The Cassutt Files
Favorite Things

Last week my colleagues on the staff of SCI FI Wire published your choices for the best sci-fi film of all time, with Star Wars the not-entirely-surprising winner, followed by Blade Runner. That survey was followed by a listing of the most unfairly neglected films, with Empire Strikes Back taking that distinction.

Well, it is awards season. Although we were spared the Golden Globes, we had the Oscars. (Note to the producers: If you want to ramp up the glamour and interest in the show itself, eliminate 2.5 hours of the three-hour "red carpet" crap. The Academy Awards are now as bad as the Super Bowl in extending the viewing experience to such a great length that only the stupid or lazy will stay to watch.) Next month the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America will offer up the Nebula Awards, going to the writer(s) of Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, The Prestige and V for Vendetta, the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who and "World Enough and Time," an episode of something called Star Trek: New Voyages.

Last year, I offered my own entirely subjective award, the Mikey, for sci-fi television work of the 2006-07 season. Since the 2007-08 season is either damaged or incomplete—and I am not in the mood—it might be time to consider my choice for the best sci-fi television series of all time.

And, in keeping with the spirit of SCI FI Wire, the most neglected.

But first, the best. In chronological order, they are:
The Twilight Zone
Star Trek
The X-Files
Babylon 5
Lost

No surprises here, I suspect. As Peter Graham, a sci-fi fan, once noted, "The golden age of sci-fi is 12." When I was 12, I was newly exposed to Serling's Twilight Zone and to original Trek, not to mention the original Outer Limits. I was ripe for enchantment, you might say, and the first two series did their work well.

Viewers who are now in college came of sci-fi age with X-Files, Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager and Buffy. This describes my children, who watched some of these series. As a parent, watching with them, I had the opportunity to view these shows through their 13-year-old eyes and was the beneficiary of secondhand enchantment.

The choice of Lost is that of a more mature but equally dazzled viewer. This is the one series I absolutely must see every time it airs ... I see it as a synthesis of the best sci-fi series that preceded it, a blend of anthology and continuing character series that plays with just about every sci-fi idea this side of interstellar travel. I don't care how Lost will ultimately end. I am simply enjoying the journey.

The least among the loved

As for the neglected? Which sci-fi shows have been, er, lost to memory, or died before their time?

Although it certainly creaks when viewed at a nearly 50-year remove, Men Into Space (1959-60) heads my chronological list. The near-future adventures of astronaut Edward McCauley thrilled my very young self, seeing the series in Saturday p.m. reruns. (And I have a Col. McCauley Space Force helmet right here in my office.)

Then there was Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-75). Given that it is a Trek series, it's difficult to claim that it was truly neglected, but it was easily the best sci-fi series of the 1970s, and it's rarely mentioned in those sci-fi circles I inhabit. Indeed, it was for many years "written out" of the Star Trek canon, its events and terminology relegated to some alternate-world sidestream. Unfair, I say.

I can't be objective about Max Headroom (1987), so let's just give that an asterisk and set it to one side.

VR5 was an imaginative look at virtual realities, created by Jeannine Renshaw, later to write on Charmed and Ghost Whisperer. Ten out of 13 produced episodes were aired in 1995-96, not nearly enough to engage an audience. If any series ever required a bit of tender care from a network, it was VR5. Its underlying concept was, at that time, too unfamiliar, and the storytelling, in the pre-Lost era, too challenging.

More recently, I was fascinated by Century City, created by Ed Zuckerman—an alumnus of the Dick Wolf school—about a Los Angeles law firm in the year 2030. This series was only given four chances on the air, but it dealt with nanotechnology, cloning, identity theft, all the stuff of great sci-fi.

Revive the past for the future's sake

Stretching our boundaries to include pilots and minis, I have fond memories of Shadow Over the Land, a one-shot TV movie that aired on CBS Dec. 4, 1968—and has never been seen since. Lee Goldberg's valuable reference work Unsold Television Pilots (1990) informs me that not only did Gene Hackman have a role in Shadow, but the pilot was originally titled United States: It Can't Happen Here, echoing the classic novel by Sinclair Lewis that I just read for the first time.

Those of you who know Lewis' 1935 novel will not be surprised that the series dealt with revolutionaries trying to overthrow a homegrown American dictatorship. Sort of like Jericho, without the nukes. Given the politics of that difficult year of 1968, the only surprise is that Shadow aired in the first place.

But what a series it would have made!

Wild Palms (1993) was a limited series from Oliver Stone and Bruce Wagner that dealt with virtual realities and crime. It has a terrific cast, wonderful production ... and a cameo appearance by William Gibson.

My all-time favorite neglected sci-fi series, however, is Mann and Machine, a futuristic procedural about a human male policeman, played by David Andrews (later to appear in Surface), and his robotic partner "Eve"—shaped into the beauteous Yancy Butler. M&M was created by Dick Wolf with Robert De Laurentiis—it lasted less than half a dozen episodes back in 1992, surely the only Dick Wolf series to run less than a decade.

It was the closest thing to that holy grail of TV programming ... the sci-fi procedural. (For attempts at same, see Threshold, Moonlight, New Amsterdam.)

Wolf later said in an interview that he believed the show was hurt by its setting—a genuine near-future world reminiscent of Max Headroom. And I think he's correct. Why not bring this one back, only set it two minutes into the future?

Just because a series is on the list of most neglected doesn't mean it has to stay there forever.