Actually, the list isn’t all that horrible. I winced about 2 or 3 times reading it, which is not bad for such a controversial topic.
I winced when I saw:
Stargate: Atlantis
WTF? This show is a weak spin-off of a weak show. I’ll give Stargate SG-1 some credit just for lasting into its 9th season, but the spin-off?
Buffy is #27.
That’s way too low. Did I mention Stargate: Atlantis is #26, higher than Buffy?
NO FARSCAPE!!!
WHAT THE FRELL IS THAT??? Farscape should be top 15(higher for me
personally).
Voyager makes it, but Deep Space 9 doesn’t.
Crazy talk! Deep Space 9 is almost as good as Next Gen. and wayyyyyyyyyyyyy better than Voyager!
Did I mention…NO FARSCAPE?
Oh, and I’m a big Battlestar Galactica fan, but I think #2 is too high for a show that hasn’t finished its second season. It may one day be #2, but it’s too early.
Good things about the list:
Babylon 5 makes #5.
Glad to see it take its place amongst the greats.
Star Trek does deserve #1.
Not great stuff, but we wouldn’t have Battlestar today without it.
One would be interested in their criteria used in assembling the list. Any list that includes The Last American Hero and doesn’t include DS9 or Farscape has got to be suspect. If it’s merely one critic’s opinions, then it should be labeled as such.
Star Trek had to be 1. I am surprised Twilight Zone wasn’t higher. Everyone know the Twilight Zone and it’s closing in on 50 year old now.
I was glad to X-files and Dr Who up high.
Yeah, I can’t get behind their construction of the list. OK, sure, I get that if you include the Bionic Woman, it doesn’t make much sense not to include Wonder Woman, even though one’s powers are based in science and the other’s, not. But there were an awful lot of adventure shows with cool gadgets on the list. That shouldn’t count. And Nowhere Man? I admit, I stopped watching after the first half-dozen episodes, but I noticed absolutely nothing related to aliens, other dimensions, or high technology in that show – sure, it was a follower of the undeniably sci-fi X-Files, but so what?
Oh, and anyone who puts Futurama at 41 and omits DS9 all together can bite my shiny metal ass.
Even a show like Quantum Leap (which I really enjoyed) I think stretches the definition. Yes, it is science fictiony the way he moves thorough time into other people. But that was almost a macguffin type plot device to simply allow for a wide variety of dramatic and comedic cicumstances that had little to do with the science fiction.
I love MST3K as much as anyone, but it’s about as much sci-fi as the Saturday Night Live skectch where William Shatner went to the Star Trek convention.
Here’s a top 100 list based on an online poll. Such polls are dominated by younger folk who don’t even know what SF shows were on in the 1950s, let alone whether they were any good.
I got the sense that they didn’t really know anything about some of the entries: Things like “This show only ran for one or two seasons”. They can’t even be bothered to find out how many seasons it was? It feels like they all sat around in a brainstorming session to name shows, but ran dry at around 41, and had to find some things someone had heard of once to fill it out to a round 50.
And while I suppose I can see the reasoning, spies and superheroes are not traditionally considered SF. Nobody’s going to say “Hey, you liked James Bond? Check out this new Battlestar Galactica show!”. This goes double for fantasy: There’s no possible way you can consider Xena to be science fiction. Now, they could have made a list of “science fiction and fantasy”, or of “speculative fiction”, but then they’d have to include a lot of other good fantasy/horror/etc. shows.
Some of the shows made me wonder also. For instance Batman. I could see it in an action/adventure list, or a comedy action list, but it isn’t science fiction.
Oh, yeah. He already knew the list was coming and he was prepared.
The fact that they considered Sliders as number ten shows they don’t no squat about SF. Sliders was a truly mediocre show that had no idea what to do with its premise and is hardly in the top 200 (and is only there because there probably aren’t more than 200 or so SF TV shows).