Sunday, February 1, 1970

Hugo Winners for Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form

In 2003 the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award was split into two parts, Long Form and Short Form. To be eligible for the Short Form award, a work must be a dramatized production in any medium, including film, television, radio, live theater, computer games or music and must be less than ninety minutes long.For the most part this has resulted in awards being handed out to individual episodes of television shows, although some other types of works have been nominated and the 2004 and 2009 awards went to other types of media.

A somewhat worrying trend is the dominance of the Doctor Who show in this category. While I agree that Doctor Who is a fine science fiction show and deserves to be honored, the slates of nominees since 2006 have generally been three or four episodes of Doctor Who, with a couple other nominees thrown in to round out the field. And while I don't have a particular argument with the winning choices during those years, I think it is bad for science fiction in general and bad for the Hugos specifically to have an award that has become as narrowly focused as this one seems to have been for the years of 2006 through 2012. Fortunately, in 2013, Game of Thrones broke the stranglehold Doctor Who had on the category, opening up the award to other dramatic works.

1941: Pinocchio (awarded in 2016)
1943: Bambi (awarded in 2018)
1944: Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman written by Curt Siodmak (awarded in 2019)
1945: (tie) The Canterville Ghost screenplay by Edwin Harvey Blum from a story by Oscar Wilde (awarded in 2020)
          (tie) The Curse of the Cat People written by DeWitt Bodeen (awarded in 2020)
2003: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Conversations with Dead People
2004: Gollum's Acceptance Speech at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards
2005: Battlestar Galactica: 33
2006: Doctor Who: The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances
2007: Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace
2008: Doctor Who: Blink
2009: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
2010: Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars
2011: Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang
2012: Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife
2013: Game of Thrones: Blackwater
2014: Game of Thrones: The Rains of Castamere
2015: Orphan Black: By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried
2016: Jessica Jones: AKA Smile
2017: The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes
2018: The Good Place: The Trolley Problem
2019: The Good Place: Janet(s)
2020: The Good Place: The Answer

What Are the Hugo Awards?

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