What is the single best science fiction or fantasy franchise?

[Corinnguard]

A modern day zombie apocalypse but with Mass Effect's Husks. Techno-organic body horror.

 

[Stalker0]

Babylon 5 could be the best considering that all five of it's seasons were planned well in advance.

Babylon 5 is one of my favorite sci-fi shows. But as a "franchise"....not even close.

I think people are conflating the two. To be best franchise you need to have broad scope, a lot of product, and overall be above average in quality.

Star Trek I think is a contender; If your British Doctor Who is a cultural icon. Lord of the Rings is likely a solid fantasy contender with both books, animation, and ground breaking movies (hobbit movies aside).

 

[nevin]

Dark matter,

 

[overgeeked]

Either Doctor Who or X-Men. I can’t pick. Depends on the day.

 

[Umbran]

What's the best science fiction or fantasy franchise? You can only pick one.

Sorry, can't. No agreement on the meaning of "best."
Not between us. I mean with myself. I don't have a specific thing I'd use to classify the best, so I cannot answer the question.

 

[Zardnaar]

Babylon 5 is one of my favorite sci-fi shows. But as a "franchise"....not even close.

I think people are conflating the two. To be best franchise you need to have broad scope, a lot of product, and overall be above average in quality.

Star Trek I think is a contender; If your British Doctor Who is a cultural icon. Lord of the Rings is likely a solid fantasy contender with both books, animation, and ground breaking movies (hobbit movies aside).

Two many duds in Trek. Trekkies just fairly fanatic with high tolerance of pain.

Similar with Star Wars to many duds.

B5, Farscape hell even Stargate have a better dud to hit ratio but lack the cultural impact imho.

So if you can find a good trilogy or 4 part/season you have a winner.

A sci fi/fantasy Breaking Bad, The Wire or Breaking Bad.

 

[Vael]

Babylon 5 is one of my favorite sci-fi shows. But as a "franchise"....not even close.

I think people are conflating the two. To be best franchise you need to have broad scope, a lot of product, and overall be above average in quality.

Star Trek I think is a contender; If your British Doctor Who is a cultural icon. Lord of the Rings is likely a solid fantasy contender with both books, animation, and ground breaking movies (hobbit movies aside).

Yeah, as a single series, Babylon 5 is pretty unimpeachable as one of Sci-fi's best. As a franchise? Ooof. Crusade, Legend of the Rangers ... there's a bunch of failed spinoffs.

Actual franchises, to me, need longevity and successful spinoffs or branches into other mediums.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

This is a next to impossible conversation to have

And yet, here we are 58 posts in...

 

[jdrakeh]

Doc Savage. Those little pulp novels are full of action, adventure, fantasy, AND science-fiction. I bought the whole run of them once from a little used bookstore in Topeka, KS and could not put them down. Absolutely riveting stuff!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

For fantasy, and overall, I'm going to go for the various Tolkien Middle Earth works, mainly on the basis that I don't think any other modern work better and more consistently walks the line of of being functional and satisfying as popular entertainment while simultaneously feeling like it has real literary weight. Maybe you can think of a work that achieves the same, but Lord of the Rings was the bestselling novel of the 20th century, and whatever you're thinking of probably can't compare with that impact wise. And practically the whole fantasy genre exists to some degree in Middle Earth's shadow (if in many case's only in the sense that they employ world-building and Tolkien is far and away the most influential worldbuilder there ever was). Adaptations have been a mixed bag, but that shouldn't be held against the underlying work, and some of the adaptions have been impressive achievements in their own right.

But seriously, page three of this thread and Star Wars has only been mentioned (dismissively) once? Has the galaxy far, far away fallen so low? Look, prequels, Disney Star Wars, one or another lame novel from the 90s, an infamous holiday special... these things shouldn't matter. The original trilogy has more iconic things per minute than anything else ever committed to film except maybe Casablanca, to an extent that it's hard to really appreciate and easy to take for granted. Those movies are an achievement unto themselves, and I just don't think anything else Sci-Fi is really comparable. Whatever Star Wars media has come since is just a feather in the franchise's cap when its good, and when it is bad... well that should be insignificant compared to the power of the Force.

If Star Wars' star has fallen so far for you to not even be worth discussing I understand, but beware... it was a very different story at the franchise's reputational height (before the dark times... before the Phantom Menace), and whatever franchise you're going to bat for may yet suffer some variation of the same fate.