Defiance (2013-15) was an original commission science-fiction TV series which has aired on the SyFy channel in both the US and the UK. Set on Earth in the near-future after a war between humans and immigrant aliens who arrived to settle on the planet, and whose technology has greatly changed Earth’s physical and biological environment through a process named as ‘terraforming’, the show was premised around exploring the interactions

The Christmas television schedules have, for many years, introduced a sense of the Carnavalesque to the viewing experience. Broadcasters, programmes, and family favourites collude in temporarily suspending the ‘normal’ laws and rules of television viewing through one-off storylines, and, in some cases, subverting perceptions of seriality in acknowledgement of a collective cultural ritual.

FOX’s horror-comedy series Scream Queens is the latest addition to the canon of Ryan Murphy and Co.’s anthology television series, alongside FX’s American Horror Story (2011-present), and the upcoming American Crime Story (2016). Scream Queens, named after the sobriquet for a female horror icon, is a hyper-stylised, retro-pastiche of horror and slasher cinema from the 1970s and 1980s.

Doctor Who fans were perhaps expecting a slow 2015.

With recent debates and discussions surrounding the government’s Green Paper and the BBC’s Charter review (how the BBC should be funded; whether it distorts the market; if it should be self-regulated; and so on.) I have found it quite easy to become lost in arbitrary and abstract notions such as “value for money” based on my naturally biased consumption of BBC products and services.

Beginning with the young single mother Nancy in ‘The Empty Child’ (2005) Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who stories have often included strongly written female characters. His creation of female roles reached new levels of variety and controversy with his transformation of the Master into the Mistress, or Missy for short.

This article is the result of a recent, but brief conversation with Matt Hills on Facebook, where we discussed the merits of the BBC’s Sherlock and fandom.

As Halloween came and went, various images of costumes circulated on social media. One of my favourites showed a mini-Predator with the caption ‘Not every girl wants to be a princess.’ My first response was to laugh in recognition. My second was to think about the kind of princess I might have wanted to be. The ones who were around in popular media when I was young were Leia and Diana Prince.

A few months ago the LA Times ran a piece entitled ‘Women at the CW work to keep sexual violence off their shows’. It detailed the discussions of the ‘Running the Show: The Women Executive Producers of the CW’ panel held at The CW Summer TCA Tour in August.

The TARDIS is one of Doctor Who ’s most distinctive iconographic components and it performs as a space for narrative action, as a vehicle, as an object within a setting, and as a place that is inhabited.  In this post I want to link together some ideas about how the TARDIS functions aesthetically, with ideas about how it enables and constrains the production of Doctor Who .