I'm list crazy, thanks to the
Great Shows that Went Bad thread.
Some notable one season shows that really had promise (or that I’m nostalgic for) in this list…Including some real clunkers that Could Have Been Great:
Wizards & Warriors (8 episodes -- 1983)A great little fantasy series that was all slapstick comedy. It was kind of proto Princess Bride. The impossibly strong sidekick, the suave swordsman hero... Throw in a goofball buddy who, in a different time and place, should have been played by a bumbling Bruce Campbell, and you have a great little adventure story. Our hero is engaged to marry the beautiful princess but, first, must do away with the threat from the neighboring kingdom ruled by the evil prince Dirk Blackpool. Perfectly campy.
Voyagers! (20 episodes -- 1982)It's actually quite hard to watch today, sadly. A real horror-show of lame writing, and I'm always a little scared of the kid.
That said... What a strangely addictive show for kids (which is really where it's sort of geared, though it'll be woefully outdated today). From Genghis Kahn's court to inventing the lightbulb, our bumbling hero and super-brilliant child sidekick made for a doable formula.
Now, here's a show I wouldn't mind seeing remade.
Green light, kid!
Planet of the Apes: The Series (14 episodes -- 1974)Set about a decade after
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (though retconning the apocalyptic ending of that movie), two new astronauts (strangely unaware of Heston's lost mission, and the mission sent out to find him) crash on the west coast. Moving ever closer to the original book, the humans in the series aren't mute animals. Instead, they're a sort of peasant class that’s subservient to the Apes. So they all speak perfect English after 1000 years and all that.
Our two astronauts are ever questing for a tantalizing hint of technology, though it's not clear what purpose it'll serve. At first, it's to replay the black box information from the spaceship, and then it becomes a "just because" mission.
Doggedly on their heels is General Urko (played by Mark Lenard) and Dr. Zaius. Roddy McDowell is back, except as young ape politician Galen instead of his role from the films.
The series is dated, it goes nowhere, and yet it's brilliant. This is one of the few from the 70's that stood up most of the way through. The hints at a larger ape society (instead of just Ape City from the movies) are wonderful. Giving them a sort of Roman Empire quality.
More on the archived GS front page:
http://www.greatsociety.org/fpm/content/view/117/2/Planet of the Apes: The Animated Series (13 episodes, 1975)AKA Return to The Planet of the Apes
The animated series really did go with the book -- the apes are a technologically advanced society (the book is narrated by apes on a spaceship). The cartoon is the melting pot of the franchise. It seems to take from the TV show in storyline, though imports plenty of characters and events from the movies, and tries to follow the book's general story. So, of course, it’s a mess.
Logan's Run (14 episodes, 1977)The first sci-fi reboot! The series is atrocious and unforgivably clumsy... But, man, what a great idea
Logan's Run is... The 90 minute pilot stands as the reboot, playing out a 60 minute version of the film and then updating the series. This time around, the outside is populated by the Fallout-style survivors of the still-mysterious apocalypse. Some of them have a vague knowledge of the dome cities but, overall, are poor farmers and thieves. Where the series is enjoyable is that the world is littered with all the shit from the war -- weapons, vehicles, etc. Logan and Jessica quickly take over a tripped out sci-fi HumVee wannabe and set off...to...do nothing.
Meanwhile, the sinister city elders (who have been orchestrating the dead at 30 rule for no reason) send Logan's former partner after him, accompanied by an unlimited number of red shirts.
Again...if you were to remake a series, this would be it. The show tried to make some attempts to get in line with the novels -- a world of domed cities run by a master computer (which was insane) and Logan's on-again, off-again quest to destroy it. In the novels, the hundreds of years old computer didn't short out the second someone asked it a question.
From the archived front page:
http://www.greatsociety.org/fpm/content/view/82/2/Alien Nation (22 episodes -- 1989)I still love this show. Most of the plotlines were resolved in follow-up TV movies, so there's a rare chance to get closure from the cliffhanger/cancellation. I like the show better than the movie, actually. The perfect balance of cop shit and sci fi nonsense. The introduction of the slaver's agents hiding out amongst the Newcomers, and the shadowy fear that the slavers themselves would return, added wonderful depth to the franchise.
Birds of Prey (13 episodes -- 2002)A still beautiful Mia Sara playing Harley Quinn? Yes, sir, sign me up. I'll be honest with you, I just sat there and stared at Mia the whole time. The show wasn't awful, but I don't remember too much besides her. Mmmm...
Cleopatra 2525 (28 episodes -- 2000)Though it technically had two seasons, it was really just hacked roughly down the middle and split up. This is sort of
Jem meets The
Matrix. Trapped underground, fleeing evil machines, the remnants of Humanity fight to survive blah blah blah. The lovely Gina Torres and her partner accidentally wake up a cryogenically frozen valley girl (Cleopatra) from 2000. The unknown Jennifer Sky played the lovely Cleopatra, kind of doing a
Farscape-style pop culture addled
Buck Rogers routine. She joins the team and the three women, guided by a mysterious and all knowing computer, fight to save the day.
Dark Shadows 1991 (12 episodes)The remake starred Ben Cross in as the troubled Barnabas Collins and Lysette Anthony as time-travelling witch/vamp mother Angelique.
The original
Dark Shadows was over a thousand episodes of really fun vampire/time travel weirdness. In fact, for the first few hundred episodes (it aired daily), Barnabas wasn’t even in it. It was just the story of a young nanny watching over troubled kids at a creepy estate. But then things get into motion and Barnabas is freed from his coffin…
Barnabas is the original reluctant vampire. Guilt-ridden, shocked from his 100 year long imprisonment, he lurks around the estate (initially posing as a long lost relative). Things heated up, though, and the show was soon bouncing back and forth between the 1960’s and the 1860’s, following the life of Barnabas and resident witch Angelique.
The remake tried to cram everything that was built over those thousand episodes into the first few episodes. Starting with Barnabas being released, it launched right into everything. Something that the original was slow to do. Consequently, we get a weird hodge podge of characters who mean nothing to us.
If they wanted to be daring, they could have just done a straight up mystery/creepy show that led, as a potential season finale, to the release of Barnabas (which is how the original handled it). Then all hell breaks loose for the next few seasons.
Earth 2 (22 episodes -- 1995)My god, what a train wreck. It’s like every episode had a guest writer who refused to read what had happened before, and avoided any sense of a thread. So many great elements thrown out with the bathwater where this show is concerned.
-- Insane penal colonists
-- Intelligent planet
-- Evil corporation/government out to kill everyone
-- 3000 mile walk to where all the supplies are
-- Weird aliens
Filmed in New Mexico and beautifully done, we follow the survivors of a crashed colonist ship as they hike to where all their supplies were dropped. The leader is an idealistic revolutionary who bucked against the government and is now hunted by them (their ship was sabotaged). They thought they’d be the first people on this new world, but find that the evil corporate government has been using it as a dumping ground for decades.
Firefly (14 episodes -- 2002)Do I even need to say anything? The greatest tragedy in sci-fi. An absolutely perfect show.
V (19 episodes -- 1984)The series picks up a few years after the
Final Battle. Diana has been captured (somehow), and makes an easy escape. She alerts the Visitor fleet, just hiding out behind the moon waiting for reinforcements. She then discovers that the Red Dust, which is sci fi’s greatest hamfisted plot device, doesn’t work in warm climates. So the Visitors reinvade, Powers Boothe declares LA a free city, and the story begins. A few of our heroes carry over to the series, the Starchild ages 18 years in a day and gets a stupid boyfriend, and everything gets retarded.
What we all want (and may soon get) is Ken Johnson’s WWII/French Resistance parallel. That wasn’t a part of the series at all… Just cashing in (blindly) on the two mini-series that preceded it.
Probe (7 episodes -- 1988)Isaac Asimov's story of a shut-in techie genius who solves crimes. The story has been stolen ruthlessly since then -- every somewhat offbeat mystery/procedural drama with a weirdo expert owes allegiance to Probe. I'm talking
Monk, Bones, etc. Though
Probe leaned more towards sci-fi than mystery, it was a fun run.
Salvage 1 (20 episodes -- 1979)Asimov also gave us Andy Griffith in
Salvage 1. Griffith is an aspiring junk dealer who whips together a spaceship made of junk, hires on a former astronaut, and an attractive “fuel expert”, and then heads into space to salvage junk from the Apollo space program. Most of it was Earthbound nonsense, though. The pilot is still pretty cool, the rest of the series just hurts.
Starlost (16 episodes -- 1973)Harlan Ellison will kill you if you mention this 1973 show about a generational colony ship fleeing a destroyed Earth which is knocked off course. We pick up 500 years later (2790), with the huge ship split into sections. The various denizens of each section (some stone age, most weird Amish types) have no clue that they're inside a spaceship. Our hero is an outcast from, like, 19th century world or whatever. He busts through the barrier and discovers the true nature of his world, and quickly teams up with others. They set out on a quest to find the control center of the ark, battling aliens, crazy computers, and various other retarded shit along the way. It's unwatchable, really, but was such a cool idea.
Ellison (and Ben Bova) quit the project during the filming of the pilot.
Ultraviolet (6 episodes -- 1998)This Brit series was a little clumsy, but still worth watching. A truce exists between humans and vampires, with a Catholic Church-funded paramilitary operation keeping the vamps in line. A general sort of leave everything alone armistice exists, but the church is quietly looking for a solution to the vampire problem and the vamps are up to no good, of course.
The story follows our heroes, who police vamps that break the rules and vaporize them. Our main guy is unwittingly drafted by the organization after his friend becomes a vampire.
Lots of fun little bits here and there, it’s a shame it never came back for a second series.
Misfits of Science (16 episodes -- 1985)Who didn’t love this one as a kid? A team of experiments gone wrong form a superhero squad. Comedy ensues. There’s the tall black guy who can shrink himself down, the electric man, a telekinetic Courtney Cox, and the ice man. Of course, Ice Man was only in one episode… But it was always implied that he was there throughout the series because everyone had to drive around in a supped up ice cream truck (which was his main mode of transport in the pilot).
Surface (15 episodes -- 2005)Lots of people hate
Surface…which is why it got canceled, I guess. I hated the build up, but loved it once everyone started believing and shit took off. Then, of course, we get the ultimate cliffhanger ending – the apocalypse is not averted, no one is saved, and our two main heroes find themselves stranded atop a clock tower as the coastal regions of the world permanently flood.
