Top 50 Sci-Fi TV Series Countdown (LoC #79)

[Johnny Unusual]

Number 12

119 Points, 5 of 18 lists, #1 MartyS (Gromit)

God has a plan for you Gaius. He has a plan for everything and everyone.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/Zu0FMaEneO0" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/Zu0FMaEneO0</a>

The Premise
In a distant star system, the 12 human colonies are decimated by the robots known as the Cylons.  With only 50,000 remaining from those colonies (mostly due to being on civilian ships at the time), they try to survive under the aegis of the Battlestar Galactica, desperately fighting for survival against impossible odds and trying to reach the legendary refuge known as Earth.

 Great Episode
 Revelations
It’s a tense hostage situation and the Cylons and the humans begin their intense negotiations.  Some humans are revealed as Cylons but even that reveal pales in comparison to where the episode heads, with a major reveal (which would have been a bitch of a cliffhanger if the show didn’t get picked up again)

 Big Ideas   
The mini-series that kicks things off certainly isn’t the show at its strongest but things certainly turn around with the tense “33” where the characters are found an impossible situation.  The Cylons have caught up with the Galactica, but everytime the Galactica gets away, only to find out that the Cylons reappear after every 33 minutes.   The situation manages to up the stakes even quicker, making the battle for survival seemingly impossible.

[BathTub]

God has a plan for you Gaius. He has a plan for everything and everyone.

Pity the writers didn't.

[BathTub]

Yeah thought the boobs in the pilot will only set you up for disappointment for the series proper!

Couple of real knuckleheads, huh?

There is a very graphic scene in the pilot that I was very surprised to see the last time I rewatched it.

[Johnny Unusual]

The producers decided that after the pilot that the stargate would no longer be powered by blowjobs.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Yeah thought the boobs in the pilot will only set you up for disappointment for the series proper!

Couple of real knuckleheads, huh?

There is a very graphic scene in the pilot that I was very surprised to see the last time I rewatched it.

Was that the new version that came out a few years ago?  I still haven't watched that cut of the pilot yet.

[Johnny Unusual]

Number 11

125 Points, 8 of 18 lists, #2 CJones, Compound & Soguru

  We are explorers. We explore our lives day by day, and we explore the galaxy trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here: not to conquer you with weapons or ideas, but to coexist and learn.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/2TsMyLt2BTM" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/2TsMyLt2BTM</a>

The Premise
Deep Space Nine is a Federation space station that was moved near the Bajoran  Wormhole that leads to a faraway sector of space, making Deep Space Nine a center for exploration, interstellar trade, political maneuvering, and even conflict.  The station is commanded by Benjamin Sisko, a grieving widower who has found himself a religious figure by many of the Bajorans, the race that lives beyond the wormhole.

 Great Episode
 Far Beyond the Stars
Sisko considers leaving star fleet after the loss of a friend hits him hard.  But soon he is having visions of himself as a science fiction writer in the 50’s, with all of his crew as people that he knows in the past.  The writer creates a story, Deep Space Nine, which features an African American commander, making it difficult for him to publish.  A great, powerful episode that is about forward thinking science fiction while being light on the actual stuff.

 Big Ideas   
I’m always fascinated by ideas of trying to deal punishment in a more humane way, but may be as bad as or worse than the original.  In the episode “Hard Time”, O’Brien asks the wrong question is given 20 years imprisonment… almost instantly.   With the crew too late to prevent the punishment, O’Brien’s cruel punishment is over in a second.  Years weren’t stolen, but perhaps some element of his humanity was…

[Johnny Unusual]

Last 10 tomorrow.  Good night!

[Soguru]

Deep space nine captured my imagination more than any other Star Trek series. Those people felt like my family even more than the crew of the original Enterprise. DS9's greatest advantage was that it had more freedom to explore unique story possibilities. One week you had a complex, intricate and clever two part story about Garak and Odo stumbling upon a Tal Shiar and Obsidian order fleet assigned to annihilate the founders(Improbable Cause/The Die is cast). Before long, you had a deeply and emotionally compelling story about Odo expressing his feelings for Major Kira as she gets stuck inside some kind of odd growing crystal... (Heart of Stone). Less action, but more emotion and an actual, genuine sense of urgency and tension led to a great ending worthy of The original Twilight Zone.

[BathTub]

Yeah thought the boobs in the pilot will only set you up for disappointment for the series proper!

Couple of real knuckleheads, huh?

There is a very graphic scene in the pilot that I was very surprised to see the last time I rewatched it.

Was that the new version that came out a few years ago?  I still haven't watched that cut of the pilot yet.

This was the original season 1 DVDs so a 10+ years ago or so.

[Johnny Unusual]

 

Number 10

127, 7 out of 18 lists, #2 Goflyblind

   Look, I'm trying to navigate at faster than the speed of light, which means that before you see something, you've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000, it's still brown-trousers time.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/00powkXPhDg" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/00powkXPhDg</a>

The Premise
Lister is a slob and a low level worker for the mining space ship Red Dwarf, who has just snuck a cat aboard.  However, this is a criminal act on a ship for fear of the spread of disease and Lister is asked to give up the cat.  He refuses and goes into stasis where he will be frozen until he can be brought back to Earth for penalization.  When Lister wakes up, he discovers 3,000,000 years has past, the crew having died shortly after he was frozen.  Now Lister, the last human alive, is accompanied his seemingly endless journey home with the ship’s computer, a cat-like being who descended from the pregnant cat that was brought aboard and a hologram of Lister’s incredibly uptight, neurotic and irritable supervisor.  Together they travel the universe encountering the remnants of humanities colonization of space.

Great Episode
Marooned
Lister and Rimmer have always been stuck together, but now the two are stuck in a much more dire situation when they crash land on an icy planet.  This isn’t one of the more high-concept episodes, but it explores the characters of Rimmer and Lister a bit more with a lean, funny episode.

 Big Ideas   
The Red Dwarf crew’s worst enemy is always themselves, even when it is someone else.  In “The Inquisitor”, the crew encounter an android so long lived, it decided to go back in time and alter history to prevent their sperm from reaching the egg that made a person.  When he comes to judge the crew, the inquisitor finds that for full fairness, they must be their own judges.  After the judgment is complete, those found guilty escape, only to find themselves in a new reality where a better version of themselves exist.

[goflyblind]

quagaars; double "a", actually.

[ScottotD]

Dwarf would hold up *SO* much better if not for Kryten's gurning 

[Johnny Unusual]

Number 9

  146 Points, 12 of 18 lists, #1 Anais.Butterfly

Oh Boy…

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/DjK9GJMBpt0" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/DjK9GJMBpt0</a>

The Premise
Dr. Sam Beckett, a brilliant scientist who theorized that one could travel in his own lifetime one day vanished after stepping into his own machine.  Now Sam Beckett has a Swiss cheese memory and is in the body of another man.  He gets help from Al, a friend from his own time projected as a hologram that only Sam can see or hear, and both get help from Ziggy, a super-computer that same created.  Soon Sam learns that to leave the body, he must avoid a tragedy, and soon Sam is leaping from life to life, making history better in small but significant ways.

 Great Episode
Jimmy
Quantum Leap dealt with a lot of social injustice by putting Sam into the bodies of people who are disenfranchised or outsiders.  In Jimmy, he ends up in the body of a man with Down’s syndrome named Jimmy and must prove that the character can find a place in society or Jimmy will end up in a mental institution.  Another great episode that tackles the injustices of the past and puts Sam in a situation where he must fight hard even to be listened too.

Big Ideas   
It was long hinted that Sam’s quest might be set out by God or some mysterious higher power, but whoever is responsible (considering Sam’s memory, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Sam himself) knows that social injustice doesn’t end with humans when Sam ends up in the body of a chimpanzee.  In “The Wrong Stuff” Sam must reveal cruel tests that are killing Chimps and finding out that he is capable of leaping into animals, which could have been stupid, but really works and fits in well with the series’ mission statement of compassion towards others.

[anais.butterfly]

Big Ideas   
It was long hinted that Sam’s quest might be set out by God or some mysterious higher power, but whoever is responsible   (considering Sam’s memory, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Sam himself) knows that social injustice doesn’t end with humans when Sam ends up in the body of a chimpanzee.  In “The Wrong Stuff” Sam must reveal cruel tests that are killing Chimps and finding out that he is capable of leaping into animals, which could have been stupid, but really works and fits in well with the series’ mission statement of compassion towards others.

Wow, that idea is awesome. Now I like the series even more. Also, that would make me much more satisfied with the ending.

[Johnny Unusual]

Though I'm an atheist, I'm kind of OK with the idea if God had a hand, unless if it was ever overtly expressed.  The show somehow felt religious yet non-denominational to me, expressing all the good values of most religions, while keeping things ambiguous enough where it emphasized said values over mythos.  If anything, it's something those God-awful Christian films could take notes from (you know things are bad when Fireproof is one of the better films).

But yeah, I totally believe Sam could have looked up enough injustices for a lifetime and set him on his journey or finished his leaping and garaunteed Sam did all the stuff.

Actually, that is one thing I really liked about the last episode.  Sam did miss home a bit, but it always felt like his big priority was helping others from the get-go.  Of course, he'd just keep going.