Your Best and Worst Sci-Fi TV Shows!

[Darth K'Trava]

Top 5:

1: Babylon 5-this show rulz with its complex plots and ever-changing characters!
2: Star Trek DS9- Great show, a different take on Trek. More gritty than the rest!
3: Godzilla- Love the big "lizard"! It was campy, but fun campy!
4: Sliders- Parallel worlds well done!
5: Quantum Leap- Al was a trip to watch! And the situations that they got put in...


The worst:

1: Star Trek: Voyager- Stupid "remake" of Gilligan's Island. Same premise, just in space.
2: Battlestar Galactica- Couldn't get into it at all. Prefer watching the original of which I'd only seen a few eps.
3: X-Files- Never was into that whole aliens/weird crap sorta thing.
4: Ultraman- super cheesy. Makes Godzilla seem like it has a budget!
5: Earth Final Conflict- Went under the WTF category.

 

[Villano]

Just sticking to live action shows (there are too many cartoons to count):

Best (in no particular order)

1.) B5
2.) ST: DS9
3.) Kolchak The Night Stalker - It had robots, aliens, etc.
4.) Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr - time travel, the Orb, etc.
5.) X-Files

Twilight Zone would probably have to be considered one of the best of all time, but it's not really a personal favorite. Also, just missing the list for me are Alien Nation and Batman (the 60s series). MST3K had some great stuff, but that's not really a series.

As a kid, I was a fan of a lot of the stuff people seem to hate, like Buck Rogers, Battlestar: Galactica, Knight Rider, Manimal, and Automan. I could never bring myself to hate them.

Worst

1.) Nightman - Oh God, the horror!
2.) ST: Voyager
3.) Galactica 1980
4.) X-Files - Yes, both the best and worst of sci-fi.
5.) M.A.N.T.I.S. - He was killed by an invisible dinosaur. Even Aquaman isn't that bad.

There are many other short-lived series that were terrible that probably deserve to be on that list, but I can't think of them at the moment.

Andromeda just missed the cut (I remembered Mantis as I was typing). Really, anything made after Roddenberry's death that had his name in the title is a pretty safe bet for any worst list.

The recent Sinbad series was so bad it made my brain hurt, however it's fantasy and not really sci-fi. Same goes for Xena (it was an okay series until they did the "kill the gods" thing).

Many, many bad shows: Seaquest, The Lost World, Jack Of All Trades, and even Next Gen (more bad episodes than good, when you think about it).

 

[Pants]

4.) Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr - time travel, the Orb, etc.

Oh man, that show was so campy fun. It had everything! Sci-Fi, Ninjas, Magic, Tanks, and Bruce Campbell!

Here's my favorites:
1) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
2) Lost (I'm classifying it as Sci-Fi!)
3) Farscape
4) X-Files
5) FireFly

Honorable Mention: Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.

Worst:
1) Star Trek: Voyager
2) Andromeda
3) Sliders
4) Star Trek: TNG (Okay, so this show has some really good episodes, but fully 80% really, really suck. The first 2 seasons are pretty bad to begin with.)
5) X-Files (Yeah, best and worst. It was great in the beginning, but it just went on too long and lost its vision. Such a waste.)

 

[mojo1701]

I don't watch as much Sci-Fi TV. I don't watch much regularly anymore. I'm only mentioning top shows, and shows that were 'meh.' The bad shows I won't list, since I really don't remember them since I didn't watch them.

Top 3:

1. Star Trek: TNG and DS9: too different, but both had strong points
2. The X-Files: Cult Classic.
3. Star Trek: TOS: Ok, so I'm way too young to have remembered this, but now, thanks to the invention that is the BitTorrent and the DVD... Still too campy and outdated for me, but quite a lot of good episodes to be mentioned.

Shows on the border:

1. Andromeda: loved the first 3 seasons. After that...
2. Star Trek: Voyager: First full series of Trek I watched. It was good, but didn't match up to its siblings.
3. Enterprise: se1 & 2: ehh... se3: not bad... se4: WOW.
4. The Outer Limits: Some episodes were too out there, but I saw some reruns as I was older, and some episodes were quite good.

I was always the impression that there were a lot of Trek fans. When I started reading these boards, there aren't a lot of them here.

 

[John Crichton]

Meh, sci-fi TV stinks.

 

[reanjr]

I'm not a Sci-Fi fan, so my best list is a bit truncated and my worst list would probably be much different if I had ever bothered watching more sci-fi shows:

BEST
X Files
Firefly (would probably have beaten X Files if it hadn't been canceled)
Outer Limits
Star Trek: The Next Generation

WORST
Farscape
Aeon Flux
Star Trek
Stargate SG-1
Sliders

 

[Darrin Drader]

Best
1. Babylon 5. The writing and the fact that it stuck to a single story from beginning to end over the course of 5 years really set the bar for excellence. Like someone before, it was the first series I ever taped from beginning to end before I purchased the DVDs.
2. Battlestar Galactica 2004. This is the first time that we've seen any true grit in our scifi. This comes across as far more realistic than it really should, which is a good thing. I hope it has a long life.
3. X-Files. The supernatural is something that has been tackled by many series, but this is the first time it was done with such style. I agree that it kind of petered out at the end, but even the last couple of seasons were worth watching.
4. Farscape. Hello? Probably the most original series ever. It didn't always make a lot of sense, but that was part of the charm. It was very out there, but for what it was, the acting was amazing, the effects were great, and the writing was equally wonderful. Definitely a series I need to get on DVD.
5. Stargat SG-1. It took me until the last year or so to actually grok it, but once I did, I fell in love with it. Sure, it isn't edgy in the same sense that the new BSG is, but it is a very good show.
Honorable Mention: The Incredible Hulk. Bill Bixby, Lou Ferigno, they were the definitive hulk. After that show there is no reason to ever revisit it on film.

Worst
1. Andromeda. I went into this wanting to like it. I enjoyed Sorbo in Hercules and I thought that putting him in a space opera would be fun. Boy was I mistaken.
2. Voyager. Another total piece of crap that I wanted to like but ended up hating. They should have aborted that series two years into it and made way for a Captain Riker series.
3. Sliders. It seemed to suffer from a terminal lack of continuity. Other than that, it just wasn't very interesting.
4. Buck Rogers. Even as a kid I thought it was stupid with bad effects and bad acting. Sure it was the '70s, but that isn't really an excuse.
5. Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict. How did this piece of trash ever get the green light. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. I can't believe it stayed on the air as long as it did.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The recent Sinbad series was so bad it made my brain hurt, however it's fantasy and not really sci-fi. Same goes for Xena (it was an okay series until they did the "kill the gods" thing).

Many, many bad shows: Jack Of All Trades...

Oi! I worked on Xena and Jack!

Though I have to agree about Sinbad. First time I saw a fight on that show, I fell off my chair and couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes...

-Hyp.

 

[driver8]

Best:
Star Trek TNG -Party becasue of the time and place for me when it came out- Pre internet (sort of). The season ending cliffhangers when the show hit its stride were simply great, zeitgeit things for my circle of college friends.

Firefly- great stories, charcters, visual style, sigh.

Stargate SG-1 In its prime SG-1 delivered great sci-fi action as opposed to say Voyagers boring gabfests.


Worst-

Hercules. It started out ok but just got a bit repititve. And Xena overtook in in terms of humor, watchability and cultural importance.

Babylon 5. Again started out ok, but the glacially slow moving plots and the ending of some story arcs (Captain to aliens "Get the hell out of my galaxy!") Add to that the addition of Bruce Boxleitner and alot of 70s and 80 actors and well, meh. Although Stephen Furst was cool.

Any mid 90's cheap sydicated fantasy series trying to jump on Xena bandwagon-Queen of Blades (?), Jack of All Trades, Black Scorpion (the female superhero series on Sci-Fi), And that show with Tia Carerre as a Laura Croft rip off.

 

[trancejeremy]

Worst:
------------

1) Firefly

Decent premise, but the execution really was bad.

2) Battlestar Galactica 2.0

The original was rather dopey, but the new version combines the dopiness of the original with all new sorts of just plain stupidity. Alien sex-bots that have a glowing spine but can't be told from a real human? Uh yeah, that's possible. Ships carrying tons and tons of water? Oh yeah, that's smart, given that todays's spaceships recycle water at an efficiently level pretty much so high that the water in the food replaces what is lost. I guess they spent all their research efforts on the sex-bots.

3) Farscape

Just seeing the actors of the shows makes me want to take a shower. Each one is creepier looking than the next. Even the ones not in makeup. Couldn't they get a female star that doesn't look like Ernest Borgnine? Sheeesh

4) Sliders (Good idea, but I just want to smack that Jerry Connell guy).
5) Firefly (so awful it deserves to be on the list twice)

Best:
---------
1) Dr. Who
2) Blakes 7
3) Buck Rogers (okay, the 2nd season was pretty bad. But the first is surprisingly good at times.)
4) Babylon 5
5) V