Yeah, I suppose it's minimally preferable, although "alternating wins" is something of a stretch; I imagine B5 would have won pretty much in the years it did anyway, with Trek dominating otherwise. I should have written "is
much better than being dominated by one." At this point, with
Game of Thrones likely to be a serious contender for the next couple years at least, we're back to that scenario anyway. At least it isn't two space-based SF franchises this time.
My larger point is that the problem isn't
Doctor Who or
Doctor Who fans in particular, but that having what is essentially a TV episodes category means that the current flavor of the year will dominate.
Doctor Who is especially bad because it's especially popular, but if you take it out of the nomination lists, you get ballots that are less skewed, but still heavy on Whedon, Abrams,
Galactica.
And really, uneven is a given. Has there ever been a genre series that was 1. consistently good and 2. not cancelled before it could have a second season?
Well, there's probably never been any TV series that meets those criteria. But I think SFF on TV has remained wildly uneven at a time when other genres are becoming more consistent. (SFF is also better than it was, God knows, but not to the same degree.) Which is why there's an upper limit to my frustration with
Doctor Who's domination of the category: variety is always nice, but I'm hard pressed to believe anything that lost to it deserved to be thought of as great science fiction. Maybe "Epitaph One" was that good-- I keep meaning to give
Dollhouse another shot-- and
The Lost Thing probably deserved better than fifth place behind a music video. Actually, that's the biggest shame about the Short Form category: that genuinely interesting and unusual short films are likely to be shut out in favor of TV episodes and comedy sketches.
