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Best Sci Fi Currently On Television?
A few months ago a friend recommended Farscape, and I started watching. The first season was flat, but the current season is absolutely amazing. So I started watching Lexx just because I had hope in TV sci fi. (I blame Voyager) I'll run a poll on this later, but I'd like to just throw this out: what is the best sci fi on TV? What do people like? Why? I like Farscape because the plot this season has been really interesting (and I even dig the device where the split the main char so they could have silly episodes interspersed with serious ones) and Lexx... well Lexx is just seriously bizarre: I love the wacky humor and terrible B effects. (thanks to everyone in Germany that recommended it. Wow! You werent kidding). Are there any other nuggets of joy out there that I'm missing? The scary thing is that the Sci-Fi channel has finally edged out Comedy Central and Cartoon Network on my Tivo for disk space.
What I like the most about are the bizarre plots and heavy sexual (vanilla, homo and bestiality) innuendo.
LEXX is definitely not classical mainstream sci-fi. It's more like a mixture of old sci-fi (flying around in the space, organic ships etc.) with underground sci-fi (S/M, questionable ethics).
cdmrTaco mad my grammer and speling bad I thikn ill try hooked on phonic
Never Underestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Groups.
that would have to be Fox news.
(Although perhaps it is better described as comedy. It's a bit hard to pin down.)
Wonder if Miami Vice could be defined as scifi? Seems like a totally different universe... :)
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
They said The Dune series was pretty nice. Wonder when/if they will show it here in Sweden...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Okay, I LOVE stargate and there are TONS of episodes that are great, but the one that really pushes the show along and takes a lot of stress off of the SGC team is knowing that they are not alone in their struggle. The episode: The Fifth Race, reveals more secrets from the Asgard. If you haven't seen it, SEE IT!
Just my two cents I felt that sci-fi on TV was getting pretty lame. I loved the first 4 made for TV movies of Lexx (if u hav'nt seen go get them now there on DVD). The next two seasons of lexx well... I caught a epp of andromeda one day And BOOM!!! what a great show I was turn off from watching it when I first heard of it (kevin sorbo) but its got a great plot with awasome FX's and compeling charcters check it out if u get a chance. Never watched Farscape but I've heard nothing but good things so I might have to check it out
Marina Sirtis really has no breasts to speak of.
Gates McFadden also didn't have to wear standard unfiform in ST:TNG.
Sirtis might be explained as having no real 'rank' of her own, and instead of being a military officer, she was 'counselor.'
My problem with that theory would be the episode in which she needed to sacrifice Geordi in her sim training to advance to a bridge command status, in which she also wore a uniform.
Perhaps they simply felt it would be a waste of the female main characters, to make them dress like retards every episode. But if that was their goal, they failed. Sirtis had an ugly uniform color, and besides being too old to be attractive, McFadden's outfit might as well have been a suit of plate mail.
Lame dialog, stupid obvious jokes, sucky scripts, poor acting, lousy special effects, lips that are about to explode from too much Collagen...come on people! This is the worst exploitive crap on TV today. It's on the same lines as Zena or Hercules. Typical eye-candy for those of you with one hand on the remote and the other... I'll take Dr. Who/B5/FarScape over this nonsense any day.
There IS no science fiction currently on televisions that I'm aware of. There's lots of fantasy with a scientific bent, but no real sci-fi.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
- The West Wing -- Two angles were mentioned. On the alternate-universe angle, it's not. It's just fiction. There's no substantial, "what if" premise related to a historical event (what if the president were a human being who could think for himself doesn't quite count). On the science angle, there's science in the show (good science), but very little speculation. Speculation is a key to science fiction, and the dividing line between Law and Order (which had a whole lot of science) and Viper (a bad show, but clearly science fiction for its speculation).
- Buffy, Angel, et al. -- Nope. These shows are fantasy pure and simple. The line gets muddy (is The Lathe of Heaven science fiction or fantasy?), but vampires and their respective hunters don't even get a smudge on their wardrobes
I will say that, as an SF snob, I find the fawning over Lexx to be distasteful, but I'm pleased with the recent Farscape for actually getting the plot moving again. Best SF on TV is still B5 re-runs and the Iron Chef (which is clearly about the mandroid who plays Chairman KagaI while found that the plot of Dune on the Sci-Fi channel more closely followed the books. My only problem with it was that Paul sounded like a whiny bitch. He never sounded like a whiny bitch in the book.
...and you guys wonder why women stay away from slashdot!
No WAY! If this is true the marketing people for BBC America should be shot. I watch BBCA in the evening and have never seen an ad for the Doctor. I am PISSED. I could have been time shifting this to watch in the evening. Don't these people have a clue?!?! Too much background noise to sift out the intersting bits.
I really like EFC, but the ending was kinda strange. I'm really curious whats going to become of it once they get done showing the top 10 or 5 or whatever episodes. I don't know it seems I'll watch anything as long as it on TV. :)
I'm not paranoid but everyones out to get me.
Thanks for the correction. It must have been that the lopped off chins & foreheads are more apparent with the black bar on the top and bottom cause I didn't notice it at all in the original airings. But I'll be damned if it didn't bug the hell out of me on the 5 or 6 episodes I rewatched on the letterbox edition. Psychological impact from the black bars no doubt ...
Check out AbiWord.
> The short lived Space Rangers was infinitely
> better than this drivel
Sorry, Clayton & Co. went the way of the dodo in my mind at the end of the very first episode when, instead of making the stiff, humorous robot part of the crew, they shoved him in a box.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Brilliant comment!
I love Red Dwarf, and have to agree the last few series have been awful in comparison. The are also some excellent older sci-fi, such as The Hitch Hiker's Guide (naturally)
Star Trek (whatever flavour) isn't bad in my opinion, worth watching if youve got nothing better to do. Although DS9 is awful!
I personnally couldnt hack Blake 7 or a few of the slightly more naff sci-fi's... but thats me inviting flames!
Futurama: excellent, worth watching. Farscape isnt bad, and neither is 7 days... but is it just me or do american 'hero' actors with 'attitude' come 2 a penny (cent?) at the moment? Ive got a bit bored with those two recently though.
Sliders: brilliant but bizzarre... goes a bit star trek-esq and off the plot at times but still quite exciting stuff with sometimes a few interesting ideas!
Well thats my list, dont know if anyone cares...
Apparently either nobody watches the current season or these comments are being written outside the US where they are back a season.
- It happens to so stupidly far in the future
Isn't quite true at all. It happens today, just, for the most part, in the "Good" universe. Now that they've shifted over to the "Evil" universe, we see a lot more earth.
That's what I've picked up from the 3 or 4 episodes I've caught this season since they put it on after Farscape.
But for some reason mainstream people are not embarassed to watch bad mainstream programms like Baywatch, Viper, Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazard ...
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Arrr....Make that "The Lathe of Heaven"
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Not on TV right now but I'm gonna have to get the DVD sets.
This message composed using 100% recycled electrons.
Hmmmm. I think that Farscape is still hte best thing on. It might have lost a step this year, but the pop-culture references and the clever homage to other ScIFi really makes it worth watching. (Yo! DRD Pike!)
This is the last season of SG-1, and some of the new episodes are really good. It comes on showtime on friday nights at 12
We can look forward to a new season? Amazing! Here I was thinking that all we had to look forward to was the film next summer (which doesn't resolve RD8's cliffhanger).
Where's the evidence then?
They aren't afraid to admit watching The West Wing. Tee hee
"What is this VCR thing of which you speak?" asked the happy TiVo owner.
can't comment on stargate... the original lexx was bad. i couldn't believe they crammed in that much bad sf into 2 hours. but they did...
I wouldn't call them SciFi, but they are good shows
My fave sci-fi shows would have to be ST: Voyager Farscape, Quantum leap, Time Trax (probably doesn't fit), ST: DS9, SG-1 and ofcourse older episodes of X-Files.
Unfortunately I haven't seen quantum leap inabout 8 years and farscape hasn't been put back on this year (bastards)
------------
"There is a thin line between genius and insanity and I can't walk straight"
The feeling I always got when watching Voyager was: tired.
Same here. At one time, I was a HUGE Trek fan (take a look ay my username!), but both DS9 and Voyager lost my intrest. DS9 became hard to follow when the eppisodes became very sequential. The best thing about TNG was that you can, more or less, watch the eppisodes in any order and not get lost in references to past eppisodes. When you can't watch the show each week (and forget to tape it), its very hard to watch.
Voyager... How many times did Janeway loose the ship to some alien who threw them off and took control? Using that theme once is fine, but it was rehashed over and over again. I was hoping that they'd get home around the middle of the series and stop the "lost in space" storyline.
Actually, it was filmed in letterbox originally with the intention of eventually using the letterboxed version on digital TV, which uses an aspect ratio like that of movie screens (about 16:9) rather than the current 4:3 ratio. But until the Sci-Fi Channel started airing the show, we only saw the pan-and-scan version.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Has anyone ever seen or heard of a little known PBS (Canada) show entitled "Prisoners of Gravity"? It starred "Commander Rick" (Rick Green of The Frantics), who did taped, Devil's advocate-type interviews with Big name artists and authors about all kinds of SF&F topics. If it was still on the air (at last awareness, it has slipped into commercial laden syndication,) it might still be covering the latest and greatest (or even the Dogs, life Cleopatra 2525), with a certain air of authority, as asnwers to the occasional tough queston came Driectly from the author/artists/muses' mouth! Oh, for the original, commercial-free 27 minute shows!
Hook the tivo up to a EMC Cellera Media Server Box, the Ultimate hack!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Scifi Channel, Friday's at 9:00p and 12:00a.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
It's tough being a geek! Long live Lexx. Zev
Brigadoon was actually my favorite episode. I really like the singing, but then again I've always been a big fan of warrior-poets. assasin-poets are even better!
I pretty much like anything with asassins and thieves.
Take this personaility test.
You didn't specify if you're having problems accessing information about the current season, or earlier ones.
There is extremely little information available about episodes until after they air. Even after they air the synopsis and screen shots might not appear for some time. If you're not seeing information about the current season, it's probably because they haven't release it yet, not because of your location.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Not current, but still one of the best damn shows on television. Plus, they're showing the series in order, and the 6PM run recently started from the beginning. The first season is great (and Riker has no beard!)
-NeoTomba
First Wave original? Good? Maybe. But original? No. Ever heard of the 1960s series "Invaders" ? Featured a guy wandering round the US of A trying to convince people of alien invaders who looked just like humans but when you killed them they dissolved, sounding familiar now? All First Wave added was a cute ex-porn star (gotta admit, her acting is getting a lot better), a hacker (hey, it's the new millennium) and some weird prophecies written hundreds of years ago.
Space: Above and Beyond? I love that show :)
-- Adam Lydick
Wandering Programmer
Why should I complain. I get it at 9 PM and again at midnight. Wouldn't getting something twice be a GOOD thing? If I miss the first one, I can catch it again...
You mean Crusade? Killed before it had a chance to prove itself. I read the scripts of the last two eps that were available on the former Bookface.com. Unbelieveable - where that show could have gone if given the chance... Sci-Fi only bought the 13 eps that were completed and aired on TNT. As for the CGI equipment, I believe Netter Digital auctioned them all online a year or two ago. Of course this means the new production company for B5: Legend of the Rangers had to buy all new equipment (drools at the thought).
Regardless of how it's defined, Buffy is one of the best shows on TV. Angel is good, too.
And major characters would often die, making it more realistic.
Not to mention the last episode, where they simply killed off all the remaining characters (excepting Blake himself... they just faded out right after he had been captured). Not many shows have the guts to do that.
Gimmie Red Dwarf anytime , My American relatives are mad about it when they come over to Ireland and watch it on VCR -as you say - the episodes 1-6 are fine but it went downhill from Kolchanski on
Your second sentence: it would be desirable to "get over this border crap between countries and learn to live as one race".
Your first sentence: if you disagree with my taste in TV, you're an idiot.
Gosh, I wonder if there's any tension between those two points of view.
Daniel Judas Bolger
(posted in accordance with Space Corps Directive 34124)
Hi, Let me guess, you never actually read the comics right? Dredd was abysmal, it sucked on so many levels I can't even begin to decribe them all, but a few of the "main" ones are as follows: Humour, this is Dredd we're talking about here, the fascist anti hero, who kicks the crap out of everyone becuase, he is "the law" it's black humour at it's best, it doesn't need "comic relief" and certainly not from a dick that the real Dredd would have assulted, incarecated or worse. Love interest... This is Dredd, the man who goes into the bathroom with a gun and a law book, he's not even house broken, so how the hell he manages to get involved witha female of the species is beyond me. The helmet. He takes it off, Dredd has never taken off his helmet, ever. The only time you ever get to see his face is after reading "the dead man" for perhaps 20 episodes, then it dawn's on you that the "dead man" is actually Dredd, but since he's got third degree burns to 95% of his body you can't tell what he looks like anyway. The tech, the redesigned it, Lawmasters don't fly, never have, never will. The lawgiver has a dial on it, and takes cartidges from three places, the grip, and above and below the barrell. I could go on, but I've got a feeling I'm wasting my time... later jb praxis22@hotmail.com
Well Babylon 5 is definitely the best of the scifi and is doing reruns on the sci-fi channel (but you really should catch it starting at the first episode since the stories follow and arc). There's also a new Rangers series coming out next year with a movie coming out near the end of this summer I think. Something definitely to check out.
Other good shows to check out would be Stargate-SG1 and Earth: Final Conflict (it's gone downhill for awhile, but it still good compared to the other crap out there).
Farscape is decent as a show and probably sci-fi channels best original series. I just hate Lexx myself (maybe if you like a "comedy" type scifi show that it's so bad you can laugh at it you'll like it).
Andromeda is a questionable show and I'm still unsure about recommending it. Most of the episodes have been rather bad but it has some good ones here and there. Hopefully it'll turn into an ok show.
Dune on SciFi was probably the best SciFi to be had anywhere lately. Hopefully more will be coming.
Try the other site then, http://www.stargate-sg1.com. Depending on where the hyphen is, you get the Showtime site, or the MGM site, which deals with the syndicated version (ie, the shows from last year that are run on Fox or wherever). I was always amused that they have two separate web sites so fans who don't get Showtime don't end up with spoilers.
By the way, your comments reminded me of one of the things I absolutely love about most Cameron stories: The characters see all the same obvious shit we do.
In Aliens, the characters don't do the typical moron horror-movie character stuff (i.e., "Hey, let's stay here on this horrible planet and let the nasty monsters plant larvae in our chests!"). They decide the smart thing to do is get the hell off the planet and nuke it from orbit. Cameron's genius is in preventing them from doing so in a believable way.
Likewise, the characters in Dark Angel see the same obvious shit we do and actually try to take the easy way out whenever possible. Cameron finds credible ways to keep them from doing so. He also complicates their lives in creative ways that seem to flow naturally from the characters' motivations, rather than from the demands of this week's "A very special Dark Angel" or whatever.
The characters are as simultaneously cynical and idealistic as most of us. I like that a lot.
Oh, and have I mentioned that Jessica Alba's luscious?
Unfortunately, even with having Tivo set to Season Pass on Doctor Who results in rather sporadic viewing of Doctor Who where I'm at(Denver Metro area). Some weeks, they show 2 parts (out of the usual 4), and then other weeks they don't show any at all, or REPEAT the same 2 parts from the week before. Weird. Where I grew up at (Central PA), it was like clockwork during my high school years. Always the same time, same day, and they showed all four parts together...unless they were doing a fund raising marathon, in which case they would split the show in two, and beg in between for about a half an hour.
On BBC2 this week. V. Good.
[zippy-the-pinhead]
I can't remember I've seen a really bad SciFi show in a long time. But perhaps I'm just glad that I can watch some SciFi other than Star Trek that makes me pretty happy.
:)
;)
Living in Sweden, we are a couple of seasons (atleast) back in most of the shows, and I gather most shows doesn't show up here at all.
Best SciFi show ever must have been Babylon 5, but I gather there will be hundreds of other fan posts explaining to Star Trek buffs why B5 is a better show. (Two words; character development)
I enjoy Farscape, although I've only seen the second season. It's the best show which are still running currently. Lexx is another great show, if one can get past the cheezy effects and acting. There are great humour there though.
Recent shows that has stopped running but are still pretty good, imho, are; Earth 2 and Space and Beyond (I _know_. Noone liked that show)
I hope someone mentions 'V' too. Just out on DVD people!
Knight Rider must be classified as SciFi too.
I'm too stupid to preview.
You have to watch the first few episodes of Lexx -- they are many times better than the later series.
If you have trouble finding the first episodes, you might try looking under its US name "Tales from a Parallel Universe."
The old Lexx was truly amazing. The actress who played Zev in the first episodes was breathtaking, and the stories were both disturbing and exciting.
DS9 became hard to follow when the eppisodes became very sequential.
This must be a big problem for viewers in the US. Considering the completly non serial way that series tend to be scheduled there.
A&E is releasing sets of DVDs comprising all the episodes of three ITC classics: Space 1999, The Prisoner, and The Thunderbirds. The Prisoner: Can this be labeled scifi? I think so. It had those white bubble thingys, right (what were they)? Kinda James Bondish but man this was a great show. The Thunderbirds: Marionettes with an attitude. The models in this show were so detailed you had to be impressed. Space 1999: One of my all time favourites. I actually think this show had more atmosphere than Star Trek. Moon Base Alpha was just such a dark and forboding place. The stories had none of the cheerfulness of the Trek shows. The cast was great (Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Barry Morse), the effects were pretty good for the day, and some of the stories were outstanding. Check it out if you were too young to catch it the first time around. All sets contain two DVDs. Each Prisoner boxed set seem to contain around 4 epsiodes, while the Space 1999 and Thunderbirds contain 6 episodes per set.
Star Trek: TNG is (was?) the best sci fi on Tv for a long time. I also rate Red Dwarf and Farscape. BTW Anyone remember the very cheesy episodes of Hitchhikers Guide...?
Well, depending on how you want to define SciFi, you can make the argument for Buffy the Vampire Slayer being the best SciFi show on tv right now.
Indeed. I think the HBO series "Six Feet Under" is brilliant (though not at all sci-fi).
Seeing what they do to bodies has convinced me to go with cremation.
Ahhh...
I remember those days. I put up a huge antena and signal amp. to pick that up way down in SC.
Say you sell your soul to the Devil (for, let's say, a lifetime supply of foo). Next thing you know two guys show up at your door to convince you to call off the deal (the catch is you have to give up your lifetime supply of foo). Should they fail to convince you, they have orders to kill you.
And they're the good guys.
It's on Space here in Canada (late Sunday), and is quite clever.
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0195462
Serve Gonk.
Funny how everyone's been joking about putting spammers behind bars for years, and now when one has been (after all, that's what poor little Dmitry is), and is now taking it up the ass in jail, you script kiddies are crying your little eyes out.
I'm a big fan of Lexx and Stargate SG1. I can't wait for season 4 of Lexx where they encounter Earth of our time :)
Not to mention the last episode, where they simply killed off all the remaining characters (excepting Blake himself... they just faded out right after he had been captured). Not many shows have the guts to do that.
I think you mean Avon. We got to see Blake killed.
I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
The first, Quantum Leap is my all time favorite Sci-Fi show ever. It's got a great concept, and some really funny parts (like when he leaps as an old lady) It's on Sci-Fi every weekday in syndication at 4o'clock EST, maybe 3 o'clock too. The latter, Chronicle, is a new series on Sci-Fi that is sort of Men in Black meets the Sun (a yucky tabloid) but to top it all off, this tabloid is true. It's hilarious and has some really funny twists. It's on Saturdays at 9 EST.
I meant 20 minutes before the other posting mentioning Buffy. my bad
hawk
I prefer to think that, rather than collagen, they're using the more natural ass-fat injections.
Then I can fantasize about kissing their huge lips and ass at the same time.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
I'm sorry you take it this way. And I'm sorry if my post made it look like the only thing I'm doing is to bash Trekies.
;)
My reason for doing so is that the most common source of critics agains B5 comes from trekies, and thus it's natural for me to compare to that. I know I shouldn't. And I know, people posting here have been mostly kind to B5.. However, the major reason for this is probably that B5 wasn't mentioned in the original story! Such things tend to have some effect on the following discussion..
Anyway.. I watch ST myself, but as I said in my original post, mostly for entertainment purposes. As far as that goes, it's among the best things around. Partly because it's sci-fi, and partly because it's hitech stuff. And I'm a geek
And why don't I mention/bash/criticize/compliment other series? Because from what I've seen (which admittedly is rather limited due to my location and so on) there are no other sci-fi series worth mentioning. B5 and ST are the top-notch, each in their own genre, but complementing eachother quite well as far as brainfood and entertainment needs are concerned.
Love over Gold.
- Bonanza = take stock characters and bring challenges to them in a familiar setting (DS9)
- Wagon Train = take stock characters and move them to new challenges in new settings (ST, STNG, Voyager)
- Outer Limits = new characters and challenges each episode
Even my Aunt Sadie can get into (1) and (2) because she can focus on the hunks and TnAs, never mind the plots (gee, will anyone ever bed Spock???). (3) requires much more love of ideas and concepts, and is a much tougher sell. However, done right, it is an incredible art and some of the best SciFi being pushed through the pipe.[flameshields status=up]
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy , which is broadcasted by the BBC these weeks :)
And it doesn't preach. Rodenberry infected all US TV SF (acronyms, ya gotta love 'em) with the disease of sanctimonious preaching. Even B5, by far the best of the bunch, suffers from this.
Kryten: Could this be the emotion you humans call...friendship?
Lister: Don't give me that Star Trek crap, it's too early in the morning!
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Futurama is the best SF on tv today. Since it's a cartoon, they can do absolutely anything. Plus, aside from The Simpsons, it's probably the funniest show on the air. Sure, it's not pure SF, but they routinely address topics that the lamer SF shows are afraid to touch.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Voyager was a great show. Not quite as good as Doctor Who, but it was damn good.
I really hate that Voyager ended. That show had at least 3 or 4 more good seasons left in it, damnit!
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
while not really sci-fi, i gotta say i really dig CSI. sure it's a little cheesey, but for once, they made a show that has some real science in it.
(pretend there's something witty here)
TNG used to be on our NBC affiliate every day at 4PM. That rocked. It was in order, and on a strong signal. About 3 years ago, they inexplicably dropped it from their lineup, and there was no TNG here for a long time. Now, TNG is on at 6 PM here, on our WB affiliate, but the signal is so weak, the cable company (AT&T) can't pick it up too well. Compound that with the fact that I'm usually at work and the VCR picture quality is nearly unwatchable from that chennel (our cable really blows). Satellite's not an option (no southern sky) and the cable company's got a monoppoly here. And we're too far from town to pick up any stations well. It's very frustrating. I'm just holding out for the DVD's.
~Mike
A big enough hammer fixes *anything*
MST3K on Sci-Fi suffered the same problem as MST3K on Comedy Central: Mike didn't have quite the strength as Joel. I didn't mourn all that much over its loss.
This is debatable--in fact it was debated for years through a vicious MSTie flamewar. I'll agree, though, that the writing went downhill after Frank Conniff Jr. and Trace Beaulieu left. The last few seasons there were a lot fewer jokes and most of them were low-brow. Still, it remained a funny show. I have no idea what the ratings were like...
for crying out loud, that stuff is its *own* parody . . .
:)
hawk
Although there were some very good episodes in season 5 [most importantly, Back to Reality (He committed suicide; he committed suicide; he committed suicide, and the _fish_ committed suicide. There's some kind of link here I can't quite make out), one of the greatest episodes, right up there with White Hole (Would you like some toast?), Timeslides (Unpack Rachel and get out the puncture repair kit!), Stasis Leak (Nevermind. It's the personality that counts), and Polymorph (I think we're all beginning to lose sight of the real issue here, which is: what are we going to call ourselves?)], and Holoship (You make love like a Japanese meal: small portions, but _so_ many courses.)
Season 6 just didn't stand up to the others. Psirens (You heard 'em -- they want seed-spreaders. I'm going to apply. You guys deal with this Psiren thing. I'll deal with this.) was decent, but then you have stuff like Emohawk which was just a lame reason to bring back Ace Rimmer and Dwane Dibley. It was funnier the first time in Polymorph.
Seasons 5 and 6 also marked the move from pure sit com to a little more action oriented, which helps to keep the show from getting stale, but I loved the slapstick stuff. The shows don't seem to flow quite as well anymore, as for a point, they were getting to be a reason to string together a bunch of one liners. However, even a bad episode of Red Dwarf is better than most of the 'good' shows on american TV these days.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Which is a *good* thing. LEXX is about as close as you can get to seeing a Douglas Adams TV show IMO, but with a bit more erotica weirdness thrown in for good measure. It is nothing like Red Dwarf at all, dunno what the original poster was smokin'...
Hear, hear! Damned right! B5 is the best Sci-Fi TV ever. It is a series that can be watched from end to end several times in a row (all 110 episodes) and you will *still* catch something new, or understand some obscure bit of foreshadowing that originally you missed. I have seen the series several times over, and I still find myself finding new gems. The continuity of the series is great; my biggest pet peeve of ST:NG (my second favourite SF TV show) was how the events of the episode would only affect the crew for *that* episode, and would never affect them afterward.
As well, it is a very believable sci-fi series. The humans are not the most powerful race in existence. The future is dirty, dingle, and jerry-rigged; not some utopian paradise. The science is believable: Star Furies act as how spacecraft *should* act. And I love the space battles; just the little details like the space debris keeping the inertia, the way streams of pulse cannon fire missing missing hitting missing targets.
B5 is the premiere science fiction series. If you haven't watched it, and want to know how good it is without knowing anything of the story line, I would suggest watching "In The Beginning", the made-for-cable movie that relates the events of the Earth-Minbari war.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
EFC is a great sci-fi show IMO (this is all opinions though, heh). There is a little bit for everyone, from political intrigue to romance. It's going into its fifth session now. They've definately invested quite a bit into their web presence, having several different websites written from the perspective of various characters in the show.
Dunno about the writing and acting, I would not define them as the "best on TV" although they have done very well at dealing with some really serious topics like the death of Buffy's Mom. The only problem is that they really failed to capitalize on some of this stuff. I mean where is the supernatural baddie that tries to capitalize on this grief or cut a deal with buffy to bring her Mom back? That could have been worked into the overarching plotline so much better.
In the end Buffy is a show without internal conflict, the gang fights evil and does the right thing. Sure Giles suffocates the villian, but it "had to be done". On the otherhand Angel is dripping with internal conflict. Damn near all the characters have some major failings in their past or major either/or tensions. Sometime you just don't know what they are going to do. Would Buffy have let two vampires feast on a room full of blackhearted lawyers? I think not.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I also think the special effects and/or props are done really well. Maybe I don't see the holes in them, but they always seem to be "just right". They never seem to have a "cheap" feel to them and aren't overdone. I think their subtlety adds a quality feel to the show that the other hollywood heavy-handed sci-fi shows overshoot.
Other shows seem to lose their engrossing quality to me because things always are overdone. When it comes to alien beings, do they always have to look the Zergs in StarCraft? It seems easier to view an alien planet that has trees to me than an alien planet with cheap props. (unless the trees are from "just outside L.A." locations - they won't cut it)
Maybe better effects are really well done to the point of being invisible. I heard that forest gump had more digital effect footage than jurassic park. You get more engrossed.
By the way, it comes in great on Dish Network. But I'll bet it looks really good on their showtime HDT channel, but they don't have a PVR for that yet...
The only show I'd consider truly sci-fi at this point that I watch and enjoy is "Andromeda." I expected it to turn out as "wonderfully" as "Earth Final Conflict" so my expectations were really low, but it turned out to be quite a gem. The community off of the official site on the boards is devoted and the information they make available is of fansite calibur in information and quality.
There are rumors of them fleshing out Trance's character and a few others so they are a bit less two dimentional. I am eagerly anticipating the next season to see how they get out of the mess they left the season finale's cliffhanger with. How they resolve this will be a good key as to how much longer I keep watching.
Things that are "sort of" sci-fi that I tend to watch include "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Roswell," "Stargate SG-1," and TNT's "Witchblade." The latter is slowly shaping up to be slightly better than what it started out as, which is good because I think it has the potential to be a great series (much like ST:TNG and its' rocky first season).
I stopped watching "The X-Files" in the fourth season because it just went too far downhill for me to enjoy anymore. I miss Space: Above and Beyond that Morgan and Wong (X-Files alums) and wish it had been given more of a chance.
I'm also cheesed Fox axed "The Lone Gunmen." I enjoyed that show quite a bit, as TLG were always my favorite X-Files side characters.
The classics that are still around that I watch are ST:TNG, ST:TOS, and Dr. Who.
On the plus side, a lot of Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies appear to be coming out soon like the tenth Trek movie, Red Dwarf, and Lord of the Rings.
Whoa! Above I wanted to rip YTV a new one for moving and then killing Farscape this past season. Now I can see it from the start. Thanks for the great news.
And it is more than Muppets in Space: there'a a wicked sense of humour about it.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
We're working with some highly unstable chemicals and- No! You've got the mixture all wrong! [BOOM]
The ice-cream truck was also neat.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
s/HDT/HDTV/
As a science fiction snob, I should never ever watch this show, let alone admit it, but the only episodic television show I watch is Andromeda. Even worse, it's pretty much just because Lexa Doig is so hot. (For those who don't know, she plays the avatar of a massively powerful warship, so she's not even playing someone real, and yet that's part of the appeal. Psychoanalyze me now!)
I'm going to science fiction hell for sure.
For non-episodic science fiction shorts, I try to check out Exposure . It's a mixed bag, but usually has something worth watching every show.
However, anyone can tell you -- Red Dwarf is not considered SciFi as much as a sitcom set in space.
I do, however, have every episode on VHS, including the two bloopers tapes, and am hoping that they released the original versions on DVD, and not the 'remastered' ones where they took out the model shots and replaced them with CG. [There's just something classic about the models slamming into everything]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Red Dwarf is still in production? Why??? Haven't they run out of new ways to insert the word "smeg" into their dialogue?
Since B5 ended (am I the only one worried about the Rangers?) there've been three series that are not just good; they're great.
Lexx is great. Stargate has gone from okay to excellent. But far away ahead of them all is Farscape.
I don't know how much you Americans have seen, but I've been watching it on DVD and I'v seen up to about half way through the second series. It's taken a fairly old plot (old before Voyager used it) and the traditional format (individual episodes, occasionally two- or three-parters, the rare reference to previous plots), but managed to be truly excellent.
The reason it's so good? IMO, it's because it avoids cliches. On several occasions (I still haven't learnt), I've groaned as ten minutes into an episode it looks like it's going to be one of those ridiculous Trek episodes that make us all cringe. But I've invariably had to apologise (mentally, anyway) to the producers by the end of the episode.
It may not have all the strongest plot lines, but it avoids cliche. And that's a rare and wonderful thing.
I do not know if it is still on, but total REcall was a decent showtime started series.
I thought it took some decent elements from other sci-fi noir and most of the time did a good job on execution.
Dr Who (I still wear my scarfs!)
Star Trek: Whatever
Andromeda - show sucks, but Lexa Doig rocks!
Earth: Final Conflict - not bad
Friday The 13th: The Series
V
That alien show where the aliens drank sour milk..
Buck Rogers in the 21st Century (Erin Grey!)
Try watching the ENTIRE series and then get back to us, then again it might just be too intelligent for your mind. Nice that you're optimistic about our race though, I'd bet most of the rest of us know better than that however, until we can all get over this border crap between countries and learn to live as one race there will never be peace on earth, and frankly I don't see it happening.
Now I might be wrong here, feel free to flame/correct me if I am. But it's my impression that the original B5 was not filmed in letterbox and that the current sci-fi channel's letterboxing is nothing but a cheap gimmick.
... :)
My only proof being that far too many scenes have chins and foreheads lopped off as if they just stuck black bars on the top and bottom to make it "letterbox". I have not compared side-by-side. Please tell me I'm not hallucinating here
I forget who did Alien 3 - Alan Smithee maybe?
You're not gonna believe this, because Alien3 is just about the worst piece of shit he's ever done, but Alien3 was directed by David Fincher who's also done Se7en, The Game and Fight Club.
And yes, I actually knew that before finding the links at IMDB to post in this message.
Maybe I missed the meeting where everybody decided that only serious llamas like Dark Angel, but I think it's a great show. Jessica Alba is seriously luscious and the stories are well written. I like the neo-dystopian post-pulse rotting Seattle she lives in. I like the hard-core Russian/South African gangs that are chasing her. I like the bad-asses at Manticore who won't stop until she's reprogrammed. I really like the fact that they're not afraid to kill off characters that have appeared in more than one episode.
All in all, it's one of the few shows I make a point to watch every week--along with Futurama, South Park and The Sopranos.
> Even though I'm a guy I find Sam (Scott Bakula) sexy.
Then I'm sure you're enwoodened over the new Enterprise series coming up.
I, on the other hand, hated him in Leap, rarely watched the show, and am disappointed he'll be the next Captain. Maybe he can pull a Michael Keaton, we shall see.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Andromeda seems to be a poor ripoff of Blake's 7 to me. The characters correspond almost one to one (in number and in traits) and the 'plot' of Andromeda is just the converse of B7. Complete ripoff, poorly executed as well...
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
> Although DS9 is awful!
I don't know. Kira frenching Dax II kind of made the whole exercise worth while.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Anybody who claims to have enjoyed DS9 is an obvious troll. Holy shit. Gosh, 40 minutes into another episode and yet again NOTHING IS FUCKING HAPPENING. You might as well just make up a little sheet of plastic that looks like the viewscreen on the bridge and watch a weekday-morning soap or something. Christ.
It sucks that Space's broadcast rights ran out. I wish I knew the exact reason. If it's in any way Space's fault, they are idiots, that's all there is too it.
Of course, don't forget we have the 5 episode marathon today at 1pm EST. Hoping they show Endgame so I can get it on tape.
You are certainly not alone in mourning B5's passing. Almost makes me want to move to the US.
What are you talking about!?! She looks like a friggin' man on the series. Hell, she's got a bigger jaw than Schwarzenegger.
I love scifi too and I belive the at b5 could have gone so much further if it wasn't for tnt and for the most part I hate sitcoms because to me its just the same thing on any show but differant time and chanel no matter who the charters are I view scifi as at least having some creativaity for sitcoms it like laugh at how stupid i am and scifi has some storys ( some times bad ones yes ) that you can feel for the main charaters or what they are doing.
I am your lord jdarr bow bow down and pled to me and give me your anime and computer parts.
Lexx is such a ripoff of Red Dwarf.
Amen... B5 was, and still is, the best story told on television - ever.
+++ATH0
any show featuring an alien race that farts helium has got to go to the top of the sci-fi list.
Lots of other reasons too, but the other sci-fi shows are just too sissy to do fart jokes.
There's a female agent named Alex Monroe, played by Brandy Ledford. Apparently her official web site is at www.brandyledford.com, but it's done in Flash so I wasn't able to see anything there. I did find a couple of pics of her here, although they aren't that great. While searching, I also discovered that she apparently played Dawn Masterson on Baywatch from 1999-2000. So yeah, it seems like a Seven-of-Nine like move bringing her in, but to their credit, they don't have her running around in spandex. Also, the first few episodes of the new season this summer, I don't think they specifically mentioned that she was new (unless I missed it), so I thought maybe she had been around before, but just not in the few reruns I had seen before.
As for the doc (I guess she's called the Keeper? The British woman), I don't know if I'd say she's "hot", but she is kinda cute, and quite the geekette.
If those breasts aren't science-fiction, I don't know what is!
Simply the best. I'm also a Farscape and Trek fan, but B5 rules.
The current season is shown on Showtime and the previous season on FOX.
I watched FG a couple of time and found it to be painfully unfunny. The dad is pretty good, sure, but he's a shameless Homer-ripoff. The baby is just annoying... that character's entire schtick seems to be that he says/thinks things that are too sophisticated for a baby. Big deal. Nothing he says is actually funny to me, just odd (and tiresome) coming from a baby.
Blech!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I may be the only person to admit it, but I genuinely hope that Enterprise doesn't stink and that I can enjoy it.
I for one like Scott Bakula, and think that if he does it right he could be a decent captain. But I suppose we wont really know until this fall. Perhaps Berman wont curse this show like he did Voyager. Maybe the Great Brd will reach out from the grave and infuse Enterprise with something more than Berman gave Voyager. And here's hoping that the Borg never turn up! I am all for a show that gives us more Tellarites, Andorians, and Orions, and less Borg and Holodeck fantasy.
Thank heavens for Space. At least not having an UPN affiliate won't mean htat I have to wait a year for Enterprise.
I don't know what kind of futuristic world it is where all the babes look like that, but I wanna go there =)
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
I miss Star Trek: The next generation. It was truely amazing to see what sci-fi can be with a budget like theirs.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
The unfortunate problem with Sci Fi is that rarely anyone besides us "geeks and/or nerds" seem to like it. If I'm sitting around with a buncha friends, and we are channel surfing, if I see a cool show like say Star Trek TNG (in my opinion the best Star Trek), they won't even consider watching it.
There is some sort of stigma attached with Sci Fi that mainstream people just don't seem to like it. Sure there are exceptions (most prominent one being X-Files when it was good), but many people just don't want anything to do with Sci Fi.
That being said, I really love Sci Fi. Some of my favs are Star Trek, and old stuff like Quantum Leap, that rocked. Maybe that's why I'm actually looking forward to the new Star Trek with Scott Bakula. It's got a really interesting premise, and if they can just do it right, it has the potential to be awesome.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
B5 was by far the best sci-fi on TV for several reasons.
The effects: The budget per episode for B5 was a tenth of what ST:TNG cost, and by the time B5 reached the 5th season the effects were just stunning. Quite possibly the best space battles ever in a sci-fi show.
The story: While you could watch most B5 episodes as a seperate entity, the dedicated viewer was rewarded by one of the best stories I've seen in any medium. I won't even try and encapsulate it here, but it ranged from great comedy (some of the Londo/G'Kar scenes, plus various comments from other characters, particularly Ivanova.) to tragedy (no spoilers here. Suffice to say the show has it's fair share of tragedy.) Unlike shows like Voyager or Next Gen, B5 started a story, and ran it to it's conclusion. There were changes from the creators vision along the way (JMS is a genius!) for various reasons, but the description "a novel for television" was used, and fairly so.
Characters: No annoying robots or cute kids. Every character was believeable. Every character had flaws. The characters evolved. B5 could and should be used as a teaching piece on character development. Another thing I liked was the fact that you never felt any character was indispensible. In TNG, you know damn well Picard, Riker etc... aren't going to snuff it. In B5 I always felt like no character had a free pass. That added immeasurably to the show.
Realism: Unlike the shiny happy universe of Star Trek, B5 had real problems. Homeless people aboard the station for example. JMS (I won't even attempt to spell his surname) made a believable universe by including such elements.
The music: The show was great, but Christopher Franke's (ex of Tangerine Dream) music moved the show up a level. There are scenes which just rip your heart out, the music is so poignant. (Again, no spoilers.)
The alien races: While most were humanoid (not all) I think the aliens designed for B5 were FAR better than the blindingly obvious "human under makeup" aliens of Trek. The Pak'Mara for example looked amazing, and while the main players are the standard "human under makeup", the diversity of the portrayed alien cultures was amazing. Oh, and not all of them breathed oxygen. The station has section for non oxygen breathers.
For all your B5 needs, go check out The Lurkers Guide.
In closing, Babylon 5 is the best sci-fi there has ever been on TV. I look forward to the new "Legends of the Rangers" but I can't see, in all honesty, how it can possibly live up to Babylon 5 itself.
Besides, you have to love a show that blasts a teddy bear into space:)
I like Lexx. Why?
.. man, the show should be required viewing for middle school kids in order to bolster social tolerance!
.. btw, I believe Lexx was created by Canadians. Can anyone confirm this?
- It happens to so stupidly far in the future
- the sexual innendoes
- its funny
just my two cents
"Old man yells at systemd"
The movie and early episodes were occasionally painful to watch as a writer tried to include some pseudoscientific nonsense, but they seem to have put that past them.
The benefits of Stargate SG-1?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Its the best built up story (so far - we're at the beginning of the 2nd season, so I dont know if the story gets worse) for a tv-series I've ever seen. And 'Max' is really cute...
As I saw on some webpages, in the US those scifi-series are way ahead. What's coming next? Any new good series?
Gery
The answer is yes, me.
When they start airing Cowboy Bebop on TV, then I'll watch. Everything else pales in comparision. Check Bebop on AnimeFu. It's Good.
Not to my knowledge. It is several years since RD8 went out in the UK. I'd have thought if another series was going to be made, it'd be out now.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I didn't USE to watch cable (much)...until I got a Tivo. Now I can use Tivo to glean all the good stuff, even if I'd never be awake or home during a show...and skip the crap (commercials).
I haven't seen television since Feburary, but last I checked, they had re-runs of Babylon-5 on. I'd say, in order, Babylon-5, Farscape, original Star Trek re-runs and StarGate SG-1 are the best scifi on American televsion today.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
I'm personally a big fan of Andromeda, although I do also enjoy Earth: Final Conflict and Stargate SG-1. I'm not holding out much hope for Star Trek: Continuity Error, though.
(<sarcasm>Cable? What the hell is cable?</sarcasm>)
The best is still Quantum Leap. Even though I'm a guy I find Sam (Scott Bakula) sexy. Even more because on the show he's got like 7 doctorate degrees or something.
The more I watched it, the more I liked to nit-pick at the science of it, but that is only half the show.
It's the only show with science, drama, and a revolving storyline that changes from week to week. I know that Star Trek has some hidden metaphores and the first interracial kiss on television, but not enough of the show was really dedicated to the human condition.
Hands down, Quantum Leap. In fact, you'll see me in front of the TV everyday at four o'clock watching sci-fi.
---
Someone told me 'Frasier' is the favorite Scientologist show on TV
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Get your Unix fortune now!
I can understand all the grief over Voyager, and TNG was definately SF for those who don't like SF, but Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was definately a Good Show, with many Moments of Greatness (but too many Moments of Embarassment, esp. in the first & last seasons). B5 for the Star Trek crowd, if you will -- some of the ideas and approaches that made B5 special, but without the pretentiousness & avoiding running out of ideas for the final season.
Also loved "Now and Again", and miss it much. Not sure if I can watch it again, knowing the terrible cliff hanger it ended on...
I agree. I think if there is another one of the Sci Fi polls with blah blah blah Star Wars blah blah blah Star Trek blah blah blah X-Files without even a MENTION of the 26-year Sci-Fi series that PREDATES them all, I'm going to be sick. Now don't get me wrong, I like Farscape and I like Babylon 5 and I even like the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne which Sci Fi cancelled -- though it's still being produced. Of course, Doctor Who IS available on DVD -- at least in the U.K and Australia, and in the U.S. next month. So why not we show some support for the good Doctor and get him on this poll to show all these young'ins what are only interested in the glitsy, $100k budget Sci Fi what some REAL television is about. :)
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
I'd have to vote for Doctor Who. Doctor Who is the greatest Sci-Fi series in the history of Sci-Fi.
Just find a PBS station that shows re-runs, or see if BBC America is still airing their early morning episodes, and kick back and enjoy.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Gee. You sound really tough.
I mean. You're Dad is all special forces. He must be able to beat up my dad. And you ride a motorcycle, which means you must be extremely masculine. I feel so weak now.
And you use really arcane words like dojo. Obviously you spend a lot of time working on your mental training. It really shows in your post. You must spend a lot of time meditating on how you can use "my hands, chains, a broken bottle, and just about anything else that I can get my hands on" to beat up anyone who you might think is a "muscle head".
You seem to like to stereotype. There are two groups: Like-Me and Not-Like-Me. You'd be hard pressed to fit me into either. But when in doubt, you'd best just hate me, call me stupid and lump me with the frat boys you so adamantly hate.
I ridicule fraternities as much as the next geek, but I am mature enough to realize that not all guys in fraternities are frat-guys. And that not all atheletes are steroid popping idiots, and that many people in the military are actually intelligent.
I wish I could tell you the world is as simple as you want it to be. Its easier for you to think about that way. Less complicated. You dont have to actually talk to anyone. In high school, I could have been mistaken for a jock. Now that is a long time ago, but I still don't look like a stereotypical coder.
Well, wake up, you childish idiot. You hate stupidy? Well, there is always going to be someone smarter than both you and I. Intelligence isn't linear, like you simple mind comprehends it. Just like the world can't be split into frat-boys and geeks, you cannot seperate smart from dumb.
If you would have watched the show more than one episode, you would realize that Crichton often seeks to do things with as little force as necessary. Something you might think of next time you have to save a girl from a drooling frat boy.
when i watched the latest episode of babylon 5, a tear came down from one of my eyes.
First proof RD is great SF. My wife hates Sci-Fi. She will not Watch ANY Sci-Fi. I Tivo it all and watchit when she isnt around. Then one night I was woken up by her laughing at RD. BUSTED! RD is also on BBCA in the USoA. I dont klnow what time. Ask my TIVO. -j
I don't know what you are talking about, blame Voyager? Voyager was the best thing on TV..
Ahead of its time then... a little lamish on the effects by todays standards, but it was great. As I have no cable I have no idea what is on now... Does anyone really watch Cable?? I thought all these /. people were DVDers...
Speaking of SciFi...back to the future 3 is on SciFi channel right now. Hell Yeah.
Now there's a show I want to see reruns of!
:)
The reason I want to see some Reruns are there are only 3 seasons worth on VHS...for the remaining season my TIVO and my computer are going to get aquainted.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I wish the network would bring back Space Above And Beyond. It was awesome! It had an all to short run.
Then when the more 'mature' second season started, it moved to Saturday at 11pm or something stupid like that. Now it's simply gone.
I usually try to avoid "Sci-Fi" shows in general because 90% of the time the writing and plots are horrible and predictable, in that order. I had to be convinced to watch Farscape half-way through the first season because I immediately thought "Great, another crappy SF show." Now It's gone, dammit!
I have to concur with other posters: for the channels I get, Buffy all the way.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
...Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato so far! come on, you can not be that old! Even though it is anime, it has all the qualities of B5 and ST TNG. And more drama than any other. And the best music ever.
I guess it wasn't insightful when I mentioned Buffy 20 minutes ago.
And let me guess, you want the world to know?
The scary thing is that the Sci-Fi channel has finally edged out Comedy Central and Cartoon Network on my Tivo for disk space.
You have limited disk space on your TiVo?
Some weak hacker you are!
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
Witty humor.
Charisma Carpenter's tits.
Supernatural violence.
Charisma Carpenter's ass.
Evil lawyers and the occult.
Charisma Carpenter's blowjob lips.
It's a good show.
I'm typing with one hand right now.
I have this ranked HIGHER than Farscape on my Tivo. It is seriously one of the best cartoons ever made. It is a downright RIOT and im laughing my ass off at nearly every episode. GIR rocks! Seriously! Stick this on your Tivo and you will NOT be disappointed. It's on Fridays nights at 8pm CST on Nickelodian (I have NO IDEA how they picked this up as its more adult humor, but I thank them for it!).
I know I know.. It's not on 'now' (except SciFi US), but it's still _the_ scifi show. It's got a really well-thought out universe and plot, the story goes well beyond the start and the end of the series as such, the actors are great, and.. well.. I think a lot of people would benefit from watching it ;)
;)
What I usually say to ST fans who claim B5 is crap and has no story and is a soap opera like anything else is: Can you, after seeing the entire ST:TNG series (all seasons), then see one episode and pinpoint it to a specific point in the story? Usually not. With B5, I could do that pretty accurately; a good indication that to B5, there is a story, to ST, there is (almost) no story.
And to piss ya folks off even more: ST is entertainment. B5 is brainfood.
Love over Gold.
I'm going to have to rant about that. Neither Buffy nor Angel are SciFi, as you've said, but they also most certainly aren't horror. Gothic, yes: you do vampires, gothic is kind of inevitable. Buffy is more like Clueless with added stakes than a horror film: Angel is Bladerunner with teeth. Defining them as horror demeans what Joss Whedon managed to write (in my opinion): an admittedly teenaged but relatively dangerous mythical world.
Ok, I'm done.
~cHris
Kurt Vonnengut makes fun of that aspect of sci-fi through his literary alter ego, Kilgore Trout. He never could come up with any decent characters, only his ideas are good. At Trout says "In all of my years as a writer only once did I create a living, breathing character... And I did it with my ding dong in a birth canal!"
Ironically Trout is possibly the best developed of Vonnegut's reoccuring characters.
IMNSHO the best Science Fiction show i've seen on the goggle box for a while is still the classic "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" (recently repeated on BBC2) funny, charming and ultimately making more sense of life, the universe and everything then anything else has to date.
Outwith classic Science Fiction the incredible epic "Space: Above and Beyond" which constantly impressed with solid story lines and intersting characters without focusing on the technology of the time.
A close runner up is the alien horror of "Dark Skies" which despite being slow and at times over-reaching was very good.
The worst show I've seen is the indescribably "VR.5" which I'm sure had a story line somewhere, I am just not sure where.
GCM d+ s+:+ a- c++ U? P! L E-- W++ NM+ V PS- PE+ Y+ PGP- t 5+ X?+ R+++$ tv+ b+ DI++++ D---- G e
I have no idea if this is showing on any channels right now, but I liked it.
Was probably because I started watching it after playing some of the Wing Commander games; there's a lot of similarities, but anyway it's a nice bit of fun sci-fi in its own right.
These two series are currently being aired on Cartoon Network. They're great. MS Gundam (the original) is old-school goodness and 08th MS Team is very nicely done. These ain't politically correct. Characters develop, characters even die, and they don't bother with brain-damaged pep talks afterwards. I do understand that anime is not universally appreciated here at /. but these really are legitimate sci-fi stories. Just thought I'd bring 'em up.
This
I always liked First Wave with the exception of one thing which is, at the end of a lot of episodes, Cade and his archrival usualy end up sharing a bit of info, and saying "thanks and good luck killing me next time." There are reasons behind this, but I won't get into them.
I also like B5 because in some ways it's series ran much like a SciFi soap opera in someways where they ran from one to another and jumped to a part of one episode three seasons ago. I was one of the guys half asleep on Monday because I would stay up till 2:30 Sunday night to watch that weeks episode as I did not have cable. Thankfully the priest with amnisia was never the father of the Narn female who was in a coma stranded at the bottom of a cliff in a cave wating for her misterious lover to return from collecting pelts to trade for food.
The Sentinel was also a decent show and was unique when it first came out when the UPN network was launched, but now I only watch it when I'm flipping channels looking for something to watch if I have the time.
The Invisible Man is a decent show to watch, but after you see a few episodes you know what to expect, good guys verses criminals, using secret weapon to win and hiding the secret. Cool, but the same special effects and the typical warm and fuzzy sceen at the end with the characters patting eachother on their backs.
I also want to mention the SciFi production of Dune. I loved everything I saw, but I missed two of the four episodes and was totaly lost. I borrowed a friends copy of the original movie with Patrick Stewart and I had a better understanding of the story. I then went out and bought the SciFi series on DVD.
Finnaly I want to mention The Visitor. In a way this show reminds me of The A-Team with a strangly dedicated Military officer chasing after the main character who wants to do nothing but help people in need. Here you have an alien who just has some snazzy power that heals things, and he uses it to help everyone he meets who is in need while trying to save the world from the currious scientists who will kill everyone if they dabble in new materials from space and other races.
Oh, BTW, Lexx scares me.
Who wants Pork Chops?
Here in New Zealand I am all to aware that the majority of people think SciFi is crap - it's plainly evident just by looking at our tv schedules.
:-)) , consisting of Quantum Leap (airing this from episode one (although I thought that first episode was a 2hr pilot when it was first released), DS9 - which I don't watch, OSI and if we are lucky a movie after that.
:-))).
Basically in this country our only scifi fix currently is coming on a Saturday night from TV4 (free to air channel that is a little off-beat, alternative, cool
On a sunday afternoon TV4 shows reruns of Voyager (mmmm 7of9) and DS9. Occasionally the other channels show the odd movie of interest (last Saturday we were treated to "Contact" again). TV2 started playing a series of (mmm Gillian Anderson) XFiles (which, I hve to disagree with people and say that the first series with Robert Patrick is quite good) and then pulled it midstream for no reason. We got one season of EFC from 4 (not bad...). TV3 played Dark Angel , but while they own the rights to (mmmm Gigi Edgly) Farscape (of which we have seen 1 season, several years ago) they refuse to play it. TV4 were playing Perversions of Science, which I liked.
TV2 is probably the worts...not only did they pull XF, but they played Brimstone and Strange World in absurdly graveyard times - great shows and they just killed any future they would have had here. I'm guessing they own series of SG1, but we havn't seen it for ages.
TV3 is JUST getting into series 3 of Charmed (mmmm Holly Marie Coombs), that's more fantasy though (good but(ts
Damn, we need a SciFi channel here, I need an intavenous SciFi infusion stat.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
The owner of all of the movies for seasons 8-10 was the Sci-Fi channel(actually USA networks). Some might have had some problems (merlin's shop of mystical wonders 1003?). But getting more bad movies was never a problem. It really was just marketing stupidity. The show started as, and never should have been considered anything other than, a way to take the lousy movies you show at 2am and juice them up. I really don't think that the Brains were costing all that much. Sunday night at 11pm for the new eps would have been fine. Then, regular repeats throughout the week whenever a gap opens in the schedule. They regularly show standard bot fodder, you can't tell me the puppets cost that much.
I actually do as well. I got hooked on SG-1 and actually the now cancelled Total Recall 2040 (to a lesser degree).
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Can someone explain why the HELL sci-fi channel
:-(
keeps pushing that "john edwards" crap?
It's called the "SCI FI" channel you fuckwit
scifi channel execs, not the "PSYCHIC HOTLINE
CHANNEL"!
Next think you know, they will be running an
hour of "john edwards" back to back with an
hour of "mistress cleo" in the smack middle of
prime time.
Eg in Polymorph II they come up with a (so far as I am aware) novel solution to the old `how do you tell real person from copy' puzzle.
And it doesn't preach. Rodenberry infected all US TV SF (acronyms, ya gotta love 'em) with the disease of sanctimonious preaching. Even B5, by far the best of the bunch, suffers from this.
I also agree with someone else who mentioned Blakes 7. a wondeful antidote to ST. A villain you had to admire (lust, lust) and a `hero' who was a scheming selfish bastard. And (in the early series when it was worth watching) a great spaceship. Pity about the effects budget though.
The SciFi network here just finished showing The Prisoner. If that lets me count it as SF then I vote for that in the top few too.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
My VCR is set for Frasier, Dharma & Greg, Spin City, The West Wing, Homicide: LotS, X files (watching The Sopranos on at the same time, missing The knock on at the same time), F1, a very good local investigative news program, and the ecology shows.
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Farscape. But what I will be real interested in seeing the new series Star Trek: Enterprise.
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
personally I think that series 5 and 6 were the best (you seem to totally ignore them).
While it isn't as good as it was, series 8 was a lot better than 7. I reckon that if they hadn't brought kochanski back then both 7 and 8 would have been a lot better as well.
people do seem to ignore the first two series mainly because it was a different style. This is unfortuante because there is some classic stuff...
Lister : rimmer are you awake ?
Rimmer : yes mum, i'm just packing my satchel
Did you know that the BBC originally planned to axe it after the first series but they had alreadly commisioned the second and spent loads of money on it.
MST3K still enjoyed considerable popularity on the Sci-Fi channel, though... I think they might've gone another season or two, except for two problems:
#1 - Creative burnout. It was simply becoming too hard to sustain the level of energy needed for the series.
#2 - Dwindling supply of movies to mock. Not that there aren't lots of movies deserving of the MST3K treatment, but the people who held the broadcast rights to those movies were starting to get more demanding about royalties and such, or were simply denying permission outright.
Actually, mainstream people are embarassed to watch bad mainstream programs like Baywatch, Vpier, Knight Rider and the Dukes... There might be a bigger audience, because now you are dealing with a MAINSTREAM subculture instead of a geek subculture, but no matter how big Baywatch got, it was never in the same category of "not a little ashamed to admit it" like a Hill Street Blues, an E.R. or The Sopranos... now those shows were mainstream ...
(psst, and you know what? The writing was/is pretty good on each. Never really been a regular viewer of any of them, but they all have a level of sophisticated writing that I only wish a sci-fi show could approach.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
There are five seasons to date. Season three just started in syndication on local channels with season four starting Sept 11th and season five is underway on Showtime. You can buy the entire first season for $80.00 ish from Amazon.com or directly from mgm. Links: Official site: http://www.stargate-sg1.com/ Great fan site w/ synoposis: http://www.scifiguide.net/stargate/
What part of your post was sarcasm?
The sig or the actual post?
Andromeda is great if you want to laugh at how cheesy it is.
Its basically, Xena (or Hercules) in outer space.
I cant figure out which is worse, the acting, writing or effects.
The short lived Space Rangers was infinitely better than this drivel
Then again, if you want great cheese, you have to check out Battlefield Earth. You will laugh you ass off.
(Oooops, Xenu is after me for making fun of $cientology....!!!)
If those Travolta-Cruise twits ever decide to make this into a series, it could be funnier than Red Dwarf which of course, has better writing than any sci-fi garbage out there.
zeke
I hate to push you back over to Cartoon Network, but Outlaw Star is really some of the best TV sci-fi I've ever seen. The characters are interesting and well-rounded and the plot just keeps on churning to the finish line. It's unpretentious, solidly done entertainment. Expanding out to DVD's, Gasaraki, also done by Sunrise (Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop) is seriously cool; hope CN gets a chance to pick that one up and give it broader exposure. Dark Angel has looked pretty intriguing to me, although I haven't delved into it, and of course B5 and Crusade reruns are always good. Is anyone doing reruns of Nowhere Man? (Does anyone besides me remember the show?)
I'd suggest something non-episodic, like Outer Limits. I also might suggest certain animes, which aren't as character-obsessed as disappointments like Voyager or as drawn-out as things like X-Files.
The problem with most Sci Fi is that you already know generally how things are going to end: no matter what anomaly the Enterprise encounters, the ship has to survive and survive intact or else you have no future episodes. No matter what freakish mutant Scully and Mulder do battle with, they're both going to find a way around it that involves bad lighting and horrid camerawork.
Shows like Outer Limits generally have less focus on characters, and more focus on the stories the characters have to deal with. That seems like something of a plus, as the unpredictability and mortality of non-reccurring characters seems more real. Suspension of disbelief is a lot easier when the characters don't seem so immortal.
- Based (loosely) on one of the creators of the genre
- One kick-ass female hero (Rebecca Fogg)
- Steampunk feel
Really, this is probably my current favorite SciFi on TV. Perhaps third (behind "West Wing," and "Sports Night" reruns). Cheers, CharlesSimply grep for involvement by Harlan Ellison. It has about a 66% hit rate. :-)
On a related note, has anyone noticed that one of the finest pieces of SF to hit TV has finally been re-released after over 20 years? Ursala K Le Guin's "The Lathe if Heaven".
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Obviously the most entertaining, if not a bit far fetched, Sci-Fi on TV is C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 (especially during tech related hearings) with Court TV running a distant third.
Cops is great fiction, but lacks the level of science required to be called Science Fiction.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The new stargate shows are playing now... There have been some very good ones this season
Witchblade on TSN (i think?) is pretty damn good. Took me a few episodes to get into it (afterall, her costume was much more..ahem, revealing....in the comic), but I really dig it. If you haven't seen it, it's on tuesday nights.
Somebody else has already brought up the other shows I was going to talk about (Andromeda, Dr. Who, Red Dwarf)... but where's Blake's 7?
Unfortunately it wasn't particuarly popular, but it did run for 4 seasons on the BBC. I think that the character development was quite good, especially in the first half of the show. The characters were usually out for themselves first and for the group sort-of when it was convienent. Plus no ridiculous pseudo-philosophical problems.
The overall story line was very believable too -- a group of unlikely outlaws rebelling against an tyrannical Federation -- and not any of the silly utopian nonsense you get with ST: The Marxist Generation. And major characters would often die, making it more realistic.
Of course the series did have its downfalls. Towards the end it seemed they ran out of stories and the episodes got pretty silly. Plus they suffered from the typical BBC attention to special effects. On most occaisons you couldn't see the strings on their models..
Go on and mod me down. I have a +1 (reminding me of D&D) and I'm not using it.
I read Science Fiction constantly, particularly hard SF from the likes of Larry Niven, or military SF (David Drake, David Weber). I've watched the recent star trek series'. I've seen all the supposedly great new shows on SciFi.
And I yawn. Boring.
X Files used to have its moments (although my favorite X files moment was the episode that involved Sculley and a tatooo. Yum)
There were a couple of times Babylon 5 was mildly interesting.
ST:TNG was utterly predictable. Voyager was just unwatchable.
Blake's 7, Red Dwarf and Dr. Who are all shown on PBS affliates around here. Dr. Who proves it's possible to make an entire TV show out of cardboard, but I don't think it's very good.
Sad thing is, I keep trying to watch, hoping I'll find something great. Nothing is out there that's as compelling as the stuff I can check out at the library.
OK, so what, in my opinion, is the best SF show on TV?
Futurama.
"Bite my shiny metal ass!"
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Easily the best show on TV, period. Not always sci-fi, but most of the movies they watch are sci-fi. You'd never get to see most of those movies on TV if they weren't put into this context.
The funniest part about this show, is that I have a hunch the idea was hatched by stoners sitting around making comments about bad movies...because they say a lot of the same type of stuff my friends and I would say when watching bad movies.
How dare you forget Eva Habermann! :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I started watching babylon 5 when it first started airing on TV and I still watch it when I get a chance (I work 4 days out of the week till 7:30) Babylon 5 is the only Sci Fi Tv show I've seen that has maintained the same plot for it's whole 5 year season. At the same time babylon 5 is almost beleivable. The characters are real people and the show's computer effects and portrayals of how things would really happen are very well done, compared to some other shows that leave you saying to yourself "that couldn't happen". Sci Fi should be a convegence of Science And Imagination.
Most SF fans know that many of the most interesting genre movies are derived from short stories (i.e Blade Runner, The Minority Report, even A.I.). What a lot of people don't know is that these short stories often first appeared in SF magazines. Magazines such as Interzone, Asimov's, and F&SF aren't in good financial health right now, even though they are the nursery for a lot of SF writers.
A yearly subscription to most of these costs less than on month's cable bill, but gives a lot more entertainment, and helps to ensure the future of SF writers.
End of pledge break -- now back to our regularly scheduled Microsoft bashing
I would have to go for Babylon 5. I can't wait to see the new movies later this year.
Has not mentioned the best form of Science Fiction on television....Mystery Science Theater 3000. But no, my precious MST3K was killed by Sci-Fi (3 days from now, it'll be two years) to give Fartscape and First Wave, what they define as "hard sci-fi", a better place on television. Despite having a very low budget and costing next to nothing to make, despite having an audience without ANY promotion or advertising, and despite the fact that it should have been in it's prime time line up, it was shuffled to the Sunday 11:00 PM EST timeslot. It's so not fair. ;)
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
There is some sort of stigma attached with Sci Fi that mainstream people just don't seem to like it. Sure there are exceptions (most prominent one being X-Files when it was good), but many people just don't want anything to do with Sci Fi.
Did you read what you just wrote? "Sure there are exceptions like X files when it was good" Its not like the US is a hotbed of high culture, but even mainstream viewers have some taste and, frankly, most Sci Fi sucks!
"...well, it was nice to see another installment in the Star Trek universe, but Voyager's writing sucked..."
"...Dr. Who was ahead of its time, but, gee, the special effects were painful to watch..."
"...Sliders was a great idea, but each new universe was riddled with logical holes..."
"...Lexx... well... Lexx..."
The unfortunate problem with Sci Fi is that rarely anyone besides us "geeks and/or nerds" seem to like it.
The problem (IMHO) with most SciFi is that it is almost never well executed.. Geeks seem have the intelligence to see past the (rather substantial sometimes) flaws and keep watching, but most people are honest enough to just keep channel surfing.
Geeks, for whatever reason, get off on preferring intelligent crap over stylish crap. They would rather see a TV show with the latest uber-gadget/newest buzzwords in physics/hot chicks with the biggest breasts who never seem to have to wear a standard uniform...
But, its not like mainstream people hate SciFi... mainstream people are embarassed to watch bad SciFi, that's all...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Stargate is just below my threshold -- not bad and I catch it pretty often, but I feel like I watch enough TV as it is so I don't follow it religiously.
Bah. I wish I got the sci-fi channel at school. I'm missing out on some great shows :(
No final decision has been made yet whether Showtime will pick up a 6th season.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The best Sci Fi on TV right now is clearly all the repeat runs of Star Trek, ST Next Generation and ST Voyager. And let's not forget the occasional Superstation presentation of Stallone in "Judge Dredd".... a stunning cinematic masterpiece, with Rob Schneider playing a wonderfully refreshing role as comic relief.
The best sci fi not on TV right now is Robotech. Episodes can be found on Gnutella and Hotline, and are also available on DVD from the Robotech website, Robotech.com.
Ok, this may be vaguely off the topic of currently running shows, though it's one to watch out for if they re-run it, or bother to get round to series 2..
That's "Ultraviolet". It's well worth watching out for, although it's (in current form) just a 6 episode mini series.
Keep the eyes peeled,
Malk
IMHO, it's the best SciFi around these days.
/. it's heresy to say this, but I find all the Star Trek derivatives to be completely unwatchable dreck. First Wave had me for a little while, but then they had to go and add Traci Lords to the cast as a cheap ratings ploy that reminded me of the "addition" of Kari Wuhrer to the Sliders cast. Like a pair of tits is going to keep me from noticing the show's getting hokey? I couldn't even bear the LEXX commercials. Farscape never really got its hooks into me.
Before that, it was Sliders (though only the shows that had the original cast, and before they just started ripping off movie plots). I know on
I've always been a huge fan of the Twilight Zone, and other shows of that particular genre of sci-fi, and The Outer Limits has taken up the thread quite admirably, with decent effects, familiar stars, and, oh yeah, interesting plots. They did an adaption of Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon"-- a great story I had wanted to see on screen since I first read it. I'm still hoping they'll someday find a way to squeeze "Flash Crowd" into an hour.)
The only time I really watch the SciFi Channel anymore is when they have one of those all-day Twilight Zone marathons, a good movie, or The Outer Limits.
~Philly
have to be the best. I only just got into The Tribe (A World without adults). I got into B5 right at the end of it's run 8-( and SG-1 was only recently added to my list of viewables 8-).
Stargate SG-1 airs at 10 PM on the east and west coast feeds. Since my cable provider normally uses the east-coast feeds, I get it at 8 PM.
If you're seeing it at midnight, you're either on a tape delay or in the CTZ but getting the west coast feed for some reason. Either way, you should complain to your cable provider.
(If I had to guess, this is to "protect the children" from the nudity and sexual situations in their late-night programming. Heaven forbid we expect parents to monitor what their children are watching on TV in the late evening.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I do not feel very much like writing another small essay on Farscape, so I'll post something that I wrote for another thread, "What is the big deal about Farscape?" from the TrekBBS" (http://trekbbs.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/003035.html) "Well, one of the things that keeps me glued to farscape is the fact that originality is not lacking. Every time I watch it, I try and look for the trademark scifi twists, and turns, and results, but they are not there! Farscape has, for three seasons, kept me amazed and wondering. Not only this, but the relationships between the characters feel so real that I can almost feel like I've been with them for the entire run. And few of them follow the stereotypical styles. They all have so many layers to them, and that is what makes them special. As for the muppets: They are wonderful, and again, make it unique. I always hear people complaining about trek's lack of "Realistic" aliens, with more than a simple bit of makeup. Well, this is how they solved the problem. The muppets do a perfect job with this, by giving you realistic and original aliens, and the scripts give you aliens who you can love or hate with passion. In a related matter, the costume and set design are (or should be) award winning. They generate a very deep, involving atmosphere that pulls you in and makes you watch in awe. The costumes are so amazingly detailed and original that you often see things you would have never expected. The music is another element of the show that really is quite good. While the show does use a lot of stock music, SubVision also composes more for certain episodes where necessary, generating a great, unique feel. There still is one problem that exists, though: The Arc makes it hard for casual viewers to follow. But don't fret! The farscape cast and crew put together yet another little "utility" that will help many. "Farscape: Undressed" This was a one hour special giving an overview of what happened throughout the first two seasons. It was VERY helpful to many I know who wanted to learn more, but didn't have the tapes. The show gave you a run down of all of the characters, their relationships, and their major encounters and developments, which really helped out quite a bit. Even to the hardcore viewer, it helped remember a few bits which may have faded out. This is why I, Sanfam, Like farscape. :-)"
--END--
Erin Gray was hot. ( http://www.buck-rogers.com/film_and_series/gallery _wilma.htm )
I guess my age is starting to show, isn't it.
In fact, there's so much SciFi on TV these days that I can't keep up. There's also a "Witchblade" show on TNT (more Fantasy than SciFi) that's not bad. "Now and Again" is starting on SciFi on Monday; cancelled show from one of the major networks that I never saw, but I'm sure I'll check out a few episodes.
Those of you in the UK can look forward to a new season soon, and most of us in the US can catch reruns of the first 8 seasons on our local PBS station.
The best Science Fiction on TV is how the Media manages to overlook important science related issues such as MS practices, Dimitri in Jail, and tries to pass of fiction as fact, and gets away with it.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I've waxed and waned on the SciFi channel - they have series that start good, but I just can't get into them. I do agree that Farscape is a lot better now than in the first seaon.
And, though it technically isn't SciFi (more horror) what about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and it's spin-of "Angel". Though I'm worred what UPN will do to it, Buffy has been the best written and the best acted show on TV, and Angel isn't far behind. The characters in those shows laugh, cry, and hurt. And, though it gets silly once in a while, it knows it's silly and just laughs at itself.
Buffy is definitely the most "junvenile" of the two, though the themes it has discussed (sexuality, loss of a loved one) are biggies and they give it the weight that those themes deserve. Angel is more of an adult-oriented, with more of a Batman: The Animated Serie feel to it.
Try it - you may like it!
The Official Red Dwarf site has a good interview with them about staring on LEXX - Prison Wardens.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
How could you all forget Space Ghost Coast to Coast?
Farscape is by far much better. The cinematography was by far much better than lexx. It compares with babylon 5 and even star trek. lexx is a show driven by sex. It's enjoyable but I prefer the content of a good sci-fi show. Plus the plots in farscape are much more interesting than anything lexx can dish out.
What happened to Excalaber(sp?). I rather disappoibted Sci-fi didn't pick thoes eps up the the bought the rights fot the whole saga. why i ask! And where are all thoes great CG machines now?
I only saw 1 maybe 2 episodes myself, and they seemed alright.. So what does everyone have against voyager?
Good news: the Space channel will be running Farscape finally starting this fall. "Stay tuned for FARSCAPE on SPACE. Coming up Fall 2001 - Saturdays @ 2pm ET with a repeat Sundays @ 1pm ET."
So when it is on again, it will qualify as the best SF on Canadian television.
I've tried to get into Lexx (which is filmed in Halifax after all) but it doesn't do much for me - Andromeda neither (besides which the purple girl used to be Busy's friend, what's she doing in outer space?).
Slightly off-topic, my votes for the best ever are Babylon 5 and Max Headroom.
Bear in mind I don't have cable but here are my favorites:
This show started out very well and has lagged after about season 2 but has been interesting throughout. Go count up how many characters they've killed since the beginning... (www.efc.com)
I've read the books, seen the movie, and I just can't get enough of this show or the series of books by Bill McCay.
I can't believe I didn't see this in the comments. The plot is a little tired but I still find this to be an excellant show, mostly thanks to Jessica Alba.
I don't know what it is but I am just hooked on this show.
Who wouldn't want to go back in time and save the world every week? (Besides it has a good dynamic between the characters.)
This show makes for some entertaining Saturday night viewing.
The characters make this show.
Super powers and demons, generally good writing.
Still better than Voyager at times.
I think they ended this in a very unsatisfying way but I was bored long before it ended.
Mystical powers just facinate me.
When I first heard about this my first thought was "Hercules in space." but I'll give credit where even the tiniest is due. I've been suprised by a few of the episodes.
I'd also like to mention these shows:
I want to see the series
I missed a big part of the story, but it was good
I only saw a few episodes but I liked the ones I saw
I miss the whole Bejoran/Kardasian/Federation/Dominion setting
Around the time when X-Files came out this was on at the same time, and was a cool show on it's own
Way back when, the stuff now really sucks
Since this was on late on Sundays I hardly ever watched it but most of the stories I saw were very good
...if you thought Snidley Whiplash was a convincing bad guy. Or if you haven't been watching American tv long enough to realize that the chick with the balloon lips is not, repeat NOT going to get naked. Ever. After about the third episode the sneering German S&M villians got too predictable for me.
Well, they are aiming for a different demographic in farscape, and personally I can not stand an idiot muscle brain frat boy portrayed as a scientist. The rest of the crew is all right, and the special effects are pretty good, but man that guy sucks as an actor and as a charachter. Lexx is pretty good, and odd, but a little shallow. The chronical shows some excellent camp humor potential. The invisible man is ok, but nothing special.
As for non sci-fi channel sci-fi, witchblade is alright, but shows signs of degrading into the monotony of the highlander siries. Buffy was good for a while, but I think that it is past the haighpoint and is going down hill. The star treks have been washed up for me for a while. Of course my all time favorite is blakes 7, with doctor who as a second.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
I dont like most SciFi. ... No not realy I dont care.
Too many are only violent, to much science 'Whe invent a atomic particle once every minute', to
much a military organisation with s.m. like uniforms or 'stupid enough I only encounter more avanced people, who wants to kill me'.
But the best SciFi is RedDwarf.
Second best is Microsoft windows 3000, Opensource edition.
I only started watching it because it was on straight before Stargate, and I thought it was rather stupid when it started. But after a while I started enjoying it.
:D
Definitly not the best Sci-Fi on TV (B5 hold that, Farscape not far behind), but it's good fun and that's all anyone can ask for
---------
FrostedWheat
I am a trekkie (watched every ep of tng and voy several times, front row center on trek movie premieres, lacking the uniform though) and I've watched Quantum Leap, B5, SG-1, SAAB and other SF shows, so I thought I knew what good SF show is like. Soon after Voyager ended, I saw a .sig right here that said something like "Farscape - the best antidote to ST:Voyager". As I found myself with free evenings due to lack of trek, I got me a few eps, started watching it and - was blown away.
I've been pretty jaded with Trek for a while lately. True, most episodes were cool and some were great, but the script format has practically never changed (twist the story as much as you can in the first few minutes, wait, and in the last five minutes put everything back together (X never really died, planet Y is saved, Voyager defeats attackers, the Borg unexpectedly retreat, the crew are resurrected due to lucky timetravel stunt).
I found myself.. wanting more. And more I got.
Farscape has an atypical human hero, smart and witty dialogue, great stories and guts to go where Viacom dares not thread - whether it's a bare behind of a female cast member or an alien farting helium, main hero popping magic mushrooms or lead lady looking at a woman and exclaiming: "She gives me a woody!"
I still like Trek, don't get me wrong. But if i had to choose only one set of DVD's to keep me company on a lonely starship, I know what I'll take.
Oh, and many thanks to the guy/gal with the Farscape .sig. You changed my opinion of SF on TV and provided me with many hours of enjoyment (although not at the end of 3x15).
Yan
Gilina: "I can't believe you're not Sebacean."
John: "Human. It's kinda like Sebacean, but we haven't conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other."
Farscape, PK Tech Girl
I think this line's only filler
OK, not strictly sci fi, but this is the best-written show, ever. It does occur in an alternate universe where the president is a different person, so that might sneak it in to the very border of SciFi-ness. Ok, probably not, but don't limit yourself to scifi, there is some excellent television floating around. Not much, but it's there.
Communication is only possible between equals
A&E started running a mystery series based on books by Rex Stout called "Nero Wolfe". No, it's not sci-fi, but it stars an 'genius that's just a little excentric', dated a few decades back when more people had class and men wore hats.
You've got to love a guy who takes "Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, Third Edition", rips out each page of it one at a time, and tosses them into the fireplace because the book threatens the integrity of the english language.
Anyways, A&E is currently shifting around the show right now and it doesn't have a solid time slot (they overplayed the first batch of episodes), but it's been playing and probably will continue it's run on Saturday nights. But of course, there's also the original books in a library near you.
I think the two best SCI FI series on TV now are Invisible Man and First Wave. Buffy is also my biggest favorite.
There have been some quite strong rumours about a coming Blake's 7 movie. (google rocks :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
IN THE YEAR 2525
THERE ARE WOMEN WITH THE WILL TO SURVIVE
FIGHTING FOR A BRAND NEW DAY
NOTHING'S GONNA GET IN THEIR WAY
...
Christ, I'm so sorry. I don't know what overcame me. Oh yeah, the character Sarge gives me wood. that's what it was. Bad TV show, bad acting, nice abs. Now it's cancelled. I hope. It disappeared off local TV like an indicted infomercial king.
I agree with everything you wrote about SF magazines and the importance of the short story in SF. Just a minor point though. The movie Blade Runner is based (loosely) on a Philip K. Dick novel, not a short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Total Recall is based on a Philip K. Dick short story though.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Two downsides, though:
- It's on at the same time as Farscape (but that's why God invented VCRs & Tivo)
- So far, there's only 6 half-hour episodes
Mrs Bitters: Zim, the machine says the only job you're suited for is --Zim: Yes, yes -- LORD OF HUMANS!! I will rule you all with an iron fist!
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
It seems that since Troops fan films have been popping up like flies and maybe soon we actually can get to a point where free online productions can compete with real shows. Everybody knows http://www.theforce.net/theater/ with it's Star Wars films, but there's also a alternative Star Trek called Hidden Frontier at http://www.hiddenfrontier.com . Though the quality leaves a lot to be desired, but they're actually a series, a new episode pops up every two or three months. Even more alternative is Star Wreck http://starwreck.peliportti.net a Finnish Trek parody series with 6 movies. It's actually pretty good and certainly different.
Blake's 7 reminds me most of Farscape: both have ships run by escaped prisoners, both have lots of personality conflicts and conflicts over group vs. individual loyalty. The Federation in B7 is far more sinister and totalitarian than Farscape's Peacekeepers - who are nasty, but are simply a free-lance military police state "for hire" that does not aspire to run everyone's lives and turn them into drug-enslaved zombies (as was the case with B7's Federation). Must admit, though, President Servalan (sp?) was pretty hot.
Earth Final Conflict is by far the best science fiction series out there today. Earth Final Conflict isn't just your average star trek created by Gene Rodenberry, but it is a story with an complex plot line dealing with humanity, morality, love, hate, perfection, survival, and many more themes. Each episode has a spark of magic in it that I haven't seen since Star Trek: The Next Generation. Any way watch it and you won't regret it. It is now starting to come on SF channel (I love this channel) Mon-Thur at 9/8 central.
Voyager does NOT suck! Sure, there were some crappy episodes. There were also some crappy episodes of Dr. Who! Some people happen to think Stra Wars sucks too. Just because YOU may not like a show does not mean it's to blame for a dearth of good SciFi on TV. For that, blame TV execs. Afer all, THEY are the ones who first canceled the original Star Trek, only to find out the next year (via a revised Neilsen Ratings system) that they were hitting the exact market demographic they wanted. For the crappy Voyager episodes (and the less than ideal finale) blame Brannon Braga and Rick Berman (primarily Braga).
Star Trek is often the whipping post of scifi diehards. But corner most of them and they'll admit they either STILL love it, or that at least they got their start on a steady diet of Star Trek.
Responding to the main topic though, Farscape is indeed the pinnacle of new SciFi right now. 6 months ago I'd have tied it with Voyager, but since Voyager is no longer running new episodes, Farscape wins. :)
I must admit though, I'm glad to be rid of Zhaan. She was way too sotto voce for me.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Have you seen those robots on CNN? That is really scary. They win my vote. ;-)
In the UK, TV stations virtually all show utter contempt for sci-fi - they deliberately air it in kids' slots (6.00pm or 6.45pm is the favourite time, often on a Monday or Wednesday) and then use that as an excuse to cut it (or in the case of ST:TNG "The Higher Ground" episode, actually ban it completely !).
Personally, I watch "Farscape" (knock out Rigel and I'd give it a "very good" rating, but it's only good in my books), "Earth: Final Conflict" (OK), "ST:Voyager" (poor, but I've watched all the ST stuff - old habits die hard), "Futurama" (excellent, though recent episodes weren't as good as the earlier ones - it's at its best when the story revolves around Bender, easily the funniest character), "Lexx" (early series good, but it's not as good now, IMHO - that rubbish about "Fire" and "Water" planets wrecked about a half of a series !) "First Wave" (still managing to hold my interest - the addition of Traci Lords helped :-) ) and "Buffy" (the last
series was quite poor, IMHO).
What's quite depressing is the almost complete lack of UK sci-fi that's been produced in recent years. Doctor Who stopped in 1989 (mind you, I hated Sylvester McCoy and the crass storylines he was involved in), Red Dwarf (a comedy, yes, but the major UK sci-fi presence in the 90's) has gone waaaaay downhill in recent series and whilst there's been some kid's sci-fi (including a poor remake of "The Tomorrow People"), I fear that the best of UK sci-fi died in the 70's and 80's (Space 1999, UFO, Blake's 7, Doctor Who and Star Cops as a few of the examples).
1) B5 way out in front (no contest -- superb) The writing for B5 was so good that it made the performances of the cast some of the best in SciFi television history. followed by ...
2) SG-1 (what a kick ass plot device did a stargate turn out to be!)
3) Earth Final Conflict (its just cool)
Trailing a ways behind is ...
4) Farscape (if it were not so melodramatic it would rate higher -- I can only take so much whining ... can we say "The Real World in Space")
and lastly ...
5) Voyager, Andromeda, Lexx, Sliders etc... (these are sometimes good but often really bad)
Lexx would rank higher if it were not so predictably childish and therefore boring. I guess you need to be college age or younger to really "appreciate" it ... and then you grow up. Voyager is too episodic and often laughably idiotic. Andromeda wants to be good but it isn't there yet.
-- JMHO
First off a little about Lexx, for those who are bashing Lexx.. you have to see the first two seasons first. They are far better than the last two (especially the current season). Some of you are saying.. 4 seasons.. where.. what.. The first season of Lexx consisted of 4 movie length shows (with a different Xev.. actually called Zev :) The "movies" are(I think in correct order): I Worship His Shadow, Eating Pattern (with Rutger Hauer), Tales from a Parallel Universe (with Time Curry), and Gigashadow (with Malcolm McDowell). They are a lot more serious and edgy and explain so much.. plus they cover mostly main plot (with the exception of Eating Pattern which I'm not big on). Also a note about Lexx "BRING BACK LYEKA" I don't care how. :)
:)
:( "Go to Red Alert. Are you sure? It would mean changing the bulb."
As for Best TV Scifi in general, good scifi on tv in no particular order:
Farscape - It's all about the characters baby. Effects aren't too bad either.. using a wormhole to eject part of a sun at a ship (a recent episode in the US).. hehe cool
Lexx - falling fast but still in there
Earth 2 - gone now but I liked it... I may be the only one.
Millenium - not strictly scifi.. and wanders a bit but I love the feel and Frank Black is too cool
American gothic - once again more fantasy but great atmosphere.. "Someone's at the door"
Chronicle - I'm all over this show.. they need to shore up some of the relationships but still cool.
Freakylinks - cancelled dammit.. I was starting to like the characters.. and wanted to know about the whole big bad whatever out there..
Babylon 5 - amazing.. truly... but I just can't watch it again.. it's over now..
Futurama- "I guess I can get rid of one doomsday device and still be feared.."
Red Dwarf- seasons 1-4 were hilarious, after that it was downhill.. now it's embarassing..
Alan
Andromeda. You humps.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Ok, I'm not saying I watched all the episodes, but in general I find that Star Trek: The Next Generation holds my attention the best. (Voyager doesn't even come close - it is sooooo trashy).
:)
Lexx is just boring.
And yeah, if Red Dwarf counts as sci fi (i'd classify it as comedy myself), then that definitely rates up the top...
Nevrar
Unfortunately, re: Lathe of Heaven, my copy of the DVD says that they lost the original film, so they had to reconstruct the DVD from aging video tape stored at a TV station somewhere. The video and audio quality is rather muddy, to say the least: the quality for a made for TV movie of that era was not high to begin with, and in spite of valiant efforts, the DVD is very disappointing in spite of the excellent story, due to the bad video quality.
has to be a tie between red dwarf and andromeda depending on the mood.
If you like West Wing, you should watch Sports Night (re-running on Comedy Central). The show was done by the same team before they started West Wing. The dialog has the same rapid-fire, sharp accuracy. It's not as polished, but the funny stuff, on average, is WAY funnier.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I absolutely love Farscape, but for a more dark serious show check out Firstwave. It is by far my favorite show on TV. Its got everything.. paranoia, conspiracy, and aliens. The main characters are great, a paranoid hacker, and an ex thief. The third season is airing right now in the us. Check it out. http://www.scifi.com/firstwave/
As always, IMHO
closed minded is as closed minded does
Def the best SciFi on the little screen.
I don't find a whole lot of character in any of the characters in Lexx. The only main character who doesn't seem completely flat is Kai (And he's DEAD!) I do derive a fair amount of sadistic pleasure in watching the writers torment Stanley and any show that has two freaking seasons of Nigel Bennett as the bad guy has got to be good.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
SAB was in a murderous timeslot, which is whay I guess no one payed it any attention. It was more Rat Patrol than Star Trek and that's what made it fun to watch because you, lo and behold, actually started to *care* about what was going to happen to the characters (unlike Trek where redshirts get picked off left and right in a predictable manner).
The Chiggy Von Richtofen two parter was some of the best hard SF I've yet seen on TV.
Abandon All Hope
Mobile Suit Gundam count? It's OBVIOUSLY science fiction, and it's on cable TV, why not?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Invis man is a show I've watched sine it first came on the air, and you are right it is an EXCELENT show!
-- "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Personally I think Andromeda is great.
It was an early 80's Saturday Morning thing. I don't remember too much about it - except I seem to recall that "Jason" was being chased by beautiful women from starship to starship. Sigh... life hasn't turned out the way I hoped.
Excelent way to describe the show. There has never been ANYTHING on TV that can even touch B5, and I'm talking everything not just sci-fi shows.
-- "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
But I still dream of Shadow ships. B5 was a golden age of sci-fi for me. Season four is the best season of science-fiction ever portrayed on TV. It just had everything, it was space Opera on the grandest scale possible and stretched my understanding of science fiction and what you could do with it. I got the same feeling from Bestor's 'Tiger Tiger' or Noon's 'Vurt'. Yes, season five blew and the Drak were pathetic, but even at it's worst season five was better than the best episode of White Crusade, which I felt embaressed what B5 had been about. Farscape I have to admit is brilliant TV. Sometimes it just has me cracking up, I mean a little green alien guy in a gimp suit is a sight to behold. Lexx has always rocked, but the latest series (3 i think) is nowhere as entertaining as the previous. They're using a different type of film or speed or something, but it looks like a TV documentery. It was much more fun at the end of series one and beginning of series 2. The mantrid storyline rocked, especially near the end when the hole the dark universe is created. Dont like the latest Zev though. In the latest series you see nudity (as far as I can think) which may seem like a stupid thing to point out but in the first and second series they didn't need to rely on titilation because everything else was just so wyrd.
-nemof
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
Lexx is the best series out there since they started a particular style with season 2 - using a whole complete season of 20+ episodes to tell a story arc, much like the time tested methods of afternoon soap operas. Miss one episode, and you're a bit behind. Miss several, and you're clueless. But keep up, and you'll find a richer, deeper kind of storytelling than you'll find on any other show - be it american, german, australian, whoever!
Kudos to the folks at Salter Street producing and writing Lexx. This season is already shaping up to look as good as the last one, with the Earth being ground zero in some kind of fundamental battle as the Fire/Water planets were last season. As a side note to those following the show so far - any clue what those robot things are that crawled up Lister and the cat's behinds?
Farscape is definitely the Best Sci-Fi on TV today. I am still a big B5 fan and have the whole thing on VHS but Farscape has beaten it out of first place with me. As a side note, Claudia Black and Gigi Edgley are definitely the hottest Space Babes ever..... stayler
This has to be the best science fiction on television -- it is unlike anything else showing. It has more of a noir, cloak and dagger feel to it, but I'd say it contains enough elements (psyonic ops in one episode) to warrant the classification.
This is a don't-disappoint show that combines an awesome but not overdone storyline with kickass suspense and demonstration of some crazy tech.
Now only if they had it out on DVD.
It usually seems to be the other way around. Wonder what the delay is - syndication rights in N.A., maybe?
SG1 wanders around the place a bit, but it regularly does very 'hard' sci-fi. Another common theme of theirs is to follow through on the human repercussions of the hyper-tech, including the inevitable stupid mistakes. For anyone who's not seen the series, or had the misfortune to see average episodes, (the first season in particlar turned a lot of people off) try these. Each episode is about 20-30Mb. ASF files are DivX.
If I had to choose just one, "Window of Opportunity" would be it.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
I honestly think that the first 2 seasons of earth final conflict were really good, they had a continuing storyline so you could watch the characters develop and you don't have to watch a TNG episode with the voyager cast. Granted some of the acting in EFC is bad and they are going for the "lets put as many super attractive people infront of computers" approach but the storyline is one of the best i have seen in a sci-fi series.
Btw whoever decided to kill off Boone should die, i loved his character so much better than the new guy.
What the hell, I'll put my two cents in-
;)
The Best Scifi on now: Farscape
I love the characters and the story lines. Yeah I know its runs into being a Buck Rogers show at times, but hey most scifi on TV is playing action-adventure hero card anyway. Farscape does it better than most out there.
Best Scifi ever: Babylon 5
Bar none, best scifi tv I have ever watched. Had great dialog, real believable characters (well as real as you are going to get in science fiction, and cool space battles.
Bad Scifi: Oh so many to pick from -
First Wave - Sorry for any fans, but I can't watch this show without bursting out laughing at the characters (oh Traci Lords
Dark Angel - Wish better for this one, but it just doesn't live up to the hype
Seven Days - I guess this is scifi, but mostly its crap.
Voyager - can't say anything that has not already been said. It sucked.
Many, many others but luckily they have been sent the way of cancellation
Worst Scifi ever - Earth Final Conflict
This is one has a special place in my heart to hate. It started with such promise - cool story background, great characters, and it came from Gene Rodenberry himself (well his notes anyway) To bad it lost almost all the original characters, got really sucky new ones and the stories have turned into simply the most awful, cliched, ones possible. Most stories run with technobabble and episode resets that would make Voyager's writers blush.
I'm reserving judgment for Andromeda, to early to tell. I think if they get rid of that Harper character everything will turn out fine.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
It's an excellent show - I only wish that my cable modem hadn't crapped out on me :-( What makes the show good is that the main character is fully aware of how cheesy the plot is. He doesn't even want to be an invisible man - all he wants to do is to escape these group of wackos who think their contrived games are the center of the world... Thus, he doesn't take any of his missions seriously. It's a great show.
>|<*:=
I agress, I love farscape, but I find Lexx very confusing and annoying. I think my difficulty is that I don't watch a lot of tv and when I catch Lexx ocassionally the story is just so different from what I recall of the last episode that it is very hard to follow.
I also enjoy The Invisible Man, mainly as a comedy. I usually get a few laughs per episode out of something that Fawkes and/or Hobbes say. They are hilarious when they get going. And there's just something nice about a show where the main character's main catch-phrase is "Aw, crap." But I have to admit, if it weren't for the good writing, this would seem like standard adventure shlock-TV from the 70's or something, and that's kind of what it seemed like to me the first one or two times I watched it.
They've already stooped to the "add a hot babe to the show" trick (that female agent is new, right? I only started watching recently; I caught a few reruns from last season, and have been watching this season so far), but she doesn't feel very out-of-place in the show.
Speaking of the guy whose name I just went blank on, who played the first corporate bad guy on TR, he was the lead on a show called Stingray several years ago that was pretty good, although calling it sci-fi is somewhat of a stretch.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
How many people have heard of the new Star Trek series coming out soon? It's called Enterprise, and it's pre-federation, and obviously pre-Kirk, pre-Enterprise.
The actualy time is somewhere between Zephram Cochran (guy who invented Warp drive and made "first contact") and Kirk. Scott Bakula (yech) is going to be the commander of the ship. That's all I've got, but if you check out some month or two old issues of TV guide you'll see more. Hopefully, it'll do better than Voyager (flop in my book). I'd like to see something as good as Next Generation (still, by far the best, only because the original is now kinda hokey).
The people who watch EFC are divided into two camps: those who hate it because of the number of cast changes, and those who love it. I'm among the latter. I've been hooked since the pilot.
The underlying plot is simple: a race of aliens called the Taelons come to Earth "on a mission of peace". They cure our diseases, end famine, and gives of loads of neat technology (Interdimensional Portals just to name one).
But thinks aren't so rosy. There is an underground resistance who believe the Taelons aren't so benevolant, and it appears they're right. The Taelons are dying, and they're being hunted by their ancestreral cousins the Jaridins. Both races have been at work for thousands of years, and the Taelons have come to Earth in search of an army.
Along the way, they've created Cyber-Viral Implants (CVIs) which expand memory, recall, and give the owner a motivational imperitive to serve the Taelons. They've enslaved a race called Skrills and bioengineered them so humans with CVIs have a powerful weapon.
But that only scratches the surface. There is a complex political stugle among the Taelons - to enslave or not to enslave. The leader of the Taelon synod, Qu'on, is killed in the beginning of Season 2 leaving the strugle for power between Da'an (the American Companion) and Zo'or (the UN Companion, and Da'an's child). Along the way, many people die while the resistance is constantly frustrated that their exposure of Taelon atrocities are ignored because humanity is more concerned with owning the latest gadget.
So if you're interested in catching up, Sci Fi is rerunning all the episodes starting this Monday.
Check out Sci Fi: http://www.scifi.com/efc/
Or the official site: http://www.efc.com/
"People of Earth, we are the Companions. People of Earth, we are here to help."
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
Nobody mentioned '7 days' Heheheh. Nothing like an Australian actor with the American accent happening.
-= ddkwe =-
I cannot believe no one has even mentioned The Prisoner yet. Am I the only old fart here?
Another excellent Science Fiction Magazine is Analog http://www.analogsf.com I would highly recommend anyone that likes the harder science fiction to check it out at the local library, then get a subscription.
LEXX is not exactley Science Fiction, it might fit under the Sci-Fi heading, but is more fiction less science. It is however a great, if quirky series. I was confused at first when I started watching, but now like the television crack that it is, I have become hooked.
The people behind the Sci-Fi channel are quite brilliant.
They can't be that brilliant. They cancelled MST3K and just today they played "So I Married an Axe Murderer." That's not sci-fi!
...but only to a point. I really like Farscape and Lexx, but they still have some little annoyances. The last season of Lexx (Fire & Water) was a little too dragged out. Maybe it'll make more sense as this season explores the plot more.
My only annoyance with Farscape is that they seem to kill off a major character every other episode and then bring him/her back before long. It's not as annoying as it was when they did the wassup-style screaming of the person's name, though. I think they've killed everyone but a few of the main characters at least once now.
I liked SAaB. After awhile, though, it got too formulaic (sp?) 1) Drop into impossible situation. 2) "New" but likable grunt gets killed, everyone sad, 3) They shoot their way out. 4) Colonel grieves privately but humanly about the loss.
... I think calling it closer to Rat Patrol than ST is hitting the nail right on the head.
I rented the DVD recently for Roughnecks and was struck by how much it reminded me of SAaB. I loved The Forever War and a lot of the Dorsai books -- but I like SF that goes beyond the ships and guns
It seems to me that Angel is a ripoff of "Forever Knight", except I thought the character development was better in FK than in Angel. Nikolaus made a much better reformed vampire, and his position as a police investigator made for much more interesting plots than Angel's home-office-hero setup. Admittedly, FK was a lot more depressing than Angel, as it was a true horror series, and not a primetime action soap opera like Buffy or Angel. I don't mind that FK and Angel have plots that are so similar, but I think since Angel is plodding down a path already traveled, they should work harder on improving on FK's concept and really standing out, instead of simply recycling. Just my opinion :)
Space: Above and Beyond was good... But the nest on the air now is Lexx or Farscape. There is nothing else on....
The problem with the second season of ST:TNG, is
it was a casualty of the hollywood writers strike.
This is something that almost happened recently, but as far as I know, was averted.
For the second season of ST:TNG, old scripts for
Star Trek II were hastily edited for current characters, and used.
First Season ended with a helluva cliffhanger, "Conspiracy". Ok - maybe not the last episode of the season, but one never followed up on at all.
The horrific "Troi's Baby" episode was lifted right from Star Trek II - makes me glad STII never saw the light of day.
First they burn books, then they burn people.
It is very simple:
What do these shows have in common?
Star Trek - the 60's version
Planet Of The Apes - Television Series
Space 1999
Quark
Space Rangers
Space Above and Beyond
Babylon 5*
Crusade
7 Days
They all were canceled.
Good Sci-Fi is canceled, drek like Voyager lives on is renewed every season.
The only reason I feel SG-1 has not fallen victim to the curse, is it was NOT originaly on network TV.
I'd bet money that the major networks would have canceled SG-1 since it is too cereberal for their target audiences.
If you want to write a sci-fi show nowadays that will be a big hit on network tv - make it about
a bunch of aliens trapped on an island that wrestle each other to see who gets thrown off.
(Babylong 5 WAS cancled by it's original network and rescued by TNT. Who later determined they'd
rather show wrestling than quality sci-fi and canceled Crusade.)
(yes Quark and Space Rangers were not in the same class as the rest - but they deserve credit for
attempting to meld comedy and sci-fi)
First they burn books, then they burn people.
The best sci-fi on television, now or ever, is LOST IN SPACE!
Or, in the case of The Day The Earth Stood Still, an even more interesting story entitled "Farewell to the Master". Spoiler alert - once you read the story, you'll wish that had been the movie that was made...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
farscape is the best sci-fi show in production. We'll see how Enterrpise fares when it airs in the fall. As for Lexx and The Invisible Man, they both blow. Be grateful they pulled The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. I forced myself to watch the first episode after the teaser (Yes, it was that bad), and it only got worse. Andromeda is actually entertaining. Much better than the execrable Gene Roddenberry's Earth. Oh, and I mustn't forget Futurama.
And I guess for non-sci-fi I'll have to say I like Angry Beavers, South Park, and The Sopranos.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
aside from The Simpsons, it's probably the funniest show on the air.
If you like the simpsons, and funny shows, do yourself a favor and watch The Family Guy. I mean, damn, how can a show be this funny every week? The dad and the baby have pretty much stolen the whole show, but you can run a show off those two characters alone. You can catch most of the third season so far on newsgroups too.
I don't know how many people are fans of the show, but I fear not enough people for Fox to keep it on the air...
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most people who watch Lexx can't get past the absurd and sexual components. And while these do appear to dominate (and I do like them very much) that's not all there is to the show. At a higher level, the science fiction concepts that drive the plot are quite sophisticated, at least in comparison to a lot of the other stuff around. The theme behind the second season was the destructive potential of self-replicating machines. The musical episode "Brigadoom" was the best exploration of the pitfalls of biological immortality that I've ever seen. The third season was a bizarre, surrealist journey through...well, I can't say without spoiling.
Those of you just getting into Lexx probably haven't seen the first four movies (season 1). The second and third were really just long episodes - but the first and fourth are two of the best damn scifi movies I've ever seen.
Some other, on-topic ramblings-
Missing an episode of either Buffy or Angel is unacceptable to me.
Farscape is rock solid.
Andromeda could turn out to be really good.
Earth: Final Conflict had a brilliant first season, and has been going steadily downhill.
Invisible Man is good, but I still resent the fact that it replaced G vs E, which was incredibly good.
The Immortal is a pretty blatant Highlander ripoff.
Stargate SG-1 started out pretty good and is only getting better.
First Wave is cheesy and over-the-top. Kinda good sometimes.
I watch way too much TV, and read way too much scifi. I guess I could be considered vaguely knowledgable on the subject.
The key to writing anything worthwile is to tell a story. Most Sci-Fi never gets beyond the "idea", and ends up telling the story very poorly.
Ideas are important, and crucial to Sci-Fi. The reason the first Star Trek was so good, was because Roddenbury(sp?) had good ideas and he understood that the key to his show was the universe, not neccessarily the day to day mundane happenings of life. If you are writing Science fiction, and have a wonderful, magical world out there, that (the environment) should be your story, not some petty personal conflict among the crew.
Too many Sci-Fi writers try to just use an idea, and build personal conflict around it in a futuristic setting, and they just plain old forget to tell a good story and build on their universe. If you look at The Hobbit, Tolkein didn't get too much into character conflict. He brought you into his world, and explained it beautifully. The world was what the story was about, not so much the people in it.
Honestly, I used to absolutely dig Sci-Fi, but they keep building off of each other, and the "futuristic" technology ideas that they incorporate into each show have become mundane and unimaginative. The writers know this, so they add petty, everyday jibber-jabber into the script, and the show ends up being flat.
can't we all live in harmoney?
I'll tell you why farscape...
first, it doesn't rely on stupid technology like Voyager did. Every week, voyager spent a bunch of time coming up with some cool new technology. "87 isotons" "500 isotons" "a million isotons" it was boring. Some people were continually impressed with the ability of the scriptwriting to create a new, banal alien every week, and multiply some number used in a previous episode by some number greater than one.
Farscape doesn't care how things work. The plot is the most important thing. Drama is maintained. With a great plot comes suspension of disbelief, and with SOD, it doesn't matter if the physics don't work at all. Even if Chriton can understand every language thanks to those micro-robots, everybody's lips should move with their native language, instead of them talking English. I don't care. Explaining the tech would take valuable character development/plot time away.
Second, they do good stories. Voyager got into a rut with the stories due to a doomed concept. Voyager could never really revisit cool aliens, and when they did, it was under extremely improbably circumstances. The concept of the whole show was that voyager was moving through space along a pretty straight line, and thus, it was almost impossible to have effective multi-episode story elements. Farscape, like babylon 5 did, has story elements that persist. The scarans are evil. Scorpius wants wormhole technology. Peace keepers hate scarans. (Excuse the spelling, as I have never seen most of this in print...) The story of the series is a continuous one, divided into several episodes. Voyager, like first season Lexx, was just a series of individual stories, most of which could be arbitrarily rearranged, to little ill effect.
Current Lexx tries to do this, but it did a poor job of dividing the elements of the large story (a season) into smaller, self complete segments. Lexx tends to end an episode with more of a cliff hanger than an ending. This is fine on occasion, but when done consistently, just makes it seem like the story writers couldn't figure out how to chop the story up into actual episodes.
With Farscape, even though there is a larger story, each episode is self contained, as doesn't end with a cliff hanger. Resolution comes at the end of the episode, instead of the start of the next one. Done like this, each episode is a cohesive drama, while each season, and the whole series, is also a single cohesive drama.
Oh, and the blue chick is hot, man. Not to mention the gray one, and the gold one. Oh, baby.
Which female agent do you mean? I haven't been able to watch the show all summer (I get SciFi at school, but know at home), but the only regular "hot babe" I know of is the Keeper, who's been there since the pilot.
Yes, I have been favorably impressed with the few episodes of Farscape that I've seen. However I am surprised that there has been almost no comment on Roswell, with it's themes that should resonate with many geeks
For those that have not seen Roswell, in first episode Liz Parker finds out that some of her high school classmates are not human. Why the aliens are on earth, their origins and related details are things we (and they, as the aliens at the start of the series know very little about their own origins) have been learning over the last two seasons (and looking forward to learning more in the upcomming 3rd season). This show is at times rough on the audience, some times it is a little over the top in terms of melodrama, and at times they have killed off likeable characters, or had seemingly nice characters turn out to be traitors.
Still, with it's recuring story element of characters set apart from the masses because of who they are (the aliens) or because of what they know and the secrets they must keep (the humans like Liz Parker), Roswell should be on any geeks must watch list.
P.S. In Canada, starting this week "Space" will be running Roswell re-runs each weekday evening in the same time slot formerly held Babylon 5 (another very good show).
You know, I also thought it was Darrien "Fox" as well. Then I started watching it with closed captioning and found out that it is Darrien "Fawkes".
Speaking of closed captioning, I've noticed that a lot of the shows I watch-- ER, Farscape, Invisible Man-- are being captioned with proper capitalization. Why the change from ALL CAPS, AS WITH OTHER SHOWS? I DID NOT LIKE ALL CAPS, THOUGH. IT'S PROBABLY FASTER TO READ, BUT IT'S NOT AS PRETTY.
Hi, y'all. I have been lurking for months now, gathering materials for my stories. I'm a wannabe science fiction writer. I had no intention of ever saying a word, but y'all (Yes, I'm a Southerner.) are talking about a subject I know a little about, so I'd thought I'd add my two cents, and maybe add a little lagniappe.
For over-all quality, I'd pick Asimov's the best anywhere. The writing quality is high. Gardner Dozois (the editor) publishes character-oriented SF, and he's -good- at it, as his multiple Best Editor Hugo awards attest. If you want to see what I'm talking about, Asimov's has all of their Hugo-nominated stories available for reading free of charge at:
http://www.asimovs.com
(In my opinion, Greg Egan's story "Oracle" is brilliant and got my vote for the Hugo this year. It is not adventure SF, but rather philosophical SF. Highly interesting to someone who is familiar with C. S. Lewis and his philosophy.)
I don't really have a second place. F&SF, maybe, with Analog close behind. I'm not too much into fantasy, so F&SF doesn't do much for me, although as a writer I really appreciate Gordon Van Gelder's short response times and personalized rejection slips. Stanley Schmidt (Analog's editor) gives equal weight to ideas and characters. The result can be clunky writing, but the ideas are usually interesting. Oh, yes, Analog's Hugo-nominated stories are currently available free of charge at:
http://www.analogsf.com
(I recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Retrieval Artist". Relatively decent hard-boiled detective writing.)
Re the decline of the print mags: It is odd, given the current cultural popularity of SF (I can remember when the only SF on TV was "Star Trek", and it was, no joke, considered to be sophisticated), that the mags' circulation numbers are going down, but it's true. It would be nice to see this change, but I am not making a plea here for you to "support" the print magazines. Something that has to beg for "support" has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Instead, I hope that if you like what your read at their Web sites, to consider subscribing, and if you continue like it, then to renew your subscription. The print mags, at least currently, are the incubators from which a lot of the new writers spring.
I say "currently". There are a number of on-line mags as well. My current favorite is Strange Horizons, at:
http://www.strangehorizons.com
I have read some excellent fiction there. If you are a curious type, there is a beautifully done online catalog of of mags, print and Web, at:
http://www.ralan.com
This is mainly a writer's resource, and so contains a lot of info irrelevant to a reader, but the type of story each mag prints, plus their URL, is listed, from mainstream SF to really weird stuff. If you like to read flying-elephant fiction and want to know who publishes it, this is a good place to go. Probably most of the Web mags are free, but the mag scene is in constant flux these days, and things are changing rapidly.
The Sci-Fi channel also publishes fiction online, BTW, just not much. They have hired a prestigious editor, Ellen Datlow, to buy their stories for them. For unknown reasons, they only publish two new and two old stories a month, all short stories. (Why, oh God? It ain't like you got to chop down trees to make hard drives!) The quality is high, although Ellen sometimes gets a little too high-falutin' lit-'try for my taste. The URL is:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction
But the subject was "The Best Sci-Fi On Television". My vote is for SG-1. I don't have cable and therefore have not seen Farscape, but it is getting raves everywhere, and I am almighty curious. I like SG-1 because it seemed to have it all, at least in the beginning. Action, good characters who developed, multiple-episode story arcs, and a strong effort to get the details right, military and scientific. I mourn its passing, even though my local Fox affiliate dropped it a year ago for, God help me, re-runs of local arena football games.
Final Conflict had good characters and a good situation, but not enough action. It failed to engage my attention. A TV show, any visual medium, has to -move-, the place for cerebration is print.
Futurama is one of the best shows on television, but I don't regard it as an SF show, just a comedy show set in the future.
My two cents.
Jeff Corkern
The Starlost was great aside from the plots, writing, acting, sets and special effects, all of which were remarkably bad. That is to say that the original idea (a huge, multi-generational ship lost in space) is a wonderful idea that's never been done before or since (that I know of).
I spent a good while tracking down the book Harlan Ellison wrote about the making of the series, which was horrifying and amusing in that sadistically brilliant way that Harlan Ellison has. It started out a big-budget Sci-Fi series co-produced by the BBS, a US network, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. By the end, the ones with the money pulled out, and the CBC produced the show, so the end result included all of the stupid ideas of the three networks, produced on only the CBC's money.
I loved the idea behind the series, forced myself to watch every episode, and I even spent some time reworking the ship into the setting of a role playing game. Lotsa fun.
It just went off the air in Canada Jul31, but there is a Farewell to B5 marathon tomorrow.
First Wave I like, and I just started watching Stargate SG-1 and what I have seen is quite good. Everyone is talking about Farscape so I will take a look at that when it starts showing up here in the fall, and I'm holding out hope that Enterprise wont turn into another Star Trek Voyager technobabble mishmash.
I love the story writing of B5 - JMS has proven that taking a well thought out plot and universe can be done before a single episode is produced! I love using Star Trek: TNG episodes as MST3K fodder :)
The Ultimate B5 Guide
Sapphire and Steel is a British show from the late-70's that is equal parts fantasy and sci-fi. It is probably the only sci-fi/fantasy show with no special effects at all. It starred Joanna Lumley & David McCallum as two "elements" dispatched to different points in time and space to correct disruptions caused by time travel. What was unique was that there were rarely more than four characters (including S & S) in any show and the action took place on spartan, barely-lit sets.
For instance, in one episode Sapphire and Steel are on a roof trying to enter an invisible time machine to save a child inside. Another episode takes place in a few rooms of a "haunted house" with a true-believing ghost hunter. It is one of few shows I have ever seen that can be as engrossing in the same way a radio drama is...
Blackstar (http://www.blackstar.co.uk) used to carry episodes on tape, but the series has been out of print since the early 1990's. There were plans to put the whole series on video last year, but it keeps getiing cancelled.
We may be running into the problem of "Just what is or isn't Science Fiction" here. What qualifies The Prisoner? Those oversized bubble gum bubbles floating on the sea? Would the original Wild, Wild West television show qualify? It had as many "not supposed to have been invented yet back then" things as The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne or whatever the name of it is. What about The Man from Uncle or Get Smart? Perhaps even a few or more of the episodes of The Avengers.
The dividing line is awfully blurry.
Just for the heck of it I'm going to mention the 80's version of War of the Worlds. Oh yeah, and that English or Australian thing that PBS showed a few episodes of several years ago where they put metal plates in everybody's heads and made them look like bowling balls.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Now I've gone to all the trouble of dl'in most of the scifi shows from various *places*...now I have to say that there are a handful of GOOD ones that NOTHING can compete with Star Trek Deep Space 9 Earth Final Conflict Stargate SG-1 FIRSTWAVE First off Firstwave is the best damned show with the most originality that I have EVER seen. Now I've got nearly all of the episodes in DIVX, 250-450megs and I have to say that if you watch them IN ORDER from 1x01-Subject 117 all the way to 3x22 Twice Bless'd then you MUST agree that its one hell of a show. The thing that saddens me is the fact that there would have been a season 4 if you pricks would have watched it instead of some B class crapbuster called farscape. Firstwave quite possibly could be one of the best shows of the century. The way it was executed with quadtrains, and everything was 100% original. The adding of Traci Lords i'm still 50/50 bout wheather or not it was a good idea, but it definately hasnt screwed the show or made it less of a show. She did good acting in it and the guy that plays Cade Foster in Firstwave is 1 of my favorite actors just because he has the skills to play the part. Shit somtimes you'd forget your watching a tv show...Crazy Eddie in the show was actualy a more believable hacker type because in all reality for the mostpart thats how those type of hacks and such are done. I dont know but you need to go watch the re runs or go dl the tv eps from someplaces...you MAY be able to find em on newsgroups but thats a maybe...
Blake's 7 was, I must agree, a killer show. But I'd have to respectfully disagree that it was much like FarScape. Except insofar as they were both derivative of the original Star Trek (which was, in turn, deeply derivative of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I kid you not--tape a few episodes from early morning SciFi, you may be surprised).
Where they differ is in tone. B7 was a bleak, grim universe with the main characters attempting a rebellion against the oppressive Federation. It beautifully turned ST on its ear, presenting the "unifying" force as a colonialist empire.
In FarScape, while there is a bit of that with the Peacekeepers, the predominant tone is one of a quest for home and/or family. The episodes have a much wider range of focus than in B7--sometimes almost random.
Both excellent shows, but apart from the inherent silimarities of zap-gun, rocket-ranger space opera, quite different.
Oh, and Voyager sucked. B5 was okay, though.
IMO, Invader Zim is the best thing on TV at the moment. Even the worst episode so far made me laugh hysterically. Oh, and by the way, the head writers are Johnen Vasquez ("Johnny the Homicidal Maniac", "Squee")(All the art is in his style, and it's *beautiful*), Roman Dirge ("Lenore"), and Frank Coniff (MST3K's 'TV's Frank') How can you go wrong?? Zim: "You REMOVED your navigaton chip? Why would you do a thing like that??" GIR: "Duh, to make room for the cupcake!"
Prisioner walks the edge of sci fi. Some episdoes are (The General, and a number of other ones regarding futuristic brainashing techniques) but many aren't.
Wild Wild West is the original example of what is now being called "Setam Punk" and IS considered a form of science fiction.
Earth: Final Conflict has turned onto a great series (shaky start-up). They have really got a good plot based series. Babylon 5 might be a bit better... toss up really, but it was truly well thought out and planned before they began to film. Both shows probably have the highest learning curve though (context is essential to each episode)... which is why they are preffered by veterans of Scifi (ok I am only 20, but loved Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and ST as a kid). ST:TNG was good, but they had a few really crappy episodes, and lost continuity too much. Anybody who will stand up for Voyager needs a good lashing. ST:DS9 was surprisingly good, better than ST:TNG / Voyager by far. Some people couldn't get past the fact that the show was more of the B5 concept in ST uniforms. I guess they really didn't appreciate the character internaction that made DS9 fun... again the show had a higher learning curve to catch everything. I haven't seen Farscape yet, but it sounds cool. Andromeda currently looks too much like the low budget version of Voyager, but the character developement is moving in the E:FC direction of tight interaction (they still have some learning to do). The conventions of the show suck though (Kevin Sorbo, a purple chick with a rubber tail, and a guy in a mangled gorilla suit), and it surprised me that they got past season 1 with that, granted I had litte tollerance for Dr Who and the other PBS style Sci-fi.... there has to be some bar of quality, even if the writing is awesome (no yet in the case of Andromeda anyways) I look foward to the new B5 shows, though I need to have cable hooked up again... or hack some DSS :)
Though I enjoyed watching it and was caught in the entire Star Trek phenom, the truth is that as sci-fi ST:TNG has some real problems. Bogus unrealistic science (totally contrived for the plots), predictable plots, deux-ex-machina endings, plots that were derivative from the original series, unrealistic "feel good" relationships between the main characters, very little short trajectories in the development of the characters (except for data). Great writing it is not, even by sci-fi standards. Ex. The episode on which Scotty appears involves a Dyson sphere, one of the most interesting concepts of futuristic speculation, and it did absolutely nothing with it!
It is by coff... er, will, alone I set my mind in motion...
I didn't really like Farscape. I had a friend who loved it and recommended I watch it. I suppose it wasn't ALL bad, but definitely not something I'd spend my time watching. The sci-fi on TV that I do watch are the original star trek episodes. Even though I wouldn't exactly recommend these to people who don't have nostalgia for them, I still say they're interesting.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
...but then they killed Birkhoff, and the rest of Season Four sucked, bordering on insane, then the fans pitched a fit, "How could you DO that to the show we loved!" and got it back for a mini-Season Five, whereupon the producers of the show said "If you thought S4 was bad, wait til you see THIS...."
A real shame, because Nikita was a show with class when it was good.
I'm just as upset about the state of sci fi on tv as anyone else. The difference is I've decided to do something about it. www.werewolvesvsvampires.com Let me know if this is something you would watch. Alpha@werewolvesvsvampires.com
In my home, we always call Farscape "The Puppet Show." I think it was the only way I could convince my non-sci-fi wife to give it a try. Now she watches every week. She misses most of the subtile bits, but she knows all the characters.
And since we are using this thread to wax nostalgic, here's my short sci-fi list:
Farscape
Dr. Who
Battlestar Galactica (campy, but cool)
Blake's Seven
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
I remember the short run that Tales from an Alternate Universe had on HBO.
If you want to see the very beginning of LEXX, go rent the movie: "I Worship His Shadow"
NRRPT/RCT
Babylon 5. Then Crusade. Not much else, IMO.
(Longing for Dr. Who and Blakes' Seven reruns...)