Stargate SG-1, all the way, every time, for ever and ever amen. Don't get me wrong, TXF was the first SciFi series I was utterly hooked on by that leapt over the proverbial great white after season 5/6 for me; Stargate on the other hand was everything I could ever hope for in a telly show. Clever, funny, inventive, knowing, responsive to the fanbase, what more can you ask? (I loved Atlantis too, Universe not so much, it lacked the humour).
I also hold Fringe very dear and I enjoy watching Continuum. Anybody know them?
I liked a lot the first four season of Fringe. However, no one can deny that his fifth and final season is different. I very much dislike the fifth season, but I guess others may disagree or may even like it more than the previous ones as at the end it's just a matter of personal taste.
I watch Continuum too as I like time travel related plots in general, but it isn't one of my favourite shows. I find it decent but not great.
1. Farscape -- How did you guys miss this!? Coolest show ever. Seriously.
I didn't like it to be honest. I watched the first 5 episodes and stopped because I couldn't get into it. Same with Battlestar Galactica.
Same here, though I sat through Farscape season 1 and parts of 2 because everyone said "oh just wait for Scorpius, it get's MUCH better then". The only character I really liked in season 1 was Aeryn Sun, everyone else was annoying in some way. At least I thought, I realized I didn't know the first thing about 'annoying' until Chiana joined the crew. It was the last straw, and Scorpius was rather disappointing for all the hype I had heard. Plus he looked like some Borg assimilated BDSM... cartoonish and 'trying too hard to look badass' compared to other scifi antagonists. I really wanted to like the show and tried to get to the 'good part' - DS9 taught me patience - but it just got sillier. The first few episodes were actually not that bad.
I remember being pleasantly surprised by Stargate SG-1. I was wary of it at first, because... TV show spin offs of movies don't have a great history. Like Robocop or Highlander; okay films, but to keep stringing them on and on and on... ugh. But Stargate I think charmed me because of the way it was a little bit tongue in cheek.
I vaguely remember Sliders; enough to remember the names of the characters. I was a little disappointed once that I wrote a BG fanfic and no-one asked if the name of a character was a reference to Sliders.
But my own favorite series, or at least the one that's probably had the most influence on me; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Also, Red Dwarf (series 1-6; everything after that never really happened).
Agreed about Stargate, I think the humor and not taking itself too seriously made it good - that's the thing they forgot in Universe. It tried to be all dark and edgy and angsty and bring up "controversial" things that turned out way less controversial than advertised. I did watch all of it, because DS9, patience, but so many episodes ended with a zoom in a dark room with a main character taking a bottle or just drowning in self pity and despair. That is what made it "not Stargate" to me, not the Destiny. (The other thing is the absence of humanoid, english-speaking aliens in favor or silly-looking CGI creatures and hence the lack of a real 'big bad' like the Goa'uld, Ori, Genii or Wraith.)
I also hold Fringe very dear and I enjoy watching Continuum. Anybody know them?
I watched the first episode of Continuum and didn't continue. It didn't really pique my interest. It is kind of cool that it's filmed in my hometown though (so is Fringe, Alcatraz, Arrow, and the first 5 seasons of X-Files). It's fun to try and pick out where the locations are.
I'm with you all the way Elminster. Other than a few minor placement differences, your list is the exact same is mine would be so I saw no reason to simply parrot it. Good tastes :-) Babylon 5 for me didn't truly hit it's stride(though the show as a whole was still great to that point and got better) until the original commander was replaced by Bruce Boxleitner. I always wondered if Molari pronounced the security chief's name Garibalding on purpose as an insult or if it was simply his accent. I also agree to a point with your honorable mention of BSG though it would have made my top 10 and futurama would be on my honorable list instead.
One of the most common criticisms of sci-fi I hear, is the aliens. Or rather the lack of them. There aren't really any aliens, they say; there are just humans with blue skin and vaginas on their heads. I think Farscape should be commended for trying to be more imaginative there. But, yeah... to be honest, I don't really remember much about the show. Other than that it was hideously expensive to make.
The other problem with aliens, is that if you want to make them into characters that your predominantly human (I'm guessing) audience sympathizes with and relates to, you end up having to give them a human face/expressions/emotions anyway. It's hard to make people care much about a big rock of silicon.
Anyone remember John Christopher's, I think, tripod trilogy? They were amongst the first books I was into when I was very small, and I've been thinking of trying to dig them up to see if they were actually any good, or if I'm just clouded by childhood nostalgia. If you don't know what I'm talking about; there were tripods who had invaded earth, and people were enslaved and made to wear these caps, and there was a character called Beanpole I think... I don't really remember. Someone must know what I'm talking about... I know I didn't just dream it.
Yeah, even if there are actually aliens, it's highly unlikely that they would have anatomies similar to humans, let alone always be roughly human-sized.
......actually considering I have seen every single x-files episode 4 times over and own the entire dvd collection.... it might.. just might be my favourite.
Yeah, even if there are actually aliens, it's highly unlikely that they would have anatomies similar to humans, let alone always be roughly human-sized.
It's just that no logic says the opposite - that they are all insect-like giant monsters, which is the second most common version after rubber ridges and spray paint on humans.
I certainly give Farscape credit for trying, but it didn't work for me. It's not the puppet aliens that didn't, it's most of the humans-in-make-up. (Though, the pregnant sentient ship was a bit too much, too.) Babylon 5, despite the old technology/a bit dated effects, did a good job to show diversity and the Shadows weren't too shabby, effect-wise.
Yeah, even if there are actually aliens, it's highly unlikely that they would have anatomies similar to humans, let alone always be roughly human-sized.
It's just that no logic says the opposite - that they are all insect-like giant monsters, which is the second most common version after rubber ridges and spray paint on humans.
Obviously it's hard to say much about alien life, since we only know about earthlings. But humans evolved just in the last few million years, so I think it is reasonable to say that on worlds with a totally different evolutionary history the chances of anything looking so much like us emerging are very small. The writers of most sci-fi of course know how implausible it is; just like they know sound doesn't really travel through space, but you need sound for drama. Neverthless, they have tried ways to explain it. In Stargate they had the goa'uld and the ancients that explained why there were so many humans and humanoids everywhere. In Star Trek TNG there was an episode were they also found a message from a member of an ancient race (who looked suspiciously like a founder), who had seeded humanoid life throughout the galaxy.
I think it's mainly down to budget and time constraints. And when shows like the old Star Trek the technology didn't even exist to have really convincing looking aliens. And even now with CGI, if it's not done carefully it looks really cartoony and silly.
As long as it is explained with pseudo-science or mythology, I really don't mind the human-looking aliens. A lot planets are shown to have a similar configuration as Earth - everyone is walking around without oxygen tanks and can usually eat plants and animals native to those planets, planets have day and night and seasons, so the atmosphere must be similar, too. Hence it's not a stretch to say the dominant species that evolved is similar to humans. Sure, there's no science behind it, but I prefer well done humanoid aliens to over the top and/or bad CGI any day.
It is good that Babylon 5 is getting several mentions here. I still consider it to be the best-written science fiction show I have ever seen. DS9 runs a close second...but then the big controversy back in the day was "which one copied the other?". There are many, many similarities between the two shows, especially in their first two seasons.
Heroes had great promise and I really enjoyed that show until the writer's strike killed it. Kring wrote himself into a corner from which he couldn't escape and thus the show limped on to its death.
Babylon 5, The original Battlestar Galactica, the earlier Doctor Who (especially Doctors 3 and 4, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker- Talons of Weng-Chiang is classic!)- I find the newer series to be much too manic for me, forcing stories into a single episode or two- which also forces the Doctor to be more manic. I liked the more laid-back earlier Doctors; they were much more enjoyable to watch for me. I also like some really obscure series that didn't last long- M.A.N.T.I.S. (about an African-American scientist paralyzed when accidentally shot during a riot who builds himself an exoskeleton that stimulates him muscles and gives him a kind of superpower- faster and stronger. I guess this crosses into Science Fantasy), "Hard Time on Planet Earth", about an exiled Alien warrior sent to Earth in human form to try and do good deeds to pay for his crimes. "The Invisible Man" that was on the Sci-Fi channel, about a man who had a strange gland implanted in him by his brother that allowed him to turn himself invisible by extruding a liquid called "Quicksilver", but which increased his anger and drove him crazy if he didn't get a shot to counteract the effects. Darien Fawkes was a thief, so the government used that to control him- the side effects and the shot.
There was also a computer graphics series called "Action Man", about an athlete with the power to calculate all the variables in his head and pull off various physical stunts. Here's the Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4tafCypDgc
I also remember many others, like "The Phoenix", about an ancient alien astronaut discovered in a Pyramid named "Bennu", who was looking for his female counterpart who knew what he was supposed to do with the powers he had (all based on the sun). That one starred Judson Scott.
"Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future", starring Tim Dunigan, a kid's series based on a line of toys about a shattered earth and a force of machines led by a computer and a corrupted human who wanted to wipe out all humans and keep their consciousnesses alive as computer files... which was mostly written and produced by J. Michael Stracynski long before he came up with Babylon 5...
Automan, which came out after the original "TRON" and was about a Police Scientist (Played by Desi Arnaz, Jr., yes "Little Ricky" from "I Love Lucy") who wrote a crime fighting program that was called "Automan" that could take on human form and create hard light constructs to make just about anything.
I have a soft spot for Red Dwarf, despite it being a bit crap. It was originally conceived as an odd-couple comedy about two flatmates which then got rewritten in space because that's the only way the producers could get it made (or so a friend of mine swears). I watched it in my early teens, and it seems everything you do around then sticks with you.
There are no aliens. The heroes are completely unheroic. Whenever they get into fights they lose. Their only real goals are finding something to do on friday nights and staving off inevitable death.
The main character, Lister, is a lazy slob who spends his time eating curries, drinking beer and pining after an ex-girlfriend who died 3 million years ago. His friend/enemy Rimmer is a chronic coward and toady, filled with self-loathing and yet self-aggrandising about his boring and pointless achievements.
There was a detailed conversation about trying to have sex with Wilma from the Flintstones, years before the internet existed and there were chatrooms for that sort of thing. What's not to like?
I used to watch Red Dwarf as a kid. For the longest time I only had vague recollections of the show until I was able to watch it on Netflix. Its a fun show, though it goes downhill during the later seasons.
@LadyRhian It's difficult to sum up the Cat as he's a bit 1-dimensional (deliberately). Did you know they actually released a single, "tonguetied", fronted by Danny John-Jules. It's excruciating.
Kryten changes so much across the series that he's difficult to pin down.
Holly - well Holly changes actors, genders, disappears with no explanation and then reappears.
Movies Alien 1-3 Terminator 1-2 (not much of a series, but man, these 2 are GOOD) Starwars 4-6 (Last week I resaw the dark menace with my son...and it was worse than I remembered =( )
Definitely a Trek fan here. Voyager and the Abrams-verse are the only Trek I can't do at all. Growing up, everyday after middle and high school, TNG was in syndication, so I watched a lot of that as a kid. Discovery was OK, but the whole mycenial network just made me cringe. It did have some interesting stuff with the alternate universe.
Anybody else into The Expanse? The more nearish future, with humans just colonizing the solar system makes things more into the hard sci-fi.
The Oddysey series was great, of course 2010 wasn't as good as 2001. The books were fun, too, but 3001 is pretty much Clarke's utopian novel.
So are we only doing movies, what about books?
How about Dune? Fantastic books (just the stuff by Frank Herbert, not the bastardization by his son). I'm still not satisfied with any adaptation for film and TV.
Got to also give a shout out to Asimov's The Foundation. Epic future history.
Anybody else into The Expanse? The more nearish future, with humans just colonizing the solar system makes things more into the hard sci-fi.
Youtube has recommended me the condensed version of the 4th episode (the Donnager battle), which I found very nicely directed. Then I've read that it was pretty much it about action in the series. Oh well. And honestly, even though it looked much better in comparison to most of space fantasy shows (for some unknown reason mentioned in the sci-fi thread, lol ), it still seemed more like dark fantasy - i.e. space version of GoT, - than a real sci-fi. I still may pick it up at some point, though, will be the first live-action show I've watched in years.
Comments
I watch Continuum too as I like time travel related plots in general, but it isn't one of my favourite shows. I find it decent but not great.
I really wanted to like the show and tried to get to the 'good part' - DS9 taught me patience - but it just got sillier. The first few episodes were actually not that bad.
I vaguely remember Sliders; enough to remember the names of the characters. I was a little disappointed once that I wrote a BG fanfic and no-one asked if the name of a character was a reference to Sliders.
But my own favorite series, or at least the one that's probably had the most influence on me; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Also, Red Dwarf (series 1-6; everything after that never really happened).
The other problem with aliens, is that if you want to make them into characters that your predominantly human (I'm guessing) audience sympathizes with and relates to, you end up having to give them a human face/expressions/emotions anyway. It's hard to make people care much about a big rock of silicon.
Anyone remember John Christopher's, I think, tripod trilogy? They were amongst the first books I was into when I was very small, and I've been thinking of trying to dig them up to see if they were actually any good, or if I'm just clouded by childhood nostalgia. If you don't know what I'm talking about; there were tripods who had invaded earth, and people were enslaved and made to wear these caps, and there was a character called Beanpole I think... I don't really remember. Someone must know what I'm talking about... I know I didn't just dream it.
X-files
Sliders
Firefly
Cowboy Bebop
......actually considering I have seen every single x-files episode 4 times over and own the entire dvd collection.... it might.. just might be my favourite.
I certainly give Farscape credit for trying, but it didn't work for me. It's not the puppet aliens that didn't, it's most of the humans-in-make-up. (Though, the pregnant sentient ship was a bit too much, too.) Babylon 5, despite the old technology/a bit dated effects, did a good job to show diversity and the Shadows weren't too shabby, effect-wise.
No one watches Eureka? I enjoy it...of course I suppose Knight Rider is sci-fi by that definition...
Dr. who of course is great too...
I think it's mainly down to budget and time constraints. And when shows like the old Star Trek the technology didn't even exist to have really convincing looking aliens. And even now with CGI, if it's not done carefully it looks really cartoony and silly.
Heroes had great promise and I really enjoyed that show until the writer's strike killed it. Kring wrote himself into a corner from which he couldn't escape and thus the show limped on to its death.
There was also a computer graphics series called "Action Man", about an athlete with the power to calculate all the variables in his head and pull off various physical stunts. Here's the Opening:
Here is the opening for "Hard Time on Planet Earth":
And "M.A.N.T.I.S."
I also remember many others, like "The Phoenix", about an ancient alien astronaut discovered in a Pyramid named "Bennu", who was looking for his female counterpart who knew what he was supposed to do with the powers he had (all based on the sun). That one starred Judson Scott.
"Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future", starring Tim Dunigan, a kid's series based on a line of toys about a shattered earth and a force of machines led by a computer and a corrupted human who wanted to wipe out all humans and keep their consciousnesses alive as computer files... which was mostly written and produced by J. Michael Stracynski long before he came up with Babylon 5...
Automan, which came out after the original "TRON" and was about a Police Scientist (Played by Desi Arnaz, Jr., yes "Little Ricky" from "I Love Lucy") who wrote a crime fighting program that was called "Automan" that could take on human form and create hard light constructs to make just about anything.
More series from the 80's:
Yes, "Wizards and Warriors" was based on Dungeons and Dragons...
There are no aliens. The heroes are completely unheroic. Whenever they get into fights they lose. Their only real goals are finding something to do on friday nights and staving off inevitable death.
The main character, Lister, is a lazy slob who spends his time eating curries, drinking beer and pining after an ex-girlfriend who died 3 million years ago.
His friend/enemy Rimmer is a chronic coward and toady, filled with self-loathing and yet self-aggrandising about his boring and pointless achievements.
There was a detailed conversation about trying to have sex with Wilma from the Flintstones, years before the internet existed and there were chatrooms for that sort of thing. What's not to like?
Kryten changes so much across the series that he's difficult to pin down.
Holly - well Holly changes actors, genders, disappears with no explanation and then reappears.
Dr Who
Fringe (eccept the last season)
Movies
Alien 1-3
Terminator 1-2 (not much of a series, but man, these 2 are GOOD)
Starwars 4-6 (Last week I resaw the dark menace with my son...and it was worse than I remembered =( )
Books
Asimov-The foundation books
1.Outlaw Star (basically anime FIrefly, but with an actual end)
2.Cowboy Bebop (space noir)
3. Firefly (If only it had a proper end)
Anybody else into The Expanse? The more nearish future, with humans just colonizing the solar system makes things more into the hard sci-fi.
The Oddysey series was great, of course 2010 wasn't as good as 2001. The books were fun, too, but 3001 is pretty much Clarke's utopian novel.
So are we only doing movies, what about books?
How about Dune? Fantastic books (just the stuff by Frank Herbert, not the bastardization by his son). I'm still not satisfied with any adaptation for film and TV.
Got to also give a shout out to Asimov's The Foundation. Epic future history.