ABSTRACT
Although film and television are similar in many ways, adapting a work from the big to the small screen is especially complicated in the case of science fiction, thanks in part, as Michele Pierson argues, to its emphasis on an “aesthetic experience of wonder” (168) that always entails additional, usually highly technological concerns. Much critical discussion of filmed adaptations has focused on the fidelity to the source or the importance of the director’s input. For television broadcasters, however, the aim was to adapt a film to meet the medium’s demands regarding technology, narrative, audience, and financing. Of the nearly twenty sf television shows that have been adapted from films, 70% ran for only one or two seasons. Why has there been such a high failure rate for sf television? One often overlooked factor, sometimes beyond the control of television or studio executives, is the timeliness of television productions in relation to cultural and historical events. Quite simply, sometimes a series appears too early or too late for a broadcast viewer who is also a cinema spectator. Such is the case with Logan’s Run. What follows is a consideration of what happened to a fairly successful sf movie from 1976 when it was adapted into a television series just a year after its big-screen debut and how various elements of the production, such as narrative patterns, visual effects, financing, and especially timing impacted its demise.
