Non-British SF or fantasy shows

Outer Limits (original) & Twilight Zone are the essential U.S. sci-fi.

Logan wrote: Guy Guden wrote: Outer Limits (original) & Twilight Zone are the essential U.S. sci-fi. Agreed. Such creativity and imagination on display in those shows. A couple of my favourite episodes are the Outer Limits Sixth Finger and Twilight Zone's Number 12 Looks Just Like You. So much greatness of course.

Edited by Guy Guden - May 18 2016 at 19:25

Dean wrote: (voted Time Tunnel ... I'd love to watch those old programmes again)

more of a Land of the Giants man myself, but Irwin Allen always did it for me.   Spared no expense. 

Atavachron wrote: Dean wrote: (voted Time Tunnel ... I'd love to watch those old programmes again) more of a Land of the Giants man myself, but Irwin Allen always did it for me.   Spared no expense.

Star Trek (the original series).  Easily.

Edited by dwill123 - May 19 2016 at 20:48

Dean wrote: Logan wrote: By the way, though I had watched a couple of Farcape episodes a few days ago since it's on Netflix Canada, today being an almost completely work free day, I decided to watch another and genuinely found it fun. Most shows, like music, I find need a little investment of effort, and I don't think I gave the show a proper chance when it was new as I would miss episodes and so lose out on finer points of the story arc, and I didn't start at the beginning. Same with Firefly, I came in part way into the show.   These days I generally prefer to binge watch when possible (with serials in particular). I watched Farscape from the beginning through to the end and the final 3 hour miniseries conclusion (The Peacekeeper Wars), I wasn't sure about it at first as the opening episode seemed to be an updated version of Buck Rodgers and I didn't warm to Ben Browder's character to begin with (far to shouty), but I liked the idea of a living spaceship (à la Anne McCaffrey's 'The Ship Who Sang' and Iain M Banks Culture series) and the supporting cast appeared to be interesting enough to continue watching: Scorpius is one of the great villains of TV SF and an alien who farts helium when scared... and yes, the ladies were pleasing to the eye but they were also strong characters and not just window dressing. Like Babylon 5 (as opposed to DS9), I favour series with a good story arc and a proper denouement and I think Farscape had that. I missed Browder and Black in Stargate SG1 because of Sky TV's dreadful scheduling of the program once terrestrial TV dropped it and still haven't seen seasons 8 to 10.

I need t read more of the Culture series, looked for it in the bookshop and at the library. Scorpio I did indeed like, and Rygel is terrific Henson creation. Digression: My favourite Henson film, by the way is The Dark Crystal which I find a very moving and wonderful film.

I also want a good story arc and denouement (even if the denouement is ambiguous). Far too often shows get cancelled before there's any sense of closure, or the writing just gets lame and tired (a reason I tend to favour through-written series). I have all of Farcape on Netflix, so there's no reason not to watch it through.

Dean wrote: I started to watch Firefly but just didn't like it, a few of the support characters were ok but I couldn't relate to the two leads. Conversely Serenity was one of those rare things - a film version that was better than the TV series that spawned it. Having enjoyed the film I tried returning to the TV series but still didn't like it. I think the difference is Firefly took the Space Western genre too literally and was little more than a thinly disguised TV series about outlaw cowboys, whereas Serenity reeled in 'Western' aspect, dragging it towards the more popular Space Opera territory. [Writing this I'm reminded of US/Canadian SF TV series that time seems to have forgotten - Andromeda, staring Kevin Sorbo]

I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts on Firefly. I will watch Serenity as it's on Netflix Canada. Having that made was quite the coup for the fans as I recall.

I think time has been kind to Andromeda, not because it aged well, but because it forgot it.    I didn't actually catch that much of it, but Kevin Sorbo had zero appeal to me (not a character I identified with, nor a commanding performance). Another that may have been forgotten, well it's a Canadian production so some might say it's to be expected, but with an American audience in mind, is Starhunter. I rather liked it. Peter Gabriel did theme music for the show (series/ season 2), and it was the music that sucked me in. And it had a girl that I found petulant and irritating in that show but I had admired in another Canadian show called The Newsroom (an all too rare, I think, example of very good Canadian TV).

Edited by Logan - May 20 2016 at 08:18

I mentioned Babylon 5 en passant earlier without noticing it wasn't on the list. Planned from the start to be a five-year, five-season, story arc with a proper beginning, middle and end it was a ground-breaking series not only for its concept, but also for the use of the emergent CGI technology and use of the nascent internet as a means to develop a fan-following. One of those silly irrelevant facts that sticks in my long-term memory is the brother of Wayne's Word's Dana Carvey built the prototype Video Toaster hardware that was initially used to create the CGI effects. A 'clever' artistic trick they used was in adding a huge nebula backdrop in all the space images so they didn't have to use artificial lighting to make the ships visible against a pure black background. The inaccurate depiction of stars in SF programmes is a minor irritation for me, especially in Star Trek but Voyager's producers' gain kudos for adding a constant engine-sound to the audio track of all on-board scenes (only noticeable in stereo broadcasts).

Another first was the programme's creator wrote most of the episodes and two whole seasons, (Neil Gaiman, DC Fontana and Harlan Ellison also wrote for the series to a strict set of rules to ensure continuity of the story-arc). While some of the dialogue was at times a little lumpen, I thoroughly enjoyed following the story-arc to the final show-down with "The First Ones" - however, binge-watching that from beginning to end would be a major undertaking that even I as a long term fan would shy away from. 

Edited by Dean - May 21 2016 at 04:27