A nice, neat, fun, high-budget intro to the new Doctor
Finally watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special, Holiday Special, or Special No. 4 (depending on which advert you see for it).
I think the Fifteenth Doctor is going to be a lot of fun, full of compassion and whimsy. Not gotten a solid coherent read off of Ruby yet, but we’ll see.
The plot it self was moderately intricate, left some bits dangling for RTD to come back to, and, if a bit fantasy-heavy … well, Doctor Who has always been fantasy with most the numbers filed off.
Good stuff.
A look back at Season 4 of NuWho, and the best Companion ever.
I will confess, I am a total Donna Noble fan (and have been for some time). So prepping for the 60th Anniversary Doctor Who specials by rewatching the Donna Noble season was a task I readily welcomed.
After endless ages in Doctor Who S1-2 of the Holy Beloved Rose Tyler, and the weirdly abortive S3 “oh, she’s falling for the Doctor, too” tenure of Martha Jones, having a Companion for S4 that was (a) out for a good, interesting time, (b) not falling on love with the Doctor, (c) sassy and independent, (d) definitely not falling in love with the Doctor, (e) nagged by an inferiority complex, and (f) oh so very much not falling in love with the Doctor, was like a breath of fresh air.
The chemistry between David Tennant and Catherine Tate was lovely. The dynamic of a Companion who wasn’t cowed or dominated or (as noted) smitten with the Doctor was delightful. There was humor, there was terror, there was so much of an EveryPerson about Donna, that every moment in her early tenure was a delight.
Her first encounter, in the S3 “Runaway Bride” gave us a person-on-the-street encounter with the weirdness of the Doctor. “Partners in Crime” shows both how that encounter has changed her and how the Doctor (a lesson that holds true for every regeneration, but particularly for Ten) absolutely needs a Companion. That’s reinforced in “Fires of Pompeii,” showing how the Doctor’s hit-and-miss adherence to the rules, like a good little Time Lord, can lead to moments of amoral inhumanity, and in “Planet of the Ood” gives the Doctor a boost in the moral outrage over that race’s slavery.
Donna gets pushed a little to the side with a standard alien invasion in “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky,” and, for obviously reasons, continues to play support in “The Doctor’s Daughter.” But she’s back on stage for the Agatha Christie “The Unicorn and the Wasp.”
After what is, at that point, a pretty normal Doctor Who season (a few invasions, some weird planets and historical pieces), S4 becomes nightmarishly dark. I would say that “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” are the scariest bits of the season, if not for the Twilight Zone-perfect “Midnight,” but Donna remains a presence — her phantom family drama in the Library two-parter makes up for River Song’s introduction pushing her a bit to the side, and her grounding of the Doctor after a very, very unpleasant encounter in the worst parts of human nature are critical parts of what make those episodes work.
All of which leads to an even darker tale in the first of the three-ep season wrap, “Turn Left,” where we see what the world — and, by extension, the lives of Donna and her family — becomes if she never takes the step that brings her to meet the Doctor. It’s an hour of progressive dystopia with shades of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, as the various disasters and plots that the Doctor averted over the course of S3-4 actually come to pass when Donna’s not there to pull the Doctor back in “The Runaway Bride.” After the horror of the Library saga and the psychodrama of “Midnight,” “Turn Left” just becomes horribly depressing (with a frisson of horror from the bug on Donna’s back).
Throughout it all, though, Donna remains — if not positive, then resolute. Capable of outrage. Determined to make things better. Self-deprecating, but willing to step up for a fight. She is utterly human and utterly a force of nature.
That brings us to “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” as Donna lets herself be recruited to save the world. The pair of episodes carries a massive, sometimes almost overwhelming amount of fan service, drawing in every NuWho Companion and hangers-on, including key cast members of Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, into a massive, multi-layered conspiracy by and battle against the (of course) Daleks.
Through this, it would be easy for Donna to fade a bit into the background, but she’s a key, if controversial, part of the plot. By the end of things, she’s proven herself, the “Temp from Chiswick,” to be the most important human in the universe … and is, for Reasons, demoted into amnesiac former Companion, unaware of what she’d seen, done, accomplished.
It feels outrageously, massively unfair to the character, of course (esp. as Martha heads off to new possible adventures, and Rose ends up with her mom and the Man of Her Dreams, sort of). It’s still gut-wrenching to watch (even as it includes the meme-worthy “David Tennant in the Rain” scene), but, aware how much of it must have been driven by Catherine Tate’s contract (she had a successful career both pre- and post-Who) and the winding down the Russell Davies era, it’s actually a far better ending than “Oh, I’m tired of / traumatized by / unrequited about traveling with the Doctor, so I quit” (which is pretty much what sort of happened with Martha, and with a number of Companions over the decades). It hurts like hell, but it’s also a tribute to the character at the same time.
And where did things go from there? Lacking Donna, the Tenth Doctor goes into what turns into a self-destructive spiral ending with him (and the showrunner) regenerating into Matt Smith’s Eleven and Steven Moffat — accompanied by increasingly Mary Sue-ish Amy Pond and Clara Oswald.
Which, of course, brings us a few Doctors along (Peter Capaldi’s gruff rock star Twelve, and, under Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker’s lovely Thirteen) to the 60th Anniversary specials, with David Tennant somehow becoming the regeneration into Fourteen and (we are told) Catherine Tate back as Donna. How will that work? Well, yeah, I’m a day or two late in watching, but I’m very eager to find out.
A great Doctor is hampered by a mediocre writer/showrunner.
Watched the Doctor Who Christmas New Years Special last night, and was once again reminded (after the long hiatus since the previous series) how much I like the characters/actors in the current iteration, but how little I’m engaged by the plots they are written into in the Chibnall era.
(I’ll try to minimize the spoilers here, beyond what’s been clearly visible in the episode title and very available press materials.)
So, up front, I continue to love Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor — she’s bright, caring, distracted, passionate, haunted. Whittaker is doing a brilliant job with her, and I’m quite sad at the rumors she’s leaving after the next series.
The supporting cast — the Doctor’s “fam” + Cap’n Jack Harkness — are also great here. They are sometimes pushed through some clunky dialog, but it’s been a great, unconventional team.
So that’s the good news.
The bad news is that showrunner Chris Chibnall, after (with some decent justification, but with mediocre substitutes) intentionally benching the Doctor’s class rogue’s gallery during Thirteen’s first series, then completely (and audaciously, but clumsily) rewriting Time Lord and Doctor history in the second series, here gives us The Number One Most Hackneyed Plot in Doctor Who History: a Dalek invasion.
He does so with a few twists, but, ultimately, it’s too derivative and just not well executed, hampered by cartoonishly stupid human villains and too-easily-manipulated alien villains. The most interesting element — the continuing Dalek debate about purity vs. survival — gets far too short shrift, in favor of pyrotechnics and mass slaughter of Brits.
(Also, given that the Daleks have invaded Earth multiple times in the past, and are well-known in government circles — why does nobody raise an eyebrow when they are “introduced” here? Or even give a lampshading, “Here we go again” comment? Answer: lazy writing.)
It’s overall a mediocre outing, which is nigh-unforgiveable given the many months we’ve been without our Doctor fix. There are some good moments — the Doctor’s life as a prisoner of the Judoon, discussions of what being in the Doctor’s circle of friends really means, lots of good character interaction — but the present action is little more than a Monster of the Week tale, and even the character work depended on too much backstory detail that the viewers needed to be forcibly reminded of.
Ah, well — the next series is theoretically showing up sometime in 2021. I look forward to more of Thirteen while we’ve got her.
I don’t know that I could have picked Rimmer out of a crowd, but his resume is a geeky wonderland. Not only did the Canadian actor portray the voice of Scott Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird 1, but he had roles (some big, some small) in three Bond movies, Doctor Who, Space: 1999, Star Wars, Dr Strangelove, Superman III, Gandhi, and Out of Africa, among many others.
Thank you sir, for all that fine entertainment, even when I wasn’t aware of you.
Do you want to know more?
Oooh, tempting. And one of my favorite serials from the entire series.
Classic Tom Baker DOCTOR WHO Coming to Cinemas | Nerdist
We’re coming up to the 44th anniversary of when Tom Baker began playing the Doctor in Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee regenerated on June 8, 1974). Baker’s seven seasons in the role (seasons 12-18, from 1974 to 1980) were a turning point in the series and remain the most popular classic series years to this day. Until the likes of David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi, if you knew what Doctor Who was, it was because of Tom Baker. And the BBC is re…
BBC has unveiled the new logo for Doctor Who. I like it, I really do, but, frankly, it feels like we’ve had more Doctor Who logos since the 1995 restart than we’ve had Doctors, and some of them were quite good, too.
Is there a special logo-generating office at the Beeb that has to keep coming up with new logos or else lose their budget?
About time! BBC unveils new ‘Doctor Who’ logo
The latest season of time travel show to premiere on BBC America this Fall
Okay, I admit it. I watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special online, without +Margie Kleerup and +Kay Hill. I’m an awful, wicked, naughty Zoot.
But I look forward to watching it with them once I get home. Because, damn, that was awesome on all cylinders. Aloha to Peter Capaldi (et fabulous all), hail and well met to Jodie Whittaker.
Twice Upon a Time | BBC America
The magical final chapter of the Twelfth Doctor’s journey sees the Time Lord team up with his former self, the first ever Doctor, and a returning Bill Potts, for one last adventure.
I’m not sure I’m thrilled about the new Jodie Whittaker outfit (though, yeah, long coat, but, shoulders, what?). I actually sort of liked the charcoal hoodie from the announcement clip. But I’m less worried about how she looks than how her stories go.
But since everyone is always wondering what the next Doctor will wear … well, here it is.
At least it’s not a floral print.
Doctor Who’s New Doctor Has a New Outfit
Ladies and Gentlemen, the 13th Doctor has finally arrived. Sure, Jodie Whittaker might have been cast as Doctor Who’s groundbreaking new Doctor months ago, but does a Time Lord truly arrive until they’re dressed for the occasion?
This is so wrong, yet so right. It had me chuckling for minutes afterward.
Class was a BBC spin-off from Doctor Who about the weird goings-on at Coal Hill Academy, involving various teens who — human and otherwise — were going through all sorts of traditional teen angst amidst alien invasions and time travel incursions and other life complications.
We enjoyed it a lot. There was enough teen soap opera, enough Who-class stories and SFX, and enough interesting characters to make it enjoyable, even if at times the accents got a bit thick for my American ears to follow.
Alas, though it got good critical response, it languished in the viewer ratings, and has been canceled. Ah, well. A tip of the hat to the creators and actors for their brief, but enjoyable, stay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_(2016_TV_series)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5079788/
And here we have a 2012 National Theatre production of Antigone, with the major role of Creon being played by Christopher Eccleston — the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, and the title role being played by … Jodie Whittaker, now cast as the Thirteenth Doctor.
Small world, ennit.
(Lovely accents, by the by.)
It’s not surprising that, given the First-Ever Female Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), her Companion would be cast with a male actor. Reading the early morning news from the UK, there seems to be a fair amount of panic in the streets over this one, as Walsh seems most known for his roles in the soap Coronation Street and for his work as a footballer and comedian in the past and as a game show host and singer more recently.
Me, I know him mostly from his work on Law & Order UK, which Chris Chibnall (the new Who showrunner) was the lead writer for, and he did an excellent job in the Jerry Orbach analog role. He can do drama and take things seriously as needed (and I do hope that’s more the approach they take). (Actually, knowing Chibnall did L&OUK also adds further confidence in the next era for the Doctor.)
Bradley Walsh ‘to be Doctor Who’s next companion’
Bradley Walsh, the former Coronation Street star and quiz-show host, will reportedly be Doctor Who’s new companion.
David Tennant playing the demon Crowley in the upcoming BBC/Amazon series of Good Omens? That sounds brilliant (and apparently right in line with one of late Terry Pratchett’s desired castings).
Tennant is best known for his turn as the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, though he also popped up in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and starred in the recent UK series Broadchurch and the Netflix MCU series Jessica Jones. His impish grin and glib tongue will be perfect for the sardonic demon who’s actually kind of appalled that the Apocalypse is scheduled for any time now. Michael Sheen will play Aziraphale, his fussy angelic partner in averting Armageddon.
Neil Gaiman is scripting the show (and constantly having to remind people that his good friend Pratchett was co-author on the original 1990 book, which is truly a delight to read). Good Omens should be out on the telly next year.
I had some time this week — with business trips and band rehearsals dragging off fellow family members — to watch the thirteen episodes of Doctor Who that starred Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, the series that started the “New Who” reboot of the show in 2005.
Man, I’m sorry he only lasted a season, because Eccleston rocked. The Ninth Doctor reminds me, in some ways, of Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor — a bit madcap much of the time, alternating with bouts of deadly seriousness. He’s angrier, though, sometimes almost cruel. And his experiences just coming off of the Time War, wherein he was responsible for the destruction of the Daleks and the Time Lords, has left him as seriously damaged goods. His desire for a Companion, for anyone to want to spend time with him, is palpable to the point of pathos, but his simmering anger and self-loathing over his war-time actions sometimes causes him to lash out or make bad decisions in a way that has rarely plagued the other regenerations of the Doctor.
Billy Piper’s Rose Tyler has long been one of my least favorite Companions, but this rewatch has confirmed that’s in large part due to how she was written with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), as an improbable romantic interest. In this season, at least, Rose is a relatively grounded everywoman, and watching her deal with the seduction of being a Companion, despite its effects on her mother and ostensible boyfriend, and dealing as well when it seems that will all be taken away from her, are some of the better parts of Rose’s tenure on the show.
The Ninth Doctor’s relationship with Rose is more as a father figure than Ten’s romantic one, at least to my mind (if unsupported in any interview material I found). He acts toward her as the long-absent father who shows up and showers the kid with gifts, who’s desperate to build a relationship, who intrinsically bristles at the mother, loathes the boyfriends, gets overly-critical in the child’s shortcomings, but ultimately revels in doing all sorts of Dad things with her (“Let’s take a trip and see something cool!”). Yeah, there’s a kiss at the last episode, but no metaphor is perfect, and that’s kind of a weird moment anyway.
It’s also worth noting the other Companion who comes along for the ride late in the season, Capt. Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman). It was a true delight seeing him early days as repentant con man, always ready with some pansexual inuendo, but noteworthy in the last few episodes for his savage, fierce loyalty to both Rose and the Doctor.
While no season of Doctor Who is without flaw, this particular series has some particularly good ones: “The End of the World,” “Dalek,” “Father’s Day,” “The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances” “Bad Wolf / The Parting of Ways” stack up, in my mind, with anything else that’s been done on the show.
The key to these things is Eccleston’s Doctor, who easily riffles through turbulent emotions like a deck of cards, who feels so contemptuously apart from humans (see Pertwee’s Third Doctor, or even Capaldi’s Twelfth) but is passionately admiring and protective of them, whose trauma from the Time War is still on his sleeve but who’s trying to get better, who is guilty of mass slaughter, but turns away from it over the season multiple times, whose “daft old face” lights up in a way that can always bring a smile even when you know he’s not smiling on the inside.
Damned fine stuff, and a great push-start to the New Who. I regret he was around for a short a time as he was, but I’m glad he was there.
Ha!
#YesMyDoctor
Love Colbert. And Tennant, too though we just finished Jessica Jones and he creeped me the hell out there.
Well, at least after 2017.
So two bits of news here:
1. The next series of Doctor Who doesn't come until … Spring of 2017? Really? Jeez, Brits, what's going on over on that side of the pond? That sounds like an even more extreme loss of momentum than in the past couple of years.
2. That series will be Moffat's last hurrah, with him then being replaced (in 2018?) with Chris Chibnall, the showrunner for Broadchurch.
I don't know a lot about Chibnall (but I'm sure I'll be learning some real soon now). But it does seem time for Moffat to let go of the reins. I've always felt he was a better episode writer than showrunner — indeed, one of this problems (to my mind, and I'm more than willing to admit this is just my opinion) is that he's tended to run seasons as though they were extended episodes, layering on mystery within mystery within mystery to the extent that the "fun" factor is overwhelmed by portentous continuity and surprise reveals. It's been too much of a good thing, in many ways.
(I would level the same charge at Moffat for recent instances of Sherlock. The irony is that my wife and I are rewatching his series, Coupling, which is fun and charming and much more manageable and enjoyable in what arc-ness it has.)
So, interesting news, but difficult to work up much enthusiasm, given that we're over a year away from that final Moffat season, and his replacement probably coming up a year after that.
Steven Moffat Leaving Doctor Who After Season 10, Broadchurch Creator Steps In
A host of Doctor Who news was announced Friday, including Steven Moffat stepping down as […]
A hat tip to +Kay Hill for this one.
So this is based on an article from a Popular Mechanics (!) article on "The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Shows Ever" [http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/g156/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows]. See here [https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2015/10/17/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less.html] for caveats and comments on that list.
I've decided to do my own force ranking (thanks +Stan Pedzick), working within the same list (to do otherwise would be to court madness). And, because I can (and, apparently, have way too much free time on my hands), I'll annotate it. Because the Internet.
First, the shows I never watched sufficiently to judge — they either never grabbed me, or were on at an odd time, or I missed the tide in watching them. (Please don't ply me with DVDs; my backlog of stuff to watch already reaches past the Singularity.) They are ordered as per the original rankings:
Dark Angel (46)
Jericho (44)
Life on Mars [2006] (40)
Lexx (39)
Twin Peaks (37)
Caprica (34)
Red Dwarf (27)
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (26)
Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato (20)
Blake's 7 (15)
Lost (12)
The rest are ranked by some idiosyncratic mish-mosh of how I like them plus what quality I think they are. I;ve indicated past the title the original ranking; the lower-ranked ones are helped a lot by dropping out the above 11 choices. Since I broke them up into three groups for initial sorting, I've kept them that way.
(Force ranking of this sort is one of my least favorite activities, since on any given day or for any given episode, I could easy see any of these rankings +/5.)
BOTTOM OF THE CLASS
39. Knight Rider (45) – Silly kids fare, with minimal FX and zero SFishness aside from snarky car AI. Though I still love Marc Daniels.
38. Battle of the Planets (41) — Noteworthy mainly for still inspiring cosplay.
37. The Six Million Dollar Man (47) — I would still watch this at the drop of a hat, but its SF elements were awful.
36. Logan's Run (28) — Deep 70s SF, variable "worlds," pretty bad writing.
35. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (36) — Space fantasy, though I still dearly love the stargate effect.
34. Lost in Space (31) — The first show to really get space opera in everyone's living room, dragged down by camp silliness that only increased each season.
33. _Thunderbirds (50) — Crunchy SF with marionettes and kiddy melodrama. I still marvel at this show.
32. Land of the Lost (49) — Hurt by being a Saturday morning "cartoon" period show, it's still (behind the awful stop-action) full of some very cool SF concepts.
31. V [1983] (13) — Brought big screen TV SF to life as an "event" — but with writing straight out of Dallas or Dynasty.
30. War of the Worlds (38) — A personal favorite of mine, if for no other reason than bringing back those lovely swan-necked Martian War Machines from the Pal movie.
29. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (17) — Upchecked for showing so many wonderfully cheesy SF movies, but downchecked for really just being a comedy riff.
STARTING TO GET SERIOUS
28. Sliders (18) — Imaginative, but the concept wore thin after a while.
27. Quantum Leap (21) — Better than its first cousin Sliders if only because the consequences were of such import and the characterizations were such a challenge. Arguably as much fantasy as thinly veiled SF.
26. The X-Files (02) — It was … okay. Influential. Dearly loved by zillions. But I never really got hooked by it.
25. Stargate SG-1 (14) — I was never a big fan of any of the Stargate iterations. Not sure why. But impressive in overall accomplishment.
24. Space: 1999 (48) — I remember this as the first satisfying SF show after the original Star Trek went off the air. The FX/model work was exquisite. It was hampered S.1 by opaque British plots, and S.2 by dumbing down too far from S.1.
23. Battlestar Galactica [1978] (30) — Incredibly hokey, but spectacular beyond its budget. Some plots were deeper than others.
22. Dollhouse (42) — Possibly ranked higher than it should be here, because while I never quite got hooked, I could tell it had a lot of strings below the surface that I wasn't giving it a chance to show.
21. Space: Above and Beyond (43) — As close as we'll ever get to a Starship Troopers TV show. I liked it.
20. Star Trek: Voyager (32) — Decent Star Trek fare, hampered by an unwillingness to truly embrace the inevitable change and problems of isolation, division, and deferred maintenance.
19. Max Headroom (25) — I am afraid of rewatching this for fear that the zany fun and interesting concepts I remember will turn out to be threadbare.
18. Alien Nation (33) — Like much good TV SF, this tackled (well) contemporary issues (mostly about racism) that would have been too controversial outside of the SF realm.
17. Torchwood (23) — Sometimes too tempted to go over the top, and with an ensemble that the writers never quite knew what to do with, this is still good, gritty, high concept SF (overlapping to fantasy).
16. Fringe (09) — I never became a fan, despite being a serious watcher for at least the first season.
TOP DOGS
15. The Prisoner (07) — While suffering from British too-cleverness (and star/producer indulgence) at times, it's still gripping in making the viewer want to figure out what the hell is going on.
14. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (24) — A great example of successfully (for my taste) grabbing a movie concept and running with it for TV. Well done.
13. Cowboy Bebop (35) — Too cool for school, between the music, the action, the dialog.
12. Futurama (29) — Ranked this high if only because of their willingness to use very single SF trope in the book — multiple times — and do it with humor.
11. Neon Genesis Evangelion (08) — High concept that sometimes gets too high for comprehensibility, it's still a gorgeous (and frightening) Giant Robots vs Aliens anime with eleventy-dozen layers beneath it, from religion to child abuse to alcoholism to identity.
10. The Twilight Zone (05) — Endlessly rewatchable and entertaining, its SF elements get washed away by fantasy too many times, and too many of the Serling and Matheson plots were simply setups for (usually great) plot zingers.
09. Doctor Who (01) — The face of SF for many, and laudable for its longevity and the loyalty of its fans — but, again, too much of it is more properly fantasy, and the uneven writing over the decades does not for great SF make. I watch every episode, but I'm trying to be realistic here.
08. Star Trek: The Next Generation (03) — A remarkable rebirth of a franchise, with a long run, a decent number of great eps, and a large number of not-so-great ones.
07. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (16) — For my money, a better show than its TNG big brother, especially early days when they were diving into the characters and the religion / politics of Bajor, less into the Dominion War in its later episodes. That said, its serial elements put it a tick above TNG.
06. Star Trek: The Original Series (06) — A remarkably seminal show in its influence on TV SF for the decades since. Riddled with weaknesses that its cultural gestalt has overcome.
05. The Outer Limits (10) — With very few exceptions, this classic anthology show was hard SF, written by some great talent (and acted by some remarkable talent), hampered at time by budget limits, but hitting major literary themes and SF tropes in a remarkable fashion. This show (in rerun) solidified my love of SF.
04. _Battlestar Galactica [2004] (04) — A gripping tale of survival and moral compromise, in the face of aliens who look just like us … those were the high points of BSG. The further they drifted away from that (e.g., the further they explored Cylon society), the weaker the show got. And, of course, I truly despise the last couple of episodes concluding the series. Still, with those exceptions, it's a remarkable work.
03. Farscape (22) — One never quite knew where this show was going (that seems to have included the writers), but that didn't hamper the wonders, fun, drama, and imagination of this ensemble explorers-on-the-run show. I just enjoyed it so much, it needed to rank this high.
02. Babylon 5 (19) — Joe Straczynski didn't invent serial TV, but he made it legit, and epic (despite near-disasters by networks and actors alike). Rocky acting early on, and mangled plot points toward the end, it still holds a major place in my heart as a five-year long coherent SF novel, delving into everything from high concept battles between not-really-good vs not-truly-evil, to human weakness and prejudice, including some remarkable character evolutions.
01. Firefly (11) — Yeah, I'm one of those people. Deep-threaded plots and hidden backstories, a delightful mixing of the SF and Western tropes, a splendid set of actors, a roster of episodes where the great far outweigh the weak, and … well, the biggest criticism I can make of the show is that it was cut off way too soon to determine if it would all pay off. I'll assume it did, and just wait for the opportunity to buy the 5-season set when we finally get those portals to parallel worlds working …
And some arguably as-good shows that didn't make the list:
Wild Wild West (of course it's science fiction)
Andromeda
Fantastic Journey
Otherworld
Greatest American Hero
UFO
The Flash [1990]
Misfits of Science
The Invaders
Robotech
I do give, again, kudos to the writers of the original list for leaving off anything within the past five years. Not only would that add a large number of prospects, but it's really hard to judge such things so close to them.
A few caveats on the Popular Mechanics list:
1. I suspect this list would look a lot different in, say, five years. We are currently going through a rich time in SF genre TV, and what will turn out to be great and what will turn out to be a flash in the pan and forgotten is very difficult from up close. That said, kudos for not including anything very recent.
2. With a list of 50 you would think you can probably hit nearly everything that most people would consider "great" at first thought. But a lot here is … um … nostalgic at best (Logan's Run? Really? And not Fantastic Journey?)
3. The list is definitely tilted to the US, with a due nod to some UK greats (though I'd tout UFO over Space: 1999).
4. The inclusion of two anime here breaks the entire list, since if we're to allow that genre there are a nigh-infinite number of "greats".
Still, a fun nostaglic look, regardless of the "accuracy."
The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi TV Shows Ever
Get ready for a lot of binge-watching.
