#3 - Religion vs. Science: Why Filmmakers Keep Getting the Middle Ages Wrong

In 1957, Walt Disney aired Mars and Beyond, the twelfth episode of their fourth season, bringing the promise of science and technology into the great American living room. Along with its predecessor Man in Space (1955), the show captured mid-century optimism about progress—but at the expense of history. To sell this futuristic vision, the Middle Ages were cast as history’s “dark slums.”

Within five minutes of Mars and Beyond, narrator Paul Frees declares that for “over a thousand years, free and logical thought was stifled by a black period of stupidity, superstition, and sorcery”—a narrative supposedly corrected by the Renaissance. This is one of the earliest televised examples of the religion vs. science trope that continues to shape how filmmakers portray the medieval world.