Television

There are plenty of blog posts listing history's most "under-rated" science fiction television shows, but this is one list that I think stands out. Not only does it list series that deserve to be on the list like Earth 2 and Max Headroom, but it has several other titles which you may have forgotten or never even heard about.

And speaking of Max Headroom, the short-lived, but influential, TV series has finally been released on DVD. Does the show live up to the reputation that has been built up for it by fans over these long decades? According to this reviewer, it does. Best of all, she promises to write episode-by-episode reviews as she works her way through the boxed set.

While shows like the X-Files and Batman are remembered by most science ficion fans, there are many crossover episodes which have been largely forgotten except by die-hard TV watchers. These are instances when characters from one show would appear on another. Do you remember when Millennium met the X-Files or when Batman and the Green Hornet crossed paths. Here's a list of 11 such meetings to get you running to your video collection.

A Chicago newspaper editor once instructed his Civil War correspondants "when there is no news, send rumours."  He obviously foresaw the era of internet journalism.

The latest rumour that isn't news is a tidbit from the Sun in the U.K. that the latest Doctor Who, Matt Smith, will stick around for just one more season before taking off for Hollywood to try his hand at being a movie star. It's worked so well for all of the other actors who've played Doctor Who. (That last line is me being sarcastic.)

Although there is a Hollywood rumour about a former Doctor Who actor who may have a major role in an upcoming film. There's talk that Sylvester McCoy may play Bilbo Baggins in the planned Hobbit movie. At this point, I'd be happy to just have it made. There so much disarray within MGM that it might never happen.

I do like one viewer's comment on Smith's departure from Doctor Who. Bring Christopher Eccleston back. He's the guy who lasted only one season before he took off for brighter lights. Now that would be a new twist for the show.

When the American Sci Fi channel rebranded itself to SyFy, not everyone was happy about the move, but from a branding and business perspective, it made a lot of sense, especially in the world of online search where a generic term like sci fi is going to turn up a lot of websites, whereas SyFy is more distinctive.

The creator of SyFy Portal, the website that relinquished the rights to the brand, takes a look back at the one-year anniversary of the switch, congralutes the network for its success and pats himself on the back for having come up with such a brilliant name.

The reality is that the brand name allowed them to get away from actually programming much science fiction in an effort to appeal to a broader audience. The core science fiction fans who were turned off by the move are now mobilizing an effort to create a channel which actually programs the genre that they love and not reality shows and wrestling.

I can back that idea, but do they actually need a television channel? Some independent producers of television shows are now looking at the web as their method of distribution, bypassing the networks completely. The most recent example is the slick sci-fi show called Pioneer One which was designed to be distributed as a torrent file.

Why not create a TV "channel" which distributes science fiction shows online the way that VODO does with indie filmmakers?

Is the time right for another Star Trek television series?

This blogger makes a compelling case for its return and offers up some suggested scenarios for a new series. Of course, the big question is when should it be set? Should it pick up where Voyager or Enterprise left off or should it be part of the alternate time line created by the latest film?

I've always thought that an anthology approach would be a good one, something along the lines of the Outer Limits or Twilight Zone. I'm not saying that the stories need to be horror-tinged and weird like those stories, but merely have each episode be a standalone story with new characters each time. The Federation is a big place and it would be easy to come up with new stories and characters to populate each episode.

Other fans are pining for Star Trek and it's not the usual suspects. Here's a philosopher who explains why he finds the show so compelling.

Star Trek certainly has its admirers. You won't be surprised to learn that three of the different Trek series make it on to Crave Online's list of top 10 sci-fi TV shows. You may be surprised, though, to learn that the highest any of them ranks is third.

You can click on the link above to look at a pretty picture for each series and generate 10 page views for Crave's advertisers, or you can read this list:

10. stargate SG-1
9. Blake's 7
8. Firefly
7. Star Trek: The Next Generation
6. Star Trek: Deep Space 8
5. Battlestar Galactica
4. Babylon 5
3. Star Trek
2. Farscape
1. Doctor Who

Farscape at the number 2 spot? How about the X-Files?

A new documentary is on the way that explore Star Trek fandom which is called Trek Nation. By the sounds of it, it is not a freak show like Trekkies was, but a more studied look at what makes Trek endure after four decades.

If you would consider using this Star Trek communicator case to hold your mobile phone, then you'll surely want to watch the documentary.

In the lean years between the end of the original Star Trek series and the first movie, fans turned to tie-in novels. Trek novels were among the earliest media tie-in books, but there were several others. This fascinating essay from IO9 looks at the history of this phenomenon which is more popular than ever before.

Whenever I watch Star Trek, my favourite episodes are the ones that feature gigantic space battles with fleets of spacecraft ranged against each other or even the one-on-one fights that would pit the Enterprise against some alien foe.

Sadly, the reality of space battles is a lot different than what would happen in Star Trek. This scientist explains the physics of space battles for you.

There  has been some concern that the number of science fiction shows on television is decreasing. The most recent cancellation is Heroes and there is talk that Flash Forward is done.

One interesting suggestion on how to correct that is to stop splurging on high-cost special effects and bring more cheap, but good, shows to the screen.

But not everyone agrees with that idea. Some say that what we really need is a serious, high-quality, cinematic science fiction series, much like the dramas that run on the cable channels HBO and Showtime.

It seems that those ideas are mutually exclusive, but I suppose they don't have to be.

I've always liked how British television produces science fiction, and other shows. Instead of having 20+ episodes for a series each year and running it for as many years as people are willing to watch it, British networks offer annual series with half or a third the number of episodes and often don't run them for more than a few years or for a fixed period like a mini-series.

For example, there's a new show in the works called Outcasts which is scheduled to have a run on the BBC of only 8 episodes in its first year. Actually, the show's premise sounds a bit like Earth 2, but the long list of stars in it, including Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber, make it sound like something worth watching.

Not sure if it's going to be broadcast anywhere outside of the U.K., but there are ways to watch the BBC Player from outside of Blighty.

In the U.K., Doctor Who can do no harm so when a popular author like Terry Pratchett publicly criticizes the show, it creates a bit of a stir. The Guardian reported on it as did the Telegraph. Needless to say, the story generated a predictable backlash.

Pratchett wrote in a guest column for SFX magazine that he thought the show's science to be rather ludicrous and criticized some of its flimsier plots, although he did concede that he enjoyed the series just as much as everyone else. He only wished that it wasn't classified as science fiction.

If flimsy plots and bad science were the criteria for removing the science fiction label from a television show or books, there would be a whole lot less science fiction in the world, not to mention entertaining science fiction.

If you're thinking that there are fewer science fiction shows on TV that there used to be, you are right, at least if you believe this fascinating infographic which plots the rise and fall of sci-fi on the boob tube.

The creator of the graph says he analyzed a database of 1,000 SF TV shows over the past 70 years and plotted a trend which clearly shows that science fiction is on the wane, having peaked several years ago before the advent of reality TV. However, someone else has done a similar statistical exercise and his conclusion was that we're actually seeing more science fiction on TV than ever before. I guess it only demonstrates that you can prove anything with statistics.

Don't think that genre television is going to disappear from the airwaves any time soon. A number of new shows are in the works for the coming season and this site takes a look at some of them and their odds for success.

One show that is coming, at least some day, is the next Star Wars animated series. If you believe the rumours, it might be set in the time after Return of the Jedi and feature some of the characters we know and love from the original films. Now if only those other reports that the series is also meant to be a sitcom turned out to be lies.

As for current sci-fi shows enjoying success you can look at Fringe. Science fiction stalwart Peter Weller appeared on the show recently and he's been enjoying it.

I think that the biggest trend, and it will ultimately prove to be a positive one, is the migration of viewers from broadcast television to the web. As the number of outlets increase, the number of shows will increase and, ultimately, the number of science fiction shows will increase.

It looks like FlashForward's ambitious five-year story arc won't go beyond its first year. Its ratings were falling then ABC decided to put it on hiatus for several months before bringing it back and it seems people forgot about it because the ratings are not improving and it looks like it will get axed.

Cutting the TV season into two chunks with several months in between seems to be a growing trend with networks, but I'm not so sure it works. It may not harm a well-established show, but I think it hurts fledgling series. What do you think?

I have to confess that I haven't actually watched FlashForward yet, but have been diligently saving episodes for future viewing. My question now is should I bother since there won't be any kind of resolution?

Maybe I'll just stick to watching complete runs of successful shows like this list of the top 10 best sci-fi and fantasy shows. There's only three shows on the list for which I've seen every episode which means there's lots of good TV there to be seen and I don't have to worry about the shows getting cancelled on me in mid-season.

One of the shows in the top 10 list is The Twilight Zone, a series that I watched a lot as a kid, but haven't revisted since.

Let's hope that the announcement that an upcoming Star Wars comedy television series is an April Fool's joke that was late in arriving. Sure, Star Wars has been the butt of many a joke and there are numerous satires poking fun at the series, but to deliberately play it for laughs is too much. What's next, the Star Wars Holiday Special II?

I suspect the only people who would bother watching such an abomination are the Star Wars obsessed. Here's a list of 10 signs that reveal whether you are so afflicted.

If you see yourself in that list, then you'll want to take this Star Wars audio quiz offered by Boing Boing. I scored a measly 44%, so I obviously don't fall into the obsessed category.

Speaking of obsessed, there are folks who actually profess to follow the Jedi "faith." One such follower who had been kicked out of a job centre because he was wearing a hood actually received an apology because he said he wore it because of his beliefs. Oh, brother. Equally amazing is that someone could be ejected from a public building because they were wearing a hood.

In the U.S., there are plenty of political opponents of President Barack Obama who believe he is secretly a Muslim. Perhaps he's secretly a Jedi!