worst sci-fi TV series of post 1964

[Expo67]

Outside of Colicos and Greene, BSG had a cast of good-looking people without notable acting talent. It was dreadfully, pathetically thought out and written. It was pretty, due to the efforts of good artists who had no input at all, of course, into casting or writing. As a result it's a visually attractive, vapid and awful TV series. There's no mystery at all as to how it might wind up on a reasonable person's list of Worst SF Series.

Of course, if one encounters it for the first time at the age of eight or nine one might develop a fondness for it.

Correction, make that two shoe stores.

Dreadfully, pathetically thought out and written? That was Galactica 1980, RDM's piece of crap remake, and Caprica.

Vapid and awful? More like RDM's writing skills when it comes to remaking a classic. The same could be said about the upcoming remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller 'Straw Dogs.'

If Peckinpah were alive today, he would break a beer bottle and stab the goddamned fool who even wrote the remake. Let alone the director who was foolish enough to take on such a foolish errand to begin with

 

[Distorted Humor]

NuBSG was not the best show ever, but to call it the worse is a major stretch,

 

[Kegg]

Hate to point this out, but Space:1999 DOES NOT deserve to be on the list of worse sci-fi shows post 1964.

I thought it was pretty clear I (and for that matter, Lensman) were defending the show. Only person who lumped it in as a worst-of was ClayHefner, and even he was just suggesting it had one of the worst premises, not that it was one of the worst series.

And I don't think it's 'saying a lot' that a show pre-Star Wars was cool. I happen to like this little sci-fi series from the 1960s you might have heard of, and that's gliding over The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone and others. (Hell, I've been watching Raumpatrouille lately and it is actually a lot better then I anticipated.)

Speaking of going to bat for stuff:

Caprica

Had some issues in execution - particularly arc construction, and the Amanda Grayson plotline but was a genuinely intriguing and well cast sci-fi series. It could have dealt with cyberspace and transhumanism in interesting (for TV) ways had it progressed, and it was certainly toying with that in what I've seen so far.

Voyager, and Enterprise

Both get a lot of hate, and a large amount of it is deserved. The Doctor was a great character, though, and ENT's final season of shameless fanwankery did a long way to make me dislike the show less, so I wouldn't peg them as the worst sci-fi shows I've seen.

 

[Expo67]

Outside of Colicos and Greene, BSG had a cast of good-looking people without notable acting talent.

Like Fred Astaire, Lloyd Bridges, Patrick Macnee, Jane Seymour, Anne Lockhart, Jonathan Harris, Loretta Spang, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict? No, no notable talent at all. Funny man, Dennis.

What do you expect from someone who remade his own story into a less than entertaining episode of TNG? And a good story it was at that.

Some other talented guest stars from the old Battlestar Galactica that should also be mentioned are the following.

Roy Thinnes, James Olson, Christine Belford, Richard Lynch, Denny Scott Miller, Britt Ekland, Dan O'Herlihy, James Whitmore, Jr, Ted Gehring, Red West, Lance LeGault, Anthony DeLongis, Audrey Landers, Barry Nelson, Rance Howard, Randolph Mantooth, Kelly Harmon, Ray Bolger, Frank Marth, Lloyd Bochner, John Hoyt, Ray Milland, Wilfred Hyde-White, Melody Anderson, Ken Swofford, Logan Ramsey, Peter B. MacLean, Kenneth Lynch, John DeLancie, Nehemiah Persoff, Edward Mulhare, Paul Fix, Lew Ayers, Rick Springfield, Arlene Martel, and Ana Alicia.

Without notable acting talent? Look at those names. Those veterans have NOTABLE ACTING TALENT!

Make that three shoe stores stuck in the mouth.

 

[Australis]

I hated oldBSG (Boxey and Muffit) for exactly the same reason I hated Buck Rogers ("bidibidibidi"). That pandering to the littlies.

The one good thing about Space Rangers was Linda Hunt, who is now excellent in NCIS:LA. (she's the main reason I watch that show).

Lost in Space was great when I was 8. Very hard to watch now, especially when it became the Dr Smith show.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

NuBSG was not the best show ever, but to call it the worse is a major stretch,

It was head and shoulders above anything Glen Larson ever emitted.

I hated oldBSG (Boxey and Muffit) for exactly the same reason I hated Buck Rogers ("bidibidibidi"). That pandering to the littlies.

Yeah, I think that affection for oldBSG is somewhat contingent on how old one was when first encountering it. I was already an adult when it premiered, and never saw it as anything other than the overblown, Von Daniken-infested cheesefest that it was.

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, neither version of BSG deserves to be on a "worst" list. That ought to be reserved for real misfires like, say, The Night Stalker remake or Baywatch Nights or something . . .

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Honestly, neither version of BSG deserves to be on a "worst" list. That ought to be reserved for real misfires like, say, The Night Stalker remake or Baywatch Nights or something . . .

Well, this points up the other problem with such a list - it's hard to rate shows that almost no one ever bothered to watch. If you allow public voting, oldBSG is going to get a lot more votes for "worst" than something like Superforce just because a lot more people are going to know what it was. If you've seen something and it repels you, that makes an impression.

 

[Expo67]

NuBSG was not the best show ever, but to call it the worse is a major stretch,

It was head and shoulders above anything Glen Larson ever emitted.

I hated oldBSG (Boxey and Muffit) for exactly the same reason I hated Buck Rogers ("bidibidibidi"). That pandering to the littlies.

Yeah, I think that affection for oldBSG is somewhat contingent on how old one was when first encountering it. I was already an adult when it premiered, and never saw it as anything other than the overblown, Von Daniken-infested cheesefest that it was.

You must have a big appetite for shoe leather.

Head and shoulders above anything Glen Larson emitted? In RDM's case, it's more like head up the ass for having remade the original.

 

[RandyS]

Close to the pilot -- she died at the end of the first regular episode, a two parter. With the three-part opener, I suppose that's technically a five episode run (although she was scripted -- and perhaps this was shot -- to die at the end of the pilot of a terminal disease, IIRC).

It was indeed shot. That storyline can be seen in the deleted scenes section of the DVD set.

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, neither version of BSG deserves to be on a "worst" list. That ought to be reserved for real misfires like, say, The Night Stalker remake or Baywatch Nights or something . . .

Well, this points up the other problem with such a list - it's hard to rate shows that almost no one ever bothered to watch. If you allow public voting, oldBSG is going to get a lot more votes for "worst" than something like Superforce just because a lot more people are going to know what it was. If you've seen something and it repels you, that makes an impression.

True. But insisting that either BSG, or any of the Star Trek series, is the "worst" ever shows a certain lack of perspective.

I mean, I can't believe that nobody has mentioned Manimal yet . . . .

SUPPLEMENT:

Okay, I dragged out my dog-earred copy of The Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction. Have we all forgotten such "classics" as Beyond Westworld, Automan, Mercy Point, NightMan, and Project UFO?

 

[The Lensman]

Well it's made very clear in the first season that it's all going according to some kind of cosmic level plan and that some kind of "cosmic intelligence" is behind it all.

There were some mumblings about alien signals from Meta, but I don't recall that being picked up again beyond the pilot episode (it's been a while, granted).

There were the signals from Meta, and yeah, I don't recall any more being done with it off the top of my head.

But the episode "Black Sun", where the moon goes through a black hole/worm hole....when they're doing the "2001" aging thing, the Commander speaks to a (or the) Cosmic Intelligence. It could only communicate with them at their level at that moment, IIRC.

Also, Bergman comments on how it's amazing that they've survived as they have and wonders if there isn't something bigger involved.

BERGMAN: It's obvious. See, I wanted analyses of previous dangers we've faced and come through. Bit of a long shot, but Anyway, friend Computer pointed it out. A statistical impossibility.
KOENIG: What are you talking about?
BERGMAN: Probability statistics analysis.
KOENIG: Probability? Will it get us out of here? There's a thousand urgent matters to see to.
BERGMAN: Stuff and nonsense. There's nothing to do that isn't being done. Listen to me. I fed programs to the computer for probability figures for every danger we've been through. Of course, the totals are cumulative. Well, the improbability of our having survived at all... never mind time after time... comes close to within a whisker of being infinite. Now, any improbability that close to infinity becomes, of course, impossible. Ergo, we can not have survived, we must all be long dead. Yet here we are. D'you see what I'm driving at, eh? Mm?
KOENIG: No, frankly.
BERGMAN: There must be another factor not taken into account. A factor the computer and I missed. But we can prove we missed nothing of that order. So that leaves only one possible answer... outside intervention.
KOENIG: You're grasping at straws.
BERGMAN: Someone... something... outside Alpha has taken notice of us, has taken a hand in our affairs, time after time, and bailed us out, saved us. Perhaps inside the black sun...
HELENA: Who?
BERGMAN: Well, the sheer physical powers involved show it's supra-human. Supra, not super, in the sense of not-human, beyond humanity, alien to...
HELENA: And why?
BERGMAN: Ah. Who knows why? Who can know? A being... beings... on that level, a cosmic intelligence, would have unimaginable reasons of its own.

And Bergman was shown to be right. So basically, anytime there's a vast scientific inaccuracy, I just chalk it up to the Cosmic Intelligence and it's mysterious plan. If Q could rewrite the gravitational constant, then who knows what the Cosmic Intelligence could do. It's a god of the shows gaps, imo and the producers do seemed to have understood that it needed one.

"Space Brain"....I don't recall if there was any talk of "cosmic intelligence" as far as directing them....but I believe the final ep of the season brings the issue up though. The moon is stopped at the planet Arkadia, they do their thing and then the moon moves on.

 

[Kegg]

^
Sounds plausible to me. I only dimly recall that episode.

Have we all forgotten such "classics" as Beyond Westworld, Automan, Mercy Point, NightMan, and Project UFO?

Literally didn't have a clue of what any of those were, so I went and wikied them.

Automan is an American science fiction superhero television series produced by Glen A. Larson.

Eggshells, here.

But yes, you have a point. Most of the series we're discussing are made with a level of competence and professionalism that doesn't make them seem like the absolute worst the genre has to offer.

Although I have a question: Why post-1964? Besides being the date Star Trek's pilot was made that seems a very arbitrary cutoff point. Granted, people are even less likely to know a lot of pre-64 sci-fi TV shows - let alone really bad ones - but it does seem a somewhat unnecessary qualifier.

 

[JRoss]

The Event, the new V, Andromeda, Tremors: The Series.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

True. But insisting that either BSG, or any of the Star Trek series, is the "worst" ever shows a certain lack of perspective.

Every "best," "worst" or "top ten/twenty-five/one hundred" list suffers from some problem of perspective or another. The latter, particularly, tend to be front-loaded with much more recent shows or movies while discounting older and often superior examples of whatever's being listed. It sells no issues of Entertainment Weekly to list "Ten Best Sitcoms Of All Time" and populate it mainly with shows that no one under the age of fifty will have ever seen unless they plopped down in front of Nick-at-Nite too stoned for two days to find the remote. There will instead be the obligatory genuflection to I Love Lucy before the coronation of How I Met Your Mother at number one.

The Event, the new V, Andromeda, Tremors: The Series.

See, suppose the category is "worst disease in history." You immediately have issues with criteria - do we privilege "worst and most painful symptoms" above "total body count," or the other way around? Is it Andromeda = ebola and oldBSG = bubonic plague?

 

[Greg Cox]

Every "best," "worst" or "top ten/twenty-five/one hundred" list suffers from some problem of perspective or another. The latter, particularly, tend to be front-loaded with much more recent shows or movies while discounting older and often superior examples of whatever's being listed. It sells no issues of Entertainment Weekly to list "Ten Best Sitcoms Of All Time" and populate it mainly with shows that no one under the age of fifty will have ever seen unless they plopped down in front of Nick-at-Nite too stoned for two days to find the remote. There will instead be the obligatory genuflection to I Love Lucy before the coronation of How I Met Your Mother at number one.

Tell me about it. That drives me nuts. It's like nothing made before 1975 (at the earliest) counts. At best, there's one token b/w classic for form's sake, and everything else makes Back to the Future seem like an oldie!

And, yes, EW's readers probably don't want to read about Gracie Allen or Ernie Kovacs, but, just for the sake of truth-in-advertising, why not just bill it as a list of "The Ten Best Modern Sitcoms" or "The Best Sitcoms of Our Time" or something?

 

[JRoss]

Hey, all of this trashing both old and new BSG without any real arguments besides "Nuh uh!" and "Uh huh!" is kind of immature.

Both had their strengths, both had their flaws. How many times can the same Cylon Raider get destroyed? And, sorry, but there's a reason we don't hear from Jefferson, Benedict and Hatch all that much anymore. That said, good production values for it's time, tread new ground, story-wise.

The new BSG had its strengths, mainly Bear McCreary's incredible music. The acting was generally streets ahead of the old series. Special effects were great and they were very bold in their storytelling. Of course, when you look at it from outside, it really makes very little sense...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

... why not just bill it as a list of "The Ten Best Modern Sitcoms" or "The Best Sitcoms of Our Time" or something?

Good question...I guess just because "All Time Best Evah!" is a bigger come-on?

Or, more honestly "Ten Best Things That Our Staff Writers Can Pull Out Of Their Asses From Memory Over Lunch Without Actually Doing Research?"

 

[Greg Cox]

^
Sounds plausible to me. I only dimly recall that episode.

Have we all forgotten such "classics" as Beyond Westworld, Automan, Mercy Point, NightMan, and Project UFO?

Literally didn't have a clue of what any of those were, so I went and wikied them.

.

For my sins, I remember all of them.

 

[JRoss]

Andromeda didn't kill many people because nobody watched it, so I'd imagine as a disease it's more like a very rare skin rash that annoys rather than kills. The Event and the NuV were blips on the radar, so let's call them a 24-hour stomach flu. Tremors, of course, is a tape worm.

Expo67, what does What do you expect from someone who remade his own story into a less than entertaining episode of TNG? And a good story it was at that. mean?