At Last, A Graph That Explains Scifi TV After Star Trek

When have TV alien been more pop than magic ? Do shows featuring time travel transportation better than those about space geographic expedition ? We graph the popularity of television ’s most common themes , and see how scifi tv set has changed since 1970 .

We looked at over 300 skill fiction and fancy goggle box shows from 1970 , the year after the original Star Trek series end , to the present . In this chart , we list a few of the most iconic shows , but those are just a sampling ofthe hundreds we surveyed .

https://gizmodo.com/tv-shows-surveyed-for-themes-throughout-sf-and-fantasy-5348003

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Then we search at which shows on the atmosphere in any turn over year featured any one of the most vulgar skill - fable theme : extraterrestrial , space traveling , automaton , clip change of location , and thaumaturgy .

( Shows that moderate multiple idea were counted once in each family , so Star Trek : The Next Generation would add one point each to aliens , space travel , robot and time travel . )

One thing the graph tells us is that the popularity of the different themes are more and more linked as time goes on . Space travel and aliens are tight linked throughout the graph , since shows about space travel almost always include aliens , but as the graph transitions from the 1970s into the eighties , evince with golem are progressively linked to shows with aliens . This is in part because the more late shows feature robots and more late display featuring alien are more likely to be one and the same , whereas in the seventies , show like Batman and The Bionic Woman would feature stilted intelligence service but not extraterrestrial .

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But it ’s interesting to note the elbow room magic trends as well . In 1970 , the col between shows featuring magic and shows feature more science - based themes is fairly panoptic , which may be related to the comparative cost of farm the unlike types of show ; Captain Kirk ask dear sets and a makeup gang while Samantha Stevens just needed a film editor program and the ability to joggle her nozzle . But as audience expectation for shows involving legerdemain become analogous to their expectation for scientific discipline fiction shows , magic ’s peaks and valley start to correspond to those of other themes , though supernatural shows may be a piece more live to overall drops in tv outlay .

The time - travel line is specially interesting , less for what it argue about the popularity of time traveling than for what it says about the form of stories being told . Although fourth dimension travel is sometimes the focusing of a show ( as in Quantum Leap or Seven day ) , it more ofttimes appear in a handful of episodes of a show that tells a various set of science fiction or fantasy story . Shows like the various Star Trek series , Lois and Clark , and even Xena sport the periodic obligatory time change of location episode .

But the graphical record ’s most prominent feature is the boom all the report apparently go through in the 1990s , and which now seems to be on the declivity . It seems to advise a vast investment in genre television shows ( and perhaps in television in general ) that we simply are n’t seeing any more .

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Interestingly , quad change of location shows were the first to go as circumstance change , and although picture about handle to hang on longer , they , too are on their way out . Does this betoken that science fabrication and fantasy shows are on the declivity ? Or does it comprise a shift to less expensive , approximate - future tense scientific discipline fiction with different questioning priorities , shows like Dollhouse , Chuck , and Fringe ?

Here is a full listof all the shows we surveyed to create this chart .

Graph by Steph Fox and additional reporting by Alexis Brown .

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