I use google for images, so please forgive a lack of referencing them, they can easily be found and traced. I use these exclusively in class to outline talking points and indicate examples for the class to discuss, so the slides' use of terminology is bound by assigned texts.

1. Dreams Teach
World Building in SFTV

2. New Life and New Civilizations
• Creating worlds rooted in our own
• Cities and villages, tiered or socialist class
systems, generatioinal organization,
hierarchies amongst individuals etc
• Interactions/problems/cause and effect
chains tend to be familiar to us no matter how
unfamiliar they may be to the characters in
the show
• Peace, War, Treaties, Alliances ---- Marriage, Divorce, Family Units ---
conflict with one self --- etc

3. (Im)Possible
Worlds
Characters experience the world they
inhabit as the only relatable truth, even
if SFTV viewers know it to be different
When these character’s world is more
like ours OR reflects a world the
character knows to be false world-building
reverses, providing growth to
the characters inner conflicts
Non Sequitor – ST Voyager

4. Dreams, Delusions, and
Alternate Universes
• "Possible" worlds are created in
contradiction to the central
imagined world of the SFTV
series in question
• Now two worlds are existing
simultaneously allowing for
parallel storytelling –
• DYADIC WORLDS - 2 for 1
• Offers chance to "strip" heroes
of advantages and re-test their
heroics and narrative potential
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

5. • Storyworlds created in Science Fiction television have their
own time lines, realities, places, characters, rules, and
limitations build on our realities BUT SET APART from our
realities
• These settings tend to be only applicable to that storyworld
offer, but become intrinsic part to the narrative
• The Storyworld provides for longer ongoing narrative story
lines and character arcs, especially as the worlds experienced
AFFECT characters and storylines
• Alternate Reality Episodes tend to be episodic playing
alongside season or series arcs
• There has to be a return to the rules of the storyworlds
created at each episode's end, feeding longer arcs
• Both narrative arcs present: FLEXI-NARRATIVE

6. Alethic Dyadic Model
• What ifs: setting aside: natural
laws, rules, limitations/freedoms,
history, and inventories of
existents in the series'
storyworlds
• Creating a disorientation for the
character trapped between the
two or isolated in one: target is to
determine the actual reality
• The 'non-real' plain created as
obstacle often becomes limiting
to the characters ability
Supernatural

7. Where am I?
• Spaces: confined clinical,
oppressing
• Characters: authoritative,
father figures,
doctors/teachers/lawyers
• Challenges: locating
problem, sanity, normality,
permission to rest and
give up the fight as
temptation
• Temptation to surrender
Star Trek: Voyager

8. This is Just a Dream … Or is IT?
• Option to nestled several dream sequences/awakenings
(manipulated characters)
• Hints and oddities pointing audience into the right direction early
on but often late reveal
• Audience can be left wondering about the validity of the
assumption that viewers have witnessed a dream or dreamlike
event
• Dream sequence functions as an alternate reset button
• If Dream and Reality of storyworld collide it becomes a crashing
dream – cause and effects chains set in motion between the two
plains

9. A Question of
Reality
Viewers and characters alike are
challenged to question understanding
of realities, rules and limitations.