SF TV Series you've felt postive emotions for

[Heradel]

Is Lost Science Fiction? I've never heard it referred to as such.

It has mysterious electromagnetic stations (possibly capable of destroying the world, though that's still unproven), black smoky chain things that seem to materialize and dematerialize, a kid with probable psychic abilities, a precognitive man, sequences of numbers that alter fate, and dreams and visions with demonstrated prophetic consequences.

What would you call it?

That show my friends keep bitching has lost it's way?

On a serious note, I watched two episodes in the first season and didn't fall into it. I've never heard it billed as SF (or for that anything weird-science-y except for radios not working). Anyway, it's on the list now, in the prominent 23rd position.

[Bdoomed]

I watched much of the first season of lost on DVD at my friend's house... didn't click with me... i just couldnt care much about it.

[Jonathan C. Gillespie]

Is Lost Science Fiction? I've never heard it referred to as such.

It has mysterious electromagnetic stations (possibly capable of destroying the world, though that's still unproven), black smoky chain things that seem to materialize and dematerialize, a kid with probable psychic abilities, a precognitive man, sequences of numbers that alter fate, and dreams and visions with demonstrated prophetic consequences.

What would you call it?

Another weekend at Cheech and Chong's.

[Jonathan C. Gillespie]

I'm pleased to see "Batman" getting it's due.  I assume we're referring to The Animated Series, which is some of the best television I've ever seen.

And I grew up with ST:TNG, have seen every episode, still love that show.  It was the right cast, with the right writers, and they ended it on a high note just before Rick Berman started getting burned out and pretentious.

[SFEley]

I'm pleased to see "Batman" getting it's due.  I assume we're referring to The Animated Series, which is some of the best television I've ever seen.

I assumed most people were thinking of the old Adam West show from the 60s.  But I guess it doesn't really matter, as the poll's creator has chosen not to distinguish between versions of shows.

[Heradel]

Superman means all the Superman series in various incarnations, Batman means all the Batman series in various incarnations. I know there were big differences in quality between some of them, but if I started doing it by series, especially with ones like Star Trek or Superman or Batman... the poll would easily be closer to 100 options, which really isn't useful, or practical.

Yes, there is a difference between the new and old BS:G's. It's a pretty big difference in some ways. If you really feel strongly on the matter and don't want to vote for (insert incarnation of series) but loved (insert other incarnation of series), post about it down here, and explain why. Then vote for something else.

[Brian Reilly]

What about the 4400? I love that show.

I voted for B5- A fantastic epic story in a well-realised universe. I loved the idea of an ongoing story arc.
BSG- The new version. Tackles topics no other SF TV series will.
Doctor Who/Torchwood- Just plain well-written. Apart from some of Torchwood, but the good Torchwood episodes were very good.
Firefly- Best bunch of characters in TV SF. Joss Whedon knows how to create a group of characters that make you want to join them.

I would have voted for Star Trek, if it wasn't for the crapness of the recent shows. Of course, Doctor Who had its share of cheese, but that's well in the past. Star Trek hasn't been any good since DS9.

Oh, and Seaquest is a case study in how to take a fairly decent show, and completely ruin it with a few simple changes.

[Russell Nash]

Oh, and Seaquest is a case study in how to take a fairly decent show, and completely ruin it with a few simple changes.

I totally agree. I loved that show and then quickly hated everything to do with it.

[Roney]

As -- seemingly -- the only person to vote for Lost so far, I'm prepared to stand up and defend it.

If there's some flaw that bugs you, I'll have a go at justifying it.

This may require another thread...

[SFEley]

As -- seemingly -- the only person to vote for Lost so far, I'm prepared to stand up and defend it.

If there's some flaw that bugs you, I'll have a go at justifying it.

The only real flaw that bugs me is that the first half of this season was ridiculously slow paced.  Too much time with only three main characters in the enemy base, which quickly became boringly mundane, and not nearly enough time spent on everybody else.

I haven't seen the last couple episodes since it started running again.  I'll get around to it...eventually.  My enthusiasm dropped with the pace.

[Roney]

The only real flaw that bugs me is that the first half of this season was ridiculously slow paced.  Too much time with only three main characters in the enemy base, which quickly became boringly mundane, and not nearly enough time spent on everybody else.

I'm inclined to blame some of that on the scheduling.  The first couple of episodes got by on sheer curiosity about how the Others actually live.  Their most important organization is a suburban book club?  Genius.  And it was great to get an explanation for season one's polar bears at last.

Then it did seriously slow down, but that's not uncommon for the first quarter of a season.  Being off our screens for, what, three months? has really intensified the feeling that it's stalled.  If it had continued at more normal intervals I think the slow start would have been easily forgotten.

[DKT]

As -- seemingly -- the only person to vote for Lost so far, I'm prepared to stand up and defend it.

If there's some flaw that bugs you, I'll have a go at justifying it.

This may require another thread...

I couldn't figure out how to reset my vote otherwise Lost would be at the top of my list.  And I agree with you that the horrible scheduling of this show has added to the stalled feeling.  And watching it at 10pm sucks (no, I don't have TIVO). I think that if the last two episodes (the ones after the 3 month gap) had been aired before the break, it would've left everyone with a much better taste in their mouth.

[slic]

Dr. Who - the new stuff is funny, clever, exciting, and they manage to include the old villians

BSG - the new stuff is funny, clever, exciting, and they manage to include the old villians (is it plagerism if you steal from yourself?)  Best effects on TV - bloody seamless, makes me think there's a stable of spaceships out there.  This is what I call "true sci-fi" (bring it on, Mr. Resnick ), taking fantastic ideas, sometimes mixing them with current issues and divorcing them enough from now that it's very thought-provoking.

B5 - awesome complete story arc. Any story suffers after the climax, but B5 was pretty good all the way through.

Star Trek - let's be honest, it's the Lord of The Rings for TV sci-fi - sure it sucks lately, but that's the cooks, not the recipe.

I love Firefly (I watch the series about once a month), but it's too short.  Though there is some good fanfic - audio style at http://sonic.libsyn.com/

Heroes is too comic booky for me to be sci-fi and it just feels like it's been done before.

[DKT]

Star Trek - let's be honest, it's the Lord of The Rings for TV sci-fi - sure it sucks lately, but that's the cooks, not the recipe.

What makes you call it the LOTR for TV?  I'm not trying to criticize, just curious.  I like the LOTR becomes it's one epic story that has a definite ending.  I enjoy some Star Trek, but like you said, the last few attempts have left a bad taste in my mouth (I hated Voyager, never did get a chance to watch Enterprise, which I almost regret). 

[slic]

When Tolkien wrote LOTR the only fantasy creatures were the ones from folklore and fairy tales.  Not only did he invent the fantasy genre as we know it today, he showed writers the beauty of having a completely realized world to play in.

I think Star Trek (the Original Series) is the same template - what sci-fi show doesn't have it's roots in the basic inventions of Star Trek- warp speed, phasers, teleporters, aliens as equals, etc. Certainly, there was Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon but I find those much more human-centric serial fiction.  Star Trek brought it to the one TV format.

As for Voyager and Enterprise - I'd say Voyager tried too hard to be a mash of The Original Series (with a crusty Doctor and a Vulcan confidant) and Next Gen (substitute Droid with hot Borg chick).  It left the first officer Chicotay (sp?) floating the breeze, and besides  Neelix was soooo annoying. 
Enterprise was just dopey and almost mean-spirited - not just the stories(the evil Vulcans are idiots), but also in the way it threw away anything associated to the original series, including the opening.  After Sept 2001, though, the Zinti story line showed some real promise - then it got dumb again.

Get the Originals on DVD or catch them on a sci fi channel - the really good ones still hold up fairly well (Amok Time, Journey to Babel, Balance of Terror, etc).

[DKT]

Ah, I see what you're saying.  It helped set the standard for sci-fi.  That's cool.  I liked what I saw of the original series, the Next Generation,  and a handful of the movies.  Even though I never really got into DS9, I respect that it was trying to do something different. 

Guess I'll stay away from the Enterprise series, though.

[Talia]

I've never gotten all the hate for Voyager. It's my favorites of the star treks (although I'm currently working my way through TOS and liking it too). The characters felt a lot more developed and interesting than the yawnfest that was Enterprise, and I felt some of the episodes were pretty innovative. Particularly some of the ones with the Doctor (or it could just be I really loved that character ).

I will confess being unable to get into either 24 or Lost. They just didn't gel with me. I think Lost's melodrama turned me off. (Yet, I'm a heroes addict. Go figure).

I miss Firefly with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. But I understand why they had to cancel it, Fox clearly needed more space for shows like "When Shoeboxes Attack, Part 200" and "Who Wants to be a Moronic, Braindead Reality Show Contestant?"

Not that I'm bitter, mind you..

[Mfitz]

I enjoy  Lost, but until we know how things will be resolved when they end the series it's sort of a one trick pony in my opinion, not equal to shows like Trek, that had impact on pop culture both inside and outside the Speculative fiction community. (Sorry I do like Firefly, and the DVD set got me through chemo, but there's just not enough of it for me to rank it as a "great" in the field.)

I think the jury is out on Lost until we know if  they stringing us along and making it up as they go (a'la Twin Peaks?), or is there really a coherent begining-middle-end plot arc? Is there really something huge and mysterious going on or will there be a mundane explanation?  If they come up with everyday explanations for everything that happens then the whole show is nothing but an extended Scoopy-Do episode with some grownup soap opera window dressing tossed it.  If they go the other way it might be one of the best SF shows ever.

[ClintMemo]

I think the love of the ST series is also dependent on when you saw them.  I saw TOS in reruns as a kid and loved it (actually, I know I saw at least part of one episode in its original airing, but I was only about 3 years old).  When TNG came out, I was almost done with college. When TNG was on, it was the ONLY notable SF on TV, and it was syndicated, so not everyone got to see it. At the time, we were so excited to see NEW ST on TV, watching it became a ritual.   DS9 came on before TNG ended and it was also good, and was also syndicated.  Voyager came on before DS9 ended, but it was on a network, so it had a more regular time slot.  However, by the time it arrived, some of the trappings were getting old.  Spock was such a strong character (the emotionless alien showing us what being human meant) that they copied him in every series - Data, Odo, Tuvok/7 of 9...Trulane became Q... etc...   
TNG tried to be a better version of TOS.  I think in many ways it succeeded because it had way more money (in later seasons) and let's face it - better actors.
DS9 just tried to be different by being on a station.
Voyager just tried to be different by taking the federation away.  IMHO, they started out well, but went downhill quickly after the first season.
I have seen very little of Enterprise, so I won't comment on it.
One thing all the series except TOS and TNG did that I think was a mistake, was to make them more serialized. 
B5 was serialized and brilliant because JMS knew where the whole story went before he started the first episode.  The later TS series weren't really like that. They had an implied order but it never looked liked the writers knew what they were going to do next season as a result of what was going on this season.


I am one of the people who learned to hate voyager.  The reason is that it started out well, with a good premise.  It had a group of very interesting characters (ok neelix was annoying at times), but around the end of the first full season, the plots started to get really dumb. I remember watching every episode, really loving it at first, then watching it go downhill until the "warp 10" episode (where the two characters go off and become lizards and have babies) and then thinking "Well, that's enough for me."  Once in while I would see it flipping channels and wonder if it ever got any better and ever time I'd watch a few minutes and decide that it hadn't.  I did sit and watch the whole finale and it seemed just as dumb and full of plot holes as most of the show had been.  I guess what makes me bitter is thinking how good the show *could* have been.

[Talia]

I never did see the lizards episode but I've heard it was pretty bad. Still, overall I thought the series was excellent and I miss it. Maybe its because I happily overlook any technical glitches and plot holes unless they are too huge to ignore. And I loved the finale, also. Part of it is I've always been one to watch TV/movies/etc more for the emotional aspect of it then the technical, so that probably affects alot

I would take exception with the statement that Odo was a copy of Spock. I found him quite different. Odo could be brusque but it was brusqueness born of emotion rather than lack of emotion.  As for the other Vulcans, yeah, but I guess how different can Vulcans get from eachother?

[Mfitz]

As for the other Vulcans, yeah, but I guess how different can Vulcans get from eachother?

Monolithic alien cultures is a major flaw in the Trek universe.  Where are the Vulcan jocks and Klingon interior decorators?

[ClintMemo]

I never did see the lizards episode but I've heard it was pretty bad. Still, overall I thought the series was excellent and I miss it. Maybe its because I happily overlook any technical glitches and plot holes unless they are too huge to ignore. And I loved the finale, also. Part of it is I've always been one to watch TV/movies/etc more for the emotional aspect of it then the technical, so that probably affects alot

I would take exception with the statement that Odo was a copy of Spock. I found him quite different. Odo could be brusque but it was brusqueness born of emotion rather than lack of emotion.  As for the other Vulcans, yeah, but I guess how different can Vulcans get from eachother?

Odo wasn't a copy exactly, it was just another version of the same thing. He wasn't emotionless but he was a loner - at first anyway.  His job was to show us what it was to be human by becoming more human.  I confess that I didn;t see all of DS9, not because I didn;t like it, but because my local station moved it all over the frickin' place. I did see the finale and I had the exact opposite response that I did from voyager's (Wow! I wish I had seen the whole series!)
Also, TOS wasn't about the characters. It was about telling a story that you couldn't get away with telling without changing the context to something otherworldly.  Sorry, I can't remember the names of individual episodes, but the episode with the men who were black one side and white on the other was about racism, for example.  Every week, they went to a new planet, had a new adventure and we were all wiser because of it.   The other series did less of that, but I doubt that would fly today anyway.

[Talia]

Odo wasn't a copy exactly, it was just another version of the same thing. He wasn't emotionless but he was a loner - at first anyway.  His job was to show us what it was to be human by becoming more human.  I confess that I didn;t see all of DS9, not because I didn;t like it, but because my local station moved it all over the frickin' place. I did see the finale and I had the exact opposite response that I did from voyager's (Wow! I wish I had seen the whole series!)
Also, TOS wasn't about the characters. It was about telling a story that you couldn't get away with telling without changing the context to something otherworldly.  Sorry, I can't remember the names of individual episodes, but the episode with the men who were black one side and white on the other was about racism, for example.  Every week, they went to a new planet, had a new adventure and we were all wiser because of it.   The other series did less of that, but I doubt that would fly today anyway.

I can see what you're saying. I think that particular archetype goes beyond sci fi though.. the alienated individual who slowly becomes more human, etc, etc. And its a popular construct. People like it when that happens. I know I do.

And I know what you mean about TOS, im figuring that out for myself as I watch it (im about 2/3rds the way through season 1). The acting is iffy and of course the effects and makeup are laughable, but the plots frequently touch on all kinds of issues that are still relevant today. Good stuff.

[DKT]

I think the jury is out on Lost until we know if  they stringing us along and making it up as they go (a'la Twin Peaks?), or is there really a coherent begining-middle-end plot arc? Is there really something huge and mysterious going on or will there be a mundane explanation?  If they come up with everyday explanations for everything that happens then the whole show is nothing but an extended Scoopy-Do episode with some grownup soap opera window dressing tossed it.  If they go the other way it might be one of the best SF shows ever.

I don't know.  Even though I felt completely ripped off by the way the X-Files ended I have no problem loving that series and rating it as one of my favorites.  Mulder is still easily one of my favorite characters in any medium.  So I've got no problem saying I love Lost now and I even rate it up with the X-Files.

And if the writers do in fact know where they're going (in general) that will make it all the better.

[SFEley]

I am one of the people who learned to hate voyager.  The reason is that it started out well, with a good premise.  It had a group of very interesting characters (ok neelix was annoying at times), but around the end of the first full season, the plots started to get really dumb. I remember watching every episode, really loving it at first, then watching it go downhill until the "warp 10" episode (where the two characters go off and become lizards and have babies) and then thinking "Well, that's enough for me."

Heh.  I took a slightly different path: started watching Voyager, made it through the first few episodes, lost interest for whatever reason...  Then, a few years later, decided to give it another try.

Naturally, the episode I watched was that "Warp 10" episode you described.

No force on earth was going to make me watch the show again after that.