Rank your favorite TV space opera shows
- Thread starter INACTIVERedDwarf
- Start date
My Top 10:
1) Star Trek (TOS)
2) Space Battleship Yamato: 2199 (and 2202) - These remakes/updates to the original SBY are well done.
3) Mobile Suit Gundam (Anything from/in the Universal Century continuity - believe me, there's A LOT of different MS Gundam continuities
)
4) Super Dimension Fortress: Macross (Bastardized to make ROBOTECH in the U.S./UK)
5) Legend of Galactic Heroes
6) Enterprise
7) ST: DS9
8) Babylon 5
9) Firefly
10) Battlestar Galactica (1978) - Yeah, sue me there was some real crap, but overall for the time, it had some memorable stuff and stoylines.
(I still prefer it over Ron D. Moores 2003 - 2009 BSG remake aka 'existential Cylons...in space' series. I liked the 3 hour miniseries and parts of the first season, but after that the whole thing because to into itself, and again existential Cylon crap just became circular and boring. YMMV.)
1) Star Trek (TOS)
2) Space Battleship Yamato: 2199 (and 2202) - These remakes/updates to the original SBY are well done.
3) Mobile Suit Gundam (Anything from/in the Universal Century continuity - believe me, there's A LOT of different MS Gundam continuities
)4) Super Dimension Fortress: Macross (Bastardized to make ROBOTECH in the U.S./UK)
5) Legend of Galactic Heroes
6) Enterprise
7) ST: DS9
8) Babylon 5
9) Firefly
10) Battlestar Galactica (1978) - Yeah, sue me there was some real crap, but overall for the time, it had some memorable stuff and stoylines.
(I still prefer it over Ron D. Moores 2003 - 2009 BSG remake aka 'existential Cylons...in space' series. I liked the 3 hour miniseries and parts of the first season, but after that the whole thing because to into itself, and again existential Cylon crap just became circular and boring. YMMV.
)
Space Opera is easy to define. Any drama set in space or on a world requiring space travel to get to can be considered a space opera. The key word here is "drama." The shows that really don't fit are the comedies, because, y'know, they're comedies.
So while I love Red Dwarf to death, I didn't include it in my list because it's not drama.
I would only sue you because it should be number ONE! Number one, I say, and I am unanimous in this!
I will watch anything with a ship, and Galactica has always been my favorite spaceship, so I had no problem getting into the RDM show. It helped that Adama and Starbuck in that version are great characters.(I still prefer it over Ron D. Moores 2003 - 2009 BSG remake aka 'existential Cylons...in space' series. I liked the 3 hour miniseries and parts of the first season, but after that the whole thing because to into itself, and again existential Cylon crap just became circular and boring. YMMV.
I ignored the Cylons. Humanoid Cylons were a cost-cutting measure.
ST: DS9
ST: TNG
ST: Enterprise
Firefly
ST: Voyager
Star Trek TOS
Cowboy Bebop
Farscape
ST: TNG
ST: Enterprise
Firefly
ST: Voyager
Star Trek TOS
Cowboy Bebop
Farscape
That's hardly the agreed-upon definition of space opera. What's lacking there is the nature of the drama. The term "space opera" is believed to be patterned after "soap opera," one of whose essential defining characteristics is cliched melodrama and which as a term dates from radio days, and after "horse opera," a somewhat broader and nuanced concept which at least encompasses western adventures that are formulaic in nature.
By extension, "space opera" consists of adventurous exploits with heavy doses of formula, but in spaaace. I believe that most would agree that Flash Gordon and Star Wars are examples of space opera and that 2001: A Space Odyssey is not.
Practically all sci-fi TV shows set in space seem to be space opera, perhaps because that sells better than other subgenres. Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Quark (there's a comedy) are all space opera, most would agree, I believe.
It might be worth discussing whether Futurama qualifies. I think it does, but I'm not sure how much of a consensus there would be.
Perhaps they might have been that in the manner by which they were originally conceived, but the premise that that's all or even just primarily what the nuCylons were to nuBSG ignores the facts that their humanoid form was integral to a great many episodes and really essential to the series as a whole. You had stories that were groundbreaking for the genre that would have been impossible to tell otherwise, such as those involving the torture of Cylon prisoners, which without humanoid Cylons would have lacked allegorical significance with respect to the real world torture of prisoners. And you also had elements that were essential to the overall series such as the Final Five and other Cylon infiltrators among the humans, which again would have been impossible without humanoid Cylons. Whatever the motivation for creating the concept might or might not have been, the concept was essential to the series. These are all matters of fact.
Whether you liked the concept, whether you thought the stories that were told using the premise of humanoid Cylons were good or interesting enough to justify adopting the premise, these are the matters of opinion, in which no one can claim authority.
Again, you don't have to like them, but the idea that a cost-cutting measure was what the humanoid Cylons were, as if that's even just what they primarily were, that's just factually incorrect.
(I still prefer it over Ron D. Moores 2003 - 2009 BSG remake aka 'existential Cylons...in space' series. I liked the 3 hour miniseries and parts of the first season, but after that the whole thing because to into itself, and again existential Cylon crap just became circular and boring. YMMV.
Yeah, while there are things I like about modern Galactica, the humanoid Cylons story turned in on itself and became a self-referential soap opera, by the end. There is a tendency in recent TV to move away from "big ideas" sci-fi, which is justified as 'grounding' the genre, but actually sometimes just removes the point of science fiction, which is to explore bigger ideas than any other genre is capable of, and dramatise bigger issues than personal secrets.
The other day, I finally got round to watching Blame! on Netflix, which is an anime film adaptation of a hard sci-fi manga I have been meaning to read for over ten years. Over geological time, our cultures are mere blips, even Egypt, which had already been a civilization for 2,000 years before Rome arose, is a mere blip compared to 300,000 years of Homo sapiens. The world of Blame! is set at an unknown point in the future where most of the solar system has been turned into a giant dyson-sphere like megastructure, and at some point, humans lost the gene needed to access the operating system of their megastructure, becoming a fallen culture inside a world they no longer remember was engineered by them. The movie starts off very very slowly, in a way completely alien to the modern TV compulsion with human banter, just like the original work which was visual rather than dialogue based. But by the end, from this deceptively slow beginning, it has introduced an interesting cumulative picture of a far future humanity reduced to an endangered species in their own ancient megastructure; it's hard to explore big concepts like this immediately, they can take time to introduce. But it reminded me of something important; sci-fi can be a difficult niche genre, and shouldn't always try to ground things in present day American social structure, to the point of diluting their cinematic vision.
Last edited:
You know me. I never agree with the "agreed-upon" anything.
Agreed
The "nature of the drama" of a comedy is that it's comedy, a separate thing from drama, so if space opera is derived from different kinds of drama, then comedies don't qualify.
Of course anybody can add whatever show they want to their lists. Just take this as why I won't be adding comedies to mine.
Integral or not, important to the story or not, it is fact that it is cheaper to have normal people in normal clothing walking around calling themselves machines than it is to actually depict the machines, whether with practical costumes or digital effects. That the creators of the show managed to integrate them into a compelling narrative is great, but it is still ultimately a compensation for not spending money they didn't have.
Transporters are integral and important to the mythology of Star Trek, but the only reason they exist is because when the original pilot was being created the creators found the fade in-fade out effect cheaper to do than building a shuttle mock-up and depicting it landing. Transporters evolved from a cost-cutting measure. Saying that is not a ding on the creators of Trek and saying the same about humanoid cylons isn't a ding on the creators of nuBSG. It's just an acknowledgment of the limitations imposed on people who do their jobs, so I acknowledge it and watch the shows anyway. I never I hated the humanoid cylons. I just didn't watch nuBSG for them.
I always felt the term "space opera" is not only used to describe "adventurous exploits with heavy doses of formula, but in spaaace" as CorporalCaptain put it, but also, in part, to distinguish the genre from the more conceptual "hard science fiction" genre with its greater involvement with actual science (e.g. Moon, Gattaca, 2001 etc).
That's considerably more precise and informative than simply "transporters were a cost-cutting measure." That's my point.
Agree, for all your reasons stated....
10) Battlestar Galactica (1978) - Yeah, sue me there was some real crap, but overall for the time, it had some memorable stuff and stoylines.
(I still prefer it over Ron D. Moores 2003 - 2009 BSG remake aka 'existential Cylons...in space' series. I liked the 3 hour miniseries and parts of the first season, but after that the whole thing because to into itself, and again existential Cylon crap just became circular and boring. YMMV.
Last edited:
I've never thought that space operas had to dramas, I'd say The Orville, and Final Space both qualify. For me it's pretty much any show that takes place primarily in space, or at least has space travel as a regular occurrence.
You know one show I forgot on my list was Doctor Who but I don't find that show space opera-ish. We are barely even in the TARDIS most of the time.
Another show that might get into my list is The Expanse. I watched the first two seasons and really enjoyed it. I'm waiting for season 3 to come on Prime and then I can see season four with the rest of you.
But they started out as one. So did humanoid cylons. That was my point.That's considerably more precise and informative than simply "transporters were a cost-cutting measure." That's my point.
I don't mind agreeing with The Orville because i've never seen it as purely a comedy. I see it as more of a "funnier" TNG. It's just not on my list because I like other shows better.
On the topic of video games...
Timeless examples:
1). Mass Effect 1
2). Mass Effect 2
3). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
4). Star Trek: Judgement Rites
5). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I
Better games:
6). Mass Effect 3
7). Mass Effect: Andromeda
8). Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
9). Battlefleet Gothic: Armada
10). FTL - Faster than Light
11). Star Wars: Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight
12). Metroid Prime 1
13). Metroid Prime 2
14). Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard
15). Stellaris
16). Star Trek: Klingon Academy
17). Star Wars: Dark Forces
18). Star Wars: TIE Fighter
19). BattleTech
20). Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity
21). Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
22). Freelancer
23). Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
24). Homeworld 1
25). Warhammer 40,000: Final Liberation / Dawn of War / Armageddon / Space Hulk / etc
26). Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
27). Zone of the Enders 1
28). Star Wars: X-Wing
29). EGA Trek
30). Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force 1
I'm sure I've missed a ton. You could include things like Halo I suppose. Way too few space opera RPGs however.
Similar threads
