KEY POINTS:
UPDATE: SIGN THE SCI-FI CHANNEL PETITION! A petition has been started to try and encourage Sky TV to introduce the Sci-Fi channel to its line-up of Pay TV channels. Add your signature!
A package arrived in my mailbox from Amazon.com last week. Its contents: a well-used 1985 edition of The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories.
These are the stories that Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling culled from the pulp magazines and literary journals of the fifties and sixties to turn into teleplay for his hit TV series, The Twilight Zone. The stories are penned by such great writers of "speculative fiction" as Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont.
Beaumont, who Serling once described as "living permanently in the twilight zone" got it right when he said the groundbreaking TV series meant "the dream of every green blooded fan would come true and for the first time we'll have decent science fiction and fantasy available on a regular basis".
The Twilight Zone is still a classic and reading these stories has got me wondering why there isn't more of an outlet for good sci-fi fare among the dozens of channels we now have access to. The Americans are lucky enough to have access to the Sci-Fi channel. Check out a regular day's schedule - The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, Eureka, X-Files, Kingdom Hospital and a bunch of Sci-Fi Channel-created movies.
So here's the message to Sky's programming people - next time you're looking to add a channel to your pay TV line-up maker it the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there disillusioned with TV and looking for some of the great thought-provoking material in the vein of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
Those shows were preoccupied with the human condition. Many of the stories were grounded in fantasy, horror or science-fiction, but they all made comment about society. Each scenario or story was a metaphor for what was going on in the world. It was thought-provoking stuff and the stand-alone nature of the stories meant you didn't have to tune in for an entire series to keep up with what was going on. We've lost this sort of innovative, episodic story-telling in television.
With TV3's change of heart with Underbelly, we've seen what role fan power can play in steering the programming schedule. So if you want the Sci-Fi channel on Sky leave a comment below and show the programmers at Sky you want something more substantial to view on their pay TV service!
