Topic: An Opinion on 'Best Sci-Fi Series'.

[Commander La'ra]

Nothing...not Star Trek: TOS, the new Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Doctor Who or any other series you can name...has ever been as consistently excellent as the orignal, black and white version of 'The Twilight Zone'.

That's all.  I'm just sounding off.

[EmeraldEdge]

I might agree with you, but is it really a "pure" sci-fi show?  It often might cover horror, or fantasy, but I guess you could argue that all things fantastic under the fantasy/horror umbrella could be sci-fi but I generally seperate them.  Of course  they do all take place in another dimension, so there is that.  Great show though, but that kind of show has a much better shot at greatness, as they don't have to have a regular cast, no set rules that must follow from episode to episode, etc.  They can do whatever they want and not have to worry about it, so they can hand pick the best stories about just about anything.  Great show, though.

[Sirgod]

The SciFI channel has been showing them late at night, and a few Marathon runs of the TLZ. And with the station bring The good Dr. Who to the American Audience, well It's becoming my favorite Fictional story channel.

stephen

[E_Look]

I finally was able to get the Space: Above and Beyond set.  I saw the first few episodes and it isn't bad.  In fact, it's quite entertaining as it looks a very near future for us.  The political orders of the Earth haven't changed all that much and really, neither is the technology.  They do look like they're set in the Alien (you know, "eat your way out of the guy you incubated in" Alien) universe, with the U.S. Colonial Marine Corp, U.S. Army defending human outposts in space.  The technology is, while more advanced than anything we've got today or for the forseeable near future, it isn't really all that far out, like Star Trek or BattleStar Galactica or really, any other space show.

I think it deserves at the very bare minimum least some honorable mention as one of the better sci-fi shows to have hit the airwaves.

I plan to catch an episode whenever I am able to get some time in the evenings; *      * but one thing competing with that is the Enterprise season four DVDs.  I must say seasons three and four were quite good if not superb, comparable almost to, say, seasons three, four, five of TNG.

I think Enterprise deserves MORE than honorable mention, as well.

[Hexx]

For consistency I'd still have to go with Firefly- although of course it had an abbreviated run
I'm sure if there was a full season of it there'd be a few that missed the mark.

Original TLZ? Really haven't see a ton of episodes, those that did either struck me as fantastic or
kinda dull
Same with Dr Who (any of them) either I loved them or spent th time channel surfing.

None of the ST series should be mentioned imho,~ with the possible exception of certain seasons
of DS9 and the last of Enterprise.

B5 was certainly better over years 2-4ish (and possibly the first) than any trek series was over the same number of episodes

The new BSG is (so far imho) doing a pretty decent job- there aren't alot of episodes that I couldn't sit down and watch again.

Actually haven't seen a full episode of SAaB, might have to try and track a few down.

[Commander La'ra]

Eh, I find that TOS is usually superior to even the best of any that came later.  DS9 had an okay war story, but much like the series that it was copying off of, it tended to get too high-handed and windy for it's own good.  Neither it or B5 felt like anything more than a dusty old war story to me.

Enterprise had the potential to be as good as TOS, but never quite reached it.  It's not the cast's fault, and thanks to them the good episodes were really good.

I think TOS gets short shrift sometimes because of it's 'corniness' to the modern eye.  What lots of younger folk don't realize is just how groundbreaking it was in it's day, how gutsy it would be in an era of happy family TV.  We can't see it now because the boundaries it challenged have, in many cases, been surpassed.

Originally posted by EmeraldEdge
I might agree with you, but is it really a "pure" sci-fi show?  It often might cover horror, or fantasy, but I guess you could argue that all things fantastic under the fantasy/horror umbrella could be sci-fi but I generally seperate them.

It certainly had the advantage of being a sci-fi show made before pigeonholing of genre became truly epidemic.

[Father Ted]

TOS was the best of all Treks, IMO. The new BSG is awesome.

But if we're going to depart into the realm of The Twilight Zone, where it's not always sci-fi, I'd have to give major props to The X-Files, which was the coolest show of the 90's.

[Dracho]

Some of the shows from the 1970's and 1980's could qualify, if the graphics were not so cheesy that, by our standards today, we can't look beyond and see the show and the concept.


For instance:

Buck Rogers
Space 1999
Logan's Run might qualify as SciFi.


I'd also love to see a remake of Heavy Metal with modern animation techniques used in movies such as Shrek.

[EmeraldEdge]

Logan's Run the TV show?  What little I saw of that was horrible, imo.  The movie was cool, but the show sadly disappointed.

Space 1999 was cool though, as was Buck Rogers, but when they went on the Searcher it went a bit downhill, imo.

[Dracho]

Logan's Run the TV show?  What little I saw of that was horrible, imo.  The movie was cool, but the show sadly disappointed.

Space 1999 was cool though, as was Buck Rogers, but when they went on the Searcher it went a bit downhill, imo.

The original Battlestar Galactica was pretty good too.

[EmeraldEdge]

It was great, especially for it's time!

[Nemesis]

for it's time!

Something people too often forget when evaluating books and movies.  Evaluate them in the context in which they were made. 

[Mentat Jon]

I must go with B5. Hell  the life of Londo Mollari is a show in its self.

[Darth Sidious]

I must go with B5. Hell  the life of Londo Mollari is a show in its self.

Been watching B5 for the past few weeks.  Up to 75% done with Season 4.

Its amazing how much i remembered from watching it on normal tv... i think i only managed to miss 5 eps so far.

[EmeraldEdge]

Yeah, I haven't seen much B5, but I've just watched the first season and was shocked at how much I had already seen.  The thing about older shows, that I've been finding upon rewatching them, is it's amazing how fast the storyline progresses.  When you watch it the first time, it seems like there was a long time between story elements (as far as long term story elements that continue from episode to episode).  Upon viewing these older series again, things really move along fast.  I could swear, in the old BSG, that there were a lot more filler episodes.  There aren't though.  I'm sure the reason is that I didn't have to wait a week, month, or year for the next episode to come along this time.  When you have to do that it seems like forever.  I find that the way they are structuring things now (one month on, one month off, sort of)  I'm almost losing interest in some series.  House, I don't think I'll be waiting for it much longer.  Lost was almost there (although I did miss tonights episode, again).  I just figure I have other things to do, and if I can't get my fix on a regular basis, I tend to move on.

[Lepton]

I don't think there really has been a decent sci-fi show for what I think sci-fi should be.  Most of these shows are merely projections of contemporary social situations, institutions, and morality into a future fantasy context.  There is rarely any real imagining of what the future might be like and what the implications might be for human life.  Similarly, I can't think of any show that has really tried to deal with alien-ness I will call it.  Besides the laughable English in space, almost any other intelligent species encountered is merely some stereotype of some aspect of human behavior.  Probably the only conceits to alien-ness I have seen have been on Star Trek, specifically TNG and DS9, but often these have been either metaphors for our own treatment of other species on our own world (which for me is a very important issue) or alien as super being which I find merely to be the goal post to which humanity is supposedly running.  Yawn.

[E_Look]

I don't think there really has been a decent sci-fi show for what I think sci-fi should be.  Most of these shows are merely projections of contemporary social situations, institutions, and morality into a future fantasy context.  There is rarely any real imagining of what the future might be like and what the implications might be for human life.  Similarly, I can't think of any show that has really tried to deal with alien-ness I will call it.  Besides the laughable English in space, almost any other intelligent species encountered is merely some stereotype of some aspect of human behavior.  Probably the only conceits to alien-ness I have seen have been on Star Trek, specifically TNG and DS9, but often these have been either metaphors for our own treatment of other species on our own world (which for me is a very important issue) or alien as super being which I find merely to be the goal post to which humanity is supposedly running.  Yawn.

Well, you're dead on target right, but man, this would be one tough project to tackle.  They had enough trouble in those very early days of TOS trying to depict full blooded Vulcans in their emotionlessness, something which was an early science fiction attempt at "alienness".  How would you get "alien" ideas when none of us are??

ENT gave it a decent shot when it Enterprise got boarded by those rather alien looking creatures at the end of one episode that looked like some cross between a Tholian and an insectoid Xindi.

This is not an easy proposition!

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

Um... did everyone forget (or just never watch) the Outer Limits?

They have done an admiralable job of keeping in the same genre as the Twilight Zone....

[Death_Merchant]

Um... did everyone forget (or just never watch) the Outer Limits?

Even with it's flaws, the ending to "Demon With the Glass Hand" was wrenching.
http://www.scifilm.org/tv/outerlimits/outerlimits2-5.html