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I have watched most of the science fiction series that have been on television. Some of my favorite series have been (in semi-chronological order):
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This Web Page represents just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the links are to television series and Science Fiction Resources.
The Avengers was a British Spy/Adventure/SciFi series from the 60's. Unlike some British shows of the same time period, like Dr. Who, The Avengers had a real budget (for sets and stuff) to work with.
The show starred Patrick Macnee as the debonair agent John Steed. and his female side kicks who contrasted Mr. Steed's personality very well:
Babylon 5, created by J. Michael Straczynski, has become my all time favorite television series. Babylon 5, an epic novel spanning five years, tells the story about the dawn of the third age of mankind.
What I find so interesting about the series is its sense of continuity. Each episode builds on the ones before it. Events in one episode build on events from previous episodes even though each episode is self-contained.
Another facet of Babylon 5 that I find interesting is trying to determine what information and events are part of the five year arc (the epic novel) and which parts are just related to the current episode. The series is like a giant puzzle that viewers try to put together before all the pieces are there. This leads to lots of discussions in the Babylon 5 newsgroups.
The Doctor was a Time Lord who became feed up with the fact that the rest of the Time Lords just wanted to sit back and watch the Universe go by. The Doctor wanted to make the Universe a better place, fix bad situations. So in order to right injustice, he stole a T.A.R.D.I.S (a Time Lord's Time Machine). There are two things wrong with this. First, he stole the Time Machine. Second, he stole it from a repair shop so that it never quite worked right.
The Doctor was caught and for his punishment he was banished to a primitive culture -- 20th century Earth! There the Doctor helps the poor Earthlings fight invaders from space, from time and from anywhere the Time Lord Council decided the Doctor was needed. During the Doctor's third regeneration, his banishment was lifted and he as allowed to roam the Galaxy.
Doctor Who holds the honor as the world's longest running science fiction television series running from 1963 to 1989.
This series was created by Gene Roddenberry years ago and stayed on the shelves until now. The premise of the series is that a technologically advanced race called the Taelons, also know as the Companions, has arrived on Earth three years ago (relative to the time in which the story is taking place). The Companions appear to want nothing but to help us. There is a group of people who doubt that this their true intentions.
So, are the Taelons good or evil? The series main character, William Boone, is trying to determine the answer. Nobody around Boone is what they appear to be, neither the Taelons or the Resistance.
This series has an ongoing story line. It is Boone's quest for the Taelon's True Purpose. Will this help the series like the five year story arc does for Babylon 5 by providing a rich set of stories. Or, will it hurt the show if the secret is learned as in the Nowhere Man because the truth will be discovered in a limited number of episodes. This type of quest must have an ending, hence a finite lifespan for the series otherwise people will lose interest. The trick is how much can we learn about the Taelons from each episode and keep the story going as long as possible/practical. Only time will tell.
I also feel that this series reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood End novel.
The Forever Knight is another of my favorite series. Similar to The Highlander, the main character is immortal. The difference is that Nick Knight is an 800 year old vampire, a vampire who wants to become mortal again. It is a good mix of fantasy and cop show.
The Greatest American Hero is one of my favorite Superhero television shows. The premise is that Ralph Hinkley (William Katt), a Hich School teacher, and Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp), an FBI agent, receive a costume from aliens. When wearing the suit, Ralph has superhero powers. Unfortunately, the manual for the suit is lost almost immediately and Ralph and Bill must figure out how to use the suit by trial and error.
What made the show interesting for me was that the show showed us what our hero faced in everyday life of super crime fighter. For one thing, Ralph had to come up with explanations as to why he was wearing a funny looking red costume since people recognized him in it. (Unlike Superman who looked like a different person in his super suit.)
The Highlander, the movie, made a successful transition
into a television series that is loosely based on the movie. The
main characters are different between the movies and the television
series. The main character in the movie, Connon MacCloud,
is the older
cousin to the main character in the television series. The
Rules of the Game are different between the movie and
the series.
To date, there have been three Highlander movies made. According to many Highlander fans, including myself, the second movie, which deviates so much from the first movie, does not exist (There can be only One!). The third movie is not as good as the first but is still a good film.
David Vincent has seen them.
For him it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a short-cut that he never found.
It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey.
It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy.
Now, David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.
So began each episode of The Invaders. . .
A suborbital flight #612 bound for London goes astray. After passing through a strange storm, the Spindrift crashes. The crew and passangers soon discover that they are not on Earth but have landed someplace where the people are giants...
My Favorite Martian is probably the first Science Fiction show that I remember watching (that did not star marionettes or cartoons). It stared Ray Walston as Uncle Martin, a martian marooned on Earth when his space ship malfunctioned and his friend, Tim O'Hara (played by Bill Bixby) who takes in Uncle Martin.
There are only a few things that truly remember of this black & white show. The first is Uncle Martin's two antennas that would rise from the back of his head, in a "V" formation, and cause him to disappear. I do believe that I remember the very last episode made. The story line was that another martian crash lands on earth and it turns out to be Uncle Martain's nephew Andrew. Andrew only had one antenna since he was still an adolescent. And, unlike Uncle Martin's ship that had a curved underbelly, Andrew's ship had a flat bottom (like an iron).
Now, thanks to the Scifi-guy, I now have a My Favorite Martian Home page to link to. Enjoy!
The original Outer Limits was a show of the same vintage as the original Twilight Zone. The new Outer Limits keeps the flavor of the unknown. One difference between the old and new version of the show is that the new version has some continuity between episodes and sometimes events in one show will be referenced in another.
So stay tuned as they take control of your television set...
There are Pretenders among us.
Geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be.
In 1963, a corporation known as the Centre isolated a young Pretender name Jarod and exploited his genius for their research.
Then one day, their Pretender ran away...
Probably the most famous cult classic science fiction television series. It is hard to believe that the entire series consists of only seventeen episodes. It was originally a summer filler.
Be Seeing You!
So, where did Sam leap to at the end of the series last episode?
Dave Lister was a lowly custodian on the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf, who was locked in stasis for 18 months for refusing to give up his cat. Then something went drastically wrong on Red Dwarf. A radiation leak killed all of the crew. But Holly, the ship's computer, kept Lister in the stasis chamber until the radiation was at a safe level. It took 3 million years!
The rest of the crew consists of Technician Arnold Rimmer, in the form of a hologram, Cat, a humaniod that is the end results of 3 million years of evolution (from Lister's cat) and radiation, and Kryten, the Service Mechaniod.
Sliders is a series, like Quantum Leap, Time Tunnel, and The Fugitive, has no common sets. Each Episode takes place in a different location. Unlike the other shows, instead of going to a different place, the cast of Sliders go to different versions of Earth.
A nuclear accident at a lunar-based waste disposal site propels our moon out of Earth orbit and into deep space. The 311 residents of Moonbase Alpha find themselves adrift in space with no way to control their course through the interstellar void.
Even thought I enjoyed this show, I always had problems with their concept of physics. The primary one being the premise for the entire series. There is a nuclear explosion on the far side of the moon. First, an explosion of that magnitude would probably have destroyed the moon instead of knocking it out of orbit -- I had no problem with this since it was fiction. The mistake is that the moon moved away from the Earth instead of towards it. (Action/Reaction) But, this series did fill an important void on television.
The Earth has been bombarded with radiation bombs by the Gamilons for the purpose of killing the human population so the Gamilons can relocate to Earth from their dying planet. The humans have moved underground but the radiation is saturating the Earth and in one year the human race will perish. Queen Starsha from the planet Iskandar offers help to the people of Earth. She has a device that can remove the radiation that is poisoning the Earth. Queen Starsha sends blueprints for a starship drive called the Wave Motion Engine. So, with a promise of hope, the people of Earth rebuild an ancient battleship, the Yamato and fit it with the Wave Motion Engine.
A hand picked crew man the Yamato, escape the Gamilon ships around Earth and begins its 148,000 light year journey to Iskandar fighting the Gamilons along the way...
The show The Star is a show that few people remember. The show takes place onboard the giant Earthship called Ark. The crew of the Ark was killed 500 years before and the ship is drifting through deep space. The super cargo (non-crew people) live in biospheres and no longer remember that they are on a space ship. In the first episode, the stars of the show, escape from one of the biospheres into the Ark and discover that the Ark is on a collision course with a star. They have three years to find the main control room and learn how to steer the Ark.
The Starlost was created by Harlan Ellison and destroyed by the "Network". In the 50+ page introduction to Harlan Ellison's book Phoenix Without Ashes, Harlan explains how the Network took his great idea and turned it into a pile of horse manure. The book is based on the first episode of the series and it shows what the show would of been like if the Network had mucked with the show.
Another one of the few Science Fiction shows that aired in the 60's is The Time Tunnel. The premise of the series is that there is a top secret Project in the desert, run by the military, to construct a device, the Time Tunnel, for viewing and visiting the Past. Dr. Tony Newman volunteers to be an experimental subject and travel back in time before the Time Tunnel Project loses funding. Tony uses the device to travel back to the Titanic without the knowledge of his co-workers. When they discover where and to when he is gone as well as the trouble he was in, Dr. Doug Phillips goes into the Time Tunnel to rescue Tony. Doug rescues Tony but the Titanic still hits the iceberg.
When the Time Tunnel crew attempt to retrieve our time travelers, they discover that they cannot. Each time that they try to retrieve Tony and Doug, our travelers end up in another moment in history and, thus, into a new episode.
For those of you who are too young to remember (or even have seen The Time Tunnel, the premise of this show may sound familiar. I believe that this show, along with Highway to Heaven, were the foundation for the show Quantum Leap.
One last Time Tunnel note. I have read the book that is also entitled The Time Tunnel that was written before the television show. In this book, the Time Tunnel actually was a tunnel that ran from the present back to a single fixed point in history. A very different story than the show.
Aliens had visited Earth and they wanted body parts. They come in small ships and would steal people for their parts. The human body part would turn up as replacement parts on the Aliens.
The show focused on the efforts of SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization). It was SHADO's mission to protect the people of the Earth from these Alien Invaders. From their Headquarters, hidden deep underneath a Movie Studio in England, SHADO would coordinate their Seabase (on a submarine), their lunar base, and their various mobile units in the fight against the extra-terrestrials and their alien menace.
This show was about the adventures of the crew of the Nuclear powered submarine Seaview. Many strange things resided at the bottom of the Ocean...
This series was based on the 1961 movie with the same name. The series first aired around 1964 (+/- a year).
In September of 1965 a new television show aired on CBS. The show, The Wild, Wild West, was not easily pegged into any one genre. It was a Western, an Adventure series, a spy thriller and a Science Fiction/Fantasy series. It is its last genre that earns the show a spot in this webpage.
The premise of the series is that James West and his side kick Artemus Gordon are United States Secret Service Agents around the year 1870 (during the term of President Grant). The Bad Guys had some pretty fancy weapons (at least for the 1870's). It is these weapons, tools and plots that gave the show its SciFi touch.
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Steven F. LeBrun Last modified: Mon Sep 02 16:37:12 Eastern Daylight Time 2002