The Silver Screen Oasis

There have been many quality television shows over the years that have a Sci-Fi flavor to them (and quite a few dogs for that matter). What was your favorite?

Some obvious choices would be any of the Star Trek incarnations (and rightfully so) or perhaps Babylon 5. I've had a couple of guilty favorites in recent years, I really enjoyed both Sliders and Quantum Leap. Great entertainment and both had a real "fun" quality to them. How about you?

Setting aside Irwin Allen productions (tremendous fun, but for me they are now more in the camp or nostalgia arena), you hit my two favorites -- Star Trek (the original series only) and Quantum Leap.

Discussion of the former is superfluous. The greatest virtue and reason for watching Quantum Leap can be summed up for me in two words: Dean and Stockwell. Of course, that may be camp or nostalgia as well.

It's such a shame more people weren't familiar with Stargate sg-1 while it was on for it's ten year run. Starting as a big budget movie, and moving to Showtime for one year, then to the Sci-fi station on a weekly basis, I imagine I've seen every episode at minimum 3 times each. The channel would start with episode 1 and run the season, then added season 2, and season 3 etc. so that eventually, you could actually see all 9 seasons, in order, on a daily basis.

The premise of the show - that the ancient Egyptians were actually people from another planet who enslaved the human race, then were conquered by a more extraordinary race, but some escaped was great fun. (That's really a lesser than base description but sufficient). They could always come up with a new bad guy, because nobody knew how many were still lurking on Earth and as each one got older, they took over a new body and their mind continued, so they continued down through the centuries.
About once a season, two or three members of the main crew had a love affair but on the whole, it was an action packed hour every week. I miss it dreadfully and am waiting for the final movie.

Anne

Eureka. Eureka. Eureka!

We've talked about this one on its own thread. It's my favorite of the newer sci-fi shows, and I do sincerely hope it's coming back. Clever premise, excellent acting and witty scripts.

I do enjoy The Ghost Whisperer. I know it can get a little "wet," as the British say, but it's less groan-inducing than, say, Highway to Heaven or Touched By An Angel. The main attraction for me is J. Love Hewitt, who I do like, and who seems finally to have learned to act, after a wobbly start as a youngster. She is one of the least objectionable young glamor girls on TV, IMO (and one of the few who still has her original nose).

The series is still uneven, though; some of the shows have been pretty lame, but some have been quite good.

Judith:

I wish they would enlarge Camryn's parts. She is such a darn good actress, and she could really enhance the plots sometimes. At least they've finally let her in on the secret.

Anne

I'm hoping the same - Camryn adds some gravitas to the proceedings (and have you noticed the weight loss?). I'm still iffy about Jay Mohr - I don't think he's quite "found" his character yet.

Does anybody remember The Invaders from the 60's. I haven't seen it since I was a child but I remember these aliens who were on Earth who looked exactly like Earthlings except for something to do with their pinky (the memories a bit foggy here). They were planning on gradually taking over the planet until the hero discovered what they were up to. He then had to frantically get anyone else to believe that he wasn't crazy so that he could save the world. Sound familiar?

cinemalover wrote:Does anybody remember The Invaders from the 60's. I haven't seen it since I was a child but I remember these aliens who were on Earth who looked exactly like Earthlings except for something to do with their pinky (the memories a bit foggy here). They were planning on gradually taking over the planet until the hero discovered what they were up to. He then had to frantically get anyone else to believe that he wasn't crazy so that he could save the world. Sound familiar?

The thing was, they didn't have pinkies, as I recall. Sort of like alien yakuzas. Did those aliens ever take the show's star, Roy Thinnes, away? I thought they might have, since I didn't see him again for 35 years, until he (and probably the same aliens) appeared on The X Files.

Another current sci-fi show that I am coming to really enjoy is Torchwood, which runs on BBC America. It is a spin-off of the long-running Doctor Who series though has little to do with it. They are just starting to show season 2 on BBC America now (and it's on On-Demand if you have Comcast). I wasn't crazy about it at first but stuck with it through all 13 first season episodes and by the end it had really grown on me. It's about a secretive team that fights off alien invasions from their London base of operations. The public has no idea of what they're doing or that there is ever any alien threat. Good special effects and clever storylines.

I think THE INVADERS is hitting DVD shelves sometime in May, 2008. I remember it was heavy on promise, very short on delivery. It was cool to see the aliens turn to glowing dust, but I got pretty tired of the BEWITCHED syndrome, over and over.

(That's where one person has some power or some knowledge and everyone refuses to believe all the repeated history to either let them use it, believe them because it would expedite things, or at least stop harrassing them for it. It's sometimes confused with the Gilligan's Island Syndrome - where you watch the screen for 30 minutes, and nothing ever changes. With INVADERS and THE FUGITIVE, it was a 60-minute sit-and-watch.)

However, my cold-shower memories of it isn't stopping me from being the "first one on my block" to buy it. Wheee. "Good taste? We don' need no steenkin' good taste..."

i gotta believe the best tv sci-fi series ever was
"Science Fiction Theatre"
unfortunately it requires someone too old to vote to remember it

hal

Hi Hal - I too was a fan of SCIENCE FICTION THEATER...with your host, Truman Bradley. Back in Detroit it was in perpetual reruns all through the 60s, although I'm pretty certain it ceased production in the 50s. Not particularly exciting or graphically dramatic the way TWILIGHT ZONE and OUTER LIMITS were, but enormously entertaining and interesting nonetheless.
Here, for anyone who cares, is a complete episode from 1955, broken into three parts...
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