Your Top Sci-fi and Fantasy Shows

[Zontar]

That kind of proves my point though. At the start, we have a group of Jaffa who just stand there, while the airmen open fire with M-16s, point blank, and down only one. ONE. So either they're the worst shots in the world, or their armour is just that strong. LAte, the Jaffa fall left and right to SG-1, who use MP5s and later P90s - I dunno, maybe these firearms ARE better than assault rifles? But while I can buy that the Jaffa aren't as well trained as US special forces (though of note, Carter spent most of her time in the Pentagon, while Daniel is a scientist, so...), but the implication was that their tech (armour, weapons) compensated for that. It kind of reminds me of the stormtroopers in A New Hope. They easily subjugate the rebel transport, but lose their lethality on the Death Star.

None of this is a dealbreaker of course, but it's just one of those niggles that allows me to only like, rather than love SG-1.

I think you need to give Children of the Gods another watch. They didn't kill one of the Jaffa who came through the gate, they killed most of them. Hell in the autopsy scene we see two very clearly on the tables.

Plus that ignores the fact that in that same pilot we see the equivalent of a single squad taking on at least a company and quite possibly a battalion without any losses. Right from the start it was made clear the existential threat they represented was not from their training or their ground tech but their sheer numbers as well as their ships being beyond our range.

They where always meant to be the equivalent of an army of dirt farmers given weapons, which happened to be inaccurate by our standards, have a low rate of fire, and with their entire battle doctrine being about making the enemy fear you instead of killing.

 

[Hawki]

I think you need to give Children of the Gods another watch. They didn't kill one of the Jaffa who came through the gate, they killed most of them. Hell in the autopsy scene we see two very clearly on the tables.

Plus that ignores the fact that in that same pilot we see the equivalent of a single squad taking on at least a company and quite possibly a battalion without any losses. Right from the start it was made clear the existential threat they represented was not from their training or their ground tech but their sheer numbers as well as their ships being beyond our range.

They where always meant to be the equivalent of an army of dirt farmers given weapons, which happened to be inaccurate by our standards, have a low rate of fire, and with their entire battle doctrine being about making the enemy fear you instead of killing.

I didn't want to go fishing out SG-1, but I looked stuff up on YouTube and the wiki. Apparently 2 Jaffa are killed (out of six, plus Apophis), while all 5 airmen are killed or captured. That doesn't say much about Tau'ri weapons or armour if you're coming out of a close-range firefight with those kinds of casualty rates.

Abydos aside (where the Jaffa lay waste to the Abydonians and Tau'ri at the gate), we come to the end. Now, it's true that SG-2 does hold the line at the end of the episode with nary a casualty, but IIRC, they have the advantage of height, range, and pre-laid ordnance. So, yes, I can buy them holding the line for a time, but not indefinately. It's been ages since I've watched SG-1, but I do clearly remember the impression I got, that yes, the goa'uld aren't invincible, but they outnumber and outgun the protagonists. An impression that kind of faded away as SG-1 mows down Jaffa left and right.

Way down the track, O'Neil kind of addresses this, with the "weapon of war vs. weapon of terror" speech he gives, but even so, the goa'uld do kind of lose their 'bite' over time. Which maybe makes sense, as the Tau'ri gain allies and tech, but even so, while I'm not that fond of the ori as a plot device, that they use actual human dirt farmers as their enemies rather than the Jaffa does make it more believable when they're shown to be relatively ineffective on the battlefield.

 

[Thaluikhain]

They where always meant to be the equivalent of an army of dirt farmers given weapons, which happened to be inaccurate by our standards, have a low rate of fire, and with their entire battle doctrine being about making the enemy fear you instead of killing.

Eh, they do into some mention of the training they do, and it's pretty hardcore.

I think it's best not to think too much about that.

 

[WolfThomas]

2) Westworld

Rats. I though I could be clever and be the first to bring up Westworld.

 

[American Fox]

Daria
Dead Like Me
The Pirates of Dark Water
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
Mysterious Cities Of Gold
David the Gnome
The Littles
Inspector Gadget
Logan's Run
Conan the Adventurer
Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea
Galtar and the Golden Lance

 

[Kyrian007]

Well, sci-fi

10. Firefly (deserves to be higher up, but was killed early)
9. Cowboy Bebop (propelled anime to a much larger audience in the U.S. by kicking off Adult Swim)
8. Dr. Who (but only if you count all of it)
7. Futurama (just too funny to ignore)
6. Star Trek TNG (the writers of this show went on to make many other good sci-fi shows, TNG really sparked a renaissance of the genre)
5. The X-Files (married procedural to supernatural/scifi successfully)
4. The Twilight Zone (this will go in fantasy too, its that important)
3. Star Trek TOS (it was just so important, many of the others on this list would not exist without it and its success)
2. Baywatch Nights (very much kidding about this, just push each one up a notch and add... I don't know, I'll go with Zontar and put Psycho Pass in at 10th.)
1. Babylon 5 (at least through the first 4 seasons anyway)


Fantasy, that's more difficult. Basically I've seen fewer that qualify.

9. The Legend of the Seeker (ok, I'm really streching it to find any more)
8. The Dresden Files (no its not the books, but its more Harry Dresden... never a bad thing)
7. Haven (just something I liked, really fun)
6. Millennium (just a personal choice, but I really liked it)
5. Buffy (honestly, actually my least favorite Whedon show, but it really gave us Joss Whedon... and it had some really groundbreaking episodes)
4. Kolchak the Night Stalker (without which we would not have had the X-Files)
3. Twin Peaks (David Lynch, nuff said)
2. The Twilight Zone (see)
1. Carnivale (short lived, killed before its time, but damn was it amazing)

And yes, Game of Thrones doesn't make the cut. I watched the first season... it was a cookie cutter version of the books. No new stuff and not everything from the books. If all it does is take away things from the clearly better version... I stopped watching. I have the books, I don't need to watch the inferior version of the same story.

 

[zoey]

Futurama. It's one of the best sci-fi shows ever! I was heartbroken when it went off air. How I wish it went on and on and on...

 

[happyninja42]

In no particular order, other than number 1, being Babylon 5. First example of a persistent narrative in storytelling on tv, paved the way for many later shows that followed suit. Excellent acting by some very good actors (Andreas Katsulas is fucking amazing in that show as G'Kar), good music, and impressive special effects for the time (some of the first generation of actual CGI in television, again pioneering a lot of later shows in the genre). Events had stakes, plot elements weren't discarded for the next week's episode, and the narrative had weight and emotion. Fucking love that show.

Avatar the Last Airbender. This show has more consistent, amazing episodes that bring me to tears of awesome than most shows in history. Excellent writing, music, voice acting. Perfect blend of comedy and drama, and some amazing examples of powerful beings. Truly epic on every level.

Battlestar Galactica (Reboot). For many of the reasons I loved B5, this show is up there too. Loved the acting, the writing was good, the stakes felt real, the events carried over from episode to episode in the arc. It didn't stick the landing when the series wrapped up, but eh, they kind of painted themselves into a corner there, so I can forgive them for that.

Probably some others, in fact I know there are others, but I can't think of any others right now and I'm at work, so maybe an update later.

 

[Hawki]

Futurama. It's one of the best sci-fi shows ever! I was heartbroken when it went off air. How I wish it went on and on and on...

Considering what happened to The Simpsons (and to a much, much worse extent), Family Guy? Um, be careful what you wish for...

and impressive special effects for the time (some of the first generation of actual CGI in television, again pioneering a lot of later shows in the genre).

To be honest, as someone who's been watching Babylon 5 over the past year or so (currently at the very end of season 3), I feel the CGI kind of holds up.

I mean, on one hand, it's obviously very primitive when taken by its lonesome, and there's some very noticeable use of green screen while on the station. On the other hand, it's rarely been a barrier to me. I think it's an example that poor special effects, CGI or otherwise, are easily overlooked if the story in which they're used in is engrossing.

 

[zoey]

Futurama. It's one of the best sci-fi shows ever! I was heartbroken when it went off air. How I wish it went on and on and on...

Considering what happened to The Simpsons (and to a much, much worse extent), Family Guy? Um, be careful what you wish for...

Haha, true that

 

[happyninja42]

and impressive special effects for the time (some of the first generation of actual CGI in television, again pioneering a lot of later shows in the genre).

To be honest, as someone who's been watching Babylon 5 over the past year or so (currently at the very end of season 3), I feel the CGI kind of holds up.

I mean, on one hand, it's obviously very primitive when taken by its lonesome, and there's some very noticeable use of green screen while on the station. On the other hand, it's rarely been a barrier to me. I think it's an example that poor special effects, CGI or otherwise, are easily overlooked if the story in which they're used in is engrossing.

I agree, one problem is that the format that the shows were recorded in, doesn't translate to modern devices well. There was actually a podcast (The Audio Guide to Babylon 5), where they spoke to one of the people in charge of the effects on the show, and he talked about the different types of film stock they used, if it was a shot involving CGI, or not, and how those source materials don't really look great in a digital format. You can usually really tell if it's human/cgi hybrid scenes, but the space shots, where it's 100% CGI, usually look quite good. The first season or so, they were still figuring out what they could do with the tech they had. But the later seasons, it's really good. I've seen worse quality CGI from stuff put out today.

So yeah, I feel it definitely holds up for the most part. But for me personally, I've never cared about bad CGI, and it's never made me hate a show/movie all by itself. I just mentioned it, because B5 really pioneered a lot of firsts for television in the scifi genre(and others just in general), and I think it doesn't get as much credit as it deserves. Most people I know never watched it, or they saw one episode and were like "That dude with the crazy hair?! The fuck is this show?! Star Trek wannabe!" and turn it off. Everyone I have forced to watch it, has ended up loving it, but it had a lot of hurdles in it's way from the start to being a broadly loved show.