Search and Destroy the previous generation of sci-fi tv shows (Farscape, Lexx, Andromeda, StarGate SG1, Babylon 5, Space Precinct, various Star Trek shows and more)

TNG/DS9 only, probably my two favorite shows ever. Tried all the others but couldn't get in them.

Doesn't apply to all, but I do have trouble getting into shows with a gritty, ragtag crew based in a dystopian future.

lexx had some kinda magic for the lowest budget cgi space panto.
4 season garbage, save for the tearjerker at the end ;_;

TNG is top-tier comfort viewing for me. I realized not long ago that it's at least in part due to the ambient Enterprise noise. Soothing.

I keep meaning to check some of these others out. I finally properly watched a bit of OG Star Trek a few years back, and it was okay and not as hokey/bad as I figured it would be. I dig most of the movies. I've been slowly (like over an expanse of time roughly equivalent to the length of time it originally aired) working my way through TNG front to back and will probably start DS9 when that's done. And Farscape, someday.

Straczynski has shit out some poor comics over the years so I'm not terribly inclined to check out Babylon 5. And the stuff I've heard about the end stretch of BSG doesn't particularly entice me, either.

Honestly, BSG's not as bad as people say, largely typical internet age griping about a (badly excuted) long-planned series ending (see also: Lost). And even if it was, it's still worth it to watch the first 2.5 seasons and ignore the rest if you really felt the need to

Deep Space 9 is probably the best long-running sci-fi series I've ever seen... The Next Generation is almost as good, but it suffers from the fact that it had a rather forced status quo, so the characters never seem to learn anything, and it tends to repeat similar kind of one-show episodes where the Enterprise encounters the Weird Space Phenomenon of the Week. (There were some longer arc though, mostly the ones involving Q, the Borg, and Klingon politics.)

DS9 starts kinda like TNG, the first season is mostly one-shot stories, but by the second season they start adding longer arcs that last until the very end of the show. The series starts when the Cardassian occupiers have just left Bajor, and later on a huge war arc kicks in, so you get loads of well-written, well-acted episodes that deal with the ambivalencies and moral dilemmas of war, colonialism, politics, terrorism, etc, in ways most sci-fi series don't. If only they hadn't added a rather stupid and pointlessly Manichean supernatural subplot (which also goes on until the very last episode), DS9 would've been pretty much a perfect series. Though thankfully the supernatural stuff didn't completely overwhelm the main plot, as it did in the new Battlestar Galactica.

Years ago I tried to watch Babylon 5 and got as far as the end of first season, but I was kinda turned off by the second-rate actors. Though to be fair the acting is often the weakest link in sci-fi series in general... I guess the Star Trek shows benefit from their larger budgets in that they don't have to spend most of the money on special effects and set design, they can also afford to hire decent actors. IMO that's certainly the thing that elevates TNG and DS9 above their contemporaries, they both had well-rounded ensemble casts that played nicely against each other, so they were able to devote whole episodes to character interaction alone. BSG had mostly good actors too, but they screwed things up in the writing department.

Babylon 5 has been getting a bit of praise lately as the godfather of long form TV, but actually I can't think of any TV that does that as well as it - even stuff like The Wire or Lost, there's a sense that at the end of the season the writers think "Okay we did well there, where can we take these plots from here?" - in B5 the main series villains turn up in the 5th episode in passing, and don't really start to emerge until middle of the 2nd series - rewatching it now, the amount of stuff clearly planted for long-term payoff is amazing.

It's also hokey as fuck in places of course - a few B-plots where you can imagine JMS going through and taking out comedy sound effects.

hah, xpost - though DS9 does suffer from the fact that the Ferengi are walking comedy sound effects.

First couple of seasons of Sliders are really gd fun

I also tried to watch Voyager for a couple of seasons, but it felt too much like a B-rate TNG: one-shot stories about weird space encounters with worse actors. From what I've gathered it doesn't manage to raise the quality later on like DS9 did?

(xpost)

hah, xpost - though DS9 does suffer from the fact that the Ferengi are walking comedy sound effects.

I don't really agree with this, or at the least they're much better better in DS9 than in TNG... Once you accept the fact that the Ferengi are lighter side of the show who get a comedy episode of their own once per season (some of which are actually quite funny), you should be able to appreciate the effort the writers put into making them much more rounded than the crass caricatures Ferengi were in TNG. All the three main Ferengi characters (Quark, Rom, and Nog) get good characters arcs and even some touching emotional moments... I wouldn't have thought a Ferengi could bring tears to my eyes, but that happened in the episode where Nog confronts Sisko on his unwillingness to recommend Nog to Starfleet Academy.

Season Four of Voyager (the season where they first introduced Seven of Nine) has a couple of really good two-part stories - 'Year of Hell' and 'The Killing Game' - but the last two seasons are just as dire as the first three.

Agree with Tuomos. The latter part of the series is so dark, the comedy eps, including the Ferengi ones are a nice change up. Also love Take Me Out to the Holosuite for that reason.

Yeah, Take Me Out to the Holosuite is the rare case where that scourge of American TV series, the dreaded Baseball Episode, actually works, even for someone like me who knows practically nothing about the sport. And I like how the episode, which takes place in the middle of a heavy war arc, doesn't just provide a bit of relief to the viewers but clearly does that to the protagonists too.

As unmpressed as I've generally been by JMS's writing, I have huge respect for how he ran Babylon 5 based on stuff I've read. All TV showrunners should familiarize themselves with his methodology.

I watched a bit of Lexx in what was probably my last burst of idle late ;ate TV viewing many years ago. All descriptions upthread otm - stoner low budget panto etc. Pleasantly imaginative, a kind of 'fuck it why not' attitude that I enjoyed. Also have a soft spot for that international co-production vibe - it didn't look American or English, just sort of… wrong.

I'd miss lots of episodes or have them on in the background while reading, so I mostly remember often being very very confused about what was going on, but there was enough camp strangeness (+ ok, eva habermann) to keep me coming back.

It recently crossed my mind to find it and watch it, but time, time, time.

Yeah, I should also point out for reference that his comics writing is Terrible - even the stuff which shares tone with B5, he hits it on the latter and misses wildly on the former.

His Amazing Spider-Man run had some good stuff in it, but was often derailed by editorial decisions

Straczynski's Thor was pretty good, or at least it established an interesting new setting and did some changes to the characters that opened them up for fresh new stories. Though for all his reputation as a super long-term plotter, Straczynski left Thor with most of his plot threads remaining unresolved, and it was left to Kieron Gillen to tie them up. And AFAIK some of them were never really resolved, like wtf was Loki's masterplan that led to The Siege supposed to be?

ha, exactly!

bland design??? i would kill to work in an office with that soothing color scheme, that perfect soft lighting, those autumnal-colored touchscreen interfaces.

otm - I find it really calming to watch. There's some thread w/ a huge transcript of an IM conversation about TNG that calls its Enterprise a space volvo or similar, often comes back to me while watching.

I think I must be missing something, because I find the writing and acting in the BSG reboot so bad that I can't find the energy to sit through it. Any Star Trek is preferable I find. I like the plot and the ideas in the BSG well enough, they're just executed so poorly. The doctor character with a Cylon in his brain, who's supposed to be creepy and ambiguous, just comes across like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen. The admiral who's supposed to be making tough, gritty decisions in the thick of it comes across like an irritated electronics shop manager.

& it is sort of odd how this stuff has died out - space taken by things that are more film or comic-related maybe, or more urban or near-future earth stuff? Like Dark Angel or something turned out to have stronger pop-DNA.

xp

What these 'previous generation' of sci fi shows had going for them is they weren't trying to be The Wire or The Sopranos, they were just happily ticking along within their accepted conventions and making a decent enough job of it. In most Star Treks, the Serious Issues under discussion take place in a comfortingly static world where everything sooner or later resolves itself - tacitly, they only ever claim to be like, 'interesting' and 'thought-provoking', rarely if ever claim to be 'essential'

xp to woof I have a vague theory that stuff like Star Trek DS9 and TNG occupy a kind of middle ground, and since their day, TV has gone off either in the direction of HBO super serious high quality drama fare, or in the direction of bargain basement cheap reality tat like that show about the Duck people in the swamp

Against your theory I place "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (from a few years ago) and "Continuum" (currently airing) -- neither of which is a space-ensemble show, but both of which definitely occupy that middle space where they are laboring (and succeeding!) to be something other than total shit, but which also don't aspire to be seen as "quality TV"

And as such, they're both better than e.g. the rebooted BSG; all three are about equally hokey, but BSG (at least the first six episodes, which are all I watched) was so painful in its insistence on its non-hokiness...

there's still a lot of random Scifi stuff like Helix or Continuum on TV, it's just more expired by the big pop hits of the past decade like Lost, Heroes, Walking Dead, etc. so you're not going to see any Andromedas right now

what do you mean by "expired?"

xp heh Continuum is on my backlog...

Sarah Connor Chronicles was so relentlessly miserable, I kind of had to love it, especially in the second season when things got even more timey-wimey and split-timeline-consequencey

There's also a ton of 1 or 2 season aborted attempts like Firefly, Dollhouse, Alphas, etc... but I guess we're sort of getting off-topic here

oops, i meant inspired

Against your theory I place "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (from a few years ago) and "Continuum" (currently airing) -- neither of which is a space-ensemble show, but both of which definitely occupy that middle space where they are laboring (and succeeding!) to be something other than total shit, but which also don't aspire to be seen as "quality TV"

Orphan Black might fit in here as well.

There's just a glut of mid-to-low level SF/Fantasy tv these days. most of it ignored by me (and probably by you) like The 100, Warehouse 13, The Tomorrow People, Forever.

I have enjoyed the 100. Basically takes bits from Lost and BSG (including some actors) and smashes them together is a way that is only occasionally annoying.

(ctrl-f'ing 'Fringe')

Also: Fringe!

Fringe was next-level tho

imo the dividing line between old school sf tv and new was the success of the X-Files

Is Continuum worth watching? I've had it on my Netflix list for a while now, but haven't yet tried it.

As much as I dug the mythology stuff initially, X-Files really should've been more of a TNG-style sci-fi procedural. Would've no doubt helped its long-term cultural cachet.

Oh, and The 100 also has elements of Earth 2.

His Amazing Spider-Man run had some good stuff in it, but was often derailed by editorial decisions

― Nhex, Monday, 15 December 2014

I think just as many, if not more of the infamous choices were his own too.

Fringe was next-level tho

― ancient texts, things that can't be pre-dated (President Keyes), Monday, 15 December 2014

Next level of what? I never watched it but the promo images gave me a bad vibe.

Heroes was astonishingly dull from the episodes I saw.

Is Continuum worth watching?

Complicated question! In some fundamental sense it's pretty badly made, and yet I find myself authentically looking forward to when a new season goes up. I'd try it.

xpost Fringe is probably the best new school sf show. Don't want to start a Fringe discussion here. There's a huge thread for that

The Monster of the Week episodes of the X-Files went a bit kooky and not so serious once the long-term conspiracy plot kicked off, which was a shame, because the one about the man who can fit into small spaces and lives in a nest of bile, and the one about the tapeworm man, were absolutely terrifying and kept me awake for two nights when I watched them recently

Against your theory I place "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (from a few years ago) and "Continuum" (currently airing) -- neither of which is a space-ensemble show, but both of which definitely occupy that middle space where they are laboring (and succeeding!) to be something other than total shit, but which also don't aspire to be seen as "quality TV"

Yeah, I buy this. My picture of what's going on in American tv sci-fi isn't so clear as I'm watching from the UK

xp you're probably right RAG
Heroes had a great first season, then immediately fell down the shitter
I tried the first half season of Fringe when it was on the air, couldn't stick with it, but from most accounts it picked up in quality huge within a couple of years
Never probably would've watched X-Files without the conspiracy angle, that's what hooked me in, but I was a strictly casual on-off viewer anyway

I felt the same way about X-Files back in the day. Hindsight and nine seasons of Chris Carter's unfocused ambling helped me appreciate the monster of the week episodes as the real meat of the show.

Re: acting in Next Generation. In the most recent episodes I saw, I remember a particularly absurd scene of Ryker fighting a superpowered old man. It looked as dumb as Hasselhoff wrestling an alligator in Baywatch.

Also some episodes really bad scripting with Data trying to understand behaviour of other people, that belonged in really bad 50s b-movies and post-code 50s comic book bland SF. But Data was generally the thing I liked best about the show.

I never mind a bit of off-topic digressions. Throw in lesser known new stuff and similar geek fantasy like Buffy/Angel, Xena/Hercules, Mortal Kombat, that old Neil Gaiman show and anything else. As long as we aren't overwhelmed with superhero talk and bitching about celebrities.

Think one difference maybe that newer shows are ever more aware of something called a 'fan'

I suppose I'm going to be the only stan for this show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond

Straight-up military sci-fi from the mid-90s - actually predated the Starship Troopers movie. Has aged pretty well.

Another obscure one is the War Of The Worlds TV series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(TV_series)

In practice the episodes were mostly OK - basically a redo of The Invaders. However a new creative team was brought in for the second season. Half of the characters were killed and the action jumped years ahead into a bonkers Mad Max body-swapping dystopic future that Makes No Sense at all. Totally dumb and totally awesome!

xp she's great "subbing" for Neko Case in "The Laws Have Changed" video

― Nhex, Sunday, 28 December 2014

I can't find it. All I can see is New Pornographers.

that's the right video. neko's the singer for TNP. well, usually!

I've started on Babylon 5, and even though it definitely has the typical rough first-season edges, a couple of the episodes are pretty great (Tomalak I mean G'Kar singing a Broadway tune!), which is better than DS9 managed.

Satire of American Beauty in an episode of Lexx?
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/lexx-at-ten/

I maintain that the Replicators stuff in Stargate SG-1 is some genuinely good SF for a cheesy TV show. Well thought through and actually frightening, unlike the Borg. The origin story is really good as well, although it might be pinched from some old short story. The Replicator planet is less credible but kind of haunting and weird IIRC.

Been thinking a while about a difficult to pinpoint aesthetic change in sff and I wonder if its crucial in its gaining wider cultural acceptance. Did there used to be more ugly, dorky and twee stuff? Dorky is hard to define. Plenty of sff today looks ugly in a bland way and I'd argue amateurish cgi and photoshopped covers are worse than anything in the past, but most of that is from small presses.

I was watching some episodes of Prisoners Of Gravity (an 80s-90s Canadian interview show) and it was just so dorky in a way I cant imagine such a thing being today (but if there was such a thing today, I think more authors would be embarrassed to show their cover art).

If Game Of Thrones was on tv in the 90s, Jon Snow would have had a furry wisecracking sidekick called Queequar and there would have been more scenes of people laughing (especially men with beards) and dancing around a fire to quaintly merry music (all 80s-90s films set in medieval Europe have these scenes, I'm sure you could make a long compilation of them).

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, January 12, 2020 12:51 PM (two hours ago)

I know it's bad form to post the same thing in multiple threads but I thought this might be more relevant to this thread. Fantasy equivalents being Xena and Hercules. And a lot of these shows were uncool in a way that is difficult for me to define, probably why I never watched most of them. I guess my idea of cool sff needs to have a certain measure of prettiness (which Marvel movies fail, but perhaps not as badly as some of these shows).

I bought the book Lost Transmissions this week and it includes an essay by Charlie Jane Anders about an obscure 90s show called Space Island One which she thought was genius. Had scripts by Stephen Baxter and Diane Duane.

I guess the type of show we're talking about here is tailored to an audience of 'fans', unlike yr prestige TV shows which are supposed to be 'what everyone is watching' and talking about?

If Game Of Thrones was on tv in the 90s, Jon Snow would have had a furry wisecracking sidekick called Queequar and there would have been more scenes of people laughing (especially men with beards) and dancing around a fire to quaintly merry music (all 80s-90s films set in medieval Europe have these scenes, I'm sure you could make a long compilation of them).

This is basically The Witcher

Haha, I only seen the first episode.

Never cared for the Star Trek uniform. Deanna Troi is the only one who got to dress nice.

> I suppose I'm going to be the only stan for this show:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond

i remember it fondly but i bought the dvds and it was slightly disappointing on a rewatch. i'll try again.

will certainly watch Firefly again (not sure that's last generation enough for this thread)

and space 1999 holds up well, the first season certainly. forcesTV showed it recently, along with UFO (is currently showing dukes of hazzard and V the series)

I really liked Space Above and Beyond at the time, no idea how it holds up. I remember watching it on a double-bill with the similarly short-lived Nowhere Man. There was some initial hype as the showrunners were two of the best X-Files writers, but that must have died down quickly. It's a shame Kristen Cloke only ever seems to act in things her husband is directly involved in....

LOL@ Space Precinct, dear god

There's an episode of TNG where an admiral takes over the ship and tells Deanna to fix her uniform to the standard.

https://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/troiuniform.jpg?w=1000&ssl=1

(+ ok, eva habermann)
Wasn't there someone else? Oh, had to look it up, Xenia Seeberg.

lol milo

xp the episode where Dick Jones from Robocop take over the enterprise, classic!

Lexx was a really weird show.

https://images.justwatch.com/backdrop/8612800/s1440/lexx

Right. Who was that guy from Renaissance Italy?

Amazing that some of this goes back into the early 80s
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Whump
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Woobie

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whump

“The amount of whump in that movie was delicious!“

“I heard there was a lot of whump in this show.”

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Get_%27em
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hurt/Comfort

This one is amazing
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Manpain

I didn't know that 'Poochinski', as referenced in the Wormhole X-Treme episode of Stargate SG-1, was apparently a real pilot for a show that inexplicably never got made.

https://youtu.be/LytgLZDzzAY

Not as funny as I would have hoped but I'm still glad it exists somehow.

Yeah sorry, it wasn't supposed to be a recommendation as such ;-)