Some friends and I occasionally get together to watch a sci-fi marathon together and recently we have been unable to find anything that seems worth watching which we have not already seen.
We’re in such a shortage of watchable material that we’ve started watching a couple of episodes of the appallingly bad stuff and then more of the stuff that wasn’t good enough to watch in and of itself. And surprisingly it worked the one time we tried it. Theres nothing like an hour and a half of Starhunter to make some mediocre 7 Days episodes so much more enjoyable.
If anyone has any suggestions for good series to watch it would be appreciated. I’ve listed all the ones we’ve seen or can’t see because we’ve discarded them or seen them individually. At least the ones I can remember. We don’t watch the cartoon series like Cowboy Beebop in the marathons although we might watch them personally, so things of that type are not of any use.
Thanks :)
Enjoyed a lot: Andromeda (season 1 and 2) - Great storyline. Very consistent quality. After these seasons we lost interest with the change in direction/quality. First Wave - Gave up when it reached the time travel storyline elements. 7 Days - Enjoyed it a lot despite the time travel premise but the appeal eventually wore off. Seemed like the quality of the episodes decreased. Space Above and Beyond - This was very good.
Ok, but not marathon-worthy: Earth 2 - Enjoyed the storyline setting up the series, but lost interest when the story was basically the stupid little girl doing stupid things to get the stupid people that kept her round into stupid situations.
Stunk: Starhunter - Inane episodes. 30 year old woman playing an unbelievably stupid teenager.
We’ve also seen these (between us) outside of the marathons: Alias - Liked. Bablylon 5 - Liked. Battlestar Gallactica 2003 - Liked. Looking forward to more. Battlestar Gallactica (old) - Too old to appreciate except for nostalgic reasons.[/b] Blakes 7 - I’ve seen this, they haven’t which rules it out. Farscape - Liked, especially the storyline episodes before the end. Firefly - Liked, where it wasn’t western dressed up as sci-fi. Jeremiah - Liked. Lexx - Liked but not marathon worthy. Red Dwarf - Liked. Stargate SG1 - Liked. Star Trek - We’ve seen them all. X-Files - Seen them all. Everyone but me hates them.
You’ve covered a lot of the good stuff already. Sadly, good sci-fi TV doesn’t come along very often. You might want to check out Babylon 5–I didn’t see that in your list. Er… how about Doctor Who? You could do a marathon of the Tom Baker years. Beyond that, I’m drawing a blank.
I’m currently making my way through Babylon 5 for the first time (just started Season 3) and its incredible. I had no idea that sci-fi of this scale could be done on TV, much less on a budget much lower than the Trek series of the time.
For some reason I suddenly got nostalgic for the days when the Sci Fi channel had a pretty good friday night line-up, ranging over the years from Invisible Man to Farscape.
What, no mention of Doctor Who? Good cheesy fun, that.
let me add a vote for firefly to. My wife and I really like invisible man when it was on, shame that’s not on dvd. We watch stargate sg-1 every week to, has some nice arc to it. Babylon 5 still is my favorite scifi series, though it did have it’s faults. It would be great for marathons though, you can really see how everything was tied together.
My wife and I just sat through the Firefly DVD over the past few weeks, having never seen it during its original run on TV, and we both loved it. Can’t wait for the movie.
I’d put B5 and Firefly on the list of things to see if you’ve never done so.
I’d avoid Space Above and Beyond because I think it’s retarded and stupid. I could count the ways, but don’t want to. That’s just me though.
I have no idea if they are still running (I don’t get Showtime) but besides SG-1 there’s Jeremiah (post-apocalyptic I gather) and Odyssey 5 (has Peter Weller in it, which may or may not turn you off).
There’s a new sci-fi (read: in the future) show on CBS next week I think called Century City. Looks dumb. Lawyer show where cases always center around new funky technologies.
If you like police/crime dramas, get an entire season of The Wire and run that from start to finish (preferably the first, followed by the second). This is a great show and is basically one long story arc.
The evil computer badgirl thingy taking over every computer! Even toasters!
Overclocking one of the good guy’s computers, (which was nothing more than a case with a bunch of random hardware GLUED to the outside) by putting it into an aquarium filled with half an inch of antifreeze?
I also really enjoyed the two Dune mini-series that were on Sci-Fi a while back, both are on DVD. I think the first series is the stronger of the two, but the last ten minutes or so of the second series first part is some of the most powerful stuff I’ve ever seen on TV.
