Best Sci Fi Currently On Television? 489
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.
LEXX is great! (Score:1, Informative)
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).
Re:Ahem.. Blake's 7? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Lexx (Score:2, Informative)
But I love this show for three reasons:
- Eva Habermann is hot. Too bad she was only on for half/dozen shows.
- It isn't politically correct. It isn't afraid to affend anyone. Compare this to Voyager which was I think was annoyingly politically correct. But then again, I wouldn't recommend it to my parents...
- It's by far got the most original concepts and ideas out there. I don't know of any other show where the humans fly around in a giant bug in one of two universes. Compare this to Roddenberry shows which all seem the same.
Ozwald
Re:Babylon 5 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Farscape. No... lexx. No... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Stargate SG-1 (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad Dr. Who is not on... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easy. Babylon 5. (Score:5, Informative)
Some good sites to go to for Babylon 5 information and discussion:
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 [midwinter.com]. A great reference source. It has THE most comprehensive episode guide for the series, it's movies, and its spinoff, Crusade. They Include a Synopsis, Notes, Comments from JMS, and other related information. The site also includes a B5 term encyclopedia, which can be beneficial for those who don't understand a term.
B5 Tech Reference. [b5tech.com] This site, while containing large amounts of fictional information, is a decent reference for anyone seeking information on the spacecraft of Babylon 5.
FirstOnes.com. [firstones.com] While this is a shameless plug, If you want to talk with other babylon 5 fans, go there and visit the forums. You'll meet some interesting people from around the world. While it's primary mission has been abandoned (to raise the Babylon 5 Space Combat Simulator, Into the Fire, from the dead), it is being transformed into a source for everything Babylon 5. (well, that's the plan, at least =) )
Hyperspace Ship Guide. [nbci.com] Another great reference page for the spacecraft of babylon 5. This has less fanfiction than Babylon 5 Tech, but less information as a whole. It has some great images, though.
The Down Below Sound Archive. [uwyo.edu] This Page has a sound bite of just about anything you could want from this show. It's a great place to go if you want something along those lines.
Babylon 5: The place to be. [tp2b.de] This is another great site, loaded with 3D art and the models to make your own! Check it out sometime.
The Music of Babylon 5. [musicofb5.com]. This is another great Babylon 5 Resource. It's webmaster posts various soundtracks from Babylon 5 on a regular basis. Most recently, the site had put up Battle Sequences A-F, the Sampler tracks for the music in Babylon 5: Into the Fire. Take a few minutes and listen to it.
The Shadow Information Office. [demon.co.uk] A great page dedicated to correcting the popular belief that shadows are evil monsters. Rather, it shows that they have a very incolved culture, and exist for the sole purpose of assisting the other races. Check it out.
I hope these links are put to good use. There is a lot of information on the web. most of it bad. This should clear up some of that. Sanfam Out.
Re:Too bad Dr. Who is not on... (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed 100%. Although Doctor Who had B-grade special effects, the thing that made the show work was the intelligent and witty writing. When you have that, you can live without the big budgets. But without it, all the effects in the world won't do any good.
Speaking of British sci-fi, I'd also like to mention Blake's 7 and Red Dwarf. I especially tip my hat to the latter. The humor will have you doubled over with laughter.
On the American scene, Stargate SG-1 is still doing quite well, although I was a little disappointed with last Friday's episode. The Outer Limits is also an interesting show to watch. Psi Factor was also good when it first came on the air, back when it was divided into short stories. I haven't seen it much in the last few years, though.
Ahem.. Blake's 7? (Score:2, Informative)
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..
Re:Lexx (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stargate (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Farscape. No... lexx. No... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Farscape is a novel for television but doesn't hit you over the head with it. Many times I have seen a "one-off" episode only later to realize how much it contributed to the overall arc. The current (US) season is a perfect example. Plenty of references to earlier seasons, explanations and thread interweaving has made for an outstanding experience!
You are right about its avoidance of cliches. The writing on the show is just great. I wish B5 had done as well. JMS is a great storyteller, but an episodic writer he is not. Some of the B5 dialogue was horrendous, not to mention the often tedious amount of explication. That's not to say that I didn't love B5. It remains one of my all-time favorites. Doesn't mean it couldn't be better, though.
Farscape's homage/satire of all of SciFi is incredibly fun. DRD Pike, for goodness sake! :)
The thing that I find most endearing, though, are the characters. They grow, change, form bonds, deceive, cheat, make up and generally act like real people. I'm very interested to see where the current character threads go at this point in the series. This is what makes a show great.
10pm, you're getting wrong feed (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Re:Space, Above and Beyond (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Easy. Babylon 5. (Score:2, Informative)
Interestingly, the effects on the show were done with the off-the-shelf Lightwave 3D software, which I've been playing with off and on along with some ship models downloaded from the Net.
The series is still shown, in letterboxed form, on the Sci-Fi Channel -- and I'm eagerly awaiting the Rangers film. Hopefully, the series will continue through to a theatrical film as some say it will.
Just because a show isn't in production any longer doesn't mean that it's not worthy of contention. By the way... I think the new Trek series' re-use of the Akira-class ship design was a cop-out. I wanted to see something fresh and new along the lines of Earth Alliance vessels with a Trek touch...
Re:Lexx (Score:3, Informative)
Since I spend wayyyyy too much time in hotel rooms, I do get to see Lexx on both sides of the atlantic. There are two different versions, the European/Canadian shows tend to be more sexy and edgy, the U.S. gets a very edited down version so the Sci-Fi channel doesn't get kicked from too many cable stations as pr0n.
When my friend first told me of Lexx, it was being sold to various investment groups and production support companies as a way to attract a large number of hard-core geeks. By analyzing the only successful elements of recent trek shows [7of9], the first season working title was Sexx. The mini-capsule was "Trek meets Xena in a Blue Velvet universe". With a tag like that, its not hard to see why CmdrTaco likes Lexx, as well as Farscape.
I like Lexx, but I wish all four seasons would come out on DVD or tape, or some fan would digitize every episode into mpeg and share them on gnutella.
the AC
Re:Angel (Score:2, Informative)