What shows are the classics of SFTV? Well, it depends a bit on how one defines a classic and on how one defines SFTV. I see a "classic" as being a show that develops a dedicated (not necessarily a large) following, that actually had some degree of quality, and that has influenced science fiction television and even the general popular culture.
While "SFTV" is "science fiction television" I'm broadening the definition a bit to television with a significant fantastic element. This gets around the fuss and argument over whether or not a show is really science fiction when there's not much of a scientific basis for plot elements. The important thing is that Sense of Wonder; the neat and cool things and stuff, the inspiration to the imagination, the impetus to say "Wow!"
I am excluding (generally) shows where there is perhaps one fantastic element but that are primarily action adventures. I'm excluding shows where the fantastic element is a alien/robot/whatever neighbor/borderer/boyfriend that does whacky things. I'm also excluding animation because that is such a huge area that I'm not familiar enough with and that deserves specific treatment. I've also excluded anthology shows like "The Twilight Zone".
These are not in an order of quality. It's not a Top Ten list; just what I consider to be classics.
We all know it. We mostly like it. Original Trek to an extent defines the popular perception of SFTV and even SF in general. It was perhaps the first regular SF series to really be more than a kiddie show. It was relatively well acted. It had generally good stories, some written by SF writers as opposed to regular television writers. And the special effects were pretty good for the time. We liked the characters. Some of us admired the ideals expressed. It was far from perfect; some stories are flat out dumb and they did occasionally play fast and loose with the science. The woman's uniforms were really pretty silly. :) But all in all, it was a good show and undeniably a classic.
There are those who despise this show, looking for any reason to tear it down. And this is not without reason. Look at such elements as Wesley The God, Troi's empathy that almost never works if it would actually be helpful, the absurd emphasis on the Prime Directive to the point that they would allow the death of a race and a culture from NATURAL CAUSES rather than lifting a finger to help them, the peculiar emphasis on avoiding almost any connection with stories and most races from the original series, things like that. But let's be realistic. The show had some great acting (Patrick Stewart is a FAR better actor than William Shatner), some good stories, some good special effects, and was influential in popular culture. It spawned two series and is moving onto the Big Screen. Can't get much more classic than that.
Yes, there's SF outside of America! :) This British series was the longest running SFTV series ever, running for over twenty-five years and possibly coming back as a co-production of the BBC and Universal. It is unique in that several different people played the main character, The Doctor, over the course of the series. Our Hero is an human looking alien who can "regenerate" and restore his body to health with a different appearance and a somewhat different personality if he is near death. His race, the Time Lords of Gallifrey, possess the secret of time travel, much of the knowledge of the universe, and have a civilization that is perhaps three million years old. They are also decadent, and avoid interfering (mostly) in the affairs of others unless they are threatened; if they are threatened they have little problem time looping worlds or moving or destroying planets.
The Doctor "tends to get involved" however. He left Gallifrey out of boredom or perhaps for other reasons and travels through space and time sometimes as a tourist but often getting caught up in the affairs of the locals. He usually has traveling companions he picks up along the way; often from his favorite species, humans. In some ways the Doctor is a superhero, but not generally in the physical prowess sense. No, he's smarter and cleverer than his enemies and he often seems to know something or even to have a secret plan. "Dr Who" has cheap but sometimes effective special effects, neat stories, good acting, great recurring enemies (don't we all love Dalaks?), and just a great fun spirit about it. Definite classic, here.
This is pushing it a bit. "The Prisoner" is not an SF show as such...or is it? The Village is a sort of alternate reality; a different world. There's a lot of SF-ish elements, a lot of surreal stuff, and an overall SF-ish feel about the show. Lots of SF fans love the show. It is regarded as perhaps the best television series, ever, by some. It was unusual in that the series was conceived with a definite beginning and end, instead of just running until the ratings went down. It wasn't perfect; I think the final episode was perhaps intentionally nonsensical but a bit rushed. It isn't really clear what all was going on, but that may well be a large part of the appeal of the show; people look for hidden meanings. And there's a appeal in the whole notion of the Individual against The Group and Conformity. Be seeing you.
Hey, any show that starts out by killing off almost everyone in the show in the first episode has a lot going for it. :) We have Dave Lister, who is the only person to survive what killed the rest of the crew and who may be the last surviving human. We have Cat, a descendent of Lister's cat, whose offspring evolved intelligence during the three million years Lister was in stasis on the ship Red Dwarf. We have the hologram personality Arnold Rimmer who is based on the recorded memories of Lister's bunkmate. We have Holly, the artificial intelligence program that runs the ship Red Dwarf that changed from a male appearance and personality to a female appearance and personality and is going a bit insane. And we have Kryten, an android that they found along the way. From all that we get what I believe to be the best SFTV comedy ever. the type of humor may not be for everyone; they can be crude and some stuff can be hard to follow. They freely abandon continuity sometimes, but overall it is pretty much a real SFTV show. It's a British show, and I suspect that nothing like it could be produced for American networks. Of course there was an attempt, actually a couple of pilots, that never got aired. Perhaps that proves my point. :)
The first cyberpunkish SFTV show. This show about a intelligent computer personality and the reporter whose memories he is based on was like nothing else before or really since. Its somewhat surreal future and the strange people and companies and society inhabiting it had a feel of a unique and different universe. It suffered from being just so different and from the overexposure of the Max Headroom character in commercials and a sort of talk show; this led to its ultimate demise. But "Max Headroom" was probably closer to the written SF of the time than most SFTV series generally are.
"X-Files" is a in some ways a "Kolchak, the Night Stalker" for the 90's. But while Kolchak was a reporter who somehow managed to stumble onto weird monsters every week and survive, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of "X-Files" actively seek out bizarre incidents in their jobs as FBI agents. We have Fox Mulder, a train psychologist who firmly believes in alien visitations and who's sister was apparently abducted by aliens when he was a child. He's obsessed with investigating the FBI's "X-files"; cases involving unexplained phenomena not just involving supposed aliens but other strange things. We also have Dana Scully, who was apparently assigned to spy on Mulder but has become his friend and ally but still rejects extraterrestrial or supernatural explanations for phenomena.
One major recurring plot element is the notion that there are massive cover-ups going on, orchestrated by vague entities in the government. The government is hiding secret projects, and most importantly the existence of extraterrestrial visitations. Mulder and Scully are manipulated by these entities to prevent any real information from getting to the public. There have been some who seem to be helping them, but there's evidence that they are pursuing their own agendas that have little to do with the pursuit of truth.
"The X-Files" is a very paranoid show with a lot of general weirdness. Not just alien encounters, but bizarre cults, magic, mutants, and monsters. I could see a "Call of the X-Files" RPG, after a fashion. There was an article in Shadis #14 covering the first season of the show and giving some gaming suggestions. "The Truth is Out There."
On the surface, "Babylon 5" looks like a space adventure set in a space station. But it's more than that. The Babylon 5 station is the one place where all the major peoples meet to attempt diplomacy and to pursue their other agendas. Almost anything that happens impacts at B5 and events on B5 can have major impacts elsewhere.
"Babylon 5", like "The Prisoner", has a planned beginning and end. The five year story arc covers a major period in history dubbed "the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind". There's at least two conspiracies going on; a plot to take over the Earth Alliance government which seems to be at the very least supported by Psi Corp and the manipulation of the Centauris in their war with the Narn by the Shadows, a mysterious ancient race that is preparing to return in force. There's counters to the conspiracies, disputes amongst the Minbari people involving their bizarre surrender to the the EA, and the true nature of the mysterious Vorlon, Kosh. It is far more complex than Trek or most other SFTV. It may well be the most ambitious show on television.
In the last issue of IR, I noted the television series that I consider to be classics. Some would add or subtract a few, I'm sure. And there are a few shows that come very close to being classics, or might eventually become classics. For whatever reason, I didn't elect to class them as "classics", but they make my list of the "near- classics".
First a radio show, then a television series, and finally a trilogy that is now up to five books; The Hitchhiker's Guide probably should have been on the classic list. It's popular and familiar to most SFTV fans, it's inspired songs ("Marvin, I Love You", "Marvin the Paranoid Android", and a sort of rap), and it was pretty good, actually. Again we see how a series with a far smaller budget than the average American SFTV show can have a convincing look, except of course for Zaphod's second head.
In a sense, The Hitchhiker's Guide would make a good template for a light campaign. Arthur Dent, ordinary Earth human, and Ford Prefect, humanoid alien traveller, are essentially a small adventuring party with little in the way of skills but lots of luck. They get to see the universe, but are far from powerful and not able to bend others to their whim. After the destruction of the Earth they have little in the way of resources but are still able to travel in space and time. Quite a bit different from the typical "Traveller" campaign where the party owns a ship and spends a goodly portion of its time trading.
Before Mulder and Sculley sought out wierdness in "The X-Files", there was Carl Kolchak; a reporter with a remarkable ability to find monsters, survive meeting them, and often defeat them. Originally "The Night Stalker" was a popular TV movie about a vampire in Las Vegas. The series was not as popular largely because it was the same story every week; Kolchak hears about a monster, he learns more about the monster, he sees the monster, nobody believes him, and then he meets it again and survives the encounter. WIthout Darren McGaven's very good performance as Kolchak it would not really bear consideration, but he was very likable and able to create some degree of interest in stories that didn't vary all that much.
Kolchak is pretty close to being a "Call of Cthulhu" player character; he knows Secret Truths and is regarded as a bit on the crazy side. I'd suggest that CoC players see a couple of episodes to get ideas as to how to play a character with Mythos knowledge.
Well, a horror soap opera! This series featured the Collins family and their ancestoral home of Collinswood and the various weirdness and horrors residing there. The most famous of the Collinses is cousin Barnabas, a vampire cursed centuries before by the witch Angelique. A good portion of the series dealt with Barnabas' attempts to become human. The series also featured time travel of a sort, another cousin that was a werewolf, various ghosts, mad scientists, a servent of the Devil, and other stuff.
Way back when, this series was tremendously popular to the point that some schools took to letting out earlier so folk could watch it. It had a pretty long run and is being shown on the SciFi channel. Why then do I not consider it a classic? Good question; I guess I don't think that it was quite good enough to qualify as a classic despite its popularity.
Okay, this is basically an action adventure and I said last time that shows that were primarily action adventures with one fantastic element didn't qualify as classics. But I think this is a potential classic. While it follows the general theme of the movies of Immortals running about beheading each other in the quest for the final "prize"; it rises above them (note however that I've not seen the third movie) in plots, acting, and just overall.
For one thing, there's the additional element of the "Watchers"; a secret society that has been observing the Immortals for at least a thousand years and possibly longer. Duncan's Watcher friend Joe Dawson claims that they are historians seeking Truth and the Immortals are a major part of history, I suspect that there's a lot more to it than that. I think it is entirely possible that, despite the "Hunters" faction in the Watchers that want to kill off the Immortals to prevent them from taking over, the Watchers's biggest secret is that the Prize is a myth. The Prize may well have been something made up by the founding Watchers to keep Immortals at each other's throats and too busy to take over the world. "TV Guide" notes that there's going to be some sort of "rift" between Joe and Duncan; I'd almost guarantee that it will involve the truth behind the Watchers.
Also, there's a lot more non-combat interaction between Duncan and other Immortals. We get more of a feeling for what it's like to be an Immortal and what sort of strains Immortality can put on a person. And we can get some idea what sort of things Immortals do to give meaning to their lives or just to pass the time.
The show still ends up being "Quickening of the Week" on occasion, and it is basically still a sort of superhero show as opposed to a real SF or Fantasy series. What will determine if it becomes a classic will be the resolution of The Prize; will they go for the lame notion in the movies where the last Immortal has sort of a universal Empathy/Telepathy and can have children and die? Will they decide that the Last Immortal really has the power to rule Humanity? Or will we find out that the Prize is a lie? Or will they do something Completely Different?
This show was on for perhaps a half-season and to the best of my knowledge has never been re-shown, not even on the SciFi Channel. I'd guess that many IR readers have never even heard of it.
"Wizards and Warriors" was a not too serious Sword and Sorcery fantasy series set in a world where magic works, and is (usually) strictly limited to a Wizards class. The focus of magic is a monocle; while a wizard can still work magic without his monocle he is far less powerful, and non-wizards can't fully use the monocle's power. Rulers generally are forbidden from meddling with magic but the evil villain stole an evil wizard's monocle and thus forces the wizard to work for him; I'm not sure but I think the monocle gives some immunity or resistance to magic.
The Good Prince was played by Jeff Conoway of "Taxi" and late of B5, and his love the Princess was played by Julia Duffy of "Newhart". The Princess was pretty much the same character as Stephane on Newhart; she was vain, loved leather, and wasn't noted for brillance. The Prince was courageous, and none too bright.
Overall, it was a pretty good show, with most of the stories involving the evil villain's attempts to take over the land ruled by the father of the good prince, and to win the love of the princess. It misses "Classic" statis, despite being about the only S&S Fantasy show ever in prime time, because it was on the network (CBS?) so briefly and hasn't been re-run in syndication so almost nobody has seen it. It is a minimal influence on SFTV, if at all; I barely remember it myself.
"Star Cops" was a near-future SF police show. It's set in a future where space is beginning to be commercially developed and the UN has a police force to handle off-Earth legal matters. They're called "Star Cops", informally.
It was very strict SF; nothing in the series violated or stretched any science as we now know it. It was probably the most realistic SF series ever. And this may well be why it's not a classic; there's not much of a Sense of Wonder about this show. It's pretty much a cop show that happens to be in space. This isn't saying it's a bad show, because it actually was pretty good. It just generally didn't have the "neat stuff" appeal of successful SFTV.
Speaking of cop shows, we have here a show about a police officer in Toronto, Ontario. Nothing particularly fantastic about that, except that the officer is an 800 year old vampire trying to "repay society for his sins" as the opening says. Nick Knight was a knight returning from the Crusades when he was "brought across" in 1228. Over time, he became ashamed of his life as a vampire and now he wants to regain a mortal life. He's done a variety of things to make up for his past and in this present time he's using his abilities as a police officer.
The show has flashbacks to the past like "Highlander", but while Duncan is generally remembering having met some Immortal in the past or some other relatively benign thing Nick as often as not is remembering murdering someone. And while both Nick and Barnabas Collins try to be cured of their vampirism with the aid of doctors who are somewhat enamored of them, Barnabas didn't seem to do all that much to atone for any wrongs he committed as a vampire while Nick is trying to redeem himself. It may not be unique, but it's different.
I'd think that "Forver Knight" would pretty much be manditory veiwing for someone trying to run a campaign involving vampires in a modern setting. While vampires in FK follow more of the traditional rules than vampires in Vampire: the Masquerade (repulsed by crosses and garlic, killed by a stake), there are some similarities. In FK there's some vague sort of organization that keeps the existance of vampires a secret and sends "enforcers" if someone (human or vampire) might convincingly reveal their existance. And elder vampires seem to be more powerful and have more abilities than younger vampires. Nick's "master" Lucien LaCroix was seemingly killed in the first season when FK was on CBS but came back in the first episode in syndication saying that he was "too old and powerful to be killed that way" (stake through the heart). And LaCroix noted when it appeared that humanity was going to be destroyed that ancient vampires would survive after the younger ones died of starvation. Plus, Nick's old vampire girlfriend has the good old reliable vampire nightclub. :)
One interesting thought from a recent episode is that in a very real sense there are no "innocent" vampires. When Nick was being "brought across" he had a sort of near death expeirience and was given the choice of his appropriate afterlife or going back. He chose to go back and live as a vampire. Consider this in a campaign. A player character is attacked by a vampire but instead of just dying and coming back as a vampire with no choice he is challenged to go to his afterlife or to return to life as a vampire, or perhaps has a third choice. Instead of, "Well, he's dead and is now a blood drinking fiend", you have a whole mini-adventure.
I think that Forever Knight may well qualify as a classic, given a
bit of time and good long term plot and character development.