From the spiritual successor to "The X Files" to lizard people with bad haircuts, these
are the underrated but undefeated sci-fi shows everyone needs to check out!
With a face like a rock and a gift for the unforgiving stare, "Cobra Kai's" Martin Kove
playing a likable character sounds shocking.
But once upon a time, he did so in a half-hour science fiction comedy about an alien convict
sentenced to Earth.
Disney's "Hard Time on Planet Earth" is a relic of the late '80s that didn't exactly
light the scene on fire.
Kove plays a traitorous alien prisoner known as Jesse.
His sentence includes an observer robot that looks like a pink flying snail and isn't exactly
the brightest around.
The critics loathed it, but that's also not reflective of the show's charm.
In many ways, it's a series ahead of its time that dared to take its absurd premise and
have fun with it.
Kove himself does a marvelous job of lampooning his own character type.
Sadly, "Hard Time on Planet Earth" seems all but forgotten.
It's not even on Disney+, and that's a shame.
"Alien Nation" is an excellent movie and a pretty good TV series about the topic of xenophobia.
Matthew Sikes starts as tough and bigoted, but he is drawn into the intricacies of Newcomer life.
He's changed by his experiences and forced to recognize them as people.
While it's never forgotten that the Newcomers are aliens, by the end, their differences
are familiar and welcoming.
It's a nice lesson.
The plug was pulled on "Alien Nation" early on, but it's also one of the few canceled
sci-fi shows to receive an unlikely rescue.
Its plot was wrapped up several years later in a series of five TV movies.
The 1980s cult sci-fi series "V" includes a two-part miniseries that dares to go as
grim as possible with its historical fascist parallels, the three-part "Final Battle" miniseries
and a weekly TV series.
It's overeager with its concept, leaning hard into its evil space lizards with an enthusiasm
that makes the whole thing thrive despite itself.
With that blatant theme comes a timelessness that overcomes the huge hair and shiny nylon jumpsuits.
It's easier than ever to watch the Visitor Diana eat a live rodent and think a politician
would do the same today to get a vote.
The most astonishing thing about "V" is that the Visitors start by triumphing in terrible,
familiar ways.
The series goes on to follow the struggle to get Earth back, with all the setbacks and
terror that come with rebellion.
It stumbles hard in places by the end, and it might not be on par with "Andor" with its
tale of strife and sacrifice, but it remains a lesser-known classic.
"There's something else I have to show you."
Better known than many of the shows in this video, "Babylon 5" still had the bad luck
to be overshadowed by the curiously similar "Star Trek: Deep Space 9."
With a fully outlined story mapped to multiple planned seasons, the creator envisioned a
grand epic, acting as a science fiction homage to the depth and detail of "The Lord of the Rings."
Astonishingly, it succeeds.
Over five seasons, the show explores the fifth and last of the Babylon stations.
All its predecessors ended in disaster.
It's Earth's best chance at preventing another war like the one that nearly obliterated it.
It nearly fails at its mission, as a great evil rises from an off-limits world.
Against the backdrop of this sprawling drama, the series explores topics still all too relevant
like bigotry, fear, and the rise of fascism.
It's still a beloved series by its fans to this day.
"Fringe" is the spiritual descendent of "The X-Files" and deserves to be mentioned in the
same breath far more often than it is.
As the show opens, the Fringe Division is relegated to investigating the weirdness going
on in the world.
The nature of these early episodes quietly lays the groundwork for an intricate myth
arc, crossing time and multiverses to tell a tale about the love of families and doing
anything to save them.
Anna Torv is the heart of the show as Agent Olivia Dunham, a capable investigator with
a past she's not initially aware of.
With her is an excellent cast that includes John Noble and Lance Reddick.
"Fringe" even brings out Leonard Nimoy for one of his best roles, treating him as more
than Spock and letting him showcase his complexity and depth as an actor in his final years.
It was easy to miss the MCU-adjacent shows on television.
However, it's the forgotten "Legion" that may be the most painful sting.
Starring Dan Stevens as David Haller, who is better known as the mutant son of Charles
Xavier, the series uses its faint X-Men backdrop to explore mental illness and trauma.
David isn't who he thinks he is, nor does he understand what the forces around him want
him to be -- or even what those forces are sometimes.
It's a complex, deeply psychological exploration of one of the franchise's most tormented mutants,
who doesn't always understand the impact of the things he's doing.
"Legion" needs a fan's full attention for its biggest twists to land with all the importance
they deserve, and its three seasons tell a complete, if not somewhat tangled, story.
Satisfying and criminally underrated, Dan Stevens deserves his own canon MCU cameo to
honor what he accomplished here.
"It's -- I can't help it.
I hear people's thoughts."
Karl Urban and a cult sci-fi wonder that leaves him hanging ... Funny how this has happened
to the poor actor twice within a short space of time.
The first disappointment was the ultra-violent glory of "Dredd," and the second was a treasure
from the creators of "Fringe" called "Almost Human."
Consisting of one season of 13 intriguing episodes that showcased a grimy cyberpunk
future filled with androids and ethical dilemmas, it received the infamous "Firefly" treatment,
right down to FOX airing the episodes out of order.
Urban plays Detective John Kennex, a man who has been in a 17-month-long coma, received
cybernetic prosthetics and has a new android partner named Dorian who also happens to be
the heart of the series.
As an anthological police procedural, it showcases some great stories, memorable characters,
and riveting hooks.
"Almost Human" was on the cusp of big reveals about its story arc when the plug was pulled, unfortunately.
Many fans who have discovered it since then are still bitter about its bizarre cancellation.
"Space Dandy" is a riot of pulp sci-fi tropes, cheesy machismo behavior and all.
The titular Dandy is like Han Solo minus the infamous scoundrel's cool-headedness, spending
the majority of his free time ogling rear ends at a Hooters knock-off restaurant.
He's also an instinctive physicist, and one of his crew members is a sentient space cat
known as Meow who has an orange-brown blot on his head.
This is not a series for deep thinkers nor does it try to present itself as anything
more than what it is.
It's here to have fun, and that's, well, just dandy.
Tatiana Maslany earned praise for her vibrant charm as She-Hulk, but she'd long since put
in the work to master her brand of humor.
"Orphan Black" is a story about a sprawling conspiracy to master cloning.
It puts Maslany in the center as Sarah Manning, a clone with some unique characteristics.
She also plays Beth, the dead cop that sets the series off, as well as Alison the twitchy
soccer mom, and a host of other clones that appear throughout the show.
Each clone is made distinct, not just in looks but also by Maslany's masterful performances.
And each one is being hunted down for reasons Sarah is racing to understand.
This complex web of her life allows for discussions to span everything from religion to ethics.
More than anything else, it's a wild ride uplifted by Maslany's performance and smart writing.
It's the BBC cult show everyone's heard of by now but hasn't yet watched.
However, this should be remedied because it's worth it.
"Oi, I already told you.
I didn't want to be her."
To best describe "Lexx," it's like a combination of "Red Dwarf" crossed with Quentin Tarantino.
And that's a compliment.
There's something compelling about this show, which doles out an actual plot about eternal
recurrence and multiversal good and evil in between its boundary-pushing sex romp set-ups.
It features a cast of losers and dead people, most of whom are following their primal desires,
rather than any noble cause.
Yet, smartly, it uses this same basic humanity to put its villains on equal footing with
their prey.
Nothing is sacred in "Lexx," not death, not the bathroom, and certainly not chastity.
There's nothing else like it.
That's probably for the best, but still, it's an experience to be cherished.
From the creator of space operas like "Captain Harlock" and "Galaxy Express 999," "Space
Battleship Yamato" is about a lifeboat as much as it is about a battleship.
It's the last gasp for humanity.
Its mission is to reach the source of a mysterious message offering a way to save an already
ruined Earth.
Brutal and complex, it's the series that paved the way for the war-scarred mechs of "Gundam"
and the wrenching psychological damage of "Neon Genesis Evangelion."
Like other Japanese classics, "Space Battleship Yamato," with its princesses and planet destroyers,
will likely appeal to the "Star Wars" fan in all of us.
"Good."
There's no Time Variance Authority in charge behind the scenes of "Sliders," a series with
a premise that would've made "He Who Remains" throw a serious hissy fit.
Inventor Quinn Mallory, and a handful of other poor souls, get lost in an unending parade
of parallel Earths.
"Sliders" leaned hardest into the potential of its premise in its first two seasons.
There were episodes in which Elvis never died and dinosaurs claimed San Francisco for their
own a year before a Tyrannosaur stomped through San Diego in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park."
Worlds of magic and alien invasion awaited the hapless protagonists, and the series earned
enough love to survive a hop from Fox to the Sci-Fi Channel.
But the show's rescue also led to a gradual decrease in quality, with iffy scripts and
plot devices torn from other popular sources.
With a cliffhanger ending and a cast that's long since moved on, the end of the series
is bittersweet.
That said, it's still a great ride that most viewers need to see to believe.