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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 Alex Christie
University of Victoria Brock University
Victoria, BC, Canada 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
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 Preproduction: Colliding Spaces

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 begin-
ning 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

1
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.

v
vi PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 (televi-
sion) 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 televi-
sion 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 recon-
figuration). This reconfiguration has been led by the US, in terms of num-
ber 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 con-
scious of the spaces it creates and inhabits—with population growth, tech-
nological 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 tech-
nologies 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES vii

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 experi-
ence 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 col-
lective shift toward radical connectivity: “I was becoming part of some-
thing, 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 tech-
nologies and transformations of societies, bodies, and planet. Again, SF
television has been particularly prescient of these complex spatial produc-
tions 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 trans-
forms our world in the tradition of SF storytelling. With these complexi-
ties of space (and time) in mind, this edited collection examines the
(television) screen and the SF genre as the most transformative of hetero-
topias—“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 reflect-
ing 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
viii PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 hetero-
topic 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 stream-
ing screen not only extends the heterotopic capability of Foucault’s cine-
matic 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 heteroto-
pias that collide and transform our world.
This relationship between SF genre and TV medium is in part a rela-
tionship 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 move-
ments, flows, and conflicts within the spaces we inhabit—walking, read-
ing, living). 2. Representations of space (planning, theorizing, and political
structuring of the spaces we inhabit—city planners, engineers, and politi-
cians). 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 cos-
mologies,” 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 representa-
tional space is of course important to SF television—a dominant imaginary
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES ix

on our small screens—but there are other spaces, including various degrees
of what we might term inner space, of planet earth, mind, and, increas-
ingly, 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 produc-
tion. Representation of SF television space might include an industry knowl-
edge of SF narratives and TV production—a knowledge that feeds back
into further development and evolution of SF television and its technolo-
gies. Representation would also include academic books, like this one you
now read, which theorizes SF TV space. And the intertextuality (the refer-
encing of other scholars) of this collection further speaks to this type of
production.
The technology, or space, of the (TV) screen itself complicates this tri-
parted 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 “cogni-
tive estrangement” (Suvin 1979, 15) that makes our world a science fic-
tionally textured space (Redmond 2004, ix–xi). The SF screen and show
then reflect the “difference” of “contradictory space” that Lefebvre asso-
ciates 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 heteroto-
pias)” and “open access” (294). It is, appropriately, this sense of the
“social” that film scholar Vivian Sobchack picks up in her understanding
x PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 pro-
duce 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 produc-
tion 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 col-
lection 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 cre-
ator 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 explo-
rations 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xi

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 aca-
demic and popular culture definitions of the genre. The repeated employ-
ment of the phrases “speculative fiction” and “advanced technologies”
dominate, but their prominence owes much to more particular defini-
tions, such as that of SF author Robert A. Heinlein, who suggests SF as a
“realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on ade-
quate 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 out-
lines SF as a “genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the pres-
ence 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 con-
fronted with the term “science fiction,” the popular imaginary often con-
jures 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 disso-
nance 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)
xii PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 fran-
chise, 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xiii

Babylon 5,12 Farscape,13 Firefly,14 and Battlestar Galactica15 (from the cre-
ator 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 uni-
verse, 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.
xiv PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 assem-
bles in a “single real place different spaces” that are “incompatible with
each other” (Foucault 354). Here there are a series of “real” spaces hold-
ing the SF spaces: from television studio, through screen, to room in
which viewers watch. Played out over 178 episodes, TNG firmly estab-
lishes 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 ges-
tures 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 pos-
sible 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, stream-
ing 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
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xv

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018),19 which offers an interactive experi-

ence, 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 confer-
ences, 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 tra-
ditional 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 pro-
gramming as it developed in the late 1980s and beyond, a development
taking place in large part through the evolution of new filming and broad-
casting 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 sto-
rylines 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.
xvi PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

For our purposes here, this 1987 development in the production of

television space also finds a symbolic counterpoint in the 1989 cancella-
tion 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 epi-
sodic design, TNG’s increased budget and its building of a complex uni-
verse 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 “cow-
boy” 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 bound-
ary 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

21
Letts, B. (Executive Producer). (1963–1989). Doctor Who [TV series]. BBC.
22
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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xvii

generally, and with it the production of SF television. American companies

have also had success with marketing these products abroad, and SF block-
buster 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 sug-
gested, SF seems at times like such a “deeply American genre” because it
is often reflective of American history and politics (265), as well as techno-
logical 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, includ-
ing 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
xviii PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 cap-
tain, 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 broadcast-
ing rights. The clips, introduced by one of the Space Rangers as informa-
tion 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 ital-
ics; 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xix

this list the popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian,29 whose titular char-
acter 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 fol-
lowed (mostly) episodic storytelling, and despite its higher production
values, the show retained something of the hokeyness of early SF produc-
tions. 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.
xx PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 sta-
tion 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 tech-
nologies 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 “unreal-
ity” of this produced space engenders a greater sense of reality on our digi-
tal 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xxi

and they more readily encroach upon our physical “everyday” world. This
immersive experience was enabled (and enhanced) by the switch to a digi-
tal 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 televi-
sion,” 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 experi-
ence mediated through our screens comes in the show Sense8,35 in which
the show’s “characters embody” an “experience of digital deterritorialisa-
tion,” 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.
xxii PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

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 inter-
face, with each other and through our digital screens.
A more telling example of a heterotopic show aware of its own produc-
tion is another Netflix series, The OA,36 which taps the current trend for
multiple-universe storytelling. The high-concept SF sets into motion vari-
ous 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 uni-
verse 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xxiii

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, chap-
ters 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 inter-
preted as a “corrective” for twenty-first century nativist and capitalist co-
opting 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
xxiv PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES

Dando, and Edward Sadrai (St. Cloud State University) approaches the
habitation of space through language. This chapter considers the con-
structed 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 lan-
guage, 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 gener-
ally. 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.
 PREPRODUCTION: COLLIDING SPACES xxv

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 configura-
tions 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 revolu-
tionary 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.
xxvi Preproduction: Colliding Spaces

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 hetero-
topic 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 vari-
ous 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 col-
lection, 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.
 Preproduction: Colliding Spaces  xxvii

contributors to the volume have come together to produce a heterotopic

scholarly inquiry that could not have been accomplished through any sin-
gle voice; this output thus leverages the generative power of the heteroto-
pia 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 Joel Hawkes

St. Catharines, ON, Canada Alex Christie
Victoria, BC, Canada Tom Nienhuis

References
Akhmedov, R. (2020). Social and Philosophical Ideas Through Heterotopia:
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Asimov, I. (1975). How Easy to See the Future! Natural History.
Bergson, H. (1965). Duration and Simultaneity: With Reference to Einstein’s
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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.
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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,
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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.
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Murray, J. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
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Redmond, S. (2017). Liquid Space: Science Fiction Film and Television in the
Digital Age. I. B. Tauris.
 Preproduction: Colliding Spaces  xxix

Stableford, B. (1996). The Third Generation of Genre SF. Science Fiction Studies,
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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
xxxii Contents

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
 Contents  xxxiii

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
xxxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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, tex-
tual 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 (peda-
gogy toolkit), he is currently completing a monograph on modern manu-
scripts 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 ungram-
matical, 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 cre-
ate social, cultural, and political identities that generate educational oppor-
tunities 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 pub-
lishing 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.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxvii

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 steer-
ing 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 conspira-
cies, 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 phys-
ical 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).
xxxviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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 anti-
racist 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 sci-
ence 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 cyber-
punk sub-genre, remains strong, and he hopes to explore cyberpunk’s
depictions of religious/supernatural experiences in future projects.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxix

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 fail-
ure 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 dis-
sertation 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 pre-
sented 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 sig-
nificance of Rose of Sharon’s smile for The Steinbeck Review. He has forth-
coming 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,
xl NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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 refer-
ence 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.

1
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.
2 Contested Habitation: Enclosed, Encoded, and Reordered Spaces

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-uto-
pia, 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 ulti-
mately 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 some-
thing 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.
 Contested Habitation: Enclosed, Encoded, and Reordered Spaces  3

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, his-
tory would have recorded far less suffering and death. Conflicts over the
right to claim space as one’s own have instead existed throughout collec-
tive memory. Legitimacy may hinge on who occupied the space first, or
the longest, or the most recently, on whose numbers are greatest or weap-
ons most powerful. Arising from these battles to assert a right to habita-
tion, 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 cen-
tral preoccupation of the third live-action Star Trek television series, Deep
Space Nine (DS9, 1993–99).1 This chapter will examine how the series

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.

I. R. Hark (*)
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 5

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
6 I. R. HARK

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 prac-
tices 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 mil-
lions 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 geno-
cidal 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 sover-
eignty, 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.
 1 OCCUPIED SPACE: THE CONTESTED HABITATION OF TEROK NOR/DEEP… 7

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 domi-
nated may itself be dominant in another space. We know that the spatial
hierarchy presents itself as an entwining or imbrication of dominant/dom-
inated 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 resis-
tance increases the likelihood of “state resurrection” but does not guaran-
tee 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, topol-
ogies, 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
8 I. R. HARK

who have been dispossessed (alienated) through conquest and coloniza-

tion” (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 revolution-
ary 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 estab-
lished 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.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Le lendemain il causait avec tout le monde et tout faisait
espérer les meilleurs résultats d’une prompte guérison, il
passe une bonne nuit et le matin du 14 à 6 heures est frappé
d’une embolie cérébrale (au moment où personne ne s’y
attendait nullement) et n’a repris connaissance.
Je suis resté jusqu’à ses dernier moments auprès de lui, et
je n’ai pas eu la chance de le voir reprendre ses sens une
seconde.
Ce que je puis dire c’est que rien n’a été négligé et qu’il a
été très bien soigné. Il paraissait très heureux.
Il en était à son avion cinq boches abattus officiellement et
en avait quatre autres en réalité mais non confirmés—plus un
ballon captif d’observation qu’il avait attaqué et enflammé: et
les nombreux bombardements du début sur voisin où il était
toujours le premier prêt à partir et des fois le seul qui allait
droit au but.
Malgré tous les dangers parsemés sur sa route et après
avoir pris tant de soins et d’attention il nous est enlevé (il ne
comptait que des amis sincères et dévoués) et juste au
moment où il était arrivé au but: Médaille Militaire, Légion
d’Honneur et Croix de Guerre qu’il avait si noblement
gagnées.
C’est une grande perte pour l’armée Française et aussi
pour nous, car il nous rapportait avec son amitié l’honneur du
devoir et la bravoure du bon soldat.
Il a été ramené à Luxeuil, où un service funèbre a été
célébré au milieu de ses amis; il a été accompagné par ses
nombreux camarades avec toutes les honneurs.
Après avoir appris la maladie grave de Monsieur nous
sommes restés quelques jours sans nouvelles causé par le
déplacement de l’escadrille, et nous avons été très heureux,
Monsieur Frédéric et moi, quand il a reçu une cable lui
annonçant que Monsieur Prince allait mieux et que tout
danger était écarté.
 Á present Monsieur Frédéric est avec nous, et vous pouvez
compter sur moi pour que je fasse tout ce qu’il me sera
possible pour lui, et espérant que l’on aura le bonheur de voir
la signature de la paix en bonne santé, je termine.
Monsieur et Madame, si vous désiriez d’autres
renseignements, je me ferais un devoir de vous les donner, et
c’est avec plaisir que je vous donnerai tous les
renseignements possibles.
Recevez, Monsieur et Madame, mes respectueuses
salutations.
Votre dévoué serviteur,
Michel Plaa Porte,
Mécanicien Escadrille, N. 124, Secteur 16.
Cover of a French Periodical
 IV
FROM HIS FATHER

Memories of my younger son Norman are so tender and fragrant

that his bereaved father may well feel some hesitation in recording
them for publication lest they may seem to those who never enjoyed
intimate relations with him to have been inspired by absorbing
parental pride and affection rather than by less partial and
disinterested judgment. If there may be any warrant for this
impression it will be readily allowed that the sacrifice of this young
life in a great cause and the commingled pride and sorrow
occasioned by such a martyrdom furnish adequate occasion for the
warmest eulogy. To know Norman well was to love him and admire
his fine traits of mind, heart, and soul.
I hardly know when our real companionship began. When he was
yet a little boy, just emerging from the nursery, Norman was wise and
resourceful beyond his young years. He was always reading and he
was persistently inquiring about things worth knowing. His youthful
self-reliance is amusingly illustrated by an incident when he was but
about eleven years of age. He asked for a private tutor to teach him
Latin, and he felt so sure of the kind of an instructor he wanted that
he took upon himself the somewhat responsible task of obtaining
one without advice or assistance. Having found one willing to accept
the position Norman at once proceeded to put him through a
preliminary examination to test his professional capacity.
 Norman Prince, Frederick Henry Prince, Jr., Frederick Henry Prince

Describing this incident the tutor writes: “Norman came to me for

work in Latin when I had no reasonable hours at my disposal for him.
At my recommendation he sought the services of another tutor, but
he soon came back to me in considerable perturbation. With his
quick, incisive, convincing sentences he described Mr. Smith’s
inefficiency in Latin, and declared his complete despair of ever
getting his tutor over six books of Virgil in two weeks. Not to be
caught again by the self-assurance of a tutor, he asked, ‘Can you
really read Virgil, Mr. Woodbury, and if so how fast can you read it?’
Determined to keep within the speed limit and not to disappoint him,
I said, restrainedly, that I thought I might read ten lines a minute. His
eyes glistened with expectancy, but with caution he inquired, ‘Really,
Sir? May I time you, Sir?’ With my consent he pulled out a stop-
watch, and finding I could slightly better my estimate, he won me
over by his irresistible arts of persuasion to give him the hours from
seven to eight in the morning and nine to ten in the evening. These
were unseasonable hours for so young a lad, but he never failed to
be ready for work at the beginning and at the close of the day until
his task was completed. Through his vivacity and his cleverness and
his unfailing good nature he became very popular with the dozen or
more fellows who were tutoring with me that summer. Between him
and me there developed a friendship which to me was a source of
great enjoyment and has now become a treasured memory.”
This incident serves to show that Norman’s precocity was
mitigated by a well-developed sense of humor as well as a playful
mischievousness. There was a merry twinkle in his eyes, denoting
that he was not always to be taken too seriously in his search for
knowledge.
A marked trait of Norman’s early youth was his dashing intrepidity.
He began hunting when he was but seven and he never showed a
sign of fear. I can see him now in my mind’s eye mounted on his
spirited chestnut thoroughbred riding as straight and true as any of
the older hunting men. An accident that happened to him and his
brother Frederick before they went to school at Groton illustrates the
fearlessness of both of them in their childhood. It was a morning
appointed for a meet and the rain was falling in torrents, making the
riding cross-country more than ordinarily dangerous, so that I
deemed it prudent to tell my sons that perhaps it might be better for
them not to join us that day. They dearly loved the sport, and I
remember how the tears came to the eyes of Norman when he
heard my gentle warning, though, as the event proved, he did not
take it any too seriously. On my return home that evening I found
Norman in the care of a surgeon with a broken thigh, while his
brother had a broken collar-bone, the result of fast riding on the
slippery turf. Regardless of the dangerous conditions against which
they had been warned they had taken not only to hunting but to
racing and by accident they had pulled into each other at the finish
where both were violently thrown. As they lay stunned on the ground
Frederick was the first to gain consciousness and he shortly heard
Norman murmuring jokingly, “Fred, I think I’m dead. How do you
feel?” Not even this playful disregard of parental counsel operated to
check a certain degree of admiration for such an exhibition of calm
nerve under painful circumstances. Norman’s interest in hunting and
racing witnessed no abatement when he took to aviation, or even
after he had experienced some of that stern joy that warriors feel. A
post-script to one of his letters from the front in France made the
naïve inquiry:
“How did my horse run at the Country Club meeting?”
Another marked feature of Norman’s personality was his gracious
and attractive bearing under any and all circumstances. To his quick
intelligence and dash he added a courtesy and graciousness of
manner that charmed all those with whom he came in contact,
whether at home or abroad, at work or at play, in the rough-and-
tumble of life or in the drawing room. His savoir faire which seemed
his by instinct, gave him a charm that was rare to meet.
 Concours Hippique

About all the notable characteristics that marked Norman’s earlier

youth remained with him as he grew older, showing a constantly
progressive development. This was particularly the case as to his
alert mentality and his remarkable capacity for acquiring knowledge
easily and quickly. As a student he could hardly be called
exceptionally studious in the sense of being closely attached to his
text books, but what he lacked in studious habits he more than made
up for by the facility with which he grasped any subject that invited
his attention. This accomplishment of his was demonstrated in a
gratifying way when he was at Groton preparing for college. He was
given an opportunity to join his brother for a year of study abroad,
but he asked that he might take his entrance examinations for
college before going. The next examinations were only a week or
two ahead, and Norman still had another year at Groton before his
turn would come in regular course. Having obtained the requisite
permission of the Groton and Harvard authorities thus to anticipate
his work he underwent the examinations at once, though he was
then but 15 years old. He passed them all without a condition and
without any uneasy apprehension on his part, apparently.
 Having achieved this triumph he went abroad, studying for a time
in Germany and at Oxford, subsequently entering Harvard in the
sophomore year. At college, as at school, he acquitted himself
creditably and was graduated with high honors. He subsequently
took the degree of Bachelor of Laws at the Harvard Law School in
due course.
It was at this time that he became an enthusiastic devotee of
aviation, and when an opening came for him to begin the active
practice of the law, he preferred to give his attention to the science
and practice of aerial navigation with the Wright brothers and with
Starling Burgess at Marblehead. Knowing something of the perils of
aviation, particularly during the early stages of its development in this
country, and apprehending that its fascinations for Norman might
prove more or less perilous, as well as tending to distract his
attention from the more serious concerns of life, I sought by every
means to dissuade him from giving so much of his attention to it, but
his ambition to distinguish himself as an aviator made it difficult for
him to pay due heed to my serious counsel, and I subsequently
found that he had been experimenting for some time with flying
machines in high altitudes under an assumed name in order to
escape detection and an undesired notoriety.
Recalling these venturesome incidents in Norman’s early career
as an amateur aviator, I sometimes think that perhaps fate had
reserved him for the cause to which he finally gave his life and that
the character of this service was that for which he had shown such a
passionate fondness and aptitude, despite all obstacles and
discouragements. Worldly success won by the ordinary plodding
methods meant little to him. He aspired to hitch his wagon to a star.
He cared nothing for the privileges of wealth, even though they might
be within his reach, and he envied no man his success in whatever
honorable lines he might elect for himself. His ambition was to
achieve something worth while and he gave all his energies to the
accomplishment of that purpose.
Considering these predominant traits of Norman’s character, as
well as his achievements, I conclude that he could hardly have
wished for a nobler fate than that which finally befell him on a
battlefield of France.
Speaking for Norman’s mother I would say in her behalf:
“Light sorrows speak—great grief is dumb.”
A mother’s grief for the loss of a dearly beloved son is too deep to
find adequate expression in words. Memories of Norman’s tenderly
affectionate nature, of his fine character, his charming personality
and his unfailing buoyancy and cheerfulness are so real, so vivid,
and so abiding that it is difficult to realize that he has gone. Although
he has indeed gallantly sacrificed his young life for a cause he dearly
loved, his mother cherishes the firm faith that the fine spirit thus
displayed by him remains undaunted and unquenched, and that it is
still the blessed privilege of those near and dear to him to continue to
enjoy this sweet belief.
A further measure of consolation has been found in the many and
tender messages of sympathy that have come from near and far,
testifying to the warm appreciation of Norman’s rare qualities as they
were revealed in his life, and to the general admiration of his heroic
self-sacrifice. These messages have helped to comfort and sustain
the bereaved family.
Frederick Henry Prince.
 V
A COMRADE’S TRIBUTE

In a contribution to the World’s Work, James R. McConnell, a

sergeant-pilot of the original American Escadrille, gave the following
graphic description of the engagement in which his comrade Prince
lost his life. It is a pathetic circumstance that but a short time after he
had written this tribute, Sergeant McConnell himself met the same
fate as that which befell his American comrade, his dead body
having been found within the German lines where he had fallen in an
aerial combat with the enemy.

“On the 12th of October, twenty small aeroplanes flying in a

‘V’ formation, at such height that they resembled a flock of
geese, crossed the Rhine River, where it skirts the plains of
Alsace, and, turning north, headed for the famous Mauser
works at Oberndorf. Following in their wake was an equal
number of larger machines, and above these darted and
circled swift fighting ’planes. The first group of aircraft was
followed by British pilots, the second by French, and four of
the battle ’planes were from the American Escadrille. They
were piloted respectively by Lieut. de Laage, Lufberry,
Norman Prince and Masson. The Germans were taken by
surprise, and as a result few of their machines were in the air.
The bombardment fleet was attacked, however, and six of our
’planes were shot down, some of them falling in flames. As
the full capacity of a Nieuport machine allows but a little more
than two hours in the air the avions de chasse were forced to
return to their own lines to take on more gasoline. The
Nieuports having refilled their tanks, went up to clear the air of
any German machines that might be hovering in wait for the
returning raiders. Prince found one, and promptly shot it
down. Lufberry came upon three and he promptly disposed of
them.
“Darkness was rapidly coming on, but Prince and Lufberry
remained in the air to protect the bombarding fleet. Just at
nightfall, Lufberry made for a small aviation field near the
lines, known as Corcieux. Slow-moving machines, with great
planing capacity, can be landed in the dark, but to try to feel
for the ground in a Nieuport, which comes down at about a
hundred miles an hour, usually means disaster. Ten minutes
after Lufberry landed, Prince decided to make for the landing
field. He spiraled down through the night air and skimmed
rapidly over the trees bordering the Corcieux field. In the dark
he did not see a high-tension electric cable that was stretched
just above the tree tops. The landing gear of his airplane
struck it. The machine snapped forward and hit the ground on
its nose. It turned over and over. The belt holding Prince
broke, and he was thrown far from the wrecked ’plane. Both
of his legs were broken and he suffered other injuries. Despite
the terrific shock and intense pain, Prince did not lose
consciousness for a time. He even kept his presence of mind,
and gave orders to the men who had run to pick him up.
Hearing the hum of a motor, and realizing that a machine was
in the air, Prince told them to light fires on the field. ‘You don’t
want another fellow to come down and break himself up the
way I’ve done,’ he said.
“Lufberry went with Prince to the hospital in Gerardmer. As
the ambulance rolled along Prince sang to keep up his spirits.
He spoke of getting well soon and returning to service. It was
like Norman. He was always joyous and energetic about his
flying. Even when he passed through the harrowing
experience of having a wing shattered, the first thing he did
on landing was to busy himself about getting another fitted in
place. No one thought Prince was mortally injured in the
accident, but the next day he went into a coma; a blood clot
had formed on his brain. Captain Haaf, in command of the
aviation groups of Luxeuil, accompanied by our officers,
hastened to Gerardmer. Prince, lying unconscious on his bed,
was named a second lieutenant and was then and there
decorated with the Legion of Honor. He already held the
Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre.
“Norman Prince died on the 15th of October. His body was
brought back to Luxeuil and he was given a funeral similar to
Rockwell’s. It was hard to realize that poor Norman had gone.
He was the founder of the American Escadrille, and every one
in it had come to rely on him for inspiration. He never let his
spirits drop, and he was always on hand with encouragement
for others. I do not think Prince minded going. He wanted to
do his part before being killed and he had more than done it.
He had, day after day, freed the line of Germans, making it
impossible for them to do their work, and five of them he had
shot to death.
“Two days after Prince’s death, the Escadrille received
orders to leave for the Somme. The night before the
departure, the British gave the American pilots a farewell
banquet and toasted them as their guardian angels. They
keenly appreciated the fact that four men from the American
Escadrille had brought down many Germans, and had cleared
the way for their squadron returning from Oberndorf. The
Escadrille passed through Paris on its way to the Somme
front. The few members who had machines flew from Luxeuil
to their new post. At Paris the pilots were reënforced by three
other Americans, among whom was Frederick H. Prince, Jr.,
who had completed his training and had come over to serve
in aviation with his brother Norman.”
Camp Norman Prince
 VI
HIS BROTHER’S SERVICE

It was the proud privilege of both the Prince brothers to give their
active services to France on the battle fronts. Having passed their
boyhood and early youth together, performing the same tasks and
enjoying the same recreations, Frederick and Norman developed
similar ambitions and aptitudes, particularly in their more strenuous
activities. Moreover, they had obtained in part their early education in
France, and the call to the French colors at the outbreak of the war
appealed almost as strongly to them as to the patriotic Frenchmen.
Norman’s early experience as an aviator at home and abroad gave
him a temporary advantage over Frederick in that he already had the
preliminary training for service in the aviation corps in which both
desired to enlist. He was consequently first of the two to realize his
heart’s desire and to take the oath of allegiance to France and her
cause. It was with pardonable hesitation that permission was
subsequently given by his parents to their only other son to join
Norman in the perilous aviation service but it was freely given, with
an appeal for God’s blessing, and Frederick sailed for France with
Norman on the latter’s return from his Christmas furlough at home in
1915. He underwent the rigorous training at the Pau aviation school
and began his active service at the front in the late summer, flying at
first with the intrepid Captain Guynemer, at the latter’s invitation, and
subsequently joining the Lafayette Squadron on the western front.
He won the high esteem of his comrades for his courage and manly
bearing, performing his duty with joyous enthusiasm and taking
active part in twenty-two aerial engagements during the ensuing five
months. When Norman fell at Luxeuil, it was a trying moment to
Frederick, who had lost his only brother and the companion of his
lifetime, but he promptly offered his services to France in his
brother’s place and he fought with the Lafayette Escadrille until he
came home on a short furlough. He subsequently returned to France
to rejoin his Squadron with courage undaunted, and with unflagging
faith in the ultimate triumph of the cause he loved and for which he
was proud to be actively enlisted.

Frederick Henry Prince, Jr., with his Nieuport

 VII
FROM THE FRENCH ENVOYS

On the occasion of the reception given by the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts and the City of Boston to the French Envoys who
came to this country in an official capacity, the patriotic devotion and
sacrifice of Norman Prince were gracefully alluded to by the Envoys
who included in their number M. René Viviani, Minister of Justice,
Marshal Joffre, Vice-Admiral Chocheprat and the Marquis de
Chambrun, Deputy, and descendant of Lafayette. At the lunch in
Faneuil Hall, given by the City of Boston, Vice-Admiral Chocheprat,
in his reply to the Mayor’s address of welcome, paid a touching
tribute to “Mr. Frederick H. Prince’s son Norman, the gallant young
aviator who sacrificed his life for France, and the cause of the Allies.”
Thereupon Marshal Joffre arose from his seat at the table and
placing his hand over his heart made a bow to the young hero’s
father, who sat by the Marshal’s side and who was acting as
chairman of the reception committee.
Subsequently at the reception given to the Envoys at the Boston
Public Library, M. Viviani, in concluding his graceful response to
Governor McCall’s address of welcome, said:
“I salute that young hero, Norman Prince, who has died after
having fought not only for France, but for America, because we have
the same ideals of right and liberty.”
M. Henri Franklin Bouillon, French Minister of International Affairs,
who made an official visit to this country later on, took occasion to
express his admiration of this fine American aviator. Speaking
subsequently at a public gathering in London of his observations in
America he said: “I cannot better express to you the sentiment of the
American people than by quoting that young American hero Norman
Prince, who, in acknowledging a salute to the American aviators in
Paris, said, ‘We have done what we have done; you must judge us
by our hearts.’”
 VIII
MESSAGES OF CONDOLENCE AND
APPRECIATION

As Norman Prince was among the first of the American volunteers

offering their services to France and to make the supreme sacrifice
for her cause, it was but natural that his fate occasioned widespread
and deeply sympathetic comment. The mournful tidings served in no
small measure to bring home to the American people a more
adequate realization of the fact that it was a World War that was
waging on the European battle-fields and that the sooner this
situation was recognized here the better for the cause of civilization
everywhere. The messages of sympathy and appreciation were as
numerous and universal as they were fervent and sincere. They
found expression in the press, in the pulpit and in the forum, and the
name of this hero came to be accepted as a fitting symbol of
patriotism and self-sacrifice. Few of these messages were more
tender and appreciative than those which came from Norman’s
comrades in the aviation service in France. Commanders and
subordinates were alike in this respect. A message from the
comrades gathered at his bedside when he died said:

“Norman passed peacefully away this morning. He died like

the brave man he was. He was more than a brother to us. We
are all heartbroken.”

The French Government took formal and appreciative notice of the

event, the representative of the French Army in this country sending
this message to the family:
 “The French Government transmits to you expressions of
its deep and sorrowful sympathy on the occasion of your
son’s glorious death. In my name as Military Attaché
representing the French Army in the United States, I desire to
say that his death has been for all his French comrades a
cause of profound grief. It is with the greatest admiration that
we have seen all these gallant young Americans risking and
giving their lives for the cause of France. Their memory
deserves to be kept in the hearts of our compatriots as is that
of Lafayette in this country.
“We bow gratefully and respectfully before his grave.”

Representing the British Admiralty, Rear-Admiral Alfred E. A.

Grant sent this message from London: “It was splendid of him to
come over to fight for the Allies. You could have felt nothing but pride
to have heard how his commanding officers speak of him—of his
popularity with all his comrades; how gallantly and faithfully he
performed his duties and how deeply his loss is regretted by all who
knew him.”