Christine’s Top 7 Sci-Fi Tv Shows

And now, I would like to revisit Top 7 Tuesday!

Cheesy, but for some reason it I loved it.

I decided on something easy to get me started, but feel free to email any of us with any ideas you would like to see us cover.

SciFi television is something I have always loved, even when sometimes it is not up to par.  I have mentioned before that I used to watch SciFi with my family, but most especially with my dad.  It is one of the ways we bonded.  Maybe that is why I still have such a deep love of it today.  While compiling this list, I realized that it is really hard to rank your favorite shows, and in someways, those that I had seen more recently kept creeping up the list.  Mostly this convinced me that I need to rewatch all my old favorites to do this right.  However, as I still have to work and re-watching all that  tv is unpaid, I am going to do the best I can on my recollections alone.

Honorable mentions: Dead Like Me, Witchblade (TNT Series), Pushing Daisies, Firefly, Dollhouse, Quantum Leap, The Guild

7.  3rd Rock from the Sun

Seventh place was somehow the hardest to pick.  I ended up going with 3rd Rock, mostly, because it was a sitcom, while all the rest were hour long dramas (more or less).  3rd Rock had that little bit of SciFi, but was still on network television, attracted a large audience, and was truly funny.  Maybe it didn’t have quite the mystery, costuming and otherness of most of my  other choices, but it worked and had a scifi background.

6. Dr Who (new version)

David Tennant is so expressive! My favorite Dr.

 To be fair, I have never watched the original Dr Who, which i hear is great and has the same quality as Bond, where you get to replace the Dr. and his companion regularly within the framework of the show and without upsetting the fan base.  I admit that many of the monsters/aliens / special effects are a little cheesy in this series at times, but I think the acting is part of what really makes me love this series.  David Tennant is just so expressive.  His Dr is like a little kid in his enthusiasm for life, and yet he can still be serious when that gift is threatened.  Great chemistry and often great writing (Turn Left, and the angel episode) make this series worth watching.

5. Star Trek: The Next Generation

My first introduction to SciFi

This was my first foray into Scifi, and I watched it with my dad.  My best friend at the time also watched it.  Together we would buy the action figures and read the spin-off books (I mostly remember Imzadi)  In high school, we went to see the first Next Generation movie together in the theatres. I even came to my love of tea through watching Jean-Luc Piccard constantly ordering Earl Grey. I don’t know if it is all nostalgia, but I love this show.

4. Babylon 5

I remember when they tried to cancel this show before its 5 seasons were finished.  I was so upset, and then they had to rewrite season 5 because the actress for Ivonova walked off in contract negotiations.  This show first introduced me to the annoyances that come with loving scifi, or really any television programming.  It can be canceled at the whim of the network, consigning so many unanswered questions, realtionships and mysteries to the trash heap.  Fortunately it did make it to season 5, and there were really so many long storylines that they got a chance to play out, which I loved;  The reltionships between G’kar and Lando, even Lando and Vir, the growth many characters had to go through.  There was a lot of Star Trek plotlines in this series (individual questions of clashing cultures and morality) but the overreaching plotline made it stand out to me, and because it was plotted from the beginning, it didn’t dissolve into complete soap opera, which I always appreciate.

3. Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Oh and right after my soap opera comment, I dive into the drama that is a high school vampire slayer.  This was my first official introduction to Joss Whedon.   My sisters got me into it in high school, and I have to say I was not impressed with the plotline of the first episode I watched.  It seemed a little corny and a little forced, but the dialogue was awesome.  So I tuned in for more dialogue and got addicted to the character insight and sheer plot genius that is Joss Whedon.  I now watch pretty much anything with his name on it, and I know I am not alone.  I was a little disappointed when it went to the UPN network, and Joss was no longer with it full time, as he was also juggling Angel at that time, but I felt the season 4 closer would have been a perfect end to the series.  Of course, then I would never have gotten to experience Buffy: the Musical, and that would have been a real shame.

2. Farscape

Farscape…what can I say?  Muppets, and new “f” swear word (frell), fantastic creatures, great plotlines, great villians, a cast that changes to keep the show feeling new, episodes done as roadrunner cartoons?  I guess it is in part this show’s willingness to takes risks that makes me love it.  I love the cast of characters and the vibrancy that comes from painting half of your aliens different colors.  I know I sound glib, but I do own this entire series on dvd.

1. Battlestar Galactica (new version)

Best show…I introduced non-scifi fans to it, and after their intial uneasiness at watching scifi, they too became addicts.  It is so much more about people and politics, then it is about scifi and it reflects so poignantly on our real world and all the crisis we face in it.  I was devastated to hear it was canceled, and yet, it that way it could never just die out, as so many other shows do in long runs.  I loved Starbuck, for I felt I could never quite peg her down, though I also felt I knew her so well.  I liked the Dr for the sheer fact that he was a coward and a narcisst and yet sometimes was still plagued with conscience.  I loved seeing how positions of power or lack there of changed these people and the questions posed when the final 5 were revealed.  There is so much to catch in subsequent viewings and so much to think about even the first time through.  I just can’t express how much I love this show.