Australian science fiction television

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Science fiction television has been produced in Australia since the 1960s, as a homegrown response to imported overseas US and British shows.

Artransa Park productions made a number of programmes in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on shoestring budgets, these generally running for one season and being aired on ABC TV. They included The Interparis (1968), Vega 4 (1967), and Phoenix Five(1970). Phoenix Five was the best known of these. It resembled US shows like Star trek and Flash Gordon without the budget and effects, but with a pscychadaelic rock soundtrack.

More recently, Australia's most well known Science Fiction show was Farscape, made with American co-production. It ran from 1999 to 2003, and was filmed at Sydney's Fox Studios.

A significant proportion of Australian produced science fiction programmes are made for the teens/young Adults market, including The Girl From Tomorrow,Watch this space, the long running Mr Squiggle, Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left, and the Jonathan M. Shiff Productions programmes, Ocean Girl, Thunderstone and Cyber girl. The Australian Children's Television Foundation, a government initiative, produces a number of Science Fiction children's shows, including Spellbinder (TV series)(in collaboration with Poland), The Miraculous Mellops and The Crash Zone. A number of these are adapations of children's books.

Other shows like Time Trax, Roar (television series) and Space: Above And Beyond were filmed in Australia, but used mostly US crew and actors.^[1]