Schedule

Some movie franchises and TV series were great when they started but lost their way long before their final installments. What are or were some of the worst examples of this phenomenon, and what caused these once-great properties to go off the rails?

Join us for a discussion of the books, TV shows, movies, comics, and computer games that have become classics and ask why they have stayed with us. Panelists will discuss everything from the content through to the context, the contemporary market, and the modern memory.

In Hollywood, “breaking a story” means listing each scene in a story and arranging them in order for maximum dramatic effect. This panel will discuss how to apply this technique to novels and other narratives.

DisCon III presents the almost complete 2010 restoration of the classic science fiction film Metropolis with an original rescore by musical artist Ryako. A Q&A session with Ryako will follow the screening.

Being a Chosen One isn’t always happily-ever-after. The season-by-season model of television, and the multi volume novel,  allows viewers to explore the arc of the chosen one-type hero after the initial hero’s journey is complete. What are some of the emotional impacts and plot implications of the Chosen One’s story? What kind of generational trauma can being, or being near, the Chosen One inflict?

Speculative media content is increasingly offered through subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and CBS All Access. Do your subscriptions reflect your identity as a consumer and fan? What does it say if you subscribe to Britbox and Shudder versus Prime and Disney+?

Over the past 10 years, the CW has become a major source for speculative television. Panelists will discuss the role of the CW shows in the development of genre TV, and how the network has had an impact on the mainstreaming of genre.

Horror offers so much more than slasher movies and ghost stories. The importance of the horror genre across literature, film, and increasingly television can hardly be overstated as a crucial platform to explore human weakness and critique social ills—while sometimes delivering sensational scares! Join a discussion about what horror is for, and what horror can do across mediums.

There have been 4 attempts to make a Fantastic Four movie (so far). They were all bad. The attendees of DisCon III can do better. Let’s plot, storyboard, and cast the perfect Fantastic Four movie.

The good, the great, and the just plain weird. Writers, editors and filmmakers talk about works they love from Africa—novels, films, comics, and literary gossip mags.

Orphan Black, a show following the struggles of a group of clone sisters, was a great show with a small audience. This panel will celebrate its themes, science, and characterizations. Just don’t talk about Clone Club…

Why is it so difficult to come up with an ending for a long-running TV or film series that satisfies fans, creators, and critics? Do finales fall apart because writers try too hard to please everyone? Panelists will discuss endings that weren’t satisfying, why they didn’t work, and what could have been done differently.

Television and film make detectives and forensic scientists into superheroes. But how much can you really tell from a grainy video, fingerbone, or scrap of fabric? How accurate are the super-science labs portrayed in shows like Bones and CSI? Panelists separate the science from the fiction in film, TV, and video game crime procedurals.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out brought psychological horror movies to the forefront again, pulling audiences back to the quieter side of horror. But it is not new. The 70s and 80s were a slasher movie fan’s dream period, but also had a fair amount of psychological horror: The Omen, The Exorcist, Angel Heart, and Jacob’s Ladder, to name a few. How do these movies hit differently from other kinds of horror? Is it scarier when you have to think?

Superheroes can mean something very different to members of marginalized communities than they do to members of a dominant culture. How do the dynamics of a superpower fantasy change when the hero is a member of an oppressed group?

Why is Lt. Uhura’s costume at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture? How did the National Air and Space Museum come to display both the 11-foot studio model of Star Trek‘s Starship Enterprise and a full-size T-70 X-wing vehicle from Star Wars? Join Dr. Margaret Weitekamp, a curator and the chair of the space history department at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum for a virtual discussion of their space science fiction holdings.

The pandemic has left many of us looking for even more streaming and network shows than before. We’ll discuss the biggest hits, our favorites, and shows we wish had gone differently. From adaptations of classics to the next new hotness, anything goes!

Cowboy Bebop and Dune are back on screens but it’s not 1965, 1984, or 1998. Is it that everything old is new again, or is space opera just a genre that keeps on giving? If E.E. “Doc” Smith’s The Skylark of Space is the root of the tree and Asimov’s Foundation series is the trunk, where do the branches lead us?

What are the best new science fiction movies across the globe? The panel will make its recommendations, and you, the audience, can add more. This is a chance to contribute to watch lists for the 2022 Hugo Awards.