There are SciFi and there are Fantasy television shows, but they are far and few between the other television shows that are out there. There are the Friends of the television world and there are the CSIs and crime drama, the Reality shows, there are Game Shows and there are documentaries and learning type shows.
I have never watched a single episode of CSI. Reality shows, are not reality, they are dysfunction made to look like reality to make people feel better. Sitcoms with their laugh tracks make me feel embarrassed, not because I watch them, but because I feel like they are the audience and they are watching me and because every episode is inane. Crime drama can be quite good, same with Medical drama and the rest, as long as they make no pretense as to be reality. And here is another key, they are not filled in America. Game shows. Documentaries and learning programs are rarely entertaining, but that is fine, people who like them like them because they learn.
Fantasy . . . Can be like Dexter, like True Blood and Game of Thrones is usually good because it is an adaptation of a book or idea from a book. It often does not try to be reality or like reality. And if it comes from a book there is a plot that the viewer can not decent right away that will thread the series, which is unlike any other type of show.
SciFi comes on many different levels. There is Star Trek. People who like star Trek say that people with high IQs like watching Star Trek, Mensa and all them are said to like Star Trek. Partially based in science exploring new planets and all that crap, it is crap. There is no plot, no arcing plot to connect each episode, each episode stands alone. Later versions like Next Generation, toyed with a plot and failed. Deep Space Nine had competition and sort of had a plot, but it was constructed one episode at a time. Voyager had a series plot, get home and Enterprise after the first season when sex was not working was to save Earth. Star Trek was a failure interest wise.
Babylon 5, on the other hand, succeeded where the other shows failed. Right from the get go, there was a plot, invisible at first, but later glaringly awesome. Things that happened in the first season were significant in the fourth season. Events in the movies, had impact in the television episodes and vice versa. A plot that moved along with every episode to a conclusion that you could not see in the very first episode, twists and turns and betrayals. The first television show to use computer graphics, the first to use space combat the way it would happen, in three dimensions. People from Mensa did not just love it, the top people in Mensa tuned in every week. And that was a chore. I watched the show regularly; their were regular problems. As with all great things, they seem to be appreciated mostly after they are gone, Babylon 5 had difficulty getting funding. Often they would have only enough money to make half a season and they would make it then get the rest of the money for the rest of the season. After one season was made, there were threats that that was going to be the only season, and after the second, the third and the fourth. Star Trek gets funding for seven years easily, but something new and good has to fight for every episode. So true for Farscape.
People liked Star Trek, a subset of those people watched Babylon 5, but the people who liked that, loved Farscape. An astronaut goes to space to test his own theory, a stepping stone to the stars and accidentally opens a wormhole and gets sucked down and is spat out in the middle of a space battle in a distant who knows where and then it gets better. Star Trek, everyone looks human, the Klingons have three hours of makeup to put on. Babylon 5, everyone looks human, some of them are in make up for hours again. Farscape, many of the people look human, one of the characters is a plant, one is half a meter at most, one is the size of a small elephant, one is the ship. Some of the characters spend the bulk of their time in makeup getting their costumes on, and some of them are puppets.
The plots on Farscape were complicated and they were episodic, but they had more imagination and fantastic than any other show before or since. There was an episode built around the music of the 1812 Overture, there was an episode where the main character was hallucinating and the hallucinations were Warner Brothers Cartoons. There was an episode where a energy malfunction switched minds in bodies, there was a episode involving shrink rays there were things that would be described as magic, but thanks to Asimov, we know that advanced technology IS magic. Farscape was cancelled. Not because it was not good, but because it did not get the numbers. The last season was brought out as a two hour long movie condensing a season into one movie, loose ends were tied up. The sixth season was a comic book that I have not seen.
It was a series that was better than anything on today, there was love, there was action, there was intelligence.
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