Your Best and Worst Sci-Fi TV Shows!

[Gomez]

What are in your opinion the five best and five worst Sci-Fi TV shows of all time. Just live action television please no animation.


Here are mine.

BEST!

1. Babylon 5 - The complete package. Great story, acting, and good effects!
2. Dr. Who - While it might not have the best effects or hard sci-fi stories. It is just a plain joy to watch!
3. Outer Limits - It thrilled me as a kid to hear the opening for this show. Still a joy to watch.
4. Firefly - A Wonderful series with grit, style, and heart! Too bad it's life was cut short.
5. U.F.O. - A Gerry Anderson live action show set in the future of 1980! I love the mod futuristic look of the show. Good acting and stories. Fun Anderson vehicles too!

Honorable mentions. Battlestar Galactica (2004), Star Trek (Original)


WORST!

1. Manimal - Nuff Said!
2. Battlestar Galactica (1980) Started out ok but into the second season it just got worse and worst. Same old plot line again and again.
3. Space: 1999 - As a kid I enjoyed the show for it's Anderson vehicles. But looking back the premise and stories were terrible.
4. Lost in Space - Watched it as a kid because it was the only show on during the afternoon. Looking back it is just too campy for my adult tastes.
5. Cleopatra 2525- yeck!

 

[Angel Tarragon]

BEST!
1 Stargate SG1 - A team of friends that explores the universes planets
2 Sliders - Can't get enough Jerry O'Connel - plus I love the idea of paralell dimensions
3 The New Outer Limits - Can't get enough SciFi goodness
4 Forever Knight - A Vampire cop that tries to regain his humanity
5 Tremors: The Series* - Gotta love this series of graboid goodness


WORST!
1 The New Battlestar Galactica - the original is better (Starbuck as a woman?!)
2 Tracker - Good premise, but poorly done
3 Roswell - Teenage aliens looking to find their ride home? Meh.
4 Beastmaster - Good show, just on the wrong network
5 Andromeda - Too much for my taste.

 

[jonesy]

Best:
1. Babylon 5. The only tv show I ever recorded from start to finish. Before getting it on DVD.
2. Firefly. Which I would have recorded from start to finish, only I missed doing so for the first episode.
3. Space: Above and Beyond. Damn I miss that show.
4. Outer Limits. Both the old and the new.
5. Stargate SG-1. It works. Sometimes repeats what it has already done, but even then it works. And it's cool.

Honorable mention goes to the show where this ship sets out to colonize another planet and ends up crashing on it. The name escapes me.

Worst:
5. Earth: Final Conflict. Goofy and lame.
4. Star Trek: Voyager. I set out to like it, and ended up hating it already after the first two episodes.
3. Lost in Space. Didn't leave any kind of impression on me.
2. Battlestar Galactica. Haven't seen the new version.
1. Roswell. Yuck. Just yuck.

 

[Rackhir]

Best

1- B5 : Precious moments equaled in no other stories
2- StarTrek : It's the classic.
3- Macross : Epic, great story and the best Mecha action ever!
4- New Outer Limits : Very, very dark and depressing at times, but always well told and thought provoking. Their lack of qualms about having endings that were NOT happy really set it apart. Some very grim tales here.
5- UFO (the far off Future of 1980!), Dr Who (Tom Baker), Blakes 7, Stargate SG-1, First season of Earth Final Conflict (such an interesting setup, characters and motivations)...


Worst - There have been so many, it's hard to choose. Especially since so many lasted so few episodes.

1-Voyager : Never much liked any of the new trek series. This was the worst offender by far. Not even reaching the levels of bad enough to despise, it was just DUMB! No virtues at ALL.
2- STNG : Heresy perhaps to those of you who grew up on it, but to me their compulsion to toss logic, reason and plot out the window for the sake of the relentlessly ham handed moral points they wanted to club you over the head with, will always ruin the show for me. BAD,BAD,BAD.
3- BG: 1980 - This was just dumb.
4- GI Joe : What can you say about a series where despite oodles of heavy weapons and automatic fire, nobody ever gets hurt or killed. Dumb characters, villians and stupid vehicle (read toy) designs drag it waaaaay down.
5- I just can't narrow this down to just one. Automan, Lost World, Beastmaster, Jerry Springer (clearly those people are from a parallel universe), TekWar, The Phoenix, Krull, any post StarTrek (OS) Roddenbery projects except the first season? of Earth Final Conflict which deserves an honorable mention as almost a best, especially that one he tried to retread about 5 times where the astronaut(s) come back to the post-apocalypse world. AND V: The series or the mini-series.

 

[Dagger75]

Best

1- Firefly Nuff Said
2- B5
3- Space Above and Beyond
4- Stargate SG-1
5- The New Outer Limits

Worst
1- Star Trek Voyager
2- Space Rangers --Anybody remeber this one
3- Battlestar Galactica -- I never got into the old series as a kid
4- Andromida --In the begining I liked it. I missed an episode and NOTHING makes sense
5- Automan --Saw reruns on Sci Fi, ugh

Honorable mentions for good Sci Fi: Knight Rider, DS9, Highlander, Logans Run, Stargate Atlantis

 

[Teflon Billy]

BEST

• Babylon 5. Wonderful writing, awesome characters, great effects. This was what Sci-fi TV should've always been. DS9 thought so, and changed their format to match when they saw how it was done.
  
  
• Firefly. Fantastic. Would've been the best Sci-Fi series ever if it had caught on, but was up against some pretty signifigant non-content-related obstacles (jumping Time Slot, episode shown out of Stroy Arc order, etc.)
  
  
• Space: Above and Beyond. Goofy, fun Top-Gun in space.
  
  
• New Battlestar Galactica. Just plain awesome. Everyhtihng about it is good so far...even the parts I thought would stink (Girl Starbuck, New Cyclons etc.)
  
  
• Farscape. Loved every minute of the series and the mini-series that followed.

WORST

• Earth: Final Conflict. Watched a few episodes. Didn't like it. Didn't continue watching.
  
  
• Star Trek: Voyager. Nothing about this shopw gripped me, including the patented "Add a HAwt GrrrL" attempt to woo an audience.
  
  
• Lost in Space. Didn't even like it as a kid.
  
  
• Andromeda. It's first season was awesome, but once they did away with the great Story Arc in favor of somehting so simple even Kevin Sorbo could understand it ("Do-Gooders in Space") it lost whatever currency it had earned. Also they did away with Tyr and Rev Bem,and they were probably the best characters.
  
  
• Roswell. Just plain sucked.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Best:
1. The X-Files - This will always be sci-fi to me, and its definitely the best. I even love most of the later seasons.
2. 2004 Battlestar Galactica - Just can't get enough of this.
3. Firefly - More of a tie with BSG that behind it...
4. Stargate SG-1 - No explanation here. Just love it.
5. Star Trek DS9 - I've recently had the chance to finally catch the whole series on reruns from Spike TV, and I just love it. Amazing change from other Trek shows(which is generally enjoy anyway)

Worst:
1. Andromida - The ultimate in Ugh...
2. Star Trek Voyager - Enjoyed the first season...then more ugh.
3. Lost in Space - I'm too young to have seen it when it first aired, but I've seen it from a DVD collection and it was just painful to watch.
4. Roswell - Just never caught onto it and still couldn't when Sci-Fi channel would show the reruns.
5. BSG: 1980 - Only in 5th because it doesn't exist. Not that the original was all that great, but it was cheesy fun.

 

[Klaus]

Man, some of the shows I liked the most have been nominated as worst! I feel terrible!

I'll name one series that really scared me as a kid: V. The scene with the Visitor lady swallowing the rat really spooked me when I was 8!

 

[WayneLigon]

Best
1. Babylon 5
2. Firefly
3. Buffy or Angel or Lost. Uncertain.
4. Star Trek TOS
5. The Twilight Zone

Worst
1. Logan's Run
2. Sliders. What a great idea. What a total waste of bad scripts.
3. Buck Rodges. BeedeeBeedeeBeedee. Need I say more?
4. Nightman. My god, the horror, the horror.
5. Any other Star Trek. I somewhat liked the first season of TNG, and not much after that. I never saw more than one or two DS9 episodes, so I don't have an opinion on it.

There may be worse or better ones; I've never seen many of the first-run syndication shows, or at least not enough of them to form a solid opinion.

Mutant X and Crow looked good the few times I saw them. Same with SG1 and Farscape. Quantum Leap... eh.

Night Gallery. God, what a come-down for Serling, but a handful of good shows. Max Headroom I really liked.

The Flash, probably one of the best superhero TV shows we've ever had. A little better scripting, a little more cash and this might still be around today.

Liked Special Unit 2 and G vs E a great deal.

Lost in Space. Started out with such an interesting premise and a few good shows then just dived straight into the depths of camp and never resurfaced. Man in carrot suit. 'nuff said.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Best:

1. X-Files
2. Firefly
3. New Battlestar Galactica
4. The original Twilight Zone
5. ST:TNG

Honorable mentions for Space:1999 and Space: Above and Beyond, and Futurama

Worst:

1. Buck Rogers
2. ST:TOS
3. Earth: Final Conflict / Andromeda (Because they both sucked, and I didn't watch them enough to keep them straight in my head)
4. Red Dwarf
5. Ultraman (fondly remembered from my youth, but dear god does it stink)

I've got to find someone to borrow the B5 DVDs from -- I tried to watch the first season and absolutely *hated* it, and never watched again. Enough people whose opinions I trust like it that I feel obliged to give it another shot.