RUMOUR: FIREFLY reboot under consideration for Disney+

Several less-reliable genre sites are reporting that Disney are considering resurrecting the 2002 space opera Firefly for their Disney+ streaming platform.

Disney acquired the Firefly IP when they bought 20th Century Fox last year. Firefly, created and showrun by Joss Whedon, ran for fourteen episodes in 2002 and a sequel movie, Serenity, was released in 2005. Although the show was cancelled due to disappointing ratings, it picked up a long tail on DVD and Blu-Ray, and Fox several times subsequently noted that cancelling it had been a mistake. Fox had considered resurrecting the show, but these plans seemed to fall through given the company's complex relationship with Whedon (especially after Fox developed, made and cancelled another Whedon show, Dollhouse, a few years later) and the patchy availability of the show's stars, most of whom have gone on to successful careers elsewhere.

The franchise has continued through comic book series and a superb board game, but a full-blown revival has seemed unlikely for some time.

However, the rumours suggest that Disney is considering rebooting the series from scratch as a somewhat more family-friendly show, perhaps in the vein of The Mandalorian, and tapping the same vein of space adventure. As a result, the rapist-cannibal enemies, the Reavers, are unlikely to appear and the prominent character of Inara, a courtesan, likely to be eliminated (or retrained in a different role).

I find this rumour dubious for multiple reasons. The first is that Firefly's fanbase remains, despite the passage of almost twenty years, both voluble and passionate. Rebooting the show from scratch and dropping the previous actors and continuity would go down very badly. The second is that Firefly's universe was designed from scratch to be slightly more morally murky and complex, and that's part of the show's appeal. Making it more PG (or PG-13, if you're in the USA) seems pointless. Also, whilst Firefly remains a cult hit, it's still very much not a mainstream show. The people who will be most excited about a Firefly reboot are Firefly fans, so alienating them by ditching the previous storylines and cast and crew is particularly self-defeating.

If the show was to return, bringing it back as a next-generation continuation in the same continuity with as many of the actors returning as wanted to, but with new characters doing the heavy lifting, would seem to be a much more sensible idea. This kind of project would probably not be suitable for Disney+, but could be a good match for Hulu or FX, where Disney's other non-kid-friendly properties are headed.

That said, Disney are clearly going to want to take advantage of their vastly-expanded portfolio of IPs, and Firefly would be a reasonable choice if they were looking for a science fiction franchise that hasn't already been over-exploited to the hilt. Disney might also feel that, with Joss Whedon's credibility and reputation at an all-time low, they can get away with a reboot without his involvement at this time, which was not the case a few years ago.

I'll keep my ear to the ground on this one, but I put it in the "possibly but unlikely" category for now.

Gratuitous Lists: Ten Shows That Should Be Rebooted

We live in the age of reboots. It feels like we can’t go a week or three without someone announcing a remake of a beloved, older property. From Ghostbusters (twice!) to Gremlins to Charmed to a third iteration of Battlestar Galactica, reboots are all the rage, many of them unnecessary or premature. 

But what about franchises that have been left fallow which should be rebooted, where a new version would be welcome because the original is very old, or because it was cancelled ahead of time, or because it never got enough recognition in its time? Here are ten shows which I think could rise again and be done interestingly.

Note that by the term reboot, I mean "a relaunch of an older franchise in a new form." This can be either a continuation of the original series but in a new viewer-friendly format – such as the 2005 Doctor Who and 2017 Star Trek “reboots,” and Sam Esmail’s recently-announced Battlestar relaunch – or a complete, from scratch remake of the original, such as Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica or the recent version of Charmed. Or even the rare franchise which attempts both (such as, arguably, J.J. Abrams’ 2009 take on Star Trek).

Space: Above and Beyond

Originally airing for just a single season in 1995-96, this space opera series focused on the Wildcards, the 58th Squadron of the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry, as they engaged in warfare with the alien “Chigs.” Set in 2063, the series depicts a human race who is on the ropes, their extrasolar colonies destroyed and their fleets forced back to the Solar system. It also doesn’t help that humanity also has an ambiguous relationship with the Silicates, humanoid artificial intelligences who have rebelled against their creators, and “In Vitroes,” genetically-engineered humans grown in tanks to help fight both the Silicates and the Chigs.

Space: Above and Beyond wears its influences on its sleeves – particularly the Wing Commander video game series – and, it has to be said, left much to be desired in terms of writing, acting and worldbuilding, particularly the fact that the main characters are simultaneously both elite fighter pilots and experienced ground combat troops. But there are some very good ideas in the show, with the murky three-way relationship between the humans, Silicates and “tanks” providing some interesting drama and contrasted against the alien invaders. Coming from some of the same creative team as The X-Files, the show also started exploring murky conspiracies which added some interesting depth to the show just before it ended on a huge cliffhanger. You’re also not going to forget the appearance of David Duchovny as an android pool shark in a hurry.

Some may feel that the revamped Battlestar Galactica has rendered a Space: Above and Beyond reboot pointless, as that show had a far superior grip on the nuances of space fighter pilots and where the desperate premise gave a better grounding for the idea of the pilots as multi-purpose troops, but there’s something interesting of the purity of a show which focuses so much on humans versus aliens, but has some added complexity to spice things up.

Ultraviolet

This Channel 4 mini-series aired in 1998 to immense critical acclaim and limited viewing figures, but has enjoyed a cult audience to this very day for several reasons. One of them is that it provided the first major role for Idris Elba, who plays supporting character Vaughn. Another is that it took the slightly barmy premise – vampires are real and such a threat to society that a secret government taskforce has spend decades hunting them – and treated it with earnest seriousness. The result is something that feels closer to The X-Files or a spy thriller than a traditional horror series or Buffy, with fantastic writing and direction from Joe Ahearne.

The cast was exceptional, with a pre-Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Davenport and a pre-True Blood Stephen Moyer leading a spectacular roster also including Elba, Susannah Harker and the fantastic Philip Quast (as the morally ambiguous leader of the taskforce), and with the vampires treated more like a disease or force of nature than forces of handsome temptation…at least until the last two episodes, which do much to make the premise and the nature of the enemy more questionable. An attempted American reboot of the show in 2000 failed to go beyond a pilot, although it did introduce Elba to American casting producers and set the scene for his casting in The Wire two years later.

This feels particularly ripe for a reboot. We’ve had a whole string of slightly campy and funny vampire shows in the last decade or so, but nothing with the menacing energy and total conviction that Ultraviolet had, and it’d be interesting to see it go beyond the first season into the more apocalyptic tone the series seemed to be setting up at the end.

Firefly

I mean, no list like this is going to be remotely complete without at least mentioning the great “missed opportunity” of 2000s space operas, Firefly. Joss Whedon’s much-admired (if thematically-challenged; why are we rooting for the Space Confederates again?) space western lasted only 14 episodes in 2002 before Fox managed to kill it through a combination of corporate politics and inept scheduling, but immense DVD sales saw it brought back as the moderately successful movie Serenity in 2005. Comics, a roleplaying game and a very successful board game have kept the name alive, with both Fox and several streaming services saying they’d be happy to consider a new iteration of the series.

Whedon himself is busy at HBO with a new project, The Nevers, and most of the cast is in demand elsewhere, so this is probably off the cards for a few more years, but it’d be interesting to revisit the ‘Verse. A remake seems unnecessary, given that the original cast was mostly pretty young when they made it (Jewel Staite and Summer Glau are still only in their 30s, Morena Baccarin only recently turned 40), so a relaunch sent 15-20 years after the events of Serenity with a presumably very different ‘Verse in play would be the way to go, perhaps a “getting the crew back together” story when a new threat arises. Moreso than a lot of the shows on this list, there's unfinished business here.

American Gothic

No, not the weak-arsed 2016 show, but the terrifying semi-supernatural drama which aired for one, memorable season in 1995-96. Created and written by Shaun Cassidy, produced by Sam Raimi and starring a frankly disturbing Gary Cole (keen to fight back against his “cuddly dude” image from Midnight Caller), who may or may not be the devil, or a servant of the same, American Gothic was a glorious mash-up of Southern Americana and Stephen King on steroids.

Cole played Sheriff Lucas Buck, the seemingly easy-going sheriff of Trinity, South Carolina who collects favours from the townsfolk in return for his help, and then collects in a brutal and often-unexpected fashion. As the season continues, the serialised story evolves into a war for the soul of Caleb Temple (Lucas Black), a young orphan boy with unusual powers. Buck tempts him towards evil, but reporter Gail Emory (Paige Turco) and Dr. Matt Crower (Jake Weber) try to keep him on the side of good. The townsfolk find themselves caught up in the struggle, which starts as a slow-burning, subtle struggle before becoming more apocalyptic as the season goes on.

Way ahead of its time, some of American Gothic’s Southern-drenched horror atmosphere resurfaced in HBO’s True Blood, although that show arguably overdid the camp and humour to negate much of the dramatic impact of the premise. If someone brought back American Gothic with just the right tone, this could be a huge hit.

Dark Skies

As The X-Files ground its way through the 1990s and it became increasingly clear that the writers were making stuff upon the fly with no pre-planning, fans began to wonder what would happen if it had been written by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, famed for his mastery of foreshadowing and setting up plot points years ahead of time to make a much more cohesive storyline.

Dark Skies attempted to answer that question. Written by occasional Straczynski collaborator Bryce Zabel (along with Brent Friedman), the show had a pre-planned five-season arc that was going to unfold across decades. The first season spans almost a full ten years, from 1961 to 1969, and focuses on FBI agent John Loengard (Eric Close) and his wife Kimberly Sayers (Megan Ward) as they uncover evidence that the Roswell incident was real, and the beginning of a clandestine alien attack on Earth by the so-called “Greys.” Top-secret US agency Majestic-12 was formed to fight against the alien invaders, led by Frank Bach (a magnificent J.T. Walsh), but the long war has made the organisation ruthless and paranoid, trampling over civil rights and the Constitution.

As the season progressed, it pitted Loengard and Sayers against the aliens, their possessed human slaves and into an ambiguous relationship with Majestic-12, sometimes as allies and sometimes as enemies. Halfway through the season there was something of a rejig of the premise, with Kimberly being taken over the aliens and it being revealed that the Greys are just a front, with the real enemy being a parasitic species called the Ganglions, who have taken control of most of the Greys and use them as slaves. Towards the end of the season there was also an unexpected alliance formed between Majestic-12 and its Russian counterpart, with Juliet Stuart (a pre-Voyager Jeri Ryan) joining the team as a liaison, and the intriguing hint that the Cold War was actually just a feint created by the US and Soviet governments to believe that humanity was weaker than it really was.

The plan for future seasons was fascinating, with the second season expected to cover the period 1970-76, the third season 1977-86 and the fourth season in 1987-99, culminating with a full-scale Ganglion invasion. The fifth season, set in real-time (2000-01) would have depicted the fight back against the invaders. Obviously, these never happened.

With its rich period detail and a much greater sense of narrative direction than The X-Files, it’s a shame that the show was dismissed as just a knock-off. A remake of the same premise now would be extremely interesting.

Babylon 5
Speaking of Babylon 5, it’s entirely possible that J. Michael Straczynski’s own magnum opus, which aired five seasons from 1993 to 1998, could be due a reassessment. With its complex, rich five-year storyline and its cast of impressive, flawed protagonists, Babylon 5 certainly felt at least twenty years ahead of its time and was seriously underrated during its time on the air.

Some may argue that remaking Babylon 5 is redundant: the show completed its storyline (unlike most of the shows mentioned here) and aired 110 episodes, seven TV movies and half a season of a spin-off before wrapping up. B5 has also been influential on the current run of space operas, particularly The Expanse (Daniel Abraham has acknowledged his huge love of the show). But whilst that’s true, it’s also true that getting modern audiences to watch the original series is increasingly difficult. There’s no sign that Warner Brothers are interested in a HD remaster, and in many respects the show has not aged as well as it might have done. The first and last seasons are both very rough, and the guest cast could be particularly ropey. The original cast was, of course, fantastic but a sadly astonishing number have passed away very young, making a sequel series or continuation almost impossible to consider.

At its heart Babylon 5 was an epic space opera custom-designed for the small screen. A reboot handled in the right, respectful way (with Straczynski’s involvement and reusing the original cast in new roles where appropriate) could become the Game of Thrones of science fiction (and it’s worth nothing that George R.R. Martin was a huge fan of Babylon 5). Unfortunately, it sounds like Warner Brothers are not interested in the idea, at least for now.

Macross/Robotech

Back in 1982, Studio Nue and Shōji Kawamori created a hugely influential animated show: Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The show depicted an alien spacecraft crash-landing on Earth in the South Pacific, alerting the planet (then on the cusp of a Third World War) of the existence of possibly hostile alien life. Humanity rebuilt the starship, the Super Dimensional Fortress (or SDF-1), but when they reactivated the hyperdrive, they gave away the ship’s position to the Zentraedi, who were searching for it. After a pitched battle, the SDF-1’s hyperdrive misfired, delivering it (and 70,000 refugees from a nearby island) to the orbit of Pluto. With the hyperdrive apparently burned out, the ship had to head back to Earth on normal rocket power, which took two years.

During this period the crew fought numerous battles with the Zentraedi, who wanted to capture the ship intact and thus were constantly fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. The story featured both soap-opera-ish developments among the humans of the SDF-1 and within the Zentraedi fleet, as well as epic battles and huge revelations about the nature of the fortress, humanity and the aliens. A final pitched battle sees Earth mostly destroyed and the surviving humans and Zentraedi forced to work together to survive in the aftermath.

In 1985 the series was bought by Harmony Gold in the USA, but they deemed it too short for syndication. It was combined with two other unrelated-but-similar-looking shows (Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada) to create a whole new show, Robotech. Drawing mostly on the Macross material for its backstory, Robotech expands the storyline to some thirty years after the original series, giving the Zentraedi a new master race (the Robotech Masters) and their own nemeses (the Invid) and exploring further conflicts with these two races. There was also an aborted spin-off, The Sentinels, depicting the original Macross characters taking the fight into space (and explaining their absence from the other series).

Macross itself also gained a large number of spin-off series in Japan, including the non-canonical Macross II, the prequel series Macross Zero and various sequels, including Macross Plus, Macross 7 and Macross Delta. Due to legal disputes between the Japanese companies and Harmony Gold, these latter series have not been released in the west. However, thanks to a new deal signed between the companies in 2019, there are plans to perhaps remedy this.

Both Macross and Robotech have their hardcore fans, and of course modern anime fans consider it sacrilege to rewrite and re-edit original Japanese material, so any reboot of the series would likely be contentious, whether it was a redoing of Macross or Robotech. But given Netflix’s success with relaunching Voltron and given the end of the long-running legal dispute between the US and Japanese creators, this project must be on their radar. With the much-mooted live-action version of Robotech apparently on the backburner (having gone through two directors in rapid succession), it might be time to see the SDF-1 and its crew back on the small screen again.

Rome

HBO’s epic retelling of the story of the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire to replace it was one of the most lavish TV shows ever made, with colossal sets, rich costuming and fantastic casting. It feels very much like a practice run for Game of Thrones, sharing a lot of DNA with the latter show in terms of brutal writing, graphic violence and, if anything, even more sex.

It was also short and curtailed. HBO aired two seasons in 2005 and 2007, but were left high and dry when the BBC bailed on cofunding a third season. HBO panicked at the show’s huge budget and dropped it, only to later recant after huge DVD sales and increased viewing figures through the second season’s run. By the time HBO felt ready to remount it, the moment had passed and the in-demand cast (including Kevin McKidd, James Purefoy and Polly Walker) had scattered to numerous other projects.

There are various options for a rebooting of the show. One idea might be to simply remake the original with a new cast (and perhaps a bit more fidelity to actual history, such as using Clodia rather than Atia and depicting the Battle of Philippi as the complex, multi-week campaign it really was), since the stories of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Mark Antony and Cleopatra are of course timeless.

A more interesting idea might be to pursue the notion that HBO themselves had five or six years ago which never took off. The original Rome was going to have a time-jump in the fourth season to the time of Jesus, with the descendants of Timon (Atia’s Jewish hatchet-man in the original show) playing a key role in events. However, after the show was cancelled HBO instead considered a fresh adaptation of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God, previously adapted as a prestige BBC mini-series in the 1970s. Using the Rome sets (most of which are still standing in Italy, although some were damaged by fire in 2007), the story could be rejigged as a Rome sequel, with many characters returning in their later years of life.

UFO

In 1970, Gerry Anderson was best-known as the creator of a series of puppet shows for kids with insanely elaborate production views: Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (among many others). UFO was his first live-action project, combining real actors with his trademark elaborate sets and visual effects, courtesy of the late, great Derek Meddings.

UFO remains an outlier among Anderson’s work. It was adult, strange, paranoid, dark, grim and occasionally barking mad. If Anderson’s other shows (excepting maybe Captain Scarlet) reflected the colourful, optimistic tone of the 1960s, UFO reflected the dark side, musing on drug abuse, the PTSD of war and the paranoia that comes from fighting a secret war against an alien infiltration force.

The premise is that Earth is under attack by alien forces. Under great secrecy, an international organisation named SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation) is established to defend the planet. The defence network consists of Interceptors, space fighters launched from Earth’s moon; Skydiver, a sub-launched aerial combat craft; and rapid-response ground troops deployed from APCs. The series mostly follows operations from SHADO HQ (hidden under a film studio), where Colonel Straker (Ed Bishop) masterminds the fight against the aliens. Other characters include Colonel Foster (Michael Billington), SHADO’s newest recruit; Lt. Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), Moonbase commander; Colonel Freeman (George Sewell), SHADO’s second in command; Colonel Lake (Wanda Ventham), SHADO’s computer specialist; and Captain Carlin (Peter Gordeno), the principle Skydiver pilot.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, this may be because Julian Gollop “borrowed” elements of the premise for his 1993 video game UFO: Enemy Unknown (released as X-COM: UFO Defense in the US), which kick-started the X-COM video game franchise. This series was relaunched in 2012 with a new game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and continues today.

UFO was way ahead of its time in being dark, rather pitiless in how it killed off characters and rather realistic in how characters were promoted, reassigned or fired, with the cast moving around a lot in roles in a mere 26 episodes. As the show drew to a close, there were interesting revelations about the nature of the aliens and hints that some of the aliens wanted peace. A modern reboot of the show could be very interesting. 

Blake’s 7

At the top of almost every SF fan’s wishlist for a show to be rebooted is Blake’s 7. Created by Doctor Who writer (and creator of the Daleks) Terry Nation, the show ran for four seasons on the BBC in 1978-81. At its height it was – briefly – the biggest show on UK television, even defeating the super-popular soap opera Coronation Street in a ratings war (albeit for the series finale). This was remarkable given that Blake’s 7 was an unabashed, low-budget space opera, complete with wobbly plastic spaceships, even more wobbly sets and rudimentary visual effects.

What made Blake’s 7 work was its utter ruthlessness. The show started off with idealistic crusader Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) and amoral computer genius Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow) joining forces after being imprisoned by the totalitarian Terran Federation, a blatantly evil version of Star Trek’s Federation (to the unsubtle extent of the Federation’s symbol being the Star Trek symbol turned all the way to the extreme right). Avon and Blake escape with a motley crew of criminals and chancers, find an advanced alien starship called the Liberator and then embark on a war of retribution against the Federation. So far, so Robin Hood.

However, the show had no truck with black and white hats and clearly-drawn lines of good and evil. Blake starts off as a hero, but becomes morally compromised as he becomes more and more willing to accept civilian casualties as “justified” in the battle to pull down the Federation. At a key moment in the series, he is asked if he can accept the hundreds of thousands and probably many millions of deaths that will result from destroying the Federation’s central control computer on Earth, disrupting food and water supplies. Blake says, rather quickly, yes, “because it’s the only way I’ll know I was right.” The moral lines become even more confused when a hostile alien race from Andromeda invades the Federation at the end of Season 2, forcing Blake into an alliance of convenience with his enemies to ensure that humanity is not just wiped out altogether.

In Season 3, Blake disappears and Avon takes control of the Liberator. Initially planning to use the ship for his own selfish ends, Avon constantly finds himself drawn into idealistic struggles and loses his own sense of identity, becoming a hero against his better instincts and loathing himself for it, as he knows he is a fraud. By Season 4, Avon is clearly suffering from paranoia and possibly a personality disorder as he can no longer determine his own motivations. The series ended with what is arguably still the most shocking finale of all time, as the entire regular cast is brutally gunned down by Federation troops, just before Avon – having just murdered a returned Blake after mistaking him for a traitor – makes a futile last stand of his own, leaving his fate ambiguous.

In truth, that finale was more of a happy accident. Another season was planned, which would open with the revelation that the crew had only been stunned and imprisoned, not killed, but the BBC decided to cancel the show on a high, leaving the bloodbath finale as the show’s last word.

Plans for a relaunch have abounded for years, including a Sky One project a few years ago that seemed to fundamentally misunderstand everything about the show and was fortunately abandoned in the planning stages. Many of the relaunch plans revolved around a “next generation” story where a band of new rebels arises, inspired by the legend of Blake and Avon. Paul Darrow would have returned, sometimes in a mentorship role to the new heroes and sometimes as an enemy, having ascended to high office within the Federation. However, the sad passing of Paul Darrow earlier this year seems to have put paid to such talk, making a full remake more likely.

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Gratuitous Lists: Top Ten SFF Pilots

Five years ago, I talked about the best SFF finales, the shows that stuck their landings with good, rousing endings. Even rarer than a good ending is a good pilot, a great first episode that hooks you into a show for the duration. Many shows take a good 3-4 episodes to bed in and start getting good, so shows which are on fire from the first episode are rarer, and more valuable to networks.

Here is a list of ten of the best show-openers (in no particular order). Note that I have used "pilot" to mean "the first episode of the series" rather than the technical definition (a premiere episode filmed separately to the rest of the series, not always for public consumption).

Battlestar Galactica: The Mini-Series

Aired 8-9 December 2003

Ronald D. Moore worked on the Star Trek franchise over a decade, starting on The Next Generation in 1989 and rounding off the final season of Deep Space Nine in 1999, co-writing two movies along the way. In 2000 he joined the writing team of Star Trek: Voyager in its sixth season, but quickly found his goals for the series being thwarted. He wanted to see Voyager, trapped far from home on the other side of the galaxy, taking damage and staying damaged from episode to episode. He wanted to see more consistent characterisation, the morals of Starfleet being tested in extreme circumstances. Instead the other writers and producers wanted to hit the reset button at the end of every week.

Three years later, Moore was approached by the Sci-Fi Network (now SyFy) with an intriguing offer. They'd picked up the rights to 1978 space opera Battlestar Galactica and were developing a remake project. A previous reboot attempt, with X-Men producers Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto, had foundered in the wake of 9/11 and SyFy were now looking for a fresh take. Moore agreed to take on the project on the understanding that he wanted to make it a more gritty and adult show. Although he'd enjoyed the original show, he felt the premise had been under-valued. The destruction of twelve planets and the deaths of billions of people would have left a staggering mental scar on the survivors, not to mention raising extreme ethical concerns of how the military and civilian authorities worked together in such circumstances, not to mention the collective PTSD of having tens of thousands of people trapped in spacecraft with dwindling supplies for months or years on end.

The result was a mini-series, aired on SyFy and then NBC in 2003, which served as a backdoor pilot for a series proper. And it'd be fair to say that Moore and his team knocked it out of the park. The second the mini-series opens it feels different. Director Michael Rymer created a shaky, immediate style of shooting that put the viewer in the heart of the action. Composer Richard Gibbs used a drums-heavy sound to create a very different, military-feeling soundtrack. The actors, a mix of newcomers like Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff and industry veterans like Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, are uniformly excellent. The visual effects by CG studio Zoic are (still) amazing. Over the course of a generous three hours, the mini-series builds the world of the Twelve Colonies and then tears it down, leaving the bewildered survivors to try to escape and build a new life for themselves.

It's not the series at its best - the first episode of Season 1 and thus the next episode after this, 33, may hold that honour - but it does set up the show well and leave you wanting to watch more.

Blake's 7: The Way Back

Aired 2 January 1978

In the late 1970s, veteran TV writer Terry Nation was called in to a meeting at the BBC to discuss creating a new show. A respected writer with a huge amount of experience in the industry, he was still best-known for creating the Daleks for Doctor Who fifteen years earlier, and the BBC were hoping to tap that magic again. Nation had several ideas for crime dramas and other ideas, but the executives he was talking to seemed underwhelmed. Improvising on the spot, Nation suggested a dystopian space opera, with a band of malcontents and criminals reluctantly joining forces to escape a tyrannical government. He left with a commission to write a pilot.

Blake's 7 was developed as a conscious riposte to the relentless optimism of Star Trek; the symbol of the despotic Terran Federation is that of Star Trek's Federation but turned to the extreme right. Nation decided he didn't want to write a children's show, and instead wrote an adult, tough and at times brutal pilot script in which engineer Roj Blake is taken to a clandestine meeting of rebels against the government and learns that he was once a respected military leader, captured by the Federation and mind-wiped to be turned into a model citizen. Blake is horrified and suffers a mild mental breakdown as his real memories come flooding back. His new associates are killed in a massacre and Blake finds himself on trial on trumped-up charges of child molestation. His lawyers discover the truth and embark on a quest to clear Blake's name...with invariably fatal results. Only at the end of the episode does Blake meet some of his other soon-to-be fellow shipmates (Jenna and Vila; Avon doesn't appear until the second episode), as he is carried away from Earth on a transport, vowing to return to destroy the government.

The Way Back is uncompromising and quite astonishingly cynical, landing in tone somewhere between Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Prisoner and a waking nightmare, and light-years from the cowboy theatrics of the then recently-released movie Star Wars. It has money problems - Blake's 7 was commissioned as a replacement for contemporary crime drama Softly Softly: Task Force and given the exact same budget! - but these are mostly overcome by cunning use of industrial wastelands and locations as sets and some quite excellent model work. What remains overwhelmingly impressive is the bleak atmosphere and superb acting, particularly from Gareth Thomas as Blake. Not just a great pilot episode, this is one of the best episodes of the entire series.

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

Aired 23 November 1963

The day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the BBC started broadcasting a very unusual drama series. Commissioned as a stopgap between the Saturday sports coverage and an evening pop music show, Doctor Who was a show that combined elements of historical drama, science fiction and educational show. Its long list of creators (Sydney Newman, Anthony Coburn, C.E. Webber, Donald Wilson, Verity Lambert and David Whittaker all played a role in development) shows it was a tough concept to translate to screen, but eventually they succeeded and filmed a pilot episode.

Unfortunately, the pilot episode was a failure. The direction was off, the actors fluffed their lines several times and bits of the set broke off during filming. Unusually (because of the considerable expense), the BBC took the step of mounting a full re-shoot of the pilot, along with a partial rewrite of the script to make the characters more relatable. This time, the team hit it out of the park, crafting a remarkable 25-minute science fiction mystery series that would ultimately launch a franchise that would run for fifty-six years (and counting).

An Unearthly Child sees Coal Hill School teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright becoming concerned about the welfare of one of their students, Susan Foreman, who is quite astonishingly bright and intelligent about somethings (like science and maths) but astoundingly ignorant about others. They are bewildered to discover that she lives with her grandfather in what appears to be a junkyard. Her grandfather, who answers only to the title "Doctor," tries to escape their attention by taking refuge in a police telephone box, but the teachers follow him inside only to discover it is in fact a camouflaged space/time machine, a TARDIS. Shenanigans ensure in which they also learn that both the Doctor and Susan are aliens, exiles from another world, before the TARDIS malfunctions and carries them away from Earth, beginning an adventure that will last a long, long time.

The first episode of Doctor Who has many of the ingredients of later episodes, including a mystery and dramatic revelations, but this time they're about the Doctor himself. This was the first time people had encountered the character, or the TARDIS, and in many cases the very idea of time travel. With some impressive sets (by 1963 BBC standards), good writing and an off-beat atmosphere, not to mention a superlative performance by William Hartnell (the Doctor), which is somewhere between stern and outright threatening, An Unearthly Child sets the scene for all that has followed since.

The Expanse: Dulcinea

Aired 23 November 2015

Bringing James S.A. Corey's series of space opera novels to the screen was always going to be a big challenge, but it's one that the team at Alcon Entertainment rose to with a relish. Dulcinea introduces the setting of the 23rd Century Solar system as vividly as Ron Moore introduced the world of the Twelve Colonies in Battlestar Galactica a dozen years earlier. The attention to detail is amazing, from the lighter gravity in the asteroid settlements to the way the crewmembers of ships not under thrust have to float in zero-g. More important are the actors, with Thomas Jane as a world-weary detective and Steven Strait as the idealistic would-be hero who puts his life (and those of others) on the line to do what he considers to be right.

The result is a vivid and immediately-impactful vision of the future, and a show that starts already in fifth gear and only accelerates from there. Stunning visuals (the effects team on the show deserve all the plaudits for their clear, detailed style, and to be frank the guys creating the murky, often barely-discernible CG on Star Trek: Discovery could learn a lot from them), some excellent music and some terrific directing (the opening imagery of Julie Mao on her terror-stricken ship is now iconic) help propel the story onwards.

The Expanse is the best space opera show since - and possibly including - Battlestar Galactica and this first episode is an important part of the reason why. Remember the Cant!

Firefly: Serenity

Aired 20 December 2002

Serenity was the first episode of Firefly to be written and shot, but it was not the first to be broadcast: Fox felt the episode was low on action and pace, so they ordered Joss Whedon to create a punchier opening (resulting in The Train Job) and moved this premiere to later in the run. Of course, as this episode was the one that established what the hell was going on and introduced the characters and premise, this didn't do much but leave viewers extremely confused and switching off in their droves, leading a few weeks later to the show's cancellation.

This was a huge shame (understatement) as Serenity - not to be confused with the movie of the same name - is a splendid pilot, the best Joss Whedon has ever written. It sets up both the world and the worldview of its characters, introduces a relatively large cast and establishes a significant mystery that will run across the season. It also has to tell rollicking good story in its own right, which it does with enviable skill.

Whilst it's hard to pinpoint one reason why Firefly failed, taking it's excellent opening two hours and burying them at the end of the first season probably had a key role to play.

Lost: Pilot

Aired 22 September 2004

Costing almost $15 million, the pilot episode to Lost is still the most expensive TV pilot ever filmed. To sell the crash-landing of Oceanic Flight 815 on a remote island in the South Pacific, ABC shipped a broken-up Lockheed L-1011 to Hawaii, scattered bits of it along a beach and then, after several weeks of shooting, had to carefully remove it again. It was absurdly indulgent, but every second of the expense ends up on screen, resulting in a scene of chaos, explosions and people trying to save one another that grabbed the audience and didn't let up.

J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof's script is intriguing, setting up no less than fourteen regular characters (and several more recurring) and establishing almost all of them with some interesting character work before later episodes would do the heavy lifting of fleshing them all out via flashbacks. Excellent acting and fantastic location shooting in Hawaii added up to that rarest of things, a network TV show that looked as expensive as premium cable.

Lost's pilot shows the value of starting your show with a bang, grabbing the audience's attention, and then not letting it go.

Mr. Robot: eps1.0_hellofriend.mov

Aired 24 June 2015

Mr. Robot began life as a movie script by Sam Ismail which he developed for some time before realising that the story was too big and the characters bursting past the page count, demanding more material. Ismail reframed the two-hour movie as a ten-hour season of television, with the pilot expanding from the first thirty pages of the script.

Mr. Robot's pilot is remarkable, an intense drama blending psychology, hacking, cyberthriller and drama. Rami Malek is perfectly cast as Eliot Alderson, a man suffering from depression and loneliness who relates to people by hacking them online, even his therapist. In doing so he finds out secrets about them that they don't even know, and is able to influence their lives without them ever knowing.

Mr. Robot's pilot also has unusual rewatch value. You can watch it on the surface as the technothriller it comes across as, but after watching Season 1 you can go back with fresh information and see all the events again in a different light. A remarkable opening episode to a very unique-feeling series.

Red Dwarf: The End

Aired 15 February 1988

"Everybody's dead, Dave." The very first episode of Red Dwarf sets up a very strong premise, with Dave Lister, the lowest-ranking crewmember on the five-mile-long mining ship Red Dwarf (because the service robots have a better union than the human maintenance crew), being sentenced to spend the rest of the mission in temporal stasis after smuggling an unquarantined cat on board. This proves unexpectedly helpful when the crew is wiped out by a lethal radiation leak. Holly, the ship's AI (IQ 6,000, "the same as 12,000 traffic wardens"), steers the ship into deep space and waits for the radiation to die down to a safe background level...which takes 3 million years.

Emerging from stasis, Lister discovers his only company is the now-senile Holly, a humanoid lifeform who descended from his pregnant cat and a holographic recreation of Lister's commanding office, the painfully officious and unpleasant Arnold J. Rimmer.

It's a great premise which gets the show off to a good start (arguably the second episode, Future Echoes, is also required viewing as it sets up how the show can move beyond its limited premise), showcases the amazing cast and features some good gags. A 31-year (and counting) journey started here.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Emissary

Aired 3 January 1993

Deep Space Nine is almost certainly the finest Star Trek television series for myriad reasons, from its greater levels of serialisation to its intricate character arcs to its refusal to push the reset button at the end of each episode, but one that is oft-overlooked is the fact that it has the best opening episode in the entire franchise.

The Cage was so esoteric and weird that it put the broadcasters off and nearly killed the original Star Trek, before it came back with the (somewhat) stronger and mostly-recast second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before; the broadcasters were still unconvinced and ended up dropping in a random early Season 1 episode to kick things off instead. Star Trek: The Next Generation's Encounter at Farpoint was intriguing but clumsily-written, with the characters pale shadows of their later, more fleshed-out incarnations. Voyager's Caretaker was only okay, and Enterprise's Broken Bow started off well by promising a more low-tech approach to Star Trek that it had pretty much broken by the end of the pilot. Discovery took arguably three whole episodes to even finish off setting up its basic premise.

Emissary, though, is a much more successful episode. It opens with a literal bang, with producer Michael Piller finally apologising to fans for having to wimp out on showing the Battle of Wolf 359 from The Next Generation's Borg epic The Best of Both Worlds three years earlier (due to cost). An epic flashback depicts the desperate struggle as the Borg cut through a Starfleet armada of forty starships with contemptuous ease, Commander Ben Sisko losing his wife in the process.

The rest of the episode is fascinating. The Cardassians have withdraw their occupation force from the planet Bajor after forty years of brutal conquest, leaving massive religious and social upheavals in their wake. The Federation has stepped in to help the transition and run an orbiting Cardassian space station, but to the surprise of the Starfleet personnel, they find a hostile reception among those Bajorans who fear they've swapped one oppressor for another. It's all rather messy and a big departure from The Next Generation, where everyone is so civilised and reasonable and solves problems over cups of (Earl Grey, hot) tea and sessions with the ship's counsellor. The fact that the main cast includes a significant number of both Starfleet and non-Starfleet personnel (a first and, to date, last for the franchise) allows for more character and cultural conflict than we'd previously seen on Trek, and fuelled seven full (and mostly excellent) seasons of stories.

The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye

Aired 31 October 2010

The Walking Dead has become such a divisive and polarising show, that it's easy to forget how well-received the first episode (and most of the first season) was. Directed by Frank Darabont (that's Mr. Shawshank Redemption to you and me), the opening episode is a masterclass in slowly building tension and character interplay, particularly the exchanges between Rick and Morgan (so effective that Morgan would return to the series years later by popular fan demand).

The visuals are striking throughout, particularly the closing images of Rick riding a horse into an eerily deserted Atlanta, only to be attacked by a vast horde of walkers and forced to take refuge in a tank. It's rare to see a pilot given this level of production value, scripting and direction, and a genuine pleasure to watch.

Of course, Darabont would be forced off The Walking Dead in -contentious circumstances a year later (with litigation still continuing today), and The Walking Dead would go through so many showrunners, writing staffs and contortions of premise that the show today barely resembles how it started, but this opener remains excellent and compelling viewing.


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Gratuitous Lists: Ten Great SFF Title Sequences

The job of a good title sequence is to hook you into the story straight away and also keep you watching whilst the contractually-mandated right names are ticked off at the bottom of the screen. For a while it looked like title sequences were going the way of the dodo, with some TV shows preferring very brief title cards (the likes of Lost and Heroes), but the rise to fame of premium cable and streaming shows, with variable episode times, has made this less of an issue. Here then - not in numerical order! - are ten great title sequences from genre TV shows.

American Gods
(2017 - present)

The most recent show on this list has an unusual, dreamlike title sequence and musical score. The title sequence mixes traditional religious imagery with modern-day objects, a clear homage to the theme of the old gods versus the new. So we have a Hindu-like statue surrounded by modern drugs, the internal combustion engine and the space shuttle being treated as religious icons and, dominating all, a somewhat threatening version of the American eagle. An impressive work of art in its own right.

Babylon 5
(1993-98)

J. Michael Straczynski's space opera magnum opus was supposed to be the TV equivalent of Lord of the Rings or Dune, a vast epic story set in a thoroughly-realised setting, with each season acting as a separate book in a series of novels. In that sense he was thoroughly successful. This required each of the show's five seasons to have a different title sequence, each setting up an increasingly complex story. Composer Christopher Franke also had to come up with not just one, but five different theme tunes (he did cheat a little and repeat some motifs to great effect). The result is a title sequence and theme tune that sets each of the five seasons apart and adjusts to the changing tone of each season, moving through the worsening situation and outbreak of war in Seasons 2 and 3 to the hopeful, post-conflict tones of Season 5.

Batman: The Animated Series
(1992-95)

There have been several Batman TV series, ranging from the 1960s camp-fest starring Adam West to current crime-fighting odyssey Gotham, but the finest remains this animated series from the early 1990s. Drawing on the Tim Burton movies, the animated series is Batman in arguably its purest and most distilled form: the Caped Crusader (with occasional allies) taking down criminals mundane and super-powered. The show's art deco-inspired title sequence may be the greatest summary of what the character and his stories are all about.

Blake's 7
(1978-81)

This cult British space opera show was far, far ahead of its time (and way ahead of its budget). An adult, dark and bleak vision of the future (albeit one with fantastic hairstyles and bizarre fashion tastes), the show was about a band of freedom fighters trying to bring down a despotic government and all too often drifting over the moral border into terrorism and murder. The ground-breaking title sequence mixes live action, animation and electronic elements to depict the mix of Orwellian future dystopia and star-spanning adventures. It was revisited several times as technology improved over the course of the show's four-season run.

Cowboy Bebop
(1998)

Generally praised as one of the greatest animated series of all time, Cowboy Bebop ran for just one season and 26 episodes back in 1998, the creators at Sunrise Studios keen not to milk the product by promptly walking away and never looking back. In those 26 episodes the crew of the Bebop got involved in everything from farcical comedies to nail-biting dramas built on suspense and even horror, all to a funky soundtrack from the obscenely-talented Yoko Kanno. Okay, let's jam.

Doctor Who
(1963 - present)

Unsurprisingly - since it has run for 36 seasons across 55 years - Doctor Who has had more title sequences than any other genre show in history. No less than 17 title sequences and variations on the theme tune have introduced the show since it's began. It's more remarkable that these sequences have carried forward the same certain motifs - the chaotic swirl of the Time Vortex - even since the first one. The 1980s version notably becomes a bit more electronic and the 1987-89 version (during the Sylvester McCoy era) introduces a new recurring idea, that of the TARDIS flying past the camera, which remains a key part of the sequence into the new era. Next month we'll see the 18th version of the title sequence and music to usher in the Thirteenth Doctor, and it'll be interesting to see what they do with it.

Firefly
(2002)

From the longst-running show on the list to the shortest, Firefly ran for only 14 episodes back in 2002. Fox TV didn't understand Joss Whedon's vision, was confused by the mash-up of SF and Wild West ideas and prematurely canned the series (eventually realising their mistake when the DVD box set sales came in). The title sequence combines spaceships, action, horses and an Old West-style theme song to perfectly nail the show's atmosphere.

Game of Thrones
(2011-19)

HBO was understandably nervous before launching Game of Thrones in 2011, their first foray into fantasy fiction. Based on the most critically-acclaimed epic fantasy book series since Tolkien, with a pre-launch hype that has not been matched since, the show was clearly going to do well. But having one of the most striking title sequences of all time certainly helped, along with Ramin Djawadi's incredible theme music (which is definitely going through your head right now).

Star Trek
(1966-69)

The original Star Trek title sequence may be the most iconic in television history. Pretty simple and straightforward, with Captain Kirk telling us this is going to be a journey to the final frontier and lots of shots of the USS Enterprise flying quickly past the camera. Star Trek: The Next Generation remixed this title sequence quite effectively before Deep Space Nine brought in a new, more stately approach.

True Blood
(2008-14)

True Blood won't be fondly remembered as one of the great genre TV shows, but it did have a pitch-perfect title sequence which combined Southern Americana, religious fundamentalism, blood and sex, setting the tone of the TV show perfectly. The choice of theme song (Jace Everett's "Bad Things") ties in with this very well as well. This intro set up the show (more specifically, its first three seasons before it became a self-parodying soap opera) perfectly and may be the most HBO of all of HBO's title sequences.

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Fox open to FIREFLY reboot

In a somewhat surprising statement, David Madden of Fox Entertainment has said he is open to resurrecting Joss Whedon's TV show Firefly, but only if Whedon was involved.

Firefly ran for fourteen episodes on Fox TV in 2002 before being cancelled due to disappointing ratings. It was resurrected in 2005 for a one-off feature film, Serenity. Both the TV show and the film have gone on to be cult successes, selling millions of DVDs and Blu-Rays, as well as being successful on streaming services.

Whedon was upset with Fox's decision to terminate Firefly after they aired the show out-of-order and provided insufficient marketing for the series, vowing he'd never work with the network again. However, he later relented and returned to Fox for the series Dollhouse, which ran for two seasons in 2009-10 before being cancelled, having lost half of its viewership. Whedon was more accepting of that show's fate, feeling that Fox had given it a fairer shot. Whedon subsequently directed the hit movies The Avengers (2012) and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), as well as co-writing and producing the sleeper hit Cabin in the Woods (2012) and directing a low-budget version of Much Ado About Nothing (2012).

Whedon has ruled out further work for Marvel Studios, citing insufficient prep time for Age of Ultron, and has been writing a new film script which is reportedly a historical drama. However, he has also said he would consider returning for a Black Widow stand-alone movie.

Whedon's attitude to Firefly is more complex, having pointed out that, fifteen years later, it would be hard to simply make a second season of the show as the passage of time would have disrupted the storylines left hanging from the show and movie. Previously Whedon has also said that there is a problem that some of the Firefly actors were busy on other shows and projects, although Firefly's leading star Nathan Fillion recently became available following the cancellation of his long-running comedy drama, Castle. Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau and Sean Maher also appear to be available, but Morena Baccarin and Gina Torres have ongoing series roles at present, on Gotham and Suits respectively.

Whedon has not yet responded to the overture, but it sounds like this was a very serious offer from the people who own the rights to Firefly, and may be the most positive news in some time for the show. The question now is if Whedon is willing to consider a return to the series.

RIP Ron Glass

Actor Ron Glass, best-known for playing the role of Shepherd Book in Joss Whedon's classic space opera Firefly, has passed away at the age of 71.

Glass, a practising Buddhist, started acting in the 1970s, landing a recurring role on sitcom Barney Miller which ran from 1975 to 1982. He appeared in more series like The New Odd Couple and Rhythm & Blues. He voiced a role in the animated Disney movie Aladdin and also appeared as a guest star in dozens of American TV shows, including Star Trek: Voyager, CSI and Friends.

However, his most ardent fanbase comes from his regular role on Firefly in 2002. Shepherd Book was a main of faith and peace whose morals came into question from working alongside the crew of the Serenity. Joss Whedon hinted at a complex backstory for Book, but the show's premature cancellation meant that this was not explored further. The 2005 movie Serenity wrapped up Book's story, as he was killed off during the events of the film. However, Whedon subsequently wrote a comic book mini-series, The Shepherd's Tale, which explored Book's backstory in greater depth.

Glass's role on Firefly led to a friendship with Joss Whedon. He later appeared in two episodes of Whedon's TV show Agents of SHIELD.

Glass passed away on 25 November from respiratory failure. He will be missed.

Gratuitous Lists: The Twenty Best SF TV Shows of All Time

In the grand tradition of Gratuitous Lists, here's a look at the twenty Best Science Fiction TV Shows of All Time (that I can think of today). The list is in alphabetical order, not order of quality, nor is there a #1 choice as I'd probably have a totally different choice tomorrow. So rather than argue about arbritary placements on the list, you can instead yell at me at what got left off.


In case you're wondering, the list contains only overtly science fictional TV shows. No fantasy (that'd be another, different list) and no anime, as I'm not well-enough versed in the field. After some debate, also no superhero stuff as the SF credentials of those shows can vary wildly and there's enough of them now to make for another list.

Babylon 5

Comprises: 5 seasons (110 episodes), 6 TV movies

Aired: 22 February 1993-25 November 1998

Spin-offs: Crusade, Legends of the Rangers, The Lost Tales

Premise: In the mid-23rd Century (spanning the years 2257-62), five powerful interstellar empires and a host of smaller worlds agree to send representatives to Babylon 5, a massive space station serving as a centre for trade, diplomacy and travel. Babylon 5 is seen as the greatest hope for maintaining peace and prosperity. However, several of the major powers fall into war and civil war and the return of a powerful, engimatic and overwhelmingly hostile alien race threatens the entire galaxy. It falls to the crew of Babylon 5 to lead the fight back against overwhelming odds.

When it comes to "proper" science fiction on the small screen, Babylon 5 may represent one of the greatest achievements of the genre and the medium. Created, produced and mostly written (91 out of the 110 episodes) by hardcore, old-school SF fan and writer J. Michael Straczynski, the series is remarkable on several levels. It was the first TV show to use CGI to create all of its effects, it was the first TV show designed to tell a single story with a beginning, middle and end unfolding over a hundred episodes and it was the first (and only, until Battlestar Galactica and Farscape) American space opera TV series to go more than two seasons since Star Trek. The storylines veer from pulp to musings on hard SF ideas, but overall the series is remarkable for its consistent and broad vision which analyses everything from philosophy to religion to politics to economics. The story is told through a broad away of three-dimensional, deeply conflicted and troubled characters. Light-years from Star Trek: The Next Generation's "perfect" heroes, the show made the future more relatable, grittier and a little more human place.

The show has not aged as well as some others on this list: the show was made on a challenging budget and it occasionally shows. Straczynski also wrote many of the episodes in just a few days (some of them in a few hours) and absolutely joyful, brilliant dialogue sits alongside hammy exposition and some wince-inducing attempts at comedy. Also, almost fully half of the fifth season is a dire slog due to some severe pacing, production and acting issues. But at its best Babylon 5 can comfortably be called one of the greatest SF TV shows of all time.

Five unmissable episodes: Chrysalis, The Coming of Shadows, In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, Severed Dreams, Sleeping in Light.

Battlestar Galactica

Comprises: 4 seasons (74 episodes), 1 mini-series (2 episodes), 2 TV movies

Aired: 8 December 2003-20 March 2009

Spin-offs: Caprica, Blood & Chrome

Premise: The Twelve Colonies of humanity are home to fifty billion people, united in fear of the Cylons, their robotic servitors who disappeared into deep space following a devastating war. Forty years later, they return without warning, shut down the Colonial Fleet with a computer virus and nuke the colonies into the stone age. The battlestar Galactica survives the attack and gathers together 50,000 survivors in a fleet of ragtag ships. With little choice, the survivors escapes into deep space, pursued by the Cylons and driven by one goal: to find the mysterious Thirteenth Colony, known in legend as "Earth".

The original Battlestar Galactica (which actually wasn't far off making this list) was a Star Wars-influenced Biblical epic which was actually, considering when it was made (1979), not that bad a show. It was fairly cheesy and had some baffling plot decisions, but it was entertaining. Its dire spin-off, Galactica 1980, not so much. But the general feeling in American TV circles was that there was something fundamentally awesome about the premise which the original series had not exploited properly.

Fast forwards to 2003 and ex-Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore, bruised from a failed attempt to bring greater realism and grit to Star Trek: Voyager, was given the task of updating BSG for the post-9/11 world. His take was extraordinary, bringing together religion, politics and war into a story that was often eerily prescient of real-world developments in how it handled the freedom of speech, the rights of the individual in the face of existential threats and the interaction of the military and the civilian population it is sworn to protect. BSG is actually a stronger and more interesting meditation on terrorism and freedom fighting than either 24 or Homeland, which is extraordinary. The series is also remarkable for its flawless cast - led by the magisterial Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - and amazing effects: one of the first shows made in HD throughout (including the CGI) it still looks beautiful today. To cap things off, the show also has one of the most accomplished musical scores of any TV show in history, provided by the versatile Bear McCreary.

Unfortunately, the show did develop significant issues as it went along. The opening mini-series and the first two seasons, lasting into the fourth or fifth episode of the third season, are almost flawlessly great (okay, Black Market excepted). But in the third season the lack of forward-planning and the producers' insistence on changing their original ideas without any regard for the backstory and an increasing desire to do things because they were "cool" rather than logical became highly problematic. The decision to reveal the identities of several Cylon agents in the fleet as familiar characters using a baffling choice of song to trigger them arguably saw the show mortally wounded, not helped by a lengthy wait for the final season and broadcast dates interfered with by the network. It's a tribute to the actors and writers that, despite these enormous problems, the show remained watchable right up to the (highly contentious and still fiercely-debated) end and great episodes could still be found amongst the increasing levels of mysticism and lazy plotting. But if there was any show that showed that the journey matters more than the destination, it is BSG. If it had been cancelled after the second season, it would simply be remembered as the greatest SFF TV show ever made, and one of the very best TV shows full stop, and everyone should certainly check those episodes out.

Five unmissable episodes: 33, Kobol's Last Gleaming, Pegasus, Downloaded, Exodus Part II.

Blake's 7

Comprises: 4 seasons (52 episodes)

Aired: 2 January 1978-21 December 1981

Premise: A thousand years in the future, Earth and its colony worlds are ruled by a tyrannical government known as the Terran Federation. A freedom fighter named Blake led a rebel army against the Federation but was defeated and captured, his memory erased and turned into a puppet and model citizen. When his former allies contact Blake and help restore his memories, the Federation frames him as a child molestor and sentences him to life imprisonment on a remote penal colony. But on the way Blake and a motley collection of fellow prisoners escape on a powerful alien starship which they turn against the Federation. But as Blake's personal crusade continues, he finds his idealism may not be enough to justify the bloodshed.

Blake's 7 is a show that was so far ahead of its time that it's really quite remarkable that it was even made. It started in 1978 in the aftermath of the release of Star Wars, but it made quite a contrast with that glossy story of heroes and villains. Blake's 7 is morally murky and ambiguous. Its central characters sometimes do horrendous things in the name of the "greater good" and the Federation is presented as a more complex, nuanced organisation than simply a collection of black hats: the initial presentation of villains such as Travis, complete with robotic gun-arm and eyepatch, and then adding layers of complexity to them was simply unthinkable for a low-budget 1970s British SF show but Blake's 7 did it anyway. The show is also notable for its most popular character being Avon (Paul Darrow), an amoral, opportunistic and greedy genius who doesn't share Blake's vision at all but only uses him for his own ends. The cynicism of the show is quite startling, the willingness to brutally kill off recurring characters with no warning even moreso.

Of course, the show has not aged tremendously well in the areas of production design or costumes and the acting can veer wildly from sublime to outright pantomime. And the visual effects never rise above serviceable and more frequently dip down to terrible. But if you can live with its visuals, Blake's 7 is a remarkable show that is cleverly-written, excellently-characterised and still has one of the most startling series finales of all time.

Five unmissable episodes: The Way Back, Seek-Locate-Destroy, Star One, Terminal, Blake.

Doctor Who

Comprises: 35 seasons (826 episodes forming 263 serials), 1 TV movie, 2 feature films.

Aired: 23 November 1963-6 December 1989, 12 May 1996, 26 March 2005-present

Spin-offs: K9 & Company, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Class

Premise: The Doctor is a Time Lord, a member of a race of highly advanced humanoid aliens who have mastered the art of time travel. Bored of life at home, he steals a TARDIS (time machine) and goes on the run, planning to explore the universe. Drawn to the planet Earth and often accompanied by human companions, the Doctor fights against forces for evil and chaos and champions the helpless and the oppressed, a journey that will last for thousands of years.

Doctor Who is the longest-running SF TV show in history: its first episode was delayed due to the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, gunned down in Dallas just a day earlier. It ran for 26 continuous seasons until 1989, when declining ratings and poor scheduling saw it removed from the screen. The BBC and Fox Studios collaborated on a one-off TV movie which was unexpectedly successful in the UK, leading to a full revival of the show in 2005. The show remains ongoing, with at least two further seasons planned.

The secret of Doctor Who's success is down to two things. First of all, the premise is extremely fluid, adaptable and versatile. It's extremely simple - the Doctor and his companion (or companions) show up, get involved in a situation and resolve it - but can lead to complex stories asking difficult questions. The tone is also remarkable malleable, with the show moving between comedy, drama and tragedy with ease. The second major component of the success was the decision to have the Doctor be able to "regenerate" into different forms and thus different actors. This has given the show its longevity, as it is no longer tied to the whim of the lead actor in how long he hangs around. As of right now, twelve different lead actors have played the role, each playing the same person but bringing a different sensibility to the character.

Given the sheer number of episodes produced across radically different periods of television production, it's unsurprising that there's a lot of poor episodes and weak stories in the classic series. There's also some quite remarkable, far-ahead-of-their-time stories dealing with issues including genocide, genetic engineering and chemical warfare. There were even periods when the show tried to be hard SF, as well as outright pantomime. The newer incarnation of the series boasts much-improved production values but has also dialled back the SF quotient in favour of stories based around magic and resolved through hand-waving. But ultimately Doctor Who works by using an alien and in many ways unrelatable being to explore what it means to be human.

Ten unmissable serials: An Unearthly Child (first episode only), The War Games, Day of the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death, The Caves of Androzani, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, The Day of the Doctor, Heaven Sent.

Firefly

Comprises: 1 season (14 episodes), 1 feature film

Aired: 20 September-20 December 2002

Premise: Earth-That-Was has been abandoned, the planet unable to support humanity any more. The human race has evacuated in its teeming billions to another star system, one with dozens of planets and hundreds of terraformable moons. The rich Inner Planets have formed the Alliance, where prosperity and riches are the order of the day. The poor Outer Planets are exploited for resources and labour. An attempted rebellion has been crushed. Malcolm Reynolds, a soldier on the wrong side of that war, now captains the Firefly-class trader ship Serenity, along with his crew of misfits and renegades. When two fugitives take up residence on the ship, Reynolds sees an opportunity to continue the fight against the Alliance.

Firefly is aptly-named, for it was  show that burned briefly but brightly. Created by Joss Whedon, hot off the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the show was supposed to run for multiple seasons and explore a number of different issues and ideas relating to authoriarianism, liberty and the notion of the state versus the individual. Instead, Fox interfered with production, messed up the running order of the episodes and treated the show badly, cancelling it before the first season had been completed. Such was the show's critical acclaim and high DVD sales, however, that Whedon was able to produce a movie, Serenity, which did (more or less) tie everything up.

What makes Firefly so appealing is its extraordinarily talented cast, most of whom have gone on to bigger and better things. Leader actor Nathan Fillion is now a bona fide American TV star due to his long run on Castle, whilst Morena Baccarin has proven a major hit on Homeland and in the movie Deadpool. Even guest actors went on to big things, most notably Christina Hendricks who became a staple of Mad Men. The show even had time to give a very young Zac Efron his first TV role. But beyond the unassailable cast is the show's writing and atmosphere, mixing Western and SF tropes together in an unusual manner and also evoking a remarkable tone of comedy, tragedy, nostalgia and bittersweetness, best-evoked in the perfectly-paced and remarkably-structured episode Out of Gas.

It's easy to be a bit cynical about Firefly, and to reflect that with another few seasons under its belt it might have jumped the shark or crashed and burned. But the fact that fourteen years on from transmission it is still cited as one of the best SF shows of all time shows that it does have something very special going for it.

Five unmissable episodes: Serenity, Shindig, Our Mrs. Reynolds, Out of Gas, Objects in Space, but seriously, it's only fourteen episodes and a movie. Just watch the whole thing.

Fringe

Comprises: 5 seasons (100 episodes)

Aired: 9 September 2008-18 January 2013

Premise: FBI Agent Olivia Dunham, based in Boston, investigates an unusual event which draws her into a shadowy world of weird experiments, bizarre individuals with strange powers and technology driven out of control to unknown ends. She recruits a team of experts from inside and outside the FBI, most notably eccentric scientist Walter Bishop, to investigate the strange events as they grow exponentially in number and danger, hinting that something cataclysmic may be happening to our world, and maybe the entire universe.

Fringe is one of the less well-known shows on this list, although it aired on Fox TV for five seasons relatively recently to critical acclaim and was created by J.J. Abrams. Its relatively low profile and limited ratings (it actually stayed on the air more due to the goodwill of several Fox executives who simply loved the show) may be a result of viewer wariness. Fringe is, very deliberately, a spiritual successor to The X-Files and was produced by some of the same team as Lost. Given the way both shows developed, viewers may have simply been unwilling to trust the producers to create a coherent series rather than yet another muddled mess of confusing mythology and retcons.

Against the odds, that's exactly what they did. Fringe tells one coherent, linear (more or less) story over the course of its five seasons, a story with a beginning, middle and end that hangs together, makes sense and is tremendously satisfying. The show does a great job of explaining its premise, rationalising dramatic plot conveniences and furthering both the plot and character without sacrificing one for the other. None of this would mean a lot if the series didn't also have a note-perfect cast, dominated by sheer brilliance of John Noble as Walter Bishop. Not since Patrick Stewart's Captain Picard has an actor come along and brought such a devastating range and intensity to their role that makes every scene they are in electric to watch.

The show certainly isn't perfect. Early episodes are a little too procedural and stand-alone, and a few plot points and characters get inconsistent development based on actor availability. The show also took dramatic licence in its fourth and fifth season with its premise, basic set-up and character relationships which some fans found difficult to accept. But Fringe stands as a show that was never afraid to experiment and innovate and ended up all the stronger for it.

Five unmissable episodes: There's More Than One of Everything, White Tulip, Peter, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Letters of Transit.

Futurama

Comprises: 7 seasons (140 episodes)

Aired: 28 March 1999-4 September 2013

Premise: A pizza delivery boy named Fry is accidentally frozen on the eve of the new millennium. He wakes up a thousand years later to find that Earth is now part of an interstellar community of worlds and life still mostly consists of doing really boring and underpaid jobs. He gets a new role working for the Planet Express delivery corporation and learns more about the insane world in which he has arrived.

SF comedy is a rare beast, with most shows that attempt it falling back on the lazy trick of simply taking the mickey out of SF tropes. Those that succeed, however, allow comedy to arise naturally out of character and the situation rather than the genre. Futurama, at its best, falls into that category by creating a memorable bunch of relatable (but never too lovable) characters and letting them loose in a crazy universe.

Futurama works as a culture clash comedy and also an examination of politics, religion and entertainment using the futuristic society as a mirror to our times. More to the point, it's often very funny and occasionally outright surreal, able to drop in one-liners as well as elaborate gags set up over multiple episodes and everything inbetween. The show even occasionally uses actual hard science fiction ideas to drive some episodes. It also helps that the show organically develops characters such as Fry and Leela over the course of the series and allows that audience to invest in them and their relationships. In this sense, not to mention its considerably more restrained number of episodes, Futurama outstrips its parent show The Simpsons in quality.

There are some weak episodes in the mix, of course, and the show being cancelled and revived several times certainly hurt its momentum, but overall Futurama is a smart and humane slice of SF that also happens to be frequently hilarious

Five unmissable episodes: Jurassic Bark, The Why of Fry, Where No Fan Has Gone Before, The Prisoner of Benda, The Luck of the Fryrish.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Comprises: 1 mini-series (6 episodes)

Aired: 5 January-9 February 1981

Premise: Arthur Dent wakes up to discover that his house is being demolished to make way for a motorway bypass. This problem is rapidly eclipsed when the alien Vogons show up to demolish the entire Earth to make way for a hyperspace transit route. Rescued from flaming death by his best friend Ford Prefect (now revealed to be an alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse), Dent finds himself adrift in a hostile and bizarre universe. In order to survive, he has to know where his towel is, insert a small fish into his ear, keep hold of his copy of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (its vital cover blurb advice: "DON'T PANIC") and discover the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything.

It's often said that the best version of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the one you experienced first. For some people it's the original radio series, for others the novel or the computer game, and for many it's the TV mini-series. Obviously it's never the 2005 movie, which is just bad.

The TV mini-series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams, is how I first encountered the franchise and remains my favourite version of it. The main reason for its superiority is its focus. By having to cram in the first two radio series/novels into just six epsiodes, Adams is able to drop a lot of the dead wood and padding from those versions and focus instead on the best elements. The result is six episodes jam-packed with humour, pathos, tragedy, hope, humanity, existentially-compromised whales and some talking white mice. The circular nature of the story, the wonderful animated entries from the Guide (and its fantastic narration) and the final (and near-heartbreaking) use of Louis Armstrong in the final moments of the series are all the icing on the cake to a story which ultimately encompasses the entirety of human history and civilisation, the end of the universe and the reason for the existence of life. Not bad for six episodes made by the BBC with what can charitably be called a "low" budget.

Six unmissable episodes: All of it.

Lost

Comprises: 6 seasons (121 episodes)

Aired: 22 September 2004-23 May 2010

Premise: On 22 September 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 is flying from Sydney to Los Angeles when it abruptly vanishes over the Pacific Ocean. In reality, the aircraft breaks up over an unusual island. Improbably, more than forty passengers survive. Dr. Jack Shephard, a medical doctor, becomes the reluctant leader of the survivors as they try to find shelter, food and water and devise a plan to escape or attract rescue. But there is something strange roaming the woods and one of the survivors, John Locke, becomes convinced that the island is much, much more than it appears.

Lost's first season aired to tremendous critical acclaim and popular success in 2004, winning plaudits for its writing, its remarkable focus on characterisation and its sense of mystery and family. As the show went on, the critical reception died down, optimism giving way to cynicism that that the writers and producers had no idea what was going on and they were making it all up as they went along. Yet the show's finale in 2010 did a better job than many expected of wrapping up the stories and mysteries, and ultimated provided a reasonable, if still bizarre, finale (although a late subplot revolving around the characters reuniting in a possible afterlife is probably best forgotten).

At its best, Lost developed characters in the most remarkable way possible, using entire episodes to flesh out single characters whilst also furthering their story on the Island. Sometimes they ran out of ideas for character backstory and this led to tangents best left unexplored (such as the infamous "Jack's Tattoo" episode), but overall it was a remarkable form of storytelling. Even better, Lost was willing to admit when the creative well was running dry and shift its paradigm accordingly. So in the fourth season the flashbacks were replaced by flash-forwards into the future, and then in the fifth season a bunch of characters were transported to another time period where they set in motion many of the events and mysteries they would later encounter in the present. Along the way, numerous factions, allies and adversaries were introduced and developed. Lost was also the most ruthless show on television, not afraid to kill off even very major characters when their purpose was achieved

At its worst, Lost was muddled and confusing, not being afraid to spend numerous episodes on what appeared to be a pivotal plot point (such as the Numbers and Jacob's cabin) and then abruptly dropping them and ignoring them after that point. The show also had a rather disconcerting habit of revealing key pieces of mythology in spin-off media (such as The Lost Experience, an online puzzle game) rather than on the main show, meaning that 99% of viewers missed that information. But Lost was also an honest show where the producers would acknowledge mistakes and course-correct. The series, as a whole, remains more coherent and comprehensible than it might be remembered for.

Of course, if you don't care about the backstory but more about the journey of the characters then Lost rarely put a foot wrong (apart from the tattoo episode, obviously, that was terrible). Even better, J.J. Abrams and his writers would learn from the mistakes they made on Lost on their next show, the rather better, tighter and more streamlined Fringe.

Five unmissable episodes: Pilot, Walkabout, Live Together, Die Alone, Through the Looking Glass, The Constant.

 

Orphan Black

Comprises: 4 seasons (40 episodes)

Aired: 30 March 2013-present

Premise: Sarah Manning returns home to reunite with her daughter, only to instead meet a woman who is her exact duplicate. This woman then commits suicide, leaving behind her belongings and access to her bank account. Broke and struggling to make ends meet, Sarah takes on the other woman's identity...only to discover that things are far more complicated than she realised.

This is the newest entry on this list, and one of the few still in production (Season 4 debuts in April and the show is set to conclude with a fifth season next year). Orphan Black is an interesting show because it is fundamentally about the ethics, morality and practicality of human cloning, but it approaches the story from the bottom up. We get to know one of the clones first, then a couple of her fellow "sisters" and it's a long way into the first (and perfectly-paced) season before we start getting to "the science bit". The show delves more deeply into the actual hard SF of the process of cloning than it's often given credit for, musing on ethics, the nature vs. nurture argument and the dangers that accompany the process.

But what makes Orphan Black shine the most is its fantastic, often jaw-dropping performance of lead actress Tatiana Maslany, who has to play multiple versions of the same character (some of them impersonating the others) and colour them with their own individuality. Some of the other shows on this list have also done this - Battlestar Galactica and Fringe most notably - but none as consistently well as Orphan Black.

Five unmissable episodes: Natural Selection, Instinct, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings, Certain Agony of the Battlefield.

Quantum Leap

Comprises: 5 seasons (97 episodes)

Aired: 26 March 1989-5 May 1993

Premise: Dr. Sam Beckett discovers a way of travelling through time by transmitting his consciousness into the body of someone in the past. Unfortunately the process goes wrong and Sam finds himself "leaping" from person to person during his own lifespan at random. He is helped by Al, one of his colleagues who uses a holographic imaging chamber to visualise what is going on and provide advice and research on what Sam is experiencing. But Sam's one wish is to finally go home.

Quantum Leap is only really nominally science fiction: it has a bit at the start and end of each episode but for the rest the time the show is mostly a morality play. However, it does occasionally deploy clever use of its time travel premise. Most notably is the fact that Sam can actually change history and that as far as everyone else is concerned, history has already been this way. At key points it is revealed that our history originally unfolded different and only became the way we remember it thanks to Sam's actions. Quantum Leap may be the slightest show on this list in terms of SF content, but it is also one of the best at doing tonal variations and it does also have one of the most memorable and powerful conclusions.

Five unmissable episodes: The Colour of Truth, MIA, Killin' Time, A Leap for Lisa, Mirror Image.

Red Dwarf

Comprises: 10 seasons (61 episodes)

Aired: 15 February 1988-5 April 1999, 10-12 April 2009, 4 October 2012-present

Premise: Dave Lister is the lowest-ranking technician on the five-mile-long mining ship Red Dwarf. When it is discovered that he has smuggled a cat on board at Titan, he is sentenced to two years in stasis. When he wakes up, he discovers that a radiation leak has killed the crew and the ship's controlling AI, Holly, has taken the vessel into deep space to avoid contamination. Oh, and three million years have passed. Lister's only companions on his long voyage home are the holographic recreation of his officious superior officer, a humanoid being who evolved from his pet cat and a neurotic android with a cleaning fixation.

Red Dwarf, like Futurama many years later, works as a science fiction comedy because the the SF background is treated like that, a background, and the comedy emerges naturally from the (brilliantly, sometimes tragically) well-drawn characters and storylines. But Red Dwarf is also frequently cutting edge in its approach to hard science ideas, like nanotechnology, parallel universes, genetic engineering and cloning. A note-perfect cast is backed up - for its second through sixth seasons anyway - by smart and witty scripts and an impressive depth of characterisation.

The show did go off the rails in its seventh and eighth seasons, after original co-writer Rob Grant departed, and the less said about the terrible ninth season the better, but the most recent reboot of the series was surprisingly good, with the show making effective commentary about ageing and mortality. Two more seasons have been filmed for transmission in 2016 and 2017, and hopefully will continue this welcome return to form.

Five unmissable episodes: Kryten, Thanks for the Memory, Marooned, Polymorph, Back to Reality.

Stargate SG-1

Comprises: 10 seasons (214 episodes), 2 TV movies, 1 feature film

Aired: 27 July 1997-13 March 2007

Spin-offs: Atlantis, Universe

Premise: The United States uncovers an ancient device, a stargate, linking Earth to remote corners of the universe. A special team is formed to explore other worlds through the stargate, but in doing so they draw hostile attention to the planet and also allow the formation of new alliances.

The 1994 movie Stargate was only a modest success, more notable for launching the career of Roland Emmerich than anything else, but Showtime took the unusual (for the time) move of making the sequel on television. Starring the mighty Richard Dean Anderson, the show somehow went on for ten seasons and over two hundred episodes. It did so by being an effectively entertaining and fun show, swapping the earnestness of Star Trek and seriousness of Battlestar Galactica for an embracing of cheese, camp and comedy. However, it was also canny enough to know when to switch gears to present more dramatic stories when necessary. It was successful enough to spawn two spin-offs, Atlantis which was made in a similar vein and proved highly popular, and Universe which tried to switch tones to something far darker and grimmer and only lasted two seasons. There's an awful lot to criticise about Stargate SG-1, but it's difficult to resist its old-school sense of fun and adventure.

Five unmissable episodes: Children of the Gods, Thor's Chariot, Reckoning, The Shroud, 200

Star Trek

Comprises: 3 seasons (79 episodes), 7 feature films (original cast), 3 feature films (reboot)

Aired: 8 September 1966-3 June 1969

Spin-offs: The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise

Premise: In the 23rd Century humanity has joined forces with several other alien races (most notably the Vulcans) to form the United Federation of Planets, dedicated to peace and exploration. One of its most powerful starships, the USS Enterprise, is on a five-year mission into deep space under the command of Captain James T. Kirk.

When it began airing in 1966, Star Trek completely rewrote the rulebook on science fiction on television. Gene Roddenberry's series mixed together Horatio Hornblower, life in the US Navy and the (then) cutting-edge field of space exploration. It was forward-thinking, having a black woman as a senior officer on the ship (even if she didn't get that much to do) and, at the height of the Cold War, showing American and Russian crewmembers cooperating peacefully. But what the show did best of all was establish a core, unimpeachable dynamic between actors William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley that would carry the series on through 79 episodes and seven (well, six-and-a-half) feature films.

This is all in spite of the fact that most of the final season of Star Trek was extremely poor, and dodgy episodes would blight its run. In its homage episode, even Futurama had to suggest that Star Trek was "seventy-nine episodes, about thirty good ones". But at its best, Star Trek was great science fiction and great, human drama, as well as giving us, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the best SF movies of all time.

Five unmissable episodes: Balance of Terror, Space Seed, The Trouble with Tribbles, The City on the Edge of Forever, Amok Time.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Comprises: 7 seasons (178 episodes), 4 feature films

Aired: 28 September 1987-23 May 1994

Premise: In the mid-24th Century, a hundred years after the time of Kirk and Spock, the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise (the fifth starship to bear the name) begins a new series of voyages as the flagship of the Federation. However, its seven-year mission will see it become pivotal in a Klingon civil war, renewed relations with the Romulans, and the discovery of a terrifying, remorseless foe known as the Borg.

The notion of reviving Star Trek with an all-new crew was an interesting but risky one, and one that almost blew up in Paramount's face when Gene Roddenberry turned in a first season that had an awful lot of terrible episodes in it. Some face-saving rejigging of the creative crew and the bringing in of some excellent, fresh writers saved the show and saw it, especially from its third season, start hitting new heights of excellence. In particular, the third season cliffhanger saw the show become a cultural phenomenon and step out of its predecessor's shadow.

One of the best things about The Next Generation was seeing the characters change and grow, and none moreso than Patrick Stewart's absolutely fantastic portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The entire cast did great work, and were better served than the original series (which often left many of the supporting characters with nothing to do for dozens of episodes at a time). The Next Generation also benefitted from better effects and also a less stringently episodic structure, with ongoing storylines and returning characters helping sell the idea of this future being an evolving, busy place.

If the show does have a problem is that it took a long while to find its feet, and the final season is a bit of a disaster (the production team unwisely focusing on the movies rather than winding the show down), but things do come together for a note-perfect finale. The success and appeal of Star Trek: The Next Generation pretty much created the 1990s science fiction boom, leading us to where we are today. On those grounds, it may be the most important and influential show on this list (but not the best).

Five unmissable episodes: The Measure of a Man, Q Who?, Yesterday's Enterprise, The Best of Both Worlds, The Inner Light.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Comprises: 7 seasons (178 episodes)

Aired: 3 January 1993-2 June 1999

Premise: After forty years of brutal occupation by the Cardassians, the planet Bajor desperately needs help. The Federation steps in to take command of an abandoned Cardassian space station and to lend aid in the rebuilding efforts. When a stable wormhole linking the Bajoran system to the distant Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy is discovered, the balance of power in the sector radically changes and it falls to Commander Sisko and his crew to maintain the peace.

Deep Space Nine, the third spin-off show from Star Trek and the first from The Next Generation, was the Star Trek show that dared to do things differently. It was more tightly serialised, had a much bigger cast - including an entire recurring cast of villains in the last few seasons - and took the themes of co-existence, peace, war, terrorism, religion and politics further than any Trek show had previously. Whilst certainly not as bleak as Battlestar Galactica (many of whose key writers started out on DS9), this was a distinctly darker and more uncomfortable incarnation of Star Trek.

It's also the best, featuring the highest hit-to-miss ratio of any of the Trek series and a consistency of quality that even The Next Generation cannot match. A de-emphasising of technobabble and magic button solutions (the bane of TNG and especially Voyager), a clear focus on character development, natural humour and a desire to humanise the occasionally sterile atmosphere of Star Trek all make this a compelling, hard-to-miss series. In characters like Weyoun and Dukat it even has villains to challenge Khan, as well as nailing Trek's most morally ambiguous character with "simple tailor" Garak. Later seasons would also feature still-impressive fleet battle sequences and see the ideals of the Federation (and Gene Roddeberry) tested as never before when full-scale war erupts between the Federation and the Dominion.

The show has its weak points (whilst the first two episodes have few outright awful episodes, there are a few dull hours, and the Bajoran political-religious stuff is fascinating to some but tedious to many), but ultimately it emerges as one of the greatest SF shows of all time: more consistent than TNG or Babylon 5 and with a far better ending than Battlestar Galactica, it's aged much better than the other Star Trek shows and is well worth a watch now.

Five unmissable episodes: Duet, The Visitor, Call to Arms, In the Pale Moonlight, Far Beyond the Stars.

The Twilight Zone

Comprises: 5 seasons (156 episodes),

Aired: 2 October 1959-19 June 1964

Premise: An anthology show exploring many different stories about science and the supernatural.

The oldest show on this list, The Twilight Zone is also one of the most impressive. Each episode had its own cast, locations, sets and costumes to arrange, lacking even the nominal recurring elements of a show like Doctor Who. The fact that the show hit such a consistently high rate of quality despite production limitations is a tribute to the production team, most notably the producer and most important writer, Rod Serling.

Even more startling is how well the series has aged. The notion of a show which has an overt morality lesson at the end seems quaint by today's standards, but the messages of episodes like The Invaders (in which we root for the plucky farmwife to see off the invading miniature "aliens" only to realise they're us) and The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (in which civilisation collapses and turns in on itself simply by having electricity cut off for a few days) still resonates strongly. Whilst some of the episodes have aged less well, The Twilight Zone is still a remarkable achievement in writing and atmosphere.

Five unmissable episodes: It's a Good Life, To Serve Man, The Invaders, Time Enough at Last, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

UFO

Comprises: 1 season (26 episodes)

Aired: 16 September 1970-24 July 1971

Premise: Alien spacecraft are covertly visiting Earth to abduct and run strange experiments on humans. The SHADO organisation, equipped with trained soldiers, orbital interceptors and scientific research facilities, has been formed to combat the alien menace, to understand it and to ultimately destroy it.

UFO is the lesser-known of Gerry Anderson's three major live-action SF series (the others being Space: 1999 and Space Precinct, the former being merely awful and the latter being totally unwatchable), which is a shame as it is by far the best. The notion of a secret military organisation combatting a series of stealthy alien attacks on Earth is highly compelling and in fact was rather blatantly borrowed by British video game developer Julian Gallop for his 1993 strategy game, UFO: Enemy Unknown (XCOM: UFO Defence in the USA). More recently these games have been remade as XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, so the premise certainly has legs.

What marks out UFO as a different kind of show is its grim tone. The aliens have superior technology and completely inscrutable motivations. The "heroes" are deeply flawed, with realistic adult flaws such as alcoholism and PTSD (maybe standard today, but in 1970 pretty edgy stuff). UFO, particularly its more psychedelic moments, is in fact more influenced by The Prisoner than the likes of Doctor Who, and a clear line can be drawn from it to Blake's 7 and onwards to things like the remade Battlestar Galactica. Particularly dominant is the theme of total secrecy even over moral concerns: the episode The Square Triangle has SHADO discover a woman plotting to murder her husband when they encounter one of the aliens. SHADO alerting the authorities would also risk revealing the existence of the aliens, so they have to allow the woman to carry out her crime.

UFO is an underrated gem and, despite the crazy hairstyles, the extremely high production values for the time mean that it's aged quite well. A reboot/remake has been promised for years now, and like Blake's 7 it's a very good premise that could do with a modern reinterpretation.

Five unmissable episodes: Identified, A Question of Priorities, The Square Triangle, Mindbender, Timelash.

Ultraviolet

Comprises: 1 mini-series (6 episodes)

Aired: 15 September-20 October 1998

Premise: A London detective, Mike Colefield, is puzzled when his best friend disappears on the eve of his wedding. Investigating, he encounters a secret government taskforce which has been set up to combat the greatest threat the human race has ever known. Recruited into this force, Colefield has to balance his new role's requirement for secrecy with his personal life...and the fact that his friend has been recruited by the enemy.

Ultraviolet is a bit of a cheat to put on this list, because it's about vampires. But it's a show which treats vampires like nothing before or since: a scientifically-explained plague and threat to the human race which has to be fought with brains and intelligence as much as with stakes (well, carbon-tipped bullets) and daylight (ultraviolet-emitting torches). It's a vigourously, logically-thought-out show which takes the traditional vampire narrative and spins it on its head to turn it into a science fiction series.

As with all good vampire shows, it makes the life of an immortal being seem appealing but does so by appealing to more basic desires: a way of escaping cancer or continuing to control the company you set up decades ago by posing as your own grandson. But Ultraviolet pushes things in directions no-one was expecting. One episode uses the possibility of a woman impregnated by a vampire to explore abortion issues in a surprisingly confrontational, head-on way. Several of the characters have lost loved ones to the vampires and are suffering from emotional trauma. The show can be viewed as being much closer to the tone and spirit of The X-Files rather than Buffy, with the exception that Ultraviolet wraps up most of its mysteries by the end of its short run.

The show is also notable for giving Idris Elba his first big starring role (several years before The Wire) and featuring several of most beautifully-choreographed and intelligently-designed vampire kills in screen history (Elba's character turning a vampire in a cryo-suspension device into a makeshift explosive device is particularly memorable). An intelligent, gripping and smartly-written thriller, it's well worth seeking out.

Six unmissable episodes: All of them, natch.

The X-Files

Comprises: 10 seasons (208 episodes), 2 feature films

Aired: 10 September 1993-19 May 2002, 24 January 2016-present

Spin-offs: Millennium, The Lone Gunmen

Premise: Fox "Spooky" Mulder is an FBI agent in charge of the "X-Files", matters pertaining to the paranormal and supernatural which no-one else takes seriously. Special Agent Dana Scully is assigned to assist him, but in reality is supposed to debunk his theories. Instead, they form a surprisingly effective team as they uncover evidence of aliens and conspiracies stretching back decades.

The X-Files was one of the biggest TV shows of the 1990s. Its first season is a masterclass in tension, writing, direction and drama, an almost flawless exercise in asking questions, raising stakes and giving the audience just enough information to keep them hooked for the next episode. It also raised the bar for production values and horror on television. It couldn't sustain such a high level of quality, of course, and ultimately the audience began losing interest somewhere around the sixth or seventh season when it became clear that the producers were more interested in spinning the series on for money than in actually providing any sense of closure or cartharsis.

But before it reached that point - and still regularly afterwards - The X-Files delivered some of the most effective small-screen slices of SF of the decade. It tapped into a pre-millennial feeling of paranoia, surveillance and helplessness which, if anything, is even more relevant today. This has been emphasised by the show's recent return for a shorter "event" run which seems likely to be repeated, perhaps, finally, giving us the answers that have been so long in coming. But The X-Files, like Lost later on, is also good enough to show that the journey is sometimes worth more than the destination, especially when you consider how amazing some of the one-off "monster of the week" episodes are.

Five unmissable episodes: Squeeze, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Home, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster

Bubbling Under

Shows which I also considered for the list but didn't make the grade include the following:

The 100 (2014-present)
After a few ropey opening episodes, The 100 has evolved into one of the more compelling SFF shows currently airing. It has some great performances but really benefits from its rich post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, utter ruthlessness to its characters and its constant attempts to find moral quandaries that put the characters in impossible situations. However, it also suffers from being a bit too magpie-like in how it borrows tropes from other, better shows (like BSG and Lost, both of which it inherits castmembers from).

Alien Nation (1989-90)
An alien spacecraft lands outside Los Angeles, carrying thousands of alien refugees. The aliens integrate into Californian society, facing bigotry and persecution. It's a very straightforward premise which allows the show to tackle topics such as drugs, prostitution and racism in a manner that a more straight-up drama series couldn't have done, especially amidst the explosive tensions in LA of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a great show that only lasted for one season. A reboot has been occasionally mooted.

Battlestar Galactica (1978-79)
The original BSG is cheesy, weird, outrageously sexist (at least to start with) and reuses its special effects to a ridiculous extent. However, by the standards of 1978 it's also quite well-made with some innovative use of serialised storytelling. The special effects may be overused but they're also jaw-droppingly good for the time and the surreal "Ships of Light" storyline ultimately ends up selling the mystical elements of the premise far better than the reboot. But in every other respect, the reboot is by far the superior series.

Dark Skies (1996-97)
It was easy to dismiss Dark Skies as an X-Files cash-in, mainly because it clearly was designed to be so. However, it was also a stylish and smart series. Beginning in the 1960s, it chronicles a clandestine alien invasion of the Earth, opposed by the Majestic-12 organisation. It featured star-making turns for Eric Close and Jeri Ryan, but unfortunately it was cancelled after only one of its planned five seasons had been made. Originally the show would have covered one decade per season, culminating with a real-time finale for the millennium. Better-planned then The X-Files and featuring a vivid period setting, it's a shame we never saw the show's promise reach fruition.

The Expanse (2015-present)
A gritty and more realistic look at how we might really colonise the Solar system over the next 200 years. An excellent first season hints at a show that could easily make this list further down the line.

Farscape (1999-2003)
Farscape was bizarre, funny, surreal, action-packed and dramatically intense. It was also wildly inconsistent in quality and never quite ended up matching other space operas in what they were trying to do (Babylon 5 was more epic, DS9 was a better war story, BSG was grittier and Red Dwarf was much funnier). But it also had some great stories, some good actors (Claudia Black finding gainful employment on other SF shows, in the film Pitch Black and in voice acting) and an overall storyline that was interesting, if not always told in the best manner.

The Invaders (1967-68)
Devised by Quinn Martin as a replacement for The Fugitive, The Invaders had a rather similar premise - desperate guy on the run tries to convince people of an outlanding fact by helping them - but an even bleaker atmosphere and tone, all the moreso by the fact that the show was cancelled before it could get a proper ending. One of its more notable successes was featuring non-humanoid aliens who have to use technology to infiltrate the human population, giving them a weakness that can be exploited, and the near-constant feeling of paranoia that the show kept up for the better part of fifty episodes.

Space: Above and Beyond (1996)
At its best, this was a compelling space opera TV series. At its worth, which unfortunately was rather more frequent, it was a tonally muddled and incoherent series with lazy worldbuilding (the characters are both combat pilots and ground troops at the same time?) and very ropey dialogue. But it's worth watching as a testing ground for the Battlestar Galactica reboot and also for David Duchovny's gloriously unhinged turn as an android pool shark.

V (1983-85)
V started off by stealing the opening to Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End and showcasing the arrival of an invading force of aliens on Earth. The aliens pose as our friends and allies, but a darker side emerges and is exposed by the "Resistance". The two mini-series which open the franchise are watchable (if not very smart) popcorn entertainment, but the short-lived ongoing series is awful. The show was briefly revived in 2009-11 for an uninspired reboot.