Journey Through Sci-Fi: Science Fiction Film History

Where does the friendly alien begin? Not with E.T., but with a Martian exiled to Edwardian London to reform the most selfish man alive.
Journey Through Sci-Fi returns with a brand new series. We Come in Peace traces the history of friendly aliens on screen. In this opener we set out the stall: what makes a visitor friendly rather than hostile, why everything gets measured against E.T., and how one mistranslated Italian word put Martians in our heads.
Then we go back to 1913 and A Message from Mars, widely held to be the first British science fiction film. Ramiel, a Martian stripped of his rank and banished to Earth, has to reform a selfish London bachelor called Horace Parker. It is A Christmas Carol with a spaceman, and almost every benevolent visitor since owes it something.
In this episode:
Friendly visitor or invader? Where the line actually sits
Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), possibly the first friendly alien story ever written
Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, and how 1947 gave us the flying saucer
Schiaparelli's canali: the mistranslation that built fictional Mars
Ramiel's tough love, the zap power, and some baffling 1913 camera trickery
Lizard people or Arthurian courtiers?
Britain in 1913: picture palaces and a film industry inventing itself
Also discussed: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, Earth Girls Are Easy, It Came from Outer Space, Aelita: Queen of Mars, A Princess of Mars, Project Hail Mary and Armageddon.
Watch along with us. A Message from Mars is free on BFI Replay: https://replay.bfi.org.uk/video/7f470ecc-3ccd-5cde-aca0-ac97153f8ecd
Lizards or courtiers? Tell us what you saw.
Next time: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) meets its 2008 remake.
Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne.
Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi
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Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the Evolution of Horror Network.

Some of them came to warn us. Some of them just wanted to go home.
We Come in Peace is a new series from Journey Through Sci-Fi, tracing the friendly alien across a century of film and television. We start in the earliest days of visitors from other worlds and work our way to the present, asking how and why that image kept changing.
Along the way: The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space, Warning from Space, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Starman, Cocoon, Alien Nation, Coneheads, Men in Black, The Iron Giant, Arrival and plenty more.
Episode one arrives (in peace) on 10 September, with new episodes every other week.
Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH network. Hosted by James Payne and Matt Willcock.
Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the first episode.

New to Journey Through Sci-Fi? Start here.
Before we launch our next full series on friendly aliens, we're taking a journey back through the archive with a special starter pack episode, featuring some of our favourite clips from past series.
Across this episode, we revisit some of the biggest ideas in sci-fi cinema: the mythic storytelling of the original Star Wars trilogy, the artificial intelligence and uneasy humanity of Blade Runner, the time-loop perfection of Groundhog Day, the simulated reality of The Matrix, the collapsing world of Mad Max, and the haunted-house-in-space horror of Event Horizon.
Featuring discussions of:
Star Wars Original Trilogy
Blade Runner
Metropolis
Groundhog Day
The Matrix Trilogy
Mad Max
Event Horizon
Whether you're a longtime listener revisiting old favourites or a new listener looking for the best place to begin, this episode is a guided tour through the many worlds, subgenres and strange obsessions of Journey Through Sci-Fi.
Our new series, We Come in Peace, exploring the history of friendly aliens on screen, begins soon. Follow Journey Through Sci-Fi now so you don't miss it.

A little bonus transmission from the JTSF Patreon feed.
We've been chatting about Spielberg's Disclosure Day, and because our next main-feed series is all about the history of friendly aliens in sci-fi cinema, this felt like the perfect thing to share.
In this spoiler-light extract, we talk Spielberg returning to alien territory, why big first-contact movies feel rarer now, and how Disclosure Day turns the friendly alien story into something closer to a conspiracy thriller for the misinformation age.
The full spoiler episode is available now on Patreon, where we get into the ending, the film's bigger ideas, and whether good old Stevie has still got it when it comes to visitors from the stars.
Hear the full episode on Patreon
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We close out our Mad Science series the only way we know how: with a very serious, deeply prestigious and completely unofficial Mad Science Film Awards.
After 58 films and more than a century of sci-fi cinema, we look back at the scientists, monsters, labs, experiments and terrible decisions that defined the season.
From Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Invisible Man to The Fly, Re-Animator, Jurassic Park, Get Out and Poor Things, we trace how mad science evolved from gothic cautionary tales to atomic-age anxiety, body horror, corporate genetics, surveillance, consent and control.
Categories include Best Mad Scientist, Biggest Ego in a Lab Coat, Most Unethical Experiment, Best Creation, Best Lab, Hidden Gem and the big one: Best Mad Science Movie.

Plus we unveil what we will be covering the next series of Jounrey Through Sci-fi!


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