Boston.com's top 50 SF TV Shows - RonO's Ramblings

Thanks to looking at the current MT VOID, I found a link to Boston.com's (the website of the Boston Globe listing of their take on the top 50 SF TV shows of all time. although I have to respect their opinion's, I also have to disagree on some of them:

Working, like their site does, up from the bottom (more or less)

#41 -- Futurama. Without trying to compile my own complete list, I'm not sure where I'd rank it, but this has to be at least somewhere above #25, in the top half of the list.

#31 -- Alien Nation. The same comment as Futurama; definitely in the top 25 somewhere.

#27 -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and #26 Stargete Atlantis. Both should be higher. I'd put both ahead of Wonder Woman (#24) and Tales from the Crypt (#23).

#22 -- Andromeda. While the first season was pretty good, I quit watching after it turned into "The Kevin Sorbo Show," abandoning most of the serial aspects and changing -- sometimes radically -- some of the characters. Since I quit watching, it might have gotten better, but when I abandoned it, it seemed like the ego of the lead actor had become the show runner. (FWIF, I also refer to CSI: Miami as "The David Curuso Show" for similar reasons).

#21 -- Quantum Leap. One of my all-time favorite shows, and one that doesn't age as badly as many others. I'd put it somewhere in my personal top ten. Definitely above much of what follows.

#17 -- Firefly. One of only two TV shows I have the entire run of on DVD. Time and schedules being what they are, I haven't watched all of them yet (and we're off to see Serenity this weekend, even if we haven't seen the unaired episodes yet). I'd put it in my top 10.

#14 -- Star Trek Voyager. This ranks above Firefly!? And, based on their lack of listings, it also ranks above Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and Enterprise. Voyager is, in my opinion, the worst of the Star Trek series. It was plagued by bad writing, a constant need to hit the reset button, and the desire to appeal to horny teenage SF fans. This is the only Trek I chose to stop watching. (I also missed a lot of DS9 because I kept loosing track of where it was on the schedule; or having conflicts. If TiVO had been around in its day, I doubt I'd have missed an episode).

#10 -- Sliders. While I wouldn't rank it above Quantum Leap, this was a very good show for about half of its run. The first (short) and second seasons were great. The third season was so-so until John Rhys-Davies left, then it stank so bad I gave up on it. The fourth (first SciFi Channel) season was just a bit below the first two seasons, and did a lot to fix the character of Maggie Beckett (I think that was her name) who should not have been the T&A Bimbo she was in the second half of the third season. The fifth season (second SciFi Channel) season was only slightly better than the latter parts of the third season, and hardly felt like the same show with only one of the original characters still around.

Missing entries: Where are Star Trek DS9, Enterprise, and Farscape? All of these would be in my top 50, and probably in the upper part.

So, just for grins, I'm going to try to do my top 17 (why 17, that was how many shows I typed in to rank). Of course this list is based on my impressions at this point in time.

From top to bottom:

 Title				Rank
 Firefly			1
 Farscape			2
 Battlestar Galactica (2004)	3
 Babylon 5			4
 Star Trek: DS9			5
 Star Trek: TNG			6
 Star Trek (TOS)		7
 Quantum Leap			8
 Stargate SG-1			9
 Buffy The Vampire Slayer	10
 Stargate Atlantis		11
 Angel				12
 Dark Angel			13
 Sliders			14
 Dr Who				15
 X-Files			16
 Enterprise			17