Best SciFi franchise (after Who)

Babylon 5 is one of my favorites, I just was able to complete my DVD set with Season 4 and 5 on sale for 19 bucks. Does everyone know that there is a new Babylon DVD being released. The latest Sci Fi Magazine has a great story, as well as a nice interview with the Latest DR Who Companion. :dalek: :dalek:

Primeval is my favorite .

"It was the Dawn of the Third Age of Mankind, ten years after the
Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal:
to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could
work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away
from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs and wanderers. Humans
and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning
metal .. all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our
last, best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon
stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5."

B5 was great.
It's sad to see JMS reduced to rehashing Spider-Man.

ooh thanks for the rifftrax link...I really miss mst3k.

As for other scifi franchise...
x files
star trek
manimal (just kidding)
old battle star galactica...I'm old school

Voyage To The bottom Of the Sea

The craziest thing about B5 was not only was JMS able to tell the story he wanted (mostly. Characters were changed around, plot lines altered, and Season Five was effectively a "What's Left" in the Plot Bin after being so long to be green lit), but he was able to do it on a Cable Network in the mid-90s.

Given the amount of CG work was done in the show (CG that - while dated - actually still holds up all these years later. The station itself is still fantastically detailed), not to mention the costuming and practical effects, it's an amazing piece of work for a Cable program.

About three years ago I made it a goal to collect the series on DVD. Watching the show from start to finish you see how amazingly intricate the whole plot was. Truly, a Novel for Television.

Babylon 5. Hands down. However, Deep Space Nine became exceptionally good after the first year-and-a-half or so. The only Trek spin-off show that didn't outstay it's welcome and actually ended as a series while still at it's peak.

Now see, to me, DS9 destroyed Roddenberry's vision of a "Brighter Tomorrow" and generally lifted a lot of plot elements from Babylon 5.

I can't deny the show is well written and well performed, but it isn't what I care for from Star Trek. Sadly, between the Boring as Watching Paint Dry Voyager and the "What is this word you keep using? Continuity?" Storylines of Enterprise, my enthusiasm for the brand as a whole has cooled significantly. I still wildly enjoy the original 60s series (A Piece of the Action is still my favorite episode of all time. So delightfully absurd), but TNG has not aged gracefully. A lot of episodes are flat out pretentious and preachy, plus the fact the D was effectively a Luxury Liner with weaponry.

I did enjoy the movie reboot, however.

I, for one, am glad Roddenberry's vision for Trek was continuously watered down by others. I think Star Trek would have flopped and died early never to rise again if his vision had been fully followed.

After who, I think I have to say starwars.

-Star Wars
-original Battlestar Galactica
-Sliders
-Primeval

~

LtViperPilot wrote:

-Star Wars
-original Battlestar Galactica
-Sliders
-Primeval

~

I liked Sliders as well - not so much after Jerry O'Connell left though.

I'd have to say:

-Firefly
-DS9
-Original BSG
-The Prisoner
-The X-Files
-Space: 1999
-Buck Rogers
-Manimal (just kidding)

Rust wrote:

Now see, to me, DS9 destroyed Roddenberry's vision of a "Brighter Tomorrow" .

But realistically, with such diverse cultures, beliefs, ideals, politics, and such, the entire universe can't possibly get along. Even Kirk had Klingons. The Starfleet personnel and Federation members, on the whole, were true to Roddenberry's future for us.

Don't misundertand me, the original series is near and dear to my heart and is my favorite Trek series, as I grew up watching it, but purely as sci-fi drama produced for television, Deep Space Nine, in my opinion, was the best written, acted, and produced of all the Trek series. Characters were allowed to change, grow, have relationships. The character arcs of Kira, Bashir, and Sisko in particular from the first to last episodes are huge. Life experiences change who people are at their very core, and DS9 is a great example of this. As it was , too, on Babylon 5. Not many dramas of any genre can make this claim or do it this well.

Okay,

There's a few series I absolutely love:

Babylon 5
Chuck (yeah, I'm throwing it in here for it's geekiness)
Stargate
Farscape
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Space:1999
Battlestar Galactica (Old and New)
The Lost Room
Heroes (season 1)
Fringe
Lost
Defying Gravity
And of course, I enjoy most Star Trek franchises (Enterprise being the slowest to get into)


I have a hard time picking favorites, but I really love all of these. I leave a long list, in case there are any you haven't heard of and want to consider

Keith

PS. I would like to also include the Logan's Run TV series in the list. However, it is not on DVD and it is a bit weaker that the other shows. However, this series has a very special place in my heart.

Who North America wrote:

PS. I would like to also include the Logan's Run TV series in the list. However, it is not on DVD and it is a bit weaker that the other shows. However, this series has a very special place in my heart.

Won't have to wait for much longer... Warner is working on the dvd release now and plan to have it out sometime this year

I actually thought Francis was much cooler than Logan!

And I was pretty shocked after the fact to find out that Gonzo from Trapper John was Logan I saw him a few years back performing in Chicago as Billy Flynn and he was very good in the role. Looked sharp too.

Rust wrote:

Now see, to me, DS9 destroyed Roddenberry's vision of a "Brighter Tomorrow" and generally lifted a lot of plot elements from Babylon 5.

I can't deny the show is well written and well performed, but it isn't what I care for from Star Trek. Sadly, between the Boring as Watching Paint Dry Voyager and the "What is this word you keep using? Continuity?" Storylines of Enterprise, my enthusiasm for the brand as a whole has cooled significantly. I still wildly enjoy the original 60s series (A Piece of the Action is still my favorite episode of all time. So delightfully absurd), but TNG has not aged gracefully. A lot of episodes are flat out pretentious and preachy, plus the fact the D was effectively a Luxury Liner with weaponry.

I did enjoy the movie reboot, however.

Hated the 2009 movie myself, since it was Star Trek in name only.

What part of TNG aged badly? I been watching quite a lot of it on Youtube, and seen nothing wrong. TOS, TNG and Ent was pretty good, really.

Some of TNG aged badly. Mostly older episodes. Really, there hasn't been a Trek show that I didn't enjoy watching at least a little. Voyager started to wear on me. I stopped caring after a while and just wanted 7/9 to die.

Calixar wrote:

Some of TNG aged badly. Mostly older episodes. Really, there hasn't been a Trek show that I didn't enjoy watching at least a little. Voyager started to wear on me. I stopped caring after a while and just wanted 7/9 to die.

Gotta name the older episodes. You're too vague at the moment.

I would have to say the first half of the first season, but they weren't the best to start with. The Naked Now, is one I skip when watching episodes. But season 3 until the end, are still the best things ever made, for any TV.

Ronpur wrote:

I would have to say the first half of the first season, but they weren't the best to start with. The Naked Now, is one I skip when watching episodes. But season 3 until the end, are still the best things ever made, for any TV.

Dunno....Where No Man Has gone Before, Datalore, Arsenal of Freedom, 11001001, among others were good....same goes for season 2.

When it's going where no one has gone before, and not fighting some villain of the week, that's how I like my Trek, along with other sci-fi.

I'm not someone who memorizes episode names. But the one Ronpur said... the Naked Now... was a rehash of an OS episode, right? With the infection? I hated that.
But I'm thinking more in general. There were some really bad backgrounds and skies on planets that look like they're right out of a Saturday morning kids show. They worked too hard had trying to look like they weren't on earth. It distracts me when watching it. And the show, early on, was really preachy. They were so obsessed with their lesson of the week that I actually stopped watching it for a few years.
The last few years the show was on were mostly great... maybe with the exception of the very last season. I really enjoyed some of the multiple episode stories and story-arcs. Again, I don't know episode names.

Calixar wrote:

I'm not someone who memorizes episode names. But the one Ronpur said... the Naked Now... was a rehash of an OS episode, right? With the infection? I hated that.
But I'm thinking more in general. There were some really bad backgrounds and skies on planets that look like they're right out of a Saturday morning kids show. They worked too hard had trying to look like they weren't on earth. It distracts me when watching it. And the show, early on, was really preachy. They were so obsessed with their lesson of the week that I actually stopped watching it for a few years.
The last few years the show was on were mostly great... maybe with the exception of the very last season. I really enjoyed some of the multiple episode stories and story-arcs. Again, I don't know episode names.

I know that even in the original series the water infection came pretty early on... but in TNG it aired right after the first episode. I thought that if they had waited to do Naked Now closer to the midseason point, it would have been more effective. The characters would have been more established by then, so at that point seeing them go completely buzzed and drunk would have had a stronger comedic impact.

Transformers it has been the one real constant in my life, and through it my other interests and hobbies have came from the robots in disguise.

Mass Effect rekindled my love of sci-fi in a BIG way, it's everything that I ever loved about the genre in an awesome video game trilogy.

A Sci-Fi show I've gotten hooked on is Eureka. It is quirky enough to be interesting while having some decent story lines.

I tend to rank Star Trek after Dr. Who because of Who's longetivity. TOS did things that no show was able to do at the time (IE - The first interracial kiss). It was a landmark show and deserves the status it has.

Babylon 5 tackled some topics of religion that would have been taboo in an setting other than science fiction.

Battlestar Galactica (the original) was just plain out fun. The redo took itself too seriously I think. I think the same thing about Buck Rogers with Gil Gerrad (until they got on that telephone looking space ship that is).

I did like Space:1999 and UFO just for the creativeness in each series.

Keith Boepple