calls “twin skin” to Belter identity for Belters in The Expanse, whose concreole is the means for self-identification, self-determination, and resistance. Within this space, Belters Josephus Miller, Naomi Nagata, Camina  Singing this song is a demonstration of loyalty to the Belters. Ashford sings this song again when he is spaced by Inaros, who has accused him of being a welwala—Abraham, D., Franck, T., Shankar, N. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2019, December 12). “Cibola Burn.” (Season 4, Episode 10). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 21  Nowak, D. (Writer) & Phang, J. (Director). (2018, June 20). “Fallen World.” (Season 3, Episode 11). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 20

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Drummer, and Klaes Ashford work at the border between Inners and Belters and between groups inside the Belter political landscape. They all are accused of being welwala, and they all work, as Miller does, to address the threat to the universe (the protomolecule) that overshadows the importance of the Inner-Belter binary. They also all exist in la frontera between Inners and Belters, which gives them “new angles of vision” to develop a mestiza consciousness and see the larger problems facing the universe itself. As Anzaldúa makes clear, la frontera is a theoretical and political space that exists in the contact between the oppressor and the oppressed. Belters’ presence in that frontera makes visible and challenges the structural hegemony that oppresses and excludes them. And using Anzaldúa’s Chicano Spanish or, in the fictional world, the Belter language, is one way in which the marginalized create semantic space and resist the center/inner—and rather than being welwala, make Belters Beltalowda.

References Adichie, C. N. (2009, October 7). The Danger of a Single Story. TED. YouTube video, 19, 16. Posted October 7, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Bellamy, B. R., & O’Brien, S. (2018). Solar Accumulation: The Worlds-Systems Theory of The Expanse. Science Fiction Studies, 45(3), 515–529. Colbert, L., & Peterson, C. (2016, January 12). The Expanse: Nick Farmer on Conlanging and the Intersection of Language and Scifi. In Decipher SciFi Podcast, produced by Decipher Media. Podcast audio, 1:04:26. https://deciphermedia.tv/decipherscifi/language-­expanse-­feat-­nick-­farmer-­episode-­46 Collins, P. H. (2009). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge Classics. Farmer, N. (@Nfarmerlinguist). (2016, February 9). @Laserhedvig First and Foremost Creole, of Course. Superstrate is English, Substrates Predominantly Chinese, Romance, Hindi Slavic, Bantu. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ Nfarmerlinguist/status/697283495257731072 Gates, C. (2021, January 5). The Expanse’s Dominique Tipper Delves Into The Belter Accent—Exclusive. Looper. https://www.looper.com/306961/the­expanses-­dominique-­tipper-­delves-­into-­the-­belter-­accent-­exclusive/

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Kishimoto, K., Barton, M. D., Sadrai, E. M., Dando, M. B., & Cogdill, S. (2021). “Am I Real?”: Hybridity, Strategic Multiplicity, and Self-actualization in Star Trek: Picard. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 23(3), 338–367. Smitherman, G. (1985). Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Wayne State University Press. Weinreich, U. (2010). Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. Walter de Gruyter.

CHAPTER 3

“You’ve Seen One Post-Apocalyptic City, You’ve Seen Them All”: The Scales and Failures of the Right to the City and the Science Fiction Production of Space in Love, Death, & Robots Phevos Kallitsis

Introduction “Three Robots,”1 the third episode of the first season of Netflix’s Love, Death, & Robots (LDR),2 finds the titular robots on a tourist expedition of a deserted city, photographing corpses while contemplating human life of the past. Long before they start referring to the human hubris that led to 1  Scalzi, J., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Maldonado, V., Torres, A. (Directors). (2019, March 15). ”Three Robots.” (Season 1, Episode 2). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio. 2  Miller, T., Donen, J., Fincher, D., Miller, J. (Executive Producers). (2019–2021). Love, Death, & Robots [TV series]. Blur Studio.

P. Kallitsis (*) Portsmouth School of Architecture, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_3

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environmental crisis and the extinction of civilization, one of them says in disappointment, “You’ve seen one post-apocalyptic city, you’ve seen them all!” Whatever the cause of this particular apocalypse, the observation recalls Henri Lefebvre’s suggestion that the death of the urban is the result of the homogeneity of cities (Schmid 2012). The French philosopher in his 1968 book The Right to the City sees science fiction as a call not only to examine the imaginary next to the scientific but also to examine the imaginary as an intrinsic element of the city (Lefebvre 1996b, 167). Lefebvre goes on to claim that science fiction (SF) has foreseen “every possible and impossible variation of future urban society,” reflecting and projecting into the future contemporary power struggles (Lefebvre 1996b, 160–161). This, of course, raises a number of questions: Are SF imaginaries of future cities always tied to the homogenized neoliberal cities we inhabit, and are they therefore also, in a sense, trapped in this homogenized space, no matter the variation of the imaginary? And, if SF has imagined every permutation of a possible future city, has that imaginary itself become a homogenizing force? Can it no longer imagine an original city? The first season of LDR ponders these questions, while also struggling with its own urban imaginaries—its cities perhaps also trapped within neoliberal homogenized urban grids and a homogenizing SF imaginary. LDR is a series of SF shorts created by Tim Miller, based on stories from established SF authors written between 1981 and 2018 and inspired by Potterton’s Heavy Metal (1981).3 Miller thought that “any kind of structure would limit the type of stories that [the episodes] could tell” (Schwartz 2019) and thus gave complete freedom to the different creators. As a result, the 18 episodes of the first season and eight episodes of the second season constitute an encyclopedia of narratives and animation techniques, though broadly speaking, Season 2 appears more focused on the very SF questions of what it means to be alive and/or human, while Season 1 is more “space,” or setting, focused—offering an extensive palette of spatial (cosmological, metropolitan, urban, rural, and natural) and cultural (Western and Oriental) contexts, its mostly bleak narratives provide rich material to explore the “destructive character of neoliberal policies,” the socio-spatial differences they produce and how they transform in

3  Potterton, G. (Director), Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum (Screenplay), (1981). Heavy Metal [Film]. Columbia Pictures, Guardian Trust Company, CFDC, Famous Players, Potterton Productions.

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different contexts (Peck et al. 2009, 53; see also Mayer 2018; Pinson and Journel 2016). A key analytical tool in this chapter is Lefebvre’s concept of the everyday, according to which “humble events of everyday life” are simultaneously a banal moment and a consequence of complex events and policies, demonstrating capitalism’s reign in all scales and levels (1991a, 57). This paper situates characters in their fictional spatiotemporal contexts, exploring the way individual encounters, memories, pleasures, and desires cross paths with large-scale plans and diachronic elements. The variety of the episodes support Peck, Theodore, and Brenner’s (2009) notion of “actually existing neoliberalism,” suggesting diverse neoliberal processes that take different forms in different contexts while retaining a similar creative-­ destructive nature. In this neoliberal reading of the diverse spaces of Miller’s LDR, the more the setting changes, the more the story and the city stay the same. Despite the variety of characters and backgrounds, protagonists frequently find themselves caught in the same traps of urban space defined by Lefebvre. This chapter’s spatial analysis follows Lefebvre’s triad of interrelated aspects of space (1991b, 38–39), examining LDR episodes as representations of space. The first section focuses on the narrative role of the dipole city/nature, which is key in Lefebvre’s analysis of the urban. As part of this discussion, the first section examines the animators’ creation of different types of generic cities (Koolhaas et al. 1995) in relation to the expansion of the city and colonization of nature as a mode of capital surplus (Harvey 2008). Within these stereotypical depictions of the city, characters perform different spatial practices, which attempt to create familiarity and at the same time question everyday activities in actual space. The second section explores the way SF bodies are trapped in these cities and forced to follow the neoliberal compulsion for continued regeneration and for novelty, thereby adapting to capitalism’s inherent and constant crises (Pinson and Journel 2016; Mayer 2018). Finally, the third section focuses on the way the bleak LDR narratives record the contemporary inability (De Souza 2010) to fully explore Lefebvre’s demand for the right to the city, reducing the concept from a possible revolution to the gratification of revenge. Under the homogenizing pressures of the city, LDR protagonists are forced into various cycles of continual regeneration and renewal in which they fall short of genuine revolution and instead fall back on revenge against their urban oppressors. Deliberately or unintentionally, then, LDR as a whole suggests a possibility for urban freedom its protagonists are

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repeatedly unable to attain, resorting instead to revenge and other forms of gratification that leave them trapped in the urban pressures from which they attempt to extricate themselves. This suggests another troubling failure, that LDR is itself trapped within the homogenized neoliberal urban imaginary.

Representation of Spatial Stereotypes and the SF Generic City According to Lefebvre, nature carries images “of the innate,” while the city represents will and effort, and through their juxtaposition great symbolisms emerge (1996b, 87). In LDR, both spaces conceal threats and offer safe haven from the other: The city is the means to control dangerous nature, while nature is a place to escape the aggressively expanding city. Rowley (2015) argues that while filmic spaces are notional places that amalgamate imagery from actual spaces (material context) and social practices, they also contain references to other media. The different cities in LDR, in order to communicate their universes within their limited duration of the short, are defined through references to recognizable urban landmarks and stereotypical representations of buildings and streets. These imaginary cities are also built through city/nature juxtapositions. This, of course, helps viewers read and understand these spaces more quickly, but it also limits what might be read there. The cities in “Ice Age,”4 “Three Robots,” “The Dump,”5 and “When the Yogurt Took Over,”6 despite differentiations in architectural forms, dystopian or utopian visions, reflect what Koolhaas et al. (1995) define as the generic city; these are cities like any other city, without a specific past or future, lacking distinction. However indistinct, these cities are decidedly US cities; they could be anywhere in the US, but at the same time they have a clear identity. They incorporate both an attempt at 4  Swanwick, M., Miller, T., Gelatt, P. (Writers) & Miller, T. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Ice Age.” (Season 1, Episode 16). Love, Death, & Robots. Atomic Fiction, Blur Studio, Digic Pictures, Netflix Studios. 5  Lansdale, J.R., Miller, T., Gelatt, P. (Writers) & Recio Gracia, J. (Director). (2019, March 15). “The Dump.” (Season 1, Episode 9). Love, Death, & Robots. Able & Baker, Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 6  Scalzi, J., Robertson, J., Miller, T. (Writers) & Maldonado, V., Torres, A. (Directors). (2019, March 15). “When the Yogurt Took Over.” (Season 1, Episode 6). Love, Death, & Robots. Blow Studio, Blur Studio, Netflix Studios.

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technological/economic progress and the conquest of nature (Harvey 2008). Their expansion, according to Engels (1995), aims to give to the land “an artificial and often colossally increasing value.” At the same time though, according to Lefebvre (1996b, 120), these generic cities’ devouring expansion leads to their death. The strongest depiction of a fatal expansion that makes urban life vanish is in “Ice Age,” the story of a couple who discover in an old freezer a miniature world that is an accelerated spatiotemporal cartography of humanity’s past and future. This world begins in prehistoric times and in a few minutes arrives to the present. As the timeline moves into the future, we witness the city’s technological advancement and subsumption of nature. The city continues to adapt, even after a nuclear explosion, and seems unstoppable until it suddenly wraps into itself and disappears. The neoliberal promise of continuous evolution leads to the end of the city; however, the mise-en-scène evokes the notion that the end of the urban has in fact arrived much earlier. In the early historical phases, the camera flies through the space, framing spatial activities and depicting everyday life. Up until the industrial revolution, the camera explores the earth and the scale of the human and with the use of wide shots links them to the larger-­ scale transformations. In contrast, the future city is framed macroscopically; the smaller scale of everyday and spatial practices is erased, reflecting Lefebvre’s (1991b, 377) assertion that: “social space emerged from the earth and evolved … until an abstract space was constructed … that went beyond spatiality by becoming the production of a homogeneous and pathogenic political ‘medium’ […] of the state, of power and its strategies.” In a similar tone in other segments of LDR, such as “The Dump” and “Three Robots,” the SF urban becomes a symbol of humanity’s infatuation with expansion and progress. At the same time, it is depicted as a mechanism of power, which overlooks people, destroys nature, and leads to the extinction of humanity. This infatuation with expansion and progress seemingly contradicts the creation of a generic and homogenized city, which, according to Richard Sennett (1992), cannot “provoke discovery.” Thus, in order to continue this expansion and development, it becomes crucial to explore and conquer nature or, in many SF scenarios, to colonize outer space. Nature in LDR (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) is an exciting space for exploration, though also codified as dangerous and in need of taming—a coding in itself stereotypical, or unoriginal—another kind of generic reading of space. Episodes critique these kinds of space but are also perhaps limited

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by them. In other words, à la Sennett, there is little to discover in the urban (and indeed natural spaces) imagined in the show. The importance of the conquest of new territories resists but also arguably falls into the trap of the homogenized experience of space. This need for conquest is highlighted in “Alternate Histories.”7 The episode explores alternative histories, and each subversion of the main timeline starts with a change of a banal moment in young Adolf Hitler’s life. These small-scale events (for instance, a car running him over) initiate a chain reaction that alters our world. Each alternative version ends with an attempt to define the ultimate “winner” of history according to which nation first conquers the moon and generates or produces a new space by expanding its civilization into new territories. This production of space is what constitutes a group, a class, a faction and makes it recognizable to others (Lefebvre 1991b, 416) and many LDR episodes focus on military, scientific, or opportunistic expeditions, either on Earth (“Good Hunting,”8 “Sucker of Souls,”9 “The Secret War,”10 “Shape-Shifters”11), or in outer space (“Helping Hand,”12 Beyond the Aquila Rift,”13 “Lucky 13,”14 “Suits”15). Throughout the 7  Scalzi, J., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Maldonado, V, Torres, A. (Directors). (2019, March 15). “Alternate Histories.” (Season 1, Episode 17). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Sun Creature Studios. 8  Miller, T., Gelatt, P., Liu, K. (Writers) & Thomas, O. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Good Hunting.” (Season 1, Episode 8). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Reddog Culture House. 9  Miller, T., Gelatt, P. (Writers) & Sullivan, O. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Sucker of Souls.” (Season 1, Episode 5). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Studio La Cachette. 10  Amendola, D.W., Miller, T., Gelatt, P. (Writers) & Zorkóczy, I. (Director). (2019, March 15). “The Secret War.” (Season 1, Episode 18). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Digic Pictures, Netflix Studios. 11  Kloos, M., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Pennacchioli, G. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Shape-Shifters.” (Season 1, Episode 10). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 12  Griggs, C., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Yeo, J. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Helping Hand.” (Season 1, Episode 11). Love, Death, & Robots. Axis Animation, Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 13  Reynolds, A., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Boidin, D., Bérelle, L., Kozyra, R. (Directors). (2019, March 15). “Beyond the Aquila Rift.” (Season 1, Episode 7). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Unit Image. 14  Gelatt, P., Kloos, M., Miller, T. (Writers) & Chen, J. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Lucky 13.” (Season 1, Episode 13). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 15  Lewis, S., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Balson, F. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Suits.” (Season 1, Episode 4). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios.

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LDR shorts, historical progress is continuously confluent with urban agglomeration. The urban in these episodes actualizes what Lefebvre (1996b, 131) describes as the “technical domination over nature.” Technological advancement (weapons, equipment, transportation, body enhancement) attempts to tame nature, take advantage of its resources, and, most importantly, pave the way for the neoliberal city to expand and increase land values. But even if the city expands, it does so at the expense of the working class, and in LDR these expeditions result in mutilation, death, or imprisonment. The city is a symbol of technology, effort, will (Lefebvre 1996b, 87), and needs to conquer the simplicity of nature and make a profit out of its resources. The most direct reference to such expansion is depicted in “Good Hunting,” which takes place in a steampunk version of British colonization in China. In a transitional scene, the male protagonist, who grew up in a rural world, mentions that he is happy that his father, a hunter, passed before he saw their world disappear. The transition is represented with the green fields and the appearance of the railway, and the camera pans until it reveals the dense, grey city (another micro to macro movement—nature to urban). In this scene, the narrative summarizes how the city is a global empire’s tool for the annexation of land. As a result of this annexation, rural everyday practices vanish, as inhabitants are unable to hunt or grow crops, and the locals are enslaved and obliged to serve their colonizers. In “Good Hunting,” one finds a key metaphor of the representational space that we call nature. Nature is the place of magic and myth, and there live the huli-jing, female seductive creatures who embody Lefebvre’s (1996b, 118) description of nature as a place “reached by the imaginary.” However, these creatures are a threat to men; the city is the means to tame them, as it drains natural resources and, in turn, the huli-jing’s magical powers. According to Lefebvre, nature “flees into the cosmos or the underground depths of the world;” both its absence and its presence are a menace and the city is not a place, but a tool to control and suppress it. At the same time, the SF city is always under threat, so it needs to expand and regenerate to survive, requiring the illusion of continuous progress in order to persist. However, as “Ice Age” implies, when progress reaches its saturation point, the urban disappears and nature takes over once again.

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Embodied Exclusions and Entrapment Focusing on progress has been an excellent strategy to deal with the short boom-and-bust cycles of capitalism since the late twentieth century (Massumi 1993), and the expansion of the SF city illustrates the concept of cities as “crucial arenas for neoliberal forms of policy experimentation and institutional restructuring” (Brenner and Theodore 2002). Under the umbrella of urban regeneration, cities banish the past as an obstacle to evolution. Harvey (2005, 101–108) highlights that the power of neoliberalism is linked to its spatial politics—special districts for investment, privileging loans for real estate, and the construction of high-tech industrial districts disadvantaging local economies and practices. Sassen (2006) adds that global capitalism outgrows the need for the citizen as worker and consumer instead of expanding the space of civic inclusion. These strategies alter the rhythm of everyday life, and Lefebvre (1996a) suggests the body is forced to adapt to this accelerating rhythm. In LDR, a number of episodes explore the urban acceleration of the SF city into a boundless and inescapable space (as described by Sobchack [1988]) and its implications for the bodies of its various subjects. In many cases, for bodies to adapt to this urban reality, they need to be mechanically enhanced. Adaptation often means remaining useful to the city’s wealthy elite. In the previously mentioned “Good Hunting,” the female protagonist is mutilated and her legs replaced with robotic prosthetics to excite the fetish of a rich man. In “Blind Spot,”16 four mercenaries by contract transfer their consciousness into consumable bodies so their employers do not have to worry about damages, while in “Sonnie’s Edge,”17 human fighters temporarily transfer their consciousness to the bodies of monsters in order to participate in fight clubs, again for the profit and entertainment of wealthy elites. Additionally, Zima (Kevin Michael Richardson), in “Zima Blue,”18 allegedly undergoes an illegal

16  Shushko, V., Miller, T. (Writers) & Shushko, V. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Blind Spot.” (Season 1, Episode 15). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 17  Hamilton, P.F., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Wilson, D., Pennacchioli, G. (Directors). (2019, March 15). “Sonnie’s Edge.” (Season 1, Episode 1). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios. 18  Gelatt, P., Miller, T., Reynolds, A. (Writers) & Valley, R. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Zima Blue.” (Season 1, Episode 14). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Passion Animation Studios.

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operation that makes him immortal so he can develop his art and amaze his fans, who require increasingly large and imposing works of art. Ultimately, the repetitive and homogenous expansion of the city fails to deliver the promise of better future for all. It makes the everyday banal and repetitive, but this is not recognized by the entrapped subjects, as we see in “Beyond the Aquila Rift.” In this episode, a space expedition goes wrong and the sole survivor, Thom (Henry Douthwaite), ends up in a faraway place where he unexpectedly meets a former lover. At first, Thom seems to be lucky, finding safety and even sexual gratification. Soon, though, he realizes that everything is an illusion and he is actually trapped by an alien entity draining his life. However, the moment Thom realizes the truth, the illusion resets to the beginning, disorienting him anew. Similarly, in “The Witness,”19 the two protagonists (a man and woman) are trapped in a time-loop, chasing each other in the infamous areas of a generic city in Asia. The chase goes through a sequence of spaces in decaying parts of the city: a cheap hotel, dirty streets, a brothel (the working space of the woman), another dirty street, and a crumbling flat. The cycle of the loop ends when one of them dies, only to be regenerated, and the cat-and-mouse game starts again, alternating the roles of hunter and hunted each time. This urban chase of the twin protagonists of “The Witness” defines the cyclical urban rhythm from which there is no escape. Both these episodes include in their narrative sexualized imagery, which has been criticized as unnecessary (Fear 2019; Robinson 2019). However, these scenes are intrinsic to the episodes’ spatiotemporal traps. In the same way Lefebvre (1991a, 35) sees displays of sexuality and nudity as a superficial “break with everyday life,” only temporarily hiding the “secret of the everyday—dissatisfaction,” the sexual images here seem to provide a break from the bleak urban reality, but, of course, they are also part of the trap. They are key to creating the illusion that conceals enslaved bodies, decaying spaces, and the inhumane nature of the expanding city and the galloping succession of capitalist crises, which limit citizens. The fleeting gratification Thom and the protagonists of “The Witness” find in sex and violence ultimately distract from and conceal the more pernicious SF loops in which these characters are trapped. The rhythms of neoliberal expansion, the accelerated capitalist boom-and-bust cycles and the poverty of 19  Mielgo, A., Miller, T. (Writers) & Mielgo, A. (Director). (2019, March 15). “The Witness.” (Season 1, Episode 3). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Pinkman TV.

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daily life they create, submit urban society to “pressures it cannot withstand” (Lefebvre 1996b, 128). One reaction to this is nostalgia for a simpler past, a form of escapism. In “Zima Blue” and “Fish Night,”20 this nostalgia takes the form of a voluntary death. In the latter, two door-to-door salesmen discuss how the advancing world is making their profession redundant. As they daydream of past days, a prehistoric underwater world manifests and phantoms of prehistoric creatures float in the sky. This colorful, joyful illusion is tempting, and the younger man dies when he attempts to integrate into the illusion, in a reflection of the Icarus myth. On the other hand, in “Zima Blue,” Zima has conquered the art world with his huge murals that grow to the point of expanding beyond the Earth and into the galaxy. Is this the ultimate form of public art, functioning as yet another distraction from the trap of urban living? When his expanding art and fame reach a saturation point, similar to the future city in “Ice Age,” Zima decides to scale down to a simpler life. Finally, the mysterious Zima reveals he is an advanced AI robot, whose initial function was to be a swimming pool cleaning device. His ultimate artwork is the reconstruction of the suburban Californian swimming pool and a final performance, in which he dives in and devolves into that simple robot, in nostalgia for a slower everyday rhythm of the past. Whether characters seek escape in gratuitous sex and violence or in a nostalgic return, their ultimate fates remain bleak. In turn, we must ask again of the show, whether its viewers are similarly trapped, titillated, and distracted at points by the show’s violence and sex (intrinsic to the entrapment of viewers), unaware that they view or inhabit a homogenized SF urban imaginary, which they are watching (and paying for), perpetuating the expansion of this SF aesthetic and world, and by extension the digital landscape that hosts it—Netflix, a homogenizing, not urban but comparable, digital space. Lefebvre (1996b) and Harvey (2006) emphasize that accumulation of wealth and power are based on spatial, financial, and cultural expansion. Hardt and Negri (2000, 154) add that this world is without boundaries and its sped-up processes are accompanied “not by free play and equality, but by the imposition of new hierarchies.” In a new “metropolitan mainstream,” as discussed by Schmid (2012, 54), “relatively banal ideas about 20  Lansdale, J.R., Gelatt, P., Miller, T. (Writers) & Nenow, D. (Director). (2019, March 15). “Fish Night.” (Season 1, Episode 12). Love, Death, & Robots. Blur Studio, Netflix Studios, Platige Image.

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how to ignite urban ‘growth’” disregard Lefebvre’s thesis of the right to the city as access to the urban resources for all segments of the population and as the possibility of realizing alternative ways of life. The SF city is about progress in the name of profit, and it is clear that bodies either need to adapt to these rhythms through mechanical enhancement or by surrendering to temporal illusions. There are many illusions to distract from the failures of the system, but it is clear that not every/body has access to this new urban future.

The Right to the City as Revenge In the previous two sections, we established how LDR narratives project on the SF city the galloping neoliberal politics of space and highlight the inability of capitalism to be inclusive and realize political promises of prosperity. The expansion of neoliberal space creates a landscape of limited access to basic resources and subjects who are obliged to serve the elites in order to survive. These subjects are either the local population of colonized areas (“Shape-Shifters,” “Suits,” “Good Hunting”) or the lower classes (“Sonnie’s Edge,” “The Dump,” “Blind Spot”) who lose access to the land and control of their bodies. While this urban expansion seems unstoppable on a macroscopic level, LDR portrays smaller-scale revenge against one’s oppressors. The oppressed, through violent and aggressive actions, reclaim their space from their oppressors, and such episodes draw links between colonization, imperialism, racism, and the exploitation of the working classes. For example, “The Dump” illustrates how marginalized people are constantly chased as time and space succumb to profit and the added value discussed by Harvey (2012), falling victim to the “class cleansing of the urban landscape” (Smith 2011). A city inspector delivers an eviction notice to Ugly Dave Dvorchek (Nolan North), who lives in a dump at the outskirts of a city. A developer has purchased cheap land next to a dump and needs the government to improve the area to add value to their investment. In other words, as Smith (2011) observes about urban regeneration projects, Dvorchek, the local resident, will be deprived of his home and will not benefit of the development of the area. Dvorchek’s eviction is halted when a muck creature, born by the accumulation of waste in the area, swallows the city inspector. Dvorchek, equally seen as human waste by the neoliberal system, treats the creature as his pet, using it to take revenge on the state attempting to remove his right to the outskirts of the city.

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Lefebvre sees this expansion of the city as the “colonization of nature,” and, as previously discussed, “Good Hunting” demonstrates how British colonization drained the natural resources of China. The clash of global (imperial) and local (rural) spatiotemporalities leads to the destruction of local balances, and industrialization supplants magic, resulting in magical creatures losing their powers and locals losing their everyday practices and rhythms of life. By representing the Chinese through different classes, genders, and species, especially in the pre-invasion part of the story, the narrative avoids stereotypical depictions, and highlights the extent to which the colonized subjects are obliged to serve their colonizers in order to survive. As children, Yan and Liang become friends despite the rivalry between their species (huli-jing and human), but they lose touch as the city takes over the grounds on which they used to meet. When Yan and Liang meet again, Yan (Elaine Tan) tells him about the tortures and mutilations she has endured. Liang (Matthew Yang King) uses his skills in robotics as a proxy to magic and reinstates her powers. The working-class Liang uses his talent to reinstate the female huli jing’s powers so she can take revenge over the men who harmed her and reclaim the right of all women to exist in public (here, urban) space. The steampunk world of “Good Hunting” condenses the timeline of colonization’s exploitation and oppression and offers a close-up view of the oppressed and their desire to avenge their exploitation. Both Dvorchek and Yan use revenge to assert their right to spatial inhabitation. Nevertheless, if “Good Hunting,” “The Dump” and “Sonnie’s Edge” ask the viewer to side with the oppressed, in the case of “Suits,” the colonization is well hidden and revenge is seen as an attack on traditional American values. Initially, the episode presents a peaceful American farmland, where brave farmers defend their land from an alien invasion using advanced mechanical suits. However, in the final scene, the camera travels upward to reveal a wide shot of a colonized planet, where the colonizers have created a network of rural gated communities. The “aliens” are the indigenous species of the planet, despite their initial representation as “others beyond the pale” who threaten the sacred right to property. However, the representation of the indigenous species as aggressive nonverbal monsters leaves little room for sympathy; as a result, we fail to fully appreciate that the aliens may be revolting against their oppressors. Capitalism and the actual existing neoliberalism take different forms and they are not one unique system, altering daily life for the locals. LDR depicts how these interruptions and invasions incite anger and a strong

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desire for revenge as the oppressed realize their spatial exclusion. This pattern is present in the stories of Sonnie (Helen Sadler) in “Sonnie’s Edge,” who seeks justice by killing men who tortured and raped her; Zima (“Zima Blue”), who wants to ridicule his art crowds; or nature itself, which destroys a hubristic, exploitative humanity (“Three Robots”). De Souza (2010), quoting Castoriades, underlines that realism is a tool to create change with “minimum horror” and implies this approach will never lead to the urban revolution implied by Lefebvre’s right to the city. Revenge could read as spatial practice, which according to Lefebvre is an attempt to redefine the conception of space to alter the way it is inhabited, but this is a limited and ultimately self-defeating practice of inhabitation that arguably aligns the “oppressed” with the oppressor—they who, often violently, control space. In “Good Hunting,” Yan talks about how men in power “perpetrate evil and call it progress,” right before she starts her vengeful brawl, aiming to allow women in Hong Kong to reclaim the streets of the city. Similar to the indigenous extraterrestrials in “Suits,” this reclamation is full of horror, as the various subjects do not succumb to the illusions that distract from the dissatisfaction of the everyday. “Suits” depicts the only case of a collective revolt, but it is presented as a threat to civilization, not an attack of colonization. Revenge, much like the neoliberal urban, is unimaginative in its response—again, there is nothing to “discover” here, and the structures of power and, through them, commodified and homogenized spaces remain intact. The other cases of resistance are limited to small-scale violent outbreaks against the men in power, which never become collective revolutionary acts. They disrupt the everyday banality and reveal the inequalities, but it seems that the rest of the world continues uninterrupted. Even when their acts of vengeance against oppressors succeed, characters remain trapped in urban agglomeration and the seemingly indelible inequalities driving its expansion. Similarly, viewers of the show remain trapped, the SF imaginary offering a similarly violent and looped television space as that inhabited by characters of the series— bloody revenge just another momentary distraction from the banal.

Conclusion As J. P. Telotte (2001, 16) observes, SF imaginary and imagery express enthusiasm for the new but also a reluctance for the possible consequences of progress. LDR provides a variety of images that warn of the negative implications of this homogenized and expanding city, which devours

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nature and people. What originally starts as a journey for exploration becomes a form of colonization of planets, countries, nature, or everyday life. Local populations, lower classes, and bodies that cannot follow this progress are enslaved and deprived of the urban resources amassed by their oppressors. At the same time, the subjects of these SF worlds (and the narration) seem unable to provide any lasting alternative to the spatial politics of neoliberalism. The struggle for the city is doomed. For viewers, these are urban spaces, narratives, and violent resistance we have seen before and will see again. Whether practices of escape for characters and viewers take the form of gratification, nostalgia, or (enjoyment of) revenge, all such attempts to evade or rewrite the atrocities and disappointments of the SF city ultimately fail to deliver lasting liberation. LDR narratives oscillate between critiquing and promoting (or being trapped within) conservative and neoliberal values under the cloak of technological progress and futuristic visions. Technological progress, the expansion of the city, the urbanization of nature, the conquest and colonization of other galaxies are key to the survival of human civilization, especially as we approach a saturation point, as imagined in the future city of “Ice Age” or implied by the post-apocalyptic world of “Three Robots.” Similar to the Sisyphean time-loops of “The Witness” and “Beyond the Aquila Rift,” civilization will arrive to its end only to be reborn, as happens with the crises of undying capitalism. LDR episodes thus highlight that progress is a cover to systematic failures, and it is not a progress of transformation but, as Lefebvre (1996b) argues, a repetition of traditional values, hidden behind strategies of regeneration (Smith, 2011). In the LDR imagery and imaginary, space is not produced socially, but is mechanically reproduced in a homogenized form. Bodies are not only excluded but also transformed in order to respond to the constant need for regeneration, either to be able to work eternally or to respond to the desires of those in power. Within this bleak atmosphere, many narratives directly or indirectly propound revenge against the oppressive system, displaying spatial practices that attempt to produce impactful change. Despite the narrative closure these victories offer, they have little in common with Lefebvre’s right to the city. Lefebvre sees the right to the city as a neglected urban quality; it means access to the resources of the city for all. Revenge does not lead to the realization of alternative ways of life that Lefebvre advocates, nor does it explore new urban possibilities that SF could help us dream. In fact, it limits that imaginary: There is nothing new here for viewers to discover.

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LDR’s narratives highlight that the struggles for the city and the need for change cannot come with “minimal horror” and require a wider-scale transformation, which, according to Harvey (2010, 255), requires “abandoning cherished beliefs and prejudices, giving up various daily comforts and rights” and “submitting to some new daily life.” Unfortunately, when such revolutions do take place, like in “Suits,” we draw back to default positions and side with the colonizers, the conquerors. Maybe, similar to the episode “When the Yogurt Took Over,” we prefer to live in a white, polished suburban world, refusing to see that the hope that capitalism will work for all is as absurd as a sentient dairy product providing the solution. And, after all, yogurt is also homogenized.

References Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’. Antipode, 34, 349–379. De Souza, M.  L. (2010). Which Right to Which City? In Defense of Political-­ Strategic Clarity. Interface, 2, 315–333. Engels, F. (1995). The Housing Question. Transcribed by Zodiac. Published June 1995. Accessed February 15, 2020. https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1872/housing-­question/ Fear, D. (2019). ‘Love, Death & Robots’ Review: Netflix’s ‘Heavy Metal’ For Post-Millennials. Rolling Stone, March 18, 2019. https://www.rollingstone. com/tv/tv-­reviews/love-­death-­robots-­tv-­review-­netflix-­808651/ Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). The Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. Verso. Harvey, D. (2008). The Right to the City. New Left Review, 53, 23–40. Harvey, D. (2010). Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition. Interface, 2, 243–261. Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso. Koolhaas, R., Mau, B., & Office for Metropolitan Architecture. (1995). Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Monacelli Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991a). Critique of Everyday Life. Verso. Lefebvre, H. (1991b). The Production of Space. Basil Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1996a). Elements of Rhythmanalysis. In E.  Kofman & E.  Lebas (Eds.), Writing on Cities (pp. 219–240). Blackwell.

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Lefebvre, H. (1996b). The Right to the City. In E. Kofman & E. Lebas (Eds.), Writings on Cities (pp. 63–184). Blackwell. Massumi, B. (1993). Everywhere You Want to Be: An Introduction to Fear. In B. Massumi (Ed.), The Politics of Everyday Fear (pp. 3–38). The University of Minnesota Press. Mayer, M. (2018). Neoliberalism and the Urban. In D.  Cahill, M.  Cooper, M.  Konings, & D.  Primrose (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism (pp. 483–495). SAGE. Peck, J., Theodore, N., & Brenner, N. (2009). Neoliberal Urbanism: Models, Moments, Mutations. SAIS Review, 29, 49–66. Pinson, G., & Journel, C.  M. (2016). The Neoliberal City—Theory, Evidence, Debates. Territory, Politics, Governance, 4, 137–153. Potterton, G, dir. (1981). Heavy Metal. Columbia Pictures. Robinson, A. (2019). Netflix’s Love Death + Robots Has One Very Big Problem and It’s Not Okay. Digital Spy. Published March 18, 2019. https://www.digit a l s p y. c o m / t v / u s t v / a 2 6 8 5 6 7 0 9 / l o v e -­d e a t h -­a n d -­r o b o t s -­n e t f l i x sexist-­misogynistic/ Rowley, S. (2015). Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs: Building Hollywoods Ideal Communities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sassen, S. (2006). Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press. Schmid, C. (2012). Henri Lefebvre, the Right to the City, and the New Metropolitan Mainstream. In N.  Brenner, P.  Marcuse, & M.  Mayer (Eds.), Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City (pp. 42–62). Routledge. Schwartz, T. (2019). How David Fincher and Tim Miller’s Heavy Metal Reboot Became Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots. IGN. Last modified March 17, 2019. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/03/16/how-­david-­fincher-­and-­tim-­millersheavy-metal-reboot-­became-­netflixs-­love-­death-­and-­robots Sennett, R. (1992). The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. W.W. Norton & Company. Smith, N. (2011). The Regeneration Railway Journey. Mute. Published March 23, 2011. https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/regeneration-railwayjourney Sobchack, V. (1988). Cities on the Edge of Time: The Urban Science Fiction Film. East-West Film Journal, 3(1), 4–19. Telotte, J. P. (2001). Science Fiction Film. Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 4

“Heaven is a Place on Earth”?: Configuring the Horizon of Queer Utopia in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” Orin Posner

Introduction “San Junipero,”1 the 2016 episode of anthology series Black Mirror, is an exception in the series.2 Among other, dark science-fiction (SF) episodes that present possible futures where new technologies challenge, hurt and destroy, “San Junipero” appears optimistic, a joyful SF text that explores a technology-enabled utopia. The episode imagines a computer-simulated

1  Brooker, C., (Writer) & Harris, O., (Director). (2016, October 21). “San Junipero.” (Season 3, Episode 4). In Brooker, C., Jones, A. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Zeppotron, House of Tomorrow. 2  Brooker, C., Jones, A. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Channel 4 Television Corporation, Babieka, Gran Babieka.

O. Posner (*) Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_4

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world, or virtual reality (VR), where old and dying people can spend time as avatars of their younger selves and cross over permanently after their death by uploading their consciousnesses to the system. For the episode’s disabled, gay protagonist, Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), this virtual space offers liberation from both physical and societal limitations; San Junipero seems to function as a queer and transhuman utopia for Yorkie and her lover, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), offering an alternative spatiotemporality through its nostalgic spaces. In this timeless simulated beach town, inhabitants can choose to experience the space in any past year—moving between the early to late 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s—enjoying the music and aesthetics of each period and a steady stream of parties in what is described as “immersive nostalgia therapy” for elderly people, provided by the fictional company TCKR Systems (“San Junipero”). Yorkie and Kelly meet and fall in love in the simulated town as their younger, able-­ bodied avatars, and after some conflict both ultimately decide to “pass over” after their deaths to “live” together, quite literally, happily ever after. Yorkie first comes to San Junipero when she is over sixty years old, hoping to experience life as a young woman in a way she never could in the real world, where she has been quadriplegic for most of her life, as well as under the legal control of her parents who reject her homosexuality; she plans to be euthanized in order to “pass over” to San Junipero. Kelly, on the other hand, is reluctant to upload her mind to the system after death, and this difference is the main conflict of the narrative. In many ways, the episode is a study of “utopia,” an imaginary, caught between hope for the future and a longing for a (mythical) past, which has long been a popular trope of SF storytelling. In highlighting the need to escape from a world still (in the near-future of the episode) oppressive of queer and disabled people into an imagined (virtual) better time and place, the episode presents what many commentators suggest is typical futuristic SF: not “giv[ing] us ‘images’ of the future … but rather [working] to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own present” (Jameson 1982, 151). Here, the SF “novum”—the novel unknown or Other supported by logic, such as a new kind of technology (Suvin 1979, 4)—“acts as symbolic manifestation of something that connects it specifically with the world we live in” (Roberts 2000, 14)—that is, to the difficulty faced by queer and disabled individuals inhabiting present-day, “real world” time and space. “San Junipero” works, then, dialectically, as both an SF text and a queer text, and it is the episode’s queer romance that frames the VR of San

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Junipero as a “hopeful future” for Yorkie and Kelly, instead of a “technologically mediated death” (Drage 2018, 58–59). The queer plot also marks “San Junipero” as one of Black Mirror’s most accoladed and publicly admired episodes: In 2017, it won two Emmy awards, as well as the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Individual Episode, and the episode’s “rapid popularity” has been attributed to “its use of nostalgia and use of queerness” (Mcclantoc 2019, 111). Indeed, “San Junipero” has been particularly popular among viewers from the LGBTQ community, who have found “pride and joy and inspiration” in the episode, pointing to the importance of “a love story between two women which was not about being ashamed of anything” (Brooker and Jones 2018, 155). This joyful representation of queerness itself can be described as a utopian endeavor: for Muñoz (2009, 26), “[q]ueerness is utopian, and there is something queer about the utopian.” As Drage (2018) suggests, the potential for utopia in “San Junipero” does not come from its SF novum but rather through its exploration and creation of “queer time,” a disruption of “normative narratives of time” (e.g., heterosexual marriage and reproduction [Halberstam 2005, 152]) in favor of what Muñoz (2009, 25) calls an “ecstatic and horizonal temporality.” This manifestation of queer time and horizonal temporality enables an interrogation of utopia’s—and by extension queer utopia’s—various spatial and temporal problematics, and its dystopian concerns. After all, escape to this “utopia” requires radical sacrifice in the real world: the killing of the disabled and elderly physical body in favor of an eternal youthful avatar. I therefore argue that “San Junipero” offers a queer spatial critique of some of SF’s basic tools of storytelling, revealing the limitations of SF narratives (and perhaps a heteronormative Western imaginary, more broadly) to imagine a future utopia. The episode does so by constructing a horizonal space-time of liminality—not a utopia, but the road, perhaps, toward a future utopia. Utopia itself is positioned outside of the narrative: in the suggestion for what may exist after the credits roll, and in the readings of the episode’s audience. Queer utopia is thus left as a space that queer characters and viewers create for themselves, through hopeful, reparative readings: reconfiguring straight, normative, limiting spaces (e.g., the VR’s various nostalgic frozen pasts) into fluid, liberatory spaces.

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The Interrogative Space of SF Utopias Fredric Jameson (1982), in his claim that SF has more to do with the present than with the future, argues that SF’s “deepest vocation is over and over again to demonstrate and to dramatize our incapacity to imagine the future [and] Utopia itself” (153). SF utopian narratives are therefore often auto-referential, and “find their deepest ‘subjects’ in the possibility of their own production, in the interrogation of the dilemmas involved in their own emergence as utopian texts” (Jameson 1982, 156). This is the interrogation that takes place in “San Junipero”: it is best described as a utopian SF narrative not because it presents a clear utopia, but because it is concerned with the problematics of utopia’s production. The VR space/time of San Junipero is constructed by fictional TCKR company as a utopia, or “no-place,” in the tradition of Thomas More’s 1516 imagining (also the “good place”), and this is where the interrogation and problems begin. San Junipero is such a “no place” since it is both spatially and temporally removed from any actual location: Though real computer servers carry its VR program as well as all the consciousnesses permanently uploaded to it, the experience of the space is completely virtual. In the narrative sense, too, San Junipero exists outside of physical space and linear time: The space is only presented in episodic glimpses— Yorkie’s weekly visits, which are limited to only a few hours for her (and for the viewers, a few minutes)—while the setting shifts between different historical periods. The utopia never really manifests in the episode, for viewers or for residents (as far as viewers can see, anyway). San Junipero is also situated in a lineage of utopias, and becomes a questioning of this but also a failure of sorts—failure as an original imaginary itself. Interrogative space might here also be a trap. Thomas More “saw his own Utopia as a continuation of the Republic” (376 BC), while 400 years later, H.G.  Wells was still constructing his “modern utopia” largely along Platonic lines. For Frank and Fritzie Manuel (1997, 1), the “myth of a heaven on earth … lies at the heart of utopian fantasy,” and this utopian conception “presupposes an idea of perfection in another sphere and at the same time a measure of confidence in human capacity to fashion on earth what is recognized as a transient mortal state into a simulacrum of the transcendental” (17). Such are the utopian aspirations of “San Junipero,” highlighted in the episode’s climax, wherein the 1987 Belinda Carlisle song “Heaven is a Place on Earth” is played as both the dreamlike virtual space (the young Kelly and Yorkie dancing in a simulated bar) and

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its technological materiality (the facility storing their uploaded minds) alternately appear on screen. We see the utopic imaginary hasn’t changed much in the last couple of thousand years—making San Junipero a kind of looping space-time imaginary in a number of ways, while it remains tied to a “real world” with dystopian qualities—in the episode, intolerance of queer, disabled and old bodies. Since utopias are “perfect” they are also imagined outside of temporal progression, providing “a frozen image of the present” that allows “no progress after the ideal society has been established” (Vieira 2010, 9). Problematically, there is little room for development, and the show connects this limitation to another trait of the utopian imaginary: “nostalgia for an idealized bygone human condition” (Manuel and Manuel 1997, 5)—depicted in San Junipero’s representations of club culture of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The club is also an isolated space—“unreal” and outside of the everyday of virtual town “life.” The joyous moments of the club might then be read as freedom but also as a time/space loop, in which nothing really changes. Finally, on screen, the utopian promise is never narratively fulfilled: In both form and content “San Junipero” positions its utopian space as problematic and limited; rather than a “real” utopia, it is a simulacrum. San Junipero is a temporally frozen space open for visitations, but staying in that space forever remains uncertain. The episode’s SF generic properties construct a defamiliarizing text that engages its audience in constant questioning; at the same time, the episode’s fraught queer romance—Yorkie and Kelly clash over whether to settle permanently in San Junipero—highlights both the liberatory potential and limitations of the “utopian” space—a utopian ambivalence common in SF narratives. The episode presents contemporary struggles that arise from the oppression of LGBTQ, disabled, and elderly people, suggesting in its technological novum a space where both characters and viewers may imagine their escape from physical and social limitations. Kelly acts as a voice identifying these problematics, presenting her criticism and concerns—or her failure of imagination (what we might read as a reflection of the failure of an SF imaginary)—about San Junipero as a techno-utopia. Kelly’s limitations are philosophical and moral: She voices the dilemma of emerging utopia and exemplifies the difficulty, even impossibility, of imagining utopian life by challenging the transhumanist novum of VR, asserting that life in that space is not real, and therefore not significant in comparison to her real life in the real world—which was lived in “real” (sequential, normative) time, or “straight” time. José Esteban Muñoz approaches this

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experience of straight time as “a firm delineation between past/present/ future or an expectation of a linear development from dependent childhood to independent reproductive adulthood” (Kafer 2013, 34). Unlike Yorkie, Kelly has lived a “real,” adult life—with a husband and a daughter—before coming to San Junipero; therefore, she deliberately creates a binary between the real world, in which she has had feelings and relationships, and the unreal San Junipero, in which she insists on just having “fun.” In her very first line in the episode, Kelly says, “I just wanna have some fun, okay?” (“San Junipero”), while Yorkie pursues a meaningful, continuing relationship. Kelly further explains: “In the time I’ve been here, I said I wouldn’t, I don’t know, do feelings.” Kelly’s approach is empirical, scientific: She does not believe in heaven, and so believes that her dead daughter and husband are “nowhere” (“San Junipero”); her empirical stance might be read as a rejection of this techno-utopia, but she also functions as critical guide to utopia for viewers. The audience is asked to examine this imaginary construct as well and decide for themselves what they see. Kelly further emphasizes the importance of authentic reality, complimenting Yorkie for being “authentically [herself]” and calling out the space’s nostalgic aesthetics as fake: “Look around: People try so hard to look how they think they should look. They probably saw it in some movie” (“San Junipero”)—implying that filmic imaginaries (as idealized/ utopian representations of reality) are less “real” and therefore negative. Identifying Yorkie (who appears as her younger, able-bodied avatar) as “authentic” while rejecting the reality of the simulated space they are both in already creates a contradiction in Kelly, who resists both a relationship with Yorkie and a permanent move to San Junipero. The state of the romance between Kelly and Yorkie is undetermined, reflecting Kelly’s uncertainty about utopia. Again, Kelly acts as guide to viewers, tacitly asking us to question what we see in the show, and on our screens, as well as our own notions of utopia. Kelly seems to read San Junipero as a “graveyard” and passing over as “spend[ing] forever somewhere nothing matters” (“San Junipero”). She acknowledges San Junipero not as a utopia but as a heterotopia, a counter-­ site separated from general society that provides a mirror to it, an “other” space holding those who are Othered from society (Foucault 1986, 24–5). San Junipero is figured as cemetery and a retirement home, the latter positioned “on the borderline between the heterotopia of crisis and the heterotopia of deviation since, after all, old age is a crisis, but is also a deviation

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since, in our society where leisure is the rule, idleness is a sort of deviation” (Foucault 1986, 24–5). Kelly’s passing over to the heterotopia of San Junipero means accepting her transformation into an ultimate Other (a deviant and in crisis) and furthermore, her criticism of San Junipero implies a criticism of the Othering and exclusionary system of space itself. Thus, the episode interrogates not only the notion of a novel techno-­ utopia but also the norms and expectations of viewers’ consensus reality, which are not that different from those of the episode: Even the highly technologically advanced world of the show organizes its space like us, through “a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another” (Foucault 1986, 23). These same exclusionary norms that dictate the spatial separation between the young and the elderly, the able-bodied and the disabled, and even at times the heterosexual and homosexual/queer, drive Yorkie to choose San Junipero as permanent residence, since for her, passing over is moving from one heterotopia (the hospital) to another (the simulated reality of San Junipero)—one she can choose for herself, and in which she identifies utopian potential. However, Yorkie’s choice to die and transcend to San Junipero is based not solely on her desire for its unlimited and fluid spatiotemporality, but primarily on her rejection of how the real world is configured for her—as an oppressive space in which her physical movement and personal choices are limited. Despite this configuration of San Junipero as a “consolation” to the real, oppressive time-space (Drage 2018, 56), the town remains a reflection of the real world’s oppressive spatial organization. An unsettling moment near the beginning of the episode reminds us that visitors and residents can also bring with them their own limiting prejudices and failures to imagine something different. Yorkie is concerned that being seen together with Kelly at the club may cause a homophobic reaction (“You know, two girls, dancing…”), and while Kelly quickly writes this off (“Okay, one, folks are way less uptight than they used to be, and two, this is a party town, no one’s judging!” [“San Junipero”]), the possibility of judgment or even violence encroaches on this space.

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Queer Utopia and its Narrative Failure In his conceptualization of queer utopia, Muñoz greatly relies on Bloch’s (1998, 341) critical notion of utopia, and on his idea of educated hope, according to which “hope’s methodology (with its pendant, memory) dwells in the region of the not-yet, a place where entrance and, above all, final content are marked by an enduring indeterminacy.” Having hope, then, according to Bloch, presupposes uncertainty about the future, imagining it as still undetermined—and this undetermined future space is the ground on which utopia may be built. Muñoz (2009, 11) applies this idea of hope to his definition of queerness, which to him is not an identity but an ideality, and therefore “visible only in the horizon.” Muñoz (2009, 1) further claims that in its essence, queerness is “about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world,” a rejection that can be understood through the concept of queer time. Halberstam (2005, 1–2) looks not to sexual practices but to “strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices” to define queerness, and identifies “queer time” as arising “at the end of the twentieth century, from within those gay communities whose horizons of possibility have been severely diminished by the AIDS epidemic.” For these communities, the constant threat of having no future created a sense of “compression and annihilation,” but also “the potentiality of a life unscripted by the conventions of family, inheritance, and child rearing” (Halberstam 2005). Muñoz (2009, 25) describes queer time as “a stepping out of the linearity of straight time” in favor of an “ecstatic and horizonal temporality [which] is a path and a movement to a greater openness to the world,” and Halberstam (2005, 152–3) further argues that “queer temporality disrupts the normative narratives of time that form the base of nearly every definition of the human,” with the example of queer people having “a stretched-out adolescence … [which] challenges the conventional binary formulation of a life narrative divided by a clear break between youth and adulthood” (Halberstam 2005, 10). Kafer (2013, 34–5) expands the concept of queer time to disability studies, arguing queer time is already “often defined through or in reference to illness and disability, suggesting that it is illness and disability that render time ‘queer’”; Kafer then identifies various “strange temporalities” in the lives of people with illness and disability and coins the term “crip time,” which, like queer time, emerges from being “marked as having no

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future, as destined for decay.” Such strange or “crip” temporalities include the anticipatory time of those with conditions that may be aggravated by certain exposures or triggers, or those who rely on the support of attendants for everyday activities, and so schedule such assistance in advance. According to Kafer (2013, 38), this anticipatory temporality “is itself a kind of queer liminality, living always in anticipation of the moment that has not yet arrived.” While the techno-utopia of San Junipero is constructed through this same process of re-formation of—or stepping out from—normative ideas of space and time, in favor of a new queer or crip temporality outside of the conventions of heterosexual and capitalist reproduction, the queer utopia does not or cannot manifest. The episode does not present a queer horizonal temporality directly—the narrative itself operates in linear time. In fact, there are only two moments in which viewers are confronted, together with Kelly, with the alternative logic of San Junipero’s space-­ time: when Kelly punches a bathroom mirror and it immediately appears whole again, and when she deliberately crashes her car and comes out unscathed. The anticipatory aspect of queer/crip temporality is also left largely un-narrativized. Yorkie’s experience of the real world as a paraplegic who lives in a hospital and relies on the care of attendants—in other words, her life in crip time—is completely left out of the narrative. Instead, between Yorkie’s visits to San Junipero the screen cuts to black and there is a very brief, vague, audio-only representation of Yorkie’s real-world space. The real-world time between visits, which for Yorkie in particular is implied to be empty of meaning and full of anticipation for her moments of freedom, is thus given no narrative time, and Yorkie’s anticipatory queer/crip temporality is positioned entirely within San Junipero. And while Yorkie’s temporality is anticipatory in San Junipero, a space marked by constant forward movement, the narrative doesn’t reflect a disabled experience or a life lived in crip time. San Junipero is a space with an anticipatory temporality, emblemized by its many roads and cars. Despite its virtual nature, which allows inhabitants to easily switch between different time-spaces, characters are constantly driving or walking around the virtual town in order to get to its different locations: The first thing we see in the episode, after an establishing shot of the cityscape, is the street in which packed cars move back and forth. When Yorkie becomes a permanent San Juniperan, almost all we see her do (other than sit on the beach and, briefly, dance at Tucker’s) is drive. Driving is a joyous, triumphant act in San Junipero—for Yorkie, it is a curative experience negating

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her real-life narrative in which she became disabled after a car accident— and this constructs San Junipero as an anticipatory and horizonal space, encouraging viewers to identify with Yorkie and with her hopeful movement forward, and to read it as a movement toward utopia. However, this anticipatory mode of San Junipero, which reflects queer/crip time as well as the queer utopian notion of hope, is made possible only by sanitizing and “curing” the queer and disabled experience, allowing it to exist in the narrative solely within a heterotopic space. As Kafer (2013, 28) points out, “[f]uturity has often been framed in curative terms, a time frame that casts disabled people (as) out of time, or as obstacles to the arc of progress,” and in “San Junipero” utopian progress is only achieved once Yorkie is “rehabilitated, normalized, and … cured” from her disability by dying and reemerging as her simulated, perfected self. While the episode frames this conclusion as a transformative utopian success—as the space is constructed almost entirely through Yorkie’s point of view from within it, and through her desire and hope—a critical queer/crip reading reveals that the utopian problematics still persist.

Between Nostalgia, Dystopian Quagmire, and Queer Hope The nostalgic setting of “San Junipero” further complicates constructions of queer time and utopia, with “a reflective narrative where the layering of nostalgia is saturated with both metacommentary and irony” (Mcclantoc 2019, 110). Each of Yorkie’s visits to the virtual town takes place in a different year: While the basic parts of the space remain unchanged (it is the same town with the same locations and same people), the aesthetics of the space transform completely. For the episode’s director Owen Harris, the prominent 1980s aesthetic was central to the narrative, the style of classic 1980s films offering a “far more optimistic [mood], almost to the point where you could classify it as a genre. The genre of eternal optimism!” (Brooker and Jones 2018, 142). And yet nostalgia also speaks of loss, and the distortion of the past (Pickering and Keightley 2006, 922), setting up a duality in San Junipero’s nostalgia of hope and loss. Tellingly, this dual experience of nostalgia is intrinsically connected to the episode’s queer narrative. For Yorkie, the nostalgic settings and her youthful avatar allow her joyful queer and youthful experiences she was denied in life and even elevate these into an idealized experience. Halberstam (2005, 177)

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identifies this nostalgic queer imaginary in LGBTQ people’s participation in youth cultures long after they cease to be young—this reflecting other specific subculture experiences and allowing “opportunities for theorizing gender, sexuality, race, and social rebellion precisely because they occupy the space of the ‘not-yet,’ the not fully realized” (177). The episode’s queer nostalgia manifests as such: forever young but also not fully realized. This nostalgia can offer hope and opportunities for characters and viewers to undertake reparative readings. For Muñoz (2009, 1), queerness may be “distilled from the past and used to imagine a future” as moments and ideas may be gathered, reclaimed and repurposed from previous eras. This approach recalls Eve Sedgwick’s suggestion that “[b]ecause the reader has room to realize that the future may be different from the present, it is also possible for her to entertain such … possibilities as that the past, in turn, could have happened differently from the way it actually did” (2006, 146). The past too can be reclaimed, reimagined in an empowering way. Yorkie looks to return to such an ideal past of the later twentieth century. The congruence of the SF genre and queer plot in “San Junipero” is pivotal: the SF novum of simulated reality presents its utopian possibilities only through the episode’s queer narrative and protagonist, and thus the text can be seen to perform a queer, reparative reading, or rewriting, of history. For Drage (2018), the fluid temporality of San Junipero allows for this reparative or “renegotiated” experience of oppressed identities because its space remains localized, with “geographical, historical, and cultural situatedness” (59). The specificity of San Junipero as an American beach town with mostly American music, fashion and media (such as arcade video games), grounds it in Yorkie’s and Kelly’s “real” world; San Junipero is thus “always in-between, … neither fully fantasy nor fully detached from the real” and through that, Drage (2018, 62) argues, it “enables a proliferation, rather than an eradication of, racial and gender subjectivities.” However, while for Drage these various spatiotemporal connections to the real world are what makes its queer utopia possible, I suggest these same conditions, largely nostalgic and calling attention to the television medium, further frustrate the hope for utopia, allowing it to only exist in a curative context—once Yorkie’s disability can be “magically” (through the technological novum) cured. Further, Yorkie’s connections to her homophobic family, who control her life, can only be broken through the same magical/technological move away from that life: She must sacrifice her physical body and abandon “normative” reality in favor of San Junipero’s

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heterotopia of crisis, which is still situated in the specific cultural reality that has so thoroughly rejected her. As previously discussed, the sense of “inauthenticity” of this space is also troubling—a repackaging of the past that does not encourage residents to present their “real” selves. This criticism also implicates viewers of “San Junipero”, who, as Mcclantoc (2019, 110) says, “are taking part of the simulation [as well], consuming nostalgia by watching the episode.” San Junipero’s nostalgic space also seemingly has no stakes, since it exists outside of linear causality. No physical harm can come to anyone in San Junipero, just as no real harm can come to characters in an old, nostalgic television show (such as a classic sitcom), and everything is reset before the next virtual visit/episode. In other words, there seems to be no consequence to actions. This nostalgic, stuck-in-the-past temporality further empties the space of meaning, and characters construe this emptiness as dystopian—as one character tells Kelly, in a seeming  hyperbole later  understood as literal: “the locals? They’re like dead people” (“San Junipero”). Kelly, too, rejects San Junipero’s reality and repeatedly frames it as a space for meaningless enjoyment, “just fun,” and this meaninglessness is also manifested directly within the simulated space, in the Quagmire. Beyond Tucker’s, the bar where Kelly and Yorkie meet, is a dark, loud, and crowded club in a distant industrial building, where visitors explore more extreme fantasies of sex and violence. This area is framed negatively, portrayed from the point of view of Yorkie, who is repulsed by it. The club’s name, Quagmire, positions it even more strongly as a metaphorical muddy swamp, the direct opposite to San Junipero’s other, well-lit areas near the sea. Muñoz uses this same word to define the opposite of his conception of queer utopia: “Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present” (2009, 1). But as Daraiseh and Booker (2019, 159) point out, the two areas derive from the same escapist need of the late-1980s United States: While Tucker’s is “constructed from the ‘official’ pop culture of 1987 … the Quagmire is equally derived from the underground/alternative culture of the same time period, which was a boom time for clubs that provided an escape from the strait-laced rectitude of Reaganite America.” For Daraiseh and Booker, both these escapist alternatives attest to “the weakness of the utopian imagination in the Western world of the 1980s,” thus implicating the futuristic company TCKR Systems, as well, which “armed with the technology to place individual consciousnesses inside any reality they

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choose, still cannot conceive of anything better” (159–160). Indeed, such failures of imagination display the “incapacity to imagine the future” that Jameson (1982, 153) identifies in the SF genre—worlds that “prove on closer inspection to be structurally and constitutively impoverished” (153), and in that make us contemplate not future possibilities, but our own limits—those of imagination. Yorkie and Kelly’s ultimate choice of a San Junipero afterlife, therefore, only makes structural sense through their joint story: a queer romance of love against all odds. As Drage (2018) writes, “[q]ueer futurity … becomes the condition for the appearance of a future beyond San Junipero’s technologically mediated death. … Kelly and Yorkie’s queer romance was not the coincidental winner of Black Mirror’s happy ending, but the condition for the appearance of that hopeful future” (58–59). The narrative then concludes before San Junipero is realized as either utopian or dystopian for Yorkie and Kelly, leaving viewers enticed by its optimistic mood and colorful aesthetics, looking to the horizon where they may rejoice in imagining their perfect forever.

Conclusion “San Junipero” thus reveals, perhaps unwittingly, the failings of the SF genre to truly represent utopia. The creators of Black Mirror, along with the unseen directors of the fictional TCKR company, construct a virtual heterotopia to inhabit its Otherized characters, distancing them from normative society, just as viewers are encouraged to see San Junipero as the only possible queer space for Yorkie. The burden of utopian proof, so to speak, falls on the (queer) viewers, through their interaction with the episode, their identification with both Yorkie and Kelly as the characters move to renegotiate their experiences of the past. Both characters and viewers find themselves in a self-conscious televisional space, itself a heterotopia positioned in between the real world (with its history, culture, and social norms) and the virtual/fantastical (with its novel spatiotemporality). The utopian reconfiguration of this heterotopia may lie beyond the episode’s narrative space-time, but only if viewers are able to imagine it. In her argument against “passing over,” Kelly asks Yorkie, “Forever? Who can even make sense of forever?” and so exposes the distance between the human mind and the post-human spatiotemporality of San Junipero, or any utopia. Yorkie counters with a direct rejection of San Junipero’s dystopian danger: “I mean, you can remove yourself like that [snaps fingers]. It’s not

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a trap.” Technologically and logically, the episode seems to settle its protagonists’ and viewers’ concerns—but only if viewers dare to hope. When Kelly finally arrives at San Junipero as a fellow full-time resident in clips interspersed between the end-credits, this broken sense of utopia must again be pieced together by viewers. The song “Heaven is a Place on Earth” plays. Kelly is in a hospital bed. Then the scene cuts to her coffin being lowered into the ground. The next scene shows San Junipero, where Yorkie picks up Kelly in her car and they drive off together into the sunset. The final images of the episode are of the technology: a huge TCKR Systems facility where thousands of consciousnesses uploaded to the cloud are stored, moved around by robotic arms. A short clip shows Yorkie and Kelly dancing together in Tucker’s. Then we are back to the material reality of their uploaded minds, numbered and glittering in blue and white lights. While the technological novum is presented, the utopian space is suggested—a gesture to the horizon where we must imagine other possibilities. While each Black Mirror episode includes this editing choice at its end—the narrative’s final moments shown alternately with the credits’ title cards, creating a kind of epilogue—in “San Junipero” this structuring is spatially crucial: The narrative positions the realization of San Junipero as a utopian space in a montage near the end of the episode, thus suggesting a dream as well as the unrepresentable. Utopia, the text seems to say, cannot be represented in narrative, in a sequential form. The result is the entrapment of the protagonists in the in-between space constructed by the narrative: a space that is both the dream of San Junipero’s utopia and its dystopian nightmare. Likewise, Kelly’s objections to an eternal stay in the space come from her construction of it within her life narrative. Having narrativized her life through her familial relationships, she struggles to rewrite her story so that it has a whole other significant chapter with no clear ending: With no stable temporal grounding or sequential order of events, “passing over” entails a post-human, post-narrative transformation. For the Otherized Yorkie, such a transformation is a welcome revolution, invested in queer utopianism. For Kelly it is a near impossibility, rejected again and again until it is finally accepted without narrative explanation. It is perhaps Kelly’s arrival at her own (old) narrative’s edge—her death—that allows her to step out of the traditional order into a new space without order and without certainty.

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But as the episode leaves the manifestation of utopia to its narrative edge, this utopia can only be accepted through the viewers’ interaction with the narrative: their investment in the queer, romantic plot; their identification with Yorkie; and their acceptance of the nostalgic San Junipero as a site for reparative reading and queer hope, rather than a dystopia of empty, distorted images of the past. Like viewers switching between shows on Netflix, characters and viewers must interact with material to locate the scene they want—a  spatial reconfiguration of San Junipero that reads it as  an optimistic, liberating space, a heterotopia allowing for utopian potential that arises from its strange and nostalgic temporality. Yorkie and viewers thus read San Junipero through the methodology of hope, imbuing it with a desire for liberation (physical and social) and for utopia—a distinctly queer desire.

References Bloch, E. (1998). Literary Essays. Trans. Andrew Joron, et al. Stanford UP. Brooker, C., & Jones, A. (2018). Inside Black Mirror. Ebury Press. Daraiseh, I., & Keith Booker, M. (2019). Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in ‘San Junipero’. In T. McSweeney & S. Joy (Eds.), Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age (pp. 150–162). Palgrave Macmillan. Drage, E. (2018). A Virtual Ever-After: Utopia, Race, and Gender in Black Mirror’s ‘San Junipero’. In A. M. Cirucci & B. Vacker (Eds.), Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory (pp. 27–39). Lexington Books. Foucault, M. (1986). Of Other Spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York UP. Jameson, F. (1982). Progress Versus Utopia; Or, Can We Imagine the Future? Science Fiction Studies, 9(2), 47–158. Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press. Manuel, F. E., & Manuel, F. P. (1997). Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA. Mcclantoc, K. (2019). “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”: Digital Nostalgia, Queerness, and Collectivity in Black Mirror’s ‘San Junipero’. In K. Pallister (Ed.), Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand (pp. 109–122). Lexington Books. Muñoz, J.  E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press. Pickering, M., & Keightley, E. (2006). The Modalities of Nostalgia. Current Sociology, 54(6), 919–941. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392106068458

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Roberts, A. (2000). Science Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. Routledge. Sedgwick, E. K. (2006). Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Duke University Press. Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Yale University Press. Vieira, F. (2010). The Concept of Utopia. In G.  Claeys (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (pp. 3–27). Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

SVOD: A Place for (Outer) Space? Andrew Lynch and Alexa Scarlata

Introduction At the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference on 26 May 2018, Amazon’s then-CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he had “saved” The Expanse1 (Otterson 2018). The critically beloved science fiction (SF) series had been cancelled by cable network SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel) earlier that month but would now be available through—and new seasons would be produced for—Amazon Prime 1  Shankar, N., Fergus M., Ostby H., Daniel S., Brown J.F., Hall S., Johnson B., Kosove A., Lancaster L., Abraham D., Franck T., Nowak D., Roberts B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television.

A. Lynch (*) Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Scarlata (*) School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_5

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Video. This announcement came after fans of the series had ardently petitioned cable television networks and subscription video-on-demand services (SVODs) to license the rights to their beloved show. Amazon Prime Video was not a particularly strange destination for the resurrected space opera, though. While other niche entertainment media interests are catered for by specific SVOD services (e.g., Crunchyroll for anime, Shudder for horror and Hayu for reality television), there is currently no “SF streaming service.” After the closure of Legendary Digital’s Alpha in March 2019, the pay-TV channel SyFy remains the (obviously) most prominent “space for SF” on television—and even it could not justify keeping The Expanse on its line-up. At the time of acquiring The Expanse, Amazon Prime Video had already produced two original SF series: The Man in the High Castle and Electric Dreams,2 both based on stories by the renowned SF author Philip K.  Dick. Meanwhile, other prominent US-based generalist SVOD services (Netflix, Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access), Apple TV+ and Disney+) have also developed a substantial stable of original SF programming, with equally substantial budgets. SF television shows and their audiences seem to have finally found a home on “mainstream,” or “first tier” (Lynch and Scarlata 2022) SVOD. But what kind of home is it, and what are the implications for the genre? Tellingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, producers have invoked a spatial language to promote their SF content, utilizing the space opera storytelling conceit of a search for home that has shaped various narratives from Star Trek: Voyager3 to Battlestar Galactica.4 Such content has found a “place” or a “home” on SVOD. However, unlike interstellar travel, “[culture] does not take place in a vacuum” (Anderson 2015, 2). It is through practice and use that spaces become lived and meaningful “places.” In practice, SVODs have strategically embraced a very particular brand of SF enabled by their conditions of production and distribution. These new SF spaces prioritize already-established creatives and foreground violent, 2  Moore, R.D., Dinner, M., Cranston, B., Degus, J., Dick Hackett, I., Egan, K., Tricarico, C., Davis, M., Kanter, D., DeRoss, M., Rawlings, L., Kehoe, M., DiMento, K., Kurt, D. (Executive Producers). (2017–2018). Electric Dreams [TV series]. Channel 4 Television Corporation, Sony Pictures Television. 3   Berman, R., Biller, K., Braga, B., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1995–2001). Star Trek: Voyager [TV series]. Paramount. 4  Moore, R.D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV series]. British Sky Productions, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R & D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios.

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gritty and sexually charged content in order to endow the genre with the “symbolic value” (Schlütz 2016, 101) of Quality TV. While this chapter explores SF’s search for home on the television medium and the spatial implications and language surrounding that search and the move to SVOD platforms, we also consider how SVOD production has transformed SF television. We suggest that while the SF genre appears to be thriving on these SVODs, it is at the cost of the tonal and thematic diversity which characterized the genre’s history on broadcast and cable television. If SVOD is SF’s new home, not all SF is welcome there. Unlike previous case studies, this chapter adopts an industrial focus, combining industrial discourse and textual analysis to describe where SF programming has been, how it now fits into global SVOD programming strategies, and how this affects the SF television being produced under these conditions. While Western SF television has had a number of specific histories and industrial trajectories in the UK (see Johnson 2005; Cook and Wright 2006), this chapter will primarily focus on North American (USA and Canada) SF television, television channels, and SVOD services. After all, North America is largely the birthplace of these platforms and (especially in Canada’s case) a production hub for SF content (Hatchell 2018).

Exploring SF Spaces and Searching for Home SF television has had several homes throughout its history, moving the first time, almost en masse, from broadcast to cable television, then to specialty cable, and more recently to SVOD. In a sense, the history of the genre on television echoes the search for home and belonging that is central to the narrative of so many SF series. Like the marginalized alien refugee Newcomers on Alien Nation,5 SF series sometimes find themselves stranded in unfriendly terrain. And like the nomadic crew of the spaceship Serenity on Firefly,6 SF series often need to jump from one temporary home to another, with the enemy (cut-throat executives) in hot pursuit. Perhaps most appropriately, like the cast of Battlestar Galactica, its titular warship and accompanying fleet of stragglers in search of Earth, SF series 5  Johnson, K. (Executive Producer). (1989–1990). Alien Nation [TV series]. 20th Century Fox Television, Kenneth Johnson Productions. 6  Whedon, J., Minear, T. (Executive Producers). (2002–2003). Firefly [TV series]. Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox Television.

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have long yearned for their promised television “homeland,” a place where the genre might “land” and establish—ironically, given its speculative content—a future. As Jan Johnson-Smith astutely notes in her exhaustive account of American SF, “science fiction television is almost as old as the medium itself” (2005, 1), with the first SF television series Captain Video and His Video Rangers7 airing in 1949. Early “telefantasy” (Johnson 2005) anthology series like Science Fiction Theater,8 The Twilight Zone9 and The Outer Limits10 frequently incorporated elements which could be generically described as SF: robots, time-travel and aliens. Launching in 1966, the Star Trek franchise continued for decades on broadcast television thanks to the fandom surrounding its first three seasons, several feature films and the subsequent television re-launch in 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation.11 The 1990s saw the possibility for more “boutique productions” (Johnson-Smith 2005, 64) such as Babylon 5,12 which aired on the short-lived Prime-Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), a broadcast television joint venture between Warner Bros. Domestic Television and Chris-Craft Industries. Citing interviews with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, Johnson-Smith argues this “budget” (2005, 65) television catering to a niche market was made possible by advances in digital effects, which allowed for the creation of the fantastical images required of SF without the associated costs needed for more “mainstream” network fare like the Star Trek franchise. Straczynski’s predictions that boutique development might just be the future of SF television smartly anticipates the success of The Sci-Fi Network (SyFy as of 2009), which had launched in 1992 under USA Networks to cater specifically to fans of the genre, as well as to house a number of already-existing fantastical film 7  Druce, O., Brock, M., Caddigan, J., Lowe, D., Opperman, H.J., Telford, F. (Producers). (1949–1955). Captain Video and His Video Rangers [TV series]. DuMont Television Network. 8  Ziv, M., Ziv, F.W. (Executive Producers). (1955–1957). Science Fiction Theatre [TV series]. Ivan Tors Production. 9  Serling, R. (Executive Producer). (1959–1964). The Twilight Zone [TV series]. Cayuga Productions, CBS Television Network. 10  Stevens, L. (Executive Producer). (1963–1965). The Outer Limits [TV series]. Villa Di Stefano, Daystar Productions, United Artists Television. 11  Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., Hurley, M., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount Television. 12  Netter, D., Straczynski, J.M. (Executive Producers). (1994–1998). Babylon 5 [TV series]. Warner Home Video, AOL Time Warner, Babylonian Productions, Time Warner, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television.

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and television properties owned by Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios. The launch of equivalent SF cable network Space (CTV Sci-Fi Channel as of 2019) in Canada in 1997 suggests the viability of such single-­genre specialty channels as spaces for SF television. Stargate SG-113 appeared to represent the potential for long-running, broadly appealing SF (in the mold of Star Trek) to remain on broad-appeal cable networks, though even that series moved to SyFy from its sixth season onwards. As Telotte argues, SF television was “often perceived as children’s programming or niche fare” and like its literary equivalent, was “seldom seen as … ‘serious’” (2008, 1). The rare but tantalizing (for producers) potential for SF to present itself as not merely niche but a source of cultural prestige for adult audiences was most effectively demonstrated by one of SyFy’s television’s only real critical successes, Battlestar Galactica, the series upon which much contemporary SF television (especially that being produced for and licensed by SVOD services) has been modelled (Lynch 2022). By the edict of Star Trek franchise-alumnus, series co-creator and “showrunner-auteur” (Newman and Levine 2012, 40) Ronald D. Moore, Battlestar Galactica distanced itself from the SF genre’s history on broadcast television through a range of formal strategies inspired by naturalistic Quality TV, including documentary-style camerawork and real-world military-­ inspired production design and costuming (Moore 2003). Throughout its history as a medium, particularly in the United States, television has had to fight for legitimacy (Newman and Levine 2012). The most consistent ongoing academic account of prestigious television is the aforementioned idea of Quality TV. Quality TV series provide value to their networks by imparting “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1984) to television producers, networks and platforms, while generating advertising dollars by attracting desirable demographics (see Feuer 1984; Thompson 1996; Cardwell 2007; Schlütz 2016). The prestige associated with Quality TV is produced by exceeding audience expectations of television through impressive production values, complex narrative storytelling and boundary-­ pushing content. We might see something almost science fictional in the transformative impact of such programming—new worlds found and 13  Glassner, J., Wright, B., Cooper, R.C., Mallozzi, J., Mullie, P., Anderson, R.D., Greenburg, M. (Executive Producers). (1997–2007). Stargate SG-1 [TV series]. Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp., Kawoosh! Productions IX, Kawoosh! Productions VII, MGM Worldwide Television Productions, Sony Pictures Television, Stargate SG-1 Productions.

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created on our screens—but the “aesthetically ambitious” (Bignell 2007, 162) Quality TV is first and foremost deployed as part of commercial strategies to create a home for desirable audiences who can then be “sold” to broadcast television advertisers, and robust subscriber numbers for both cable television networks and SVOD services. Ronald D. Moore’s attempt to legitimize Battlestar Galactica (and SF television as a whole) via connections to Quality TV represented, in his words, “nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series” (2003). The idea that contemporary SF television can and should be aesthetically ambitious, risk-taking and adult-orientated has only calcified the sense that the genre “belongs” on paid services such as cable television and SVOD. The extent to which SF has moved away from its original home on broadcast television is demonstrated by the critical response to FOX’s 2019 broadcast television adaptation of Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy of SF/horror novels.14 Critics overwhelmingly lamented that The Passage had been adapted by and for broadcast television, with its limited production budgets, need for a wide appeal and focus on episodic storytelling over more complex narratives. The Passage’s FOX incarnation was negatively compared to an imagined idealized adaptation on either cable television or SVOD. From its first episode, it was read as a decidedly non-­ prestigious horror/SF hybrid series. In an article titled “‘The Passage’ and the Limitations of Network Television,” television critic Alison Herman notes that “The Passage’s most obvious predecessor is Game of Thrones,” but she highlights the lack of coarse language, “relatively cheap” production design and “slightly hokey” visual effects (2019). She describes the aesthetic of the series as “more Buffy than Westworld, albeit much more self-serious” (Herman 2019). AV Club critic Kyle Fowle shared this sentiment, labelling The Passage “overwhelmingly self-serious” (2019). There is clear recognition of textual elements associated with high-end contemporary SF (though Herman refers more generally to Peak TV) and the generic associations that go along with them. Herman identifies The Passage as a series that should, by all rights, be Quality TV—it is adapted from a successful novel series with the potential for a large, complex self-­ serious narrative—but is not because of its broadcast home. She 14  Heldens, L., Reeves, M., Zucker, D.W., Kassan, A., Scott, R. (Executive Producers). (2019). The Passage [TV series]. Scott Free Productions, 6th & Idaho Productions, Selfish Mermaid, 20th Century Fox Television.

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attributes the deficiencies of the series to broadcast network production schedules, budgets and programming strategies. The problem, then, to viewers and critics, is production—the production values are not high enough to produce a believable, habitable (for viewers) world. In her critique, Herman goes on to imagine a very science-fictional formulation of space (and show), through the imaginary of alternative realities, as she suggests that “watching The Passage is inseparable from wondering what The Passage might look like if it had taken one of those other routes,” on cable or film (2019). Jen Chaney at Vulture similarly critiques the series’ storytelling, lamenting that the series was developed for network television as opposed to subscription television, and “[wishes] the adaptation, like its smart, sweeping source material, could just breathe for a few minutes so the audience could settle more deeply into the alternative America that Cronin so carefully conjured on the page. If The Passage had landed at an HBO or a Netflix, it might have had an easier time accomplishing that” (2019; author’s emphasis). Like so many unlucky SF series before it, The Passage was cancelled after its first season.

SVOD as SF Home and Imaginary The critical conjecture around The Passage is borne out by the recent accomplishments and strategies of the major global SVODs: while cable television has traditionally embraced SF, more recently the genre has found a home online. SF producers have been emboldened by the reach, reputation and means of these relatively new platforms. The proliferation of SF programming on all current key players—Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Disney+, and Apple TV+—suggests that far from a niche interest, SF of a certain Quality TV style and stature is a valued part of the original programming strategies of most major streaming platforms. This is part of a larger shift in Quality TV towards the fantastical (Lynch 2022). For SF, the shift is significantly spatial—a move from the periphery of culture, television production and broadcasting to the bright center of the television and cultural universe. The SVOD might itself be seen as a SF medium: a technology unimaginable just decades ago; a platform (or world) seemingly more science fictional as it is shaped by the many SF worlds it produces and contains; a veritable

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heterotopia. But this new home also shapes SF, reconfiguring its worlds and viewers’ expectations. Since Netflix first began to commission original content for simultaneous release to its global audience (with dramas House of Cards15 and Orange is the New Black16), exclusive programming has proved imperative to the value proposition of SVODs. Alongside, of course, a competitive library of broadcast content, original shows produce “long-term value for the collection” and render “existing measures of success such as immediate ratings of limited value” (Lotz 2017). SVODs are “binge-spending” (Spangler 2019) an unprecedented amount on content, with relatively new entrants Apple and Amazon already allotting an estimated annual US$6 billion (Bridge 2020) and US$11 billion (Palmer 2021) respectively for exclusive shows and movies, and market leader Netflix doling out an estimated “$17 billion in cash on content” in fiscal 2021 (Netflix 2021, 3). According to Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, around 85% of their budget is pegged for original commissions (as cited by Spangler 2018), and as a result the platform now offers more than 1500 originals (i.e., if we adopt Netflix’s problematic definition of “original” and include here any content that they had substantive involvement in [Ball 2018]). Originals are an integral part of the brand strategy of these increasingly popular portals (Wayne 2018), but they are also used to situate SVODs as the new frontier for creatives—a welcoming place that offers a “light touch,” if not complete “creative freedom” (Baldwin 2013). They offer more security than broadcasters and cable players (with an emphasis on entire seasons at a time rather than episodes, which impacts narrative format and structure), and free from the constraints of regulation, classifications and linear schedules, producers can dabble in controversial themes and imagery. SVODs also, as above, offer steadily increasing budgets: in 2019 Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings anticipated that the

 Fincher, D., Spacey, K., Roth, E., Donen, J., Brunetti, D., Davies, A., Dobbs, M., Melfi, J., Willimon, B., Willimon, D., Manson, D., Coles, J.D., Wright, R., Pugliese, F., Gibson, M.J. (Executive Producers). (2013–2018). House of Cards [TV series]. Media Rights Capital, Netflix, Panic Pictures, Trigger Street Productions. 16  Kohan, J., Friedman, L., Hess, S., Herrmann, T., Vinnecour, L., Tannenbaum, N.K., Burley, M.A. (Executive Producers). (2013–2019). Orange is the New Black [TV series]. Titled Productions, Lionsgate Television. 15

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record-­breaking £100 million per-season budget of The Crown17 would shortly “look like a bargain” (cited by Sandle 2019). Indeed, Amazon Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series18 apparently cost US$465 million for its first season alone (Andreeva 2021). These are the ideal conditions for SF production of the might and majesty craved by critics of FOX’s The Passage. When it comes to the kinds of shows that are being commissioned, Lotz has described (at least Netflix’s) approach to original content as a “conglomerated niche curation strategy” (2017). While SVODs seemed to prioritize adult drama at launch, all have gone on to gradually invest in more niche areas: teen comedies, horror films, Christmas movies, stand-up comedy, unique reality programming, and— perhaps most interestingly, because all of them have commissioned some kind of flagship series in the genre—science fiction. A brief overview of original SF content on SVODs highlights the extent to which these platforms contain SF worlds, and are thus SF imaginaries or multiverses themselves, made manifest online, so connecting the (physical) world around us. Appropriately, we begin with the first of the major SVODs, Netflix, and its SF world-building through its original content strategy. One of Netflix’s first exclusive SF offerings was Sense8,19 and

 Morgan, P., Daldry, S., Harries, A., Martin, P., Mackie, S., Shaw, M.B., Fox, R., Seghatchian, T., Wolarsky, N., Goss. A., Caron, B., (Executive Producers). (2016–). The Crown [TV series]. Left Bank Pictures, Sony Pictures Television. 18  Payne, J.D., McKay, P., Weber, L., Greene, C., Bayona, J.A., Atienza, B., Doble, J., Cahill, J., Hutchison, G., Richmond, B., Yguado, S.T. (Executive Producers). (2022–). Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power [TV series]. Amazon Studios, Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Trust, HarperCollins, New Line Cinema. 19  Hill, G., Wachowski, L., Wachowski, L., Straczynski, J.M., Holland, C., Friedlander, P., Duncan, T., Nayar, D., Clarance, L., Rosen, M., Toll, J., Delahaye, L. (Executive Producers). (2015–2018). Sense8 [TV series]. Anarchos Productions, Georgeville Television, Javelin Productions, Motion Picture Capital, Studio JMS, Unpronounceable Productions. 17

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shows like Black Mirror,20 Stranger Things,21 The OA,22 Dark,23 Altered Carbon,24 Lost in Space,25 Another Life,26 Better Than Us,27 The I-Land,28 Osmosis,29 Away30 and Raised by Wolves31 have since proliferated. Netflix “single-handedly accounted for over 18% of all US SF and fantasy commissions announced in 2018, across both linear and VoD platforms,” and in the first quarter of 2019 the service was commissioning SF and fantasy titles at a greater rate than it was licensing titles in these genres, to the extent that almost a quarter of all Netflix commissions were SF or fantasy titles (Thorpe 2019). As of 2021, SF and fantasy titles accounted for some 14% of Netflix’s scripted original series (Ampere Analysis 2021). Original Netflix SF is not only produced in the English language and in America, 20  Jones, A., Brooker, C. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Black Mirror [TV Series]. Zeppotron, Channel 4 Television Corporation, Babieka, Gran Babieka. 21  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV Series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre, Netflix. 22  Marling, B., Batmanglij, Z., Pitt, B., Gardner, D., Kleiner, J., Esberg, S., Sugar, M., Engel, A., Fetter, B., Wolarsky, N. (Executive Producers). (2016–2019). The OA [TV Series]. Plan B, Anonymous Content, Netflix. 23  Müsch, J., Friese, J., Berg, Q., Wiedemann, M., Odar, B. (Executive Producers). (2017–2020). Dark [TV Series]. Netflix, W & B Television. 24  Nelson, B., Middleton, J., Ellison, D., Goldberg, D., Ross, M., Medavoy, M., Messer, A.W., Fischer, B.J., Vanderbilt, J., Hurran, N., Friend, R., Lerner, G., Blackman, S., Schapker, A., Kalogridis, L. (Executive Producers). (2018–2020). Altered Carbon [TV series]. Mythology Entertainment, Skydance Television. 25  Marshall, N., Estrin, Z., Burns, K., Jashni, J., Sazama, M., Sharpless, B., Helwig, M., Graves, A. (Executive Producers). (2018–2021). Lost in Space [TV series]. Legendary Television, Synthesis Entertainment, Applebox Pictures, Cinesite, Clickety-Clack Productions. 26  Martin, A., Halpern, N., Regina, C. (Executive Producers). (2019–2021). Another Life [TV series]. Halfire Entertainment. 27  Iloyan, E., Kessel, A., Shlyappo, V., Sorokin, R., Trotsyuk, A., Zhalinskiy, D. (Executive Producers). (2018–2019). Better Than Us [TV series]. Yellow, Black & White. 28  LaBute, N., Oakes, C., Frislev, M. (Executive Producers). (2019). The I-Land [TV series]. Netflix, Nomadic Pictures Entertainment. 29  Fouché, A., Aknine, S., Albano, A., Chelli, C. (Executive Producers). (2019). Osmosis [TV series]. CAPA Drama. 30  Katims, J., Goldberg, J., Reeves, M., Hinderaker, A., Zwick, E., Swank, H., Kassan, A., Mulein, J., Lee, M. (Executive Producers). (2020). Away [TV series]. 6th & Idaho Productions, True Jack Productions, Universal Television. 31  Guzikowski, A., Huffam, M., Zucker, D.W., Scott, R., Kolbrenner, A., Sheehan, J. (Executive Producers). (2020–). Raised by Wolves [TV series]. Film Afrika Worldwide, Lit Entertainment Group, Scott Free Productions, Studio T.

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but in a plethora of languages and from around the world, including Germany (Dark), France (Osmosis), Brazil (3%)32 and South Korea (Sisyphus: The Myth).33 All are available to viewers around the globe, creating a truly multiple, transnational SF imaginary on the Netflix platform. The much smaller originals slate of Paramount+ (formally CBS All Access) also prominently features SF. The first scripted series it developed was Star Trek: Discovery34 and the platform has since committed to a Star Trek universe-building project, giving a two-season order to the adult animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks,35 developing the animated Star Trek: Prodigy36 for children with Nickelodeon, producing three seasons of the Patrick Stewart-led Star Trek: Picard,37 and launching the prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.38 Paramount+ “burnished” (Steinberg and Holloway 2017) SF further with an anthology series revival of The Twilight Zone,39 and more recently has given a series order to The Man Who Fell to

32  Mello, T., Piagge, E., Avalos, D., Barmack, E., Luegenbiehl, K., Aguilera, P. (Executive Producers). (2020). 3% [TV series]. Boutique Filmes, Netflix Studios. 33  Seung-son, J. (Executive Producer). (2021). Sisyphus: The Myth [TV series]. Drama House, JTBC Studios. 34  Fuller, B., Semel, D., Roddenberry, E., Roth, T., Goldsman, A., Kadin, H., Berg, G.J., Harberts, A., Kurtzman, A., Osunsanmi, O., Siracusa, F., Weber, J., Lumet, J., Paradise, M. (Executive Producers). (2017–). Star Trek: Discovery [TV series]. CBS Television Studios, Living Dead Guy Productions, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. 35  Kurtzman, A., Kadin, H., Roddenberry, R., Roth, T., Krentz, K., McMahan, M., Baiers, A. (Executive Producers). (2020–). Star Trek: Lower Decks [TV series]. 219 Productions, CBS All Access, CBS Eye Animation Productions, Important Science, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout, Titmouse. 36  Hageman, K., Hageman, D., Roddenberry, R., Roth, T., Krentz, K., Baiers, A., Kadin, H., Alex K. (Executive Producers). (2022–). Star Trek: Prodigy [TV series]. Secret Hideout, Roddenberry Entertainment, Brothers Hageman Productions, Nickelodeon Animation Studio, CBS Eye Animation Productions. 37  Roddenberry, E., Roth, T., Duff, J., Stewart, P., Kadin, H., Goldsman, A., Chabon, M., Kurtzman, A., Matalas, T., Aarniokoski, D., Massin, D. (Executive Producers). (2020–). Star Trek: Picard [TV series]. CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. 38  Roddenberry, E., Roth, T., Lumet, J., Siracusa, F., Weber, J., Baiers, A., Kadin, H., Myers, H.A., Goldsman, A., Kurtzman, A. (Executive Producers). (2022–). Star Trek: Stranger Worlds [TV series]. Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, H M R X Productions, Roddenberry Entertainment, CBS Studios. 39  Kinberg, S., Peele, J., Rosenfeld, W., Chon, A., Serling, C., Berg, R., Yaitanes, G., Morgan, G., Rubens, A. (Executive Producers). (2019–20). The Twilight Zone [TV series]. CBS Television Studios, Genre Films, Monkeypaw Productions.

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Earth (Andreeva 2019).40 Apart from its Star Trek series, one of Paramount+’s most significant releases has been its 2020 adaptation of Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic epic The Stand.41 Like Netflix, Amazon Studios has been commissioning original content since 2013, with an initial focus on comedy, drama and documentary (McGee et al. 2019). SF was not a priority until relatively recently, with The Man in the High Castle and Electric Dreams. Bezos’s 2018 announcement of the platform’s intention to “save” The Expanse represented a larger ongoing shift in Amazon’s content strategy. In September 2017, Bezos tasked Amazon Studios chief Roy Price (and later his replacement Jennifer Salke) to prioritize “buzzy” event and genre projects with “global appeal” (Littleton and Holloway 2017), and place “less emphasis on naturalistic dramas and comedies” (Birnbaum 2017). An increase in production spending was earmarked for numerous adaptations of existing intellectual property: Larry Niven’s Ringworld; Ian M. Banks’s series of interstellar novels, beginning with Consider Phlebas; films Fast Color42 and Event Horizon;43 and the graphic novels East of West, Transhuman and Paper Girls. SF appears to be an increasing priority for Amazon and its SVOD Prime Video. SF also appears to be an important part of the original content strategy of recent major SVOD entrant, Apple TV+. Of the twelve titles available upon its launch in November 2019, two were SF: For All Mankind44 and See.45 The former has an “impressive pedigree” (Bundel 2019) in that it was created by Ronald D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame. Each hour 40  Bauer, R., Beverly, C., Guyonnet, F., Hlavin, J., Kadin, H., Kurtzman, A., Lumet, J., Timberman, S., Halkin, T. (Executive Producers). (2022). The Man Who Fell to Earth [TV series]. CBS Studios, Secret Hideout, Timberman-Beverly Productions, Tandem Productions. 41  Cavell, B., Elmore, T., Boone, J., Weiske, W., Miller, J., Lee, R., Rubinstein, R.P. (Executive Producers). (2020–1). The Stand [TV series]. Vertigo Entertainment, CBS Television Studios, Mosaic. 42  Hart, J. (Director), Jula Hart and Jordan Horowitz (Written by), (2018). Fast Color [Film]. Codeblack Films, LD Entertainment, Original Headquarters. 43  Anderson, P. (Director), Philip Eisner (Written by), (1997). Event Horizon [Film]. Golar Productions, Impact Pictures, Paramount Pictures. 44  Moore, R.D., Wolpert, M., Nedivi, B., Davis, M., Gordon, S., Shankar, N., Beattie, N., Thompson, B., Weddle, D. (Executive Producers). (2019–). For All Mankind [TV series]. Sony Pictures, Tall Ship Productions. 45  Lawrence, F., Knight, S., Chernin, P., Topping, J., Campo, K., Rowe, J., Shotz, D., Steinberg, J.E., Yale, J., Tropper, J. (Executive Producers). (2019–). See [TV series]. Chernin Entertainment, Endeavour Content, Nebula Star, Quaker Moving Pictures.

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of the latter cost nearly US$15 million to produce (Schwartzel 2019). Apple TV+ later released Amazing Stories,46 Invasion47 and Foundation.48 Finally, Disney+, the most recent large contender in the SVOD market, has committed to a full slate of original television for its Marvel and Star Wars properties (Vary 2020). It is, then, not only important to consider just how much SF content is being produced across SVOD platforms—the lists of shows above are not exhaustive and are ever expanding—but also the SF language of discovery and “search for home” that seems to advance this SF expansion and fans’ reading of this streaming platform agenda. This is a television creation of SF worlds on a scale never seen before.

SVOD’s Utopias and Dystopias To examine the reconfiguration of SF television, it is useful to explore shows that have moved (home) from specialty broadcast or cable channels to SVOD. Here we can begin to track that particular brand of SF television that SVODs seem to have commercially prioritized: a more violent, gritty, and sexually charged proposition, which is promoted as the product of creative freedom for showrunners. Perhaps suitably, this freedom appears delineated by the utopia/dystopia dichotomy that has long haunted SF storytelling and the television medium. That is, the idea that two things can be one, and at the same time. The imagined space free from the cultural, social and economic ills of the time often collides on screen with a vision of poverty, conflict and climate change imagined to apocalyptic levels (Claeys 2010; Murphy 2021). TV itself has been understood along this binary. As J.P. Telotte notes, as a once-futuristic medium, TV has been imagined as meant to bring people together and “foster international relations” (2006, 182). SVODs have certainly encouraged such a reading: These platforms are rhetorically positioned as homes of creative freedom and internationally produced content. For the lucky SF 46  Kitsis, E., Horowitz, A., Spielberg, S., Frank, D., Falvey, J., Frost, L.A., Goodman, D.H., Long, C., Kurt, D., Burns, E., Lubin, A. (Executive Producers). (2020–). Amazing Stories [TV series]. Amblin Television, Universal Television, Kitsis/Horowitz, ABC Studios. 47  Verbruggen, J., Chon, A., Kaufman, A., Baldwin, A., Kinberg, S., Weil, D., Ellis, E. (Executive Producers). (2021–). Invasion [TV series]. Kinberg Genre, Boat Rocker Media. 48  Goyer, D.S., Ellison, D., Goldberg, D., Bost, B., Asimov, R., Ross, M., Friedman, J., Welsh, C. (Executive Producers). (2021–). Foundation [TV series]. Skydance Television, Latina Pictures, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Phantom Four.

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creators working with SVOD, the financial and creative support offered by streaming represents nothing short of a production utopia, a far cry from the struggles they have experienced on broadcast and cable TV. Many attributed Black Mirror’s shift from Channel 4 to Netflix to the SVOD’s outbidding of the UK broadcaster in a reported US$40 million deal (Plunkett 2016). According to Endemol Shine, this allowed producers to “realize their ambitions for the series” (Lee 2016). However, creator Charlie Brooker has insisted that jumping ship was instead more about finding the perfect home for the anthology show: “Somebody didn’t just come out and wave a cheque and we ran away from Channel 4 towards it, put it that way… We don’t have cliffhangers or recurring characters—and shows that reinvent themselves every week have struggled in the ratings. Ratings were the king for years. But on Netflix, we can put the whole thing up and it’s like a short story collection, or an album, or tickets to a film festival” (Brooker as cited by Jeffery 2016). Netflix’s (ostensibly, or at least marketed) collaborative but “never prescriptive” approach gave Brooker the opportunity to push even more creative boundaries: “From story to story, we can reinvent the wheel and produce massively different tonal pieces. We have the freedom to do absolutely whatever we want” (Grater 2017). While it is worth remaining sceptical of the utopic narrative presented by Brooker, SF television creators have almost universally described the move from broadcast and specialty cable to SVOD in similarly optimistic terms. When Amazon picked up The Expanse for a fourth season after its cancellation on SyFy, the resounding response was that it was going to be “so much better” because the show had found its “rightful home” (Carbone 2019). According to showrunner Naren Shankar, “We literally feel like we died and went to heaven. A streaming platform is really, I think, the home the show always wanted. I think we were always built for this exact kind of platform. It’s tremendously creatively free” (as cited by Aquilina 2019). The same utopic rhetoric we have seen from other producers and critics, and fans, is at play here. This freedom included no more restrictions on content and format: “We don’t have to bang on 47 minutes every episode, we don’t have to worry about commercial breaks. We don’t have the restrictions in terms of content: it’s darker, it’s sexier, it’s a little more gritty, it’s a little more real” (Anvar, as cited by Carbone 2019). It also allowed producers to adapt “certain parts of the source material novel that never would have made it to basic cable” (Hurley 2018). To be fair, it would be unreasonable to suggest that SyFy was not already trying to push

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boundaries with The Expanse: Its first episode features two characters engaging in relatively explicit zero-G sex;49 in its fourth, a character’s head is blown off by a stray railgun round during a space ship battle, after which his blood pools uncannily in mid-air to “realistically” represent the zero-­ gravity environment.50 After The Expanse moved to Amazon Prime Video, its characters’ use of expletives certainly increased, but otherwise its visceral content remained largely unchanged from its cable-produced seasons. Shows like Black Mirror and The Expanse are the kind of dystopian SF that have helped create the expectations of Quality TV on SVODs. It is then in SVODs’ commissioning of original content that we see more fully the utopian production values play out in creation of increasingly uniform dystopian content. This dystopian SF programming is central to the creation of Quality TV, which, as Schlütz points out, seeks to distinguish itself from other television by adding “symbolic value to the viewing experience” (2016, 104) via a range of strategies including mixing familiar generic elements with a deliberate foregrounding of visual and aural style linked to cinema, morally compromised protagonists and a general sense of “cultural verisimilitude” (Neale 2000, 159) expressed through graphic sex and violence, as well as unexpected narrative twists. As Brett Mills notes, “texts which most obviously signal their generic characteristics are commonly seen to be of low cultural value” (2009, 27). Hence, when SVOD SF series utilize their more familiar generic elements, they often do so in such a way as to be tastefully aligned with highbrow Quality TV. Gone, then, is the hopeful outlook, “clean” space, and utopic vision of some pre-SVOD SF, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation; instead, viewers are thrust into the morally and narratively more complex “dirty” space of new shows, such as Netflix’s Altered Carbon or the reimagined classic utopian Star Trek franchise, with Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard. Netflix’s Altered Carbon begins its first episode “Out of the Past” in an orgy of sex, death and body-horror.51 These elements are accompanied by elaborate (and expensive) production design and complex 49  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & McDonough, T. (Director). (2015, December 14). “Dulcinea.” (Season 1, Episode 1). The Expanse. Alcon Entertainment, Hivemind. 50  Shankar, N. (Writer) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2015, December 29). “CQB.” (Season 1, Episode 4). The Expanse. Alcon Entertainment, Hivemind. 51  Kalogridis, L. (Writer) & Sapochnik, M. (Director). (2018, February 2). “Out of the Past” (Season 1, Episode 1). Altered Carbon. Mythology Entertainment, Skydance Television.

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cinematography which present traditional SF tropes as spectacular, adultorientated and worthy of SVOD. Dara Downey describes the series as a “generic hybrid” that “punctuat[es] its science-fictional/noir mise-enscène with elements of horror (gore, sexualized violence, and extended scenes of torture)” (2019, 203). Most of these elements are on full display in the post-­ credits sequence that follows the elaborate, Quality TV-inflected, CGI titles commonly deployed in Netflix originals (Lynch 2022). In Altered Carbon’s first scene, protagonist Takeshi Kovacs (Byron Mann) recalls his own death. As Kovacs’s new “sleeve” (another human body into which his mind is implanted) floats to the surface of an effervescent pool, he recalls a series of evocative images: himself and a female accomplice washing gore from one another’s naked bodies in a shower, a series of sexual encounters with unidentified women and viscera being scraped from mysterious, glowing, high-tech discs. Kovacs wakes in his new body (now portrayed by Joel Kinnaman), confused, disoriented (like the audience) and slathered in viscous bio-tech birthing fluid. In this opening sequence, potentially utopic SF themes such as the fluid nature of consciousness, physicality, identity and an imagined future are presented to the viewer in the swiftest, crudest ways possible to depict a grim and gritty cyberpunk dystopia. Kovacs screams for the techno-resurrection personnel to “get [him] a fucking mirror!”, in which actor Byron Mann’s face is digitally wiped away as Joel Kinnaman’s screaming visage flies into view (“Out of the Past”). These images are intercut with an extended action sequence wherein Kovacs and his accomplice violently dispatch a number of power-armoured goons before being mowed down by gunfire. A similar uniformity of content and narrative—that “harsh future reality”—even redraws previously family-friendly, utopic series like Star Trek. The new incarnations of the franchise are positioned as potential SVOD flagship titles after being inflected by the demands of Quality TV. Whereas all previous Star Trek series originally aired on broadcast networks and then proceeded into syndication, Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard were produced for and released on the newly minted CBS All Access SVOD platform (now Paramount+). Star Trek Discovery was the second original series released on the service, the first being essentially a Quality

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TV-inflected spinoff of CBS legal drama The Good Wife52 titled The Good Fight.53 The Good Fight features fewer episodes-per-season and flaunts its restriction-free subscription platform status by featuring established The Good Wife characters uttering expletives previously unavailable to them on broadcast television. As the creator of Star Trek: Discovery notes, his series does more of the same: Fuller admitted that since the show will be on CBS All Access, “we’re not subject to broadcast standards and practices”, which will allow them a “broader spectrum” of content and the potential for more graphic scenes. He said that they’re still “weighing” how much they want to include in terms of profanity, because they still want the series to feel like “Star Trek” and be suitable for younger viewers. “I’d imagine we’re gonna shoot scenes a couple of ways and see what feels authentic in the editing room” (Prudom 2016).

In addition to the expletive “fuck,” used twice in quick succession in episode five of the first season of Discovery, “Choose Your Pain”,54 and the aesthetic changes made possible through bigger budgets, Discovery reimagines the hopeful, utopian future of earlier series in the franchise to focus on sex and explicit violence. This violence is especially notable when compared to the generally bloodless depictions of inter-galactic conflict in other iterations of the franchise. This is carefully produced Quality content. Discovery more officiously demonstrates its Quality TV status through its violence. In the third episode “Context is for Kings,”55 viewers are 52  Scott, R., Johnson, D., Zucker, D.W., King, M., King, R., Kennedy, B., Scott, T., Humphrey, T., Dick, L., Eisner, K., Turk, C., McDougall, C. (Executive Producers). (2009–2016). The Good Wife [TV series]. Scott Free Productions, King Size Productions, Small Wishes, CBS Productions, CBS Television Studios, CBS All Access. 53  King, R., King, M., Robinson, P.A., Scott, R., Zucker, D.W., Glotzer, L., Kennedy, B., Scott, A., Finkelstein, W.M., Reingold, J., Tolins, J., Sheehan, J., Scarlett, D., Squire, A., Hermann, N., Shohet, T., Cross, A. (Executive Producers). (2017–). The Good Fight [TV series]. Scott Free Productions, King Size Productions, CBS Productions, CBS Television Studios, CBS All Access. 54  Powers, K., Berg, G.J., Harberts, A. (Writers) & Rose, L. (Director). (2017, October 15). “Choose Your Pain” (Season 1, Episode 5). Star Trek: Discovery. CBS Television Studios, Living Dead Guy Productions, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. 55  Berg, G.J., Harberts, Sweeny, C., Fuller, B. (Writers) & Goldsman, A. (Director). (2017, October 1). “Context is for Kings” (Season 1, Episode 3). Star Trek: Discovery. CBS Television Studios, Living Dead Guy Productions, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout.

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greeted by the Star Trek franchise’s first instance of truly visceral gore. Boarding a damaged spacecraft to investigate (a well-worn plot device from Star Trek series past), a team from the USS Discovery encounters the bodies of slain Starfleet personnel and Klingon warriors. A close up reveals several mangled corpses, their faces rent apart and cracked bone fragments visibly penetrating flesh and uniforms. These images are achieved through practical effects, used to evoke a level of bodily affect (Williams 1991, 3)—an experience unfamiliar to Star Trek fans. However, audiences who had engaged in promotional material for the series might have expected such content, given that Bryan Fuller served as showrunner of the grotesquely baroque television adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal novels.56 Interestingly, the dead personnel are revealed to have been killed by a giant CGI-rendered version of the quaint microscopic real-world organism, a tardigrade or “water bear”—demonstrating that even elements that would have felt at home on “classic” Star Trek can be reimagined as spectacular, frightening and worthy of the kind of contemporary high-end Quality SF preferred by SVOD services. Even as elements of the older, utopic series in the Star Trek franchise are revisited in the new SVOD incarnations and folded into the logic of dystopic adult-orientated content, a clear nostalgia for “classic” Star Trek remains. For example, important characters from the original Star Trek series like Spock (Ethan Peck) and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) are featured in the new SVOD series, while even sillier fan-centric Easter eggs like the fluffy alien Tribbles make an appearance. Indeed, some episodes of the SVOD Star Trek series still resemble the anthropological tales of discovery that defined earlier series. However, these gentler nostalgic elements feel incongruous alongside the gory scenes of battle and torture which populate the new SVOD series. Utopia and dystopia collide to make a convoluted viewing experience, in which fans, and even casual or new viewers are made to feel not at home, uncomfortable in fact, so that the Star Trek franchise can find a home as Quality TV on an SVOD. This dual positioning between utopian and dystopian impulses is best evidenced in Patrick Stewart’s return as Jean Luc Picard (a return long desired by 56  Fuller, B., De Laurentiis, M., Dumas, S., Riandee, C., O’Connell, K., Roth, E., Colleton, S., Slade, D., Brancato, C., Alexander, J., Rymer, M., Lightfoot, S. (Executive Producers). (2013–2015). Hannibal [TV series]. Dino De Laurentiis Company, Living Dead Guy Productions, AXN: Original X Production, Gaumont International Television.

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fans) in a series which abandons much of the hopefulness which defined the characters’ earlier adventures. In the fifth episode of Picard’s first season, “Stardust City Rag,”57 another nostalgic return occurs when the Star Trek Voyager character Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) is forced to mercy-kill her adopted son Icheb (Casey King), after his cybernetic implants have been mercilessly and graphically harvested by black marketeers. In the episode’s cold open, audiences are shown Icheb’s mechanical eye being yanked from its socket in a sequence that recalls the “torture porn” (Lockwood 2009) horror subgenre epitomized by the Saw film franchise. As a result, a broken and cynical Seven of Nine becomes a vigilante, patrolling the lawless borders of a scaled-back, isolationist Galactic Federation. The violence of this SVOD-reimagining of the Star Trek universe breaks with past iterations of the show, looking to do something new. Describing earlier series in the franchise, George A. Gonzales argues that “Star Trek is a political tract arguing/explaining how humans … will, can, and should achieve an ideal political, social, and economic system—that is, a utopia” (2015, 32). When reimagined for SVOD, Star Trek is no longer a hopeful tale of humankind leading a galactic federation of planets; it is, instead, a collection of disjointed dystopic stories of lost hope and broken promises.

Conclusion In Battlestar Galactica’s fourth season, the last of humanity arrives on Earth, only to find it a blasted wasteland. However, through perseverance, unlikely alliances and faith, the show’s “heroes” eventually find a place to call home. Likewise, as a cable network specifically dedicated to the genre, SyFy should have been SF television’s salvation, were it not for a lack of funding and an original line-up that resembled something of a blasted wasteland, at least creatively. SVODs seem to have finally offered SF shows a home; Amazon Prime Video provided The Expanse with three more seasons and the opportunity to “[stick] the landing, and creatively, [give] the show the send-off it deserve[d] (Strait as cited by Britt 2022). However, at times this new home can come at the cost of variety and perhaps

57  Beyer, K. (Writer) & Frake, J. (Director). (2020, February 20). “Stardust City Rag.” (Season 1, Episode 5). Star Trek: Picard. CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout.

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ironically—given the reading and promotion of the medium—freedom and creativity. That SF has become a valued part of the original programming strategies for the major streaming platforms has not escaped the attention of their competitors. An early consideration of the original content commissioned by newer SVOD players—Disney+, BET+, HBO Max and Peacock—found that more than one quarter (27%) of scripted commissions were classified as SF and fantasy (Broadband TV News 2019). Whether this content will be accompanied by similar discourses—that SVOD SF is darker, sexier, grittier and more “real”—remains to be seen. As this chapter has demonstrated, SF TV is a genre that moves with the times, adapting and being adapted to new platforms, delivery methods and tastes. As the prophecy in Battlestar Galactica goes, “All this has happened before. All this will happen again.” Though industrially, culturally and academically significant, SF’s recent move to SVOD may just be another stop on the genre’s never-ending search for a permanent and receptive home.

References Ampere Analysis. (2021). Analytics-SVoD. https://www.ampereanalysis.com/ products/about/analytics-­svod Anderson, J. (2015). Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces. Routledge. Andreeva, N. (2019, August 1). ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ TV Series from Alex Kurtzman Ordered by CBS All Access. Deadline. https://deadline. com/2019/08/the-­man-­who-­fell-­to-­earth-­tv-­series-­alex-kurtzman-­ordered-­ cbs-­all-­access-­1202657384/ Andreeva, N. (2021, April 16). ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Blockbuster Budget for Season 1 Is Revealed As New Zealand Ups Amazon Series’ Rebate. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2021/04/the-­l ord-­o f-­t he-­r ings-­s eason-­1 -­b udgetrebate-­increased-­new-­zealand-­1234736222/ Aquilina, T. (2019, October 5). The Expanse Stars Tease ‘Chaos and Bedlam’ for Season 4—Watch Action-Packed New Trailer. Entertainment Weekly. https:// ew.com/comic-­c on/2019/10/05/expanse-­s eason-­4 -­n ew-­t railerchaos-­bedlam/ Baldwin, R. (2013, February 1). With House of Cards, Netflix Bets on Creative Freedom. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2013/02/creative-­freedomcord-­cutting/

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Ball, M. (2018, August 27). How the Paradox of the Term ‘Original’ Explains the Video Industry (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 4). Redef. https:// redef.com/original/how-­t he-­p aradox-­o f-­t he-­p hrase-­o riginal-­s eriesexplains-­the-­video-­industry-­netflix-­misunderstandings-­pt-­4 Bignell, J. (2007). Seeing and Knowing: Reflexivity and Quality. In K. Akass & J. McCabe (Eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (pp. 158–170). I.B. Tauris. Birnbaum, D. (2017, September 28). Amazon Increases Production Spending for 2018, Developing Three New Sci-Fi Series. Variety. https://variety.com/2017/ tv/news/amazon-­studios-­lazarus-­snow-­crash-ringworld-­1202576048/ Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press. Bridge, G. (2020, January 6). Entertainment Companies Spend $121 Billion on Original Content in 2019. Variety. https://variety.com/2020/biz/ news/2019-­original-­content-­spend-­121-­billion-­1203457940/ Britt, R. (2022, January 15). Expanse Season 6 Ending Explained: Why Season 7 Isn’t Coming. Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/ expanse-­season-­6-­ending-­explained-­season-­7 Broadband TV News. (2019, September 17). How Will the Six New SVOD Players Use Original Content?. https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2019/09/17/ how-­will-­the-­six-­new-­svod-­players-­use-­original-­content/ Bundel, A. (2019, November 1). Apple TV Plus Joins Disney+ in the Streaming Wars with Mediocre Shows and Lots to Prove. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/apple-­tv-­plus-­joins-­disney-­streaming-­wars-­mediocreshows-­lots-­ncna1074946 Carbone, G. (2019, October 14). Why The Expanse Season 4 Will Be So Much Better on Amazon Than Syfy. Cinema Blend. https://www.cinemablend.com/ television/2482202/why-­t he-­e xpanse-­s eason-­4 -­w ill-­b e-­s o-­m uchbetter-­on-­amazon-­than-­syfy Cardwell, S. (2007). Is Quality Television Any Good? Generic Distinctions, Evaluations and the Troubling Matter of Critical Judgment. In K.  Akass & J. McCabe (Eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (pp. 19–35). I.B. Tauris. Chaney, J. (2019, January 10). The Passage Is Decent, at a Time When Decent Might Not Be Enough. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/the-­ passage-­tv-­review.html Claeys, G. (2010). The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell. In G.  Claeys (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (pp. 107–132). Cambridge University Press. Cook, J. R., & Wright, P. (2006). British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker’s Guide. I.B. Tauris.

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Downey, D. (2019). Laeta Kalogridis’ Altered Carbon (2018–present)– Edgar Allen Poe. In S. Bacon (Ed.), Horror: A Companion (pp. 201–210). Peter Lang. Feuer, J. (1984). The MTM Style. In J. Feuer, P. Kerr, & T. Vahimag (Eds.), MTM ‘Quality Television’ (pp. 16–32). British Film Institute. Fowle, K. (2019, January 14). It Takes a Lot of Work to Make Something as Bloodless and Dull as The Passage. AV Club. https://tv.avclub.com/ it-­takes-­a-­lot-­of-­work-­to-­make-­something-­as-­bloodless-­a-­1831669950 Gonzales, G.  A. (2015). The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future. Palgrave Macmillan. Grater, T. (2017, July 2). Emmys 2017: Charlie Brooker Talks Netflix and ‘Black Mirror’. Screen Daily. https://www.screendaily.com/features/emmys-­2017-­ charlie-­brooker-­talks-­netflix-­and-­black-­mirror/5119195.article Hatchell, R. (2018, July 2). The Future of B.C.: Vancouver as Sci-fi Television’s Ideal Media Capital. Flow Journal. https://www.flowjournal.org/2018/07/ the-­future-­of-­bc/ Herman, A. (2019, January 14). ‘The Passage’ and the Limitations of Network Television. The Ringer. https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/1/14/ 18181598/the-passage-­network-­tv-­fox Hurley, L. (2018, June 27). The Expanse Star Talks What the Move to Amazon Means for Fans. Cinema Blend. https://www.cinemablend. com/television/2442320/the-­e xpanse-­s tar-­t alks-­w hat-­t he-­m ove-­t oamazon-­means-­for-­fans Jeffery, M. (2016, October 11). Here’s Why Black Mirror Ended Up on Netflix, According to Charlie Brooker. Digital Spy. https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a810729/heres-­w hy-­b lack-­m irror-­e nded-­u p-­o n-­n etflixaccording-­to-­charlie-­brooker/ Johnson, C. (2005). Telefantasy. British Film Institute. Johnson-Smith, J. (2005). American Science Fiction TV Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond. I.B. Tauris. Lee, B. (2016, March 29). Black Mirror Series 3 Won’t be Shown on Channel 4 After All as it Loses Broadcast Rights to Netflix. Digital Spy. https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a788561/black-­m ir r or-­s eason-­3 -­c hannel-­4 -­l osesrights-­to-­netflix/ Littleton, C., & Holloway, D. (2017, September 8). Jeff Bezos Mandates Programming Shift at Amazon Studios (EXCLUSIVE). Variety. https:// variety.com/2017/tv/news/amazon-­s tudios-­j ef f-­b ezos-­r oy-­p ricezelda-­1202552532/ Lockwood, D. (2009). All Stripped Down: The Spectacle of ‘Torture Porn’. Popular Communication, 7(1), 40–48. Lotz, A. D. (2017). Portals. University of Michigan. Lynch, A., & Scarlata, A. (2022). Streaming Paracinema: Charles Band, Full Moon Features and Auteurism on Third Tier SVOD Services. Senses of Cinema,

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100. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2022/feature-­articles/streamingparacinema-­charles-­band-­full-­moon-­features-­and-­auteurism-­on-­third-­tier-­ svod-­services/ Lynch, A. (2022). Quality Telefantasy: How US Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids into the Mainstream. Routledge. McGee, P., Barker, A., & Nicolaou, A. (2019, November 1). Apple Enters the Video Streaming Wars with Launch of TV+ Service. Financial Times. https:// www.ft.com/content/29336b04-­fbe8-­11e9-­a354-­36acbbb0d9b6 Mills, B. (2009). The Sitcom. Edinburgh University Press. Moore, R.  D. (2003, December 17). Battlestar Galactica Series Bible. http:// leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Battlestar_Galactica/Battlestar_Galactica_ Series_Bible.pdf Murphy, P.  D. (2021). In D.  A. Vakoch (Ed.), Introduction to Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond: Feminist Ecocriticism of Science Fiction (pp. 1–7). Routledge. Neale, S. (2000). Genre and Hollywood. Routledge. Netflix. (2021, April 20). 2021 Quarterly Earnings: Q1 Letter to Shareholders. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/ FINAL-­Q1-­21-­Shareholder-­Letter.pdf Newman, M. Z., & Levine, E. (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. Routledge. Otterson, J. (2018, May 25). ‘The Expanse’ Moves to Amazon for Season 4. Variety. https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/the-­expanse-­season-­4-­amazon1202823280/ Palmer, A. (2021, April 15). Amazon Spent $11 Billion on Video and Music Content Last Year, Up From $7.8 Billion in 2019. CNBC. https://www.cnbc. com/2021/04/15/amazon-­spent-­11-­billion-­on-­video-­and-­music-­content-­ last-­year.html Plunkett, J. (2016, March 30). Netflix Deals Channel 4 Knockout Blow Over Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/media/2016/mar/29/netflix-­channel-­4-­charlie-­brooker-­black-­mirror Prudom, L. (2016, August 10). ‘Star Trek: Discovery’: 10 Things We Know About Bryan Fuller’s New Series. Variety. https://variety.com/2016/tv/ news/star-­trek-­discovery-­gay-­character-­cbs-­all-­access-­1201835052/ Sandle, P. (2019, September 20). Netflix Chief Says ‘The Crown’ Will Look Like a Bargain After Streaming Explosion. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-­n etflix-­b ritain/netflix-­c hief-­s ays-­t he-­c rown-­w ill-­l ook-­a -­b argainafter-­streaming-­explosion-­idUSKBN1W50ZQ Schlütz, D. M. (2016). Contemporary Quality TV: The Entertainment Experience of Complex Serial Narratives. Annals of the International Communication Association, 40(1), 95–124.

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Schwartzel, E. (2019, July 10). Coming to a Streaming Service Near You: Shows Costing as Much as Big-Budget Movies. The Wall Street Journal. https://www. wsj.com/ar ticles/coming-­t o-­a -­s treaming-­s er vice-­n ear-­y ou-­s howscosting-­as-­much-­as-­big-­budget-­movies-­11562751000 Spangler, T. (2018, May 14). Netflix Content Chief Says 85% of New Spending Is on Originals. Variety. https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflixoriginal-spending-­85-­percent-­1202809623/ Spangler, Todd. (2019, January 18). Netflix Spent $12 Billion on Content in 2018. Analysts Expect That to Grow to $15 Billion This Year. Variety. https:// variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-­c ontent-­s pending-­2 019-­1 5billion-­1203112090/ Steinberg, B., & Holloway, D. (2017, November 2). CBS Will Revive ‘Twilight Zone’ on All Access Streaming Service. Variety. https://variety.com/2017/ tv/news/cbs-­twilight-­zone-­all-­access-­streaming-­1202605761/ Telotte, J. P. (2006). Lost in Space: Television as Science Fiction Icon. Journal of Popular Film & Television, 33(4), 178–186. Telotte, J. P. (2008). Introduction: The Trajectory of Science Fiction Television. In J. P. Telotte (Ed.), The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader (pp. 1–34). University Press of Kentucky. Thompson, R. J. (1996). Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. Syracuse University Press. Thorpe, A. (2019, November 4). Netflix’s Sci-Fi Commissioning Comes Back Down to Earth. Ampere Analysis. https://www.ampereanalysis.com/insight/ netflixs-­Sci-­fi-­commissioning-­comes-­back-­down-­to-­earth Vary, A.  B. (2020, December 10). ‘Star Wars’ and Marvel’s Futures Now Flow Through Disney Plus. Variety. https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/ disney-­plus-­star-­wars-­marvel-­pixar-­series-­1234850947/ Wayne, M.  L. (2018). Netflix, Amazon, and Branded Television Content in Subscription Video-on-Demand Portals. Media, Culture & Society, 40(5), 725–741. Williams, L. (1991). Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess. Film Quarterly, 44(4), 2–13.

PART II

Mirroring Screens: Reflections, Refractions, and the “Real World”

(Re)configuration From the depths of that virtual space which is on the other side of the mirror, I turn back on myself, beginning to turn my eyes on myself and reconstitute myself where I am in reality. Hence the mirror functions as a heterotopia, since it makes the place that I occupy, whenever I look at myself in the glass, both absolutely real—it is in fact linked to all surrounding space and absolutely unreal, for in order to be perceived it has of necessity to pass that virtual point that is situated down there. (Foucault 1997, 352)

The television functions in a similar way, showing us to ourselves; at times we even catch reflections of our physical selves in the darker colors of the screen. For a moment we see ourselves in the show under our gaze. Watching American SF programming, we see ourselves as part of an American SF space—and we are shaped by the experience. From the shows discussed in this collection to those that lay beyond its boundaries, all American SF shows reflect our world, and more frequently American perspectives of the world (being, after all, products of the culture that produced them). Chapters 6 and 7, however, examine the specifics of American geopolitics and conflicts reflected in Deep Space Nine,1

1  Berman, R., Behr, I. S., Fields, P. A., Piller, M., Wolfe, R. H., (Executive Producers). (1993–1999). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [TV series]. Paramount Television.

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Battlestar Galactica,2 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars,3 while Chap. 8 examines broader conceptions of (spatial) modernities as they shape our world and that of the SF imaginary in The Expanse. The screen in front of us might be read as a process of modernity itself, shaping us and our world even as it reflects a frequently Americanized vision of the world back to us.

Reference Foucault, M. (1997). Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (pp. 350–356). Routledge.

2  Moore, R. D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios. 3  Filoni, D., Lucas, G., Winder, C. (Executive Producers). (2008–2014, 2020). Star Wars: The Clone Wars [TV series]. Lucasfilm Animation.

CHAPTER 6

The Wars of Ronald D. Moore: Terrorism, Insurgency, and News Media in Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica Ben Griffin

Introduction On January 16, 1991, Bernard Shaw informed his CNN audience that “the skies over Baghdad have been illuminated,” as Iraqi anti-air guns futilely engaged American warplanes. The report, which featured shots of tracer fire through grainy night vision and the sound of booming explosions, offered viewers drama that competed with any scripted show. War was live in homes across the world. Following Desert Storm, news networks increasingly brought this strange and alien endeavor of war to viewers in the safety of their homes. News and entertainment blurred, complementing and competing with one another in examination of a world beyond the television screen.

B. Griffin (*) Department of History, United States Military Academy, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_6

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On the screen, science fiction (SF) television shows Deep Space Nine (DS9)1 and Battlestar Galactica (BSG)2 emblemize how fictional storytelling evolved in the 1990s and 2000s to allow viewers to interact with contemporary conflicts and news media. Both shows shared a producer and major creative voice in Ronald D.  Moore, who shaped both programs’ exploration of terrorism, jus en bello (right conduct in war), and the personal and societal costs of war. While working on DS9, Moore responded to a fan question about the show’s ability to comment on history, noting that SF offered a chance to explore contemporary issues and themes in ways “that are not readily available in other genres” (Fandom n.d.-f). The creation of “entire societies with wholly fictional socio-political” contexts could blend the foreign and the recognizable to resonate with viewers. Moore felt alien species were a particularly effective way to achieve this; he enthusiastically endorsed a viewer’s claim that “the main use of another race in Science Fiction … is to hold a mirror up to us” (Fandom n.d.-e). With major world events such as 9/11 taking place between the end of DS9 and the beginning of BSG, both of Moore’s shows reflected a changing sense of “us,” but also a change in the way shows engaged with shared political interests. Moore’s mirrors (like the mirrors of Michel Foucault’s heterotopia), did more than reflect: they also shaped perceptions and guided viewers’ readings of current political events. The parallel between shows and events could only exist because of the evolution of media coverage of war in the 1990s. DS9 and BSG evolved alongside that other mirror—news media, which had itself changed how we read, reflected on, and interpreted modern warfare. This chapter explores not only how Moore’s work provided spaces for viewers to think about modern war but also how both shows emerged from and contributed to a changing media environment (i.e., televised space) in which war was increasingly experienced as a media phenomenon. Viewers watching DS9 and BSG turned to the stars for escapist adventure but also to explore the terrestrial present (of war); they also literally turned from terrestrial, real-world conflict, which played out as these shows aired, to the cosmic every time they tuned into television shows, news, or SF 1  Berman, R., Behr, I.S., Fields, P.A., Piller, M., Wolfe, R.H. (Executive Producers). (1993–1999). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [TV Series]. Paramount Television. 2  Moore, R. D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV Series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios.

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programming. With this literal and figurative “turn” in mind, an exploration of DS9 and BSG as mirrors of contemporary conflict suggests a formulation of the television medium as a science-fictional space where images of war are at once real and fictional. These shows function, in a sense, like the “Mirror Universe” of the Star Trek franchise, which offers a dark reflection of the franchise’s utopian vision, implying the gap between a just and unjust society is not as great as viewers might wish. Though both shows engaged in this depiction of real and imagined conflict, after the events of 9/11, BSG undertook a reconfiguration of space that reflected an evolution in American conflict abroad, its reporting, and reception. The mirror universe was torn and fractured, revealing the trauma of new conflicts as filtered through the screen. Such traumatic shifts emerged in rapid fashion during the decades over which DS9 and BSG aired, disorienting viewers and increasingly reflecting and reinforcing the connections between viewing publics, televised images of war, and the radically shifting world of the new millennium. The blending of fiction and nonfiction, terrestrial and alien, on DS9 and BSG was immersive and compelling, highlighting how television could reconfigure a sense of the “real.” Viewers who turned on the television found a different context for their present political moment. This became particularly important as Americans discovered that the clean narrative of power and righteousness afforded by Desert Storm and the end of the Cold War was an illusion.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine CNN’s coverage of Desert Storm earned the highest ratings in its history. Wolf Blitzer cited the war as the moment “CNN came of age” (2015). Media coverage of the conflict was a conflicted space, with news networks torn between the need to report the violence of war, balance unprecedented access with operational security, and entertain their audience. Millions of viewers around the world saw what historian Melani McAlister refers to as “simultaneously a major military action and a staged media event” (2005, 239; my emphasis). CNN and network news showed the conflict as surgical, implying the US could achieve clear victories and spread its ideology, with minimal cost to Americans and reduced collateral damage in Iraq. President Bush praised it as “swift, decisive, and just” (1991). The defeat of Saddam Hussein’s forces showed “how essential America’s vast military and diplomatic superiority” would be in containing

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instability (Brands 2016, 334). Televised coverage of the war validated Bush’s September 1990 belief that “out of these troubled times … a new world order can emerge” (1990). This belief, however, proved short-lived, as global events, filtered through the television, led Americans to question their nation’s effectiveness. In December of 1992, US marines landed on the beaches of Somalia. However, the only shooting in the amphibious assault came from news crews arriving on the beach in advance of the deployment. The UNITAF mission intended to provide food relief for the Somali famine but descended into violence, culminating in a siege in Mogadishu that left eighteen US soldiers and up to 2000 Somalis dead (Stewart 2002, 23). After the battle, CNN aired footage of militias dragging American bodies through the city. The gruesome images brought into living rooms across the country were alien to American expectations of war after Desert Storm. Domestic support for the intervention evaporated, and US forces withdrew. By 1995, UN forces followed, leaving Somalia in anarchy. Historian Jeffrey Engel argues the failures of US military forces in the 1990s and 2000s showed American policy makers were “imprudent and wrong” in their confidence in US moral capital and military supremacy (Engel 2017, 476). Americans reckoned with this realization through news reports depicting terrorism, war, and ethnic cleansing across the world. Americans also appeared to increasingly expect fictional spaces to reflect contemporary news, especially in the SF space of DS9, as message boards and reviews attested. Some even questioned the viability of the Star Trek franchise. A 1996 New York Times article argued “the Roddenberry optimism” underpinning the franchise was “naïve” (1996). Headlines about “division between Serbs and Muslims, Kurds and Turks, Israelis and Palestinians” showed an “increasingly depressing globe” (1996), which was irreconcilable with the utopian vision of the Federation in Star Trek3 and Star Trek: The Next Generation.4 Moore’s Deep Space Nine adapted to this new environment and provided a series that mirrored media portrayals of conflict and offered viewers a way to contextualize and relate to what they saw across other televised spaces.

3  Roddenberry, G. (Executive Producer). (1966–1969). Star Trek: The Original Series [TV series]. Paramount. 4  Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., Piller, M. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount.

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DS9 broke the traditional Star Trek formula. The show was set on a space station, rather than a ship—a grounding to a fixed location in space that allowed for serialization of story arcs across seasons in a way less possible in past shows in the franchise. Rather than boldly going to seek out something new, characters on DS9 lived with their choices. Starfleet transformed into interstellar peacekeepers rather than explorers. Their mission followed a brutal occupation of the planet Bajor by the Cardassians, long-­ established villains in Star Trek. The station commander, Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), had the express mission of helping the planet rebuild in order to join the Federation (“Emissary”).5 The sudden thrust of Starfleet into a complicated post-conflict environment mirrored the way Americans watched their military employed following the Cold War. Reviewers and fans immediately sought the real-world inspirations for the space setting of DS9—a real world again mediated through news media. Entertainment Weekly closed its review of the premiere by noting that “like the best Trek manifestations, [DS9] provokes questions” (Tucker 1993). It asked viewers to ponder if the imperialist nature of the Federation (and United States) was benign. The reviewer also questioned if DS9 offered “a metaphor for the Middle East conflict or the ‘troubles’ in Ireland” (1993). One fan asked Moore if Bajor was “rather like Lebanon” with the station as Beirut (Fandom n.d.-a). Moore demurred, noting the writers did not “try to make Bajor a direct analogy for anything” but acknowledging that “depending on the episode, you could also call Bajor Israel, or Iran, or even America.” All of these were, during the show’s run, hot spots that viewers could easily access through CNN or other news channels, but the fictionalized space of DS9 offered something more. The immersive nature of the show, and connections viewers forged with characters, built empathy and understanding of events beyond the universe of DS9, the spectacle of war on cable news, and the comfort of a living room. The show’s writers incorporated real-world locations and events, as well as contemporary subjects, allowing the audience “to view the topics in a different light without the baggage” of direct allegory (Fandom  n.d.-g). Creators Rick Berman and Michael Pillar created settings that “took our characters and placed them in an unfamiliar environment… where there were people who didn’t want them there” (Variety Staff 1993). Fans of the show, media figures, and the show’s cast and crew understood that 5  Berman, R., Piller, M. (Writers) & Carson, D., (Director). (1993, January 3). “Emissary” (Season 1 Episode 1). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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while DS9 was set in a distant century and solar system, it was very much about the Earth of the present. Season 2 of DS9 began with a three-part story, a first for the franchise. Airing from September 26 to October 10, 1993, the story explored the fraught nature of peacekeeping. The first episode, “The Homecoming,” introduces the Circle, a group calling for the expulsion of all non-Bajorans from the station.6 Supplied by the Cardassians, the Circle stages a coup and seeks to capture DS9. Sisko orders the evacuation of the station in episode 3, “The Siege,” though the crew remains to defend their home.7 The coup collapses once evidence of Cardassian support for the Circle becomes public, restoring an uneasy peace. Though written before the Battle of Mogadishu, the depiction of a beleaguered peacekeeping force fighting against superior numbers bore some resemblance to the battle that took place a week before the episodes aired; viewers saw a fictional depiction of the US failure in Somalia. The US Army’s official analysis of operations in Somalia recognized that “the chaotic political situation” and the presence of “factions [who] were not exhausted from the fighting” meant there was “no peace to keep” (Stewart 2002, 26). DS9’s fractured Bajor uncannily anticipated and reflected this political reality. As if channeling the Bajoran prophets, the show’s writers saw the immediate future by carefully reading past and present. The dangers of attempting to keep a peace when not all parties wanted one was a driving theme of the show. DS9’s continued exploration of this theme not only contextualized what viewers saw on news broadcasts but also challenged them by placing protagonists in situations where they became the terrorists and immoral actors. The mirror then also reflected a reality that viewers were not searching for—in which Pax America was to be interrogated. Not unlike the mirror universe of the series, DS9 created a parallel universe that revealed and commented upon ongoing conflicts in the real world. During DS9’s run, the specter of ethnic cleansing again haunted Africa and Europe, yet despite the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which signified a commitment to ensuring events like the Holocaust could never happen again, nations 6   Behr, I.S., Taylor, J. (Writers) & Kolbe, W. (Director). (1993, September 26). “Homecoming” (Season 2 Episode 1). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount Television. 7  Piller, M. (Writer) & Kolbe, W. (Director). (1993, October 10). “The Siege” (Season 2 Episode 3). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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consistently found reasons not to act. Fear of a potential quagmire underpinned the refusal of United States and others to intervene in Rwanda to stop genocide, leaving nearly a million dead and two million refugees (Engel 2017, 476). Wars in the Balkans also led to shocking acts of ethnic violence. Most infamously, in Srebrenica, Serbian forces killed over 8000 Bosniak men and boys in a ten-day period. That the massacre took place in a designated UN safe zone further highlighted the unwillingness of the world to act. René Auberjonois, who played Constable Odo, specifically cited Bosnia and Yugoslavia as an influence on the show, noting “everything was falling apart. There was a real darkness” (Holloway and Otterson 2018). The darkness became a hallmark of the show, with its final four seasons focused on war with the Dominion. This exploration of war proved controversial, and some fans derided the choice, claiming “war was not what Star Trek was ever about.” Moore disagreed, noting the conflicts of past Star Trek iterations, while pointing out “that [he] didn’t put phasers on the Enterprise, Gene [Roddenberry] did” (Fandom n.d.-b). Aligning the fictional space of DS9 with the news viewers saw on TV made the show more powerful and relevant and would go further to interrogate the complicity of America and its allies in genocide, the moral ambiguities of modern warfare, and the uncertain nature of its coverage in news media. By having the Circle call for the expulsion of non-Bajorans from the system, DS9’s writers began to address some of these uncertainties and complexities. The Bajorans, who had been victims of ethnic cleansing under Cardassian rule, were now potential perpetrators. Moral boundaries blur further when, in Season 5 episode “For the Uniform,” insurgent leader and former Starfleet officer Michael Eddington (Ken Marshall) targets Cardassians with genetically engineered weapons.8 Even more problematic is Sisko’s employment of a similar weapon to make a planet inhospitable to humans, thus forcing Eddington’s surrender. The episode ends with human insurgents and Cardassians trading damaged planets, restoring balance. All parties are complicit in war crimes, including the Federation. Although Sisko acknowledges his role as villain, his actions receive little scrutiny on the show. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), his science officer and close friend, quips, “sometimes I like it when the bad guy wins” (“For the Uniform”). This smirking one-liner highlights a tendency 8  Fields, P. (Writer) and Lobl, V. (Director). (1997, February 3). “For the Uniform” (Season 5 Episode 13). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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to leave the crimes of “white hats” unexamined to maintain an easy narrative of moral superiority. The moral ambiguity of the Federation is in no doubt when DS9 again explores genocide in the series-spanning Dominion War arc. A rogue Starfleet faction develops a biological weapon to eradicate the race of changelings who lead the Dominion. The rogue status of this faction allows the Federation to retain some moral authority, and when the disease brings the changelings to the brink of extinction, Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), the station’s medical officer, develops a cure.9 Starfleet’s moral authority is clearly undermined, however, when  they allow the cure to be shared with the changelings only after significant debate. Starfleet’s hesitation reflects the inaction of America and its European allies in conflicts like Rwanda, and gestures toward complicity. The Rwandan genocide took place in a country in which Belgian occupiers had once divided the population into two ethnic groups to facilitate colonial rule. While Belgium did not commit the genocide in the 1990s, it helped establish the conditions later exploited by mass murderers. Like the mirror universe of the show, DS9 produced dark reflections of historical events as they unfolded onscreen. A telling moment of the Federation’s moral ambiguity, which also reflected upon the intersection of real-world conflict and modern media, comes in Season 6 as the Federation appears doomed to lose the Dominion War. There will be no Pax Federation; the benevolent empire will disappear. The nineteenth episode of the season, “In the Pale Moonlight,” explores how far a good person will go to turn the tide of a conflict.10 Critically acclaimed as one of the best episodes of the franchise, it features Sisko describing immoral and criminal actions. The episode begins with Sisko posting the weekly list of casualties, revealing the emotional and personal toll of the conflict. He then engages in a scheme to use false intelligence to convince the Romulans to enter the war in support of the Federation. Over the course of the episode, he blackmails, bribes, and abuses his command authority to produce the false intelligence. The Romulan ambassador discovers the forgery and departs, only to be assassinated in a manner designed to cast blame on the Dominion. The 9  Thompson, B., Weddle, D. (Writers) & Posey, S.L. (Director). (1999, May 19). “Extreme Measures” (Season 7 Episode 23). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 10  Fields, P. (Writer) & Lobl, V. (Director). (1998, April 15). “In the Pale Moonlight” (Season 6 Episode 19). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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Romulans abandon their neutrality, shifting the tide of war in favor of the Federation. Before deleting his log, Sisko notes “a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for safety” (“In the Pale Moonlight”). Most character logs in Star Trek are voiceovers, but Sisko delivers his staring into the camera, as though in the confessional of a church or reality TV show. Viewers became hyper aware of the screen as the war, Sisko, and the actor playing him, Avery Brooks, intruded into their living rooms. The moment draws attention to the boundaries broken by reality TV and war correspondence in their reshaping of the television experience in the 1990s. Rather fittingly, this was also the age of the popular Big Brother house.11 News and reality television are an odd but telling pairing that speak to a new media experience and elicit questions about the nature of “reality” on our screens. The intimacy (fake or real), derived from Sisko’s confession, broadly challenges the audience to ask what price should be paid to maintain order. Moore called “In the Pale Moonlight” “one of the most rewarding shows” he worked on, noting that it forced its lead to take “actions he never thought he would take” and pushed him into “moral territory he never thought he’d travel” (Fandom n.d.-c). Viewers are left pondering the implications of Sisko’s actions, America’s position in real-­ world conflicts at the time, and their own morals regarding defense and peacekeeping. The episode also expands on the complicated nature of the post-Cold War world. Television news in the 1990s blurred the lines of conflict by filtering it through the television medium on an unprecedented scale, and by showing the perils of both action and inaction. As Americans surveyed the conflicts around the world through their screens, it became difficult to determine who “the good guys” were. “Palpably exclusionist or racist” groups battled each other, committing atrocities that impeded peace processes (Westad 2017, 629). A complicated American Cold War legacy furthered this confusion. The collapse of the Soviet Union, paired with technological diffusion empowering non-state actors, blurred distinctions about sides and morality. DS9 captured these complications by using Sisko to paint the Federation in shades of gray. Other episodes like “Inter Arma Enim Silet Leges” (In Times of War the Law Falls Silent) featuring Section 11  Grodner, A., Meehan, R., Shapiro, A., Roach, C., Colden, C., Kroll, J., Ross, D., Einzinger, S., Römer, P. (Executive Producers). (2000-). Big Brother [TV series]. Evolution Film & Tape, Arnold Shapiro Productions, CBS, Endemol Entertainment, Endemol Shine North America, Fly on the Wall Entertainment, Shapiro/Grodner Productions.

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31, the Federation equivalent of the CIA, continued this theme.12 The secret arm of the Federation acted without oversight to assassinate, overthrow, or otherwise eliminate major threats to the Federation. Luther Sloan (William Sadler), the main Section 31 agent on the show, continually justified his actions as necessary, echoing Sisko’s reasoning in “In the Pale Moonlight.” Moore’s identification of “Inter Arma Enim Silet Leges” as a favorite episode of the final season suggests he enjoyed exploring such ambiguous spaces (Fandom n.d.-d). Moore’s other two favorite episodes of the final season create a personal narrative of war and depict the intersection of moral and narrative uncertainties of both Starfleet and real-world conflict, along with the blurred boundaries and mirrored universes of entertainment and news media. “The Siege of AR-558” features the most intense ground combat depicted in Star Trek, as the crew and a handful of others defend an outpost against overwhelming enemy numbers.13 The episode is unsparing in depicting the death of Starfleet personnel and is among the grimmest of the series. During combat, Nog (Aron Eisenberg), a recurring Ferengi character, is wounded, forcing amputation of his leg. In “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” Nog struggles with posttraumatic stress (PTS) due to the siege and continues to experience phantom pain.14 He fears his mortality and cannot reconcile his past enthusiasm for war with its reality. Nog only escapes and recovers by moving into a reality that he can control: A holodeck recreation of 1960s Las Vegas, which provides him simplicity and safety, pure escapism of the type many viewers felt SF should be. “The Siege of AR-558” opened the traditionally escapist Star Trek to brutal realities of war. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” offers the escapism to Nog, who finds healing in the holosuite (“screen”) but not to viewers who are aware of Nog’s PTS. Following the airing of the episodes, the actor who played Nog received an outpouring of support from combat veterans

 Moore, R.D. (Writer) & Lobl, V. (Director). (1999, March 3). “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” (Season 7 Episode 16). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 13  Behr, I. S., Beimler, H. (Writers) & Kolbe, W. (Director). (1998, November 18). “The Siege of AR-558” (Season 7 Episode 8). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount. 14  Mack, D., Ordover, J. (Writers) & Williams, A. (Director). (1998, December 30). “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (Season 7 Episode 10). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount Television. 12

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praising his performance  (Behr and Zappone, 2018).15 The holosuite is part of a lineage of escapist holodeck adventures on the Star Trek franchise, and it is worth noting that DS9 has many more of these than the earlier TNG series. Julian Bashir and Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) are frequent users, often choosing to escape their war by reenacting historic ones. Their recreations of the Battle of Britain and the Alamo show a penchant for outnumbered defenders in dire straits, mirroring their reality with the Dominion but offering an outcome they can control. The episode in which Nog finds sanctuary in the holosuite is entitled “It’s Only a Paper Moon” after a song of the same name (1933), and the episode and title gesture toward the seeming “unreality” of the world. The reference to the moon also connects this episode to Sisko’s deleted video confessional of “In the Pale Moonlight,” and further to Season 6’s “Far Beyond the Stars,” the only other episode with an astrological body in its name.16 In this episode, Sisko despairs of being able to make a difference in the Dominion War and considers resigning before having visions of the life of Benny Russell, an African-American working as an SF writer in the 1950s. Russell becomes entranced with a drawing of DS9 and begins writing stories about a black captain name Benjamin Sisko. As Russell faces escalating racism culminating with the pulping of his story and his firing, the worlds of 1950s NYC and DS9 merge, leaving Russell questioning reality. Sisko awakes as Russell collapses screaming that his created future was real. The captain confides that the vision encouraged him to keep up the good fight. He then breaks the fourth wall, speaking to viewers, wondering about the nature of his reality and if there are people out their imagining him. Here, again, the nature of truth and screen is explored. The events of “In the Pale Moonlight” take place six episodes later. Moon and starlight are often portrayed as romantic and hopeful, but also ethereal; it is fitting then that these astrologically titled episodes pushed audiences to reconsider the nature of reality as they sat in front of a different kind of illuminating body—their screen. The romantic, escapist Trek platform reframed reality: for viewers, society looked different, but familiar enough, as it was mirrored in the depths of space. 15  Behr, I.S., Zappone, D. (Directors). (2018). What We Left Behind: Star Trek DS9 [Documentary Film]. Zappone, D. (Executive Producer). 455 Films, Tuxedo Productions, Le Big Boss Productions, Shout! Studios. 16  Behr, I.S., Beimler, H. (Writers) & Brooks, A. (Director). (1998, February 11). “Far Beyond the Stars” (Season 6 Episode 13). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Paramount.

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Battlestar Galactica If DS9 offered a somewhat escapist, holosuite version of contemporary war and genocide, Moore’s Battlestar Galactica looked to produce a more “in-focus” image, reflecting a disorienting, brutal world. Moore returns to the themes of crippling injury, amputation, and PTS throughout BSG. Felix Gaeta (Alessandro Juliani), who begins the series as one of the most ardent members of the ship’s crew, loses his leg on a mission that he felt betrayed his principles. He lacks Nog’s ability to escape from his reality, and his resentment of his situation leads him to stage an ill-advised mutiny resulting in his execution as a traitor (“Blood on the Scales”).17 Gaeta’s experience—his inability to recover, and his disillusionment and pain—was a fictional version of the journey many Americans became familiar with as coverage of America’s post-9/11 wars evolved. PTS, traumatic brain injury, and veteran suicide became familiar concepts as local and cable news coverage throughout America’s longest wars highlighted the costs paid by soldiers in these conflicts. Most Americans also experienced their own trauma in the terrorist attack of 9/11 and its aftermath through their television screens. Terrifying and heartbreaking footage of hijacked planes crashing into skyscrapers, trapped people leaping from the buildings, and shots of wreckage at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania traumatized the nation. More hopeful images, though, of first responders’ frenetic work and of citizens mobilizing to help also impacted the nation. The attacks of 9/11 sparked fear of future attacks from unseen enemies but also created a belief that the attacks would galvanize the United States to meet this new challenge. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq initially did little to cast doubt on this belief. They echoed the Gulf War as seemingly made-for-TV spectacles of US military might, as Americans saw Green Berets on horseback with rugged Northern Alliance partners topple the Taliban within months. In 2003, “Shock and Awe” airstrikes in Iraq preceded an armored “Thunder Run” to Baghdad and the collapse of Hussein’s government. However, success in both wars proved short-lived as the United States became embroiled in insurgencies it neither desired nor was prepared to fight.

17  Angeli, M. (Writer) & Rose, W. (Director). (2009, February 6). “Blood on the Scales” (Season 4 Episode 14). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal.

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The writers of BSG shaped nearly every aspect of the show to highlight the realities of post-9/11 America and challenge its viewers to rethink the attack and subsequent wars. Like DS9 in the 1990s, BSG mirrored media coverage of the time, supplementing it through narratives and characters in whom viewers saw themselves reflected. First airing as a mini-series in December of 2003, it begins with the destruction of thirteen human colonies in a surprise attack organized by Cylons, a race of robots including some models indistinguishable from humans. Humanity’s remnants flee in a small space fleet looking for a new home. The insider nature of the attack and way it transforms society are clear allusions to 9/11, and Moore was explicit about his expectation that audiences filter the show through their own memories of the 9/11 attack (Ott 2008, 13). The show proved immensely popular, drawing some of the highest ratings in the history of the SyFy channel. It also sparked early discussions about changing viewing habits, as many fans watched it in nontraditional ways by streaming or downloading the show. Serialized storytelling became normalized as viewers had greater control over when and how they consumed episodes. In some ways, this serialized format must have reminded viewers of the 24-hour coverage of the New York attack that had not only the nation but the world transfixed. The reality of 9/11 had been shaped by this constantly repeating footage of two planes crashing into the towers. The event and its constant replay seemed to rupture news media spaces and distort what America understood of itself and its security. BSG was set to do the same. The first two seasons of the show largely focus on how human society changes because of the attacks. Episode six, “Litmus,” captures the feelings of many Americans about 9/11.18 A successful Cylon attack on the Battlestar and the public revelation that Cylons look human spark fear and paranoia among the crew. One crewmember laments to another, “the world’s changed while you were asleep.” President Bush echoed this sentiment years later, recalling that “when [he] woke up on September 12, America was a different place” (2010, 139). The remainder of the episode focuses on a search for Cylons within the fleet that quickly turns into a “see something, say something” witch hunt. Similar campaigns proliferated in media coverage of the aftermath of 9/11. Viewers routinely saw press conferences with public officials providing assurances about the steps 18  Vlaming, J. (Writer) & Hardy, R. (Director). (2005, February 11). “Litmus.” (Season 1 Episode 6). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal.

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taken to prevent another attack, along with messages designed to make Americans feel they were personally part of the solution. Watching vigilantly was a civic virtue in post-9/11 America. Fear dominated the White House after the attacks. Every morning the national security staff received a brief on a new list of potential threats, ranging up to a hundred per day (Baker 2013, 157). CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice both admitted the daily briefings changed how they viewed threats, regardless of their plausibility (Baker 2013). This fear was also being communicated to the public. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union revealed that plans of American nuclear reactors and maps of tourist sites had been found in Afghan caves (Bush 2002). Bush’s speech became the second most watched State of the Union, trailing only Clinton’s 1998 address, which came just as the Monica Lewinsky scandal began to break. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union, given as the United States prepared to go to war with Iraq, would top both, with nearly 67 million viewers (Nielsen 2020). The shared media experiences of the period from 2001 to 2004 provided viewers of BSG with an easy point of reference through which they could quickly enter and understand the politics of the show. Like DS9 before it, BSG drew on current political events, the news media that reported them, and the medium of the television screen by which most Americans accessed their news and entertainment. However, something had changed. If the holosuite on DS9 functioned as the escapist metaphor for war in Moore’s 1990s construction, then the faster than light drive (FTL) on BSG was the spatial metaphor for conflict on the small screen in a post-9/11 world. Instead of providing a “multiverse” of images and realities, the FTL distorted space allowing for escape and pursuit. It was a source of safety, anxiety, and survival. Many Americans could be forgiven for seeing their television in a similar light in the early 2000s as it showed New York ruins and subsequent American incursions in the Middle East with ever new instances of death, abuse, torture, and failure that called America’s position as worthy leader of the Free World into question. Moore intended for the show to challenge its audience, and like an FTL jump, the show distorted the recognizable, throwing viewers into new physical and political spaces without warning. In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, Moore explained that he wanted audiences to rethink what it meant to be “free in a society under attack,” consider “the limits of freedom,” and, controversially, whether the audience was rooting

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for the right side (Hodgman 2005). The show drew near-universal praise for its exploration of these issues. The New Yorker review gushed that BSG was “refreshingly, as real as science fiction gets,” raising “questions that nag at you in the same way that life on Earth does” (Franklin 2006). The New York Times acknowledged BSG was not the first “to explore contemporary themes in an imaginary world” but it “may resonate particularly well now” (Glater 2005). A review of the mini-series credited it with advancing “the sci-fi genre … by pulling the narrative closer to home” and praised the subversive nature of Adama’s (Edward James Olmos) pre-­ attack speech, which foreshadowed the Cylon attack and implied humanity deserved it (Martel 2003). BSG’s relevance as a vehicle for understanding post-9/11 America received further validation when it won a Peabody Award after its first season. The committee praised how the show’s premise afforded “diverse narrative and philosophical possibilities” (2005). During the awards telecast, comedian and prominent media figure Jon Stewart introduced the show by noting it “reinvigorated the science fiction genre and demonstrated once again how our speculation about the future can teach us about the present” (2005). While accepting the award, Moore spoke to frequent questions about who or what certain characters represented. While admitting that the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and domestic US events found representation on the show, he noted these depictions were not static. Much like the DS9 writers’ room, BSG writers used characters in different ways to pose interesting questions (Peabody Awards 2006). Moore’s approach is most evident in season 2’s finale and the initial episodes of season 3. BSG concludes its second season with the humans unexpectedly opting to settle on a planet they believe safe. This proves a grievous misjudgment, as one year later the Cylons descend on the planet and occupy it (“Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 1 and Part 2”).19 Season 3 begins with a two-part episode showing the Cylons’ inability to pacify the humans despite Cylon military supremacy. Former members of the Galactica form an insurgency, conducting increasingly indiscriminate attacks, some of which are carried out by suicide bombers. These attacks 19  Moore, R.  D. (Writer) & Rymer, M. (Director). (2006, March 3). “Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1” (Season 2 Episode 19). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal. Cofell-Saunders, A., Verheiden, M. (Writers) & Rymer, M. (Director). (2006, March 10). “Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 2” (Season 2 Episode 20). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal.

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spark military reprisals and crackdowns.20 The episodes provide clear commentary on the Iraq War, but the show’s human protagonists, in whom American audiences were encouraged to see themselves, were represented as America’s foes in Middle Eastern conflicts. This choice led to a remarkably accurate diagnosis of the challenges the US military faced in Iraq, three years after easily defeating its army. BSG’s use of former military officers to start the insurgency referenced Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2, which dissolved most Iraqi security institutions. The official US Army history of the war notes the move “created a large population of seasoned military men who suddenly had no livelihood” (Rayburn and Sobchak 2019, 142). These former soldiers provided a ready population for the nascent insurgency. The episode “Occupation” features the planning of a suicide attack targeting the graduation of a human police force working with Cylons. The bomber is shown preparing himself for the attack through prayer, like the preparations conducted by Al Qaeda’s suicide bombers. The attack succeeds, leading to the death of police recruits and the temporary demise of the nearly immortal Cylons. The attack challenged viewers by forcing them to question the morality of the protagonists’ actions. In response to the attacks, another group of police, acting for the Cylons, conducts night raids. Wearing masks, they break into homes and detaining suspected sympathizers, leaving family members uncertain if they will ever return. Again, viewers were asked to question this act and their allegiances. Like the disorientation that follows a hyperlight space jump in the show, viewers found themselves plunged into an unexpected conflict and struggling to regain their bearings. Such spatial disorientation (in contrast to the mirroring effect of DS9) was produced through the explosive collision of multiple perspectives within a shared TV space. Such raids occurred nightly during the height of the Iraq War and were featured as part of the media’s increased focus on the ambiguity and decay of the situation in Iraq. Importantly, BSG’s depiction of bombings and raids created empathy for the experience of Iraqis facing the prospect of masked Iraqis or armored Americans entering their homes without warning. Mass detentions stemming from such raids also negatively impacted the war effort. Between 2005 and 2006, the number of detainees climbed 20  Moore, R.D. (Writer) & Mimica-Gezzan S. (Director). (2006, October 6). “Occupation/ Precipice” (Season 3 Episodes 1/2). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal.

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from 10,000 to 18,000—this, despite the release of nearly 25,000 detainees during the same period (Rayburn and Sobchak 2019, 432, 433). While many of these prisoners were involved in lethal insurgent activity, the sheer number of detainees prevented effective screening and control of the camps. As a result, hardened extremists mingled with soon to be released minor insurgents and un-radicalized individuals, leading to hardening of ideologies and dissemination of techniques to conduct more effective attacks (Rayburn and Sobchak 2019, 435). Mass detentions not only exacerbated local distrust for US forces but also made the insurgents more dangerous. BSG’s subversion of audience expectations, effective portrayal of an Iraqi point of view, and remarkable effects and acting made “Occupation” and “Precipice” two of the most lauded episodes in the new BSG run. Both received Emmy nominations for outstanding writing in a drama series, aired to strong ratings, and garnered praise from critics. The New York Times review of the opening two episodes praised how the show took on new dimensions and raised questions about how Iraqis should respond to the occupation of their country (Heffernan 2006). The show also provided Americans with an exploration of how their armed forces were, because of superior technology and training, successful in 2003 but unable to adapt well to an unfamiliar cultural and historical context. Like US peacekeeping efforts in the 1990s, the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s highlighted the remarkable difficulty of winning the peace. Even the biblically framed “Exodus,” which follows “Occupation” and “Precipice” and sees Adama rescue humanity with a daring and visually spectacular raid, is less uplifting than the escape would suggest.21 The double episode asks viewers to examine the nation’s troubled sense of itself post 9/11 and the role of news media in this conflicted imaginary. Adama’s FTL jump in “Exodus” to rescue humans from New Caprica functions as a 9/11 trope, however defamiliarized. Echoing the scene of twin (two) towers, and the repeating footage of the two moments of impact on news networks, “Exodus” proliferates a sense of doubling, which also aids a 21  Weddle, D., Thompson B. (Writers) & Enriquez Alcala, F. (Director). (2006, October 13). “Exodus, Part 1” (Season 3 Episode 3/4). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal. Weddle, D., Thompson B. (Writers) & Enriquez Alcala, F. (Director). (2006, October 20). “Exodus, Part 2” (Season 3 Episode 3/4). Battlestar Galactica. David Eick Productions, R&D TV, NBC Universal.

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deliberate rendering of the 9/11 trope as multiple, or indeed unreadable. With, perhaps, a nod to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, which opens with Air Force One being hijacked by insurgents and purposely crashed in a future Manhattan Island (now the country’s maximum-­ security prison), Adama jumps to New Caprica to liberate prisoners.22 The biblical allusion to Exodus, to God’s chosen people, and even to the two pillars of cloud and fire (another doubling) which guide them through the wilderness, questions American exceptionalism and America’s (or, in BSG, humans’) position as the “good guys.” When Adama’s son Lee (Jamie Bamber) arrives on a second Battlestar, The Pegasus, to help the escape, his final act is to ram a Cylon Basestar with his ship. The wreckage of the two ships destroys another Basestar. The “two towers” trope is warped; this time, humans (America?) have led the attack on their own settlement, New Caprica (New York), while rescuing their own people, some of whom, during occupation, have become suicide bombers in New Caprica, which itself resembles a detainment camp used by America and its allies in the Middle East. The moment is unreadable, like the collision of images, stories, and readings of post-9/11 conflicts on television screens, which helped imagine a nation uncertain of itself following 9/11 and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the light of the TV screen and the FTL drive alike, otherwise discrete perspectives collide, and post-9/11 spatial orientations become radically distorted. The society saved in “Exodus” further reflects an America deeply divided by conflict. Amid the celebration on the hanger, Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), the XO and leader of the insurgency, cannot bring himself to take part, lamenting that he could not bring “all of them home.” As the fleet continues to wander through space in search of its promised land, its people bitterly pursue vendettas. A secret jury executes collaborators, a former vice president of the colonies leads a mutiny with Felix Gaeta, and the fleet is divided over the trial and acquittal of Gaius Baltar (James Callis), president during the Cylon occupation. The divisions stemming from New Caprica become the driving political force of the fleet, replacing the shared need for survival the original attack on the colonies sparked. Alliances form and dissolve rapidly, and the division extends to the Cylons,

22  Carpenter J., Castle, N. (Writers) and John Carpenter (Director), (1981). Escape From New York [Film]. Bernadi, B. (Associate Producer). AVCO Embassy Pictures, International Film Investors, Goldcrest Films International, City Films.

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who split and fight a civil war, like another troubled nation, Iraq, itself a darker mirror of the chaos and uncertainty playing out in the United States. The explosion of intra-fleet violence and discord aired alongside broadcasts of a similarly deteriorating situation in Iraq. Al Qaeda’s February 2006 destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra touched off intense sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni groups. By the end of the year, Iraq appeared to be in a civil war, despite the presence of US troops. The confusing, violent struggle received extensive media coverage, leaving many doubting whether the war was worth the continued sacrifice or even winnable. Few could make sense of the shifting landscape shown through their screens; one hot spot flared after another, and casualties rose for both US and partner forces and Iraqi civilians. In February 2007, two-thirds of Americans felt the war was going badly and nearly half wanted US forces to leave the country as soon as possible (Rosentiel 2008).

Conclusion The collision of images, stories, and readings of post-9/11 conflicts on television offered competing and complementary explanations of the wars to an increasingly uncertain nation. Unlike the comforting mirrored universe of DS9 and more like a battlestar jumping into the atmosphere, the conflicts of BSG exploded unexpectedly into view. As the movement from one televised space to another became increasingly abrupt, so too did the conflicts, allegiances, and shifting senses of orientation of the American geopolitical psyche—as it was mirrored in the changing visions of televised war—in the two decades around which the new millennium pivoted. Both DS9 and BSG are still politically relevant today. DS9’s depiction of the cost of war foretold future emphasis on posttraumatic stress, and the show’s depictions of close combat filled with difficult decisions remain relevant in the context of America’s longest wars. In 2022, the wars that inspired much of BSG’s most poignant commentary only recently ended. Their place as America’s longest wars and the lasting societal impacts stemming from 9/11 ensure that BSG remains important and relevant. At the same time, new media spaces have enhanced the effectiveness and relevance of these shows’ storytelling. DS9 grew in popularity with the advent of streaming, and binge-watching enabled fans to enjoy the serialized episodes in order and on their own time, creating a more immersive experience. In 2017, the show’s fans crowd-funded a documentary. Debuting in 2019, What We Left Behind explored the lasting legacies of

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DS9 and how the show’s audience grew after it stopped running new episodes. NBC announced a reboot of BSG to anchor its upcoming streaming service, expecting the strength of the franchise to drive subscriptions. The SyFy channel produces “Battlestar Galacticast,” a podcast examining every episode of BSG with Tricia Helfer, who played a Cylon, and Marc Bernadin, a writer. In a time of streaming and Video-on-Demand services, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica invite reflection upon how the shocks and disorientations of 2008, 2016, and 2021 continue to ripple through our experiences of the screen, our movement between televised worlds.

References Baker, P. (2013). Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. Doubleday. Behr, I. S., & Zappone, D.. dir. (2018). What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek Deep Space 9. Shout! Factory, Peacock. Blitzer, W. (2015, May 29). Wolf Blitzer: The Whole World Was Watching. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/26/opinions/blitzer-­cnn-­iraq-­ desert-­storm/index.html Brands, H. (2016). Making the Unipolar Moment: US Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order. Cornell University Press. Bush, G. (1990). Joint Address to Congress on the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait. https://miller center.org/the-­p r esidency/pr esidential-­s peeches/ august-­8-­1990-­address-­iraqs-­invasion-­kuwait Bush, G. (1991). Address on the End of the Gulf War. https://millercenter.org/ the-­p residency/presidential-­s peeches/august-­8 -­1 990-­a ddress-­i raqs­invasion-­kuwait Bush, G. W. (2002). State of the Union Address. https://millercenter.org/the-­ presidency/presidential-­s peeches/august-­8 -­1 990-­a ddress-­i raqs-­i nvasion-­ kuwait Bush, G. W. (2010). Decision Points. Crown Publishing. Engel, J. (2017). When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War. Houghton Mifflin. Fandom. (n.d.-a). Memory Alpha: AOL chats/Ronald D.  Moore/ron013.txt. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://memory-­alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron013.txt Fandom. (n.d.-b). Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D.  Moore/ron099.txt. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://memory-­alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron099.txt Fandom. (n.d.-c). Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D.  Moore/ron103.txt. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://memory-­alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron103.txt

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Fandom. (n.d.-d). Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D.  Moore/ron129.txt. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://memory-­alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron129.txt Fandom. (n.d.-e). Memory Alpha: AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron067. Retrieved 21 October 2022, from https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron067.txt Fandom. (n.d.-f) Memory Alpha: AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron053. Retrieved 17 January 2023 from  https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron053.txt Fandom. (n.d.-g) Memory Alpha: AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron012. Retrieved 17 January 2023 from  ­https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron012.txt Franklin, N. (2006, January 15). Across the Universe: A Battlestar is Reborn. The New Yorker. Glater, J. (2005, January 13). Retooling a 70’s Sci-Fi Relic for the Age of Terror. The New York Times. Heffernan, V. (2006, October 26). In Galactica, It’s Politics as Usual. Or Is It? The New York Times. Hodgman, J. (2005, July 17). Ron Moore’s Deep Space Journey. The New York Times Magazine. Holloway, D., & Otterson, J. (2018, January 3). Star Trek Deep Space Nine at 25: Through the Wormhole with Cast and Creators. Variety. https://variety. com/2018/tv/features/star-­t rek-­d s9-­2 5th-­a nniversar y-­i nter view-­ 1202648047/ Martel, N. (2003, December 8). Television Review: The Cylons Are Back and Humanity Is in Deep Trouble. The New York Times. McAlister, M. (2005). Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, & U.S.  Interests in the Middle East Since 1945. University of California Press. Nielsen. (2020, February 5). Over 37 Million Viewers Watch the 2020 State of the Union Address. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-­releases/2020/ over-­37-­million-­viewers-­watch-­2020-­state-­of-­the-­union-­address/ Ott, B. (2008). (Re)Framing Fear: Equipment for Living in a Post-9/11 World. In T.  Potter & C.  W. Marshall (Eds.), Cylons in America. Continuum Publishing. Peabody Awards. (2006). Ronald Moore—Battlestar Galactica—2005 Peabody Award Acceptance Speech. YouTube video, 4, 04. From awards presentation on June 5, 2006. Posted September 9, 2015. Rayburn, J. D., & Sobchak, F. K. (Eds.). (2019). The U.S. Army in the Iraq War: Volume 1. United States Army War College Press. Rosentiel, T. (2008, March 19). Public Attitudes Towards the War in Iraq, 2003–2008. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch. org/2008/03/19/public-­attitudes-­toward-­the-­war-­in-­iraq-­20032008/

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Stewart, R. (2002). The United States Army in Somalia, 1992–1994. U.S. Army Center of Military History. Tucker, K. (1993, January 8). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Entertainment Weekly. Variety Staff. (1993, January 24). Piller and Berman. Variety. Westad, O. A. (2017). The Cold War: A World History. Basic Books.

CHAPTER 7

“To Ensure the Safety of the Republic, We Must Deregulate the Banks”: A Social Democratic Reading of Star Wars: The Clone Wars Edward Guimont

Introduction It is a time of civil war. Rebel fans, striking from hidden social media accounts, have won their first victory against the evil Disney Empire. At least, that was the likely sense of some Star Wars fans on June 5, 2018 when, after a coordinated harassment campaign, they drove actress Trần Loan off Instagram. Trần, better known by her Americanized name Kelly Marie Tran, played Resistance mechanic Rose Tico in 2017’s Star Wars

E. Guimont, PhD (*) Bristol Community College, Fall River, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_7

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Episode VIII: The Last Jedi1 (TLJ), the third Star Wars movie produced by Disney after its 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm from George Lucas (Taylor 2015, 381–94). Right-wing fans alleged that the Disney era of Star Wars generally promoted leftist identity politics; after all, the liberal “#Resistance,” formed immediately after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, took its name from General Leia Organa’s organization that looked to resist the First Order—introduced less than a year earlier in the first Disney Star Wars movie, Episode VII: The Force Awakens2 (TFA).3 The character of Rose—a working-class woman of color who pours scorn on the galaxy’s rich idling in the Canto Bight casino, “a terrible place filled with the worst people in the galaxy”—was a lightning rod for right-wing ire, as was the outspoken actress who played her (Tran 2018). To this “fandom menace,” the new Star Wars films were the latest front upon which they could wage their own culture wars. While TLJ might have been a tipping point for those fans, fandom complaints were endemic for years before the Disney buyout. Star Wars spinoff media was often the incubator of such complaints, and the right-wing fan campaign had originally emerged parallel to a separate campaign from fans of those spinoffs. Termed the “Expanded Universe” (EU) by Lucasfilm in the 1990s, it consisted of thousands of entries by the time of the Disney purchase. These included stories set thousands of years before the prequel movie trilogy (PT), and over a century after the original movie trilogy (OT). The latter in particular concerned EU fans in the aftermath of the Disney purchase. After all, the novels and comics set after 1983’s Episode VI: Return of the Jedi4 (ROTJ) had introduced such elements as the Rebel Alliance’s transformation into a New Republic, only for its capitol to be destroyed by an extragalactic invasion; Princess Leia and Han Solo’s son, who was trained as a Jedi by Luke Skywalker before turning to 1  Johnson, R. (Director and Screenplay), (2017). Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi [Film]. Lucasfilm. 2  Abrams, J. (Director), J. J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan (Screenplay), Michael Arndt (Story), (2015). Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens [Film]. Lucasfilm. 3  On the other hand, QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory which emerged in 2017, has also adopted the term “the Awakening” for the millenarian endpoint to their conspiratorial eschatology. Note also that TFA director J. J. Abrams’s prior movie, the 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness, was written by 9/11 Truther Roberto Orci, and has heavy shades of that conspiracy theory (Faraci 2013). 4  Marquand, R. (Director), George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan (Screenplay), (1983). Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi [Film]. Lucasfilm.

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the dark side and becoming galactic dictator; and Emperor Palpatine’s return from the dead and secret Jedi grandchild. Obviously, these would be nearly impossible for casual fans to follow and would prohibit the new movies from developing their own original stories in new directions. The inevitable came in 2014: a declaration that the EU would be terminated, renamed “Legends,” and repositioned from the core of the continuing narrative to an alternate continuity, a space where old fans could continue to enjoy (and purchase) the old materials while room for new fans was carved out in the primary medium of film. A new slate of comics, novels, and cartoons would be introduced alongside the new films, which would (ostensibly) be the same continuity “level” as the new spinoffs. A single-­ issue comic book would officially “count” as much as the sequel movie trilogy (ST). The sole exceptions to this continuity repositioning were the original six films developed by Lucas—and the cartoon Star Wars: The Clone Wars5 (TCW) (Taylor 2015, 286–95, 409–10; Beidler 2017, 21–37).

The Clone Wars Strike Back The Clone Wars was not included in the 2014 realignment of Star Wars storytelling for good reason. Far from being a child-friendly spinoff of the much-maligned PT, TCW serves as a transition between the 1999–2005 Lucas-helmed PT and the 2015–2019 committee-managed ST, not only in terms of production but also in terms of the political arguments made by all three works, and the fan reactions to them. As of 2021, with the ST now over, the core of the continuing Star Wars products—The Mandalorian6 live-action show, the Squadrons video game, the Galaxy’s Edge amusement park, and perhaps most importantly Star Wars: The Bad Batch7 (TBB), which is a direct continuation of TCW—incorporate crew, cast, and characters from TCW, arguably more so than the PT at the very least, if not the ST as well. TCW must, then, be critically repositioned from remote spinoff to the bright center of that galaxy far, far away—central to narrative development and fan interaction. 5  Filoni, D., Lucas, G., Winder, C. (Executive Producers). (2008–2014, 2020). Star Wars: The Clone Wars [TV series]. Lucasfilm Animation. 6  Favreau, J., Filoni, D., Kennedy, K., Wilson, C. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Mandalorian [TV series]. Fairview Entertainment, Golem Creations, Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Studios. 7  Filoni, D., Portillo, A., Corbett, J., Rau, B. (Executive Producers). (2021–). Star Wars: The Bad Batch [TV series]. Lucasfilm Animation.

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More particularly, as TCW anticipates the cultural wars to come, the show offers a critique of mainstream American liberalism as embodied in the Obama administration (2009–2017). Of particular note, and central to this chapter, are three episodes from its 2010 third season that deal with deficit reduction, tax breaks, deregulation, privatization, globalization, war spending, and their impact on the welfare state. In these episodes, TCW presents a social-democratic critique of Obama-era politics and its consolidation of neoliberalism, defined by journalist Ezra Klein (2019) as “a general preference for market mechanisms over state interventions [which] happens when capitalism mutates from an economic system to a governing and even moral philosophy.” Despite somewhat more progressive campaign rhetoric, the Obama administration continued the process started under Bill Clinton of cementing Democratic social liberalism to neoliberal economics, positioning the party as the sole possible alternative to Republican economic policies despite the fact that the differences were matters of scale at most. Arguably, the real targets of these neoliberal policies were figures to the left of the Democratic leadership, who held economic views that were genuine alternatives but anathema to the donor class who funded the Democratic leadership. After Obama, this neoliberalist position only solidified, particularly thanks to Democrats allying with “Never Trump” Republicans as a bulwark against both Donald Trump’s presidency and a resurgent Democratic left (Sitman et al. 2020). I argue that in their political argumentation, the three TCW episodes separate the political wavelengths that this post-Cold War political realignment had blurred, restoring a clear leftist politics that Democratic leadership had actively resisted in this period. But additionally, and crucially, these three episodes also illustrate the changing cultural and economic framework of the 2010s out of which both right- and left-wing fans interpreted the subsequent Disney-era Star Wars movies, especially in the Trump era. The titular Star Wars are, then, not only civil wars in a Galactic Empire far, far away, but also representative of ideological combat within the contemporary American Empire, and the political culture it exports across the world. TCW acts as a cultural prism in which these real-world conflicts are spatialized, with shifts in American politics intersecting across the imagined universe of the Star Wars series. The Clone Wars allows us to examine the Star Wars and culture wars that are both waged across outer space and the medium of the television and computer screen. The blended territories such wars are fought in and for drove, and continue to drive, actual cultural and political conflicts in post-2008 America.

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“Begun, the Clone Wars Have” TCW first aired for six seasons from 2008 to 2014. Set between 2002’s Episode II: Attack of the Clones8 (AOTC) and 2005’s Episode III: Revenge of the Sith9 (ROTS), the show tells the story of the titular Clone Wars, the three-year-long galactic conflict that culminates with the destruction of the Jedi Order and the transformation of the democratic and pacifist Galactic Republic (later termed the Old Republic) of the PT into the authoritarian and militarist Galactic Empire of the OT. A proper overview of the conflict would fill a book; as of November 2022, the Wookieepedia article on it was over 46,000 words long (“Clone Wars” n.d.). A capsule summary of the conflict is that Sheev Palpatine, Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, is also the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, sworn to destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy as a Dark Side theocracy. He and his fallen Jedi apprentice, Count Dooku, organize the major corporations of the galaxy into supporting a Separatist Alliance to wage war on the Republic and Jedi, with Palpatine secretly at the helm of each faction. The Separatists wield a literal war machine, comprised almost entirely of military droids, while the Republic’s Grand Army is composed of lab-grown, genetically engineered clone troopers.10 At the end of the war, the Separatists have been decimated, along with many of the Republic’s political freedoms. With a single command, the Republic’s indoctrinated clones carry out their pre-programmed orders and kill their Jedi commanders in a surprise massacre, leading to the Empire’s creation, the Republic Senate no longer strong enough to resist Palpatine (Fry and Urquhart 2012, 73–108). This narrative echoes and anticipates the explosion of conspiracy culture which would emerge in the American political sphere of the 2010s, driven partly by the mediatization of the War on Terror, which Clone Wars and Clone Wars alike reflect (Culloty 2020). If real conspiracy culture replicates a blurring of the once-delineated spaces of legitimate political discourse and irrational fears, the narrative of both Clone Wars and Clone Wars—in 8  Lucas, G. (Director), George Lucas and Jonathan Hales (Screenplay), (2002). Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones [Film]. Lucasfilm. 9  Lucas, G. (Director and Screenplay), (2005). Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith [Film]. Lucasfilm. 10  The economist and futurist Manu Saadia has pointed out that the economic reliance on inefficient slave labor, in the form of droids and clones, is at the heart of what separates the feudal society of Star Wars from the socialist utopia of Star Trek, with its post-scarcity economy based around the replicator. See Saadia (2016, 65–86, 138); and Guimont (2019).

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which the war was the result of a true conspiracy against the Republic, justified by Palpatine invoking a fake Jedi conspiracy—accurately predicts how damaging the prismatic collision of fear and political discourse can be. TCW’s role in facilitating the transition of fan cultural politics from PT to ST stems from its existence as a transition between the pre- and post-­ Disney eras of Star Wars in terms of production, continuity, and crew. The PT, with a few exceptions, remained broadly compatible with the prior EU, mainly because the EU had been kept away from the timeframe of the prequels. If anything, Lucas paid homage to the EU more than he disrupted it, by including Jedi from the comics and prominently featuring the galactic capitol planet Coruscant from the novels (Zahn 2011, 17–18n5; Handley 2017, 3–4; Beidler 2017, 32). TCW also incorporated several elements from the wider EU (Zahn 2011, 12–13n17)—only one of the ways it serves as a continuity chimera, bridging the pre- and post-Disney eras of Star Wars. More significantly, it was the last major Star Wars product involving Lucas to be released.11 His daughter Katie also wrote a number of episodes spanning both sides of the Disney purchase. Because of this, TCW was not bound to the dictates of the existing EU as all prior non-film productions had been. Instead, its crew were free to pick and choose which EU elements to incorporate, ignore, or override—the same approach that Disney would take to Legends for all new Star Wars productions in 2014 (Handley 2017, 5; Beidler 2017, 30). Perhaps most relevantly, TCW executive producer David Filoni would go on to work on the development of all three sequel movies (Szostak 2015, 20, 2017, 91, 2020, 35), which the TCW cast would also appear in as background voices. The closest thing to a main character in TCW, Jedi padawan Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein), even cameos at the climax of 2019’s Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker12 (TROS), giving a pep talk to Rey (Daisy Ridley) via the Force—apt, as she was not only predecessor to Rey as the first (onscreen) female Jedi lead, but also to Rose Tico as a working-class female (Breznican 2020). In 2021, Ahsoka, as well as TCW character Bo-Katan Kryze, would both make the jump from animation to live-action in the second season of The Mandalorian (with 11  Lucas also worked on the development of several video games and TV shows that were cancelled after the Disney purchase, as well as ST story outlines that Lucasfilm scrapped early in production of TFA (Taylor 2015, 390, 405–8; Szostak 2017, 19). 12  Abrams, J.J. (Director), J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio (Screenplay), (2019). Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker [Film]. Lucasfilm.

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Bo-Katan being played by her TCW voice actress, Katee Sackhoff). Ahsoka and Bo-Katan are only two of the TCW references in The Mandalorian, a show which Filoni writes, directs, and produces alongside Jon Favreau— the two having met when Favreau voiced a recurring Mandalorian character on TCW. The spinoff movies Rogue One13 and Solo14 would also directly incorporate characters and concepts from TCW, while starting in 2021, The Bad Batch debuted as the second sequel cartoon, following the 2014–18 Rebels.15 The prism of TCW allows the show to integrate this spectrum of production and continuity in one space and in doing so, to some degree, collimate the different fandoms—as well as the conflict within Lucasfilm about how to develop Star Wars after Lucas, balancing respect for the man with the critical, cultural, and financial reception of the PT. The influence of franchise profit in decision-making reveals the true prismatic nature of TCW, highlighting neoliberal capitalism as the real threat of Star Wars, in-universe and in terms of production, with conflicts between fans over questions of the authenticity (canon or not) of space and questions of culture (wars) emerging in part from these tensions. The PT in particular, all written and directed by Lucas, has been noted for having generally anti-capitalist messages. This is evident from the first moment of 1999’s Episode I: The Phantom Menace16 (TPM), whose opening scrawl begins, “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.” In response, the Trade Federation occupies the peaceful Republic member planet Naboo in protest. Despite being a corporation, the Federation has its own representative in the Senate, reflecting the Marxist precept that the “executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of

13  Edwards, G. (Director), Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, John Knoll, Gary Whitta (Screenplay), (2016). Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [Film]. Lucasfilm. 14  Howard, R. (Director), Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan (Screenplay), (2018). Solo: A Star Wars Story [Film]. Lucasfilm. 15  Filoni, D., Kinberg, S. (Executive Producers). (2014–2018). Star Wars Rebels [TV series]. Lucasfilm Animation. 16  Lucas, G. (Director and Screenplay), (1999). Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace [Film]. Lucasfilm.

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the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels [1848] 1998, 53).17 The name of the Federation’s senator, Lott Dod (Alan Ruscoe), as Chris Taylor points out, clearly evokes then-US Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, while the Federation’s leader, Nute Gunray (Silas Carson), echoes Ronald Reagan and his most famous film, Knute Rockne18 (Taylor 2015, 300–301). In AOTC and ROTS, the Federation joins with the other galactic megacorporations—including the InterGalactic Banking Clan, Corporate Alliance, and Techno Union—to form the Separatist Alliance, which wages a proxy war on the Republic, with those corporations providing the droids for the Separatist military. ROTS in particular, the only prequel written after the disputed 2000 US presidential election and start of the War on Terror, was seen as a critique of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, particularly Palpatine’s justification of forming the Empire being “for a safe and secure society” and Amidala’s reflection that “this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause” (Kaminski 2008, 406–08; Taylor 2015, 342).19 That this new trilogy’s central conflict was one of economic conflict and not guerilla war (as in the OT) disappointed expectations for the revived franchise, and was one of the core criticisms of TPM. Indeed, The Simpsons episode “Co-Dependent’s Day”20 makes this disappointment clear, when an iconic All-Terrain Armored Transport breaks through the walls of the Galactic Senate, only to then sit down and propose amendments to a tax bill. However, the notion that the corruption of “greedy trade barons”— who would become the Trade Federation by TPM—was responsible for the rise of a dictatorship out of the Republic had been present since Lucas’s second draft of the original movie script in January 1975 (Kaminski 2008, 174–75, 297). Far from being a late addition, the tension between capitalism and democracy has been central to Lucas’s conception of the Star 17  While there are critiques of the United States in the OT, they tend to be focused on the persona of President Richard Nixon, particularly centering around the Vietnam War and Watergate, with Return of the Jedi’s Battle of Endor especially a metaphor for American defeat in Vietnam (Kaminski 2008, 30, 58, 68, 296; Taylor 2015, 236, 301; Beahm 2018, 213–17). Also of note, Return of the Jedi was directed by Richard Marquand, who was the son and brother of two British socialist academics and Labour Party politicians, Hilary and David Marquand. 18   Bacon, L. (Director), Robert Buckner (Screenplay), (1940). Knute Rockne, All American [Film]. Warner Brothers. 19  That being said, perhaps the foremost modern leftist cultural critic, the communist philosopher Slavoj Žižek, had a dim opinion of ROTS (Žižek 2005). 20  Warburton, M. (Writer), & Anderson, B. (Director). (2004, March 21). “Co-Dependents’ Day.” (Season 15, Episode 15). The Simpsons. 20th Century Fox Television.

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Wars setting since almost the beginning. While some of the post-TPM EU explored these issues in greater detail, particularly James Luceno’s 2001 novel Cloak of Deception, it was the TCW episode “Sphere of Influence”21 that first allowed a sustained, on-screen analysis of these issues.

“Enter The Bureaucrats, The True Rulers of The Republic” “Sphere of Influence,” co-written by Katie Lucas, is largely concerned with the foreign relations of the Republic planet Pantora. The recent election of Baron Papanoida (originally played by Lucas himself as a cameo in ROTS) to the planet’s leadership is protested by the Trade Federation, who blockade the world under the pretext of unpaid debt (the nature of which is not specified). Lucas and the other scriptwriters show a sense of history, with the episode title itself a term first used in 1885 to demarcate British and German colonial economic interests in West Africa. This European colonial conflict is mirrored in the Republic-Separatist conflict over their respective corporations’ interests on Pantora. Dooku (Corey Burton) offers to pay off Pantora’s debt to the Federation, in exchange for Papanoida joining the Separatist cause (in turn mirroring the Federation’s blockade of Naboo in TPM). In the Republic Senate, it is accurately pointed out that the Federation is allied with Dooku and that the Pantora situation is clearly the result of a company applying economic pressure on behalf of a sympathetic government. But rather than nationalize the Federation or eliminate its political representation, the legislature does nothing, swayed by Lott Dod’s (Gideon Emery) duplicitous claim: “We are not Separatists simply because we do business with them. How many times must I remind you of the Commerce Treaty of 1647? The Trade Federation is neutral.” Independent of the Senate, Jedi Ahsoka Tano and Senator Riyo Chuchi (Jennifer Hale) go undercover to gather blackmail material to force the Federation leaders to abandon their blockade. “Sphere of Influence” illuminates two core features of neoliberalism, as discussed by Naomi Klein (2007, 3–25). The first is the inability, or even unwillingness, of a national government to regulate a multinational corporation, and the role of such corporations in using more powerful governments to leverage weaker states on their behalf. The second is that the 21  Lucas, K., Melching, S. (Writers) & Dunlevy, K. (Director). (2010, October 1). “Sphere of influence.” (Season 3, Episode 4). Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm Animations.

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crisis is not resolved by governmental action, but rather two well-meaning elite individuals voluntarily acting entirely within the private sphere to achieve change for the public good. Several episodes after “Sphere of Influence,” a two-episode storyline further expands that episode’s neoliberal economic interpretation of the Star Wars universe, opening with “Heroes on Both Sides.”22 Its doubling-down on the economic factors of “Sphere of Influence” was prophetic given the result of US midterm elections seventeen days prior to the episode’s airing. The Republican Party swept the House of Representatives and state governments, animated by the far-right Tea Party movement, whose ostensible policy cornerstone was extreme austerity and free market policies to slash the national debt. The intention was to limit the types of policy the government could pursue, particularly social services and environmental regulation. The Tea Party tried to justify this by equating themselves to the Patriots of 1776— those who, in the parlance of Star Wars, advocated separatism from Britain, the evil empire of their day (Boykoff and Laschever 2011, 341–43). As such, the new political reality of the United States would provide the perfect backdrop to these TCW episodes. In turn, the fan culture and online politics associated with Star Wars, beginning with PT and now developing under TCW, would eventually contribute to widening those political divisions. “Heroes on Both Sides” continues to explore ideas reflecting American economics, opening with a debate in the Republic Senate on the purchase of more clone troopers due to high casualty rates. However, the Republic is close to bankruptcy from war spending. Instead of going into Keynesian deficit spending for the public good, as Obama proposed in the Great Recession (2007–2009), the Techno Union’s senator proposes deregulating the galactic banking system, as represented by the InterGalactic Banking Clan—like the Trade Federation, ostensibly neutral but aligned with the Separatists. In exchange for deregulation, the Banking Clan will offer new military loans to the Republic. Senator Padmé Amidala (Catherine Taber) rejects this line of thinking: “Say nothing of fiscal responsibility, what about moral responsibility?” Instead, she travels to the Separatist capitol to negotiate a cease-fire with her old friend, Mina Bonteri (Kath Soucie), a former Republic senator now part of the Separatist Parliament. Encouraged by Amidala, Bonteri manages to convince the 22  Arkin, D. (Writer) & Dunlevy, K. (Director) (2010, November 19). “Heroes on Both Sides.” (Season 3, Episode 10). Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm Animations.

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Parliament to begin peace negotiations. The Corporate Alliance’s MP opposes the measure, resulting in an attack from another MP: “This is a democracy, and unlike the Republic, corporations do not rule us.” However, behind the scenes, those same corporations are working to undermine the Republic’s democratic politics. The Trade Federation, Banking Clan, and Techno Union representatives on Coruscant urge Dooku to launch an attack on the Republic capitol to derail the peace process. Dooku sends several droids to destroy a power plant and shut down Coruscant’s energy grid, foiling Amidala’s pro-peace speech to the Senate. The Senate instead votes to deregulate the Banking Clan so that additional clone troopers can be purchased. In the words of Chancellor Palpatine (Ian Abercrombie), “I’m afraid we’ve been given little choice. To ensure the safety of the Republic, we must deregulate the banks.” To those who have read Naomi Klein, Palpatine and Bonteri’s actions are a perfect example of “disaster capitalism,” the use of large-scale emergencies to justify cutting budgets and privatizing public utilities—done to reduce expenditure and transfer public assets to wealthy individuals but justified by the claim that free markets can provide more flexible solutions than government actions (Klein 2007, 355–408). Palpatine’s use of a wartime terrorist attack to justify deregulating banks to increase the military budget would surprise neither Klein nor the Tea Partiers—nor Lucas, who had been writing ROTS at the time Bush was justifying 2003 tax cuts as necessary for economic stimulus after the 2001 terrorist attacks and 2003 Iraq War.

The Shock Doctrine Disaster capitalism’s attack on the public sphere becomes the focus of the next episode, “Pursuit of Peace.”23 In the aftermath of the banking and military funding bills, Dooku sends a message to the Republic Senate rejecting peace negotiations due to Bonteri’s death in a supposed Republic reprisal attack. The senator of Kamino formally introduces a bill to purchase five million additional clone troopers; as the clones are grown on Kamino, it is effectively a case of pork-barrel spending by a representative whose district houses a major defense contractor. Additionally, immediately after their deregulation, the Banking Clan announces it will raise its 23  Arkin, D. (Writer) & Dunham, D. (Director). (2010, December 3).“Pursuit of Peace.” (Season 3, Episode 11). Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm Animations.

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interest rates on the Republic loans from 10 to 25%, terms explicitly called “outright theft” whose “interest alone could completely bankrupt the Republic.” As Amidala and her Senate allies worry, “social services have suffered because of this war. Education, infrastructure, health care. If we go deeper into debt, the basic needs of our people will evaporate.” Again, this is a clear expression of the neoliberal shock doctrine—an acceptance of capital’s position on the economic debate, that public debt is bad. Therefore, only one solution is offered: retreat in the economic space wars and shift from public welfare spending to a position of austerity. The Banking Clan has then achieved what Naomi Klein suggests Chilean neoliberals achieved, a “democracy-proofing [of] capitalism,” by ensuring the private sphere was not only protected from political regulation but also powerful enough to shape political discourse and stifle pro-regulation legislation—providing the privatized economy “insulation from politics,” to quote Chile’s neoliberal labor minister José Piñera (Klein 2007, 257). From the viewpoint of Lucas, who in 2012 proclaimed that he was “an ardent believer in democracy, not capitalist democracy” (Taylor 2015, 301), the Banking Clan’s actions are clearly against the former in service of the latter. Amidala and her allies reflect the contemporary capitulation that the Obama administration had already made toward Wall Street through its 2009 pursuit of an insufficient recovery act and 2010 abandonment of a public healthcare option, a capitulation that politically only served to demoralize the Democratic base and embolden the Tea Party. By this point in the economic front of the space war, Amidala has first-­ hand knowledge of the Clone Wars’ impact on healthcare. Earlier in the conflict—the 2009 episode “Blue Shadow Virus”24—the senator’s homeworld is threatened with an outbreak of the titular pandemic, spread among the Gungan community by a Separatist agent. This public health crisis is exacerbated by the fact that the indigenous Gungans, since TPM widely perceived to be coded as Black (Taylor 2015, 306), were suspicious of any offers of help from Naboo’s human settler population. This appears to draw from the history of medical experiments conducted on African-­ Americans, which increased that community’s suspicion of mainstream medicine in the United States. Combined with a lack of access to healthcare, this distrust has resulted in disproportionately high number of

24  Titley, C. (Writer) & Volpe, G. (Director). (2009, February 13). “Blue Shadow Virus.” (Season 1, Episode 17). Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm Animations.

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African-American deaths in the COVID pandemic (Ross 2020), which began a decade after this episode aired. Outside of her own experiences with healthcare inequality among her homeworld’s colonized people, Amidala learns the impact the war has on poor human denizens of Coruscant—a group that could be seen as a Star Wars equivalent to the “white working class,” a formation that rose to prominence in Trump-era American politics. While helping Amidala prepare for the evening, Teckla Minnau (Ashley Moynihan), one of her handmaidens, notes that “You’re not like most politicians … you actually talk to the people, people like me” (“Pursuit of Peace”). When pressed, Teckla tells Amidala about her family’s difficulties, caused by a combination of Coruscant’s power outages and the Republic’s wartime austerity. A decade later, Teckla’s misfortunes bring to mind the deliberate power outages in California initiated in October 2019 by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), the enormous private electrical utility that had declared bankruptcy due to the liabilities incurred as a result of massive wildfires caused by a combination of neglected equipment and global warming (which the company’s carbon emissions had contributed to). At the same time PG&E was attempting to pay $16 million in bonuses to its departing executives, it was shutting off power to millions of its customers—overwhelmingly in low-income areas (Palomino and Dizikes 2019). In February 2021, the electrical grid of Texas was unable to withstand the effects of a climate change-induced winter storm, causing over two weeks of blackouts that killed hundreds. Republican officials blamed clean energy to distract from the true causes: deregulation and underinvestment in maintenance. Private energy providers made billions of dollars in the crisis, as they selectively directed power from minority–majority neighborhoods to white-majority ones (Gonzalez 2021). On Coruscant, while the working-class Teckla lived in darkness due to the power failures, Amidala remained metaphorically in the dark, her own lavish Senatorial apartment unaffected from its position in a tower high above the lower levels in which the Minnau family reside. Amidala leverages this newfound knowledge of the common people’s lived experiences to craft a stirring speech to the Senate against the military expansion act: Like so many of the people that we tell ourselves we’re here to serve, Teckla lives in a district that rarely has electricity and running water as a result of the war. Her children can now only bathe every two weeks, and they have no light in which to read or study at night. The Republic has always funded

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these basic services, but now, there are those who would divert the money to the war with no thought for what the people need to survive. If not for people like Teckla and her children, who are we fighting for? My people, your people, all of our people. This war is meant to save them from suffering, not increase it … . [I]f we continue to impoverish our people, it is not on the battlefield where Dooku will defeat us, but in our own homes … . The creation of more warriors will not end this war. The financial cost alone will bankrupt and cripple the Republic. By adding more clones to the conflict we are only escalating destruction, not winning the war.

This TCW speech is one of the clearest articulations of not only antiwar sentiment, bringing to mind the plight of the Syrian civil war’s refugees amongst others, but also the criticism of neoliberalism on American television in recent years, which has even been articulated and broadcast in Presidential debates—most vocally from Bernie Sanders. In this way, the cultural prism of TCW not only reflects the vanguard of upcoming American political developments, but inverts, for analysis, the traditional American media narratives of warfare and its politics. From at least Vietnam onwards, American news media have adopted the rhetoric of the Wild West genre to insulate the wars of both Republican and Democratic administrations from criticism (Aday 2020). The genre has always been, of course, a major influence on the Star Wars franchise (Taylor 2015, 50), but here TCW utilizes and adapts its Western-infused platform to condemn America’s wars and at least begin to question the bipartisan consensus that war should be excused, even supported through misrepresentations. TCW represents a shift in television during this period to a questioning of American politics, and SF TV was central to this shift. Battlestar Galactica25—whose final episode aired on March 20, 2009, the same day as TCW’s first season finale—similarly questioned, and indeed reshaped, media representations of America’s most recent wars. Amidala’s speech offers more; it anticipates legal scholar Aziz Rana’s later criticism of the American military with language that could have come from Amidala herself: “Social democracy at home requires anti-­ imperialism abroad” (Rana 2019). The problem of this reading in the context of Star Wars is that the positioning of “home” against “abroad” is not so clear-cut. Fans have often pointed out that the progression of the 25  Moore, R. D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV Series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios.

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Clone Wars does not make sense when its battles and the allegiance of worlds to the Republic or Separatist causes are charted on the fictional map of the galaxy (Fry and Urquhart 2012, 98). But even these amorphous and overlapping Republic/Separatist “borders” reflect the American Empire in the age of the War on Terror, where Border Patrol agents staff checkpoints hundreds of miles deep into Texas and Arizona, or at Irish and Canadian airports, and where domestic US protests are stifled by police armed with US military surplus from the Iraq War via the 1033 program, supported by both Obama and his Republican predecessor and successor (Platt 2018; Miller 2019). The 1033 Program’s merger of foreign war and domestic policing seems to play out Klein’s argument of disaster capitalism using foreign wars to justify policies at home. But in TCW itself, Amidala’s economic critique of the war is particularly thrown into sharp relief by the retort of one of her opponents, Senator Christo (Jason Spisak): “What does ideology matter at this point?” Christo’s statement is the clarion call of the Third Way centrists of the 1990s, the Clintonian architects of the neoliberalism that is the American equivalent to the deregulation of the Banking Clan. Amidala’s critique even fits into an in-universe economic history of the Star Wars galaxy. While the Republic deregulates banks and slashes social services, the Empire it is replaced by nationalizes the megacorporations (Fry and Urquhart 2012, 106–07) and institutes a social safety net even for its most oppressed nonhuman subjects (Reaves and Perry 2007, 102). After the Empire is overthrown following the end of ROTJ, the democratic New Republic once again privatizes healthcare, including the care of veterans of the civil war (Dawson 2015, 327). To these New Republicans, a universal welfare state, which would defuse the conditions in which popular support for dictatorship takes hold, must be eliminated to shore up support from the corporations that suffered under the Empire rather than providing for the citizens whose will the New Republic claims to represent. This is again reflective of the core animus of the Tea Party: effective mobilization of popular resentment to Obama’s 2009 bailout, which saved the banks but ignored average citizens. In 2015, financial engineer Zachary Feinstein wrote a widely circulated paper, defending that bailout by analyzing the economic impact of the Death Star’s destruction and arguing that the victorious New Republic would have to bail out the Imperial banking system (Feinstein 2015). The prismatic role of Star Wars is on display here—the simultaneous use of the popular franchise to defend Obama from both left- and right-wing criticisms and the suggestion that

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the only respectable route for the fictional heroes would be to copy Obama’s real-world actions. The spaces between real and fictional politics are not only blurred; left and right are entwined. Even the episode title “Heroes on Both Sides” is evocative of both the liberal lure of centrist-appealing civility politics, epitomized in post-­ presidency Obama, and Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” response to the 2017 murder of Heather Heyer, a socialist activist, by an alt-right (fascist) terrorist in Charlottesville. This brings to mind what emerged as a popular reading of the ST after Trump’s election: that the trilogy’s villains, the First Order led by Amidala’s grandson Kylo Ren (né Ben Solo), should be seen as avatars of the alt-right (Jasper 2017). There is some logic to this equivalence from an in-universe perspective. The leadership of the Obama-era Democratic Party were convinced that their brand of liberalism, combined with American demographics, would ensure a Democratic lock on the Presidency; this complacency blinded them to the growth of significant right-wing opposition to the neoliberal order they championed while assuring them their leftist critics would be forced to fall in line. The New Republic can similarly be seen as a complacent liberal order birthed from victory in a conflict for (galactic) superpower supremacy. In both the old EU and the new Disney spinoffs, the victorious New Republic is depicted as being more interested in rehabilitating than prosecuting former Imperials within its boundaries, predicting the liberal obsession with bipartisanship and allying with putative “Never Trump” Republicans (Rusch 1996, 11–13; Hidalgo 2015, 8–9; Gray 2016, 30–33). Just as Obama’s liberal complacency led to the state capture by that far-­ right he ignored, the New Republic was decimated by the authoritarian element it allowed to thrive within itself, due to its devotion to values of civility and free speech, and its leaders’ belief that the rise of such an authoritarian fringe to political prominence again was impossible. The First Order emerges from the neo-Imperials the New Republic allows to organize within its own Senate (Gray 2016, 210). The ignorance of popular politics outside of the spaces of debate recognized in the halls of the Senate resulted in its destruction, as those external politics moved to occupy the literal and metaphorical core of the galactic body politic.

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“Evil is Everywhere” The New Republic’s permissiveness toward Imperial sympathizers extends beyond the Senate. A recurring theme of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian is that the unwillingness or inability of the New Republic to govern the galaxy’s Outer Rim has allowed remnants of the Empire to thrive in the region, years after the Republic unilaterally proclaimed total victory over the Empire. Filoni and Favreau clearly based this on the fact that TFA director and co-writer J.  J. Abrams explicitly based the First Order on the urban legends of Nazis escaping Europe to build a Fourth Reich in South America; the original name of the First Order was even the Neo-Empire (Dockterman 2015; Szostak 2015, 66, 90). Those claims of postwar Nazi survival in South America proliferated in the 1970s, particularly stirred by two American novels and their film adaptations: Frederick Forsyth’s 1972 The Odessa File (filmed in 1974)26 and Ira Levin’s 1976 The Boys from Brazil (filmed in 1978)27—the latter of whose premise of mass-producing clones and resurrecting a dead dictator have obvious parallels with both AOTC and TROS. In addition to serving as the political ecology from which Star Wars grew, 1970s South America was also the home of neoliberalism, emerging with Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed September 1973 fascist coup in Chile (Klein 2007, 91–120).28 There is a reason that the notion of the Old Republic succumbing to dictatorship due to anti-taxation ideology only occurred to Lucas for the 1975 second draft of Star Wars, and not the original outline he completed in pre-coup May 1973 (Kaminski 2008, 297). Liberal fan readings of the First Order as the alt-right blends Abrams’s intentions and the political climate when TFA was released with the anti-fascist, anti-neoliberal ideology of the OT.  These readings inhabit the same space not uncomfortably, but the more forceful rhetoric of TCW is adopted and adapted in TFA without any of its substance, in true neoliberal fashion. TCW’s economic critique and the fandom’s political debate over it therefore originate even before the first movie’s release. 26  Neame, R. (Director), Frederick Forsyth (Screenplay and adapted from), (1974). The Odessa File [Film]. John Woolf Productions, Domino Productions, Oceanic Filmproduktion. 27  Schaffner, F, P. (Director), Heywood Gould (Screenplay), Ira Levin (Adapted from), (1978). The Boys from Brazil [Film]. ITC Entertainment, Producer Circle. 28  Notably Pedro Pascal, the actor portraying the titular The Mandalorian, was born in Chile but raised abroad as his parents, supporters of Salvador Allende, had to flee Pinochet’s dictatorship.

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But the historical parallels to the 1970s neoliberal turn remain strong even in the post-Lucas era. In the fictional space, one can assume that the New Republic’s privatization of the Imperial welfare state fed the rise of the First Order, much like the unequal distribution of privatization in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism led to the wave of “illiberal populism” now plaguing the region (Klein 2007, 310–31). Similarly, the New Republic levied “punishing reparations” upon the populations of former Imperial planets whose leaders refused to step down after the peace treaty was signed (Hidalgo 2015, 8) despite the fact that, as subjects whose governors were imposed by a dictatorship, those populations had no say in their leadership or its decisions. This brings to mind the IMF and World Bank’s attitudes to Third World countries, particularly in Africa— giving loans to dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, and then once the pressure of the Cold War ended, forcing newly democratized regimes to shoulder the burden of repayment, thereby undermining both their sovereignty and legitimacy (Klein 2007, 215–309). The above TCW episodes—“Sphere of Influence,” “Heroes on Both Sides,” and “Pursuit of Peace”—clearly critique the neoliberal order that by the 2010s had so thoroughly drained the public sphere of its finances and imagination alike, especially in the aftermath of Obama’s handling of the Great Recession. The episodes aired the same criticisms of austerity and privatization that developed alongside the 2011 Occupy movement, and which would fully emerge in 2015 with Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign. This is important because it was that neoliberal order itself that contributed to the rise of the alt-right as a phenomenon against the managerial Third Way policies of professed liberals, not only in the United States but across the West (Brown 2019, 1–22). It is also important because, as noted above, there is a strong tendency for defenders of the ST to claim that all who criticize the Disney era of Star Wars are alt-­ right sympathizers motivated not by plot criticism, but by the use of Star Wars as a public space in which to promote their personal grievances at multiculturalism and inclusivity (Zakarin 2018). In particular, these racist and misogynist desires have been attributed to the segment of the fan base

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who wish for the continuation of the pre-2014 EU storyline (Wendig 2016).29 This attributed motivation is suspect for several reasons, not least of which is the well-documented dislike of the PT (and OT special editions, and large swaths of the EU) by Star Wars fans long before the Disney era (Taylor 2015, 328–69). If anything, the accompanying EU rehabilitated the prequels in the eyes of some fans (Taylor 2015, 368). Angela Nagle and others have traced the origins of the alt-right political movement to online discussion spaces which then transferred into the analog sphere, particularly via interactions of gamers (Nagle 2017, 1–9; Woodcock 2019, 154–55). This makes a certain amount of sense, as the political orientation of video games shifted rightward following the 2001 start of the bipartisan War on Terror (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016, 258–61). Yet one of the most popular Star Wars games of all time is the 2004 Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, which not only chose as one of the main villains a financial planning droid attempting to crash the galactic economy, but also questioned the morality and assumptions of the Star Wars films in a way that predated TLJ (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016, 108; Cross 2018; Woodcock 2019, 126). Several years later, during Occupy Wall Street, Star Wars memes were prominently shared online, largely in support of the protesters. These included Yoda being pepper-sprayed by UC Davis police officer John Pike under the slogan “May the excessive force be with you;” Luke Skywalker proclaiming himself to be a member of the 99%; and Emperor Palpatine stating that the “Rebel Alliance don’t seem to have clear demands” (Shifman 2014, 136–39). Lucas himself voiced support for the Occupy movement, describing himself in 2012 as a “dyed-in-the-­ wool 99-percenter before there was such a thing” (Taylor 2015, 301). If it is to be taken that the alt-right emerged into the real world from online gaming discussion spaces, then there is a clear divide between the alt-right and the anti-ST critics, given the same online discourse that gave rise to the alt-right was receptive both to Star Wars and leftist viewpoints prior to 2014. If there is a change, then it is due to a shift in the American political landscape that at least the initial Disney films ignored. As mentioned above, TFA feels very much a product of the liberalism of the 29  One of the leaders of this claim, the Disney-era Star Wars author Chuck Wendig, was also one of the leaders of the 2020 movement to call for the shutdown of the Internet Archive in defense of the strict copyright regime largely pushed by, and benefitting, the Disney corporation over a public culture.

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Obama years, a confidence in the security of the established order as entrenched in the figure of a popular political leader embracing platitudes over state action even in the face of immense disaster. As also mentioned above, that same neoliberal consensus embodied and promoted by Obama contributed to the conditions that fed the development of the alt-right. The economics of TCW, as demonstrated through those 2010 episodes, not only critique that economic order but also epitomize the geopolitical economic critiques Lucas had imbued—however obscured at times—in Star Wars from the start. With the purchase of Star Wars by Disney, that Lucasian economic critique faded from the franchise—even in-universe, as demonstrated by the New Republic healthcare plot point. Star Wars was vulnerable to attack, identified as part of the hegemonic economic order that had resulted in downward mobility for so many, at the precise moment political activism associated with the show was invigorated online. ST defenders seemingly wanted to transform discussion of the ST into a political battle with the alt-right. If the alt-right was aligned with pro-EU, anti-ST arguments, liberal fans could defeat the alt-right from their keyboards, the battle taking place online where discussion of the Star Wars universe played out, away from the wider public political space. In this, the self-­ appointed guardians of peace and justice in the Star Wars fandom continued a war that had begun between TCW and EU fans at the dawn of the Obama era as a desire to return to liberal optimism. Again, TCW is a prism reflecting the political and cultural conflicts before and after it first aired in 2008. It anticipated the liberal activism around the ST but also the broader adoption of fan culture by American liberals, which has turned the likes of Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsberg into super-heroic pop-culture figures. It is, as journalist Alex Shephard points out, “as if celebrity itself could somehow transcend the grubby business of politics,” or insulate them from critique of their politics by making support for the “Notorious RBG” more about the secondhand cultural memes they inspire (Shephard 2020). This fan-culture activism evolved subsequent to the development of the fan-political space of TCW era. In turn, the neoliberalization of the 2010s, which laid the groundwork for the culture wars of the ST era, was itself a continuation of a process begun in the 1970s—a decade of neoliberalism.

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The Saga Continues By the 1983 release of ROTJ, the leaders of the Hollywood New Wave were in moral and economic shambles. Their 1970s excesses had left them bankrupt, divorced, and alienated from each other—with none more sapped by the decade of neoliberalism than Lucas himself (Kaminski 2008, 274–76). Fittingly, while Lucas claimed that the PT reflected the OT due to it being “poetry,” the Skywalker film saga concluded in December 2019, just a few months after the start of protests in Chile explicitly aimed at ending the neoliberalism inaugurated there in the 1970s. Around that same time in 2019, Lucasfilm began the publicity drive for its limited revival of TCW, which would air a final seventh season in spring 2020. The resurrected season, though including several episodes focused on the lives of everyday Coruscant citizens, lacked the socioeconomic critiques of earlier episodes—a stark difference between the economic message of the original run, reflective of the increased political differences within the fandom since 2014. Those political differences would also be expressed in the finale season, in a way that would not become immediately apparent. As was assumed, a major focus of the TCW revival was Order 66, the event when the clone troopers turn on the Jedi Knights. Exactly one year after the final episode of TCW aired, the first episode30 of The Bad Batch debuted, also focused on Order 66. In the cartoons, Order 66 is depicted in stories about clones in the field. But in ROTS, the climax of Order 66 is Darth Vader’s (Hayden Christensen) invasion, alongside a legion of clone troopers, of the Jedi Temple. Ten years after ROTS, Vader’s grandson Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is introduced in TFA by massacring a village on Jakku, an action meant to reflect World War II atrocities (Beahm 2018, 218–20). Although the Order 66 and Jakku scenes serve roughly analogous narrative circumstances, from the viewpoint of 2022, it is the prequel movie which seems more contemporary—as almost exactly halfway between the two cartoon depictions of Order 66 was the events of January 6, 2021, when an alt-right mob invaded the US Capitol in an effort to overturn the democratic election and, allegedly, hang Vice President Mike Pence for his supposed collusion with the hidden enemies within the Deep State (Khavin et al., 2021).

30  Corbett, J., Filoni, D. (Writers), & Lee, S., Ruiz, S.,Villanueva, N. (Directors). (2021, May 4). “Aftermath.” (Season 1, Episode 1). Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Lucasfilm Animation.

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In this light, with Vader leading an armed invasion of an institution of the Republic in the name of protecting the Senate, it is Order 66, not the actions of the First Order, which has the most relevance for the modern alt-right, despite the framing of the ST defenders. Similarly, the 2020 second season finale31 of The Mandalorian featured Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) fighting an army of Imperial droids to rescue the titular protagonist and his allies, in a scene reflecting his father Vader’s famous hallway fight from Rogue One. For ST defenders who had otherwise embraced The Mandalorian partially due to its framing as a continuation of TCW, this depiction of a “badass” Luke was seen as the latest perceived slight against TLJ, with its Luke who had abandoned confrontation; for critics of TLJ, the depiction of Luke was evidence that the creatives of Lucasfilm shared their dislike of the movie (Patton 2021). More fuel was added to this fandom flame war from the revelation around the same time of how TLJ director Johnson inspired Filoni to transition from animation to live-­ action, a focus that took him away from The Bad Batch (Barton 2020). These factional debates are not new within the fandom, even if they have now been politicized in a way they have not always been—partially a cause, and partially a symptom, of the neoliberal trend to displace political activism with personal cultural consumption. But what they do highlight is that, for the galaxy far, far away, the new frontline of the Star Wars is the small screen, and specifically the heirs of The Clone Wars. To paraphrase both the Marxist dialectic and another 2000s space opera show that Lucas was a fan of (Taylor 2015, 374), all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

References Aday, S. (2020). The Myth of a Thousand Westerns: Media and Just War Theory. In S. Maltby, B. O’Loughlin, K. Parry, & L. Roselle (Eds.), Spaces of War, War of Spaces (pp. 123–140). Bloomsbury Academic. Barton, R. (2020, December 17). Dave Filoni: Rian Johnson Convinced Me to Do Live-Action. Inside the Magic. https://insidethemagic.net/2020/12/ dave-­filoni-­rian-­johnson-­r wb1/ Beahm, G. (2018). The Military Science of Star Wars. Tor Books.

31  Favreau, J., (Writer), & Reed, P. (Director). (2020, December 18). “Chapter 16: The Rescue.” (Season 2, Episode 10). The Mandalorian. Lucasfilm.

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Beidler, M. (2017). The Canon Question: A Slight Return. In R.  Handley & J. F. Berenato (Eds.), A More Civilized Age: Exploring the Star Wars Expanded Universe (pp. 21–37). Sequart. Boykoff, J., & Laschever, E. (2011). The Tea Party Movement, Framing, and the US Media. Social Movement Studies, 10(4), 341–366. Breznican, A. (2020, April 24). Ahsoka Tano—A Star Wars Oral History. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/04/ahsoka-­tano-clone-­ wars-­finale-­star-­wars Brown, W. (2019). In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. Columbia University Press. “Clone Wars.” (n.d.). Wookieepedia. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from http:// starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Clone_Wars Cross, K. (2018, January 3). Knights of the Old Republic 2 Beat The Last Jedi to Its Best Lesson. Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/3/16841630/ star-­wars-­last-­jedi-­spoilers-­kotor-­2-­obsidian Culloty, E. (2020). Conspiracy and the Epistemological Challenges of Mediatized Conflict. In S. Maltby, B. O’Loughlin, K. Parry, & L. Roselle (Eds.), Spaces of War, War of Spaces (pp. 83–102). Bloomsbury Academic. Dawson, D. S. (2015). The Perfect Weapon. In A. D. Foster (Ed.), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (pp. 305–371). Del Rey Books. Dockterman, E. (2015, August 25). J.J. Abrams Says Nazis Inspired the New Star Wars Villains. Time. https://time.com/4010014/j-­j-abrams-­star-­warsforce-­awakens-­villain-­nazi/ Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2016). Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, Third Edition. Routledge. Faraci, D. (2013, September 11). How Star Trek Into Darkness Is a Crypto-­ Truther Conspiracy Movie. Birth.Movies.Death. https://birthmoviesdeath. com/2013/09/11/how-­s tar-­t rek-­i nto-­d arkness-­i s-­a -­c r ypto-trutherconspiracy-­movie Feinstein, Z. (2015, December 3). It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09054v1.pdf Fry, J., & Urquhart, P. R. (2012). Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare. Del Rey Books. Gonzalez, O. (2021, February 17). Texas Power Outage Highlights Inequalities for Minority Neighborhoods. Axios. https://www.axios.com/texas-­power-­ outage-­m inority-­n eighborhoods-­i nequality-­f 57e3e24-­a 137-­4 705-­ ba5f-­222f545bca0e.html Gray, C. (2016). Star Wars: Bloodline. Del Rey Books. Guimont, E. (2019, December 24). What to the Droid Is Life Day? Contingent Magazine. https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/12/24/droid-­life-­day/

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Handley, R. (2017). Expanding on Legends: An Introduction. In R. Handley & J. F. Berenato (Eds.), A More Civilized Age: Exploring the Star Wars Expanded Universe (pp. 1–8). Sequart. Hidalgo, P. (2015). Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary. DK Publishing. Jasper, M. (2017, December 31). Why Kylo Ren Is the Perfect Villain for the Age of the Alt-Right. The Mary Sue. https://www.themarysue.com/ why-­kylo-­ren-­is-­the-­perfect-­villain-­for-­the-­age-­of-­the-­alt-­right/ Kaminski, M. (2008). The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition. Legacy Books Press. Khavin, D., Willis, H., Hill, E., Reneau, N., Jordan, D., Engelbrecht, C., Triebert, C., Cooper, S., Browne, M., & Botti, D. (2021, June 30). Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol. The New  York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000007606996/capitol-­ riot-­trump-­supporters.html Klein, E. (2019, September 20). Leftists, Liberals, and Neoliberals Share a Problem: Congress. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-­and-­politics/ 2019/9/20/20874204/obama-­f arhad-­m anjoo-­n eoliberalism-financial-­ crisissanders-­warren Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador. Luceno, J. (2001). Star Wars: Cloak of Deception. Del Rey Books. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1998). The Communist Manifesto. Signet Classics. Miller, T. (2019). Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World. Verso. Nagle, A. (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Zero Books. Palomino, J., & Dizikes, C. (2019, November 3). Power Outages Hit Some of State’s Poorest Communities Hard. San Francisco Chronicle. https://www. sfchronicle.com/california-­wildfires/article/Power-­outages-­hit-­some-­of-­state-­ s-­poorest-­14804853.php Patton, J. M. (2021, January 1). What Star Wars Fans Get Wrong About Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi and The Mandalorian. Comic Years. https://comicyears.com/pop-­culture/star-­wars-­fans-­get-­wrong-­about-­luke-­skywalker-­inthe-­last-­jedi-­and-­the-­mandalorian/ Platt, B. (2018, October 18). ‘Cops Are at War Out There’. Jacobin. https:// www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/police-­c ulture-­v iolence-­r acism-­b luelives-­matter Rana, A. (2019, April 26). Social Democracy at Home Requires Anti-Imperialism Abroad. Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/left-­internationalismanti-­imperialism-­foreign-­policy Reaves, M., & Perry, S. (2007). Star Wars: Death Star. Del Rey Books.

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Ross, J. (2020, May 2). Coronavirus Misinformation Crosses Divides to Infect Black Social Media. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/ c o r o n a v i r u s -­m i s i n f o r m a t i o n -­c r o s s e s -­d i v i d e s -­i n f e c t -­b l a c k -­s o c i a l -­ media-­n1198226 Rusch, K. K. (1996). Star Wars: The New Rebellion. Bantam Spectra. Saadia, M. (2016). Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek. Pipertext. Shephard, A. (2020, September 18). Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Failure of Democratic Politics. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/159421/ruth-­bader-­ginsburg-­failure-­democratic-­politics Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. The MIT Press. Sitman, M., Adler-Bell, S., & Moyn, S. (2020, August 10). Know Your Frenemies. Dissent. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-­your-­enemy-­knowyour-frenemies-­with-­samuel-­moyn Szostak, P. (2015). The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Harry N. Abrams. Szostak, P. (2017). The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Harry N. Abrams. Szostak, P. (2020). The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Harry N. Abrams. Taylor, C. (2015). How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise, Revised and Expanded. Basic Books. Tran, K. M. (2018, August 21). I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/movies/kelly-­ marie-­tran.html Wendig, C. (2016, April 20). An Open Letter to The ‘Bring Back Legends’ Star Wars Fans. Terribleminds. http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/04/20/ an-­open-­letter-­to-­the-­bring-­back-­legends-­star-­wars-­fans/ Woodcock, J. (2019). Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle. Haymarket Books. Zahn, T. (2011). Star Wars: Heir to the Empire: The 20th Anniversary Edition. Ballantine Books. Zakarin, J. (2018). How the Alt-Right and Nostalgic Trolls Hijacked Geek Pop Culture. Syfy Wire. Retrieved November 6, 2019, from https://web.archive. o r g / w e b / 2 0 2 1 0 9 3 0 1 8 2 8 2 8 / h t t p s : / / w w w. s y f y. c o m / s y f y w i r e / how-­the-­alt-­right-­and-­nostalgic-­trolls-­hijacked-­geek-­pop-­culture Žižek, S. (2005, May 21). Revenge of Global Finance. In These Times. http://inthesetimes.com/article/2122/revenge_of_global_finance

CHAPTER 8

Enclosing, Opening, and Redefining Modern Space in The Expanse Edward Royston

Introduction As the heroes of the television series The Expanse1 race aboard their salvaged warship, The Rocinante, to uncover the secret that has brought twenty-fourth century humanity to the brink of war, their mechanic, Amos Burton (Wes Chatham), remarks, “we’re just caught in the Churn, that’s all … When the jungle tears itself down and turns into something new” (“Windmills”).2 Amos does not know it yet, but the “Churn” will not only change the people and politics of human space but also the space

 Shankar, N., Fergus M., Ostby H., Daniel S., Brown J.F., Hall S., Johnson B., Kosove, A., Lancaster L., Abraham D., Franck T., Nowak D., Roberts B. (Executive Producers). (2015–22). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 2  Abraham, D., Franck, T. (Writers) & Johnson, B. (Director). (2016, January 19). “Windmills.” (Season 1, Episode 7). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 1

E. Royston (*) Pfeiffer University, Misenheimer, NC, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_8

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itself: moons will be destroyed, the surfaces of Earth and Venus will be irrevocably altered, and a new structure will assemble itself in orbit beyond Neptune, offering gateways to distant planets—a huge expansion of navigable space. The “Churn” indicates the central conceit of the setting. While Amos likens it to a natural process, the death and rebirth of a jungle, what he is really observing is a mode of human-driven modernity, a process of constant change. In All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Marshall Berman invites us to “think of modernism as a struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world” (1988, 6). The Churn is then the “maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish” (Berman 1988, 15) that Berman understands modernity to be, processes we must negotiate—experiences, as Clive Bloom suggests, of “ambivalence and contradiction” (1994, 5). This is the Churn, at the heart of all six seasons of The Expanse and the series of books the show is adapted from. The Expanse’s characters, especially its main protagonists on the Rocinante, enact this struggle, searching and fighting for places where they can make a home or feel at home while the space around them is reinvented and reimagined after the discovery of the Protomolecule, an alien substance that functions as a new technology that drives modernity. I argue that The Expanse depicts a future still rooted in modernity to explore how humans produce and are produced by modern social space. The show then subjects its fictional future to a series of calamitous changes to reify that disruption and transformation are the essential characteristics of modern space. The Expanse is a discourse of spatial modernities. This discourse is, and always has been, as Henri Lefebvre (1991) suggests, a conflict—between those who plan, shape, control, imagine, and inhabit these spaces.

Enclosing Space The Expanse indicates its concern with space from the start, with the opening credit sequence presenting a time-lapse visualization, a chronology of human habitation in the physical space of Earth and the solar system. First, glaciers break up and the island of Manhattan forms; then time skips forward to show sea walls being erected around Liberty Island. Here, the credit sequence invites viewers to consider both natural and man-made alterations to physical space and how humanity navigates both—a thread that links all six seasons. This smooth transition from natural to man-made

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recalls Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of the naturalization of culture: “‘Culture’ stood for what humans can do; ‘nature’ for what humans must obey,” but while “cultural facts might be human products […] once produced they confront their erstwhile authors with all the unyielding and indomitable obstinacy of nature” (1999, x). In turn, the “man-made” must also be negotiated, requiring further building and development of lived space; enclosing of space has always defined human habitation. Human culture, in the form of buildings and sea walls, creates the space of Manhattan on our screen as much as the glaciers that carved out the East River and Hudson—an interplay of spatial designs that makes this science fiction (SF) world and begins to delineate the struggle between human-­ made and nature that initiates the modernity project. The sea walls foreground this struggle by invoking the effects of anthropocentric climate change and human efforts to counter them. Later in the series, viewers will see the underclass who live among these sea-walls and drainage tunnels— evidence of what Diletta D. Cristofaro would call, “the distributive injustice of our world’s environmental risks” (2022, 141). Significantly, the struggle between human-made and natural creates unequal conditions for humanity, a state of affairs that drives the conflicts of both the modern world and The Expanse. The credits continue to present the setting of The Expanse, shifting to an image of satellite paths in Earth’s orbit, envisioning humanity’s expansion beyond Earth’s atmosphere into the solar system, casting these products of human culture as the natural and necessary course for an expanding population. Lights spread out across the Moon’s dark surface, and individual explorers on Mars give way to larger and larger domed settlements that recall not only classic SF novels (such as Patrick Moore’s The Domes of Mars [1956] or Kim Stanly Robinson’s Red Mars [1992]) but also Joseph Paxton’s revolutionary iron and glass prism, the Crystal Palace, designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. If the Crystal Palace was a monument to modernity and humankind’s ingenuity, and in particular a celebration of “British mastery” (empire) of the modern world, then the domes of Mars and Mars’ terraforming plans for the lifeless planet speak of a similar mastery of nature and celebrate Mars’ technological superiority in the solar system. Berman reads the Crystal Palace structure as symbolizing “new modes of freedom and happiness” (1988, 220). And this is certainly the intention of a Mars looking to be free of an overcrowded and polluted Earth. But the Crystal Palace also speaks to Bauman’s reading of modernity as “a time when order—of the world, of the human habitat, of the

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human self, and of the connection between all three—is reflected upon—a practice that is aware of itself […] and wary of the void it would leave were it to halt or merely relent” (199, 5). This hyper-conscious quest for order plays out in various ways in The Expanse, taken into the “void” of space, where mining probes and ships approach asteroids and planetoids in the Belt, where they will carve out new enclosed spaces for human life. These locations are naturally uninhabitable at first, but human culture transforms them. Such sites are very much modern productions of space; they are highly regulated, and their continued existence is precarious (to a highly self-conscious degree). For example, strict rules govern resources and use of space on Ceres Station, an early site of human colonization of the Outer Planets on the planetoid Ceres, a trading hub in the Belt. Gravity is artificially produced on the station, and water is carefully recycled and distributed (misuse leads to severe punishment up to and including being thrown out of an airlock and into the void of space). This production of space is nicely mapped by Henri Lefebvre’s notion of the “Representations of space: conceptualized space, the space of the scientists, planners, urbanists […] the dominant space in any society” (1991, 38–39), which we inhabit and navigate under state regulation. Controlled by the Earth’s and Mars’ authorities, Ceres is quickly politicized for viewers, who see how the Station’s inhabitants live very “space-conscious” lives. A focus on terraforming, building, and settling in The Expanse then helps us realize the relationship between “Representations of space” and what Henri Lefebvre would distinguish as social space, such as “a city—a space which is fashioned, shaped and invested by social activities” (1991, 73). Here we begin to see conflict and development of space. Ceres Station, home to around six million permanent residents, with shops, cafes, apartments, and streets, is a recognizable city space to viewers despite its futuristic outer-space location. It is a trading hub in the Belt, located in a lineage of urban development that might be traced back to early nineteenth century farm towns of Europe that oversaw trade and accelerated the movement of populations from the country into the more restricted, restrictive, densely populated cities. Some cities would become industrial hubs, machines in a sense, driving the next stage of modernity, the Industrial Revolution. The arrangement of social spaces of The Expanse, in and beyond Ceres, is essentially capitalistic and modern, though the wealth and class struggles that continue to define city space are perhaps best sketched in Ceres Station, which channels something of the Victorian cities of the Industrial Revolution (a haunting of sorts), in which

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inequalities of space are more visible and better understood to a twentyfirst-­century audience. Ceres in turn becomes a hub of the power conflicts of space (or spatial modernities) that play out through The Expanse universe and reflect much of Lefebvre’s criticism of capitalism’s arrangement of social spaces. Space is dominated by the governments of Earth and Mars in a political scenario that resembles, as Matthew D. Atkinson and Darin DeWitt observe, the agreement of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia in Europe (2022, 78)—an uneasy peace that contributed to the creation of modern nation states (which form as part of capitalist/modernist development). People of the Belt (Belters) refer to Earth and Mars as “the Inners.” Inners’ warships control the networks and pathways of humanity’s social space, ensuring their hegemony. Much as capitalism’s “restructuring” of space lead to “slums at the edge of the city” (Lefebvre 1991, 316), the hegemony of the Inners leads to the asteroids and moons of the Belt becoming an economically disadvantaged periphery. As Clint Worthington notes in his review for RogerEbert.com, “every capitalist society requires a beleaguered underclass, and ‘The Expanse’ has that in the form of the ‘Belters’” (2021). Earth and Mars are the “centres of wealth and power” that “endeavor to mold” the peripheral spaces of the Belt and outer moons that they dominate (Lefebvre 1991, 49). Ceres embodies this spatial order while giving it an SF twist. As an asteroid with artificial gravity, those inhabiting this rock live upside down—so “up” is inward, towards the core of the asteroid, while “down” is towards the surface, where existence is more precarious because of its proximity to the vacuum of space. Gravitational stability established by rotation around the rock’s core delineates the center of power in this social space. This motion maps the social systems of power as they play out in social space, but it also embodies and anticipates the “Churn” of modernity that is about to play out through the new technology of the Protomolecule. Earth and Mars then dominate such peripheral spaces from a physically and symbolically more stable position (the center of Ceres or the surface of a planet closer to the center of the solar system), as well as through their military and private firm proxies like Star Helix, which polices Ceres. Enclosed spaces are more important than ever for survival off planet, but they also act as microcosm of embodied social space and its class implications. After establishing its expansive space setting in its opening credits,

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Season 1’s first episode “Dulcinea”3 offers a sequence of more personal spaces within it. The first of these sequences features a young woman, Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), trapped in a storage space aboard a derelict ship. After a brief montage indicating her increasing desperation to escape, she breaks free to hover in zero gravity, her straight-cut hair floating about her head. With hands and feet, she propels herself down the lifeless corridors of the ship. The second sequence follows a drone as it makes it ways through the ducts and promenades of the asteroid colony, Ceres, establishing the spaces of this low gravity settlement and giving brief glimpses of Belter life under the control of Earth and Mars authorities. Crowds form in corridors and promenades; intimate and private encounters are confined to cramped apartments. A hummingbird leisurely flaps its wings, needing little lift to remain aloft in low gravity. The third sequence turns to the loading bays of the Canterbury, a massive commercial ice hauler that supplies colonies like Ceres with much-needed water. A giant block of ice breaks free inside its giant loading bay and maims an unlucky crewmember caught between it and the wall. The vast distances and dangers of working in zero gravity are summarily displayed. A final sequence turns to Earth, where an aristocratic woman, United Nations Undersecretary General Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), interrogates a Belter, a person born and raised in zero gravity, who cannot hold himself upright against the force of Earth’s gravity. Propped up by his armpits, he slumps under the weight of his own body. In these sequences, viewers begin to appreciate what theorist Yi-Fu Tuan understands as our human perspective on space, dictated by our upright bipedal bodies: “Vertical-horizontal, top-bottom, front-back and right-left are positions and coordinates of the body that are extrapolated onto space” (1977, 35). This perspective comes from our grounded nature as people who stand upright in Earth’s gravity. Zero gravity confuses this perspective—a reconfiguration of space that characters must navigate. Julie Mao (from Earth) must reorient her sense of up and down to escape the derelict ship; the drone on Ceres reveals the intense, cramped existence of an asteroid station with limited air and water; and the tortured Belter reveals a different type of human body—adapted to life in low gravity, his limbs long and uncompressed by the full gravity of Earth. Tuan’s understanding of the human body in space must be renegotiated by 3  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & McDonough, T., (Director). (2015, December 14). “Dulcinea.” (Season 1, Episode 1). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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viewers. And in some ways, this becomes a reconsideration of one’s own body. Bodies have evolved on the show, changed by new technologies and new spaces of habitation. But the familiar politics of social space continue to run through these bodies—Belters who live and work in space have bodies adapted to their environments (Earthers find this space more difficult to maneuver within), but their bodies also exclude them from the centers of power of Mars and Earth. The physiological effects of being born and raised in zero or low gravity are graphically depicted. Belters must take expensive drugs and slowly acclimatize to the planet’s atmosphere if they are to survive a visit even for a short time. Avasarala’s torture of a Belter for information on Earth uses space as an implement—it reinforces just how much impact physical space has on our bodies. The various gravities of The Expanse universe, though, also reflect the various structures and flows of the social spaces we inhabit (and something of the Churn). Up and down are manufactured in space by thrust or centrifugal force, as we see in Ceres Station, and they can shift on the various ships navigating the Belt. Amos is tossed about, alternately standing up, lying on his side, or hanging on for dear life as the Rocinante engages in a perilous space battle early in Season 2 (“Doors and Corners”).4 Ships in The Expanse are oriented around means of manufacturing g-forces. While they again complicate Tuan’s and our notion of the human body in space, they also at times return us to the power associated with the upright human form. The Rocinante offers a nice example: the apparent front of the ship is actually its top, its decks oriented like the floors of a high rise. This is most clearly illustrated when it lands on the new world of Ilus in Season 4’s opening episode “New Terra.”5 Rather than landing on its side, it lands on its tail, orienting its decks’ floors parallel to the surface of the planet and standing like a heavily armed warrior or apartment tower, replicating the upright bipedal human body while also blurring its form. The body is in a sense transformed by this technology. Julie Mao’s sister, Clarissa (Nadine Nicole), epitomizes this revolutionized modern body, with tech implants that give her almost superhuman abilities for brief periods, though she is not completely in control and collapses from physical exhaustion after using them. Perhaps one of the most 4  Abraham, D., Franck, T. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2017, February 1). “Doors and Corners.” (Season 2, Episode 12). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 5  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2019, December 12). “New Terra.” (Season 4, Episode 1). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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iconic images of this technology (modernity)-transformed body in space comes in the series finale, “Babylon’s Ashes,”6 where Amos, strapped to a rocket pack, hurtles, spinning uncontrollably in zero gravity towards the rail guns of the Ring Station, the new center of power in the solar system. He is a body physically and symbolically caught up in the Churn, his rocket pack a microcosm of the transformative potential of the Ring Gate that has opened up the universe to exploration.

Opening Space The enclosing of space in The Expanse paradoxically leads to a greater opening of space. This process is the Churn, or the maelstrom of modernity that Berman notes; and by extension it is part of the modernity project identified by Bauman—the attempt to organize the world, to remove all trace of ambivalence, which—rather than producing control and uniformity (through processes of mapping, building, labelling, dissecting, categorizing, and organizing)—leads to greater fragmentation and ambivalence. This cycle drives the project ever onward. Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane), a detective working for Star Helix on Ceres, becomes a guide to this opening up of space for the crew of the Rocinante and for viewers. He is something of a nexus of colliding spaces himself, an embodied version of Ceres, which in itself reflects the greater politics of space—the conflicts between Inner and Outer planets. Miller is a Belter, an orphan who has lived his entire life on Ceres, but he faces disdain from his fellow Belters because he chooses to work for an Earth corporation. Miller embodies the conflict and contradiction between (Lefebvrean) center and peripheral social spaces explored in the show. He can guide the audience between Earther and Belter spaces on Ceres, and it is this ability, combined with his detective skills, that leads characters and audience to the conspiracy of the Protomolecule and its reconfiguration of space. In death (or merger with the Protomolecule), Miller’s role as guide is transcendent, as he facilitates the formation of the Ring Gate that will open distant regions of space to human exploration (“Abaddon’s Gate”).7 In Season 4, he returns again to help settlers and James Holden (Steven 6  Abraham, D., Franck, T., Shankar, N. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2022, January 14). “Babylon‘s Ashes.” (Season 6, Episode 6). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 7  Abraham, D., Franck T., Shankar, N. (Writer) & Jones, S. C. (Director). (2018, June 27). “Abaddon’s Gate.” (Season 3, Episode 13). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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Strait) negotiate an advanced alien technology that threatens to destroy the planet Ilus (“Saeculum”).8 These stages of opening space to exploration are again aligned with the political sense of freedom in space—the struggle to find one’s place in the variously controlled, reconfigured, and policed locations of the solar system. As Tuan notes, “[s]paciousness is closely associated with the sense of being free” but a “sense of crowding can appear under highly varied conditions and at different scales” (1977, 52, 60). Miller’s Earth-born partner Havelock (Jay Hernandez) is visibly discomforted by the dense population and low ceilings of Ceres (“Remember the Cant”).9 Conversely, James Holden, captain of the Rocinante, feels crowded by his large and overbearing family on their estate on Earth, but free aboard the tight confines of ships like the Canterbury and Rocinante (“Windmills”). There is some appropriate irony here; Holden’s family land is reminiscent of early American settlement—an existence that ostensibly plays out against the threat of nature, a struggle to tame the land—though the overcrowded, highly developed nature of Earth contradicts this somewhat. Holden’s life in space is an escape from Earth, functioning as a more modern, and truer, version of settler expansion, later epitomized by Season 4’s focus on settlers who have gone through the Ring to build a new society on Ilus (as called by Belters) or New Terra (as called by the United Nations). The political struggle for space on Ilus plays out through naming, an observation on colonial practices that extends through another political-spatial irony reflecting settlement of the US: Ilus is far from an untouched and unsettled Eden. It is a site for an ancient and advanced society, the whole planet a refinery for the Ring Builders. Ilus/New Terra functions as a microcosm of the historical and continuing processes and politics of modernity as it shapes our world. An essential aspect of this organizing and modernizing of space is speed. Speed is historically connected to advances in technology—the motorcar a defining manifestation of this development at the beginning of the twentieth century and the plane towards the end of it. As Tuan notes, “[a] tool enlarges a person’s world when he feels it to be a direct extension of his corporeal powers. A bicycle enlarges the human sense of space, and 8  Abraham, D., Franck, T. (Writers) & Eisner, B. (Director). (2019, December 12). “Saeculum.” (Season 4, Episode 9). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 9  Veith, R. (Writer) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2015, December 22). “Remember the Cant.” (Season 1, Episode 3). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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likewise, the sports car” (1977, 53). The key tool in The Expanse is the Epstein Drive, which becomes a focus of a Season 2 episode aptly titled “Paradigm Shift.”10 A series of flashbacks depicts the invention of the drive, a new form of propulsion that allows humanity the freedom to travel to the Belt and outer moons in a reasonable time, so initiating widespread colonization of these celestial bodies and leading to the crowded populations on asteroids like Ceres and Eros. The ability to utilize this speed will ultimately bestow power on those with access to it. Not everyone can afford their own Epstein drive ship, and even passage off somewhere like Ceres on a larger transport can be unaffordable for some. This sense of speed translates ultimately into a sense of space. Bauman observes, “‘distance’ is a social product; its length varies depending on the speed with which it may be traversed” (1999, xxii). To those with power (and wealth), like Avasarala or the Jules-Pierre Mao (François Chau), CEO of the most powerful corporate conglomerate in the solar system, Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile, the solar system is more navigable; it can even be controlled and reshaped. It is Mao’s development of the Protomolecule that initiates a redrawing of political and physical space, which will play out through solar system-­ wide conflict. Technology’s effects on the perception and navigation of distance are perhaps best illustrated by the ship battles at the heart of this transformation. Most of the battles in the series are fought at ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, using guided missiles that can take hours to reach their targets. Engagements within dozens or hundreds of kilometers are known as CQB (Close Quarters Battle), a term that in our present refers to hand-to-hand combat using bayonets, knives, and fists. These “close” distances on the show take a long time to traverse, even at the exceptional speeds of space flight. While cuts and montage speed these times up for the viewer, they also indicate the long waits of crews at their stations as they endure tense minutes and hours for intercepts to play out and torpedoes to hit or miss their targets. As Lefebvre observes: “Modernity curiously enlarged, deepened, and at the same time dilapidated the present” (2004, 31). The crews’ presents are stretched and dilapidated in this way. The crews (and viewers) do not see these distances firsthand; instead, they view simulacra of them on screens. Their “present is composed of simulacra; the image before [them] simulates the real, drives it out” (32). 10  Shankar, N. (Writer) & Grossman, D. (Director). (2017, March 1). “Paradigm Shift.” (Season 2, Episode 6). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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The crews engaged in a space battle can cause the deaths of dozens or hundreds of opponents while only witnessing the blinking out of an icon on a monitor. In the first of these battles, in Season 1’s “CQB,”11 attacks by unidentified stealth ships culminating in the destruction of a powerful Martian battleship mark a violation of the Inner’s established order—the beginning of the Churn. Mars’ military superiority is challenged by a secret fleet of ships developed by Protogen, the corporation that found and began experimenting with the Protomolecule. This secret fleet is built by an Earth-based corporation using Martian stealth technology and employing soldiers and scientists from across human space. Protogen and its forces seek to establish a new center of power (As Lefebvre writes, “Centrality is moveable” [1991, 332]). As Protogen’s machinations lead to war between Earth and Mars, UN undersecretary Sadavir Errinwright (Shawn Doyle) exclaims, “if Mars wins, Earth will become a colony of theirs”: the shift in power is also a redrawing of space (“Static”).12

Redefining Space The Creators of the Protomolecule in The Expanse might be read as a synthesis of Bauman’s concepts of the gardener, “who believes there would be no order in the world at all, if not for his constant attention and effort,” and the hunter, who “when the woods have been emptied of game … may move to another relatively unspoiled wilderness” (2006, 318–19). Our solar system was to be exploited for resources by the creators of the Protomolecule—the Protomolecule targeted at the goldilocks zone of Venus, Earth, and Mars. Those planning the reordering and modernizing of this space two billion years before the events of The Expanse were willing to alter or destroy life evolving in the system. Bauman highlights the atrocities committed in the cause of such historical “gardening” regimes— pointing to the holocaust of World War Two, suggesting, in contradiction to what we would like to believe, that it was not an aberration of civilization and modernity but a logical (and terrifying) step in the modernity project, where that which is deemed unwanted or unneeded for society (or 11  Shankar, N. (Writer) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2015, December 29). “CQB.” (Season 1, Episode 4). The Expanse. Legendary Television. 12  Veith, R. (Writer) & Woolnough, J. (Director). (2017, February 8). “Static.” (Season 2, Episode 3). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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the State’s imagining of it) is “weeded out.” As Bauman notes, “[g]ardeners know better what kind of plants should, and what sorts of plants should not grow on the plot entrusted to his care” (2006, 318). Mao’s (and Protogen’s) discovery and harnessing of the Protomolecule follows a similar course two billion years later, with Mao willing to experiment on the population of the asteroid Eros. Eros is a peripheral slum, its mineral wealth long since extracted, now little more than a lawless frontier community and, thus, a prime target for such a large-scale experiment. As Miller points out, “no one cares what happens to a hundred thousand Belters” (“Leviathan Wakes”).13 Those Belters are exposed to the Protomolecule so that Protogen’s scientists can observe its effects, and the effects are terrifying. They recall the medical experiments undertaken by the Nazis in camps during World War Two. The bodies of the Belters begin to transform, breaking out in blue-tinged sores from which crystal structures emerge and coalesce into a latticework connecting their bodies to each other and the station around them. The Protomolecule transforms humans into sources of more Protomolecule, coopting the human capacity for reproduction in an echo of Lefebvre’s critiques of capitalist production itself and its exploitation of human bodies (1991, 232, 325). This monstrous experiment initiates the series of events that begins the Churn, which itself will lead to the creation of the Ring Gate and the opening up and redefinition of space. Fittingly, it is the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) that resists this experiment on Eros. This militant group of Belters pushes back against those behind the experiment—a conflict that again plays out on spatial terms. Out of control, the experiment/Eros aims itself towards Earth and would devastate the planet. The OPA commandeers the Nauvoo (a massive generation ship built for the Mormons who intend to explore the universe and search for God), using it as a weapon against the Protomolecule-controlled Eros. Their plan is to knock Eros off its current course and push it into the Sun. But as the Nauvoo closes on Eros, the asteroid turns, evading the Nauvoo, adopting a new, even faster trajectory towards Earth. Earth is only saved because the Protomolecule’s space on Eros still contains some remnant of the humans who were subsumed into it. Led by Julie Mao, “patient zero” of the Protomolecule’s “infection” of Eros, and helped by our guide to the processes of modernity reshaping space, Detective Miller, 13  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & McDonough, T. (Director). (2016, February 2). “Leviathan Wakes.” (Season 1, Episode 10). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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the rock is steered towards Venus (“Home”).14 Again, those who inhabit space resist the power and plans of those who shape it—though they are caught in the Churn, and further chaos is unleashed. These experiments lead to Project Caliban, a weaponization of the Protomolecule that echoes the trajectory of research that began in World War Two in Nazi camp experiments and continued in the Cold War weapons programs. Project Caliban (a name that ironically gestures to a lack of civilization and the abuses by the civilized, via Shakespeare’s The Tempest) looks to create superhumans who can survive in space without a vacuum suit. As Protogen scientist Antony Dresden (Daniel Kash) explains, “the Protomolecule is our ticket out of the limitations that bind us to these pathetic little bubbles of rock and air” (“Doors and Corners”). To Dresden (a name that also gestures to World War Two and its atrocities), the Protomolecule is just another technology, a “tool that enlarges [humanity’s] world” (Tuan 1977, 53). Dresden is another one of Bauman’s “gardeners” and one of the banal Eichmann-like villains identified by R. S. Leiby (2022, 51). Project Caliban is tested on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, where it slaughters marines from both Earth and Mars and precipitates open war between the two worlds, as each blames the other for the attack. The Churn initiated by the modernity project intensifies, threatening the very civilizations that have undertaken the project. Ultimately, Project Caliban is destroyed, and its backers are caught and punished for their transgression of legal and moral orders, but just as it seems that order will be returned to the solar system, the Protomolecule on Venus takes its final form as the Ring Gate. Fittingly, the opening of the gate is a study of speed—of advancing and stuttering technological expansion. A “slow zone” is opened beyond the Ring, placing a speed limit on objects moving through it. As ships suddenly decelerate and their direction of thrust changes, the fragility of human bodies in space is again highlighted—bodies disoriented and thrown violently against bulkheads and objects. Holden and a ghostly Protomolecule reproduction of Miller work to free the ships from this zone. This version of Miller is mostly a machine or program, designed to troubleshoot and reopen the Ring Gates. Here, Miller takes on something of Bauman’s “modern men and women” who are “mechanical reproductions”—the very “machines” that constitute “modernity” (Berman, 1988, 14  Fergus, M., Ostby, H. (Writers) & Grossman, D. (Director). (2017, February 22). “Home.” (Season 2, Episode 5). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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29). Bodies in a sense accelerate again, coopted by the machine that opens up space through the technology of the Ring Gate. The Gate initiates a momentous transformation of human space recalling the transformations that Lefebvre (like others) observes in the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries (1991, 25, 268). In the sixteenth century, “the town overtook the country in terms of its practical and economic weight” (Lefebvre 1991, 268). The Ring Gate makes more accessible the infinite space “first confronted” in the seventeenth century (O’Neill 2022, 4). With the opening of the Ring Gates leading to new, safer worlds, there is no longer a need for fragile colonies and stations on hazardous asteroids and moons in our solar system, thus reducing the economic and political supremacy of Earth and Mars. As Lefebvre observes, “Centrality is moveable” (1991, 332). A nice analogy might also be found in the development of the railway across Britain in the mid-­ nineteenth century and the development of the interstate highway system in the United States a century later, where new transport routes lead to the death of some towns and the growth of others and enabled easier movement of less wealthy citizens. Society is sped up in a sense by this new mode of transportation, which also, by providing an “increased volume of range and mobility […] inevitably […] weaken[s …] the hold of locality” (Bauman 1999, xxx). The Martian context best exemplifies how the Ring Gates change humanity’s relationship with locality. When the Ring Gates appear, Martians begin to question the terraforming project that has dominated their lives and united them as a society with a single goal. Many abandon the project and their loyalty to Mars. Esai Martin (Paul Schulze), a formerly loyal Martian police detective, begins selling scrapped Martian weapons and advanced technology on the black market. Justifying his actions, he says, “Mars died the minute the Gates opened” (“The One-­ Eyed Man”).15 The local and attachment to the local are lost in this brave new modern world. Martin’s smuggling also assists another shift in power and space, as he provides valuable Martian technology to a renegade OPA faction led by Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander). The same Martian stealth technology that Protogen appropriated for its secret fleet is used by Inaros to disguise asteroids, which are then launched at Earth to unleash a comparable catastrophe to that inflicted on Belters at Eros. The rock throwing might 15  Nowak, D. (Writer) & Harding, S. (Director). (2019, December 12). “The One-Eyed Man.” (Season 4, Episode 8). The Expanse. Legendary Television.

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suggest a more “primitive” attack when compared to the advanced technology of Earth military—something of “Caliban” perhaps, or even the nineteenth century Luddite movement in Britain, which destroyed textile machinery in protest of the mechanization of this trade to the detriment of its workers. But here, as Caliban tells Prospero, “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is I know how to curse” (Shakespeare, 1.2.364–65). Inaros turns technology against its masters and empowers the Belt, taking control of the Ring Gate and thus access to other solar systems. As Sid Simpson suggests, Marco Inaros and his Belter “Free Navy” are a distinctly anti-colonial force, a reaction to modernist colonialism across the solar system (2022, 98–99). Inaros sees the opening of the Ring Gates as an opportunity for the OPA and Belters at large to assert their primacy—a movement to the symbolic center. This shift in power around the Ring Gate and the redrawing of space in and beyond the solar system reveals contrasting responses to modernity. Martin’s betrayal of Mars and Inaros’ plot against Earth reflect the despair and nihilism produced by modernity (Berman 1988, 20, 110). Everyone is caught in the Churn, uncertain of where they fit in this new order, traumatized by the destruction that has initiated this change. And yet, marginalized Belters see having worlds of their own as a way to create their own centers, where they will no longer be subject to the hegemony of the Inners. These Belters embody the utopian optimism of modernity, “the idea that human beings can replace the world-as-it-is with another and different world, wholly of their making” (Bauman 2006, 317). The settlement on Ilus illustrates this hope, but even here, modernity through past alien technologies, and also through the presence of an Earth-based mining company, threatens this new home. Diletta de Cristofaro sees here the spread of the modern Anthropocene to other planets and worlds (2022, 135). Ilus finally functions as microcosm of many of the competing processes of modernity, a collision between societies, local and global (or solar), individual and government and corporation, technologies and nature. But as Berman remarks, “the deepest social and psychic wounds of modernity may be repeatedly sealed over without ever being really healed” (171). The Ring Gates bring new opportunities and challenges that draw attention to but do not resolve the old conflicts. Amos Burton’s “Churn,” the process of modernity, continues unabated.

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Conclusion Ultimately, the enormity of the “Churn” and the profoundly transgressive and transformative effects of the Protomolecule are amplified by The Expanse’s grounding of its setting, characters, and their relationship in modernity. The production and arrangement of social spaces in the show reflect our own and are therefore rent apart by the introduction of the Protomolecule. Characters’ relationships to those spaces are born from our own grounded perspectives, our lived experiences of the spaces we inhabit. The freedom offered by space travel is amplified by the interstellar Ring Gates, but they lead to alien spaces perhaps more crowded than we would have hoped for. And they remain haunted by our own pollical concerns—a political and class struggle that always plays out in the modern spaces in which we live.

References Atkinson, M. D., & DeWitt, D. (2022). Moral Obligation in an Anarchic World. In J.  L. Nicholas (Ed.), The Expanse and Philosophy (pp.  74–83). John Wiley & Sons. Bauman, Z. (1999). Culture as Praxis. Sage Publishing. Bauman, Z. (2006). Living in Utopia. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 33(1), 316–323. Berman, M. (1988). All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. Penguin Books. Bloom, C. (1994). Literature and Culture in Modern Britain Volume 1: 1900–1929. Routledge. Cristofaro, D. D. (2022). ‘We Had a Garden and We Paved It’: The Expanse and the Philosophy of the Anthropocene. In J. L. Nicholas (Ed.), The Expanse and Philosophy (pp. 135–144). John Wiley & Sons. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Trans. D.  Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell Publishing. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life. Continuum. Leiby, R. S. (2022). The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt and Jules-Pierre Mao. In J.  L. Nicholas (Ed.), The Expanse and Philosophy (pp.  47–56). John Wiley & Sons. O’Neill, Michael J. (2022). The Infinite and the Sublime in The Expanse. In J. L. Nicholas (Ed.), The Expanse and Philosphy (pp. 3–12). John Wiley & Sons. Simpson, S. (2022). The Inners Must Die: Marco Inaros and the Righteousness of Anti-Colonial Violence. In J.  L. Nicholas (Ed.), The Expanse and Philosophy (pp. 93–101). John Wiley & Sons.

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Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press. Worthington, C. (2021, December 10). Here Comes the Juice: The Expanse Changed How We View Sci-Fi Storytelling. RogerEbert.com. https://www. rogerebert.com/streaming/here-­c omes-­t he-­j uice-­t he-­e xpanse-­c hangedhow-­we-­think-­about-­sci-­fi-­storytelling

PART III

Intersecting Media: Text, Television, and Streaming Services

(Re)configuration New Media foreground the interface like never before. Screens of all shapes and sizes tend to come to mind … a palimpsest the interface may be; yet it is still more useful to take the ultimate step, to suggest the layers of the palimpsest themselves are “data” that must be interpreted. To this end it is more useful to analyze the intraface using the principal of parallel aesthetic events, and to claim that these parallel events reveal something about the medium and about contemporary life […] there will be an intraface within the object between the aesthetic form of the piece and the larger historical material context in which it is situated. —Alexander R. Galloway, The Interface Effect (30, 44–45, 53)

The chapters in this section consider different media of science fiction, the novel and television. Even as SF stories depict futuristic media, our access to such fictional media is mediated through the screen (or page) of the story itself, thus affording playful considerations of mediation as a multilayered phenomenon. Chapter 9 examines the use of screens in Babylon 51 and how they anticipate a future mediated through the screen. Interfaces, or rather intrafaces, within the show not only allow access to the aesthetic experience of the story and its use of screens but also to the production techniques of the show’s sets/spaces that lie hidden in plain sight. Such 1  Netter, D., Straczynski, J.M. (Executive Producers). (1994–1998). Babylon 5 [TV series]. Warner Home Video, AOL Time Warner, Babylonian Productions, Time Warner, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television.

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techniques, and their staging, anticipate our own time, and strangely connect us back to ourselves, as we access ourselves from the “other side” of our screen. Chapter 10 examines disembodied spaces in Westworld2 and draws attention to Prestige television media—a high-budget production structured around, John Bruni suggests, narrative deferral that ultimately disappoints. We can again read this as a question of connection and interface—how do we consume our SF narratives? What does this connection/ experience offer us? In Chap. 11, Ellen Forget playfully considers the adaptation of FlashForward from novel to show3 and offers entry points into this process, via screen, novel, online reviewers, and her main mediating texts: production memos sent between the novel’s author, Robert J. Sawyer, and the show’s production team. Beyond this section, Chap. 6. The Wars of Ronald D. Moore: Terrorism, Insurgency, and News Media in Deep Space Nine4 and Battlestar Galactica5 by Benjamin Griffin and Chap. 12. Pushing Through Networks and Media Spaces in Stranger Things6 by Nicolas Orlando more ostensibly explore questions of interface. The question of adaptation (also a question of interface) connects a number of the chapters and shows discussed in this collection. Many newer shows are adaptations, their SF imaginaries in part made possible for the screen through newer CGI technologies. This suggests a reconfiguration of sections: Chap. 10 on Westworld and Chap. 11 on FlashForward from this section might be grouped with Chaps. 2 and 8,

2  Abrams, J.J., Nolan, J., Joy, L., Weintraub, J., Burk, B., Lewis, R.J., Patino, R., Wickham, A., Stephenson, B., Thé, D. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Westworld [TV series]. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television. 3   Braga, B., Goyer, D.S., Guggenheim, M., Borsiczky, J., Gerardis, V., Vicinanza, R. (Executive Producers). (2009–2010). FlashForward [TV series]. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment. 4  Berman, R., Behr, I.  S., Fields, P.  A., Piller, M., Wolfe, R.  H. (Executive Producers). (1993–1999). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [TV Series]. Paramount Television. 5  Moore, R.D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV series]. British Sky Productions, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios. 6  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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which examine The Expanse,7 and Chap. 13 on The Boys8—all are adaptations of books. Battlestar Galactica is itself an adaptation of sorts, a reboot of the 1970s show of the same name (1978–79),9 which was itself revived as Galactica 198010 and continued as a series of books. This thinking leads us back to the idea of interface/intraface. What do we access through the screen and our chosen show? Westworld makes for a nice example. Westworld the TV show is based on the Westworld the film (1973),11 its sequel Futureworld (1976)12 and the briefly lived television show Beyond Westworld (1980).13 Michael Crichton, who created Westworld for the screen, later wrote the novel Jurassic Park (1990) and The Lost World (1995), a variation on the Westworld story, which has now spawned six films and a host of other media. How far do we access these through the television show Westworld? Do we also access the show Person of Interest (2011–16),14 with its creator Jonathan Nolan, also co-creator of Westworld? The show deals with similar themes, while Season 3 (2020) of Westworld is aesthetically and tonally reminiscent of Nolan’s earlier show, though it also reads as a reimagining of Blade Runner15 via the 2017 sequel Blade

7  Shankar, N., Fergus M., Ostby H., Daniel S., Brown J.F., Hall S., Johnson B., Kosove A., Lancaster L., Abraham D., Franck T., Nowak D., Roberts B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 8  Kripke, E., Rogen, S., Goldberg, E., Weaver, J., Moritz, N. H., Shetty, P., Marmur, O., Trachtenberg, D., Levin, K.F., Netter, J., Rosenberg, C., Sgriccia, P., Sonnenshine, R. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Boys [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios. 9  Larson, G.A. (Executive Producer). (1978–1979). Battlestar Galactica [TV series]. Glen A. Larson Productions, Universal Television. 10  Larson, G.A. (Executive Producer). (1980). Galactica 1980 [TV series]. Glen A. Larson Productions, Universal Television. 11   Crichton, M. (Director), Michael Crichton (Written by), (1973). Westworld [Film]. MGM. 12  Heffron, R.T. (Director), Mayo Simon and George Schenck (Written by), (1976). Futureworld [Film]. AIP, Aubrey Company. 13  Shaw, L. (Executive Producer). (1980). Beyond Westworld [TV series]. MGM Television. 14  Abrams, J.J., Burk, B., Nolan, J., Plageman, G., Thé, D., Fisher, C., Semel, D. (Executive Producers). (2011–2016). Person of Interest [TV series]. Kilter Films, Bad Robot, Warner Bros. Television. 15  Scott, R. (Director), Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples (Screenplay), (1982). Blade Runner [Film]. The Ladd Company, Shaw Brothers, Warner Bros., Blade Runner Partnership, Michael Deeley Production, Ridley Scott Productions.

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Runner 2049.16 What other SF spaces then do we ultimately interface with through a single episode, through a show, through our screen? Another configuration suggests itself: Chap. 10, Westworld could be grouped with Chaps. 2 and 8, The Expanse, Chap. 12, Stranger Things, and Chap. 13, The Boys—all Prestige TV productions that rely on the art of narrative deferral, our most recent entry point into the world of SF television. But from here we might locate another intraface to the antecedent shows that anticipate Prestige TV: SF boutique productions Babylon 5 and FlashForward.

Reference Galloway, A. R. (2012). The Interface Effect. Polity.

16  Villeneuve, D. (Director), Hampton Fancher and Michael Green (Screenplay), Hampton Fancher (Story), (2017). Blade Runner 2049 [Film]. Alcon Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, Sony, Toridon Films, 16:14 Entertainment, Scott Free Productions, Babieka, Thunderbird Entertainment.

CHAPTER 9

The Year Everything Changed: Babylon 2020 Alex Christie

Introduction The year is 2020. The name of the place is Babylon 5. I am watching the final episode of the fourth season, and something seems wrong. “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars”1 is a curious episode in that it was written and filmed at the last minute to replace the series finale, “Sleeping in Light,”2 after the show was picked up for a fifth and final season by TNT. At this moment, however, about three minutes into the finale, the episode is skipping. As a fan of the show, I should know better: the hiccups in the video are not an error in my streaming service or a buffering delay; they are part of the finale’s (and the show’s) conceit. What is first presented as interference in an ISN (Interstellar Network News) broadcast is

1  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Stephen, J.F. (Director). (1997, October 27). “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars.” (Season 4, Episode 22). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 2  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Straczynski, J.M. (Director). (1998, November 25). “Sleeping in Light.” (Season 5, Episode 22). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

A. Christie (*) Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_9

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quickly revealed to be an even greater science fictional setup. The finale unfolds as an unnamed human in the distant future reviews video footage of the aftermath of the show’s main events through a futuristic television device, reflecting upon the evolution of the human race moments before the sun explodes, destroying humanity’s cosmic home. The brilliant finale, written and directed by Stephen Furst (who also portrays the character Vir Cotto), presents footage from different time periods after the end of the show. As the episode moves further into the future, the footage is captured through increasingly futuristic media devices. The finale concludes with the death of Earth’s star, as a far-distant human reviews this historical footage before transfiguring into a ball of energy and entering a humanoid version of a Vorlon encounter suit. In this radical and highly experimental finale, viewers see the story of the human race come to fruition, as humanity finally achieves what they fought for during the Shadow and Civil wars of the show’s main storyline: self-­ determination. What makes the episode particularly radical, though, is its suggestion that the process of human historical betterment also involves navigating increasingly sophisticated media landscapes. Looking back on Babylon 5 in the year 2020, as I watch the remastered version of the show through my streaming device and on my flat screen television (a far cry from the cathode-ray tube visions of the show’s original 1990s broadcast), I cannot help but reflect upon the confluence between the finale’s unnamed futuristic human and myself. At the moment when the video skips and I wonder whether I have run into an error with my streaming service, Babylon 5’s story about human self-determination also seems to be about me. Reflecting upon the legacy of the show after the completion of its five-­ year arc, showrunner Joseph Michael Straczynski said he set out to create “a myth for television” (Killick 1999, 8). As viewers take up the finale’s invitation to consider the historical import of the show, it seems Babylon 5 (B5) also stands, at least to some degree, as a myth of television (and of the science-fiction television genre). The show’s lasting significance is frequently marked by a list of firsts for the medium. Babylon 5 pioneered several of the storytelling and production methods (Computer-generated imagery [CGI], serial narrative, multi-season character arcs) now associated with grand-scale television shows like Game of Thrones3 and Battlestar 3  Benioff, D., Weiss, D.  B. (Executive Producers). (2011–2019). Game of Thrones [TV series]. Warner Bros. Television Distribution.

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Galactica.4 As producer John Copeland put it: “If [Straczynski] had come along with this ten years earlier, it would not have been possible…No one had really done [this] before, and there were folks in the production community who thought we were Looney Tunes. It’s kind of appropriate that we landed up in Warner Bros. For that very reason” (Killick 1998a, 9–10). While B5’s innovative productions frequently assume the narrative of the proverbial “battle to stay on the air,” they also take the form of radical storytelling and staging techniques that directly implicate the audience in that battle, particularly in the Season 4 and 5 finales. The true finale of the show (filmed at the end of Season 4 production but not aired until the end of Season 5) directly implicates the viewer (and by extension the show’s fandom) in the story of Babylon 5’s heroic production. It ends by suggesting the entirety of the Babylon 5 broadcast (i.e., the entire show) has been an ISN Special Documentary broadcast long after the events of the series (“Sleeping in Light”). Not only does this metafictional conceit draw attention to Babylon 5’s status as televised, it also blurs the boundaries between televised fiction and reality. The metafictional framing devices that close the Season 4 and 5 finales seem to be dramatic renderings of the show’s own heroic battle to finish its run. The closing footage of the B5 production crew virtually staged in Minbar and the final lines from “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” suggest as much: Season 4 ends by explicitly conflating the peacekeeping mission of the Babylon 5 station with the production mission of the Babylon 5 show. The finale is “Dedicated to all the people who predicted that the Babylon Project would fail in its mission. Faith Manages” (“The Deconstruction of Falling Stars”). The future is now, and as B5’s network run recedes further into the historical past, one of the more subtle and subversive elements of the show grows increasingly distinct: Babylon 5 often explicitly addresses the audience watching the show, especially audiences looking back at the show from the future (in other words, us). While scholarly criticism of Babylon 5 is relatively sparse, several studies have retrospectively considered the cultural relevance of the show and its themes. Most recently, Michael Pruski (2021) has revisited the ethical dilemmas of the episodes

4  Moore, R. D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV Series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R&D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios.

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“Deathwalker”5 and “Believers”6 in light of conscientious objections to COVID-19 vaccines; leaving anti-vaxxer objections out of the discussion entirely, Pruski considers where more nuanced concerns about vaccine development and rollout replay complex ethical issues staged in specific medical plotlines from the show. Elsewhere, Sharon Ney and Elaine M.  Sciog-Lazarov (2000) have offered a feminist reading of the show’s female characters, examining Susan Ivanona, Lyta Alexander, and Delenn as three competing models of feminine identity. Perhaps most relevant to this chapter are the respective studies of Alan Wexelblat (2003) and Kurt Lancaster (2001), which reveal the complex interplay between showrunner Straczynski and fans of the show, which unfolded online and in message boards throughout the show’s run. As Wexelblat documents, Straczynski constructed an online auteur persona, “jms,” (Wexelblat is careful to distinguish this public persona from Straczynski himself) as part of a complex and ongoing interaction with fans of the show (and their theories) while it was still on the air. While this chapter focuses on the production and storytelling decisions of Straczynski and colleagues (as distinct from the jms moniker), it joins Wexelblat in considering the nuanced interplay between television production and audience as a critical context for Babylon 5’s and its enduring import. Specifically, B5’s metafictional references to viewers of its broadcast are not merely storytelling devices employed at the end of the show but part of a persistent set of narrative, staging, and production techniques that run throughout the whole of the work. This means the science fiction (SF) spaces of Babylon 5 extend beyond the show’s in-world universe (and the production techniques used to create it) to consider the television screen itself as a zone where multiple spaces conjoin, collide, and conflate with one another. Such considerations extend Michel Foucault’s theories about modern space into the realms of the digital screens of SF television. Like the screen, the Babylon 5 station is not a static location (or place) but instead a constellation of disparate but intertwined perspectives that form a patchwork whole (be that a patchwork of alien races, competing perspectives, or station sectors). Straczynski refers to this non-local status of the B5 station by calling it a “nexus for a lot of different locations to 5  Straczynski, J.M., DiTillo, L. (Writers) & Green, B.S. (Director). (1994, April 20). “Deathwalker.” (Season 1, Episode 9). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 6  Straczynski, J.M., Gerrold, D. (Writers) & Compton, R. (Director). (1994, April 27). “Believers.” (Season 1, Episode 10). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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come together” (Killick 1998a, 37). This chapter further argues B5 is a non-local space specifically produced through digital screens, be they the screens in the show (such as ISN, and the way it fictionalizes the actual B5 viewership) or the screens of the show (specifically, the innovative CGI techniques used to blend real and virtual sets). Extending Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia by way of Alexander Galloway, we will see how digital screens themselves operate, like the B5 station, as non-local spaces (or nexuses). These theoretical explorations will ultimately enrich our understanding of the show’s storytelling and messaging, as I contend these non-local spatial productions are the catalyst for the protagonists’ moments of personal transformation and growth. Whether it is the image of John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) leaping into the ether of Z’ha’dum7 or Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs) clawing his way back to life from Downbelow (while the Shadow War rages in the night),8 the show’s moments of revelation are consistently predicated upon abandoning one’s sense of fixed place, belonging, or homeland. Such non-local understandings of space are necessary not only for the show’s characters but also for the scenes themselves (and the digital intermixing of spaces they afford). Interestingly, these spatial productions frequently cross the threshold of the television screen, as the show incorporates the viewing audience into the staging of several transformational scenes. If the non-local spaces of Babylon 5 serve as complex constellations of disparate locations, where characters must risk everything to discover who they may yet become, the show’s nuanced use of digital screens further suggests the television is a similarly unfixed space where audiences may either find or lose themselves. Moving beyond clean divisions between the inner and outer edges of the television screen, Babylon 5 situates the screen itself as a site of the Vorlon philosophical method: “understanding is a three-edged sword.”

You Can’t Go Home Anymore When Marcus (Jason Carter) says to Delenn (Mira Furlan), “Back on the colony, Earth was just a place that sent us vids and took thirty percent of our income,” he articulates a persistent rejection of the local that is 7  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Nimoy, A. (Director). (1996, October 28). “Z’ha’dum” [TV series]. (Season 3, Episode 22). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 8  232 Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Friedman, K. (Director). (1996, October 21). “Shadow Dancing.” (Season 3, Episode 21). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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embodied in the B5 station and mission.9 Communications from Earth always seem to come from an “over there” noticeably disconnected from where the show takes place. While this is to some extent true of all the homeworlds in the show, Earth in particular is consistently characterized as a homeworld that no longer feels like home for many of the show’s humans. This spatial separation is almost always conveyed through screens and the way they hinder direct communication. When Sheridan speaks to his father during the escalating conflict between Earthgov and Babylon 5 in “Severed Dreams,”10 their inability to converse openly highlights just how far-removed the events on Earth are from the station. Similarly, when we see a doctored version of the events of the White Star’s mission to Jupiter broadcast via ISN at the end of “Messages from Earth,” the disjuncture between the story as we know it and the story being told on Earth reinforces the sense that whatever is happening on Earth is always happening somewhere off stage.11 Earth is a somewhere we only ever know of through screens (at least until the end of Season 4): vids are sent from Earthgov; ISN is broadcast from Geneva; Gold Channel Communications come from Earthdome (also in Geneva). The disconnection between Earth and outer space is largely predicated on Earth’s function as a fixed place, in contrast to the non-local space of B5. Earth’s locality is precisely what makes it so distant. Unlike the messages from Earth, communications in and around the B5 station are frequently distributed or non-localized, embodying Straczynski’s description of the station as a nexus where different locations come together. When Sheridan announces B5 is declaring independence from Earth in “Severed Dreams,” he uses Draal’s (Louis Turenne) holography system on Epsilon 3 to project himself throughout the station. This media dissemination technique stands in decided contrast to the broadcasts of ISN: whereas ISN announcements always come from a fixed studio, Draal’s holography allows Sheridan to appear in multiple locations throughout the station simultaneously. We do not get the sense that Sheridan is speaking to the station’s inhabitants from one fixed location (i.e., an “over there”); instead, Sheridan seems to be speaking directly to 9  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Flinn III, J. (Director). (1996, April 8). “Ceremonies of Light and Dark.” (Season 3, Episode 11). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 10  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Eagle, D.J. (Director). (1996, April 1). “Severed Dreams.” (Season 3, Episode 10). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 11  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Vejar, M. (Director). (1996, February 19). “Messages from Earth.” (Season 3, Episode 8). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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the inhabitants in each part of the station where his presence appears. Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian) similarly uses Epsilon 3 to boost the signal for her Voice of the Resistance announcements. During these scenes, Christian frequently speaks directly to the camera, addressing the audience of the show as if they were the resistance fighters watching her command-­ and-­control updates (just one example of the staging of the audience within the diegesis of the show).12 While Ivanova’s broadcasts are not holographic, they are still decidedly non-local. The whole point of her 20-minute C&C updates is that Ivanova gathers and disseminates real-­ time information from rangers stationed throughout the galaxy. Ivanova’s ability to gather and relay communications from a diverse constellation of different voices is a metonymy of the B5 station itself and its peacekeeping mission, a neutral location where various races can come together to communicate and collaborate. For the characters of the show, as for the audience, creating a sense of home or belonging requires collapsing place-based divisions between “here” and “there,” often through screen-based media. These non-local hubs and nexuses frequently offer a greater sense of security and belonging than characters’ actual homeworlds, allowing the younger races to overcome the tactical threats posed by the Shadow and Vorlon forces. Isolationist tactics taken by non-aligned races (as examined in Season 3’s “Walkabout”13 and Season 4’s “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies”)14 always end in defeat, since retreating to defend one’s own homeworld plays into Shadow strategy. Instead, success in the Shadow War is consistently driven by moments where the younger races transcend the idea of a galaxy composed of individual and separate locations. The rangers successfully work with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds to bolster their defenses by cooperatively patrolling the borders between their spaces and shifting their tactics from defending individual worlds to defending shared borders. Similarly, the Shadow War is only won once the League (and, crucially, the Narns) decide to shed their individual interests to defend the White Star Fleet; here, rather than fighting to defend a fixed homeworld space, the younger races join forces to fight for a more nebulous and non-locatable cooperative galactic space. 12  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Eagle, D.J. (Director). (1996, November 25). “Falling Toward Apotheosis.” (Season 4, Episode 4). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 13   Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Cremin, K.G. (Director). (1996, September 30). “Walkabout.” (Season 3, Episode 18). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 14  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Vejar, M. (Director). (1997, May 12). “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies.” (Season 4, Episode 13). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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Much of the aftermath of President Clark’s downfall hinges upon this tension between place and space. In a place-based ideology, much like Shadow ideology, historical progress comes from the conflicts between isolated interests and locations. A space-based perspective instead adopts a non-local ethos, where progress comes from understanding the interconnection between seemingly disparate perspectives and places. It is for this vision of the galaxy as it may yet become that the Interstellar Alliance fights. Acting as a non-localized peacekeeping force, the Alliance represents a paradigm shift (coinciding with the show’s Third Age of mankind), in which people begin fighting to defend a less tangible cooperative space. The major conflicts of the show (the Shadow War and Earth’s Civil War) are conflicts between these place-based and space-based understandings of the galaxy. In that these wars also signal the transition from the Second to the Third Age of mankind, they are also battles for human progress. Conflicting place and space-based ideologies also lie at the heart of the show’s later Telepath Wars. The research and development behind William Edgars’ (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) secret telepath virus are predicated on the belief that the existence of two classifications of humans (telepaths and normals) must invariably lead to a conflict in which one prevails. Edgars’ beliefs are especially Shadow-like in that Edgars sees evolutionary conflicts as growth opportunities for driving corporate R&D, and it should come as no surprise that his virus based on Shadow technology.15 These isolationist paradigms adopt a model of historical progress in which conflict drives scientific advancement, which is conferred upon a solitary winning group. By way of contrast, victories in these wars usher in newfound understandings of humanity’s place in the universe, where human progress is confluent with the interests of its allies, however diverse. The conflicts between place and space-based perspectives in the show are thus ultimately conflicts between two models of historical progress. Citing Shadow ideology as an extreme form of Hegelianism, showrunner Straczynski has stated: “Go back to Hegel, the philosopher, and his whole notion ties right back into the Shadows…They have, however, taken it to extremes, and that is the dividing line” (Killick 1998b, 173). As Michael Forster explains, Hegel’s dialectic is “a method of exposition in which each category in turn is shown to be implicitly self-contradictory and to develop necessarily into the next (thus forming a continuously connected 15  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Lafia, J. (Director). (1997, June 2). “The Exercise of Vital Powers.” (Season 4, Episode 16). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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hierarchical series culminating in an all-embracing category that Hegel calls the Absolute Idea)” (Forster 1993, 132). For Hegel, the overcoming of such dialectical contradictions is the movement of History. While Shadow ideology distorts and misapplies this theory by inciting such conflicts as catalysts for historical progress, the peacekeeping mission of the Babylon Project adopts a more tempered approach. The B5 station operates as a science-fictional heterotopia in the show: when we enter the station, we step out of an existing galaxy (made up of separate homeworlds) and into a microcosm of how the galaxy may yet be (a nexus of cooperative parts, where no one perspective fully supersedes another). While this distinction is never quite so neat in the show (characters certainly fight for homeworld interests onboard the station), B5 frequently serves as a site where characters learn to move beyond the self-serving perspectives and agendas they bring on board. Heterotopia par excellence, the station’s rigorous entry and exit procedures and checkpoints cordon it from the normal flow of space, and this allows the station to rearrange the rules by which races normally interact: throughout the Centauri occupation of Narn, Narns aboard the station are granted sanctuary and can retain their freedom (so long as they remain onboard). In this way, social dynamics that are otherwise impossible in the galaxy (such as the Narns operating as station security) are possible within the heterotopia of B5; as Foucault writes: “The heterotopia has the power of juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other,” and B5 adheres to this definition both in its repatterning of social relations and in the screens and transmissions that frequently underscore the difference between how things operate inside and outside the station’s walls (Foucault 1997, 354). In this way, the station is a mirror in the galaxy that reflects out a model of how the galaxy may yet be structured. Following Hegel’s dialectical model of historical progress, much of the show turns upon the contradiction between B5’s non-local model of galactic cooperation and the homeworld-driven conflicts occurring in the galaxy at large; we could identify the opposing poles of this dialectic as place and space, or homeworld and nexus, and it is overcoming this tension that heralds the show’s Third Age. For this reason, characters like Lorien (Wayne Alexander) frequently tell the One (namely, Sheridan, Delenn, and, indirectly, Sinclair) the course of history turns upon their shoulders. In fighting for B5 and its peacekeeping mission, these characters fight for the space-based paradigm upon which the Third Age will be founded. Following the show’s frequent metafictional constructions, this

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fight for hybrid or composite spaces (where disparate places come together in previously impossible configurations) is not simply a fight that happens within the universe of the show. B5’s battles for hybrid and interwoven/ non-local understandings of space also involve the show’s battles to be on the air. The future of SF television hangs in the balance.

Spatial Effects The hybrid spatial assemblages of the B5 station extend from the fiction of the show to the groundbreaking VFX (Visual effects) techniques of the actual B5 production. Thus, while the notion of non-local or hybrid spaces is a significant theme in the show, it is also integral to the way sets and set-­ pieces were assembled and filmed. Rather than locating its production in Canada, where filming would be less costly, Babylon 5 remained in LA so it could be closer to its VFX studio (which eventually came in-house in the fourth year of production) (Killick 1998c, 12). The decision to base much of its production around CGI informed Babylon 5’s unique use of soundstage space. A general lack of available filming space in LA necessitated the production’s clever re-use of space, as well as what producer John Copeland refers to as a “creativity-first” approach, where production problems were not addressed with money but through creative problem solving, such as modifying or modularly recombining sets to form different spaces (Killick 1998c, 15). Set designer John Iacovelli explains: “If we [use the same set, but] change the color of the stripe and change the number of the corridor [it looks] like a completely different place” (Killick 1998c, 5). Similarly, key locations such as the Observation Dome and the Zocalo were frequently redressed and reused. In this filmmaking context, the B5 station was quite literally produced as a non-local space or nexus, where otherwise disjoint places came together in previously impossible configurations. B5’s status as a heterotopic space, in this way, involves a nuanced interplay between the thematic elements of the galactic space of the show and the concrete elements of its physical production and filming. Hybrid and composite understandings of space are the lifeblood of the show. The use of innovative production techniques to create the show’s composite spaces is essential to the space opera elements of B5’s storytelling. The necessity of hybrid spaces for the show’s most important dramatic moments is best exemplified through the show’s creation of virtual sets. John Iacovelli traces the inception of this technique to Season 1, Episode

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12 (“By Any Means Necessary”),16 where G’Kar (Andreas Katsulas) conducts a religious ceremony at the episode’s conclusion. As Iacovelli explains, the scene was originally going to be filmed in G’Kar’s quarters, simply because there was no other set where the scene could take place. Demonstrating Copeland’s creativity-first approach, Iacovelli suggested creating half a set and allowing the VFX team to create the rest of the set digitally. The result is the final scene of “By Any Means Necessary,” where we see the Narns sitting in the lower-half of the shot, while a window to the exterior of the station (an entirely CGI fabrication) occupies the top half of the screen. These groundbreaking virtual sets became a staple of the show’s creative production. Crucially, however, the technique arose out of a specific storytelling necessity. Conveying the weight of the religious ceremony required that several Narns be in the scene (not just G’Kar) and that the scene occur against a cosmic backdrop (a window to the stars); none of this was possible in the existing set for G’Kar’s quarters. The creation of virtual sets thus enabled a specific storytelling approach that runs throughout the whole of Babylon 5: painting the drama of personal spiritual transformation against a galactic backdrop. Using virtual sets to televise SF spaces that had never been seen before also meant telling a large-canvas story that had never been brought to the small screen. Some of the most memorable moments of the show involve a character’s personal struggles unfolding against the vastness of space: Sheridan clambering over a wall and leaping into the air of Z’ha’dum (“Z’ha’dum”); Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle) sitting alone in a Martian transport tube while Bester walks coolly out the door;17 Franklin fighting with himself in the bowels of Downbelow while Earth’s civil war rages among the stars.18 (This list would, of course, be incomplete without the image of Sheridan falling through the low-G atmosphere of B5 itself at the end of Season 2, in a visual prolepsis to his fate at Z’ha’dum.)19 These scenes would have been impossible to film without the show’s CGI and virtual sets, which allowed the production to intermix live action footage with 16  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Johnston, J. (Director). (1994, May 11). “By Any Means Necessary.” (Season 1, Episode 12). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 17  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Vejar, M. (Director). (1997, June 9). “The Face of the Enemy.” (Season 4, Episode 17). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 18  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Friedman, K. (Director). (1995, October 21). “Shadow Dancing.” (Season 3, Episode 21). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 19  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Greek, J. (Director). (1995, November 1). “The Fall of Night.” (Season 2, Episode 22). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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computer-generated imagery. Most importantly for this analysis, these scenes disclose an intimate interrelationship between the personal and the spatial that is fundamental to the show’s space opera. The transformational moments experienced by the show’s characters almost universally involve their attempts to navigate various forms of spatial isolation or fragmentation—while such moments often involve personal experiences of loss and transformation, they are all staged against the hybrid spaces unique to B5’s production. After what is left of his wife (whose personality has been stripped away by the Shadows) pursues Sheridan to the edge of a precipice overlooking the underground capital of Z’ha’dum, Bruce Boxleitner leaps off the edge of an actual set and into the computer-­ generated Shadow cityscape (“Z’ha’dum”). Similarly, while G’Kar’s visions in “Dust to Dust” do not involve the use of the show’s virtual sets, they nonetheless require the hybridization of several discrete psyches: while G’Kar is invading Londo’s mind, he is unaware that Kosh (Ardwight Chamberlain) is simultaneously entering his own mind. After these psychic encounters have cascaded across the screen and prompted G’Kar’s pivotal moment of catharsis, the audience alone is shown the full staging of the physical space where the encounter occurs: as G’Kar buries his head in his hands to cry, and the camera pans up to reveal Kosh standing above both Londo (Peter Jurasik) and G’Kar.20 Like the moment in which Sheridan climbs to the cliff edge to jump (it is no coincidence that Kosh plays an influential role in both scenes), G’Kar’s moment of personal transformation can only occur when he abandons a fixed location (here, his place on the station) to enter into a more nebulous, non-local space (first, Londo’s mind, and next, the scene of his father’s death on Narn). It is at these transformational moments that the show’s two main themes converge: in order to access moments of personal transformation and growth, the show’s characters must exit conventional geography and enter into non-local, heterotopic spaces where otherwise disjointed places in time and space can coexist in previously impossible configurations. Perhaps the most potent and sustained instance of personal transformation requiring a character to exit conventional, place-based geography is Franklin’s walkabout in Season 3. After coming to terms with the reality and the depth of his stim addiction, Franklin draws from his Foundationist religious beliefs to go on walkabout as a way of facing himself. Walkabouts 20  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Eagle, D.J. (Director). (1996, February 5). “Dust to Dust.” (Season 3, Episode 6). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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are predicated upon exiting conventional, place-based geography to enter a more nebulous space, and this is materialized in Franklin’s decision to carry out his walkabout in Downbelow and without assistance or external contact. Members of command staff frequently try to contact Franklin, but he consistently rebuffs their requests. This decision, in part, is meant to keep the walkabout experience a personal one, though it also preserves the space of Franklin’s journey. By cutting off contact with command staff and refusing outside assistance, Franklin exits the conventional space of B5 (where anyone is reachable at any time via link) and into the liminal space of life in Downbelow. While Downbelow to some extent functions as what Marc Augé calls non-places, or transitory spaces like airports and shopping malls that erase individuality, such anonymity more specifically allows characters to enter a space of ontological alterity, where they can explore the shadow sides of their being (2008). As Richard Biggs notes of his performances in “Walkabout” and “Shadow Dancing”: “I really tried to show two different characters.” It is only once Franklin exits the conventional topography of the station (and his place within it) that he can begin to come to terms with his fractured self. The culmination of Franklin’s personal crisis on walkabout coincides with the climaxes of several other narrative arcs, from the intensification of the Earth Civil War to the increasingly apparent shadow side (pun intended) of the Vorlon race. This theme of dual identities runs throughout these culminating episodes, from Lyta Alexander’s (Patricia Tallman) conflicting allegiances to the Vorlons and the Humans to the Jekyll-and-­ Hyde duality of the seemingly paternal Vorlons, now revealed as sinister. (Note the new Vorlon insists on being called Kosh despite evidence this is very much not the Kosh we knew.) As Straczynski notes, Franklin’s personal struggles in Downbelow are deliberately set against the cosmic canvas of interstellar war, underscoring the show’s space opera storytelling. “[What] is that [space] battle about?” he asks rhetorically. “It is about the right of individuals to stand up and decide for themselves what they want to do, which is exactly what Franklin is doing. So what Franklin is enduring was absolutely at the heart and core of what the battle was about” (Killick 1998b, 168). While this is yet another instance in which B5 draws consistent inspiration from The Prisoner21 (most overtly referenced in Alfred Bester’s [Walter Koenig] signature farewell: “Be seeing you!”), it 21  McGoohan, P. (Executive Producer). (1967). The Prisoner [TV series]. Everyman Films, Incorporated Television Company.

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also underscores the extent to which the show consistently frames personal self-determination against a grand, spatial context. These spatial effects rest at the dramatic core of characters coming to terms with where they have been and where they are going. Dramatizing Hegel’s dialectical model of progress, an internally contradictory Franklin enters the space of Downbelow so that one whole Franklin can leave it. When the doctor finally does come to terms with himself, he is no longer in the secure confines of station space: the only one who can get him out of Downbelow is himself. Some of the most potent elements of Franklin’s transformation are the looking glass effects used to visually represent his fractured identity. At multiple points throughout “Walkabout,” viewers see Franklin’s face refracted through glass, multiplying the familiar, singular image of Franklin into multiple contiguous yet partitioned copies of his face. This looking glass effect was not a directorial invention but a very specific visual trope meant to appear in the episode. As Walkabout director Kevin Cremin reveals: “[Straczynski] was real specific with the looking through the glass and the multiple images of Franklin…The minute I read that in the script, I said ‘Guys, let’s start going around finding glasses.’ We went through about twenty-five to thirty glasses to find the right one” (Killick 1998b, 148). While the visual trope of internal fragmentation underscores Franklin’s identity crisis, it is intermittently interrelated with the doctor’s rejection of a fixed place of sense of Homeland to find himself in the more nebulous space of Downbelow. This nebulous space (or hybrid collection of places), where Franklin is never at rest but always passing through, enables Franklin to at last see and confront the conflicting facets of his personality. In short: Franklin’s walkabout demonstrates where the show’s characters must enter into non-local spaces in order to see the truth of who they really are. In many ways, walkabout is Franklin’s own way of answering the Vorlon and Shadow questions “Who are you?” and “What do you want” on a deeply personal, visceral, and importantly spatial level. Of most interest for this analysis is the pivotal role screens and reflections play in communicating these liminal, crisis moments to the audience. Whether it is the image of Franklin facing the disparate facets of his identity in Downbelow or Sheridan face-to-face with troubling transmissions from Earth over StellarCom, moments of crisis for the show’s protagonists consistently incorporate screens and refractions as a core visual trope. Such effects directly implicate the audience in the drama behind the screen.

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Beyond the Screen Perhaps the most ubiquitous (yet subtle) non-local spaces in Babylon 5 are screens themselves, which connect (or divide) the station and the various homeworlds, human and alien, of the show. As characters navigate the non-local space of the StellarCom screen, they frequently find themselves on a quest to uncover a truth about themselves or a crisis. The most evident instance of this technique comes in the Season 3 episode “Point of No Return,”22 which opens with an unnamed Earthforce General informing Sheridan and Ivanova that President Clark (Gary McGurk) has dissolved the Senate and conveying General Hague’s message: “everything’s gone to hell.” Behind the unnamed General are four screens arranged in a square, each displaying the same StellarCom image of Sheridan and Ivanova. (Given the impracticality of having someone’s face behind you when you are videoconferencing with them, let alone duplicated across four screens, the General’s visually striking yet highly impractical setup seems a deliberate staging choice.) Sheridan and Ivanova’s perspective in this scene echoes the visual trope of refraction in “Walkabout” through complex staging effects that break down the distinction between what is happening on either side of the screen. Shots move back-and-forth between direct images of Sheridan and Ivanova looking at the camera and images where Sheridan and Ivanova are watching themselves reflected in the General’s array of screens. Like Sheridan and Ivanova, the viewer is looking through their screen to see yet another screen reflected back at them. In drawing attention to the audience’s own act of watching the show, this scene implicates viewers in Sheridan’s struggle to navigate the difference between what is happening on Earth, what is happening on the station, and how much information he can glean through the screens that at once connect and divide the two locations. Mirroring Marcus’ pivotal statement that “Earth was just a place that sent us vids,” the StellarCom communications of “Point of No Return” frequently underscore both the division and the interconnection between homeworld and station. Unequivocally, media literacy is one of this episode’s central themes. “Point of No Return” opens with Londo Mollari teaching Vir to spin the reports he sends back to Centauri Prime, admonishing Vir for his belief that the purpose of his reports is to provide “accurate intelligence.” In 22  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Johnston, J. (Director). (1996, February 26). “Point of No Return.” (Season 3, Episode 9). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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many ways, the challenge for Sheridan and the audience alike in this episode is to understand where General Smits (Sheridan’s primary StellarCom interlocutor, who comes on after the unnamed General) has demonstrated Londo’s argument that communications to and from homeworld must be phrased carefully. It is clear from Smits’ (Lewis Arquette) communication that he is attempting to convey crucial information to Sheridan but cannot do so openly because of the threat posed by Clark; discovering the truth about Clark’s Martial Law order involves using the StellarCom screen to think around the spatial fragmentation created in a homeworld space paradigm, where no one in space ever quite knows what’s happening back on Earth. In essence, Sheridan’s challenge is the same one the audience faces throughout the episode: he must see beyond the screen to decipher the truth of the messages from Earth. The episode concludes with Sheridan having pieced together Smits’ hint that Clark’s orders circumvent military chain of command and can thus be obviated on the station in a way that is simply not possible homeworld. Sheridan discovers this veiled suggestion only after rewinding and replaying a recording of his conversation with Smits several times to piece together Smits’ true message. Media literacy is arguably fundamental to the show’s inception, given that Straczynski only began working in television after he became disillusioned with the journalism industry and decided to leave. As he has noted himself, in reference to the recurrent role of ISN in the show, “Too often we look at what we hear from the media in an uncritical fashion” (Killick 1998d, 84). Indeed, the media screens of the show frequently serve as sites where characters view a truth that either can be revealed or has been concealed. Mira Furlan revealed that Delenn’s challenges interacting with ISN reporters in Season 2’s “And Now for a Word”23 paralleled her own experiences with the media as her home country of Yugoslavia descended into war (Killick 1998c, 129). Elsewhere, Straczynski has also clarified that ISN’s increasing misrepresentation of the events they report is meant to be an indictment not of journalism but of propaganda and “the failure [on] the part of those who don’t understand there is a difference” (Killick, Babylon 5, 1998d, 83). Indeed, the most potent threats in the show do not come from outright violence but from various forms of influence exerted by more powerful or knowledgeable groups upon their opponents. After his episode-long interrogation in the riveting “Intersections 23  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & DiLeo, L. (Director). (1995, May 3). “And Now for a Word.” (Season 2, Episode 14). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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in Real Time,”24 Sheridan begins disclosing secret information to Clark’s interrogator not because of the physical violence inflicted upon him but because he can no longer distinguish whether he is in a detention center on Mars or back on Babylon 5 talking to Franklin. Here, Sheridan finds himself in nearly an identical position to Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O’Hare) in Season 1’s “And the Sky Full of Stars,” who becomes trapped in a virtual reality simulation that he can no longer differentiate from the actual world.25 Both circumstances seek to extract a hidden truth from the station’s captain, not primarily by threat of violence but instead through various media production techniques, from the Drazi actor of “Intersections” to the virtual reality device of “Stars.” As Sheridan’s interrogator boasts to his colleague: “we’ve distorted his sense of reality.”26 The media of Babylon 5 frequently serve as sites of contested truth, whether this involves Sheridan deducing the truth of Clark’s orders by being an astute viewer of his StellarCom, or Sheridan disclosing a hidden truth by losing his capacity to distinguish media fabrication from real life. In this way, the futuristic media of the show frequently serve as heterotopia where otherwise isolated locations can impossibly connect, collide, and become conflated. While the screens inside the B5 universe frequently serve as non-local spaces where fabrication and reality collide, still more subtle are moments when those screens invoke the television screen through which audiences view the show. ISN news broadcasts are frequently presented with such metafictional flair, perhaps most evident in Season 4’s “The Illusion of Truth.” In the first half of the episode, a news crew gathers footage and conducts interviews for an ISN special that viewers watch in the second half of the episode. Unsurprisingly, the special report (under the stranglehold of Clark) grossly misrepresents the events that were filmed, and the difference between what the audience sees aboard the station and what they watch on ISN underscores the episode’s media literacy theme. Most interesting, though, is the way the transition between the television broadcast of the B5 show and the news broadcast of ISN is handled. Sheridan says to Ivanova and Delenn: “Well, let’s see 24  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Lafia, J. (Director). (1997, June 16). “Intersections in Real Time.” (Season 4, Episode 18). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 25  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Greek, J. (Director). (1994, March 16). “And the Sky Full of Stars.” (Season 1, Episode 6). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 26  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Eagle, D.J. (Director). (1997, October 6). “Between the Darkness and the Light.” (Season 4, Episode 19). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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what’s on. With our luck, it will probably be a commercial.” He then walks up to the camera, which is looking out into the room from the vantage point of the television screen the three of them are sitting down to watch. This staging invokes the actual viewing audience of the series and places them within the diegesis of the show: when Sheridan looks at the screen in his office, he is looking into the actual television screen through which the audience watches the show. The next moments reinforce this metafictional invocation of the television screen on which Babylon 5 is being watched: Sheridan uses his hand link to turn on the television screen in his office, and at this precise moment the episode switches over to the ISN broadcast. It is similarly Sheridan himself who ends the episode, which cuts to the credits when he uses his hand link to turn off the TV. These experimental staging effects extend the show’s understanding of screens as heterotopia to the actual television screen of the viewer, thereby implicating the audience its media literacy theme. Whether they are connecting homeworld to station or fictional universe to reality, the television screens of Babylon 5 consistently operate as heterotopic or non-­ local spaces where otherwise discrete locations connect and collide in previously unimaginable configurations. Characters in the show are often at the greatest risk when they lose their capacity to distinguish media from reality; by way of contrast, personal and historical progress frequently involves navigating (rather than conflating) the disparate places that come together through the screen. Invoking the outside world of the viewer from the interior of an artistic work is not unique to Babylon 5. Exploring a range of such approaches, Alexander Galloway identifies them as what he refers to as “interface effects,” perhaps most readily defined as moments when an intraface within a work of art (such as a painter viewing his canvas) references the interface between the audience and the art object itself (here, the actual viewer looking at the painting). Such effects efface easy demarcations between interior and exterior (or, in the case of Babylon 5, diegesis and non-diegesis). As Galloway writes: “The stress here is that one must always think about the image as a process, rather than as a set of discrete, immutable items. The paratextual (or, alternately the nondiegetic) is in this sense merely the process that goes by the name of outering, of exteriority” (2017, 37). The ISN broadcasts in Babylon 5 frequently enact such interface effects, in which the non-diegesis of the actual television audience of Babylon 5 is situated within the diegesis of a particular scene or episode. These moments collapse the distinction between the fictional world on

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one side of the television screen and the actual world on the other, thus enacting an effect in which living room and galaxy form a composite or hybrid space through the heterotopia of the screen. When Babylon 5 uses such effects, it almost always ties its invocation of the audience to a character’s search for truth, be it the truth of Franklin’s identity in crisis or the truth of the legality of Clark’s orders. After losing his eye to the cruel whims of Emperor Cartagia, G’Kar tells Londo: “I can see things now that were invisible to me before. An empty eye sees through to an empty heart.”27 Later in the season, G’Kar’s spiritual insight is literalized through cybernetics when Franklin installs his prosthetic eye in “Atonement.”28 The prosthetic allows G’Kar to see beyond the confines of his local body since it is wireless and can be removed from G’Kar’s eye socket while still functioning. It should come as no surprise that G’Kar receives his new sight in the episode immediately following “The Illusion of Truth,”29 since the prosthesis uses screens and cameras to make G’Kar’s claims to newfound spiritual insight literal and material. Embodying at once a non-local understanding of space (where otherwise disconnected places can be combined in new ways) and the Minbari spiritual assertion that “the soul is a non-localized phenomenon,”30 G’Kar’s new insight allows him to see otherwise incompatible perspectives at the same time. G’Kar can quite literally be in two places at once, meaning his vision can combine two locations or perspectives in a way that was previously impossible—a heterotopic sight. G’Kar’s newfound ability to exist both inside and beyond the confines of his body simultaneously is illustrated immediately after the activation of the eye in “Atonement,” when G’Kar looks at himself through the prosthetic and waves. This scene uses the same interface effects present in the previous episode: switching from the non-diegetic cameras filming the scene to the camera within the diegesis of the scene—G’Kar’s eye. The audience sees what G’Kar sees through the prosthesis—static and 27  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Lafia, J. (Director). (1997, January 27). “The Long Night.” (Season 4, Episode 5). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 28  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Dow, T. (Director). (1997, February 24). “Atonement.” (Season 4, Episode 9). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 29  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Furst, S. (Director). (1997, February 17). “The Illusion of Truth.” (Season 4, Episode 8). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network. 30  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Nimoy, A. (Director). (1995, November 27). “Passing Through Gethsemane.” (Season 3, Episode 5). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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all—magically situating them within the diegesis of the show. At this moment, it is uncertain whether the audience is occupying the position of G’Kar (seeing what he sees) or the position of the eye (seeing what the prosthesis sees). While we can assume the scene involved Andreas Katsulas holding an actual camera in his hand, the ambiguous location of the audience in these shots brings G’Kar’s newfound non-local vision to life. Here again the show uses digital screens to collapse the distinction between the world of the show and the location of the viewing audience (typically assumed to exist outside the world, on the other side of the screen). This effect is elsewhere used when Garibaldi (and the audience) discovers the truth of Bester’s machinations in “The Face of the Enemy.” As Bester speaks over images of Garibaldi’s unlocked memories, a Psi Corps agent walks up to the camera and smiles at the viewers before closing a door, seemingly, on them. This uncertain positioning of the audience is again tied at once to Garibaldi’s revelations and to his displaced sense of belonging, which can no longer be anchored to any fixed sense of place or homeland affiliation. Garibaldi’s unmoored sense of belonging is reinforced through the uncertain position of the viewing audience, using the same interface effects present in Franklin’s, Sheridan’s, and G’Kar’s moments of crisis and transformation. As Bester says to Garibaldi before exiting the transit tube: “So, as the saying goes, you can’t go home again” (“The Face of the Enemy”).

Screening the Future If the characters of the show face moments of personal and spiritual transformation only as they shed ties to a fixed sense of place or belonging, the Season 4 finale “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” takes this phenomenon to its logical extreme. With a wink to future viewers of Babylon 5, looking back on the series after its broadcast has completed, “Deconstruction” portrays a highly evolved human descendant reckoning with the literal destruction of our homeworld. This episode’s references to screens and media as places where we may either discover or lose our connection to truth are perhaps the most overt, as are the interface effects masterfully staged by director Stephen Furst. The first act presents historical footage from 100 years after the events of the series: an ISN retrospective on the Interstellar Alliance formed at the end of the show (including a potent critique of academic opportunism). The connections between

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media and truth become more explicit at the acts progress. Act two takes us 500 years further into the future, in which the crypto-fascist Politdivision has holographically recreated the characters and locations of the show in an attempt to fabricate historical records. Similar to the conceit of “The Illusion of Truth,” this act furnishes a metafictional staging of film and television production, replacing the futuristic mobile cameras of ISN with the even more sophisticated (and frighteningly verisimilar) holographic filming techniques of Politdivision. A further 500-year jump shows us the disastrous outcome of Politdivision’s nuclear escalation, in which humanity has reverted to pre-industrial technology and lost access to space as a result of “the great burn” (thermonuclear war). Although this scene was almost cut from the episode, its inclusion strengthens the central theme. After answering probing questions from the acolyte Brother Michael (Neil Roberts) and sending him back to his studies, a monk (Brother Alwyn) speaks directly to camera. At this point, it becomes evident that Brother Alwyn (Roy Brocksmith) is a ranger with access to technology (and space), and that the scene is being recorded through hidden cameras situated throughout his study. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the finale is the consistent materiality of camera and screen: every shot of the episode (with the exception of the brief footage we see in the far, far distant future) is filmed on a camera that exists in-universe. This not only adds plausibility to the framing device in which each scene is meant to be a piece of archival footage but also enacts a final interface effect in which the audience occupies the viewing position of the Vorlon-esque human descendant throughout all but three or four shots of the episode. The screen on which this descendant watches the historical footage of the episode is, seemingly, our television screen. In conflating its audience with the unnamed human watching this historical footage, Babylon 5’s concluding act is to blur the boundary between fiction and reality, a boundary-partitioning universe on either side of the television screen. In so doing, the show’s recurring attention to the risks and rewards of colliding disparate locations through media comes to life for the audience. The broadcast thus concludes by placing viewers in the same position as Sinclair in “And the Sky Full of Stars” or Sheridan in “Point of No Return” (as just two examples): faced with a media event whose significance can only be uncovered by moving beyond one’s fixed sense of place or belonging (here, the audience’s comfortable location outside the television screen) to undertake a more challenging yet

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rewarding quest for truth. Seeing Babylon 5’s metafiction as an intentional address to the viewer thus elucidates the show’s final act: an invitation for viewers to assume the role of its Vorlon-esque human descendant by transcending the facile senses of home and belonging uncritically reinforced through television. As a seeming address to future viewers of the show, the conclusion is unabashedly optimistic. As Ivanova says in the closing moments of “Sleeping in Light,” “[Babylon 5] changed the future, and it changed us.” The landmark show certainly changed the future of SF television production, ranging from its innovative use of CGI and virtual sets to its demonstration that a serialized, space opera narrative had a place on the small screen. Arguably more subtle and more ambitious than these, however, is the show’s persistent suggestion that the television screen itself is a space where people may either lose their sense of reality or forge their connection to a future grounded in truth. Success in this media literacy endeavor is consistently contingent upon moving beyond a sense of home, belonging, or affiliation that relies upon a fixed and stable sense of place. Instead, adopting nonlocalized understandings of space and of self enables characters to uncover the truth of the universe around them and of who they can become. Moreover, by staging the audience as an active participant in these moments of transformation, Babylon 5 uses the television medium itself as a metafictional device to implicate the audience in its quest for truth beyond the screen. Lorien’s statement about Sheridan precipitating the Third Age of mankind may equally apply to the viewer, then. “You must understand your way out of this,” he says to Ivanova, “Sheridan knows. What remains to be seen is whether he knows that he knows.”31

References Augé, M. (2008). Non-Places: Introduction to An Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso. Forster, M. (1993). Hegel’s Dialectical Method. In F.  X. Beiser (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1997). Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (pp. 350–356). Routledge. 31  Straczynski, J.M. (Writer) & Dobson, K.J. (Director). (1997, February 3). “Into the Fire.” (Season 4, Episode 6). Babylon 5. Prime Time Entertainment Network.

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Galloway, A. R. (2017). The Interface Effect. Polity. Killick, J. (1998a). Babylon 5: Signs and Portents. Del Rey. Killick, J. (1998b). Babylon 5: Point of No Return. Ballantine Pub. Group. Killick, J. (1998c). Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows. Ballantine Pub. Group. Killick, J. (1998d). Babylon 5: No Surrender, No Retreat. Boxtree. Killick, J. (1999). Babylon 5: The Wheel of Fire. Ballantine Pub. Group. Lancaster, K. (2001). Interacting with Babylon 5: Fan Performance in a Media Universe. University of Texas Press. Ney, S., & Sciog-Lazarov, E. M. (2000). The Construction of Feminine Identity in Babylon 5. In E. R. Helford (Ed.), Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (pp. 223–236). Rowman & Littlefield. Pruski, M. (2021). Conscience and Vaccines: Lessons from Babylon 5 and COVID-19. The New Bioethics, 27(3), 266–284. https://doi.org/10.108 0/20502877.2021.1959789 Wexelblat, A. (2003). An Auteur in the Age of the Internet: JMS, Babylon 5, and the Net. In I. I. I. Henry Jenkins, J. Shattuc, & T. McPherson (Eds.), Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (pp.  209–226). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383505-­012

CHAPTER 10

Disembodied Spaces and Cyborg Utopias in Westworld John Bruni

Introduction In a moment that would surely cement the cult status of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984),1 the titular hero is asked, “Why is there a watermelon there?” He replies, “I’ll tell you later.” The answer, however, is never given. Inherent in the open-ended narratives of postmodern science fiction (SF), at which Buckaroo Banzai pokes cheeky fun, this deferral of meaning became a key strategy of The Sopranos (1999–2007)2 and its assault on historic TV signifiers. Matthew Christman writes that The Sopranos

1  Richter, W.D. (Director), Earl Mac Rauch (Writer). (1984). The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension [Film]. Sherwood Productions. 2  Chase, D., Grey, B., Green, R., Burgess, M., Landress, I.S., Winter, T., Weiner, M., Pugini, M.V. (Executive Producers). (1999–2007). The Sopranos [TV series]. Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, HBO Entertainment, The Park Agency.

J. Bruni (*) Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_10

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utilized the serialized storytelling, the depth of characterization and theme of a novel, and the visual sensibility of film. Episodes ended without the pat resolution that defined traditional TV drama. Stories stretched out over episodes and seasons. Characters underwent the sort of transformations that would have confused and alienated the audiences of previous generations of shows that thrived on archetypes. (2017)

Arguably, Twin Peaks (1990–91; 2017)3 kicked off this trend, but its off-­ kilter storytelling pushed beyond generic limits. In contrast, The Sopranos was an extended treatment of the gangster genre, and, in turn, bequeathed the similarly genre-centric Deadwood (2004–6; 2019),4 The Wire (2002–8),5 Mad Men (2007–15),6 and Breaking Bad (2008–13).7 The search for a label that captured the scope of the artistic aspirations of such shows eventually resulted in the designation “Prestige TV” (Newman and Levine 2012; Mittell 2015; Maciak 2016). The connotation of “prestige” as exclusivity is key here as the proliferation of Prestige TV shows belied the very concept of exclusivity. Every one of these shows, as Christman argues, copied the “aesthetic sensibility and glossy production value of the shows that first defined the genre. Everything is brooding, tortured anti-­ heroes, stillness punctuated by sudden acts of violence, montage and ironically counterposed musical choices” (2017). Despite their adherence to the postmodern sensibility of a lack of narrative closure, Prestige TV shows offered subject matter that would feel the “most real” to their viewers. Even their most provocative elements, including graphic sex and violence, made permissible by cable-network standards, were intended to capitalize on the perceived desire for heightened realism. 3  Frost, M., Lynch, D., Sutherland, S.S. (Executive Producers). (1990–1991, 2017). Twin Peaks [TV series]. Lynch/Frost Productions, Propaganda Films, Spelling Entertainment, Twin Peaks Productions, Showtime, Rancho Rosa Partnership. 4  Milch, D., Fienberg, G., Tinker, M. (Executive Producers). (2004–2006). Deadwood [TV series]. Roscoe Productions, Red Board Productions, Paramount Network Television, CBS Paramount Network Television, Home Box Office. 5  Simon, D., Colesberry, R.F., Noble, N.F. (Executive Producers). (2002–2008). The Wire [TV series]. Blown Deadline Productions, HBO Entertainment. 6  Weiner, M., Hornbacher, S., Jacquemetton, A., Jacquemetton, M., Leahy, J. (Executive Producers). (2007–2015). Mad Men [TV series]. Weiner Bros. Productions, Lionsgate Television, RadicalMedia, AMC Original Productions, U.R.O.K. Productions. 7  Gilligan, V., Johnson, M., MacLaren, M. (Executive Producers). (2008–2013). Breaking Bad [TV series]. High Bridge Productions, Gran Via Productions, Sony Pictures Television, American Movie Classics.

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The Prestige TV show Westworld,8 however, departs from the expectations of conventional realism even as it ultimately uses those conventions narratively. A refashioning of the 1973 film of the same title (written and directed by Michael Crichton) about an android uprising in a futuristic Western theme park, the HBO TV series (created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy) draws upon the hall-of-mirrors postmodern SF perspective by casting the action from the viewpoint of the cyborg “hosts” and human “guest” oppressors in equal measure. The promise and threat of the android uprising alludes to the singularity, that speculative moment when AI overtakes humanity (Vinge 2017; Minsky 1997; Kurzweil 1999). Over the first two seasons (the scope of this analysis), the dystopian and utopian dimensions of the singularity connect through a potentially redemptive outcome for the hosts. The singularity also registers as a progressive generic signifier of Prestige TV, a supposed “thinking through” of the apparent constraints of both humanism and capitalism. During Season 2, the Westworld theme park is revealed as a corporate long con; guests are unaware that data from their experiences are being mined to create more human-like hosts and to offer the 1% a chance at immortality. This is not exactly a new development in SF narratives. What is new, though, is how the story unfolds, following the narrative deferrals of Prestige TV, now retooled to take advantage of the larger cultural shifts in TV watching (Lotz 2018). After watching episode 3 of Season 1, TV critic Zack Handlen sardonically remarks, Westworld seems to be falling into one of my least favorite forms of modern television: the “let’s have a bunch of storylines we follow each week that don’t precisely connect or tell a closed narrative, but do presumably set up information which, I guess, will eventually be relevant.” The Binge Model in other words, or Lo, What Serialization Has Brought Down Upon Us All. (2016)

Perhaps the most crucial philosophical deferral in Westworld concerns the question of the aforementioned singularity: what happens to us if there is a consciousness that surpasses human thinking? Yet when partial answers arrive, they inevitably adhere to traditional criteria about what was/is/can 8  Abrams, J.J., Nolan, J., Joy, L., Weintraub, J., Burk, B., Lewis, R.J., Patino, R., Wickham, A., Stephenson, B., Thé, D. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Westworld [TV series]. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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be human. Those criteria frame the disembodiment of information in the spaces that AI occupies, returning us to Cartesian dualism (the privileging of mind over body) that supports the traditional humanist self (Hayles 2000). Instead of doing something interesting or novel with the question, such as engaging in truly speculative mapping of non-human information space, Westworld ends up rehashing old tropes. These tropes overwhelmingly inform the first two seasons of Westworld, in which a nostalgia for a bygone frontier era unfolds in shifting on- and off-line spaces that merge environmental and narrative complexity. In Season 1, the hosts’ dreams and memories provide intriguing clues to the formation of their identities, which complicate traditional human definitions of the self. Season 2 features the corporate-diversified spaces of the spin-off theme parks of Westworld, Shogun-world, and the Raj. The narrative then bifurcates around the choice, which some hosts take and some refuse, of a possible redemption through escape to a disembodied utopia. I argue, however, that overshadowing both seasons is the promise that corporate spaces will enable us to finally answer the question of “who” we are, as humans, by seeing ourselves in the mirror of the non-human consciousness of AI. This answer implies, in a nostalgic turn, seeing us as we were, before AI takes over—but only if we can see into the future, which is occluded by the narrative deferrals characteristic of Prestige TV. Westworld has attracted the attention of a wide variety of scholars, the vast majority of whom published close readings of the first season commenting on the pressing ethical issues inherent in the show’s human/ non-human interactions (see, e.g., Clavin and La Casse 2019; Erwin 2019; Sebastián-Martín 2021). Kim Wilkins’ analysis stands out from this group by showing how fantasies of sex and violence that underwrite the “masculinist canon of ‘quality’ television” are repackaged by the first season “as an elite experience” (2019, 40). Similarly compelling are those who are able to examine the first two seasons, like Will Slocombe, Sherryl Vint, and Dustin Abnet (2019; all are collected in Goody and Mackay’s (2019) Reading Westworld; the editors’ afterword is also a good source for analysis of the movement from Season 1 to Season 2). They cover the colonialist angle more fully; Vint, for example, uses Lisa Lowe’s work to show how the liberal humanist subject is produced through colonialism and applies this analysis to Westworld (Vint 2019, citing Lowe 2015).

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Westworld Season 1: Dreams of Humanity The fashionably retro-futuristic Westworld theme park is a nostalgic space constructed to differ visually from the real world. Mobilizing the SF trope of an alternate reality built from nostalgic images of the frontier experience, the luminescent sand of the desert resembles an alien planet (Tatooine from Star Wars). Yet in the saloon, fashioned with strict adherence to a period look, a piano player performs instrumental versions of the 1990s’ popular rock songs. (For more in-depth analysis on the music of Westworld, see Marshall 2019; Köller 2019). Frontier nostalgia becomes incorporated into an archly postmodern pastiche, the self-referential brand of “cutting-edge” SF marketed to an HBO demographic eager to watch the latest development in the saga of Prestige TV. Frontier nostalgia also underwrites the guests’ violent and debauched behaviors, as they live out their every fantasy of violating conventional morality. For the hosts, this sense of violation registers, at one level, as a human-defined trauma—the theater of cruelty (Antonin Artaud’s dramatic concept of shocking the senses) is meant to register to the viewer as an indictment of humanity at large, while retaining the voyeuristic appeal of naked female bodies as a signifier of “adult-themed” SF. On another level, however, nostalgic feelings in Westworld surpass human experience because after hosts “die,” they are repaired and reactivated, left with vague memories of the past, the layers of which keep crystallizing throughout their “lives.” One of the major characters in Westworld, the brothel madam Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), gains awareness of her situation before the other hosts and deliberately “dies” to gain intel on the rebuilding process. As a running theme of the show, the hosts’ experiences, such as Dolores’ circuitous route to self-awakening (visually represented by maze-like images) feel like strange dreams. As a counterpoint to their guests’ nostalgia-­coded fantasies of sex and power, this provocative way of framing the question of identity makes humans the outsiders to Westworld, alien to the hosts’ model of sociality. The space of Westworld figures into what could be called a post-human calculation because it sets itself apart from its environment—replaying, in spatial terms, the distinction between the hosts’ dreams and the guests’ fantasies. Systems theory is useful for understanding the pressure the system/environment distinction puts on the traditional structure of humanism, a model which the heterotopic space of Westworld reflects and challenges in its nostalgic evocations of human experience and the differences between human and non-human

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beings. As systems-theorist Cary Wolfe states, the system/environment distinction (the paradox that systems are both separate from and connected with their environments) overrides humanistic binaries, such as culture/nature and reason/feeling (2010, 220). Yet these humanistic binaries are crucial for the performance of frontier nostalgia in Westworld, which frames the violation of the tenets of conventional morality within a pain/pleasure aesthetic. If frontier nostalgia reflects a humanist ideology, the construction of the hosts’ identities challenges this ideology by adopting an important systems-theoretical premise: all systems must deal with environments that are always more complex than they already are. To deal with environmental complexity, systems ramp up their own complexity by reproducing the distinction between themselves and their environments. Reproducing this distinction, granted, would hopelessly ensnare a traditional humanistic model of identity in the paradox of defining something by the difference from what it is not. Systems, however, use this paradox to construct their identities (or, what could be called non-identities). Such counter-logic resonates, in Westworld, with how the hosts effectively dream who they are/were. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) says, in Season 1, episode 8, that she is “trapped in a dream or a memory from a lifetime ago” of a bloody shootout, a traumatic event that guides her self-­discovery.9 The hosts’ dreams restage the process of identity formation in systems theory, in which identity develops through the synthesis of multiple discrete systems. Self-identity derives from social and psychic systems—producing outer and inner spaces that remain separate (to prevent disruptive communication such as unwanted telepathic exchanges). What this separation of outer and inner spaces implies is critical: any communications, considered as social systems, are not psychically steered: they are beyond human control. “Humans cannot communicate,” Niklas Luhmann, a noted architect of systems theory, rather bluntly puts it, explaining, “Only communication can communicate” (quoted in Wolfe 2010, 19). In Luhmann’s deconstruction of humanist tenets, society is constituted through its communications, locating humans outside of the space of society (Moeller 2012, 21, 58). In Westworld, we observe the non-humanness of communication systems when the paradigm of storytelling is flipped and recast from the hosts’ points of view. The season 1 9  Nolan, J., Joy, L., Yu, C. (Writers), & Williams, S. (Director). (2016, November 20). “Trace Decay.” (Season 1, Episode 8). Westworld. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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focus on Dolores’ origin story increasingly sheds light on the programming that, by constructing her identity, questions the supposed humanness of dreaming and remembering: Dolores’ dreams and memories, as we observe, have both been technologically manipulated. These dreams and memories, furthermore, are about the unmaking, or deconstruction, of identity. What Dolores is intended to “remember” is her killing of Arnold Weber, one of the two human creators of the park, an act arranged by Weber himself. To address environmental complexity, Westworld adds narrative complexity by further playing on/with the idea that communication is non-­ human. Online/virtual messaging takes the form of an SF ghost story where mysteries abound, which abets the narrative deferrals characteristic of Prestige TV. Questions about who characters are, what they are doing, and why they are doing it proliferate. The proliferation of these questions then opens the issue of where, that is, on the spatial level of reality which is being observed at a given moment. But throughout the series, the vantage point for observation dissolves the boundaries between real and virtual spaces. While any communication archive, according to Jacques Derrida, “haunts” us because it will outlast us (quoted in Wolfe 2010, 293–94), this feeling of nostalgia has an intensified melancholy in virtual spaces; Derrida argues that virtual communication “prohibits us more than ever . . . from opposing presence to its representation, ‘real time’ to ‘deferred time,’ effectivity to its simulacrum, the living to the non-living, in short, the living to the living-dead of its ghosts” (1994, 169). For Nathan Jurgenson, the virtual critiques “digital dualism,” the tendency to view “the online and offline as largely distinct” (2019, 68). These concepts gel in the return of Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the other creator of the park. The stormy relationship of Ford and Arnold Weber (Jeffrey Wright, who also plays Bernard) takes a new turn when Ford guides Bernard, the host version of Arnold, in season 2. Although Ford dies at the end of Season 1, we learn later that he has uploaded himself to the park’s mainframe. In doing so, Ford has become, according to Handlen, “a sci-fi version of a ghost now, and he ends the episode literally haunting poor Bernard, back once again to giving orders and assuming those orders will be heeded” (2018d). The ghosting of the narrative suspends Bernard’s character development, another strategic deferral that builds up complexity through the shifting identities of human/host. Bernard/Arnold ironically suggests that when he is in his host form, he is more human than human.

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Just as the distinction between real and virtual spaces seems to recede through narrative deferral, so do the demarcations between life and death. If Westworld epitomizes modern biopolitics, defined by Michel Foucault as “making live and letting die,” as opposed to an earlier form of “taking life and letting live” (2003, 247), frequent depictions of host suicide as a sacrifice enabling characters’ endless returns upend the sovereign self. Westworld symbolizes the abandonment of a self, not conducive to the manufacture of multiple self-versions, that can be ended by suicide. In her reading of Derrida, Nicole Anderson states that the self is constituted through the opposing logic of preservation (immunity) and destruction (autoimmunity). In the traditional humanist model, the self is secured through reason (in the Cartesian sense), producing the discourse of the immunitary, which offers protection against harmful outside influences and is the cornerstone of the frontier myth depicted in Westworld. But to have a self that is recognizable to both oneself and others requires a turning inwards to secure the self by imagining a boundary for the self and, in effect, turning reason inside-out (2017, 103). In the paradoxical logic of self-formation, reason, and sovereignty overlap. “[T]his turning within itself,” as Anderson explains, “is not only an immune, but precisely an autoimmune, response” that removes immunitary protection; as she puts it, “[r]eason (which characterises the sovereign self), destroys itself.” The concept of suicide, which requires a “self” to destroy, is therefore destabilized. Anderson concludes that “if autoimmunity is constitutive of any self, then there can be no pure or unified self, no self that is not in and of ‘itself,’ other” (2017, 103). In Westworld, Anderson’s inquiry into a “pure or unified self” is reiterated through the deferral of an answer to the question, raised throughout the series, of what defines us as humans. According to the multiple versions of the hosts, produced through the “act” of suicide, “we” may indeed be something “other” than what we think we are. While the hosts’ self-destructive acts trouble humanist definitions of the self, their agency undermines the humanist notion of a transcendental ethics. Consider, in particular, Ford’s communication with Bernard as a ghost in the machine. This ghostly messaging discloses the contingent outcome of communication, articulated, however, in a crucial register: as a “radical undecidability” that cannot simply be dismissed through our acting as good “humanist subject[s],” that “all-too-familiar ‘we,’” defined in accordance with an agreed-upon “idea of society” (Wolfe 2010, 220). A breakdown in humanism suggests that interpreting Bernard’s conflict as

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an ethical struggle between being on the side of “us” or “them” depends too heavily on a humanist rendering of his supposed lack of agency. From such a perspective, Handlen proposes, Bernard’s most defining characteristic is his fundamental passivity, his desire to do good (or at least, to do what his Arnold self considered good) constantly disappointed by his role as a pawn in several different games. I suppose there’s something to be said there about how Ford, in trying to recreate his old partner, made sure to build someone who could never betray him the way the real Arnold did. But there’s something unbearably sad about seeing Bernard muddle through another yet another situation, able to almost grasp what’s going on, but helpless to take any action that might prevent it. (2018d)

But Ford’s moral programming of Bernard assumes, as Wolfe would insist, that “socially and linguistically constructed codes of ethics” can be calculated from a subjective position that absents Ford himself, as a virtual presence, from “being bound by them.” Challenging this assumption, Wolfe goes on to say, would trouble “the entire force of the distinction between morality and merely ethical ‘roles’” (2003, 202). In the middle of the shifting alliances between hosts and guests, Bernard resists the “idea of society” that frames “ethical” actions and intention in communication, as he plays out his ethical “role” at the end of season 2. The vexed question of agency becomes all the harder to address, because we discover that “when” we have been observing the season has been occluded. The season is constructed as an extended flashback—another form of narrative digression—through Bernard’s point of view as he regains consciousness in the first moments of the season. Bernard, however, has deliberately scrambled his memories, further increasing the complexity of the season’s storyline, to make it more difficult for the human supervisors of Westworld to figure out his crucial role in the hosts’ rebellion.

Westworld Season 2: Dreams Deferred Season 2 discloses a sinister agenda: the data from the guests’ experiences is being mined to create more human-like hosts and offer the 1% a chance at immortality. But this critique of exploitative corporate capitalism (as a traditionally dystopian SF trope) is deferred by the spatial diversification encountered through narrative bifurcations characteristic of Prestige TV: the Westworld spin-off Shogun-world and the Raj, which echo, through

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the reconstruction of historical spaces of colonialization, the strategy of corporate diversification. As a result, “dynamic” characters, such as Maeve, run up against the same ethical and agential limits as the more “passive” Bernard. While Maeve saves the life of Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), a Westworld “scriptwriter,” casting her as a hero—especially because Lee has done little to deserve a reprieve—her enlisting him in the search for her lost daughter compels him to point out that this search has been programmed into her.10 The scene expands into the deferred space of Shogun-­ world, whose historical setting has been caricatured within a colonialist framework, much like Westworld; Lee even admits that he borrowed character types, such as Maeve’s character, and narrative devices from Westworld (Slocombe 2019, 57). Thus, Maeve’s encountering Akane, her double, becomes a staging of Maeve’s self-observations as a reflection of the narrative, which iterates in a mission to rescue a kidnapped geisha.11 Yet the self-commentary extends only to the limits of such narrative bifurcations, for Maeve’s character development is never plausibly tied to Shogun-world. Again, Maeve’s dynamism is constrained, this time by her becoming an outsider traveling through a corporatized space, what Handlen calls a “TV-show friendly idea” that extends the narrative through/into the space of Shogun-world (2018c). Arguably, the copying of Westworld onto Shogun-World comments on Lee’s limited and overworked imagination, but this commentary also does the cultural work of excusing a corporate mandate the show must fulfill, that of holding the audience’s attention over a seasonal timeline. In particular, the mystery of the exoticized realm of the Raj disguises what, in retrospect, is a rather obvious plot point, scripted to introduce a tiger, escaped from that realm, into the environs of Westworld. The deferral of the narrative is technologically mediated, paralleling the diffusion of a technologically boosted capitalism that makes the theme park possible as a profitable business venture. In this way, Westworld maps the future for the historical story of capitalism through the singularity: a telling instance of a techno-scientific paradigm, according to Ira Livingston, 10  Joy, L., Patino, R., Atwater, G. (Writers), & Lewis, R.J. (Director). (2018, April 22). “Journey Into Night.” (Season 2, Episode 1). Westworld. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television. 11  Dietz, D., Atwater, G. (Writers), & Zobel, C. (Director). (2018, May 20). “Akane no Mai.” (Season 2, Episode 5). Westworld. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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being displaced as it achieves greater reach and saturation of other realms; its pluralization and relativization make it more resilient even as they may in some ways make it less itself. Not coincidentally, this seems to have been one of the leading principles of empire building for several millennia, just as it makes a rough-and-ready account of the current transnational hegemonic success of capitalism and the West. (2005, 137; original emphasis)

In systems-theoretical terms, this diffusion of capitalism is informed by the ramping up of systemic complexity. Operating in an environment that is always already more complex than itself, a system builds up its complexity through functional differentiation: the system spins off into subsystems, reentering the system/environment distinction—the system becomes the environment for these subsystems (Luhmann 1995, 17). Not only are Shogun-world and the Raj subsystems of Westworld, they also map the economic system’s influence on systems of observation/communication, from the manipulation of second-order observation, that is, observing observation, performed through Maeve’s seeing her double in Shogun-­ world, to a partial view of a subsystem through the system—it is suggested, perhaps, that the narrative connection of the Raj to Westworld is of greater significance than any elucidation of how the Raj plays with/on the history of British colonialism in India. The copying of the system/environment distinction sets up the spatial organization of Westworld as a corporate entity, while muting somewhat a critique of its business practices. That is, while humans inhabit the corporate-­controlled spaces of Westworld, the purpose of the park being to copy their identities, the larger trajectory of Season 2 appears dependent upon traditional humanism, as it informs the viewing of the human as a nostalgic and recessive marker of authenticity. In Episode 4 of this season, we see the unsuccessful attempt to copy Jim Delos, the founder of the company.12 The dramatic tension is cued by the sound of the Rolling Stones’ song, “Play with Fire” on a phonograph; the crackle of the vinyl record is an added nostalgic touch. As Handlen comments, the invocation of the SF trope of memory as a signifier of self-identity “plays on our emotions, telling a short story about a consciousness duplicated hundreds of times with its knowledge, each new copy slightly different than 12  Nolan, J., Joy, L., Atwater, G., Crichton, M. (Writers) & Joy, L. (Director). (2018, May 13). “The Riddle of the Sphinx.” (Season 2, Episode 4). Westworld. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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before—and each one doomed to failure when the mind can’t accept itself” (2018b). Although Westworld positions this impasse as inherent to the problem of authenticity, viewed as the “fidelity” of cyborg copies to the original, it also troubles this humanist belief; the destruction of each flawed copy reminds us of the host suicides, both of which dramatize Anderson’s insistence that “there can be no pure or unified self, no self that is not in and of ‘itself,’ other” (2017, 103). The failed promise of the reproduction of human consciousness reifies how humanist logic follows capitalism in envisioning information processing made more efficient by transcending corporeal limits. Such logic returns through the traditional SF fantasy of disembodied spaces. For example, there is the imposing structure of the Forge, which stores the digital copies of the guests. Here, it is implied that these copies replicate the thinking patterns of humans without bodies, which enables Dolores to study humanity and find its flaws to gain, in Bernard’s words, a “competitive advantage.” Jurgenson, however, would be the first to challenge that claim: “The idea of a perfectly observed society, as both dream and nightmare, is built on the fiction that data uncomplicatedly records and renders life” (2019, 110). His challenge applies, crucially, both to the utopian and dystopian tropes of SF. If the Forge is a futuristic model of data mining, retaining all of its pessimistic overtones, then the Ghost Nation—the Native-American host counterparts to the guests’ cowboy fantasies— expresses the ideological contours of Big Data in a more politically progressive register. The ethos of the Ghost Nation comprises a utopian quest to transcend the limits of a present, “fallen” world: “[T]here isn’t one world but many, and we live in the wrong one.” What becomes a manifestation of techno-spirituality is informed by a colonialist legacy.13 David Sims points out, “Here was the colonizers’ view of Native American society boiled down to its three simplest clichés—at first, they’re docile and friendly, then frightening, one-dimensional enemies, then mysteriously spiritual, blessed with the kinds of higher truths Westerners could only hope to understand” (Sims et al. 2018; see also Abnet 2019). The Ghost Nation leads the way to the discovery of a techno-utopian space where the consciousnesses of some of the escaped hosts are uploaded at the end of Season 2. 13  Wray, C., Dietz, D., Atwater, G. (Writers), & Briesewitz, U. (Director). (2018, June 10). “Kiksuya.” (Season 2, Episode 8). Westworld. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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Sherryl Vint (2019) relates the hosts’ crucial decision to upload (or not) into this space, one that seems safe from corporate exploitation, to the distinction between how human identities have been constituted through historical acts of colonialism and how the hosts are beyond this process. This distinction sets up the differences between Arnold and Bernard, and Dolores, who rejects this escape to continue the rebellion, would then be reentered into a colonialist history of violence. While this utopian outcome appears to constitute a redemption narrative for the hosts, we observe a larger tendency for corporeal abstraction in the closing episodes of Season 2 (which clarify the non-linear timeline of Bernard’s self-scrambled memories). Crucial to the host rebellion are multiple mind/body switches—as if consciousness can be uploaded to a reconstructed body. For example, Bernard uploads Dolores’ consciousness into a copy of the human, Charlotte (Tessa Thompson). After killing the real Charlotte—which, for Bernard, is putative revenge for Charlotte’s murder of Elsie, his comrade—Dolores/Charlotte takes Charlotte’s place. What appears as a further distinction between the abstracting of the hosts’ corporeal bodies and the agency of Dolores, a host who chooses to find a way to the real world, is undermined, for, posing as Charlotte, Dolores carries the stored consciousnesses of several hosts with her. The depiction of hosts consciously awakening by finding their voices puts much weight on the traditional belief that voice is an expression of identity. But Wolfe reminds us that all communicative utterances are social, thus distinct from psychic processes. Otherwise, he says, our communication would be “private,” unable to express “‘our’ thinking at all” (2010, 35). Gleaned from the clues scattered throughout Westworld, this awakening appears to be based on a technologically mediated, quasi-Cartesian “bootstrapping” model for psychic development. Handlen explains that the catalyst for the hosts “is making their programming sound like the Voice of God in their heads” (2016). Although the allegory of programmer as deity is irresistible for bundling at least some of the crucial SF conceits in Westworld, there still has to be a sound heard as voice. Wolfe argues, however, that “sound is not voice. The desire for it to be so seems to lie at the heart of much compelling art, music, and film” (2010, 169). Rather, he asserts that “voice and sound exist along a continuum, not a divide, which is simply to say, in another register, that one person’s voice is another person’s noise” (2010, 179). Even viewed subjectively, Dolores’ self-discovery in Season 1 borders on cliché. Citing her overwrought declaration, “I have one last role to play: myself,” Handlen responds, “This is

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a bit much. I guess the next stage in her evolution is college student who just discovered pot and self-help books” (2018a)? More sympathetic is Bernard’s struggle, which Bryan Bishop regards as a narrative echo: Knowing his memories could give the game away, Bernard decides to scramble his own brain to hide what he’s done. But first, he has one final conversation with Ford on a beach—during which he realizes that his latest conversations with his mentor have been nothing more than his own imagination. It’s a callback to Dolores recognizing her own internal voice in the season 1 finale, and it serves as evidence that Bernard has finally achieved his own independent consciousness. (2018)

Yet his consciousness is interdependent on the networking of information, communication, and observation. It is not borne from a traditionally humanistic process, whereby, as discussed previously, autonomy develops through a transcendental act of self-recognition. Corporeal limits on social communication remain in the imagined disembodied spaces of information at the end of Season 2, regardless of the quasi-Cartesian narrative trickery (the season as an observed psychic flashback) of Bernard’s “scrambled” memories.

Conclusion Season 3, like the previous seasons, offers speculation upon speculation about the identities of the hosts while continuing to defer answers. Handlen vents his frustrations with his blunt comment: “Every season of Westworld, the show gets worse, and every season, I fall for the nonsense in the first half like it won’t happen again” (2020). The insistence on the trope of disembodied spaces renders the well-publicized plot twists that center on the hosts’ multiple personalities/entities as a variation on the theme of corporate spatial diversification, which is epitomized by Shogun-­ world and the Raj. These diversified corporate spaces also leverage the star power of Wright and Newton—whose commanding performances as hosts striving to awaken and free themselves from their Westworld prison are, of course, the stuff from which Prestige TV is made. Yet the foregrounding of their characters’ heroic feats, as a signifier of Wright and Newton’s celebrity status as actors, reads as a traditionally humanistic realizing of their potential and fulfilling their destiny.

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As we have observed, the seemingly endless narrative deferrals in both space and time ride the polished rails of traditional humanism. Westworld does offer a compelling riff on the idea, expressed by Siobhan Lyons, that “no human system is sufficient in determining one’s sense of self, and it is not for humans to decide what it means to be a legitimate being” (2019). But the storytelling engine of Prestige TV takes over, and the sidetracking cannot obscure the humanist impasse we have already reached: that the answer to who we are, as humans, will always have to be told to us later.

References Abnet, D. (2019). Escaping the Robot’s Loop? Power and Purpose, Myth and History in Westworld’s Manufactured Frontier. In A.  Goody & A.  Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 221–238). Palgrave Macmillan. Anderson, N. (2017). Auto (Immunity): Evolutions of Otherness. Parallax, 23(1), 94–107. Bishop, B. (2018, June 25). Westworld Spoilers Club Season 2, Episode 10: The Passenger. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/25/17500188/ westworld-­season-­2-­episode-­10-­recap-­the-­passenger-­finale Christman, M. (2017, May 14). How TV Became Respectable Without Getting Better. Current Affairs. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/ how-­tv-­became-­respectable-­without-­getting-­better Clavin, K., & La Casse, C. J. (2019). Triggered: The Post-Traumatic Woman and Narratology in HBO’s Westworld. In M.  A. Marotta (Ed.), Women’s Space: Essays on Female Characters in the 21st Century Science Fiction Western (pp. 177–193). McFarland & Company Publishing. Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx. (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Routledge. Erwin, C. (2019). The Frontier Myth of Memory, Dreams, and Trauma in Westworld. In A. Goody & A. Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 119–139). Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2003). In M. Bertani & A. Fontana (Eds.), Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. (D. Macey, Trans.). Picador. Goody, A., & Mackay, A. (Eds.). (2019). Reading Westworld. Palgrave Macmillan. Handlen, Z. (2016, October 16). Westworld Hunts Down “The Stray” and Builds Some Backstory. The A.V.  Club. https://tv.avclub.com/westworld-­hunts-­ down-the-stray-and-­builds-­some-­backst-­1798189277 Handlen, Z. (2018a, April 22). Westworld is Back, Heavy on the Violent Ends. The A.V.  Club. https://tv.avclub.com/westworld-­is-­back-­heavy-­on-­theviolent-ends-­1825452723

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Handlen, Z. (2018b, May 13). A Resonant Westworld Finds Meaning in the Past. The A.V. Club. https://tv.avclub.com/a-­resonant-­westworld-­finds-­meaning-­inthe-­past-­1825996883 Handlen, Z. (2018c, May 27). A Sword Fight, a Reunion, and a Familiar Face on Westworld. The A.V. Club. https://tv.avclub.com/a-­sword-­fight-­a-­reunion-­and-­afamiliar-face-on-­westwo-­1826362324 Handlen, Z. (2018d, June 3). A Violent Westworld Continues Through Its Loops. The A.V.  Club. https://www.avclub.com/a-­violent-­westworld-­continuesthrough-­its-­loops-­1826520229 Handlen, Z. (2020, May 3). In Its Season Finale, Westworld Offers a Shallow Hope.TheA.V. Club.https://www.avclub.com/westworld-­offers-­a-­shallow-­hopefor-­the-­future-­1843232670 Hayles, N. K. (2000). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. University of Chicago Press. Jurgenson, N. (2019). The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media. Verso Books. Köller, S. (2019). ‘I Imagined a Story Where I Didn’t Have To Be The Damsel’: Seriality, Reflexivity, and Narratively Complex Women in Westworld. Zeitschrift Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, 67(2), 163–180. Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines: How We Will Live, Work and Think in the New Age of Intelligent Machines. Phoenix. Livingston, I. (2005). Between Science and Literature: An Introduction to Autopoetics. University of Illinois Press. Lotz, A.  D. (2018). We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. MIT Press. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. (J. Bednarz, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Lyons, S. (2019, July 14). Westworld and the Robotic Imagination. Genealogy of the Posthuman. https://criticalposthumanism.net/westworld-­and-­the-roboticimagination/ Maciak, P. (2016, September 15). Who’s Afraid of Serial TV? Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/whos-­afraid-­serial-­tv/ Marshall, K. (2019). Music as a Source of Narrative Information in HBO’s Westworld. In A. Goody & A. Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 97–118). Palgrave Macmillan. Minsky, M. L. (1997, January 2). Will Robots Inherit the Earth? Marvin Minsky. https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html Mittell, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York University Press. Moeller, H.-G. (2012). The Radical Luhmann. Columbia University Press. Newman, M. Z., & Levine, E. (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. Routledge.

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Sebastián-Martín, M. 2021. “Subverting or Reasserting? Westworld (2016–) as an Ambiguous Critical Allegory of Gender Struggles.” 452oF: Revista de Teoría de La Literatura y Literatura Comparada 24, 129–145. Sims, D., Kornhaber, S, & Gilbert, S. (2018, June 10). Westworld: Ghost Nation, Revealed. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2018/06/westworld-­s eason-­2 -­e pisode-­8 -­k iksuya-roundtable/ 562451/ Slocombe, W. (2019). ‘That Which Is Real Is Irreplaceable’: Lies, Damned Lies, and (Dis-)simulations in Westworld. In A.  Goody & A.  Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 43–60). Palgrave Macmillan. Vinge, V. (2017). The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in a Post-Human Era. In R. Latham (Ed.), Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings (pp. 352–363). Bloomsbury Academic. Vint, S. (2019). Long Live the New Flesh: Race and the Posthuman in Westworld. In A. Goody & A. Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 141–160). Palgrave Macmillan. Wilkins, K. (2019). These Violent Delights: Navigating Westworld as ‘Quality’ Television. In A. Goody & A. Mackay (Eds.), Reading Westworld (pp. 23–41). Palgrave Macmillan. Wolfe, C. (2003). Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. University of Chicago Press. Wolfe, C. (2010). What Is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.

CHAPTER 11

Memos from the Author: Adaptation of Flashforward for Television Ellen Forget

Introduction Flashforward (1999), Robert J. Sawyer’s award-winning novel, was adapted for television by ABC in the same year the main story in the novel took place, 2009.1 In both versions, the story offers an intriguing twist on a favorite science fiction (SF) narrative: time travel. An unprecedented blackout around the world kills millions, but the survivors glimpse their own futures during unconsciousness. A reader of the original novel knows from the beginning that a botched science experiment has caused this catastrophe, while a viewer of the TV adaptation attempts to solve the mystery behind the catastrophe alongside the detective characters. The television adaptation makes three major changes from the novel: setting, timeframe, and genre. The action moves from CERN in Geneva, 1   Braga, B., Goyer, D.S., Guggenheim, M., Borsiczky, J., Gerardis, V., Vicinanza, R. (Executive Producers). (2009–2010). FlashForward [TV series]. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment.

E. Forget (*) University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_11

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Switzerland, to Los Angeles, United States; the flashforward that offered a glimpse of 21 years into the future now gives a vision of just six months ahead; and a hard SF novel becomes a detective mystery SF show. The title also undergoes a minor change: Flashforward becomes FlashForward. As expected of an adaptation, the show reflects the original text, but also transforms it. As a professional member of the SF publishing community in Canada, I was fortunate to meet Robert J. Sawyer on multiple occasions at various industry events. Through this connection, I obtained some of the production memos between Sawyer and the writing team working on the TV adaptation of Flashforward in 2009. The memos contain ideas and dialogue that ultimately ended up in the show, but they also contain information from a future that never occurred in our timeline—including a second season. Though FlashForward debuted to high viewer ratings in the USA on September 24, 2009, numbers quickly declined and the show was cancelled after one season. The memos thus nicely reflect not only the dislocations of time and space experienced by characters in the novel and the show—those fragmentary and reflective glimpses of a future—but also an adaptation process that equally offers variations and possibilities of what might be or could have been. This sense of being inside and outside of another world that is still our own in some way—or a variation of it—also plays out in the experience of a reader or viewer consuming these fragmentations in their book or on their screen. The memos draw attention to the interaction and intersection of these texts and the fragmentary reflective experience of time and space they produce; there is something particularly heterotopic about this experience. Further fragmented still is the intersecting experience of a Flashforward reader viewing FlashForward the TV show. My chapter, then, takes its cue from Michel Foucault’s reading of mirrors and screens as heterotopic spaces in which pieces of time and space collide. Between these textual spaces (of the novel, show, and memos), we enter a world of mirrors—texts as objects, but also as processes of production and transformation, as the memos offer a glimpse into the time and space between the novel and the show. This chapter playfully opens up the heterotopic focus of this edited collection you now read through the use of fragments from the show, novel, and, most importantly, memos from the author; this is a non-traditional chapter, but it also reflects and refracts concerns of other chapters in this collection. Through this fragmented process, reflecting the forms and processes of a heterotopia, this chapter

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undertakes the serious critique of the process of adaptation and of bringing an SF novel to the small screen.

Memo The small spaces of the memos show what was and what might have been of the adaptation—ideas and paths taken and not taken. The memos are flashforwards themselves to possible futures, but they also offer entrance to the impossible, usually impenetrable space of television production, a real and fictional heterotopic space. As Foucault writes, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place; “[e]ither one is forced [… ] or one must submit to rites of purification. One can only enter by special permission and after one has completed a certain number of gestures” (Foucault 1997, 355). My business contacts provided these private memos, which grant access to the production processes behind the show, and a different kind of access to what might be read as the public space of the television show, though entry to the show is itself restricted to those who have paid to access ABC programming. There are other entry points as well: From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 2:20 AM I believe part of the spirit of some of the network comments we heard last week was that they preferred episodes that could be viewed as standalones […] We’re also looking for more entry points for new viewers into the show, and I think this would give us a chance for another one of those. The opening of “Black Swan,”2 with the bus going into the lake while Bjork sang, was one of the best moments of the entire series; almost as good was “Ring Around the Rosy” bit with Charlie and her schoolmates.3 These were cool recapitulations of the core idea of the series.

Standalone episodes allow easier access for a new viewer, but, in a way, they also frustrate access for those already invested in the story’s greater 2  Zwerling, L., Gimple, S. (Writers) & Rymer, M. (Director). (2009, October 15). “Black Swan.” (Season 1, Episode 4). FlashForward. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment. 3  Brannon, B., Goyer, D.S., Guggenheim, M. (Writers) & Goyer, D.S. (Director). (2009, October 1). “White to Play.” (Season 1, Episode 2). FlashForward. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment.

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story arc. The isolated space of the standalone episode that once defined SF shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation4 was developing through shows like Babylon 55 and Lost6 into a different kind of access and experience—the standalone now a moment to pause, develop characters, perhaps offer an experimental and at least tangential space, path, or door. Smaller spaces—scenes in a show—are also outlined in this memo as access points and microcosms—spaces that again reflect and often contrast. We can then see the final televised and aired space of the show as a multiplicity of possibilities, spaces of reflection and refraction offering different points and types of entry. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM Here’s what I was getting at with “audience vs. creator” today in the room. Audience says, “Mark should never drink.” And, indeed, he shouldn’t—but Creator (being smarter than audience ) knows that there IS a reason WHY the thing the audience doesn’t want to have happen HAS to happen, and why it WILL be accepted by the audience.

How does one enter? How does one want to access the show? Through book, adaptation, show, episodes. But asked here: Who creates the show, the adaptation, these access points? The author, the director, the writers, the network, and the publisher all lay claim as (partial) creator. Through the memos this intersection is highlighted—adaptation more of a process than a product.

Verbs Reflecting on Foucault’s heterotopic mirrors, Peter Johnson writes, “The bunch of verbs that Foucault uses to describe these different spaces is dazzling and somewhat confusing. They mirror, reflect, represent, designate, 4  Roddenberry, G., Berman, R., Hurley, M., Piller, M., Taylor, J. (Executive Producers). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [TV series]. Paramount Television. 5  Netter, D., Straczynski, J.M. (Executive Producers). (1994–1998). Babylon 5 [TV series]. Warner Home Video, AOL Time Warner, Babylonian Productions, Time Warner, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television. 6  Cuse, C., Lindelof, D., Burk, B., Abrams, J.J., Higgins, J., Bender, J., Horowitz, A., Kitsis, E., Sarnoff, E., Pinkner, J. (Executive Producers). (2004–2010). Lost [TV series]. Bad Robot Productions, Touchstone Television, ABC Studios.

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speak about all other sites but at the same time suspend, neutralize, invert, contest and contradict those sites” (2006, 78). The language of adaptation and production—verbs that are performative and anticipate performance—are equally confusing and transformative, pointing to the possible futures in the production of (television) space: the aims of “constructing a mystery,” “pushing the plot forward,” the “could be … killer end-of-­ season-­one moment” that does manifest, and the “Season two would start before this moment, and be the series of events leading up to it” that never was. The could and might have beens: “THIS could be the resonance for Charlie’s ‘No More Good Days’ line;” “This also could be the symbolic resonance for the kangaroo” (Memo from: Robert J. Sawyer, To David S. Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM).7 And “the glimpses of the future,” “The series didn’t go that way,” “We need to get to” (Memo from: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM; my emphasis). From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM As you and I both well know, there are two rules when constructing a mystery story. :) The first is that you write toward a known ending. …The second rule for writing mysteries is that clues MATTER.

Genre From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM … the significant difference is that in my novel, the apparent cause of the flashforwards is obvious from the first chapter, but in the series, you’ve set it up as a mystery.

In switching genre from the hard SF about scientists at CERN to the detective mystery SF about FBI agents in LA, the show caters to its would­be North American TV audience, offering the familiar and more saleable space of an American city and culture, but also the well-tested and well-­ received procedural. Even as the show creates uncertainty in the 7  Goyer, D.S., Braga, B. (Writers) & Goyer, D.S. (Director). (2009, October 15). “No More Good Days.” (Season 1, Episode 1). FlashForward. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment.

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flashforwards, it offers structure and predictability in the popular crime procedural format. In a sense, little has changed. The mystery of the TV show is really no mystery at all. Such a format offers easy access to view, and it is a genre that often relies on standalone episodes. The nature of the larger SF story arc, however, necessarily complicates this genre shift. The show cannot escape the procedural altogether, nor can it fully adopt the procedural format, revealing a further conflict within this adaptation— that of adapting a niche Canadian SF novel set in Switzerland into a popular, mainstream American show. Although the book and the show share a title and the notion of timeand space-bending flashforwards, the two texts operate in different spaces “in such a way as to suspend, neutralize or invert the set of relationships designed, reflected or mirrored by themselves” (Foucault 1997, 352). Between texts (book and show) and within the show (and the memos), this spatial conflict plays out, while we see from the very first episode that the show occupies a distinct space, a heterotopic “displacement of time [that] is matched by the disruption of space” (Johnson 2006, 79) as we switch genres. The safe and familiar procedural distorts the recognizable SF space of the novel and so becomes a heterotopic force.8 From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM More: you’ve set it up as a mystery wrapped in a conspiracy. That’s the game changer.

Disruption of time and space is, of course, the point of SF; it “involves a world view differentiated in one way or another from the actual world in which its readers live … more often than not involves instances of technological hardware” (Roberts 2016, 2). While the genre of the show shifts towards mystery, it still holds true to its SF roots through the technology (the SF novum) used to create the flashforwards—and the tech used by certain characters to avoid the flashforwards. From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM 8  How this distortion plays out in the eye of the audience depends almost entirely on the audience itself. A viewer coming from Lost will find FlashForward entirely familiar, whereas a viewer coming from CSI may be uncomfortable with the SF elements or a viewer of Star Trek may dislike the procedural narratives.

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… how I handled the physics and the underlying philosophy in the novel doesn’t matter; the question now is, what physics and underlying philosophy works given that the series is a conspiracy-oriented mystery.

The spatial disruption experienced by the viewer, then, is not just that of the flashforwards themselves, but also the contradiction of localized space used in the show, an experience elevated for those viewers who have already read the book.

Production From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM But it’s not just that we need to establish that the flashforwards shown in 101 were of things that are probably going to come true for the sake of getting the audience to stick around until April 29. We also need to establish that this is our rule if we want anyone to give a damn about whatever is revealed in the April 30 flashforwards at season’s end (or any subsequent flashforwards we might portray in future seasons).

The shift in genre serves as a mirror between the static space of the novel (the printed page) and the adaptable space of the (produced) television show. We must, as Chuck Tryon suggests of adaptation, “look at the process of the adaptation, the motivations behind revising or reimagining an existing text” rather than criticizing that adaptation for “going outside of the source’s boundaries” (2013, 177).9 From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 2:20 AM [W]e need to show that the universe is unforgiving of attempts to alter destiny (this isn’t the mythology of my novel, but I think it should be the mythology of your series).

This is about the space of television. I look to Foucault’s definition of structuralism, which is “the attempt to establish between elements that may have been split over the course of time, a set of relationships that juxtapose them, set them in opposition or link them together, so as to 9  In this section of his article, Tryon is quoting and paraphrasing concepts from Thomas M. Leitch’s (2007) book Film Adaptations and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of Christ.

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create a sort of shape” (1997, 350). Such disparate elements and their relationships to one another and to FlashForward are brought together in the memos: a kaleidoscope of references to film and television help think through production—the giving of a shape—to this show. Curb Your Enthusiasm,10 24,11 and This Week with George Stephanopoulos12 offer contemporary television points of reference; Gary Cooper and the western helps sketch out the notion of “high noon” and a sense of fate, alongside Casablanca,13 and “The season finale needs to be like the ending of THE USUAL SUSPECTS,14 where it all makes sense in retrospect, and the audience goes WOW!” (Memo from: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S. Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM). But the shape of this television show is more particularly reflective of, made of, and molded in the shape of SF television at the time the show was in production in 2009. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2:37 AM But, if you’ll forgive me, my friend, it seems (as Fawn observed in the room today) that we’ve gotten so caught up in pushing the plot forward moment by moment, we’ve lost sight (or never did know) where we were actually going. This is almost certainly the trap that X-FILES,15 LOST,

10  David, L., Garlin, J., Polone, G., Schaffer, J., Gibbons, T., O‘Malley, E., Weide, R.B., Charles, L., Berg, A., Mandel, D. (Executive Producers). (2000–). Curb Your Enthusiasm [TV series]. HBO Entertainment. 11  Grazer, B., Gordon, H., Katz, E., Sutherland, K., Cochran, R., Surnow, J., Cassar, J., Coto, M., Fury, D., Turner, B., Krantz, T., Braga, B., Gansa, A., Johannessen, C. (Executive Producers). (2001–2014). 24 [TV series]. Imagine Television, Real Time Productions, Teakwood Lane Productions, 20th Century Fox Television. 12  Stephanopoulos, G. (Creator). (1981–). This Week with George Stephanopoulos [TV series]. ABC News Productions. 13  Curtiz, M. (Director), Epstein, J.J., Epstein, P.G., Koch, H., (Screenplay), Burnett, M., Alison, J., (Adapted from), (1942). Casablanca [Film]. Warner Bros. 14  Singer, B. (Director), McQuarrie, C. (Written by). (1995). The Usual Suspects [Film]. Universal Pictures. 15  Carter, C., Goodwin, R.W., Gordon, H., Spotnitz, F., Gilligan, V., Shiban, J., Manners, K., Morgan, G., Wong, J., MacLaren, M., Watkins, M.W., Greenwalt, D. (Executive Producers). (1993–2018). The X-Files [TV series]. Ten Thirteen Productions, 20th Century Fox Television, X-F Productions.

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AND BATTLESTAR GALACTICA16 fell into—so let’s learn from their mistakes, and avoid their fate.

It is telling that Sawyer uses Lost as a comparison here, as there are many similarities between the shows, even as he wants to avoid Lost’s fate of, well, getting lost … and cancelled. FlashForward was filling the mystery SF-shaped hole left in ABC’s lineup after Lost was cancelled, but the relationship is more complicated. Sarah Clarke Stuart, author of Literary Lost, says “Another ABC science-fiction program, Flashforward, deals unequivocally with predicting the future. It is likely that Lost, in fact, borrowed the term ‘flashforward’ from the novel by Rob Sawyer” (2011, 100). Lost— which first aired on ABC on September 22, 2004—then first mirrored aspects of Flashforward the novel before FlashForward the TV show— which also debuted on ABC—reflected pieces of Lost. Spaces collide, and, since then, any number of other shows reflect this type of mystery SF production, from The Event17, which debuted on NBC on September 20, 2010 (also cancelled after one season), through to the more recent Manifest,18 which first aired on NBC on September 24, 2018. Though cancelled by NBC after three seasons, Manifest’s later popularity on Netflix ensured the streaming platform renewed the show for a fourth and final season. Between these shows and FlashForward, we also find a host of similar mystery SF shows: any other J. J. Abrams show, Heroes,19 The 100,20

16  Moore, R.D., Eick, D. (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica [TV Series]. British Sky Broadcasting, David Eick Productions, NBC Universal Television, R & D TV, Stanford Pictures, Universal Media Studios. 17  Stark, S., Katz, E., Reiner, J. (Executive Producers). (2010–2011). The Event [TV series]. Steve Stark Productions, UMS. 18  Levine, J., Rapke, J., Rake, J., Zemeckis, R., Goldstein, L., Tirone, R., Chappelle, J., Frankel, D. (Executive Producers). (2018–). Manifest [TV series]. Compari Entertainment, Jeff Rake Productions, Universal Television, Warner Bros. Television. 19  Hammer, D., Kring, T., Armus, A., Chory, J., Foster, N.K., Arkush, A., Beeman, G., Semel, D. (Executive Producers). (2006–2010). Heroes [TV series]. Tailwind Productions, NBC Universal, UMS. 20  Morgenstein, L., Rothenberg, J., White, D., Shumway, K., Vlaming, J., Fraiman, E., Girolamo, G., Craft, E., Fain, S., Dolins, C., Nalluri, B. (Executive Producers). (2014–2020). The 100 [TV series]. Alloy Entertainment, CBS Television Studios, Warner Bros. Television.

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Person of Interest,21 Timeless,22 Continuum,23 Travelers,24 and Westworld25 reflect and refract around a prism of which Lost is often seen as the shiny center. From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM Indeed, if you can clear them, we’d do well to have clips of both HIGH NOON and CASABLANCA appear in the series: the audience’s railing against Mark and Olivia’s constant fighting in our series is really just the audience saying what Rich Blaine says in CASABLANCA: “The problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

This trend of renewals on Netflix and other streaming services begs the question, what would have become of FlashForward had Netflix been around in its current form in 2010? We know from the memos that the FlashForward writers were still working on scripts for later episodes in Season 1 after the first few had aired, and that the audience’s reaction to and reviews of the show impacted those later episodes, at least partially. How would the show have developed if the entire first season was written and produced prior to the simultaneous release of every episode on Netflix?

Audience From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 2:20 AM 21  Abrams, J.J., Burk, B., Nolan, J., Plageman, G., Thé, D., Fisher, C., Semel, D. (Executive Producers). (2011–2016). Person of Interest [TV series]. Kilter Films, Bad Robot, Warner Bros. Television. 22  Kripke, E., Ryan, S., Davis, J., Fox, J., Hochman, M., Mittman, A.L., Smuts, T., Beeman, G., Kurt, D., Marshall, N., Showalter, J.F. (Executive Producers). (2016–2018). Timeless [TV series]. MiddKid Productions, Kripke Enterprises, Davis Entertainment, Universal Television, Sony Pictures Television. 23  Barry, S., Williams, P., Rowe, T., O’Connor, M., Richardson, L., King, J. (Executive Producers). (2012–2015). Continuum [TV series]. Reunion Pictures, Boy Meets Girl Film Company, Shaw Media, GK-tv. 24  Lenic, J.G., Mudd, C., Wright, B., Neinstein, R., Hurran, N., Tanz, L. (Executive Producers). (2016–2018). Travelers [TV series]. Peacock Alley Entertainment. 25  Abrams, J.J., Nolan, J., Joy, L., Weintraub, J., Burk, B., Lewis, R.J., Patino, R., Wickham, A., Stephenson, B., Thé, D. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Westworld [TV series]. HBO Entertainment, Bad Robot, Jerry Weintraub Productions, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television.

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What makes FLASHFORWARD intriguing is the notion of the inevitability of fate, and as soon as you say to the audience, “You know all that cool stuff people saw in their futures in the pilot? Forget about it—the future can be anything,” you’ve (in my humble opinion) violated a key promise to the audience.

If production memos offer a privileged access to the show unavailable to most, access to and influence on that space is still available more widely. Fans and viewers can engage with and help shape the show by simply talking and writing about it, through private conversations or public review. Sawyer’s memos, in a heterotopic sense, reflect and anticipate these small spaces of conversation and review. It is interesting to consider some of these contemporary reviewers, who ask similar questions and have similar concerns to those in the production memos regarding the fate of the show. In a debut-day review for AV Club, Emily St. James (2009) writes that “the opening two acts of the pilot are, honestly, among the best pilots I’ve ever seen” but then shifts to say “Should you check this out? Absolutely. Will this be a great series? That’s a lot harder to say.” In an overall positive review of the pilot, St. James is skeptical about the future of the show and the “big ideas” the flashforwards themselves raise, much like Sawyer’s concern about the inevitability of fate. Equally interesting for this review, though, is the interactive space of the comments and (anonymous) audience replies. Some agree with the reviewer: “I was basically ready to never watch any more episodes by the end… until the last 10 seconds.” Another reviewer breaks the barrier between novel and show by admitting they are “a huge Sawyer fan,” which would keep them watching the show despite a distinct lack of humor (comparative to the comedic relief offered by characters in Lost, one of whom is also named Sawyer). Another commenter accesses a similar heterotopic space as the memos by revealing behind-the-scenes knowledge: “Reportedly, Goyer and Braga caused such a stir with the pilot script because they sold it with a hard five-year plan for the show.” Though they do not reveal their source for this information, it comes as a response to another reviewer claiming that the show “looks like it would be a great movie or miniseries. But as an indefinitely long series? I’m not so sure.” In contrast, when we flash forward to more recent discussion of the show, some reviewers riff on greater hope of what might have been. Andrew Grevas (2019) wonders, “Could the potential the show flashed earlier on have materialized or was this show simply doomed to fail? Either way, we’ll never know, but I will always contend that FlashForward was cancelled too soon” (TV Obsessive). Perhaps in the

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recent age of reboots and second chances, a dedicated audience could make a case for a FlashForward redo. From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM The whole point of Schrodinger’s Cat is that observations MATTER: it’s the ACT OF OBSERVING that shapes reality. Until a qualified, conscious observer looks in the box, the cat is neither alive NOR dead; it’s unresolved: it is a superposition (a stacking one atop the other) of all the possibilities; only observing collapses the wavefront (the stacked unresolved possibilities) into ONE concrete reality.

Audience reviews act as both sides of a heterotopic space as defined by “a system of opening and closing that isolates them and makes them penetrable” as they can be both public and private, opened and closed conversations (Foucault 1997, 355). However, it is worth noting that participation in reviews is weighted differently. Again, returning to Foucault: “Anyone can enter one of these heterotopian locations, but, in reality, they are nothing more than an illusion: one thinks one has entered and, by the sole fact of entering, one is excluded” (1997, 355). In this case, those who post public reviews on well-known and highly visited sites are penetrating that heterotopic space, while those who comment on such reviews may feel as though they are entering the space, but are actually only adjacent to that space. Though public, professional, and mainstream reviews, of course, only go so far as well. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM Because if they’re not wowed by the intricate snick-snick-snick of it all falling into place, they’re going to yawn when presented with another flashforward as your season finale, thinking that there’s no point in paying attention to whatever visions are revealed in the second or any other flashforward, since, of course, they’ll all be invalidated and discarded by the time the characters catch up with them.

Many of Sawyer’s memos discuss and imagine where FlashForward would go in a second season, but this was not to be. An article published by SyFy Wire discusses Sawyer’s pitch for the second season, which he had posted on Facebook after it was certain that FlashForward would not be getting a season 2; the article states that “FlashForward was a huge mess from the

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get-go” but posits that Sawyer “had an awesome idea for how to fix the show in Season 2. You know, had it not been canceled” (Moore 2015). From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday November 19, 2009 2:37 AM Because of our implicit promise to resolve the first flashforward on (airdate and story date) April 29, we ONLY get a second season if the audience agrees we delivered on the promise we made in the first season.

Today, under the cultural dominance of social media, reviews proliferate and fan voices are louder than ever, and they can shape a show. Fan demands to Netflix to reconsider their cancellation of the SF show Sense8,26 for example, resulted in the production of a two-hour long conclusion. Intense fan campaigning for the return of an arguably more imaginative and accomplished SF show The OA failed.27 The fan campaign to save FlashForward included plans to stage performed “blackouts” in front of ABC offices in Los Angeles, New  York, and Chicago on June 10, 2010, while fans also sent calendars with the date April 29 circled (the day revealed in the flashforwards, and on which Season 1 ends with a second global blackout) to the ABC president, Stephen McPherson. The campaign failed but reveals a further blurring of boundaries between the show and television screen that can play out through fandoms. The show and flashforwards transcended the book, production memos, show, and screen into everyday lived space. From: Robert J. Sawyer, To: FlashForward writers, Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:26 PM As I’ve said before, the audience expectation is that the clues laid out in 101 matter, and that the future that they were shown glimpses of is going to play out largely as suggested.

26  Hill, G., Wachowski, L., Wachowski, L., Straczynski, J.M., Holland, C., Friedlander, P.  Duncan, T., Nayar, D., Clarance, L., Rosen, M., Toll, J., Delahaye, L. (Executive Producers). (2015–2018). Sense8 [TV series]. Anarchos Productions, Georgeville Television, Javelin Productions, Motion Picture Capital, Studio JMS, Unpronounceable Productions. 27  Marling, B., Batmanglij, Z., Pitt, B., Gardner, D., Kleiner, J., Esberg, S., Sugar, M., Engel, A., Fetter, B., Wolarsky, N. (Executive Producers). (2016–2019). The OA [TV Series]. Plan B, Anonymous Content, Netflix.

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Space At the center of these spaces—fan, book, TV production, memo, and much more—we find FlashForward the show, an assemblage of sorts of these reflective colliding spaces. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 2:20 AM dealing with the kangaroo (I’m pretty sure they don’t pass the mirror test—meaning it wouldn’t have blacked out on October 6), but we need a good explanation of why it was on the loose.

The viewer is exposed to the heterotopic space of the show from the first episode, as the two main characters chase down a suspect, and the world suddenly goes black. Everybody experiences their flashforward, and then we see the chaos that is the LA street they were driving on, now littered with crashed cars, distraught people, and a kangaroo that ominously hops away from the camera—and then “hops” through production memos as the team ponders its significance, how to explain it, and what to do with it (“No More Good Days”). There is something of Foucault’s cemetery in this opening scene— another one of his heterotopias, a location of disruption that offers “a close and untroubled promiscuity between the living and the dead” (Johnson 2006, 79). Unconscious and dead bodies on the street are indistinguishable for some time after the flashforward, and the visions of the future are something like glimpses of death—a crossing over, blurring of boundaries of time and space that define our human existence; one character sees nothing in his flashforward, which informs him of his imminent murder (“No More Good Days”). Trapped in this moment, trapped wondering what the flashforwards mean, characters are suspended as if in a prison (another heterotopic form that shapes the show)—trapped and isolated from the (truth of the) event, while tasked with understanding it. The viewer similarly inhabits this trapped inside-outside position. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To David S.  Goyer, Tuesday November 17, 2009 2:20 AM … talking about inevitability, and explaining WTF is going on to our audience…

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…during the course of 117, we could make clear that self-reflective consciousness (the kinds humans, chimps, parrots, crows, and elephants have) is required to have a blackout.28

Conclusion The production memos considered in this chapter are just a few of many. They are themselves fragments, pieces. Much remains hidden, obscure. From: Robert J.  Sawyer, To: David S.  Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM This could be the symbolic resonance for the kangaroo: it leaps ahead, just as, in our mythology, consciousness leaps ahead—and it does it multiple times, always looking for a safe place to land.

Where do we land? The reader, viewer, critic, and the show’s creators? There are two distinct ways in which Sawyer talks about the show throughout the memos. He discusses the novel in personal terms—the novel is purely his—but he moves between the personal and the impersonal when discussing the show. When he is offering ideas to the writers discussing the show in positive terms, he uses the collective personal our and we as seen in the memo excerpt above; however, when he is discussing aspects of the show he sees as imperfect, he uses the impersonal your, as seen in an earlier quoted excerpt: “they’re going to yawn when presented with another flashforward as your season finale” (Memo from: Robert J. Sawyer, To: David S. Goyer, Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:37 AM). Whose show is it, then? and the FLASHFORWARD logo pops in and out as our teaser ends. (From Robert J. Sawyer to David S Goyer on Tuesday Nov 17 2009 2:20AM)

References Foucault, M. (1997). Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (pp. 350–356). Routledge.  Goyer, D.S., Zwerling, L. (Writers) & Gomez, N. (Director). (2010, April 22). “The Garden of Forking Paths.” (Season 1, Episode 17). FlashForward. ABC Studios, Phantom Four Films, HBO Entertainment. 28

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Grevas, A. (2019, August). No More Good Days: Remembering FlashForward & What the Show Could’ve Been. 25 Years Later Site. https://25yearslatersite. com/2019/08/22/no-­more-­good-­days-­r emembering-flashforward-what-­ the-­show-­couldve-­been/ Johnson, P. 2006. Unravelling Foucault’s ‘Different Spaces’. History of the Human Sciences. London: SAGE Publications. Leitch, T.  M. (2007). Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of Christ. Johns Hopkins University Press. Moore, T. (2015, February 20). The Awesome Pitch Flashforward’s Author Made for the Second Season We Never Saw. Syfy Wire. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/awesome-­pitch-­flashforwards-­author-­made-­second-­season-­we-­never-­saw Roberts, A. (2016). The History of Science Fiction (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Sawyer, R. J. (1999). Flashforward. Tom Doherty Associates. St. James, E. (2009, September 24). FlashForward: ‘No More Good Days’. AV Club. https://www.avclub.com/flashforward-­no-­more-­good-days-1798207065 Stuart, S. C. (2011). Literary Lost: Viewing Television Through the Lens of Literature. The Continuum International Publishing Group. Tryon, C. (2013). Fan Films, Adaptations, and Media Literacy. In J. P. Telotte & G.  Duchovnay (Eds.), Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptation (pp. 176–189). Routledge.

PART IV

Transformed Communities: Technologies, Bodies, and Viewers

(Re)configuration The final two chapters of this collection examine SF bodies. Chapter 12 considers bodies networked into the Upside Down in Stranger Things1 as allegory for our own media spaces, while Chap. 13 views celebrity, superhero, and queer bodies in The Boys.2 These are bodies in science-fictional spaces, produced and reconfigured by them—transformed—but they are also bodies as science-fictional spaces, territories explored, mapped, redrawn, written upon by technologies (The Upside Down and the machines used to open them [Stranger Things] and the drugs that instill superhuman strength [The Boys]). With a reconfiguration, this section on transformed bodies might hold any of the chapters in this collection— chapters that examine the different spaces of SF television narrative, production, and consumption but are always conscious of where the bodies are, be they residents on space stations, inhabitants of SF cities or utopias, or actors in front of the cameras, people behind the cameras, or those bodies sat at home watching television—all of these bodies inhabiting science fictional spaces. 1  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV Series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre, Netflix. 2  Kripke, E., Rogen, S., Goldberg, E., Weaver, J., Moritz, N.H., Shetty, P., Marmur, O., Trachtenberg, D., Levin, K.F., Netter, J., Rosenberg, C., Sgriccia, P., Sonnenshine, R. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Boys [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

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Both shows point to an overlap of Science Fiction (SF) and Gothic genres through these bodies—bodies, like genre, that are amorphous, a collection of parts (in a Frankenstein sense). If SF exists as “part of broader aggregations of genre” (Donnelly and Hayward 2013, xv) as the gothic exists as a “mixture of genres” (Hogle 2019, 1), what implications are there for viewers as they access not just SF television through the screen but increasingly live a life mediated through screens, connected to algorithmic networks? Does the contemporary resurgence of the body horror subgenre of SF (from Julia Ducornau’s 2021 Titane3 to Richard Stanley’s 2019 Color Out of Space4), and this genre’s roots in Gothic literature suggest our contemporary bodies are at once science-fictional constructs and gothic assemblages of embodied affiliations and alienations? And how do the conditions of such embodiments emerge from interfacing with technologies, both actual and science fictional? Can one begin to imagine, as Stranger Things does, something like a Cronenbergian body—a relative heterotopic space of contractions, blurred borders, epitomized in Cronenberg’s eXistenZ,5 in which physical and virtual realities merge when the body is plugged into to a video game via organic cable? When do we start to wonder where we exist—inside or outside of the screen?

References Donnelly, K. J., & Hayward, P. (2013). Preface. In K. J. Donnelly & P. Hayward (Eds.), Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future (pp. xiii–xviii). Routledge. Hogle, J.  E. (2019). The Gothic-Theory Conversation: An Introduction. In J.  E. Hogle & R.  Miles (Eds.), The Gothic and Theory: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh University Press

3  Ducournau, J. (Director), Julia Ducournau (Written by), (2021). Titane [Film]. Kazak Productions. 4  Stanley, R. (Director), Richard Stanley and Scarlett Amaris (Written by), (2019). Color Out of Space [Film]. SpectreVision, ACE Pictures Entertainment. 5  Cronenberg, D. (Director), David Cronenberg (Written by), (1999). eXistenZ [Film]. Dimension Films, Alliance Atlantis Communications, Canadian Television Fund, Natural Nylon Entertainment, Serendipity Point Films, The Harold Greenberg Fund, TMN, Téléfilm Canada, UGC.

CHAPTER 12

Pushing Through Networks and Media Spaces in Stranger Things Nicholas Orlando

Every relationship is a power struggle. Some of us need to be controlled. —Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), Mr. Robot (2015–19) People don’t spend their lives trying to look at what’s behind the curtain. They like the curtain. It provides them stability, comfort, and definition. —Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman), Stranger Things (2016–)

Introduction Before today’s algorithm economy collected user data from platforms like Amazon and Facebook, generating advertisements by predicting users’ future consumption, newspapers were delivered to our doors with just one set of advertisements. The Sears catalogue, a symbol of modernity’s convenience-­ driven consumerism, satisfied every consumer’s needs.

N. Orlando (*) Department of English, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_12

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Indeed, Derek Thompson (2014) suggests that the “American consumer for much of the 20th century was defined by this comforting narrowness of choice, and the city paper and the department store were two hallmarks of this localized scarcity.” Thompson goes on to suggest that the localism and agency arrived at through this narrowness of choice has been transformed by the Internet: our problem in the digital age, he argues, is one of confusing abundance, with the algorithms of sites like Facebook and Amazon overloading users with information and recommendations. And yet this overwhelming sense of choice is an illusion – we are more limited than ever, disorientated by the illusion of choice from an algorithmically curated bank of products. Thompson goes on to suggest that to reclaim a sense of agency, we must surrender ourselves to these algorithms: “[W]e have to embrace a new version of intimacy that felt natural with the local newspaper and corner shop clerk who knew our name. The machines have to know us” (Thompson 2014). Thompson’s suggestion of what amounts to a passive intimacy is troubling, not least of all for its embrace of techno-solutionism. Such an intimate relationship with our technologies only strengthens the grips Big Data holds on us, a grip that recent US Congressional hearings have sought to loosen, recognizing its pernicious effects. Facebook’s data curation assisted in the proliferation of “fake news” during and after the 2016 presidential election (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017), while Amazon collects customer data from Amazon searches, computers and mobile devices, and third-party purchases to predict and direct user behavior (Burgess 2021). Most data collection occurs automatically in the background of our online activities; we unwittingly, and at times unwillingly, consent to information aggregation. In the realm of television and streaming services, Netflix confessed to collecting user data through their interactive spectacle Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018),1 which deployed a choose-your-own-­ adventure narrative design to exploit the viewer/user’s illusion of choice (Sharf 2019). The techno-conspiracy thriller Mr. Robot (2015–2019)2 outlines this anxiety over our digitally mediated and technologically networked world. Our issue is then not over-abundance; it seems our 1  Slade, D. (Director), Charlie Brooker (Written by), (2018). Black Mirror: Bandersnatch [Film]. House of Tomorrow, Netflix. 2  Esmail, S., Golin, S., Hamilton, C., Iberti, J.E., Bradstreet, K., (Executive Producers). (2015–2019). Mr. Robot [TV series]. Anonymous Content, Esmail Corp., Universal Cable Productions.

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machines know us too well already. It is we who need to learn more about our machines and ourselves. Matt and Ross Duffer’s Stranger Things3 sets out to do just this, rejecting Thompson’s full-throated affirmation of the algorithmic economy and the passivity it requires of us. The show, I suggest, seeks to recover what Thompson proposes we sacrifice in contemporary media spaces: an embodied relationship with networks. According to Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy (2004), “MediaSpace [sic] … at once defines the artefactual existence of media forms within social space, the links that media objects forge between spaces, and the (no less real) cultural visions of a physical space transcended by technology and emergent virtual pathways of communication” (2). Social spaces, whether physical or virtual, are directed and redirected by and through media, both old and new, analog and digital, and issue dialectical senses of alienation and belonging. Today, one might look to one’s smartphone as a quick example: our phones, which operate within a network of other screened media, blur the boundaries of social space, oscillating between the private/domestic and public spheres; enable us to forge communicative links between spaces; and provide access to “virtual pathways of communication” (to borrow Couldry and McCarthy’s term) through social media applications, email, and text messaging. Yet, importantly, the embodied, networked relationships we forge through communications technologies need not be technologically determined. Embodiment calls for action and agency, rather than the passivity of intimacy. In what follows, I argue that Stranger Things invites viewers to engage with new modes of navigating mediated spaces in the age of social media and algorithmic governance. I explore the show’s realm of the Upside Down as a monstrous figure for contemporary media spaces, the neoliberal network economy they espouse, and the uncanny vision of passive collectivity they offer. Creatures from the Upside Down render Hawkins’ structural boundaries malleable, and they thus introduce the prospect of living in two spaces. Extending Couldry and McCarthy’s conception of media space, I contend these virtual/Upside Down spaces must necessarily become lived spaces. Following Henri Lefebvre, media spaces as lived spaces are bound up with the sensations of everyday life (Conley 2012). 3  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Levy, S., Cohen, D., Holland, C., Wright, B., Thunell, M., Gajdusek, K., Paterson, I. (Executive Producers). (2016–). Stranger Things [TV series]. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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Through its narratives and networks, Stranger Things demonstrates our lack of control over media, even as we participate in them. Yet, our participation is undeniably necessary for both narratives and networks to function. Spectatorship, from this perspective, is an active, sensuous, and spatial experience that encourages sociopolitical action, even as its fixity in place is uprooted. Therefore, my reading focuses not only on Stranger Things’ content, but also its form, which mediates the story and its sociohistorical and political context for viewers. Stranger Things, then, urges spectators to look for new, heterogenous forms of collectivity as it recognizes the public relationships all media foster.

The Bridge Between Worlds Arriving to Netflix in 2016, a platform whose success is indebted to the algorithm economy praised by Thompson, Stranger Things embarks on a nostalgic trip through the 1980s’ American and cinematic history. Set in a fictional suburb, Hawkins, Indiana, Stranger Things chronicles Hawkins residents’ repeated attempts to ward off the destructive forces of a monstrous, extradimensional space called the Upside Down. After a child named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) escapes from the Hawkins National Laboratory, where a team of government scientists performed mind control experiments on her, she teams up with friends Mike Wheeler (Fin Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) to protect Hawkins from monsters emerging from the Upside Down. In later seasons, newcomer Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) joins the ranks of “the party,” the self-­ proclaimed title for the boys’ original group of four. To navigate Hawkins, and later the emergent threat of the Upside Down, the party relies in part on antiquated communications technologies such as walkie-talkies and HAM radios to communicate from afar, and in their use, the group gains agency. Stranger Things looks back to a moment when media space was experientially ethereal, intangible; we see the group forge, and take charge of, their own “virtual pathways of communication” (Couldry and McCarthy 2004). More than mere anachronisms, walkie-talkies and HAM radios express a desire for rendering media spaces, and by extension networks, invisible. At its most mundane, Stranger Things demonstrates this in its dialogue exchanges, relying on the shot-reverse shot to concretize a point-to-point connection between participants. In Season 1’s first episode, following

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Will’s disappearance, Mike contacts Lucas over their walkie-talkies, linking the two spaces despite their distance from one another.4 Viewers follow the characters’ disembodied voices as they cut across the spatial distance. In less mundane scenarios throughout the series, the static from radios and televisions enables Eleven to move through the void, an ambiguous in-between space, to locate other characters including Will in Season 1, her mother in Season 2, and Billy (Dacre Montgomery) in Season 3. To do so, Eleven undergoes sensory deprivation, which keeps her “sensuous body,” to borrow from Barnett (2014), isolated while she exercises this ability. Megan Fariello (2019) finds the series’ emphasis on voice and sound to be part of the “techno-historical acoustic,” a diegetic and technological medium that “detaches the audience from the nostalgic space of the past, refocusing on the objects tethering them to that space” (125). The process, Fariello contends, reorients the spectator’s nostalgic longing toward “an earlier mode of technology” that emphasizes the tactility and intimacy found in physical, interpersonal relationships (126). These technologies “symbolize home, and a return to home, and actually mediate a connection between home and the unhome-like: in Stranger Things, this is the Upside Down” (130). But at the same time, Fariello’s techno-historical acoustic disavows bodily connection between two spaces. Taking Season 1’s fourth episode5 as her example, in which a fake version of Will’s body is found in a lake and used as proof of his death, Fariello contends only the techno-historical acoustic can be trusted as a mode of truth because it conjures memories. On Fariello’s reading, Stranger Things affirms a casting away of the sensuous body and instead emphasizes one’s fixity in place. Media spaces, in other words, are not spaces the body can actively traverse; rather we rely on technologies to transfer sound to communicate between spaces. The sensuous body is left behind. Stranger Things is not so univocal in its depictions of mobile technologies and their (re)organizations of space, though. If two-way radios and rabbit-ear televisions emphasize distanced communication, they also provide opportunities for empowering separation and disconnection, 4  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2016, July 15). “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers.” (Season 1, Episode 1). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 5  Doble, J. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2016, July 15). “Chapter Four: The Body.” (Season 1, Episode 4). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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something purportedly denied by contemporary telecommunications and computing technologies. Kayla McCarthy (2019) argues, “By using technology associated with boyhood in the 1980s, the boys evade the surveillance of their parents as well as the surveillance of the sinister government agency. . . The freedom to roam with one’s friends, connected only by walkie-talkies, creates nostalgia for an analog age in which people were free from the tether of a cell phone” (669–670). McCarthy’s view of boyhood technologies contrasts the series’ depictions of landline telephones, which are vulnerable to surveillance, as evidenced in the episode “Pollywog,” when Nancy’s call to Barb’s mother is intercepted by government officials.6 In contrast, walkie-talkies promise the party a kind of privacy through which mobile communities can be formed. Yet like Fariello, McCarthy reads a disconnection between two spaces, between viewers and the original 1980s’ culture: watching the show “overrides” spectators’ memories of the texts it pays homage to – “it becomes about remembering the remembering, rather than remembering the original” (673). The spaces in the show forged by media, then, remain separate from the “real” world of Hawkins. In this way they function like Foucauldian “media” heterotopias: “a place outside of all places” (1984, 4). Jason Landrum (2017) celebrates the show’s use of the arcade for its “separation from the rest of the world” (137), while the series doubles down on this media separation in Season 3 with Camp Know Where and Dustin’s hand-­ made HAM radio, Cerebro. A youth summer camp for all things science and technology, Camp Know Where remains off-screen. The camp enables campers to experiment with technology at a safe distance from Hawkins, or “nowhere”; the pun suggests a place for knowledge, locatable for only those in the know, like Dustin. Indeed, Dustin’s friends do not believe in his girlfriend, Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo), whom he met at camp. A media space again produces a disembodied experience. The show’s configuration of media space produces something of Couldry and McCarthy’s (2004) “virtual pathways of connection” – sensible, yet invisible  – while also highlighting an implicit technophobia toward contemporary digital technologies and, by extension, the networked media spaces they operate in – a fear of what remains unseen, and dislocation of the body that uses and is enmeshed within digital media 6  Doble, J. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2017, October 27). “Chapter Three: The Pollywog.” (Season 2, Episode 3). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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spaces. Stranger Things, then, is anxious about its virtual pathways becoming visible. In “Trick or Treat, Freak,” Will, after returning from the Upside Down, clarifies this anxiety, explaining to Mike that he feels as if he is “caught between two slides.”7 Referring to the slides of a View-Master, a hand-held, stereoscopic toy for children, Will offers a nostalgic spatial rendering of his experience – this is an experience of existing in media, the slide like our own screens connecting us to an invisible network (the other side of our screen). He tells Mike, “One slide’s our world and the other – the other slide is the Upside Down. And, there was this sound coming from everywhere. And then, I saw something… It was like this huge shadow in the sky, only it was alive, and it was coming for me” (“Trick or Treat”). Both spaces for Will are held open simultaneously – he can see (or sense) both. In the frame, the two boys sit side-by-side, captured first in a medium shot. The show then cuts to another series of shot-reverse shots framed over Mike’s and Will’s shoulders. The camera then places one character in between the other and the viewer, suggesting our participation in the scene. Of course, we cannot manipulate the image, but we are implicated in two places at once: our bodies stay in one place, yet our minds are engaged somewhere else, somewhere not here.

Centering the Upside Down Although Stranger Things suffers a technophobic anxiety of being in two spaces at one, it is less worried about bridging two distant spaces (or times) together and more concerned about eversion, Steven E.  Jones’ (2016) term for cyberspace’s merging with the physical world. Jones observes cyberspace serves “as a metaphor for the global information network” in the 1980s, the decade to which Stranger Things looks back, a period when popular conceptions of networked connectivity assumed “the ultimate goal of users interfacing with the network was total immersion, meaning the loss of body-consciousness as one disappeared into the digital world on the other side of the screen” (Jones 2016). The 1992 film The Lawnmower Man8 and the 1995 television show VR.59 deal with such 7  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2017, October 27). “Chapter Two: Trick or Treat, Freak.” (Season 2, Episode 2). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 8  Leonard, B. (Director), Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett (Screenplay), (1992). The Lawnmower Man [Film]. Allied Vision, Fuji Eight Company Ltd., Lane Pringle Productions. 9  St. John, T. (Executive Producer). (1995–1997). VR.5 [TV series]. Samoset Productions.

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anxieties. Cyberspace networks were viewed as a world apart from the real, and for Jones (2016), locked into a process of “eversion,” a turning inside out and leaking into the physical world. By the early to mid-2000s, however, networks were understood as part of the world rather than some “transcendent virtual reality” (Jones 2016). Significantly, Netflix transformed its content distribution model around this same time, transitioning from a DVD rental service to an online streaming service in 2007. And, as I demonstrate later, by reimagining networked spaces as lived spaces in which we participate and express ourselves, we can recognize these spaces as crucial for public communities and sociopolitical engagement. Stranger Things imagines the Upside Down as a subterranean network of predatory monsters that threaten the material boundaries of Hawkins itself. An alternative dimension to Hawkins, the Upside Down is an ever-­ expanding underground web of alien fauna and flora. As such, the Mind Flayer acts as a centralized authority that maintains a hive-minded, symbiotic connection to all other members of the Upside Down, which eventually includes Will. In this way, the Upside Down functions as a kind of distributive network, Alexander Galloway’s (2004) term for the protocological, networked relationships of the Internet as determined by their technological materials. For Galloway (2004), following a language protocol, like computing code, a distributed network establishes “direct communication with another node” in its web of relationships “without having to appeal to a hierarchical intermediary” (5). Of course, for two nodes to communicate, Galloway (2004) states, they must speak the same language. Similarly, the creatures of the Upside Down, Will, and others trapped in its web of plant-like tendrils are all nodes in its language system, one unintelligible to the viewer. Stranger Things updates the protocological, distributive system for the algorithmic economy, and thus maintains the Mind Flayer as a centralized authority. Today Internet users are locked into modes of power in which our content exposure is curated by Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and others, even as they promise openness and exposure. According to Elinor Carmi (2020), “[social media] platforms don’t just moderate or filter ‘content’; they alter what registers to us and our social groups as ‘social’ or as ‘experience.’” As such, media spaces that initially promise openness and extension instead lead to restriction. Similarly, Stranger Things imagines its Upside Down and its distributive networks as organic yet uninhabitable and uncontrollable by humans. Elizabeth Reich (2019), in her study of

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the show’s racial politics, similarly argues the Upside Down is a figure for an “ecology of black life” with “a time-and-place construction that is not stable, that shifts across registers, dimensions, and durations.” Although its original point of access opens up in Hawkins National Laboratory in Season 1, the series more clearly articulates its capitalist allegory in Season 3, reopening the gateway beneath the Starcourt Mall. Eversion, in Stranger Things, is less a casual occurrence over time and more a violent invasion into Hawkins. The town is always already at risk of invasion since the Upside Down exists just underneath Hawkins, and gateways, large or small, leading into the former continue to open up. Still, to access its monstrous network, Stranger Things enacts a particular vision of networks: users must plug in to access this alternative space. When police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Winona Ryder) search for Will in the Upside Down (“The Upside Down”), they find him tangled in vines, with one down his throat.10 After the scene cuts to a reaction shot of Hopper, it cuts again to a handheld shot of his young daughter, Sara (Elle Graham), lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. An endotracheal tube leads from her mouth, and she is connected by wires to several medical machines. The shot then cuts back to Will in the Upside Down, as Hopper pulls the vine out of Will’s mouth. The juxtaposition of the hospital and the Upside Down is striking; while the hospital machinery extracts data from Sara for her survival, the seemingly organic structures of the Upside Down extract Will’s life. Networked bodies, implied by the juxtaposition of these two moments, are nodes within a larger systemic web of social and technological relations. While these relations promise to sustain life, they subject it to datafication. Accompanying this bodily connectivity is the loss of one’s agency within the network, made evident by Sara’s death and Will’s inability to separate himself from the Shadow Monster. Networks, on one hand, are sites of bodily control, and by plugging into them, we find alienation, isolation, and death. At the same time, the close-up shots of Will and Sara confront the spectator, as we share the perspectives of Joyce and Hopper approaching Will’s body. This moment, then, self-reflexively allegorizes our contemporary networked relations. As we, like Joyce and Hopper, approach Will in the Upside Down, and as Hopper recalls his daughter’s death in the hospital, 10  Duffer, M., Duffer, R., Dichter, P. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2016, July 15). “Chapter Eight: The Upside Down.” (Season 1, Episode 8). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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we notice that we are also plugged into the Netflix streaming service and the Internet. The creatures of the Upside Down, as well as the characters trapped within it, communicate with the real world through various electronic media: flickering lights signal the approach of its creatures, television static indicates the presence of the Shadow Monster, and telephones short-circuit when the Demogorgon communicates through them. During Eleven’s final showdown with the Demogorgan at Hawkins Middle School, alongside Will, Dustin, and Mike, the threat posed is two-­ fold: not only are the boys hunted as new subjects for the Upside Down, but the viewer is also threatened with the recognition of our networked connectivity, the recognition of our own experience of heterotopic eversion. In this way, the series’ horror is located not in the prospect of getting lost, as Jason Landrum (2017) suggests, but the prospect of being found and finding ourselves in the midst of networked activity. In other words, Stranger Things asks us to reconcile the idea of participation in the algorithmic economy. If we are to reclaim and retain open networks as critical media spaces, spaces that are necessarily and intricately linked to others and ourselves, we must first examine what the Upside Down exposes and then force it to be something else.

“Doris, You Oughta Call the Paper…” Narratives and the networks they mediate have not always been considered spaces elsewhere, spaces utterly disconnected from our own. To articulate this line of argument through Stranger Things, I briefly turn away from technology, toward the show’s depiction of journalism. To be sure, I do not seek to pit old (analog) media against their new (digital) counterparts. Rather, in the series, the newspaper is figured as a forerunner to the Upside Down and its media/mediated channels. “Newspaper,” here, refers to both the material paper one reads as well as the media networks through which it circulates. At the same time, journalism most clearly wrestles with the politics of Stranger Things’ media spaces, which are organized around direct encounters of localism between citizen, community, and State. The Hawkins Post, which prides itself on its local relationships built on trust and an adherence to facts, is initially depicted as a unifying force in its community; we see Mr. Sinclair (Arnell Powell) and Hawkins’ mayor Larry Kline (Cary Elwes) both reading the paper, and it is available for public distribution and circulation. Expansive networks, then, are not just ultimately restrictive; the newspaper reveals that networks have always

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been about restricting rather than opening spatial relationships. They are restrictive by design. In the first episode of Season 3, Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) work as interns for The Hawkins Post. Near the beginning of the episode, the newspaper’s editorial team meets in the office conference room to decide which front-page story to take to print.11 Space, for the journalists, is concrete and localized with imagined boundaries guarded by signs, whether physical or linguistic. In this scene, editor Tom Holloway (Michael Park) rejects most of the editorial staff’s story proposals, stating he wants to publish “something local” and “something real.” While the newspaper does report on foreign affairs and other stories, made clear by the reports on Beirut in the paper held by Mayor Kline in “The Mall Rats,”12 the outward-facing appearance of the newspaper serves a more spatial role. That is, the newspaper, by way of its reporting, mediates between two spaces, integrating pieces of the global (Beirut) into the local (Hawkins) and the institutional (the Post) into the public. Despite this, the newspaper, or rather the power structures distributing and supporting it, strive to keep these spaces separate. Holloway’s equation of the local and the real, then, suggests a desire for journalistic realism, which reveals journalism’s architectural purpose: Like the city limit signs reading “Welcome to Hawkins” and “You are now leaving Hawkins,” The Hawkins Post is instrumental in determining what Hawkins is and is not. Both city limit signs and newspapers guard against intrusions from the world outside Hawkins and also contain Hawkins’ inside(s) – its individuals, families, public spaces, institutions, businesses, and politics. Therefore, Holloway’s vision for The Hawkins Post prizes exclusivity instead of inclusivity and narrative control over public knowledge. Holloway’s exclusive vision becomes apparent when he rejects Nancy’s suggestion for an investigation of the Starcourt Mall, a space at once local and global, physical and networked (“Suzie, do You Copy?”). Its signs, unlike those of Hawkins’ city limits, signify places both inside and outside the town. The mall, a neon-lighted beacon of the 1980s’ consumerism, stands as a symbol for globalized corporate dominance over local 11  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2019, July 4). “Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?” (Season 3, Episode 1). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 12  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2019, July 4). “Chapter Two: The Mall Rats.” (Season 3, Episode 2). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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communities. Since Starcourt Mall opened, Nancy states, the small businesses of Hawkins have fallen into economic precarity, and some have been forced to close. Prior to this scene at The Hawkins Post, shots of downtown Hawkins display business outlets with window signs indicating closure and advertising available leases. At the Post, with campy staging and off-kilter camera framing, the editorial team turns to look at Nancy and the viewer with bewilderment. Moments later, Nancy is laughed out of the room, and the viewer with her. This scene lays bare the series’ spatial paradox: although the newspaper initially promises to collapse geographical distances, since it brings news of other places to one’s present location, its restrictive, local-only curation insulates (and isolates) readers and preserves the separateness of Hawkins from the outside world. If media that initially promise community and extension are ultimately restrictive as they are bent to satisfy the demands of institutions of power, then it is critical to consider the historical media spaces Stranger Things looks back to. To follow the example of The Hawkins Post, the Duffers’ series looks back to American journalism’s high modernism period, which, according to Daniel C.  Hallin (1992), denotes an era when journalists strove to be both powerful and public-spirited in their objectivity. During the Cold War, Hallin (1992) states, journalists strove to become part of the Establishment elites, offering friendly reporting toward government officials. The Hawkins Post maintains a close relationship with the mayor’s office. In “The Sauna Test,”13 Mayor Kline smugly threatens Hopper’s position as police chief, stating, “One call to Tom at the Post, and you’re done buddy. You’re gone.” Not only does Kline boast of his relationship with the town’s paper, but he also demonstrates a distaste for local protesters, requesting Hopper and the Hawkins police remove the protesters from the front lawn of the mayor’s office, stating they do not have a permit to protest. Hopper, of course, complies, thereby implicating himself in Hawkins’ political regime of disciplinary power (“Suzie, do You Copy?”). In addition to its reflection of spaces that strip one of public agency, the Upside Down, as a figure for media space, also mirrors spaces of power like The Hawkins Post and the mayor’s office. The Upside Down via the Mind Flayer exercises power using a top-down structure that desires a homogenous and localized collectivity. In Season 3, the Mind Flayer is re-­ designed not as a shadowy entity, but rather as a gruesome collectivity of 13  Trefry, K. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2019, July 4). “Chapter Four: The Sauna Test.” (Season 3, Episode 4). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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Hawkins residents and animals. In fact, both Holloway and Bruce (Jake Busey) are “flayed” to become part of the Mind Flayer’s Cronenbergian body of a synthesized whole. As such, the threat of flaying represents the threat of a new mechanism of control that cuts into and absorbs existing structures. As centralized authorities, Hawkins’ institutions stand, as Rose Butler (2017) argues, as Hawkins’ social Others, which renders them “a far more insidious threat than any ‘foreign’ entity,” such as the Russians or the monsters of the Upside Down (192). Yet, to say Stranger Things affirms this top-down structure, this otherness, would be to grant these institutions too much control. Despite the Upside Down’s mirroring of centralized authority, the show also aesthetically allegorizes, and therefore exposes, the networks that link these institutions with each other and the homes of Hawkins, particularly those of Joyce in Season 1 and Jim Hopper in season 2. Hawkins, then, is a networked town, technologically, politically, and socially. As such, it reveals our longstanding dependence on networked media spaces.

The Upside Down as a Space of Freedom If media spaces are always constitutive components of our worlds, we must not settle for media spaces that mirror already established spaces of power. Stranger Things prompts us to find new modes of navigating media spaces that, in turn, encourage sociopolitical participation. In its narrative action, Stranger Things deploys maps as a continuous motif: in season 2, Will Byers franticly draws a sprawling map of the Upside Down, Jim Hopper uses a map of Hawkins to trace the source of the towns’ problems back to the Hawkins National Laboratory, Dr. Sam Owens’ (Paul Reiser) team of scientists use ultrasound technologies to map the Upside Down’s winding pathways; in Season 3 Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke), and Dustin Henderson use the blueprints of Starcourt Mall to navigate its air ducts. K.  Shannon Howard (2018) interprets Will’s mapping as a method to make the invisible visible: “Will taps into the ‘hivemind’ of the [Shadow Monster] by making the network to which he belongs a public display” (138). Will can only do this, of course, because he maintains a symbiotic relationship with the monster. It is the monster, we learn, that allows Will to view certain information in the creature’s now-memories. Will describes the experience of these now-memories, explaining to Joyce and Hopper, “It’s like – I don’t have to think. I just know things now. Things I never did before” (“Will the

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Wise”).14 This experience of instantaneity self-reflexively allegorizes the algorithmic logics of our contemporary media spaces, which make content recommendations from our past Internet history and searches. This is precisely how Netflix makes suggestions for viewers – it does the thinking for us, just as the Shadow Monster does the thinking for Will. The streaming service, like others and their social media counterparts, have re-shaped the way we know things. Rather than a process of discovery, knowing Internet content means submitting to the predictive process of the algorithm. Knowing is divorced from thinking. However, upon revelation of Will’s connection to such a network, his kin’s attempt to destroy the connection reflects the technophobic response to networked media I am arguing against. Near the end of “The Mind Flayer,”15 Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike, attempting to unplug Will from his symbiotic connection with Upside Down, tell stories to remind Will of who he is. Joyce speaks fondly of his eighth birthday, Jonathan reminisces the building of Castle Byers, and Mike narrates the first day he met Will. What these stories share, aside from modeling the series’ own nostalgia for times past, is an emphasis on place-based identity. For Will, as someone stuck between “two slides,” cultivating an identity necessarily includes navigating two spaces at once. The series doubles down on this in its allusions to gender identity in Season 3, adding Will’s realization of queerness to his struggle to fit in. The “real” Will, for his family and friends, is cultivated by memories from home and school. Will cannot be himself when plugged into the Upside Down, when connected to the networks expanding beneath Hawkins. Yet, modeling technophobia, Will’s well-meaning kin attempt to stamp out a necessary feature in a networked world: adaptability. As Howard (2018) suggests, Will demonstrates an adaptability in communication and technology, maintaining a literacy in the English language, Morse code, and the unspoken language of the Upside Down. Conversely, Joyce and the others personify a technophobia that only reinforces the algorithm’s ability to know us, and know for us. After all, the Upside Down, a distributive and algorithmic network, does not disappear.

14  Dichter, P. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2017, October 27). “Chapter Four: Will the Wise.” (Season 2, Episode 4). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 15  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2017, October 27). “Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer.” (Season 2, Episode 8). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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Thus, the series’ desire for mapping ought not go unchallenged, particularly because of the Cartesian implications this desire holds. Maps, after all, are fundamentally unchanging in their objective perspectives, relying on static relationships, pushing toward a mastery of space. As Ben Anderson (2008) argues in his discussion of Doreen Massey, maps prefer a “totality of connections” rather than the “dynamism of change” (228). In Stranger Things, the use of maps and navigational language risks reproducing these Cartesian desires. Each mode enables characters to understand the world from a distance without recognizing one’s bodily, and therefore subjective, attachments to it. These Cartesian desires are placed within the realm of science, representative of reason, rationality, technocracy, and technological progress. In “MADMAX,”16 Dr. Owens and the Hawkins Lab staff use media to extract information, or data, from a source and create a grid of its subject, Will. After Will slips into the Upside Down at the arcade, Joyce and Hopper accompany him during a check-up at the Hawkins National Laboratory. Close-up shots show disembodied hands, no different than medical tools, prepare Will for his appointment and measure his weight, blood pressure, heart rate, and neurological activity. Will is reduced to a series of abstract figures and data, which dehumanizes and alienates him from his surroundings. Likewise, in “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard,”17 in order to fight off the Mind Flayer in its new articulation, an aggregate of the gooey remains of Hawkins residents, Mike, Will, and company admit the need to close the gate and disconnect “the brain from the body.” The suggestion is clear: if we can restore Cartesian binaries of mind/brain, inside/outside, and local/global, then Hawkins will return to normal. In other words, if we can end the process of eversion, we can rescue our way of life. To counteract this extension toward Cartesian mapping, in which one claims mastery over an environment, I look again toward the Upside Down’s Mind Flayer and the gooey synthesis of bodies that constitute it. Although the Mind Flayer mirrors spaces of power as a commanding centralized authority, collecting bodily matter from his victims into a homogenous whole, it also mirrors the collective action taken by the series’ 16  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2017, October 27). “Chapter One: MADMAX.” (Season 2, Episode 1). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre. 17  Bridges, W. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2019, July 4). “Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard.” (Season 3, Episode 3). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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protagonists as well as the possibility for change obfuscated by mapping. At the end of Season 3, for example, during the climactic battle at Starcourt Mall, Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Will, Eleven, Steve, Max, Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan, Robin, and eventually Billy team up to fight the Mind Flayer in the mall’s food court. Meanwhile, Hopper, Joyce, and Murray (Brett Gelman) fend off the Russians beneath the mall. These two groups form and reform throughout the series, reflecting the plasticity and malleability of collective action within the public space. Furthermore, the various groups remain tethered by “virtual pathways of communication” (Couldry and McCarthy 2004), or media spaces that connect device to device and body to body. Similarly, the Mind Flayer, as it is torn and dismembered by the series’ protagonists, forms and reforms as it amasses bodies from Hawkins. It exposes the diverse collectivity of embodied mediated relations necessary for public action to prosper in the Internet age, and for a truly democratic arrangement to emerge in contemporary media space. This, of course, is what the series’ institutions, including The Hawkins Post, the local government, and the Starcourt Mall, aim to repress by imposing methods of biopower through the networks of Hawkins. Furthermore, the collective agency practiced by the series’ protagonists is necessarily diverse and heterogenous rather than homogenizing. Stranger Things, then, unmoors this repressed notion of collectivity, despite its attempts to resist it through the defeat of the Mind Flayer. While one aspect of resistance might be located in the phenomenological encounters through the show’s use of body horror – which repels characters and viewers from the interconnectivity offered by the Upside Down and its denizens – these same phenomenological encounters can, in part, be seen to renew our sense of belonging with heterogeneity and diversity in mind, highlighting the need for a sensitive, embodied experience of the virtual networks we are already integrated within. With the Mind Flayer’s liquidation of Hawkins’ rats and residents into a gooey mass, the work of computer graphic imaging (CGI) accentuates the sensual qualities of digital data. But it is in Billy’s death in “The Battle of Starcourt,”18 that we see the body punctured and bleeding in open display as Billy rejects the sensory relationship with the Mind Flayer. When Billy sacrifices himself to save Eleven, the Mind Flayer suspends him in space with sharp-toothed 18  Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Writers) & Duffer, M., Duffer, R. (Directors). (2019, July 4). “Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt.” (Season 3, Episode 8). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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tentacles before bringing him to his knees. In a point-of-view shot-reverse shot, Billy screams at the camera, and us, blood pouring from his mouth. Then, after a cut, the viewer and Billy face the monster, who deploys another penetrating tentacle toward our face and Billy’s chest. We cringe as the Mind Flayer’s phallic tentacle hurls toward us, only to be saved by one last cut to display Billy’s death and not our own. Yet, in this brief moment, viewers see what the Mind Flyer’s coagulated body makes intelligible: the curatorial algorithm, our data given flesh, complete with a razor-toothed abyss-like mouth to feed on us. And, in the sequence’s reversal in its shot-reverse shot, the goopy personification of data sees us, threatens us, and catches us in our over-investment. Just before Billy’s death, viewers confront the monster of data extraction that Derek Thompson so fondly praises (referenced in my introduction). Meanwhile, in his sacrificial act, Billy, his arms spread in Christ-like form, fully realizes the implications of the technophobia of his younger counterparts. Although Billy is in touch with the sensuous body throughout the series, implied by his sexual promiscuity (his seduction of Mrs. Wheeler) and knack for violence (his fight with Steve in Season 2), his death signifies a complete loss of agency within the Upside Down’s network. Brute force, it seems, cannot break through the constitutive structures of control that inform media space. Still, Billy’s fatal error is renouncing the networked relations the Mind Flayer figures in favor of his technophobic counterparts.

Leaving the Door Open Three Inches To find resistance to the Upside Down and the restrictive networks it figures, Stranger Things requires us to reconceptualize media spaces as lived spaces encouraging openness, heterogeneity, and relationality. For Henri Lefebvre, lived spaces require inhabitants to be “active practitioners in order that…the everyday can become a creative milieu or a continuum in which living can be developed into an ‘art’ available to an anonymous collectivity” (Conley 2012, 14). Challenging the midcentury State under capitalism, Lefebvre finds emancipatory potential in reforming urban spaces as they are lived, experienced, and moved through by their residents (Conley 2012). Mary Anne Doane (2009) refines the point in her reading of Lefebvre, stating space must not be thought of as a container, but rather a practice, as something to be produced. Importantly, Lefebvre lends his critique of capitalist space to screened media and in particular

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cinema. The latter, for Lefebvre, displaces the spectator “into a not-so-­ everyday world where we are not only inured to our alienation but also led to enjoy it. In the realm of cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, the medium is that which colonizes desire and fantasy, and as a result lived space gives way to a world fashioned by Technicolor images” (Conley 2012, 16–17). Despite Lefebvre’s suggestion that the cinema inures spectators to, and convinces us to enjoy, our own alienation, I would like to suggest a rephrasing of his logic. As lived spaces, media spaces, which include cinema, wrap spectators up in the tensions of media participation, implicating us in its modes of extraction yet nevertheless giving us tools to reconfigure these spaces. In Stranger Things’ first season, prior to her regressive technophobia in Seasons 2 and 3, Joyce models a different relationship with technology: participation as a “being-together,” as Annouchka Bayley (2021) calls it. Stringing Christmas lights throughout her entire house, Joyce discovers an interactive way to chart Will’s movements throughout the Upside Down, and Will can signal his presence by blinking certain lights. Unlike maps, the Christmas lights do not place Will in a definite position within the Upside Down. Joyce cannot see where he is; she can only witness he is still alive. Lights in Stranger Things typically announce oncoming danger; they blink whenever a monster from the Upside Down approaches or rips through the spatiotemporal fabric of Hawkins. Yet, Joyce’s use of lights does the same, though with care in mind instead of violence. In “Holly, Jolly,”19 Joyce paints the alphabet on her living room wall, corresponding each bulb with one letter. This enables Will to signal his presence, spelling “right here.” Unlike the Demogorgon, who desires a violent and absolute eversion, Joyce, through her maternal configuration of care, acknowledges the distance between her and Will and reaches out for a bodily connection. Yet, on my reading, Will demonstrates the inextricable link between media spaces and the body, since it is Will’s body generating the data Joyce and the viewer need to recognize him in the first place. In this way, Joyce figures the Netflix spectator, who must interpret spatial codes to navigate a heavily technologized world. Today, our computational devices become truly participatory in moments of crisis, and they are used to engage in acts of peaceful protest and to raise awareness of serious sociopolitical issues. For example, social 19  Mecklenburg, J. (Writer) & Levy, S. (Director). (2016, July 15). “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly.” (Season 1, Episode 3). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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media users across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter used these platforms as extensions of the Black Lives Matter protests initiated by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. This instance, and others like it, was not a mere acceptance of intimacy with machinery and data, to recall Derek Thompson’s sentiments at the beginning of this chapter. Instead, social media users recognized data, and therefore networked connectivity, as intimately connected to life, to the human body, engaged in a sociopolitical dialogue and concretizing a heterogenous, multimodal community of public action. Yet, social media sites are far from an activist’s dream. While they may enable activists to communicate and spread awareness of different causes, social media platforms like Facebook also cultivate echo chambers of misinformation, fake news, and political propaganda. Stranger Things, then, self-reflexively allegorizes this struggle between activism and echo chamber, democratic participation and capitalist restriction in its images of bodies struggling in space. However, it does so, to be sure, in self-exculpating fashion, hiding and villainizing its own algorithmic relationships even as it participates in the same media space. In “E Pluribus Unum,”20 after Eleven watches Billy’s memories while searching for him through the void, Billy traps her in a new, spatial development of the ambiguous psychic-space. Rather than an empty black abyss, the void now mimics the Wheelers’ basement, where the rest of the group await El’s return. Yet, in the void-basement, the flayed Billy confronts Eleven, marking the first time the Mind Flayer speaks to a character. In a series of point-of-view shot-reverse shot from both characters, Billy taunts Eleven, threatening the death of Hawkins. The flayed Billy states, “You shouldn’t have looked for me, because now I see you. Now we can all see you. You let us in. And now, you’re going have to let us stay. Don’t you see? All this time, we’ve been building it…we’ve been building it for you…And now it’s time to end it. And we are going to end you. And when you are gone, we are going to end your friends. And then, we are going to end everyone.” (“E Pluribus Unum”)

Along the way, these point-of-view shots are interspersed with memories of Eleven’s first contact with the Demogorgon and Hawkins’ Fourth of 20  Gwinn, C. (Writer) & Briesewitz, U. (Director). (2019, July 4). “Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum.” (Season 3, Episode 6). Stranger Things. 21 Laps Entertainment, Monkey Massacre.

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July festival as the rest of the flayed flock to their own absorption. All of these shots are stitched together in one continuous, streaming media space in varying sprints and drags in time. For the flayed Billy, Eleven, and the viewer, this moment confirms media space as both lived and embodied, catching all three in a gaze that confirms the existence of the other. Eleven exposes herself as one who surveils Billy to stop the Mind Flayer’s pursuit of totalizing destruction; Billy in turn, by way of the Mind Flayer, exposes himself as the human face of the Mind Flayer’s spatial colonization; and the viewer, too, is exposed, seen by Billy, Eleven, and Stranger Things itself through the scene’s point-­ of-­view shots. It is as if Billy threatens to expose what Stranger Things ultimately desires to repress: as spectators, we participate in the algorithmic relationships that dominate networked media spaces. For Tung-Hui Hu (2015), these moments of looking and counter-looking reveal an undercurrent of desire that “connects the watched and the watcher, and suggests there can never be a clear separation of the two parties” (127). Yet Stranger Things also undercuts this more direct relationship between watched and watcher, narrative and spectator, altering the subjects in each position (Billy/Eleven/us) and disrupting our gaze with a flurry of images that obscure our sense of space and scale. Instead, the cinematic space of Stranger Things troubles viewers with its non-linear, violent lack of continuity. The series, then, struggles between emancipating its viewers and locking them into the immediate effects of spatial and scalar disruptions.

Conclusion Although Stranger Things struggles to manifest in full a structural critique of media spaces in the algorithm economy, it does allegorize responses to its modes of control. In the series, violent acts of defense allegorize both the activist push-back against datafication and the individual’s inability to accomplish the change necessary for a digital commons. At the same time, we find media space as a mode of practice in these defensive acts of violence, acts that differ from Billy’s brute force mentioned earlier. In “The Upside Down,” Jonathan and Nancy line the Byers’ house with traps for the Demogorgon. From a bear trap to gasoline-soaked carpets, Jonathan and Nancy transform Byers’ house from safe haven to death trap. Using Joyce’s lighting scheme, the two teenagers, and later Steve, track the monster’s unseen presence until it emerges in the living room under a veil of darkness. Standing back-to-back, Nancy and Jonathan frantically search

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the room as the camera tracks around them and the lights blink in disarray. When one can see, the lights are often obscured, out of focus, entrapping the viewer with the characters in sensorial vertigo. While the flickering lights might encourage us to scrounge for epistemological certainty, the revolving dolly shot grounds us as it nauseates us, refuting epistemological certainty and maintaining media space’s dialectic alienation and belonging. In a final turn of the former scene, however, Steve rushes into the house, beating the monster into the bear trap, and Jonathan sets fire to the beast. Although Jonathan and Nancy fail to slay the Demogorgon, their failure holds open otherwise closed boundaries. In other words, the failure to contend with one node in the Upside Down’s network opens up the possibility for new practices of media space. By keeping doorways open, communal connectivity remains possible, as does a community pushing out against homogenizing, political economic forces. Far from advocating for violence, Stranger Things represents violence as a reaction to the predatory data extractions of the contemporary digital economy, in which promises for belonging only perpetuate alienation. Yet, by this same token, it is media space as practice Stranger Things must foreclose. Like its protagonists, it seeks to close the gates to the Upside Down through its narrative development. The challenge remains, then, of releasing the stranglehold of privatized media collection from our potentially democratizing networked architectures. To do that, an intervention from power is necessary, lest we entrap ourselves in a fight that is ultimately self-defeating.

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Bayley, A. (2021). Stranger Things, Secret Cinema and the Transmateriality of Cinema. Performance Research, 25(5), 63–70. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13528165.2020.1868844 Burgess, M. (2021, June 19). All the Ways Amazon Tracks You - and How to Stop It. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-tracking-how-to-stop-it/ Butler, R. (2017). ‘Welcome to the Upside Down’: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things. In K. Jackson & L. Belau (Eds.), Horror Television in the Age of Consumption (pp. 187–201). Routledge. Carmi, E. (2020, December 14). The Organic Myth. Real Life. https://reallifemag.com/the-­organic-­myth/ Conley, V. A. (2012). Henri Lefebvre: Lived Spaces. In Spatial Ecologies: Urban Sites, State, and World-Space in French Cultural Theory (pp. 11–28). Liverpool University Press. Couldry, N., & McCarthy, A. (2004). Introduction: Orientations: Mapping MediaSpace. In N. Couldry & A. McCarthy (Eds.), MediaSpace: Place, Scale, and Culture in a Media Age (pp. 1–18). Taylor & Francis. Doane, M. A. (2009). Scale and the Negotiation of ‘Real’ and ‘Unreal’ Space in the Cinema. In L.  Nagib & C.  Mello (Eds.), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (pp. 63–81). Palgrave Macmillan. Fariello, M. (2019). Mediating the ‘Upside Down’: The Techno-Historical Acoustic in Netflix’s Stranger Things and The Black Tapes Podcast. Sound Studies, 5(2), 122–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2019.1587581 Foucault, M., & Miskowiec, J. (1986). Of Other Spaces. Diacritics, 16 (1), 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648. Galloway, A. (2004). Introduction to Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (pp. 1–27). The MIT Press. Hallin, D.  C. (1992). The Passing of the ‘High Modernism’ of American Journalism. Journal of Communication, 42(3), 14–25. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1460-­2466.1992.tb00794.x Howard, K.  S. (2018). Solve Z for X: Extending Generational Paradigms in Stranger Things. In Unplugging Popular Culture: Reconsidering Materiality, Analog Technology, and the Digital Age (pp. 126–146). Routledge. Hu, T.-H. (2015). Seeing the Cloud of Data. In A Prehistory of the Cloud (pp.  111–144). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/97802 62029513.001.0001 Jones, S. E. (2016). The Emergence of the Digital Humanities (as the Network Is Everting). In M. K. Gold & L. F. Klein (Eds.), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016. University of Minnesota Press. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/ untitled/section/09efe573-­98e0-­4a10-­aaa3-­e4b222d018fe#ch01 Landrum, J. (2017). Nostalgia, Fantasy, and Loss: Stranger Things and the Digital Gothic. Intertexts, 21(1-2), 136–158. https://doi.org/10.1353/ itx.2017.0006

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McCarthy, K. (2019). Remember Things: Consumerism, Nostalgia, and Geek Culture in Stranger Things. The Journal of Popular Culture, 52(3), 663–677. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12800 Reich, E. (2019, July 4). The Ecology of the Upside Down; or, The Possibility of Black Life in Stranger Things. Post45. https://post45.org/2019/07/ the-­e cology-­o f-­t he-­u pside-­d own-­o r-­t he-­p ossibility-­o f-­b lack-­l ife-­i n-­ stranger-­things/ Sharf, Z. (2019, February 13). Netflix Saved and Collected Every Choice Viewers Made in ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.’ IndieWire. http://www.indiewire. c o m / 2 0 1 9 / 0 2 / n e t f l i x -­s a v e d -­b l a c k -­m i r r o r-­b a n d e r s n a t c h -­c h o i e made-­viewers-­1202043808/ Thompson, D. (2014, March 12). The Algorithm Economy: Inside the Formulas of Amazon and Facebook. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-­a lgorithm-­e conomy-­i nside-­t he-formulas­of-­facebook-­and-­amazon/284358/

CHAPTER 13

The Boys Keep Swinging: Celebrity Bodies in and Between Space Sean Redmond

Introduction In this chapter, I explore the way bodies in Amazon Prime’s The Boys1 not only constitute types of mutable space but also transform the way that space is encountered and experienced. The embodiment of space happens largely through the Seven, superheroes who either penetrate space, travel through it, or become entangled or enmeshed in it. In The Boys, all-of-­ space seems to be occupied, a contradictory and contested heterotopia in which different worlds collide and intersect. The Seven represent radical

1  Kripke, E., Rogen, S., Goldberg, E., Weaver, J., Moritz, N. H., Shetty, P., Marmur, O., Trachtenberg, D., Levin, K.  F., Netter, J., Rosenberg, C., Sgriccia, P., Sonnenshine, R. (Executive Producers). (2019–). The Boys [TV series]. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

S. Redmond (*) Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9_13

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forms of technological corporeality: produced or engineered by the conglomerate Vought International, they are commodified and weaponized to become self-serving, possessive “superhero celebrities” of global capitalism. The Seven reside in opulent towers, debauched clubs, upmarket homes, and apartments, yet they can also travel anywhere at any time, expanding the spatial and temporal reach of celebritized market forces. By contrast, the Boys, the vengeful vigilantes of the series, occupy marginal and marginalized spaces, and non-places (Augé 1995), their vulnerable human bodies at home in these realist or Other heterotopias. The Boys can travel to and invade the utopic spaces where the Seven reside, but they do so by overcoming the limitations of their bodies and restrictions on their movements, by demonstrating that they also have superhuman qualities and capabilities. Certain members of the Seven also resist market capital, seeking to work for civic society and community, rather than against it. The Boys plays out, then, the binaries that exist in the production of the spatialized self in the urban city where technologies limit freedoms and yet transform human capability. What is also interesting about the super bodies in The Boys is the way many of them engage in “perverse” acts and perversely fail, opening up the notion of the self to alternative forms of identity. These super bodies are found in “super” spaces in which mutability dissolves into or through “everywhere,” exposing identity to a liminal gaze, to queer becomings. I link this last reading of perversion to Donald Trump and his own attempt to be a perverse/perverted superhero. Trump connects the various threads of this chapter, enabling it to contextually situate the reading of The Boys in relation to his celebritized presidency and capitalized persona.

Bodies in and Between Space In the opening episode of The Boys (“The Name of the Game”), Hughie (Jack Quaid) is holding his girlfriend’s hands on the edge of the sidewalk when speedster superhero A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) crashes into or rather through her. Initially we hear rather than see A-Train, his speed captured through the generic sound of velocity and the liquid vibrations of the air. We are then presented with the blood splatter of Robin’s disintegrating body as A-Train runs through her—splashes and squidges of red animated in space, falling on Hughie’s cheeks and squelching on the sidewalk. Through a series of rapid cuts, we move around the space, seeing A-Train as he screeches to a halt, the wet mass of Robin’s violated body, and

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Hughie standing in disbelief, his face still but in movement because of the way the blood-spill flows and falls on and over it. As A-Train rapidly departs the scene, we see that Hughie still holds Robin’s severed hands. In this scene a number of spatial realities are being signaled and experienced: first, that space and body are not separate but mutual and mutable. A-Train is both a type of moving space, a lightning-quick “vehicle,” and a super body, bringing that entanglement into Hughie’s world. By doing so, A-Train delineates what the spatialized individual can be in the contemporary age, one where they are “subsumed or fused into a discontinuous mode of being that does not recognize boundaries between self and other (human and machine, human and artificial, human and animal)” (Cranny-­ Francis 2015, 222). Second, the scene brings two types of spaces together: the utopian world of the superhero and the ordinary world of the everyday person— with the former entering and exiting the latter. There is both, then, a heterotopia of illusion “that exposes every real space” and a heterotopia of compensation that functions “to create a real space—a space that is other” (Foucault 1986, 24). Such “heterotopias enable us to both confront our illusions and to create new illusions of the utopias we cannot have” (Sudradjat 2012, 29). A-Train is here revealed as less of an ethical superhero and more of a time-bandit, running to or from a drug deal, while Hughie is left to hold in his hands the remnants of coupling dreams he can no longer have. Illusion and compensation, utopia and banality, meet on the gutter that runs along the sidewalk—a space not quite on the road, nor on the pavement—the threshold actant that propels the series forward. Third, the scene’s spatial coordinates begin to undermine heterosexual and monogamous coupling. Hughie’s romantic desires are thwarted here, which lays the groundwork for the series’ destabilization of gender and sexual binaries and the queering of its heterotopias. Queer heterotopias “are material spaces where radical practices go unregulated. They are sites where actors… engage in what we might call a radical politics of subversion, where individuals attempt to dislocate the normative configurations of sex, gender, and sexuality” (Jones 2009, 2). As the series progresses, Hughie has a romantic/sexual relationship with Annie/Starlight, crossing the human and superhuman divide in doing so. Fourth, A-Train acts as a “slice of time,” rendering the space as a type of heterochrony, offering an “absolute break” with traditional experiences of time and temporality (Foucault 1986). When A-Train crashes through Hughie’s reality he reveals how precarious and borderless time and space

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are today. In this respect, Zygmunt Bauman has argued that modern life has entered an “era of disembedding without re-embedding” (Bauman and Tester 2001, 89), where Transience has replaced durability at the top of the value table. What is valued today (by choice as much as by unchosen necessity) is the ability to be on the move, to travel light and at short notice. Power is measured by the speed with which responsibilities can be escaped. Who accelerates, wins; who stays put, loses. (95)

A-Train and Hughie encapsulate this temporal dichotomy; the former is a superhero because he can move faster than light, while the latter is rooted, literally in this scene, to his mediocre social position. A-Train is capital and moves (his) capital around the city, as do the other members of the Seven, while, initially, Hughie stagnates, only consuming capital that comes his way. Space is capitalized and capital is space in The Boys, and where an individual is positioned “in space” confirms social hierarchies. In this regard, Ben Highmore has tellingly argued that in the Superhero text urban spaces are often depicted as the source of an ordinary individual’s impotence, the city being a stifling force that renders them helpless (2005, 128). By contrast, a superhero’s mobility enables them to soar above and below and in and between space, thus becoming a fantasy to be lived and an attainable “symbol” for overcoming the city’s limitations and restrictions on everyman/everywoman. In The Boys, however, illusion and compensation are radicalized: by the end of the first episode, Hughie has killed one of the superheroes, refusing to be just ordinary, taking up or on the symbolic fantasy that to be successful or visible one has to be more than human. Fifth, the scene evidences the way digital technologies reorient and recalibrate contemporary experiences of space. A-Train is not only a digital special effect but the embodiment for the way contemporary space has been technologized. Digital technology has invaded the lived experience of the physical through mobile phones, AR and VR augmentation, and digital maps, and the photographic image has itself been transformed “into a truly ‘plastic’ object that can be molded and remolded into whatever shape is desired” (Belton 2002, 101). The superhero genre creates scenes and situations of infinite forms of mutability and transportability, the heroes’ bodies and the spaces they inhabit instantly re-shapeable (Kobre 2018). Bodies are always in and between space in the superhero

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genre, which often leads to ruination, as the location where they meet inevitably ends up being destroyed. A-Train and the rest of the Seven create carnage wherever they go, although this of course leads to rebuilding and remodeling, ensuring the forces of capitalism are ever replenished (Hassler-Forest 2012). Sixth, the scene carries forward the impression that no space is private or privatized: that everywhere and anywhere is open, permissible, to be entered or exited at any time. This collapse of private and public means that a romantic moment, such as Hughie holding his girlfriend’s hands and sharing a kiss, can be turned into a public horror show. Further, A-Train and the rest of the Seven act as surveillance systems, able to see, hear, and enter into the private, supposedly to prevent crime but actually to protect their own “secrets” as manufactured or doped superheroes. The Seven are supported by a crime analytics center, which monitors the city, looking for live acts of criminality and predicting where those acts may happen. The power of superheroes to survey always has the capacity to “spill over into paranoia and an authoritarian desire for total surveillance” (Curtis 2016, 86), and as the series develops, Homelander (Antony Starr), the leader of the Seven, becomes the fascistic embodiment of such autocratic power as he leads and attempts to control not only the superheroes and Vought International, but the political and economic systems of America. Homelander can be considered a conduit for “panspectrocism” involving a 360-degree, multi-sensorial monitoring of all human bodies administered by algorithms equipped with relevant watch-lists of “filters.” This logic of surveillance, said to be characteristic for a post-disciplinary “society of control”, is presumably not so much about using visibility to reshape individuals (e.g., by forcing them to internalize punitive norms) as it is about deploying overlapping regimes of visibility to generate “shadows” of the individual. (Baruh and Popescu 2017, 3)

Homelander’s superpowers include heat and X-ray vision, superhuman hearing and smell, superhuman strength, superhuman speed, superhuman intelligence, and flight. Taken together, they grant Homelander the full surveillance armory of panspectrocism, enabling him to see into the “shadows,” into everything and everyone. Of course, as I outline later, Homelander and the Seven are also subject to the same algorithmic forces of modern surveillance.

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Finally, the scene draws attention to its own spectacle and special effects, wallowing in its ability to accelerate and slow time, marveling at the destruction of Robin’s body. Special effects are woven into the “matter” of the space as A-Train crashes through time and materiality and Robin’s shredded body becomes one with the air. Such special effects can be seen as a “technological showcase for current image creation technologies— technologies that perhaps only a few years before were science fictions in themselves” (Walker 2007, 3). They also herald the special effect of the superstar superhero whose fame stops time and space in its tracks. Once A-Train realizes what he has done to Robin, he is caught in a superhero pose, filling the moment with a paparazzi-like image of the celetoid. In addition to this self-aware posing, such spectacular scenes commercialize the latest technological developments as they become a testing ground or a “shop window” for the latest and greatest in new digital special effects. The Boys is here commenting on its own technical ingenuity in the art of special effects, promoting the industry as it does so. These ideas return the chapter to the argument that The Boys demonstrates how all of space—private and public—has been celebritized and capitalized, something I will now explore in greater depth.

Capital Space and Celebrity Superhero Bodies The Boys offers a vision of an alternative present that might be defined as a critical utopia: in the contemporary America of the series, a team of superheroes fight to keep evil at bay, and their heroic actions bring the community together. We see the Seven defeat crime and take up civic duties, such as attending festival events. But we also see how Vought International has manufactured them for both political and economic ends, and we witness the self-interest and megalomania that exists in and drives the behavior of many of the Seven. In The Boys, crime fighting is economized for political gain: superheroes are contracted to represent American states, to keep crime down and to offer models of heroic self-worth to their citizens. Crime literally pays. This commodification of crime is extended to the monetization of war and its relationship to the entertainment military complex. The Seven are being marketed as supersoldiers, able, for a price, to defeat terrorists and thwart the actions of rogue nation states. The series in a sense engages in a double consciousness: it critically reflects on the relationship between film, superheroes, and the American military while showing viewers the

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awesome power such a “complex” unleashes. It is both cognizant and critical of the entertainment military complex, yet it bathes itself in the complex’s spectacular capabilities. The Seven are of course monetized in a more compelling manner: they are intertextual commodities and transmedia brands that flood the marketplace and the lived experiences of everyday life. Their heroic deeds and victories are attached to a number of ubiquitous merchandising streams and sponsorships, and they appear in their own film, game, and television franchises. In a very tangible sense, the Seven are involved in what Henry Jenkins defines as transmedia storytelling, reflecting the economics of media consolidation or what industry observers call “synergy.” Modern media companies are horizontally integrated—that is, they hold interests across a range of what were once distinct media industries. A media conglomerate has an incentive to spread its brand or expand its franchises across as many different media platforms as possible. (Jenkins 2007)

The Seven are managed by Hero Management, a PR company within Vought that helps manage and grow their public identities and product lines, and which undertakes crisis management if a superhero behaves badly, such as when The Deep (Chace Crawford) is outed as a molester. As part of their individual brand, each superhero has a particular persona related to their superskill: Queen Maeve’s (Dominique McElligott) powers include super-strength and flight, and her name is borrowed from Celtic folklore, enabling her to be branded as a warrior heroine. The Deep can communicate with aquatic life and breathe underwater. He is marketed as the “King of the Seas” who is unable to remove his helmet due to an Atlantean curse. Homelander, a nationalist and patriotic figure who wears a cape styled after the American flag, is invincible in combat and thus marketed as the glue that holds the American National imaginary together. Homelander’s brand is “hope, baseball, America, Sunshine…” The transformation of the Seven into transmedia storytelling machines produces two important outcomes. First, it ensures that commodity and consumption circulate not only in traditional media and merchandising runs, but into/through the very fabric of society. The Seven can penetrate all of space in The Boys, and so can their representations, merchandising, and ideologies. New York in the series is an endless stream of products that circulate in every public space, adorning buildings, schools, and in almost every private dwelling. It is a type of SimCity, “a place where simulations

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of a presumably real world increasingly capture and activate our urban imaginary and infiltrate urban life. An electronic generation of hyperreality” (Soja 2003, 23). However, it is not just physical space that is capitalized. As noted above, the space of heterotopic dreams is also invaded. For example, Annie January (Erin Moriarty) has dreamt of being a member of the Seven her entire life: in flashbacks to her youth she practices her superhero powers and engages in imaginary superhero play. A devout Christian, she successfully auditions for the Seven and becomes Starlight, an ultra-feminine, blond and blue-eyed superhero who uses the power of light to defeat her enemies. In The Boys, of course, such dreams are exposed as illusionary— Starlight soon learns of the corruption that lays at the diseased heart of the Seven. Her dream turns sour when she is forced to give a blowjob to The Deep to secure her place in the team and then witnesses first-hand the commodification and egotism that drives the Seven and Vought International. Annie is chosen not because she is essentially “good” but because each superhero has a shelf-life in terms of popularity and the success of their merchandising streams. Annie/Starlight’s star image complements the composition of the Seven and will sell to those “girls” who also hold such inspiring dreams. She is an idealized white female fantasy “star” whose purity and goodness can be readily marketed. The constant changing of the personnel of the Seven also points to the way figures such as Starlight are replaceable celebrity-commodities. As Graeme Turner contends, “the production of celebrity can truly be regarded as a manufacturing process into which the product’s planned obsolescence is incorporated” (Turner et al. 2000, 12–13). We can see the impact of the currents of celebrity discourse on the way the Seven inhabit the spaces of their own body and the way they turn space into what I would like to call spectacular “data” heterotopias. The Seven all see themselves as celebrity brands that appeal to a particular market demographic. They are keenly aware of the economic data used to determine their celebrity worth, and they survey themselves through algorithms. As it is with manufactured boy bands, they are also aware of each other’s appeal and how together they succeed as a super celebrity brand. In numerous scenes at Vought headquarters, the Seven go over their latest sentiment, sales, and endorsement figures, and Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), Vice-President of Hero Management, details their stock and share appeal to senators, business leaders, and governments. This metrification

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of their celebrity sits within what has been defined as an audit culture, or those contexts where the principles, techniques, and rationale of financial accounting have become central organizing principles in all aspects of society, from the provision of safe nurseries and the transformation of government to the execution of war… We see audit culture as a rationality of governance and a corresponding set of dispositions and practices. It therefore refers to a condition or constellation of processes… Put simply, audit culture refers to contexts where auditing has become a central organizing principle of society. (Shore and Wright 2015, 422)

The Seven know their celebrity superhero worth through the number of likes they get, the number of toys, games, and films they shift. They define themselves and are defined by these figures—data which fill the news and entertainment media of the series so that we find data spatialized and space datafied. The Seven’s celebrity status shapes the public spaces they enter, since they are very much forms of media spectacle, “providing dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business” (Kellner 2003, 4). Annie’s introduction as Starlight to an adoring crowd at a live televised/streamed event mirrors and mimics both the trappings of Oscar night and large political rallies held at full stadia. The series here touches upon a structural shift “to a society of the spectacle that involves a commodification of previously non-colonized sectors of social life and the extension of bureaucratic control to the realms of leisure, desire, and everyday life” (2003, 3). Capital space and celebrity bodies are brought together in The Boys, illusionary and compensatory in equal measure. There is also something more telling about space, body and celebrity spectacle in The Boys, something linked to authoritarianism and neo-­ fascism as it manifested during the Trump presidency. That is to say, the series plays out its concern with space in critical dialogue with Trumpian celebrity spectacle and his fascistic impulses. Trump haunts The Boys, becoming the “invisible” space and the “shadow” narcissist that nonetheless shapes and colors the series’ narrative trajectory. In fact, in many respects Homelander becomes a cipher for Trump, not least because Trump presents himself as a superhero or Übermensch who

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…will magically restore the U.S. to greatness, provide jobs and create incredible wealth, and restore the U.S. to its rightful place as the world’s Superpower. In this Fairy Tale, the billionaire King will fight and destroy all the Nation’s domestic and foreign enemies and the Superman will triumph and provide a Happy Ending for the people of the US.  In the form of authoritarian idolatry… his followers appear to believe that Trump alone can stop the decline of the United States and make it “great” again. Over and over, Trump supporters claim that he is the only one who talks about issues like immigration, problems with Washington and politics, and the role of money in politics. Trump promotes himself as the tough guy who can stand up to the Russians and Chinese, and to “America’s enemies.” (Kellner 2017, 80)

Homelander embodies the “zealous nationalism” (Jewett and Lawrence 2004) that Trump represents, as well as the deep narcissism on display during Trump’s presidency. In Episode 3 (“Get Some”),2 Homelander is caught staring at his own image and its narcissistic reflections, in love with himself. His vanity is marked in all his encounters with the Seven, among whom he takes up a godlike position. Homelander’s godlike self-image is further reflected in his public speeches when he refers to who countenances his actions and whose judgment he lives by. In Episode 5 (“Good for the Soul”),3 for example, Homelander draws upon Psalms 58:10 at a “Believe” rally. Attempting to whip the adoring crowd into a frenzy, he recites: … Wasn’t I chosen to save you? Is it not my God-given purpose to protect the United States of America? The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; and He will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.

As the speech reaches its crescendo, Homelander rises off the ground, his pose and outstretched hands creating the shadow of a cross on the stage’s backdrop. As he hovers over the crowd, it is like he is walking on water. Here, allusions to Trump’s political speeches are many. The merchandise on sale at the Seven’s rallies parodies the “make America great again” kitsch sold at Trump’s stumps. Homelander’s God complex mirrors 2  Kripke, E. (Writer) & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2019, July 26). “Get Some.” (Season 1, Episode 3). The Boys. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios. 3  Saunders, A.C. (Writer) & Schwartz, S. (Director). (2019, July 26). “Good for the Soul.” (Season 1, Episode 5). The Boys. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

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Trump’s idolatry—that he/they alone can change the direction of the United States. Homelander and Trump are of course both insincere celebrities, craving fame and letting nothing stand in their way of achieving it. When, at the end of Season 2 (“What I Know”),4 Homelander masturbates over New York City from its highest vantage point, while repeating the line “I can do anything I want,” he is cumming in the image of Trump. That both Homelander and Trump appeal to a society’s base instincts and insecurities propels authoritarianism into the city, into the urban milieu. Homelander and Trump are both illusionary and compensatory figures— super bodies who attempt to create their utopia in their here-and-now. Nonetheless, the image of Homelander wanking over New York City does something else to body and space in the series: it confirms that perversity is also central to these hybridized heterotopias.

The Boys Keep Swinging Neither body or space is secure, sealed or singular in The Boys. Bodies resist normativity, and public and private spaces refuse to be closed or bordered. As superheroes, the Seven are required to have plasticine bodies, since the superhero is always “an inherently ambiguous creature, simultaneously moving and unmoved through the interplay of stasis and sequential succession in a permanent state—an eternal in medias res—of bodily transition” (Stein 2018, 18). However, it is the manner of the Seven’s elasticity—how they use their bodies—which challenges their ontology, their gender, and sexuality. The notion that they are “fluid” is actually marked by the way they are perversely related or attracted to liquid/ liquidity. Homelander, for example, craves breast milk, and to meet this desire he gets Doppelganger (Dan Darin-Zanco) to transform into Madelyn Stillwell so that he can suckle on her post-natal breasts. The Deep has sex with a fangirl who proceeds to enter her hands through his gills, into his fleshy, wet interior. Popclaw’s (Brittany Allen) landlord performs cunnilingus on her, and as she climaxes, she crushes his face until it is a red, squishy mess. Bodies readily and regularly explode and implode in the series, splattering out and into/onto everything, wetting the mise-en-­ scene. Such acts are, at times, scatological. Translucence (Alex Hassell) is killed when a bomb, planted in his body through his anus, is detonated. In 4  Sonnenshine, R. (Writer) & Graves, A. (Director). (2020, October 9). “What I Know.” (Season 2, Episode 8). The Boys. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

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a very concrete or messy sense, then, the superhero bodies in The Boys enter the realm of the “perverse,” but this “is not a repudiation or celebration of certain acts but ways of thinking such acts” (MacCormack 2004, 2), which brings them out into the open. Julia Kristeva argues that “abjection is above all ambiguity…it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger” (1980, 9). Further, as Margrit Shildrick suggests, the domain of the abject is no mere abstraction but a site that is in fact “densely populated” by all those whose bodies, practices, and desires contest the boundaries of the normative subject. They are the sexual outlaws, the people with disabilities, the racial others, the monsters of every kind, all those who have been denied a place in the symbolic, the domain of the intelligible and fully realized subject in the mode of sexed and gendered self-sufficiency and self-control. (2005, 341–42)

The Boys is collectively a text where these non-normative potentialities emerge, since ambivalence runs like a river through the series’ spaces. One can connect The Boys’ interest in the pornification of abject bodies to the argument that “the eroticisation of computer mediated communication might be bound up with new configurations of embodiment and intersubjectivity which are developing in relation to digital technologies, configurations which can’t be adequately described in terms of absolute presence or absence, proximity or distance” (Waldby 2015). However, this interest in superhero abjection also returns us to the idea of queer heterotopias, which disrupt the “order of things” (Foucault 2005). The bodies of the Seven are both idealized and excessive—the viewer is asked to gaze at them in both moments of heroism and depravity. Gazing in The Boys is thus compromised and becomes a liminal or queer activity. As Fawaz argues, the superhero body has historically “thwarted the direction of heterosexual desire… and cultivated an affective orientation toward otherness and difference that made so-called deviant forms of bodily expression, erotic attachment, and affiliation both desirable and ethical” (2016, 22). It is Homelander in particular who seems to occupy this queer space. On the one hand, he is represented as a blonde and blue-eyed Adonis or Übermensch and is seemingly sexually and romantically interested in women, although the three instances depicted on-screen involve coercion and rape. On the other hand, he fails to enter secure heterosexual

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relationships, and his hypermasculine excess, which, like all superheroes, emerges out of his skin-tight costume, marks the character and his body as powerful, distinct, mysterious, and publicly visible. In a word, the costume marks the wearing as a “spectacle.” Moreover, the costume’s ability to emphasize the hero’s muscular physique implies an innate sexuality to the superhero persona. (Brown 2018, 50)

Catherine Williamson suggests that superhero texts overlap with queer identities in two central ways: the centrality of drag, and the way “secret identities” are closet metaphors. Williamson suggests superheroes are in drag because of the way they use “clothing and performance to signify an ironic relationship between gender and sex,” and that they are in the closet “because of the way secrecy and silence permeate all corners of superhero characterization, including—and especially—sexuality” (1997, 3). Homelander’s secret identity is particularly complex. He was brought up in a laboratory, unaware who his natural parents are. He has a child, but that fact is kept from him; he had been told he was sterile. Homelander is told that the mother of the child, Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten), who he had raped, is also dead. The surrogate Mother and Father he confides in—Madeine Stillwell and Dr. Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman), the Vought scientist who created and raised him—seek to control him and put limits on his identity. Vogelbaum calls Homelander “his greatest mistake.” Homelander, then, emerges as a superhero who from birth has grown up in “heterotopias of deviation,” those institutions where individuals whose behavior is outside or contradicts the social norm are placed. Homelander resists these limitations; he refuses the “closet” he has been put into and exists in a sea of excess. This excess, however, leads to a further overlap between superheroes and queer identity, that of the play of camp, or the “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (Sontag 1996, 1). Homelander camps his way through the series, ironically embodying space as if he and it are locked in a kitsch embrace. Homelander is also of course “trapped” in an Oedipal and narcissistic fantasy, in love with his own image and infatuated with the Mother who is not. He seems to have fixated at the oral and phallic stage—desperate for mother’s breast, terrified of the phallus. And yet he also seeks to build a normal, heterosexual family with Becca Butcher and his son, Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti), taking on the role of father figure, teaching him

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about his powers (“Proper Preparation and Planning”).5 However, given that Ryan was conceived through Homelander’s rape of Becca, the family unit he intends to make is a simulacrum. Such arguments (un)naturally return me to Donald Trump: a figure also caught in his own Oedipal and narcissistic fantasy, unloved by his wife/family but loved by himself, and desperate to prove his superhuman capabilities. The irony, of course, is that such longings queer Trump, in the same way that Homelander-as-Trump queers him. The more Trump embodies a hypermasculine position, the more visible his gender instability becomes. In this respect, Homelander and Trump mirror one another. Understood contextually, Homelander’s queer body speaks to the “identity wars” raging during Trump’s presidency, and to the discourses that labelled Trump as not fully a “man” (with small hands, coiffed hair, over-­ tanned skin). The elastic bodies and spaces in The Boys, however, are not essentially phobic. Rather, they open up gender and sexuality to multiple forms of becoming, and space to possibility and potentiality. The transgression of bodies in the series is often, although not exclusively, joyful, particularly when the bodies are seen and heard to explode or implode. This “frenzy of the visible” is carnal and stands in opposition to bland heteronormativity. There is a “surplus value” (Dyer 1993) to these characters, one where their elasticity is so powerfully drawn it comes to productively dominate the representation. When the boys swing, the series is at its most pleasurable, at its most heterotopic.

Conclusion Superhero texts very often engage with current issues, reflecting and feeding back on dominant concerns. For example, Dan Hassler-Forest argues that post 9/11 superhero films carried forward Bush’s War on Terror doctrine, representing the United States as “a heroic force that operates in the arena of global geopolitics in the same way that superheroes regulate their fantasy worlds” (Hassler-Forest 2012). The Boys similarly taps into three prevalent conditions: the capitalization of space, the transmedia spectacle of celebrity, and the way spaces and bodies are hybridized, extending 5  Sonnenshine, R. (Writer) & Friedlander, L. (Director). (2020, September 4). “Proper Preparation and Planning.” (Season 2, Episode 2). The Boys. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios.

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identity way beyond binaries. That said, there is one further cultural co-­ ordinate the series touches upon: the crisis in whiteness. Starlight and Hughie represent one version of whiteness: homely, pure, ideal, while Homelander represents another more poisonous kind—a hyperwhite figure of and for the Alt Right. Again, Homelander apes Trump, carries forward his religious fervor and his Othering discourses.6 However, Homelander is critically positioned, shown to be corrupt and pathological, while the whiteness that Starlight and Hughie represent is combined with other ethnicities and races in the series. The Boys then may well be reaching for not only the freeing of sex and gender but a post-race narrative. Ultimately, however, these tensions and contradictions, illusions and compensations, render the text messy, with an open aperture, not simply “representing” heterotopia but embodying one.

References Augé, M. (1995). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Trans. J. Howe. Verso. Baruh, L., & Popescu, M. (2017). Big Data Analytics and the Limits of Privacy Self-management. New Media & Society, 19(4), 579–596. Bauman, Z., & Tester, K. (2001). Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Polity. Belton, J. (2002). Digital Cinema: A False Revolution. October, 100, 98–114. Brown, J. A. (2018). Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity: The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus. Routledge. Cranny-Francis, A. (2015). Robots, Androids, Aliens, and Others: The Erotics and Politics of Science Fiction Film. In S.  Redmond & L.  Marvell (Eds.), Endangering Science Fiction Film (pp. 220–242). Routledge. Curtis, N. (2016). Sovereignty and Superheroes. Manchester University Press. Dyer, R. (1993). The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. Routledge. Fawaz, R. (2016). The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics. NYU Press. Foucault, M. (1986). Of Other Spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Foucault, M. (2005). The Order of Things. Routledge. Hassler-Forest, D. (2012). Capitalist Superheroes: Caped Crusaders in the Neoliberal Age. Zero Books. Highmore, B. (2005). Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City. Palgrave Macmillan.

6  As part of their PhD, Ashika Paramita has powerfully explored the theme of Trumpian Discourse in the contemporary comic book.

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Jenkins, H. (2007, March 22). Transmedia Storytelling 101. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html Jewett, R., & Lawrence, J. S. (2004). Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Jones, A. (2009). Queer Heterotopias: Homonormativity and the Future of Queerness. InterAlia: Pismo Poswię ́ cone Studiom Queer, 4, 2–20. Kellner, D. (2003). Media Spectacle. Routledge. Kellner, D. (2017). Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism. Fast Capitalism, 14(1), 75–87. Kobre, M. (2018). Only Transform: The Monstrous Bodies of Superheroes. In W. Haslem (Ed.), Superhero Bodies (pp. 149–160). Routledge. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Columbia University Press. MacCormack, P. (2004). Perversion: Transgressive Sexuality and Becoming-­ Monster. Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture, 3(2) https:// journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/thirdspace/article/view/maccormack Shildrick, M. (2005). Unreformed Bodies: Normative Anxiety and the Denial of Pleasure. Women's Studies, 34(3–4), 341–342. Shore, C., & Wright, S. (2015). Audit Culture Revisited: Rankings, Ratings, and the Reassembling of Society. Current Anthropology, 56(3), 421–444. Soja, E. W. (2003). Imagining Cities. Routledge. Sontag, S. (1996). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin. Stein, D. (2018). Bodies in Transition: Queering the Comic Book Superhero. Navigationen, 18(1), 15–38. Sudradjat, I. (2012). Foucault, the Other Spaces, and Human Behaviour. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 36, 28–34. Turner, G., Bonner, F., & David Marshall, P. (2000). Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge University Press. Waldby, C. (2015, May 12). Circuits of Desire: Internet Erotics and the Problem of Bodily Location. Culture & Communication Reading Room. https:// wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/readingroom/VID/Circuits3.html Walker, B. (2007). The Digital Surreal. http://surfacedetail.com/wp-­content/ uploads/2008/09/the_digital_surreal.pdf Williamson, C. (1997). “Draped Crusaders”: Disrobing Gender in “The Mark of Zorro”. Cinema Journal, 36(2), 3–1.

 Post Production: Screening Futures— From Scarlet to Ebon Mark Bould

In 2068, the Zero-X mission to Mars discovers a beautiful alien city. But the crew, mistakenly thinking they are about to be attacked, open fire and destroy it. In response, the Mysterons swear revenge against Earth, beginning with “a war of nerves.” They will announce attacks against specific targets then, using their ability to “reverse matter,” replace people or objects necessary for the mission with identical copies under Mysteron control. In their first strike, they kill Captain Scarlet, an officer in the global security organization Spectrum, but when his duplicate is also killed, it comes back to life with his original consciousness. And, thanks to his new body’s “retrometabolism,” he is indestructible. My earliest memories of screen SF—and of screens in screen SF—are of Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.1 Its final episode was first broadcast five months before I was born, but the series was shown four more times on ATV Midlands, our

1  Anderson, G. (Executive Producer). (1967–1968). Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons [TV series]. Century 21 Television, ITC.

M. Bould University of the West of England, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Hawkes et al. (eds.), American Science Fiction Television and Space, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10528-9

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ITV regional franchise, between 1969 and 1974. I remember watching it in our house in Staffordshire, and since we moved to Devon in 1972, I must have been only three years old, maybe four. And even though our black-and-white television denied us the series’ vibrant colors, those memories have always been vivid: the color-coded Captains’ epaulettes, which lit up whenever they spoke through the mics that dropped down from their radiocaps; the nuclear- and solar-powered Cloudbase, an aerial aircraft carrier perpetually hovering at 40,000 feet; the Spectrum Patrol Cars, the Angel Interceptor jet-fighters and, above all, the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (SPVs). Designed by Derek Meddings, these metallic-blue, eightton, twenty-five-foot-long, windowless armored vehicles had a very peculiar feature: all the seats faced backwards. Instead of looking out of a windscreen, the driver steered the SPV at speeds in excess of 200 mph by watching live footage of the road (behind him but ahead of the vehicle) on a screen at the rear of the control compartment. Fifty years later, that screen-SF screen seems full of metaphoric potential. In his ninth thesis on the philosophy of history, Walter Benjamin reimagines Paul Klee’s 1920 monoprint Angelus Novus as “the angel of history” looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. … His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (1992: 249)

Anderson claimed that the SPVs’ peculiar internal arrangement was inspired by real-world proposals to redesign airliner interiors for greater passenger safety: during rapid decelerations, they would be pressed into their backward-facing seats rather than thrown perilously forward. Here— as one would expect of the creator of such technophilic shows as Thunderbirds,2 with its frequently extended, almost pornographic, 2   Anderson, G. (Executive Producer). (1965–1966). Thunderbirds [TV Series]. AP Films, ATV.

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sequences of interlocking machinery being deployed—Anderson promulgates a naïve vision of progress while reinforcing the status quo. Consequently, while the SPV driver—whether the crash-prone protagonist or the far more competent Captain Blue (Ed Bishop)—might be oriented like the angel of history, he is incapable of seeing what lies behind its forward thrust. Not for him the catastrophe accumulating in his wake, just the deceptively uncluttered road ahead. His screen screens: it shows and it obscures. And in such an echo chamber, as Benjamin’s fifth thesis notes, “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably” (1992: 247). Captain Scarlet’s conservative imaginary carefully subdues any sense of post-imperial melancholy, appealing instead to British “white heat of modernity” discourses and a nascent sense of global Empire, and washing it down with the Kool-Aid of techno-eroto-consumerism.3 Construing the kind of Atlanticist future Churchill imagined, minus the empire but with similar delusions about Britain’s post-war significance, the series operates along a UK–US axis, as if they are equal partners. Captain Scarlet’s sculpted features are modelled on Cary Grant, and Francis Matthews’ voicing of the character studiously replicates his carefully cultivated midAtlantic accent. New York and London are the favored terrestrial settings, along with more picturesque British and American locations, ranging from a Scottish castle to an unsavory Arizona hotel. Despite acknowledging that, after the (American) World President, the three most powerful politicians in the world are European heads of state, the continent (represented by Paris, Monte Carlo, and Geneva) remains a rump no more prominent than Commonwealth white settler colonies (represented by an Australian outback base and missile facilities in Canada’s far north). The rest of the world is reduced to colonial clichés: Saharan test site, Middle Eastern oilfield, African game reserve, Himalayan observatory, Andean desalination plant. Spectrum’s “benevolent” neo-imperialism is overseen by the aptly named, silver-haired patrician Colonel White. He commands a rainbow array of Captains—Scarlet, Blue, Ochre, Magenta, Gray, Brown, 3  To find any trace of the contemporary SF New Wave in Anderson’s shows, you have to look to the costuming, production design, and more psychedelic episodes of his live-action UFO (1970–71) and Space: 1999 (1975–77). Or to “Double Agent” (12 January 1969), that weird episode of Joe 90 (1968–69) when Joe downloads into his own mind the brain pattern of a woman (apparently) in love with his smitten father.

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Indigo—who are, despite their cognomens, equally pallid Britons, Americans, or safely assimilated colonials or settler-colonists (Irish Captain Magenta, Australian Doctor Fawn). The only suggestions that the rest of the world might actually be involved in this global organization are the French Destiny Angel and the Chinese Harmony Angel. The one named officer of color is the Trinidadian Lieutenant—not Captain—Green. In a similarly limited vein, the series stymies its modest feminist advances through a bizarre gender segregation. Women pilot the supersonic Angel Interceptors, but only women, and that is all they do. They have no military rank and are excluded from Spectrum’s key organizational metaphor: their codenames/callsigns are not colors but musical terms—Symphony, Melody, Harmony, Rhapsody, and, well, Destiny. And while Lieutenant Green is at least voiced by a black actor, Guyanese Cy Grant, the African American Melody Angel is not. Focused almost entirely on the military/political/scientific professional-managerial class, Captain Scarlet at least spares us Thunderbirds’ fawning over swinging London aristocrats. And while it has no Parker— the cockney bank-robber, descended from a family of servants and blackmailed into becoming Lady Penelope’s butler and chauffeur—the general absence of the working classes betrays its shared preference for them to know their place. Traces of the increased but still limited post-war social mobility, associated with grammar schools and redbrick universities, run smack into the class difference inscribed in the UK’s division between the wealthy home counties in the south and the impoverished industrial north—between heroic, clean-cut, Winchester-born Captain Scarlet and his Mancunian nemesis-with-junkie-stubble-and-eye-bags, Captain Black (Donald Gray). In Captain Scarlet, every possibility of building a better future is curtailed by this inability to see the past, to admit to the global catastrophe from which the myth of progress screens us. Instead, the series persistently projects an imagined future onto an obscured past. As if it were all inevitable and necessary and seamless. As if there is no alternative, and never was. It is like the nineties’ Fukuyama (1992), but with puppets. Do not get me wrong. Imagining the future is not easy. And Gerry Anderson’s combination of embracing technological advances while refusing structural changes is not at all uncommon. A similar pattern subtends the American right-wing libertarian SF tradition that runs from Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), through survivalist and doomsday prepping scenarios, to tech billionaires fantasizing that any

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problem—regardless of scale—can be solved (profitably) with a technical fix, and that they can upload themselves into the digital while ordinary folks will be happy with indentured servitude in Martian colonies. But no matter how unsatisfactory such fictions might be, they articulate SF’s central problematic (how to imagine difference) and its unavoidable corollaries (the ideological horizon, legibility, cognizability). This SF dialectic of familiarity and novelty, identity and alterity, is manifested in The Expanse’s4 lang Belta: when first encountered, viewers (differentially) recognize only fragments of the diasporic polyglot creole,5 but through context and repetition, they (differentially) begin to learn their way into an alternative language and worldview to that provided by the more or less standard English of welwala Inners. The torsions of this dialectic are visible in SF settings where distinctive real-world locations that once epitomized architecture’s cutting edge play at being somewhere else—like the bits of the Royal Festival Hall and the Westin Bonaventure Hotel that crop up in Blakes 76 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century 7—or where real-world locations are redressed in futuristic garb, such as The Expanse’s New York or the San Francisco of sundry Star Trek iterations. Negotiating a path through this dialectic throws up ambiguities, as Blade Runner 8 demonstrates. The overt labelling of its rather un-Los-Angeles-looking city as Los Angeles means that if you recognize the Bradbury building and the 2nd Street tunnel, you can be sure they are playing themselves. But has Union Station really become police headquarters, or is the scene merely filmed there? And what are we to make of Deckard’s 97th floor apartment? Filmed in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, it is clearly not located there, so its walls are simultaneously decorated with Wright’s faux Mayan wall panels and, as K.W.  Jeter puts it, 4  Shankar, N., Fergus, M., Ostby, H., Daniel, S., Brown, J.F., Hall, S., Johnson, B., Kosove, A., Lancaster, L., Abraham, D., Franck, T., Nowak, D., Roberts, B. (Executive Producers). (2015–2022). The Expanse [TV series]. Legendary Television. 5  Comprised of Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Zulu, and other languages. On the distinctiveness of SF language, see Csicsery-Ronay, Jr (2008: 13–46). 6  Maloney, D., Lorrimer, V. (Producers). (1978–1981). Blake’s 7 [TV Series]. BBC. 7  Larson, G. A., Mantley, J. (Executive Producers). (1979–1981). Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [TV Series]. Glen A.  Larson Productions, Bruce Lansbury Productions, John Mantley Productions, Universal Television. 8  Scott, R. (Director), David Peoples and Hampton Fancher (Screenplay), (1982). Blade Runner [Film]. The Ladd Company, Shaw Brothers, Warner Bros., Blade Runner Partnership, Michael Deeley Production, Ridley Scott Productions.

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“replicas of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original faux Mayan wall panel” (1995: 235).9 Fredric Jameson’s corrective to SF’s traditional understanding of “extrapolation” illuminates the significance of these SF words and worlds. In mathematics, the term describes a process of estimation for deriving the value of a variable beyond the current data set. Writers, fans, and critics adopted it in the mid-twentieth century to describe several related SF world-building practices focused on anticipating (not predicting) possible (but not necessarily probable) developments or outcomes: a hard-SF writer such as Hal Clement might in Mission of Gravity (1953) extrapolate the nature of life on a planet revolving so quickly that its surface gravity varies from 3g at the equator to 700g at the poles, while a satirical SF writer like Frederik Pohl might in “The Midas Plague” (1954) extrapolate some comically counter-intuitive consequences of runaway consumer capitalism. However, in 1975 Jameson—beginning with the words on the page rather than any putative world-building process—reconceptualized SF’s “capacity to provide something like an experimental variation on our own empirical universe” (2005a: 270). Noting the collocation of feudal architecture, electric winches and massive yet quiet trucks running on caterpillar tracks in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), he argues that SF extrapolation “means nothing if it does not designate just such details as these, in which heterogeneous or contradictory elements of the empirical real world are juxtaposed and recombined into piquant montages” (2005a: 276). On the one hand, this echoes Trotsky’s description of combined and uneven development;10 on the other, it identifies the way in which SF, as Jameson puts it in a 1982 essay, “defamiliarize[s] and restructure[s] our experience of our own present” and “transforming [it] into the determinate past of something yet to come” (2005b: 286, 288). Other theoretical frameworks capture something of this SF dialectic. Consider, for example, Michel De Certeau’s (1984) distinction between the urban planner who, like some transcendent deity, looks down upon 9  A further wrinkle is added if you also recognize Warner Bros.’ New York street backlot, built in Burbank in the 1930s and appearing, not necessarily as a New York street, in such films as The Public Enemy (Wellman 1931), Little Caesar (LeRoy 1931), The Maltese Falcon (Huston 1941), and The Big Sleep (Hawks 1946). 10  The way in which capitalism, imposed on a non-capitalist society, sublates existing forces and relations of production, social structures, and cultural forms to produce not global uniformity but yet another in the array of particular local forms of global capitalist-modernity.

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the city and fantasizes that it is a rational, orderly space, free from the material complications of history, people and places, and the actually existing sprawling contradictory realities of urban life and space that, “below the thresholds [of] visibility,” teem with pathways entangled like “intertwining, unrecognized poems” (93). Or Donna J. Haraway’s (1998) distinction between “the God trick” (581) of presumptive objectivity and situated knowledges. And the SF dialectic of Jameson’s piquant montages resonate strongly with some of the theoretical frameworks drawn upon by authors in this volume, such as Michel Foucault’s heterotopia of deviance, where “behaviour deviates from the current average or standard” (1997: 353), and with three of his heterotopian principles: the “juxtapos[ition] in a single real place of different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other” (1997: 354); the related heterochronistic collection of “bits and pieces of time” (1997: 354); and the implicit “system of opening and closing that isolates … and makes penetrable at one and the same time” (1997: 355). Or Gloria Anzaldúa’s distinction between the border and the borderland. One is “a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge” invented, policed, and militarized by state power “to distinguish us from them” (1987: 3); the other is “a vague and undetermined place … in a constant state of transition” and inhabited by the “prohibited and forbidden” (1987: 3). Derrida’s opposition of l’futur and l’avenir recapitulates Anzaldúa’s spatial thinking in temporal terms. L’futur refers to the programmed, prescribed, predictable perpetuation of what already is, locking down future possibilities to a single path. In The Twonky,11 l’futur is an authoritarian future reaching back into the present in the form of a robot identical in appearance to a contemporary television set—another screen-SF screen. The Twonky takes over a philosophy professor’s house and life, censoring his choice of reading and listening material, preventing him from lecturing on the importance of free speech, and putting anyone who challenges it into an acquiescent trance. A decade earlier, this electromechanical interloper would have implied a fascist future, and one might easily take it for McCarthy-era avatar of communism (or social democracy, which America often likes to confuse with communism). But the film’s feeble satire is sufficiently confused that it might 11  Oboler, A. (Director), Arch Oboler (written for the screen by), (1953). The Twonky [Film]. Arch Oboler Productions. Based on the 1942 story of the same name by Lewis Padgett, a pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.

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as easily threaten the idiocracy of Cyril M.  Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” (1951) or the consumer-conformist nightmare intimated by Invasion of the Body Snatchers.12 Regardless of specifics, this locked-down future seems inevitable: how else could its harbinger arrive here from there, transmitted into a present lacking insufficient immunity, its seeds broadcast on the now’s too-receptive soil? Contingency begins to look like telos; becoming reifies into being. Seventy years later, l’futur is the world ravaged by market monotheism, extended forward in time through fictitious capital’s proliferating instruments and through the deadly climatic consequences of carbon capitalism. In contrast, l’avenir is the unknowable future, the unpredictable that cannot be anticipated. It is the enduringly indeterminate “not-yet” of Ernst Bloch (1998) (and José Esteban Muñoz 2009). Neither locked down nor locked in, it is wide open, full of potential and impossible to screen. Derrida writes, “that for which we are not prepared … is heralded by … species for which we do not yet have a name” (1995: 386); that is, by monsters. Like Anzaldúa’s borderland, l’avenir screens—that is, shelters— “the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half dead…, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal’” (1987: 3). At its nearest edge lie planets like Ebon in “Nightmare”, an episode of The Outer Limits.13 In the opening sequence, this alien world is a featureless black disc at the center of a starfield, over which the narrator pronounces “Ebon, its form of life unknown, its way of life unpredictable, to the fighting troops of Earth a black question mark at the end of a dark foreboding journey.” Unified Earth’s Colonel Stone (Ed Nelson) takes over, explaining to his multiethnic crew, “We have no way of knowing what to expect of the enemy. We’ve never seen him before.” In such places—further out towards the Rim than Z’ha’dum, in the Twilight Zone of the Upside Down—are the gates of difference, the borders of the possible, the threshold of becoming,14 the place from which teratological potential speaks. 12   Siegel, D. (Director), Daniel Mainwaring (Screenplay), (1956). Invasion of the Bodysnatchers [Film]. Allied Artists Pictures, Walter Wanger Productions. 13  Stefano, J. (Writer) & Erman, J. (Director). (1963, December 2). “Nightmare”. (Season 1, Episode 2). The Outer Limits. Villa Di Stefano, Daystar Productions, United Artists Television. 14  See Cohen (2020).

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An uncanny arrivant from the future—all but impossible to distinguish from the revenant, the ghost that returns to haunt, the already dead that refuses to stay buried—the monster addresses us through its very anomalousness. It shows us the monstrousness of the world we have made, of “what normality is” (Derrida 1995: 385)—just as “Nightmare” reveals that it is not a story about cruel alien others torturing captured humans, but about rational humans subjecting their own soldiers to sometimes lethal experiments just in case they should one day encounter extraterrestrials as “anxious and belligerent” as themselves. The monster is utterly unprecedented—there’s never been anything like it before—and thus it is as desirable as it is terrifying. Screened, it demands that we screen; rejected, it requires us to consider the possibilities. To admit that there is something wrong with our television. To adjust the picture. To seize control of the transmission, of the horizontal and the vertical. To refuse the one single image in all its crystal clarity. To participate in a great adventure. And, in any new world of gods and monsters, to always choose monsters.

References Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Benjamin, W. (1992). Theses on the Philosophy of History. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Trans. H. Zohn. Illuminations (pp. 245–255). Fontana. Bloch, E. (1998). Can Hope Be Disappointed? In Literary Essays (A.  Joron & Others, Trans., pp. 339–344). Stanford University Press. Cohen, J. J. (2020). Monster Culture (Seven Theses). In J. A. Weinstock (Ed.), The Monster Theory Reader (pp. 37–56). University of Minnesota Press. Csicsery-Ronay, I., Jr. (2008). The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press. De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life., Trans. S. Rendall. University of California Press. Derrida, J. (1995). Passages—From Traumatism to Promise. In E. Weber (Ed.), Trans. P.  Kamuf & Others Points…: Interviews, 1974–1994 (pp.  372–395). Stanford University Press.

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Foucault, M. (1997). Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (pp. 350–356). Routledge. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press. Haraway, D. J. (1998). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Jameson, F. (2005a). World Reduction in Le Guin. In Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (pp. 267–280). Verso. Jameson, F. (2005b). Progress Versus Utopia, or: Can We Imagine the Future? In Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (pp. 281–295). Verso. Jeter, K. W. (1995). Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human. Orion. Muñoz, J.  E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press.

Index1

A AI, 48, 193, 194 Algorithm, 227, 228, 230, 240, 243, 246, 255, 258 Amazon Prime, 251 Anzaldúa, Gloria, xxiv, 1, 22, 26, 27, 30n12, 34, 34n19, 36, 37, 273, 274 B Bauman, Zygmunt, xxi, 147, 152, 154–159, 254 Berman, Rick, 101 Bodies enhancement of, 45 monster, 46 queer, 225, 264 Brooker, Charlie, 57, 64, 84

C Capitalism, xvi, 6, 7, 41, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 122, 125, 126, 129, 130, 133, 149, 193, 199–202, 243, 252, 255, 272, 272n10, 274 Celebrity, xxvi, 138, 204, 225, 251–265 Class, 8, 26, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 122, 131, 148, 149, 160, 270 Colonization, 7–9, 12, 23, 41, 45, 49–52, 148, 154, 246 Commodification, 256, 258, 259 Communications, v, 22n4, 31, 172, 173, 181, 182, 196–199, 201, 203, 204, 229–231, 234, 240, 242, 262 Communism, 136, 273 Community, xvi, xix, 17, 27, 50, 57, 62, 130, 156, 169, 210, 225–226, 252, 256

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Computer graphic imaging (CGI), ix, xx, 86, 164, 168, 171, 176, 177, 188, 242 Cronenberg, David, 226 Cybernetics, 89, 185 D Derrida, Jacques, 197, 198, 273–275 Disability, 62, 64, 65, 262 Displacement, 214 Dystopia, 23, 69, 83–89 E Exploitation, 6, 7, 23, 24, 49, 50, 156, 203 F Fandom, xiii, xv, 74, 101, 103, 105, 106, 120, 125, 135, 138–140, 169, 221 Foucault, Michel, vii, viii, xii, xiv, xvi, xviii, 60, 61, 95, 98, 170, 171, 175, 198, 210–212, 215, 220, 222, 253, 262, 273 G Ghosts, xvii, 197, 198, 275 H Habitation, xxiii, xxiv, 1–3, 5–20, 146, 147, 151 Harvey, David, 41, 43, 46, 48, 49, 53 Haunting, 148, 197 Heteronormativity, 264 Heterotopia, vii–x, xii, xiv, xv, xvii, xviii, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, 60, 61, 66, 67, 69, 78, 95, 98, 171, 175,

183–185, 210, 222, 232, 251–253, 258, 261–263, 265, 273 Home, x, xii, xiii, xviii–xx, xxiv, 2, 11–20, 29, 49, 60, 72–84, 88–90, 97, 102, 109, 111, 112, 114, 132, 133, 135, 146, 148, 157, 159, 168, 171–176, 182, 186, 188, 225, 231, 239, 240, 252, 270 Humanism, 193, 195, 198, 201, 205 Humanity, xix, 43, 51, 89, 109, 111, 113, 145–147, 149, 154, 157, 158, 168, 174, 187, 193, 195–199, 202 I Identity, xxvi, 18, 27–29, 32, 36, 42, 62, 65, 86, 120, 170, 179, 180, 185, 194–197, 201, 203, 204, 240, 252, 257, 263, 264, 271 Imperialism, 49 Interface, vi, x, xxii, xxvi, 163–166, 184–187 Intraface, 163, 165, 166, 184 Isolation, xxii, 178, 235 J Jameson, Fredric, 56, 58, 67, 272, 273 K Klein, Naomi, 127, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136 L Lefebvre, Henri, viii, ix, xvi, xxiii, xxiv, 1, 6–8, 11, 12, 17, 19, 40–52, 146, 148, 149, 154–156, 158, 229, 243, 244 Lucas, George, 120, 121, 124, 124n11, 125

 INDEX 

M Metafiction, 188 Mirror universe, see Reflection, modes of, mirror Modernism, 146, 238 Modernity, xxi, xxv, 12, 96, 146–149, 152–157, 159, 160, 227, 269 Moore, Ronald D., xiii, 75, 76, 82, 97–116, 164 N Nature, vi, viii, xi, xvii, xviii, xxii, xxiii, 1, 9, 13, 15, 41–43, 45, 47, 50–52, 63, 86, 101–103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 125, 127, 147, 150, 153, 159, 196, 214, 272 resources, 45 Neoliberalism, 41, 46, 50, 52, 122, 127, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139 Netflix, vii, xiv, xvii, xxii, 39, 48, 69, 72, 77–82, 84–86, 217, 218, 221, 228, 230, 234, 236, 240, 244 Networks, xvi, 25, 50, 71, 72, 74–77, 86, 89, 97, 99, 113, 149, 169, 211, 212, 226–247 Nostalgia, 48, 52, 56, 57, 59, 64–67, 88, 194–197, 232, 240 O Occupation Bajor, 7, 8, 10 Deep Space Nine (DS9), 5–7, 9 Iraq, 113 New Caprica, 114 Wall Street (see Occupy Wall Street) Occupy Wall Street, 137 P Peak TV, see Prestige TV Performance, 48, 107, 179, 196, 204, 213, 263

279

Prestige TV, xxiv, xxv, 2, 73, 75–77, 85–88, 166, 192–195, 197, 199, 204, 205 Q Quality TV, see Prestige TV Queer in bodies, 57, 59, 62, 65, 66, 225, 240 Queerness, see Queer in bodies R Rebellion, 6, 65, 199, 203 Reflection, modes of, 16, 99, 102, 104 mirror, xxiv prisms, 138 S Sawyer, Robert J., xxvi, 164, 209–223 Science fiction (SF), definitions of, v, xi Science fiction (SF), limitations of, 57 Sex, 29, 47, 48, 66, 85, 87, 192, 194, 195, 253, 261, 263, 265 Singularity, 193, 200 Social practice, 42 Soldiers, see War Space boundaries, 197, 222 capitalist, 8, 243 configuration, xix frontier, xviii, 26 hybrid, 176, 178, 185 localized, 215 map, 149 margin, 252 media, xxvi, 109, 115, 225, 227–247 multiplicity, v non-localized, xxv occupied, xxiii, 5–20 opening, 152–155

280 

INDEX

Space (cont.) outer, v, vi, viii, x, xi, xviii, xxi, 2, 8, 19, 20, 43, 44, 71–90, 122, 172 political, 12, 26, 30, 33, 37, 110, 138 produced, viii, xviii, xx, 8, 13, 14, 19 queer, 262 reconfiguration, 99, 150, 152 reflective, 222 representational, viii, ix, 45 semantic, 22, 27, 31–33, 36, 37 social, vii, x, xxiii, xxv, 1, 6, 8, 12–14, 17, 19, 43, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 160, 229 textual, 210 trap, 44, 58 urban, 41, 50, 52, 243, 254 virtual, 56, 58, 95, 197, 198 Space opera, xviii, xx, 72, 140, 176, 178, 179, 188 Space station, 1, 2, 6, 7, 13, 15, 101, 225 Space, theories of centre/periphery, 149 heterotopia, vii, ix, 253 nexus, 152 non-place, 179 public/private, 136, 211, 237, 242, 257, 259, 261 social space, 1 Space-time, 57, 59, 63, 67 Spectacle, 101, 108, 228, 256, 259, 263, 264 Star Trek, v, xii, xiii, xv, xviii, 1, 5, 14, 16, 26, 27, 74, 75, 81, 82, 85–89, 99–107, 123n10, 214n8, 271 Straczynski, Joseph Michael, xx, 74, 168–170, 172, 174, 179, 180, 182 Superhero, xxvi, 225, 251–264 Superpowers, 134, 255, 260

T Television (TV) broadcast, 73–76, 84, 87 cable, 72, 73, 76, 77 production, viii, ix, xiv, xv, xx, 77, 170, 187, 188, 211 screen, v–vii, x, xiv, xix, 97, 108, 110, 114, 170, 171, 183–185, 187, 188, 221 streaming services, xvii, xxv, 163–166, 228 Time crip, 62–64 queer, xxiv, 57, 62, 64 Transformation, vi, vii, 13, 43, 52, 53, 61, 68, 120, 123, 146, 154, 158, 171, 177, 178, 180, 186, 188, 192, 210, 257, 259 Transmedia, 257, 264 U Utopia queer, xxiv, 55–69 transhuman, 56 V Virtual reality (VR), 56–59, 183, 226, 254 W War, 9, 14, 100, 108, 112, 155, 275 Cardassian, 6, 10 Clone Wars, xxv, 96, 119–140 Cold War, 99, 101, 136, 157, 238 Desert Storm, 97, 99, 100 Dominion, 19, 104, 107 Romulan, 104, 105