(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. Went shopping at L&T, commiserated with fellow L&T shoppers and retailers about the closing of the flagship storefront. Did find some great things, feel much better now. I've gained a lot of weight, so many of my clothes don't fit right. Hence the shopping trip to make myself feel better.

Got a some great pants, and some interesting shirts. All summery, but several can also go into fall and spring.


2. Eh, I don't agree with their rankings at all... 100 Best Sci-Fi Shows

I'd put shows they put in the top ten further back, and shows that were in the lower levels higher.
I think it is very subjective. Also a lot of things they have ranked in the top ten, I didn't feel the need to watch. Humans bored me, I gave up early on.

I'd have ranked the top twenty thusly:

1. Farscape (it's the only one I feel a desire to rewatch, and the most innovative)
2. Battle Star Galatica v.2
3. Doctor Who
4. Star Trek Next Generation
5. Bablyon 5
6. Terminator : Sarah Connor Chronicles
7. The Twilight Zone
8. Westworld
9. The Prisoner
10. Star Trek - The Original Series
11. The X-Files
12. Lost
13. Torchwood
14. Sense8
15. Deep Space Nine/Voyager (tie)
16. Firefly
17. Now and Again
18. Dollhouse
19. Misfits
20. Orphan Black (which I may catch up with some day)/Cowboy Beebop

I haven't seen a lot of them. I don't like the ones that go too far with horror, or are too cheesy.


Off to make dinner. Waited too long again. My digestive system will kill me.

Comments

[anoyo]

Fit Stargate SG-1 onto that list somewhere around Babylon 5 and bump Westworld, and I pretty much agree with your list, yeah.

[shadowkat]

Eh, couldn't get into Star Gate. But it is on the 100 list. ;-)

[yourlibrarian]

I can understand the loss of a place one shops in a lot, and there have been a lot of stores closing their doors around the country, either locally or in toto.

I noticed looking at the list that it reminded me of top 100 song countdowns on the radio, which always ended with Stairway to Heaven but otherwise had a bunch of songs from the previous year in the top 25. There's a lot of very recent stuff and as good as I find Westworld and while I enjoyed Stranger Things, both have barely been around and have a handful of episodes compared to Who or Star Trek or even BSG.

I do think stuff that has been gone for a decade but still holds up to reviewing is a good criteria for a "top" list. I've never been able to get into Who or X-Files, Lost lost me early on, and while I think Orphan Black was a landmark of sorts (both in terms of Tatiana Maslany's performance, its representation, and a largely female cast) it was not a particularly good show of any kind. I haven't even heard of Counterpart, and given it's only a year old that kind of goes to the point of "how can you be certain it's really any kind of a landmark?"

Also, Caprica, are they serious? Tons of BSG fans wanting a new series in the verse and very few of them could stick with it. Ambitious perhaps but, again, not a particularly good show much less great.

Yeah, there's a lot to disagree with here -- whether it should even be on a list at all and certainly in terms of rankings.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, it's like any other ranking list - very subjective. There's quite a few items on it that I thought, oh come on, did you just grab every sci-fi show you could think of?? I also thought while reading it -- yes, there's a reason sci-fi television shows get a bad rap, they are crappy. LOL!

There's only been a handful over the years that I'd consider worth watching or looking at on a deeper level and expanded the form. While Lost had problems in it's later seasons, it did change television shows in various ways and introduced a new format. (ie. The flashback episodic format. A story is present, mystery of the week or B story is back-story or flashback. An idea I adore -- so much more interesting that the rather stale monster/mystery of week formula.) Lost was excellent in regards to character focus, development and episode structure, horribly inconsistent in regards to mythology/sci-fi world-building. (Since I don't care about sci-fi world-building and agree with Ursula Le Quin that this all metaphor for present every day problems anyhow, it didn't bother me as much as lot of people. In fact I tended to ignore that part of the show. Until the last season...which made no sense.) So, Lost, from an objective perspective - belongs high on the list, because it did come up with something new structurally and change television. It will belongs on the Best of Tv list for that reason alone.

Orphan Black is less of one -- mainly because they've done the whole clone thing before. However, the idea of one actress playing multiple versions of herself is rather innovative, particularly if it's not as DID. But it lost me early on -- seen too many shows like it, structurally speaking, and I was able to see where it was going. And the characters didn't appear to be changing that much.

Caprica? Interesting idea, should have worked, didn't as well as they hoped. I enjoyed it more than a lot of people did. My difficulty with it -- is it got bogged down on the religious stuff and overly convoluted as a result. But it didn't last long enough to be on the list and doesn't have the cult following Firefly does.

Westworld? It's better than Dollhouse. But does it have longevity? Doesn't appear to.

Doctor Who is a kid's show -- you sort have to view it as one, as people keep telling me. I think it may well be the best long-running episodic series on television. But it is also the only long-running episodic television series. Nothing else has been on that long that isn't a daytime soap opera. You got to give it credit for surviving since 1963. (Although I've never loved it as much as others have, so agree with you there.)

X-Files...is weird. I like the stand-alones fine, I hate the serialize arc or alien conspiracy story (which makes no sense and lost me early on). It's possibly the only series that is an episodic hybrid in which I prefer the stand-a-lones to the serial story.

Counterpart is on Starz, I think, and seems similar to Fringe. Great critical reviews. Stars the guy who played Skinner in X-Files as the lead. It's basically about a man who caused a split in the time line and now there are two parallel worlds and he is living two lives, and comes face to face with himself. (I haven't seen it, I don't get Starz.) It's barely made it past it's first season.

Why they have Lost in Space on the list, I don't know. There's others I'd have put on instead. Legion comes to mind. So too does VR5, which granted barely survived a season but has a lot in common with Caprica and Dollhouse. Sci-fi is really hard to do well on television for some reason. I think it's the audience, and the capricious nature of it...also, so much of television is still advertiser driven. As that changes, we'll get better and more sci-fi, I think. I know Amazon is actively pursuing it as is Netflix and Hulu.

[yourlibrarian]

You're right about Lost introducing a new format of storytelling. One problem I had with it was that it stuck to that formula so rigidly but it was also understandable in the early seasons given what the show was about. My problem with it was that the show didn't know what it was trying to say or where it was supposed to be going (something long admitted by the writers).

I also agree that I liked the plan behind Caprica -- they had the opposite problem from Lost. They did know where they were going and how they were going to get there, but the pacing was very slow and the stakes mattered only if you already knew the outcome in the later series, which is not a good way to get a new audience interested. I had similar problems with S1 of The Expanse. I stuck with it because I could see it had ambitions and I had heard the reviews which considered it an incredibly well done show. By the time I got to the end of the season I could see why. But even so, there was more to draw one into Expanse than Caprica.

I'm not a big fan of Pileggi so that's probably why I hadn't heard about it. It sounds like Sliding Doors, which I admit I've yet to see either.

I haven't seen S2 of Westworld yet and I understand it's had a more mixed reception than S1. Maybe Legion was considered a superhero show and excluded due to genre? Because I agree, it definitely deserved to be on here more than many.

[shadowkat]

My problem with it was that the show didn't know what it was trying to say or where it was supposed to be going (something long admitted by the writers).

Very true regarding LOST. The writers got burned out and wanted to end it earlier than the network did, and they had no plan. (If you get around to watching "Showrunners", Damon Lindenoff pretty much admits that. They told the network they couldn't keep stringing the story out and had answer these questions and pull people off of the island, otherwise the audience and the writers would get bored. (Closed Story formats like LOST have issues, because you need to have the characters accomplish their aim. Audiences don't have the same level of patience people did years ago, with less content available. Now there's so much, that if you get annoyed or frustrated you can just jump to something else.)

Which brings me to...

I had similar problems with S1 of The Expanse. I stuck with it because I could see it had ambitions and I had heard the reviews which considered it an incredibly well done show

Weirdly I am the exact opposite. Caprica held my attention. The Expanse hasn't. I can't get past the eighth episode of S2. I keep trying to watch it, and my attention wanders to other things. I just find it boring and slow. Really slow - as is in glacial. It might get better after episode 8. Don't know. I read the first of the books, and have the second on my Kindle, haven't gotten past the first book either - Levithan Wakes. I liked that story. Caliban....the second book in the series? I can't get into at all. I got into the Expanse really quickly and liked the first season and a half (which is Levithan Wakes) but not interested in anything much past that for some reason. (I think it may because I liked Julie Mao and Det. Miller the best, and was ambivalent about everyone else? Don't know.) Caprica -- I found far more compelling and sort of miss. I'd have continued watching it, while I have 13 episodes of the Expanse on my DVR that I'll probably delete without watching soon, and won't be following it to Amazon.

If you were to ask me why? I'd say I just found the characters and story thread more compelling, relatable, and innovative on Caprica than the Expanse. Both are hard to follow and both have plot issues.

It sounds like Sliding Doors, which I admit I've yet to see either.

No, more like Fringe. It's a science oriented conspiracy thriller not a romance. ;-)

Maybe Legion was considered a superhero show and excluded due to genre? Because I agree, it definitely deserved to be on here more than many

Maybe, but they have shows on that list that sort of fall under that category...I don't know, it's a weird list.