[TV] Any good sci-fi TV shows?

[Deleted]

As mentioned you should watch Battlestar Galactica.
There's a spin off coming up later this year or early next year called Blood and Chrome that you should keep a look out for aswell.

[Endus]

Farscape was only mentioned once, and deserves to be mentioned again. Well worth it.

If you liked Stargate: Universe, then dipping into Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis would be worth it. They're a bit more "fun" than Universe, which was trying to go for a grittier, darker feel, but there's good stuff to be had, though it's all a bit pulpy and campy.

If you want something kind of completely different, then I highly recommend Sanctuary. It's kind of a steampunky sci-fi with mythological connections. IMO, it's one of the best speculative-fiction TV shows nobody knows about.

[George]

Thanks again everyone. I already watched Star Trek: TNG series and all the feature movies, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, all the Stargate feature movies, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica (same universe as BG but different plot).

I was always squeamish about Babylon 5, I don't really know why, and never watched it but I see many of you are recommending it so I will give it a try. I see there is pretty much no chance to be re-released on Blu-ray so I'll have to find it on DVD somewhere.

I'm building a list of your suggestions and get to it

[Northy]

Are there any good sci-fi TV shows running at the moment? Something involving space travel and exploration, like Star Trek or Stargate Universe?

There are rumored to be plans in the work for another Star Trek series. I can't wait and hope it's actually true.

http://screenrant.com/bryan-fuller-n...s-yman-166584/

---------- Post added 2012-05-09 at 06:06 AM ----------

Oh, and I forgot....

[grandpab]

I think it got cancelled, but the first couple seasons of Warehouse13 were enjoyable. I mean, the writing and acting wasn't great but the way they spun history and fiction together was a fun trip for the imagination.

I liked Warehouse 13, Sanctuary wasn't bad either, plus it starred Amanda Tapping.

[Xenogeist]

Alphas is the best currently running sci-fi show, but it doesn't have space travel. Doctor Who is the only show that offers that at the moment.

If you haven't seen Babylon 5 then I recommend that, it is my favorite show.

[Deleted]

Well, someone mentioned Farscape, which is a good show ,


from what you've told us you've seen , i can only recommend 1 thing , it's a tiny bit older, but you'll torrent it anyways :P : Andromeda

[Shinzai]

Babylon 5 and Firefly, probably my two all time favourites as far as far as sci-fi TV shows go.

[Symdawg]

Babylon 5 and Firefly, probably my two all time favourites as far as far as sci-fi TV shows go.

Both were great, firefly especially. Andromeda was good too.

Our best hope of a scifi resurgence lies with the heavyweights - stargate and star trek. They're the only ones with a guaranteed return for the network. And since stargate is down for the count, the sole responsibility lies with star trek.
We've got the Season1 NextGen blurays which made back their money in the first month. They went to the expense of going back to the negatives for this stuff. Plus the success of the last movie, and the anticipation of the second.
I think paramount is just waiting how to see how it plays out. We'll have a new star trek show in a few years.
Then MGM will decide they want something like that, and they'll remember they own the rights to stargate...
And after that, newer shows will start popping up again.

[Xenogeist]

I'm crossing my fingers that Forward Unto Dawn inspires a major TV series and we'll see some good space sci-fi. It's just a web series set in the Halo universe but it is pretty good.

Babylon 5 is my favorite. I think I've seen all the major space sci-fi shows so I've turned to anime and have started watching The Legend of the Galactic Heroes which is pretty good.

[Symdawg]

I was always squeamish about Babylon 5, I don't really know why, and never watched it but I see many of you are recommending it so I will give it a try.

Bab5 was great, just keep in mind the first season was veeery low budget and was a bit corny in places. But it really builds momentum from s2 onwards.

[zoefschildpad]

Thanks again everyone. I already watched Star Trek: TNG series and all the feature movies, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, all the Stargate feature movies, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica (same universe as BG but different plot).

I was always squeamish about Babylon 5, I don't really know why, and never watched it but I see many of you are recommending it so I will give it a try. I see there is pretty much no chance to be re-released on Blu-ray so I'll have to find it on DVD somewhere.

I'm building a list of your suggestions and get to it

If you've only seen TNG you should definitely watch deep space nine and voyager too.

[Spikeychris]

Are there any good sci-fi TV shows running at the moment? Something involving space travel and exploration, like Star Trek or Stargate Universe?

If you haven't seen them: Battlestar Galactica and Falling skies are me 2 recomendations.

[Morden]

Babylon 5 - Amazing scope and story arc, it all leads up to the greater story.
BSG - Great Show, the acting is good and the CGI is pretty insane to boot.
Of all the Star Trek Shows I tend to favour DS9(Seasons 3-7) because it actually has a story arc rather than random episodes. same goes for Voyager to an extent.

I quite like Earth Final Conflict as well, but that is a royal chore to get hold of. Its one of Gene Roddenberry's shows. If you can find it, give it a go, its odd but its one of the most unique shows ive seen.

Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are also well worth watching, though I never developed a taste of Universe

[Deleted]

I would recommend Babylon 5 (planning to watch it again because I didn't see all episodes), Star Trek - Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise (last of the series which I thought were good, especially after season 1 but it got cancelled :/) and Andromeda.

[Symdawg]

I dont know if this is the right forum for these tidbits, but there's enough scifi fans here i thought it worthwhile. Here are some ‘might-have-beens’ that we’ve missed out on…

Star Trek - Had ST: Nemesis been a financial success, the next cinematic movie would have been Voyager. Had ST:Enterprise Not been cancelled, s5 would have covered the origin of the borg queen, the start of the earth-romulan war, and William shatner would have guest starred.

Andromeda - Robert Hewitt Wolfe (who bought Gene Rods story to the small screen) had differences with the network about season 2/3. They wanted episodic adventures about Dylan Hunt, he wanted a 5yr story arc featuring all characters as major players. As a result they got rid of him, and the series went downhill. Google Andromeda Coda for his original idea for the show.

Stargate – If MGM hadn’t gone under, there were plans for both an SG1 & Atlantis movie, plus another crossover movie featuring the cast of all 3 shows.

Star Wars – It’s fairly well know that at one stage George Lucas was planning an Eps 7,8 & 9. He’s declared now that it will never happen, and blames the fans criticism of his changes to the original trilogy.

[Stormcall]

Yeah, I've seen Battlestar Galactica and it was awesome. Haven't seen Firefly, but imdb.com say it ran for only one season and it has a rating of 9.3.

See, this is what I don't understand: there are great shows with high ratings that were cancelled prematurely. Annoying.

It didn't have great ratings when it aired-likewise, it's a show with a diehard cult following, not a show with mainstream success. The average person won't know anything about it, only the people who were sci-fi fans already(and you're more apt to find that sort on a gaming forum). Out of my family, all of who watch TV, I was the only one who had heard of the show, and I'm still the only one that's watched it, many of my friends are the same way. In other words, the people who follow it are likely to rate it highly on places like IMDB, and they are likely to account for the majority of people who look it up in the first place, thus, you're gonna get high ratings-it's not like Seinfeld or House or Law and Order that had long runs and where new viewers can constantly stumble across it on reruns and be familiar with it even as non-fans, it only lasted 1 season so you won't have people downrating it cause the later seasons dropped in quality(ie the Simpsons), etc, and this will skew the rating in the show's favor. Fact of the matter is, lots of the people who rave about it now never even heard of it when it was actually airing, much less actually watched it. Sure, you can blame Fox for killing it too early, but fact of the matter is, if the show had been drawing good ratings when it aired, they likely wouldn't have cancelled it. That's just the sad facts about how TV works, it doesn't matter HOW good a show is, if enough people aren't watching it for the network to consider it a success.

As for me, I enjoy it and recommend it, but I fully believe lots of people overrate it as well. I saw someone list it as "best show of the decade", and my first thought was "say what?" cause I can think of what *I* consider 3 better shows just from stuff currently in production(Dexter, Justified, Sons of Anarchy) not even counting shows like The Shield which have ended.

---------- Post added 2012-10-26 at 01:25 AM ----------

Thanks again everyone. I already watched Star Trek: TNG series and all the feature movies,

DS9 is must see-especially in the later seasons. Voyager bored me, and Enterprise was worse.

[Collegeguy]

Even the scifi channel doesn't have scifi anymore. also, changed their name.

Kind of odd considering that scifi, at least from what I can tell, is the most popular genre in video games. My best guess is that more tech savvy people are using netflix and not watching television. I think it just shows how much of a failure and out of date the rating system is for shows deemed worthy to continue. With the abundance of csi crap that is on tv, seems like sit at home moms are rating shows now.

[Deleted]

Try Fringe, sadly its in its final season but you really need to watch it from the start as the early seasons are the best.

[Stormcall]

Kind of odd considering that scifi, at least from what I can tell, is the most popular genre in video games.

I dunno, there's no shortage of FPS games that aren't sci-fi based(CoD to name the most popular), and depending on if your definition of sci-fi considers fantasy it's own genre or not, many MMOs(like WoW) are fantasy more than what is generally thought of as sci-fi as well.

As for shows, well, I'm no stay at home mom, and I don't like CSI, but frankly, I find other "police procedurals" that might fall into that umbrella(stuff like Law and Order, NCIS, and Criminal Minds) preferable to sci-fi as well, generally speaking. So does my dad, and so do most of the people I work with, it's not like the success of those type of shows exists because of "sit at home moms", they exist cause, well, a lot of people, you know, actually like them, even if you(or I, in the case of CSI), do not. Sure, it sucks when good shows get cancelled due to poor ratings, but with networks, for better or worse it's all about the money, and a show with good ratings makes higher advertising revenue than a show with bad ones, so the networks are gonna focus their efforts on a show that's doing well in the ratings rather than one that's struggling, even if the struggling show may be the "better" show.

Also, a lot of those "tech savvy" people who use Netflix instead of watching TV...use Netflix to watch TV shows. And I imagine companies take note of what people are watching there, too.