Introduction

Screen Soundtrack Studies has developed significantly since the turn of the millennium, with a series of dedicated journals and books on aspects of sound design and music helping to consolidate the field. Sf has proven particularly attractive for a variety of writers. Two book publications - Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema (2004) and Sound Design and Science Fiction (2007) - have provided overviews, the former concentrating on music and the latter on sound design. Complementing these, Wierzbicki's extended analysis of Louis and Bebe Barron's score for Forbidden Planet (Wilcox US 1956) illustrated the potential for overlap and convergence between the two sonic practices. Sf television soundtracks have been less extensively studied (see Hayward and Lewandowski), although Jeff Bond's The Music of Star Trek (1999) addresses both the television series and subsequent film adaptations.

This themed issue of Science Fiction Film and Television is a further contribution to scholarship in the field, addressing the previously overlooked score for Kurt Maetzig's East German/Polish co-production Der Schweigende Stern/Milcząca Gwiazda (The Silent Star; 1960); the critically derided 2000 screen adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth (Christian US 2000) and the recent genre hybrid blockbuster Cloverfield (Reeves US 2008). Two further articles provide valuable additions to the analysis of sf television series. The first analyses the music for early Dr Who (1963-1989) series and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's 'supermarionation' programmes Thunderbirds (1965-1966) and Stingray (1964-1965) within the context of British television during the decade. Book-ending fifty years of television production, the final study analyses the music of Lost (2004-2010) and The X-Files (1993-2002) with regard to the manner in which the scores create unease and otherworldly uncertainty appropriate to the programmes' narrative themes.

These five articles illustrate the manner in which analyses of sf audiovisual media scores can offer significant insights into the narrative and thematics of a genre that is usually studied with near-exclusive address to visual design/effects, narrative, characterisation and dialogue. The articles eschew use of specialist musicological terminology in favour of an accessible cross-disciplinary approach that offers non-specialist authors models for expanding their work to include a key aspect of screen sf 's affective operation. The editors welcome further submissions to the journal that engage with elements of sound and music either as the principal focus of analysis or as an integral part of overall texts and contexts.