Ten Science Fiction Shows That Never Got Any Respect

Science fiction shows can build a devotional following in nothing flat.  If a science fiction or genre show hooks you, you don’t want to let it go.  You want it to last for years and years and years, even if the actors playing the main characters leave the show and are replaced by other actors.

And those shows develop a heavily devoted following.  Whovians.  Trekkies.  MSTies.  Even the occasional annoying Browncoat or two.

But for every sci-fi show with a following that will go ape any time a rumor starts about their favorite show returning to the airwaves, there are several shows that never got that same respect – despite having very entertaining storylines and advanced concepts.

BLAKE’S 7

Lost among all the love for Doctor Who and its spinoffs was this series created by Doctor Who writer Terry Nation. Blake’s 7 were a band of intergalactic freedom fighters, hoping to take down the mighty Federation (which, on this show, are the bad guys). This was not a team of Robin Hoods; it was more like the Dirty Dozen. Blake had been framed for child molestation, Avon was a computer mastermind who stole millions of credits from the Federation’s holdings; Vila was a burglar who could pick any lock, etc. The team didn’t like each other, and were only bound by their common goal of survival. In this show, main characters were killed off – even Blake himself died in the final episode. This fan-created clip is from the second season of Blake’s 7 – which many of its fans say was the best of the show’s four seasons.

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL

David McCallum (NCIS) and Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) played two inter-dimensional beings with the ability to adjust time and space. How this show survived for six “assignments” on a miniscule budget is beyond me. But it definitely has its fans and they would go nuts if Sapphire and Steel ever came back to television. This is a recap of one of their “assignments,” “Escape Through the Crack in Time.”

QUARK

Richard Benjamin is the captain of his own space ship. Oh, did I happen to mention that the space ship’s primary purpose in life is to clean up all of space’s garbage and trash? This was an NBC summer replacement series in the mid-1970’s, and it seems to spoof Star Trek and Star Wars with equal aplomb. Of course, the best part of this series was the Betty clones – played by twins Tricia and Cyb Barnstable – one of the Betties was a clone, but neither one would admit to being so. Here’s ten minutes of Quark’s pilot episode.

HOMEBOYS IN OUTER SPACE

There’s nothing wrong with goofing on the sci-fi genre. And this show did plenty of goofing on it. It also cheezed off a lot of science fiction fans, especially those of the show Red Dwarf (the Homeboys show had a disembodied head as the control unit of their spaceship, just as Red Dwarf did) and fans of the show Star Trek (because actor James Doohan played a character on Homeboys named “Pippen” for a few episodes – ha ha, Pippen, get it?).

DOLLHOUSE

As far as I’m concerned, you can have your Buffy and you can have your Angel.  This sci-fi show from Joss Whedon was the one that should have gotten the same amount of respect.  Thankfully, it did last two seasons and the storyline was resolved. Eliza Dushku played “Echo,” a member of an organization who are brain-programmed to be anything you want them to be – lovers, fighters, anything.  Yes, the show had two seasons, but I think the second season was more like five years of shows packed into thirteen episodes.  But hey, I’ll take what I can get.

SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND

For one season on Fox, our planet was attacked by an alien race.  And the only organization that could save us was an organization of Space Marines. The show only lasted for a single season, but it still was an entertaining thrill ride, nonetheless.

UFO

From Gerry Anderson, creator of such puppet-centric shows as Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, came this live-action series about a mysterious organization that protects Earth from alien invaders. The show lasted for about a year, there were some plans to create a second season of the show, but the budget just wasn’t there. A few years later, the show was reconceived by Anderson as the sci-fi drama “Space: 1999.” Here’s the first 15 minutes of UFO’s debut episode.

ODYSSEY 5

A Space Shuttle crew watches helplessly as the Earth is destroyed. And then, the crew are rescued by an entity called the Seeker – who is trying to find out who is destroying all the planets in the solar system. The crew is sent back five years in time, and must find clues to prevent the cataclysm from happening again. The show lasted for about 20 episodes, and it definitely had its moments. I wish it could have received a more solid run, but even Showtime – where the show aired – can’t promise to bankroll a five-year-plan if the ratings aren’t there.

SEAQUEST DSV

Okay, Steven Spielberg makes fantastic movies, but his TV shows haven’t done as well. Seaquest DSV was an attempt to create a sci-fi show along the same lines as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek. The show had futuristic concepts, it had talking dolphins, and it had a fanbase. Of course, it didn’t help that NBC kept meddling with the way the show was written, kept pre-empting it for sporting events, and kept moving it around the schedule like a pawn on a chessboard… but it did get 2 1/2 seasons completed before it was finally cancelled.

ALIEN NATION

Kenneth Johnson has always taken genre shows and turned them into parables about society; his original sci-fi take on “V” was a retelling of the Nazis occupying Europe in World War II, with the Nazis as the alien “visitors.”  In this series, he focused on racial relations and racial purity, as the alien “Newcomers” become Earth’s new minority population, and the relationships they have – both good and bad – with Earth-dwellers.  The show only lasted a single season, but there were five TV movies afterward that wrapped up the story rather nicely.