Your top 10 (or more) SF/F television *episodes*? (any series)

[Temis the Vorta]

Yikes, this is a toughie. This is just a semi-arbitrary list from what could easily be my top fifty of roughly-equivalent episodes...

In the Pale Moonlight, DS9
There's No Place Like Home, Lost
The Doomsday Machine, TOS
Rocks & Shoals, DS9
Pilot, Lost
Amok Time, TOS
Five Years Gone, Heroes
The Why of Fry, Futurama
Flashes Before Your Eyes, Lost
Crossroads Pt II, BSG

Geeze, couldn't even find a place for 33 (BSG), Unrealized Reality (Farscape), Serenity (Firefly), Balance of Terror (TOS), Call to Arms, Sacrifice of Angels and Purgatory/Inferno (DS9), The Shape of Things To Come, Through the Lookinglass and The Constant (Lost) or Roswell That Ends Well (Futurama). This is nuts!

Funny how I can't think of an episode of The X-Files that just screams out to be included in this list. What are everyone's favorites? I gotta admit, I'm not a big fan of Jose Chung's From Outer Space...what's that episode with the guy who can foresee people's deaths and when Scully asks him how she dies, he says "You don't?" That was pretty good.

14) On Thursday We Leave For Home (The Twilight Zone)

What was that episode about?

Crossroads part 2 (BSG)--particularly the last 20 minutes--was probably my favorite television memory ever. It totally blew me away.

That would really be an easier poll, the "blew me away!" moments. That's one of mine, but so is...

Sisko & the gang losing the station thru the rendezvous with the big-ass fleet, Call to Arms, DS9.

Everything from Kira and Nog failing to stop the mines from being taken down through Dukat's "I forgive you, too," Sacrifice of Angels, DS9.

"IT"S A FAAAAKE!" (seriously, does that ever get old? ) and "I can live with it." In the Pale Moonlight, DS9.

"Guys...where are we?" Pilot, Lost.

"Make Your Own Kind of Music," from the second season opener of Lost (I was just about to change the channel - frak, is this the wrong station? )

Ben gambles that Keamy won't kill Alex...ooops, The Shape of Things To Come, Lost.

Ben Linus turns the Frozen Donkey Wheel, and the denoument thereof, There's No Place Like Home, Lost.

"DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL," BSG miniseries.

Or we could do moments that truly INFURIATED you beyond measure - the reveal (which I had guessed) about the flash-forward from Lost in the third season finale really ticked me off till I saw more of S4 and realized it was actually a genius move.

Hah, I guess that's ten.

 

[Harvey]

I surely couldn't pick one episode from the X-Files or Millennium, and have an awfully hard time choosing one (or even two favorites) from the Twilight Zone and Farscape.

You're thinking of "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," Temis. It is indeed one of the best episodes of the series, although my favorite is probably "Anasazi," the season two cliffhanger.

 

[chrisspringob]

14) On Thursday We Leave For Home (The Twilight Zone)

What was that episode about?

A spaceship crashes on a desolate alien world, and the crew tries to make a life for itself there. 30 years later, rescue finally arrives, but the original ship's captain, who had been maintaining strict control over his crew for all these years, has trouble facing the prospect of returning to civilization....

I can't really say more than that without giving too much away. This ep was from the infamous 4th season, when they transitioned from half hour episodes to one hour episodes (the one hour eps are rarely shown in reruns anymore). The bulk of the episodes from that season are way too padded, but this one works really well. It's not at the top of the list for most people's favorite Twilight Zones, but this one really got to me for some reason.

 

[ialfan]

Here's my list in no particular order. After posting this I realized I left off a lot of good shows but oh well. I couldn't level it down any more.

1. Firefly: Serenity (pilot)
2. Firefly: Out of Gas
3. ENT: Observer Effect
4. ENT: Demons/Terra Prime
5. ENT: Babel One/United/The Aenar
6. ENT: In a Mirror, Darkly
7. DS9: Homefront/Paradise Lost
8. DS9: The Way of the Warrior
9. DS9: What You Leave Behind
10. nuBSG: Exodus, Part II
11. nuBSG: Resurrection Ship
12. nuBSG: The Captain's Hand
13. TNG: The Drumhead
14. TNG: Chain of Command
15. TNG: The Defector
16. VOY: Living Witness
17. VOY: Scorpion
18. TOS: Errand of Mercy
19. TOS: A Taste of Armageddon
20. Angel: Power Play/Not Fade Away
21. Angel: You're Welcome
22. Angel: Birthday
23. Buffy: The Gift
24. Buffy: Becoming
25. Buffy: Once More, With Feeling
26. BSG: The Living Legend
27. Heroes: Company Man
28. Dead Like Me: Pilot

 

[I am not Spock]

God, this will be hard (I watch loads of SF)

TNG: Best of Both Worlds
DS9: Far Beyond the Stars
VOY: Living Witness
ENT: Cogenitor
TOS: City on The Edge of Forever
Buffy: The Body
Dr Who: Blink
Dr Who: Human Nature/ Family of Blood
Angel: Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?
Buffy: The Gift

This is just some of my faves. There's many many others.

 

[Barbados Slim]

10. "The Pegasus Project" Stargate SG-1. A balls to the wall adventure episode with some of the best fx on TV.

9. "Out of Gas" Firefly. The episode that truly showed us the potential of a series that died too soon.

8. "Greatest Hits" Lost. Charlie's swan song. He declares his love for Claire in an extremely romantic way and sacrifices himself to save everyone only to survive and make an amazing discovery. This is one of the few episodes of Lost that had me crying full-on.

7. "Best of Both Worlds I" TNG. Before Internet spoilers, Trek gave us a terrifying episode with a shocking cliffhanger.

6. "Once More, With Feeling" Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They pulled off a huge feat: A musical episode that had great songs and advanced the plot in spades.

5. "You're Welcome" Angel. The 100th episode that brought back our girl for one last snark, one last fight, one last kiss and a tearfully poignant goodbye.

4. "In The Pale Moonlight" DS9. Sisko's darkest hour when he makes a choice that hurts his beloved Starfleet integrity. This episode played like a 40s noir thriller and it's conclusion floored us all.

3. "Pegasus" Battlestar Galactica. An episode where a shining beacon of hope comes and turns into the fleet's worst nightmare. This episode shows what wouldve happened to our heroes had they not had Roslin in the beginning. The stories heard made me angry and the treatment of the Cylons made me cry. Plus it was Adama at his aboslute ballsiest.

2. "Blink" Doctor Who. One of the scariest hours of television ever also was filled with humor and sorrow towards characters we just met. And I've never seen time played with in sci-fi the way they did with a DVD easter egg.

1. "Tapestry" TNG. The best Q episode of the series. We all have different degrees of love for Trek. I have taken many life lessons from these shows. They shaped me, helped define who I am and how I move about this world. None more than this tale about living a life without risk taking and how I can miss out on doing great things if I take the safe road all the time. Tapestry is a very personal story that lives in my heart and pops up when I had doubts about moving to a new city, or applying for a promotion. Because of that, this to me is sci-fi's finest hour of television.

 

[Greg Cox]

Just to focus, I'm going to limit myself to one episode per series, even though that's going to make for some excruciating choices:

TZ: "The Obsolete Man"
TOS: "The Devil in the Dark"
TNG: "Q Who?"
DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations"
BUFFY: "Hush"
X-FILES: "Home"
XENA: "A Day in the Life"
THE NIGHT STALKER: "Horror in the Heights"
THE OUTER LIMITS: "Do Not Open Until Doomsday"
ANGEL: "Smile Time"
FARSCAPE: "Die Me, Dichotomy"
DOCTOR WHO: "Blink"

 

[Neroon]

I am trying very hard to keep things reined in here in listing these, but here it goes:

Babylon 5
Z'ha'dum
Severed Dreams
The Long, Twilight Struggle
Sleeping In Light
The Coming of Shadows

Farscape
Die Me Dichotomy
The Way We Weren't
Out of Their Minds
The Hidden Memory
Different Destinations

Firefly
Out of Gas
Serenity
Our Mrs. Reynolds
Ariel
Shindig

Star Trek
The Doomsday Machine
The Trouble With Tribbles
City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
The Tholian Web

The Twilight Zone (orig)
To Serve Man
Stopover In A Quiet Town
Little Girl Lost
The Changing of the Guard


Star Trek: TNG
The Best of Both Worlds, part 1
The Inner Light
The Defector
Yesterday's Enterprise
The Offspring

 

[Goji]

No real order, that would make this even harder

Into the Lion's Den, I & II - Farscape
Sandoval's Run - Earth Final Conflict
The Changing Face of Evil - DS9
In Purgatory's Shadow - DS9
Mirror, Mirror - Star Trek
The Enterprise Incident - Star Trek
Folie a Deux - The X-Files
Bad Blood - The X-Files
Ariel - Firefly

 

[Ben Sisko3]

A few more...

Justice League: A Better World I & II
Justice League Unlimited: For the Man Who Has Everything
Batman Beyond: Meltdown
Superman: Apokolips Now I & II
Smallville: Shattered
Smallville: Onyx
Smallville: Descent
Lost: Deus Ex Machina
Lost: Live Together, Die Alone
Lost: The Man Behind the Curtain
Lost: Meet Kevin Johnson
MillenniuM: Midnight of the Century
MillenniuM: Jose Chung's "Doomsday Defense"
MillenniuM: The Fourth Horseman / The Time Is Now
Jericho: Pilot
Jericho: Termination for Cause
Jericho: Patriots & Tyrants
Stargate SG-1: Window of Opportunity
Stargate SG-1: Shades of Grey
Stargate SG-1: The Other Side
Stargate Atlantis: Common Ground
Stargate Atlantis: Vegas
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Passion
Angel: A Hole in the World
Farscape: Into the Lion's Den I & II
Battlestar Galactica: Flesh and Bone
Battlestar Galactica: Sine Qua Non
The Spectacular Spider-Man: The Invisible Hand
The X-Files: The Unnatural
Supernatural: In the Beginning

 

[chrisspringob]

I don't know if I could pick ten without really thinking hard about it. A few that I can name.

"Spectre of the Gun" (Star Trek)
"The Face of the Enemy" (Babylon 5)
"Far Beyond the Stars" (Deep Space Nine)
"In the Pale Moonlight" (Deep Space Nine)
"Heroes II" (Stargate SG-1)
"Crossroads II" (Battlestar Galactica)

Weren't you a big booster of "Occupation/Precipice" in the BSG hurt/heal thread, saying that it was their best episode? I'm surprised you didn't list it here. Granted, it's technically two separate episodes, but no need to be that nitpicky if you prefer to think of it as one.

 

[Vasquez Rocks]

TNG - Family
TNG - The Defector
TNG - The Offspring
TNG - The Best of Both Worlds
TNG - All Good Things
TNG - The Inner Light
TOS - Amok Time
TOS - The City On The Edge Of Forever
Buffy - The Body
Buffy - Lies My Parents Told Me
Buffy - Dirty Girls
Buffy - Empty Places
Buffy - The Zeppo
Buffy - Halloween
Buffy - Hush
Angel - You're Welcome
Angel - Hero
Angel - Lullaby
S:A&B - Who Monitors The Birds?
S:A&B - Stay With The Dead
S:A&B - R & R
S:A&B - The Angriest Angel
Firefly - Ariel
Firefly - Objects In Space
Firefly - Out Of Gas
T:TSCC - The Demon Hand
T:TSCC - What He Beheld
T:TSCC - Self Made Man
The X-Files - Eve
The X-Files - The Erlenmeyer Flask
The X-Files - Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
The x-Files - Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'
The X-Files - Home
The X-Files - Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man

 

[Harvey]

I don't know if I could pick ten without really thinking hard about it. A few that I can name.

"Spectre of the Gun" (Star Trek)
"The Face of the Enemy" (Babylon 5)
"Far Beyond the Stars" (Deep Space Nine)
"In the Pale Moonlight" (Deep Space Nine)
"Heroes II" (Stargate SG-1)
"Crossroads II" (Battlestar Galactica)

Weren't you a big booster of "Occupation/Precipice" in the BSG hurt/heal thread, saying that it was their best episode? I'm surprised you didn't list it here. Granted, it's technically two separate episodes, but no need to be that nitpicky if you prefer to think of it as one.

You caught me! I didn't want to amend my list, but, you're right, I prefer those episode(s) over Crossroads. It's also pretty blasphemous that I didn't include an X-Files or Farscape episode on the list. It's hard enough to make one of these lists for ONE show, but for every science fiction program I've ever seen? Practically impossible to keep those all together in my head at once. No wonder people here have lists forty episodes long.

 

[chrisspringob]

My personal top scifi episodes:

1. Severed Dreams (Babylon 5)
2. In the Pale Moonlight (DS9)
3. The Visitor (DS9)

You have excellent taste.

 

[chrisspringob]

Based on responses so far, just going by which episodes are getting mentioned most frequently, I'd say that "In the Pale Moonlight" is most commonly mentioned top episode, probably followed by "The Best of Both Worlds" and "The Visitor". Maybe "Blink" (Doctor Who) and "Exodus" (BSG) would be the most commonly mentioned non-Trek episodes.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Some ambitious person should do a poll!

 

[Technobuilder]

The ones from The Outer Limits where the world ends...

That should be at least 10 episodes, right there.

(I'll try to pull together a real list in the next day or so.)

 

[stj]

From popular series TV, Babylon 5 Severed Dreams and Sleeping in Light; Voyager Living Witness and Muse; Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon, Devil in the Dark and Errand of Mercy; SG1 Window of Opportunity and The Other Guys; DS9 Duet.

From the unjustly forgotten Outer Limits, though---The Architects of Fear; The Man Who Was Never Born; A Feasibility Study; Soldier; Demon with a Glass Hand. And for good measure that Twilight Zone with Agnes Moorehead but no dialogue!

The new Outer Limits had some good ones as well but I've never been able to see too much of it.

 

[Kelthaz]

This could be hard.

Orpheus (Angel)
Sleeping In Light (Babylon 5)
Becoming (Buffy: The Vampire Slayer)
Armageddon Now (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys)
Norse by NorseWest/Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys)
In The Pale Moonlight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
The Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Year of Hell (Star Trek: Voyager)
Apokilips Now (Superman: TAS)
God Fearing Child (Xena: Warrior Princess)

 

[Greg Cox]

Based on responses so far, just going by which episodes are getting mentioned most frequently, I'd say that "In the Pale Moonlight" is most commonly mentioned top episode, probably followed by "The Best of Both Worlds" and "The Visitor". Maybe "Blink" (Doctor Who) and "Exodus" (BSG) would be the most commonly mentioned non-Trek episodes.

Not a bad showing for Michael Taylor, who wrote both "The Visitor" and "In the Pale Moonlight"!