For those who don’t need a lot of science in their science fiction, I recommend Journeyman and New Amsterdam.
Firefly! And then watch the movie. Delightful.
Anyone watching Almost Human?
Err, no, it tried to cash in on X-Files mania, in fact. And failed, but not for want of trying. It had some nice ideas.
I liked Dark Skies but felt that it ran out of steam by trying too hard to shoehorn the plot arc into key historical events. Maybe it would have improved later but I probably would have pulled the plug on it by the end too.
This. Yes. Very weird and trippy, but definitely worth watching (only 17 episodes).
This is another one that started out brilliantly and ran out of steam. Which was a pity because Bruce Campbell was really good in it.
**Lexx **is wonderful when set against all the other sci-fi shows - the protagonists are horrible people who wreak destruction across a couple of universes through their incompetence, stupidity, greed and generally shallow and squalid personalities, providing an entertaining contrast with all the grand and noble heros of Star Trek etc. The most sympathetic (and indeed competent) character is an undead cyborg assassin. You are not supposed to like these people; this is pretty much slapstick on a galactic scale. Whatever successes they have are despite their idiocy, and even when they prevail it’s rarely to their benefit.
Babylon 5 is a tough one. When it’s good, it’s phenomenal. When it’s bad, it’s truly awful. I think the good outweighs the bad by a decent margin but a lot of the bad happens in the first season as part of the set-up to the long story arcs, and since you really need the foreshadowing to fully appreciate what happens later you have to sit throught the "TKO"s and similar to capture the brief but important moments. Also, the entire Byron storyline in season 5 is soul-deadeningly awful but you get a few great episodes mixed in (“A View From the Gallery”, for example) and the second half of the season gives you the payoff for a lot of the character arcs.
But the G’Kar/Londo arc is one of the finest bits of character writing on television ever (and indeed finest bits of character acting - Katsulas’ death is all the more tragic for seeing how good an actor he was through layers of latex), and I would recommend it on that alone, even if everything else were terrible. Which it isn’t.
Firefly and Battlestar are my top two recommendations by far and seems to be consistent with the recommendations here. Also Star Trek (I always liked Voyager and Enterprise the most).
Surprised there isn’t a little more love for Stargate and Stargate Atlantis. I really liked both of them and they aren’t hardcore sci-fi which means non sci-fi fans can actually enjoy them as well.
I’m surprised that no one seems to have mentioned the Twilight Zone – both the original and follow-up series. Yes, a lot of it was fantasy, or even non-fantastic, but quite a few of the episodes were adaptations of stories from the 1950s SF magazines (such as Damon Knight’s To Serve Man (“It’s a Cookbook!”), which I suspect most watchers thought had been written by Serling himself. Not true – Serling shared writing duties with others (chiefly Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont), including one episode by Ray Bradbury (!), and many of the stories were adaptations of previously-published works. A lot of them are straight science fiction.
I agree strongly with The Outer Limits, although I think the series is, overall, over-rated. Too many times they seemed to get their hands on a concept and didn’t have any idea what to do with it. But they ran some gorgeous stuff, especially the two Harlan Ellison episodes. The later incarnation was good, too. They adapted Larry Niven’s Inconstant Moon.
Agree also about The Prisoner, one of the great curveballs of TV.
There were a couple of British series from the 1960s that I’d love to see – Out of This World and Out of the Unknown. They adapted already-published SF stories, some of them really impressive ones (like Asimov’s I, Robot). At least one episode of the two series has shown up on YouTube. I don’t know if any others exist. I also recommend the 1950s BBC Quatermass serials.
Futurama takes as one of its inspirations the work of Robert Sheckley. That alone I enough to recommend it.
I like the various incarnations of star Trek, including the short-lived animated series, which adapted a Larry Niven story, a David Gerrold-scripted sequel to the Trouble with Tribbles, and some other good stuff (along with a lot I’d rather ignore).
A lot of single events, rather than series, were worth watching – The SciFi channel’s adaptations of Dune and Children of Dune and The Cold Equations, the PBS adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven (but not the cable version of it, or the PBS adaptation of Overdrawn a the Memory Bank)
In general, though, I’ve been underwhelmed by SF on TV.
I forgot - probably the hardest space-based SF show, and criminally-ignored - Space Island One - just doesn’t get enough love.
Earth 2 is available on Netflix, and at 22 episodes, is enjoyable without requiring too much commitment. Alien- and exploratory-based, and filmed beautifully in Utah.
Crusade, the spin-off from Babylon 5, is only 13 episodes, very mythological and space-opera-based, so you could try that before trying Babylon 5 to see if you like the style.
Space Above and Beyond was cool for it’s time, but is remarkably dated. The first season of Earth: Final Conflict was excellent, but the rest was terrible. I’d wade through higher ranked series first.
I love them so much, but they’re hard to recommend. They’re good, but are they great? Similarly, loving Warehouse 13 gives me an inferiority complex.
But I forgot a series from my list:
Stargate Universe - Only two seasons, easy to get through, human characters stranded on an ancient ship in a distant galaxy. Character- and action-based. Deep and broody, meant as a competitor to BSG, but came out too late for the bandwagon. Bonus: Ming Na of SHIELD fame.
Personally, I found this an atrocity that utterly flew in the face of the whole underlying premise of the original short story. Maybe, if you haven’t read the story first, you might enjoy it; but if you have, the movie version will piss you off.
NOOOOOOOOOO! **Crusade **was terrible (apart from the X-Files parody episode). Honestly - don’t watch Crusade unless you finish the rest of B5 and all the movies (In The Beginning is particularly good) and “Lost Tales”. THEN you can watch Crusade.
I really liked the show - there were some really solid episodes - but I agree, plus the “Space Marines who are pilots AND infantry AND do infiltration AND…” strained credulity a bit too far. I’d certainly watch it if it aired again but I wouldn’t spend money on it.
Lexx is freaking awesome. But if you’re not a die hard sci-fi fan, I doubt you would like it.
Thought of another one - Charlie Jade. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked it (and it’s a nice view on my hometown-as-SF-setting, something I don’t see nearly often enough)
I admit that I was disappointed in it, but she still ended up dying. It could have been worse.
Incidentally, the story has been dramatized at least two other times on TV. I haven’t seen the other ones, but I suspect they’re more faithful.
while it probably didn’t exist when this thread began :smack:, I’d have to put in a mention for Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies. 3 seasons so far, and going strong! Definitely a new take on the “aliens invade Earth” scenario…
Babylon 5 is one of my all-time favorates.
Here’s something not yet mentioned. I can’t remember the titles. Two British shows about two different cops who go back in time and find themselves being cops in a strange-to-them earlier era.
Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Life on Mars was one season, self-contained. Ashes to Ashes was a sequel that went for 3 seasons. Ashes to Ashes has some of the same supporting cast, but a different protagonist. They are both good.
How do you feel about Taken? It was an interesting story but I found the ending a bit anticlimactic.
I’ve actually never seen it…
A good (spoiler-free) resource to help you decide on shows to watch (not necessarily just SciFi):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=655890
Someone should add Taken…
My all-time favorites have been mentioned, so I’ll plug a couple of my currently-in-production faves:
Orphan Black (on BBC America here) is great–gritty and original and featuring impressive performances by the lead actress who plays multiple characters. Season 2 will begin airing in April.
Continuum (on Syfy) It started a little bumpy, but steadily improved. Season 2 was very good and the last couple of episodes really ramped things up. Season 3 will air this spring.