But the show itself was a solid, albeit generic, sci-fi experiment, anchored by a charming, odd-couple pairing that prevented it from taking a nosedive into boresville. The legendary NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history. —Josh Jackson, Creators: Howard Overman, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Eliza Coupe, Derek Wilson, Glenne Headly, Ed Begley, Jr. Network: Hulu, The cure for herpes creates a dystopian divide between humans and mutant beings. Germany has taken over the Eastern states. Your full guide to boxing on TV this week including the biggest televised fights from around the world. —Shaina Pearlman, Creator: Andrew Cosby, Jaime Paglia Stars: Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Debrah Farentino, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Erica Cerra Network: Syfy, Set in the quirky, scientist-saturated, totally top-secret Pacific Northwestern town of the same name, Eureka was then-SciFi’s big swing of a counterargument to the gritty seriousness of Battelstar Galactica, which had premiered two years earlier and launched SciFi into the pop culture mainstream. Thanks in no small part to characters like Nazanin Boniadi’s Clare, the show offers a richly detailed and thought-out take on revisionist histories, terrorism by those who do not see themselves as terrorists, governmental cover-ups and even whether we can really know our own spouses. Need I say more? When an investigative reporter (Frewer) uncovers a scandal and is injured trying to escape with the information, a hacker uploads his mind into a computer and Max Headroom is born. The early episodes of Misfits were some of the most underrated and low-key, sci-fi episodes on television—it was sci-fi for people who weren’t sure they liked sci-fi. —Shaina Pearlman, Creator: Kelly Marcel, Craig Silverstein Stars: Jason O’Mara, Shelley Conn, Stephan Lang, Christine Adams, Network: FOX, Steven Spielberg, dinosaurs and time travel sounds like about as airtight a pitch as they come, and the future was looking bright for the Spielberg-produced Terra Nova in fall 2011. The technology, which allows for resurrection of the dead and instant travel across star systems, raises questions about religion, justice and familial relationships, like when agnostic police detective Kristin Ortega brings her grandmother home in the body of a pierced, tattooed convict to celebrate All Hallows Eve—her neo-Catholic family believes a soul brought back from the dead can never rest. The genre-blending series was goofy and weird, complete with a mysterious futuristic orb, a time-traveling bad guy and irreverent sense of humor. This backstory is quickly summed up in the packed intro, which shows Zim traveling to Earth, setting up his house and literally consuming the planet under the might of his machines—if only in his dreams. So it was disheartening when Syfy recently made the shortsighted decision to cancel the show. Developed as an eight-episode limited series by Friday Night Lights scribe Bridget Carpenter and produced by J.J. Abrams and King himself, 11.22.63 stars James Franco as Jake Epping, a recently divorced English teacher who learns that his friend, Al (Chris Cooper), has been attempting to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy via a time portal in the back of his diner. It’s probably the best pure cast in terms of acting talent that any entry in the series has ever had. The team encounters a future where super-powerful humanoid predators and just-as-scary giant insects have eradicated all of humanity. —Mark Rozeman, Creator: George Lucas Stars: Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane Network: Cartoon Network/Netflix, Contrary to popular belief, Lucasfilm did manage to create an engaging storyline set in the “prequel” universe. —Josh Jackson, Creator: Y?ji Enokido, Kazuya Tsurumaki Stars: Mayumi Shintani, Jun Mizuki, Inori Minase, Karen Miyama, Jun Fukuyama Network: Adult Swim, FLCL was intended to feel unlike anything else you’ve ever watched, anime or otherwise. He’s brave, loyal, mostly incompetent and completely self-deluded, but he’ll stop at nothing to help his friend Avacato and the object of his infatuation, Quinn, as they save the universe from the evil Lord Commander. CBS greenlit the show to help launch their All Access subscription package. Into the woods & New possibilities / director, Peter Deluise. Rosyln keeps a whiteboard with an updated population count, and each of the principle characters changes with every right or wrong decision. —Jim Vorel and Josh Jackson, Creator: Joss Whedon Stars: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Ron Glass Network: Fox, Leave it to Joss Whedon to dream up a space show without aliens. —Harry Mackin, Creators: Graeme Manson, John Fawcett Stars: Tatiana Maslany, Dylan Bruce, Jordan Gavaris, Kevin Hanchard, Michael Mando, Maria Doyle Kennedy Network: BBC America, Having one actor play several characters in a single show is nothing new. The way it curbs our freedom, diminishes our privacy, and subjects us to anonymous attacks can feel like an unforgivable violation. Series director Hideaki Anno frames his characters’ traumas through horror imagery; crucifixion, sexual misconduct, child abuse, and the literal melting of humankind are all ideas he visually worked into this crazy, decades-spanning franchise. Plus, if the living spaceship thing didn’t tip you off, things get pretty weird, and occasionally pretty silly. | In each episode, he leaps into the body of another person (man, woman or child) in a different historical time and must “put right what once went wrong” before jumping into a new body. The smart writing he brought to Buffy turned the universe into one big frontier, where those who didn’t conform to authoritarian rule were forced to eke out their livings among outlying planets where the long arm of the law couldn’t follow. —Trent Moore, Creators: Rockne S. O’Bannon, Kevin Murphy, Michael Taylor Stars: Grant Bowler, Julie Benz, Stephanie Leonidas, Tony Curran, Jaime Murray, Graham Greene, Mia Kirshner, Jesse Rath Network: SyFy, Defiance was ambitious, a key to any TV show filled with aliens and spaceships. Okay, fine. They wanted something edgy and a little bizarre. A bizarre show in retrospect that featured a puppet as the titular character, ALF was about an alien named “Gordon Shumway” who crash-lands in the backyard of a suburban family and then proceeds to work his way into their hearts while waiting for his cohorts to stop by and pick him up, occasionally attempting to catch and eat the family cat along the way. Knowing it was coming from Matt Groening, perhaps people expected a futuristic version of The Simpsons, but Futurama is fundamentally different in quite a few aspects. We need more three-dimensional leading ladies interacting on our screens, and Dark Matter has them in spades. —Jim Vorel, Creators: Pedro Aguilera Stars: Bianca Comparato, João Miguel, Michel Gomes, Rodolfo Valente Network: Netflix, U.S. shows have long been a part of Netflix’s offering in foreign countries, and the streaming service has brought a handful of foreign TV shows to America. Although dispatched simply to collect undercover surveillance and stay out of the way, Zim—along with his malfunctioning erratic robot drone, GIR—decides to conquer our planet himself. —Josh Jackson, Creator: Martin Caidin Stars: Lee Majors, Richard Anderson, Alan Oppenheimer, Martin E. Brooks Network: ABC, NBC, “We can rebuild him. Surprisingly, few others in the precinct seem to question or care why Kennex drags in such an outdated model. When Whedon created Malcolm Reynolds as the centerpiece of Firefly, he wanted a hero who is “everything that a hero is not.” Once a sergeant in the losing war for independence, Mal captains a team of misfits in smuggling operations on the edge of the galaxy. It’s a preposterous premise but the show has proven to be strangely prescient some 30 years after its premiere, and its dark undercurrent paved the way for other series like Twin Peaks and Dark Angel. They were sort of like Bill and Ted, minus the impromptu bouts of air guitar. Release Dates Season Two’s two-part finale, featuring one timeline in which the team supported a badass Harriet Tubman (Christine Horn) and one in which the lives of multiple of their own team members were the core plot points but Lucy used her walk-and-talk to underscore the shameful truth of San Francisco’s oppression of its Chinese residents in the 1880s rather than rehash their personal problems, is a perfect example of this, but so was the previous episode which saw Reagan’s attempted assassination serve as the fulcrum for a focus on the importance of Agent Christopher’s wife and kids, and the thunderous changes honesty about one’s identity make across time, and so was the one before that, which saw women’s suffrage nearly snuffed out. Elizabeth hears good news about her book, and a prisoner transfer goes wrong for Nathan. Is it an allegory for how humans are doomed and can’t communicate? Then, in 2014, as the show’s first season began its final arc, Captain America: The Winter Soldier happened. the show depicts a not-so-United States in the years following World War II. Affirmative Action Legacy: The second Ultimate Spider-Man, taking up the webs after Earth-1610's Peter Parker died, and Afro-Latino for added diversity. Annie is a severely mentally ill, demented and obsessive nurse (with the stereotypical traits of the nurse as a … Hulu’s movie selection is outstanding —Oscar winners, music documentaries, ’90s action thrillers, laugh out loud comedies— but these are the 50 best as of February 2021. The collision is not about the obliteration of one perspective, but the slow formation of compromised strengths. —Jim Vorel, Creator: David Jenkins Stars: Wyatt Cenac, Ana Gasteyer, Oscar Nuñez, Michael Cassidy, Alice Wetterlund, Luka Jones Network: TBS, This high-concept comedy centers on a reporter (played by Daily Show alum Wyatt Cenac) who investigates a support group for people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. If you like your sci-fi with a slice of madness and horror, Helix may be for you. Likewise, its self-contained continuity was unlike almost every other animated sitcom, with events unfolding in both its first and second run on TV that fundamentally affected the viewer’s perception of earlier plot points. Boxing on TV – schedule and calendar for all the big 2021 fights. The challenges the leaders face are of a higher magnitude than we’ve experienced on earth, but the moral squirming and self-justification are all too familiar in politics today. What else can one call an episode such as “Living Doll,” wherein a confounded, asshole Telly Savalas is threatened, stalked and ultimately killed by his abused daughter’s vindictive doll, Talky Tina? More of a riff on the Odd Couple than is typical of spaceship crews, Dave Lister wakes up three-million years after the rest of the Red Dwarf’s crew are killed by a radiation leak only to find himself alone in a titanic mining ship except for a hologram, a cat and a robot. Science fiction is almost entirely the domain of epic stories-working through a relationship gets completely overshadowed with the fate of humanity on the line. Robots in Sherwood Forest. —Josh Jackson, Creator: Simon Barry Stars: Rachel Nichols, Victor Webster, Erik Knudsen, Stephen Lobo, Roger Cross Network: Showcase, I’m starting to grow suspicious: Do Canadians plug into the walls at night? Their vessel is the Starship Enterprise, which appears in all its glory, orbiting planets and traveling at high warp, faster than anything that 1960s audiences had ever seen, as fast as progress itself. And they’re not even all alive to start with! The show is actually a remake of a Swedish series, and is one of the few remakes that manage to meet (and sometimes exceed) the quality of the original. Unlike the Utopian crew of Star Trek’s Enterprise, each of the major characters has significant flaws. And as long as the story is good and the Doctor is traveling through an old, blue police box that’s bigger on the inside, audiences will tune in across the globe. Joel Hodgson’s brainchild transformed an act carried out by stoned college kids watching late night TV into some of TV’s sharpest comedy writing, leaving an indelible mark on the comedy world and inventing an entire subgenre of professional comedic exploration while he was at it: Movie riffing. —Jim Vorel, Creators: Patrick McGoohan, George Markstein Stars: Patrick McGoohan Network: ITV, It almost seems like an insult to call The Prisoner a sci-fi show—it’s really not science fiction, at least not in the way that Star Trek or Dr. Who are. We watch epic films like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings to get caught up in struggles much greater than we face and vicariously inherit the satisfaction of seeing them overcome. The world gets a little bigger than Hawkins, Indiana, and the stakes get a little higher, but at its heart, six kids must face up to their monsters, metaphorical and real, to a perfect ’80s soundtrack. The show often broke the fourth wall making the audience more active participants; however, the show never caught on. —Mark Rozeman, Creator: J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci Stars: Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Jasika Nicole, Lance Reddick Network: Fox, Like Lost, J.J. Abrams’s Fringe starts as a masterful slow-burn. Scott Bakula plays Dr. Sam Beckett, a quantum physicist who becomes trapped in a morphing time loop after an experiment gone awry. Starring Natalie Morales (of Parks & Recreation, not the NBC reporter) and Matt Keesler (Scream 3), the pop-culture-reference-infused show followed Wendy Watson (Morales) and the Middleman (Keesler) as they protected the world against villains big and small, human and alien. When a mysterious, dimensional portal brings the Marshalls to an alternate universe populated by dinosaurs, primates and other creatures, the family must find a way to survive and make their way back home. Each character is more outlandish than the next: an Irish vampire, a holistic assassin, an imaginary flying unicorn voiced by Patton Oswalt. ), Jerry O’Connell’s Quinn leads his group of travelers from parallel Earth to parallel Earth in what can charitably be called an exercise in WTF. Despite a jail sentence, she’s recruited by the Captain Gabriel Lorca (Harry Potter’s Jason Isaacs) to serve as science officer on Discovery, a ship with a teleportation drive unique to among Federation ships that leads to an unexpected plot twist. But there’s certainly enough sci-fi elements—the island’s bizarre magnetic field, the Dharma Initiative experiments, the frozen wheel, time-travel—to put it on this list. When Simon, faced with Alisha’s super sexual appeal, would mutter his darkest fantasies, you saw a completely different, but very real side of the average boy.