Top five Sci-Fi/Horror TV series
- Battlestar Galactica (2004 version)
- X-Files
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- ST:TOS
- Firefly
over 2 years ago
James Quinn
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Loved X-Files
Never watched Firefly on TV but I did like the movie. Never watched the other stuff.
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by ratherfantastic on Aug 22, 2009 8:05 PM EDT reply actions
Firefly
Only something like 12 episodes of Firefly were made, which is a real shame. It was as fun as the orignial Star Trek. Great ensemble cast. And it hit the ground running. If you have a chance it is very much worth watching on DVD.
Back around 1996-1998 I just loved the Files. I don’t think I’ve ever liked a show as much before or since. It has also aged fairly well as a show. The last season was not so good, but I think seasons 3 – 8 are still very watchable.
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QFT
Baseball's that swingy stick game, right?
by royalsroyalsroyals on Aug 23, 2009 1:46 PM EDT up reply actions
Firefly is also available (for free) on Hulu for those interested.
I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet, but I plan to soon. Everything I’ve heard about the show is that it is awesome.
The original twilight zone...
They would be considered hokey by todays standards. As RR. stated they scared the hell out of me as a kid. Old Rod was a real scary dude when you are 10 or 11. I never got into the XFiles and I thought Buffy the Boobpire was hilarious. If I ever needed a good laugh I would watch Buffy stay out of the way of her bouncing boobies and try to act. Has anyone seen the original Solaris? It is much better than the Clooney version.
I had Solaris taped on DVR of off IFC, but
when I upgraded to HD, I got a new DVR and lost it. I’d like to see it, but it was around 3 hours and I put it off too long..
And yes, Twilight Zone is a bit hokey, but there are still great episodes even by today’s standards. The plastic surgery/pig men one comes to mind (SNL parodied it with Pamela Anderson IIRC), the Boxing Robots (one of the robots has a man inside), the lady buying a thimble at a department store finds out that she’s just a mannequin, gremlin on the wing of the airplane, the pool player calling the legendary Fats back from the dead for a challenge, etc. The problem with them, is that there isn’t always a lot packed into the episodes and they feel slow by today’s standards. The twists were usually good.
I was never really into the original ST series. I liked The Next Generation much better. Loved X-files and Battlestar. Didn’t care for Buffy.
- Battlestar Galactica
- ST: TNG
- Futurama
- The Twilight Zone (original)
- Sliders (If you didn’t watch this it’s understandable as FOX execs screwed with it, aired episodes out of order, fired main cast members, and pissed away an excellent show)
Somehow I left X-files off my list....
Put it in a tie for #1 with Battlestar. I’ve watched all the episodes multiple times and they are still great. I really liked the conspiracy, but I know a lot of people hated that about the show. It was confusing at times, but people that watched religiously knew what was going on. I just thought it was great that the show was connected from week to week, and that they were progressing towards something, even if it was kind of a Holy Grail quest for Mulder that was unattainable.
Not the biggest fan these days
Unless Los" counts (it should, shouldn’t it?), although I just fininshed Season 1 of BSG on DVD…and it’s awesome. Back when I was a kid, though, I was a big fan of the original Battlestar, reruns of Lost in Space, and the Gil Gerard classic “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”
If you look closely, it really says "CentralChamps2012."
by CentralChamps2009 on Aug 23, 2009 1:33 AM EDT reply actions
LOST
Lost, Night Stalker and Twilight Zone would have been the next three on my list. I think Lost counts on this list.
I knocked Lost down due to lack of follow through. I loved the first season, but then I just felt like the writers were writing from the seat of their pants week after week. It lacked direction. While I see BtVS is not much loved here, one of that shows great strengths is how well it all holds together. Whedon pretty well had a seven season story line mapped out in year one and so the series feels like a single work of art and not just a pile of scripts.
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Wow
I disagree completely about Lost and Buffy. I love both shows but I think Lost has to be planned out WAAAAAY further in advance than Buffy did. Buffy evolved naturally, but I don’t think that’s evidence that it was planned that way from the beginning
Hi raefzilla,
One one of the first season episode’s commentary tracks one of the writers says that by the mid-point of season one the writers were only three weeks ahead of production, and they had no idea how most of the story lines were going to play out. Such as the monster which makes its apperance in the first episode. The writers had no idea how that whole thing was going to work out. I was surprised to hear this as well. Once I understood the writers were just winging it, I stopped trying to read to deeply into the scripts.
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mid-first season, sure,
but I think from that point forward they started planning things out much more carefully. Its hard to plan out a 6-year run if you have no idea if you will be picked up for year 2. I have heard they have a mantra in the Lost writer’s room that they never introduce a mystery until they know how it will be resolved. Obviously, they probably have to fudge it and wing it a little bit, but I think that is generally true, at least after the first batch of episodes.
I'm a huge Buffy fan...
and it was definitely NOT planned that far ahead. Joss planned the show on a season by season basis and he originally was only hoping for five seasons. The brilliant thing about Joss was that he put in little details that he could expand in a future season should he want to do so (like the First from season 3), but he wasn’t really writing the show as a huge continous story…instead, it was written as a metaphor about life. The plot was secondary to the meaning and dialogue.
That being said, if Lost (which I also love) was planned out in advance, then the writers must have the preplanning skills of the Royals. Lost is made up as they go along (not that there is anything wrong with that).
"I DARE you to make less sense."
In Buffy there is just so much foreshadowing.
Small hints, which only make sense a year or two after they are dropped. I think there was a great deal of pre-planning going on in BtVS. I don’t know that Whedon had story archs for seven full seasons in the first year, but he pretty well knew where the characters were going to end up in life.
I guess I am like yourself. When I watch Buffy I pretty well know that everything line in the script either advances that week’s story, adds to character development or will pay off at some point in the future. When I watched Lost I just felt like I was having stuff thrown at me with real promise of organization or planning.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
opps,
last line should read “without any real promise of organzation or planning.”
It is too bad we can’t go back and edit our comments.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
wow, if Buddy had thay much pre=planning
did the plan on planting so many seeds and plotlines that were later just dropped as if they never happened?
STarting with season 4 to the finish they dropped off faster than Jose Guillen in July 2008
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by Matt Klaassen on Aug 25, 2009 11:47 PM EDT up reply actions
sorry
I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.
Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Aug 26, 2009 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions
I promise
That said “Lost” when I typed it.
If you look closely, it really says "CentralChamps2012."
by CentralChamps2009 on Aug 25, 2009 12:52 PM EDT up reply actions
I only watched a few episodes of Babylon 5.
I know I would probably like it, along with FarScape, Stargate and Red Dwarf, if I ever invested in them. I’m sure I will give them all a try at some point in the next few years.
I’d encourage you to reevaluate your views on BtVS. After seeing Firefly I finally decided to give in and watch some BtVS. I had friends encouraging me to do so for years. I thought the show was harmless and fun right away. And after 8 or 10 episodes I started to see the other qualities. I’ve seen four seasons so far and I now think it is one of the smartest series ever put out there.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
I liked it too, but only for the X-files tie in
They were loveable geeks, too bad the show wasn’t very good. They had a great death scene/episode in the X-files.
I am a complete X-Files fan.
But I couldn’t watch TLG. I saw the first episode and just never felt interested enough to even watch the rest of the series on DVD. Maybe I should give it another go someday.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
Lone Gunmen was decent
X-Files was okay until they started the overall storyline that they were obviously throwing together as they went
Dochovny and Anderson are unwatchable now
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by Matt Klaassen on Aug 23, 2009 11:58 AM EDT up reply actions
Chris Carter had the whole conspiracy plotted out from Day 1
What threw a wrench into some of it was Duchovny being a douche and trying to leave the show, only do so many episodes, and making the production move from Canada to LA.
hmm...
so it just sucked because of bad writing episode-to-episode then, I guess
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Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Aug 23, 2009 3:20 PM EDT up reply actions
So you're one of the people confused by/hated the conspiracy I see
If you didn’t watch the show every week, it was very easy to be confused as things changed from episode to episode. You learn about it as Mulder does, so things are cloaked in half-truths and lies. Even when things are resolved, they didn’t always spell it out. The 2 and 3 part episode arcs involving the conspiracy were especially crucial to understanding, so if you missed one, you were sort of lost as to what was going on. I have a few friends that feel exactly like you, and they are Joss Whedon fans as well. They preferred the “Monster of the Week” X-Files episodes, which were fun, but I hated them, because I wanted to know more about Cigarette Man and his group of shadowy men.
The Smoking Man was actually cool
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by Matt Klaassen on Aug 23, 2009 9:34 PM EDT up reply actions
William B. Davis made a brief appearence in Caprica. It was nice to see him again. I can’t remember if he was smoking or not.
I understand that Davis used to go to conventions as TSM and screw around with the fans by saying his character was always terribly misunderstood and in reality he was always playing a double game on Mulder’s side. That would have been a fun scene to witness.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
Yeah, I was surprised to see him in Caprica, but thought it was great
As a sidenote, I can’t read “William B. Davis” without thinking of Alice from the Brady Bunch. She had the last credit on the intro, and was listed as “Ann B. Davis”.
TSM did seem to play a double game on Mulder’s side at times, but it was always to get something he wanted. The Scully episode with TSM comes to mind.
I get where you are coming from, but on the other hand, Duchovny was a very big part of what made the show so good from my perspective. I don’t think I would have liked it nearly as much had someone else played the Mulder role. Case in point, how lame Doggett was as a character compared to Mulder. Robert Patrick is a fine actor, but compared to Duchovny he just seemed so flat and uninteresting.
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Don't get me wrong
The show wouldn’t have been anywhere near that good without Duchovny. He made the show. Anderson was good too, but didn’t really get to that level until she turned hot.
I offer my rebuttal to the above statement
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+1
Also liked the sequel miniseries “V: The Final Battle” (or whatever it was called). There was also a TV series after the final battle (aw, who cares if that makes no sense, it’s just TV) that was just OK.
If you look closely, it really says "CentralChamps2012."
by CentralChamps2009 on Aug 25, 2009 12:54 PM EDT up reply actions
If it had been given a longer run it might have been #1
I felt odd even putting it on the list, due to how few episodes were produced. But damn, it really is good.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
Here's a couple that I really loved
The 4400 – first two seasons were really good, 3rd season excellent. The 4th season was okay, but ended with a flourish and left me wanting for more. Then Heroes came in a stole the audience and The 4400 was not renewed.
Highlander – Way better than the movies. Adrian Paul kicked butt for years, the flashbacks were excellent, and the minor characters had great stories, too. Swordsmanship rocks.
So, my five:
1.) The 4400
2.) X-Files*
3.) Highlander
4.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer
5.) Quantum Leap (had a great run in my childhood)
*I saw the new X-Files movie and thought it was really well done and fit in perfectly with the series. However, I was left with the feeling of pointlessness: what was the point of making the movie? Going back after ten years and adding an episode, I expected lots of questions to be answered, and it made sense (in the show or in real life) to leave those questions unanswered, but it made the whole idea of another movie a bit odd.
I was diasppointed with the movie as well, but it was nice to see Mulder and Scully again. The movie was true to the series and characters, so it was welcomed on those levels. The story was pretty weak, and like most fans I was hoping for much more after waiting for ten years.
There was talk of another movie. I hope that works out. Duchovny was looking pretty beaten down by life in the flick. Gillian Anderson looked great. We are about the same age and it is nice to age with actors.
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by James Quinn on Aug 23, 2009 10:30 AM EDT up reply actions
I also was a big 4400 fan
For most of its run, although it did seem that the writers got distracted and introduced too many different regular characters and plot directions—it made me think they had no idea how they were going to finish it all up.
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by CentralChamps2009 on Aug 25, 2009 12:56 PM EDT up reply actions
Anybody remember Time Trax?
It was a bad sci-fi show that had Dale Midkiff as the star, running around time in search of fugitives from justice, IIRC. He even had his own little hologram that felt like a ripoff of Quantum Leap’s Al. I loved it when I was a kid.
I have many thoughts on Buddy, that can be found in comment threads
Good show, but like a pitcher’s arm, the attrition started right away. The first two seasons were great, but the slide into “taking itself too seriously” started already in season two, was managable during season three, and (as I realized in retrospect), the “college years” were terrible — exactly the kind of self-important crap that was mocked in the original self-conception.
I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.
Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.
I was wondering why I had never heard of the sci-fi show "Buddy"
When I realized you mistyped Buffy after about a minute.
D'oh!
Actually, it was a Charles in Charge spinoff
I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.
Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Aug 23, 2009 3:20 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
This one will date me...
but, I remember the original Dr. Who and The Prisoner. Both were well ahead of their time. The original King Kong too….
Some shows I watched in first-run as a kid
Space 1999
The original Battlestar Galactica
Buck Rogers
Quark
Logan’s Run (series)
The Hulk
The Man from Atlantis
Yeah, some pretty bad stuff in there. I also remember a British(?) series which took place on a big space station and the characters all fought with cross bows because firing a bullet in space might cause depressurization? I have no idea what the show was called but I remember watching a few episodes and enjoying them.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
Kid-wise I have to reach back a little farther:
The Time Tunnel was a big hit at our house during the one year it was on the air. We used to flail around and throw ourselves on the floor just like Tony and Doug arriving at a new destination in history — just in time for another Big Event. I caught a few episodes on DVD in the last couple of years and found it to be extremely formulaic.
Lots of hours wasted with Lost In Space while it was in syndication, aired in the afternoons after school was out. Just think, I could have been a scholar if I hadn’t wasted so much time with that. — IIRC my Dad watched some of the early episodes in their first run in prime time, when it was still trying to be a show for adults. I remember thinking: it must be good, Dad’s watching it!
Caught almost all of the original Star Trek series when it was airing in syndication during my junior high and high school years. No, I don’t really need to see The Squire of Gothos ever again, but I’ll still make time for the really good episodes. Watched a few of them with my son while he was in the hospital a few years back.
I’d put Lost in my top 5 instead of Buffy, but otherwise I’m in agreement.
It will be interesting to see if Dollhouse continues to gather momentum this season. Very uneven so far, but it’s so crazy, it just might work.
I tried a few episodes of the first season of Torchwood but really couldn’t get into it. Also saw the recent Torchwood miniseries, which successfully killed any remaining curiosity I had about it.
I have Dollhouse coming via Netflix now. I haven’t seen any episodes yet. The reviews I have seen pretty well match your own. Hopefully it will click with me.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
dollhouse is solid
firefly is hands down the best thing ever on tv.
"red bull is amaZing" -Coco Crisp
Can't believe no one mentioned THIS horror tv series...
Royals Baseball…15 years and running!!
My top 5
(not including The Prisoner…cause I’m just starting it now)
1. Firefly
2. Star Trek:Deep Space Nine (I like most of the Star Treks, but Avery Brooks is badass and can almost outact Patrick Stewart…see the episode where Sisko brings the Romulans into the war…fantastic…also, he hit Q and then Q never came back)
3. Millenium (another Cris Carter show…Carter’s strengths are in writing slower paced horror or quicker paced humor…and this show does it far more often than X-Files did…the “conspiracy” felt like it was written by prequel-era George Lucas…it was pretty bad.
4. Angel – Mostly because Wesley was my favorite character from the Buffy-verse
5. Twilight Zone – Damn good
Honorable Mention: Lost (which was great season 1 and parts of Season 2…kinda sucked for a while…and then came back strong last season somehow..
Also, does anyone remember a show called Nowhere Man? It was out during the early years of X-Files (actually, it ripped of the conspiracy thing from the Files, but did it better). No Aliens in the show, but it was good.
"I DARE you to make less sense."
I liked DS9 too
Just not as much as ST:TNG. I didn’t realize that there was an overarching plot to the entire series until I happened to catch the pilot episode one day. So I watched the entire series in order, and I really liked it. Previously, it was just ok. But saying that Avery Brooks can outact Patrick Stewart is like saying I can outhit Albert Pujols, it can’t be done.
Hehehe...
I said almost! However, Avery’s acting on his BEST ST episodes (the Pale Moonlight one for example) is equal to Stewart’s best (the first movie where his nephew died, that flute episode, or the “there are FOUR lights” episode) not to mention Avery’s job in American History X.
The thing about Patrick Stewart is that he had a more consistent best. Here’s my analogy
Avery Brooks:Mike Sweeney (circa 144 RBI days)::Patrick Stewart:Albert Pujols
The best Mike Sweeney seasons wouldn’t look out of place in Albert’s career, but damn Albert had a lot of those seasons.
"I DARE you to make less sense."
I don't know about that even.
Avery isn’t in much except DS9 and AHX, and I always felt he relied to much on his booming voice, and he seems wooden and stilted a lot.
Avery Brooks::Brady Anderson as Patrick Stewart::Albert Pujols
ST:TOS and ST:TNG
I think one of the bigger flaws in TNG is that I only grew to like two of the ensemble cast, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner.
I actively disliked Frakes, McFadden and, or course, Wesley. Dorn was fine. Anyway, with so much screen time taken up by actors and characters I did not care to see I never invested in the show like I did with TOS. And Jesus almighty Denise Crosby was horrible in every scene in which she appeared. Even Shatner was more convincing as an actor.
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I liked Wesley
but I was about 8 or 10 years old at the time, so I naturally took to the misunderstood youth.
Will Wheaton did not age well
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by Matt Klaassen on Aug 25, 2009 11:47 PM EDT up reply actions
I'll give you that
But I was pretty young when TNG came out, and thought TOS looked bad and had really bad acting. It was hard to get past at first. The plots of TNG were far more interesting most of the time, but TOS had its greats too, which I appreciate now.
Picard >>>>>>> Kirk
I prefer Picard to Kirk as well. Avery Brooks was very good as well. I found DS9 darker and less exciting than TNG and never really took to it as a series. I think it was just the nature of the show. Nothing wrong with the concept, it just wasn’t my personal preference.
I never even got through the pilot on ST:V. The writing and the acting felt like being slapped repeatedly with a loose sack of crap. I’m sure it got better with time. I still haven’t seen a single episode of ST:E. Any boosters for this show out there?
I am about to get started on Doll House now that season one is out on DVD.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
by James Quinn on Aug 26, 2009 10:18 AM EDT up reply actions
It wasn't very good...
but it was a LOT better than Voyager. Enterprise actually got to be pretty good toward the end.
"I DARE you to make less sense."
Yeah, it had interesting stories
but it seemed to be on an alternate path from the original ST universe. The acting, espcially Scott “Quantum Leap” Bakula, was pretty bad.
Farscape needs to make the list
I’m disappointed there aren’t more advocates for Farscape. Good cast with good chemistry, and writers who weren’t afraid to experiment, even at the risk of the entire show going off the rails. I still miss it.
My list would probably be:
1) Battlestar Galactica
2) Farscape
3) DS9 (tough choice between it and TNG, but have you tried watching seasons 1 & 2 of TNG recently?)
4) Firefly
5) Futurama
Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG are pretty bad
but it got much better after that, and there were a few gems in there.
Farscape is good, but I liked the chick with the British accent, as I’m a sucker for that, and never really took the show seriously.
Anybody watch Eureka?
We don’t have the SciFi channel, but I keep seeing commercials for it. It looks amusing, if nothing else.
Meh.
Rented some of the first season, not that impressed.
If you look closely, it really says "CentralChamps2012."
by CentralChamps2009 on Aug 26, 2009 12:28 PM EDT up reply actions
I was wondering if anyone would say that.
I don’t watch it, but I was surprised it hadn’t turned up yet.
I hear the new version is pretty good. Personally I found the original series unwatchable.
I also am not a big fan of The Prisoner. I recognize it’s qualities, but I found watching the episodes I saw more of a chore than entertainment.
I’d like to give both these shows another chance when I have a bit more time on my hands.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
by James Quinn on Aug 26, 2009 10:12 AM EDT up reply actions
interesting SCIFI list here
http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/gallery/topscifishows/
Lists most of the shows people have mentioned, but also mentioned Quantum Leap, which I had forgotten about but loved. Oddly, it also includes Mystery Science Theather 3K, which was also awesome, but seems more like a comedy than true scifi show.
Thanks for the link.
Boy, what a terrible list! I guess I don’t have that much in common with the Boston Globe’s editorial staff. Wonder Woman? The Hitchhiker? in the top-25? Sliders as #10? Was Trey Hillman picking that line-up?
I think they were letting childhood memories run wild. Many of those shows are simply unwatchable by anyone over 8 years old.
www.rockchalktalk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage
i went back
and rented quantum. soooo much worse the second time around.
"red bull is amaZing" -Coco Crisp
Yeah, I got fed up with that show when I was a kid.
It had some interesting shows, but for the most part wasn’t that great.
Oh boy.
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