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The Starlost was a Canadian-produced science fiction television series devised by writer Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973 on CTV in Canada and on NBC in the United States. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
Harlan Ellison, c. ...
1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ...
CTV is a TLA that may stand for: CTV Television Network - a Canadian English language television network Channel Television - the main television broadcaster in the Channel Islands Chukyo TV. Broadcasting - a Japanese TV station in Nagoya This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might...
The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ...
It was about a multigenerational ship lost in space, whose inhabitants had forgotten that they were on a ship. However the production of the show had many difficulties, and Ellison ended up disowning the show before the first episode even aired. A generation ship is a hypothetical type of starship that would travel much slower than light across great distances between stars (see interstellar travel). ...
The Premise
The initial concept was that, faced by the destruction of Earth, a multigeneration starship had been built. The ship contained dozens of self-contained biospheres, miles across, each one containing people from a different culture. Early in the voyage, disaster struck, and the command section, with its crew, was destroyed. ...
This article is about the vehicle for interstellar travel. ...
The biosphere is that part of a planets outer shell—including air, land, surface rocks and water—within which life occurs, and which biotic processes in turn alter or transform. ...
Centuries later, the story opens with a young man in the Amish biosphere making a discovery that the world is far larger and mysterious than he had realised: he finds his way into the service areas of the ship, and discovers its history. The ship is now only a few years from its destination: the (lost) alternate command bridge needs to be found, somewhere on the vast ship, and preparations made for arrival. Amish couple in a horse-drawn buggy in rural Holmes County, Ohio, the site of one of the largest concentrations of Amish in the United States The Amish are a denomination of Anabaptists and noted for their restrictions on the use of modern devices such as automobiles and electricity. ...
The scenario drew on common themes in science fiction; it had the obvious potential for an interesting, developing storyline as more discoveries were made about the ship, and other, previously isolated cultures contacted in other biospheres. Twentieth Century Fox was interested in the project, Douglas Trumbull was to be the executive producer; Keir Dullea was contracted to play the lead role. The science fiction writer and editor Ben Bova was signed up as science advisor. Related articles FOX Television Network Fox Searchlight Pictures Fox Entertainment Group List of Hollywood movie studios List of movies Variant of current 20th Century Fox logo External links 20th Century Fox Movies official site Twentieth Century Fox is also the punning title of a song by The Doors on their...
Douglas Trumbull (born 1942) is a film director and special effects supervisor. ...
Keir Dullea (born May 30, 1936) is an actor best remembered for his role as astronaut David Bowman in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
Benjamin William Bova (born November 8, 1932) is an American science fiction author and editor. ...
Problems in Development and Production Problems began when Fox was unable to sell the show to the networks, and decided to do it in syndication. With the show not being in prime time, Fox started trying to find ways of cutting the budget, moving production to Toronto - there was also a writers' strike in the US at that time, which did not help. Most of the Toronto production team had never done television drama. As the filming went on, Ellison grew increasingly disenchanted with the progressive dumbing down of the story, budget cuts, and crucial details changed. }|135px|City of Toronto, Ontario Official Flag]]|Coat Image=[[Image:{{{Coat Image}}}|135px|City of Toronto, Ontario Coat of Arms]]}} {{Hide = {{{Disable Motto Link}}}}} Motto: {{Unhide = {{{Disable Motto link}}}}} Diversity Our Strength {{Canadian City/Location Image is:{{{Location Image Type}}}|[[Image:{{{Location Image}}}|thumbnail|center|250px|City of Toronto, Ontario...
Dumbing down is a usually derogatory term which refers to the simplifying of a subject, often education, news and TV amongst others. ...
By the end of production, Ellison had invoked a clause in his writers' contract to force the producers to use his alternate registered writer's name of "Cordwainer Bird" on the end credits: this was a signal to anyone who knew him to show how disgusted he was with the whole business (see Alan Smithee for the motion picture industry equivalent). Alan Smithee, Allen Smithee, and Adam Smithee are pseudonyms used between 1968 and 1999 by Hollywood film directors who wanted to be dissociated from a film for which they no longer wanted credit. ...
For other uses see film (disambiguation) Film refers to the celluliod media on which movies are printed Film — also called movies, the cinema, the silver screen, moving pictures, photoplays, picture shows, flicks, or motion pictures, — is a field that encompasses motion pictures as an art form or as part of...
The show aired, to uniformly bad reviews. Sixteen episodes had been made, but NBC decided not to pick up the options for the remainder of the series after seeing how badly it was doing in the ratings. Bova, having gotten increasingly frustrated as his advice was ignored, saw the first show when it was broadcast, and immediately quit. He asked the producers to take his name off the credits of all the shows, but unfortunately did not have a clause like Ellison's in his contract, so his name remained on the credits. The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ...
Afterward On 31 March, 1974, Ellison received a Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay for the original script. A novelisation of this script by Edward Bryant, Phoenix Without Ashes, was published in 1975; this contained a lengthy afterword by Ellison describing what had gone on in production. March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining, as the final day of March. ...
1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ...
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the collective bargaining representative, or labor union, for writers in the motion picture and television industries. ...
Edward Winslow Bryant Jr. ...
1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...
Ben Bova, in an editorial in Analog Science Fiction (June 1974) and in interviews in fanzines made it clear how disgruntled he had been as science advisor, and in 1975 published a novel entitled The Starcrossed, depicting a scientist taken on as a science advisor for a (terrible) science fiction series. Astounding Stories was a seminal science fiction magazine founded in 1930. ...
In this context, the announcement some years later, by the producer of Babylon 5, that Ellison was going to be the advisor for that series was an indication to science fiction fans that, for once, there would be a serious attempt to do science fiction properly on television. (Ellison was listed on the credits for Babylon 5 as himself, rather than Cordwainer Bird). The Babylon 5 Station Babylon 5 is an epic science fiction television series created, produced, and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. ...
Episodes of the original series were rebroadcast in 1980. Several episodes were also edited together form movie-length installments that were sold to cable television broadcasters in the 1980s. Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house Cable television or Community Antenna Television (CATV) (often shortened to cable) is a system of providing television, FM radio programming and other services to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted directly to people’s televisions through fixed optical...
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