The Mediaverse and Speculative Fiction Television : Understanding Speculative TV Fandoms

Some (web) television texts achieve immense commercial success. Certain commercially successful texts boast dedicated, creative, and exponentially growing fandoms. These fan communities engage in specific fan practices that are significantly influenced by the textualities of the texts and their contexts of production, distribution, and consumption. Increased fan engagement resulting in the acceleration of the text’s popularity leads to the following inquiries: · How is the series influenced by the interactions among and the relationships between the producers, consumers, distributors, and content? · What are the sites of these interactions? · What are the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that impact the series? · How do the text’s contexts of production, distribution, and consumption lead to the text’s popularity in mainstream media? In pursuit of an answer to these questions, the analytical lens of the ‘mediaverse’ is developed. An inductive study, this book explores four television series’ that fall within the scope of speculative fiction to characterise the mediaverse and highlight the interconnectedness among the networked nodes of new media. These wield a significant influence on the production and consumption of media and its presence in our everyday lives, thus outlining the mediaverse as a tool for the analysis of a media texts and practices that shape contemporary media culture. Acknowledgments Contents 1 Introducing the Mediaverse 1.1 Mediaverse, Web 2.0 and the Speculative Genre 1.2 Star Trek: Pioneering Speculative Television 1.3 Black Mirror & Techno-Dystopian Science Fiction 1.4 Genre-bending in The OA 1.5 Good Omens and Fantasy Fiction 2 The Star Trek Mediaverse 2.1 Star Trek: History and Fandom 2.2 Transmediality and Intermediality in Star Trek 2.3 Star Trek: Formatting, Franchising and the Fandom 2.4 Audience Criticism and Cultural Diffusion in Star Trek 3 Digital Consciousness in the Black Mirror Mediaverse 3.1 Techno-Dystopia and Black Mirror 3.2 Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and the Viewer as Player 3.3 Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and the Mediaverse 3.4 Striking Vipers and the Virtual Queer 3.5 Digital Consciousness in Black Museum 3.6 Techno-Dystopia and the Black Mirror Mediaverse 4 The Metamodern Utopia in The OA Mediaverse 4.1 Science Fiction and Fantasy Audiences 4.2 The OA and Storytelling 4.3 The OA and the Spiritual 4.4 The Intradiegetic Utopia 4.5 The Extradiegetic Vision and #SaveTheOA 4.6 Shared Interpretations and Performances in The OA Fandom 5 The Good Omens Mediaverse: Myth, Prophecies and the ‘Voice of God’ 5.1 Good Omens: The Myth and the Prophecy 5.2 Good Omens: A Metafictional Reading 5.3 Good Omens: A Modern Fantasy 5.4 Good Omens: Fantasy Fiction Meets Fanfiction 5.5 Neil Gaiman and Celebrity Culture 5.6 The Second Screen and the Paratextual Function of the Celebrity 6 Conclusion: The Mediaverse Toolkit Works Cited