One of the things The Stake is interested in is rounding out the parameters of genre, and bubbling up those pop culture properties that set themselves apart. One of the easiest manners to do this is that ever-popular internet format: the list. In an attempt to come to terms with a science-fiction television argument of recent, I endeavored to create a list of the 5 best Sci-Fi shows (I’ve seen) on television. It is hardly comprehensive and based completely on my personal responses (how else can we engage culture but personally?), but it is, to the best I am able, honest.

Andrew and Cat might have something to say about these choices, but here are my Top 5 Sci-Fi TV programs:

5. Firefly (& Serenity)

Whedon’s 14 episodes of Firefly, and the film that followed, are endlessly re-watchable. Which accounts for my love of the show. It may seem silly to put a show that was cancelled in the middle of its premier season on any top 5 list. Oh well. Firefly’s that good. The show is the ultimate in sentimental storytelling, unwilling to balk at that which makes it special: Mal’s unwavering love for his cause and crew, and the exhaustion resulting from being right, and losing anyway.

The universe in which Serenity sails is bleak and cold. The problems of humanity have not progressed towards resolution. Instead, humans ruined ‘earth-that-was’, and used our technology to advance the pursuit of power into the outer reaches of the ‘verse. A frontier western mixed with a space-opera, the entire premise is held up in the relationships between a sentimental captain and his crews’ admiration for this loyalty.

What I learned from Firefly/Serenity is that the world is what it is; we should try to make it better. And we do so by the people you surround yourself with. That may seem an easy lesson, but Firefly’s brilliance is recognizing that it’s extremely difficult. Firefly makes plain this “old-world” sentimentality without sacrificing the humor, humanity or intensity of this short-lived show. Jayne says in Serenity, “If you can’t do something smart, do something right.” That is Firefly.

4. Star Trek: The Next Generation

I have always wanted to live on the future Earth as it is in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In this future there is peace and understanding. Humans don’t spend their lives hoarding money and treasure but contributing something to the betterment of the world and its inhabitants. There’s no hunger, no warring nations, no poverty, not even any television (which would make this list more difficult, yes).

In the formative years of my youth, TNG contributed a visionary picture of a future I had never considered: A peaceful one. A world that need not be violent, where knowledge is the pursuit which motivates our species, and having the most possessions was a pursuit that had long since become outdated. As Picard says, “people are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things…we have outgrown our infancy.” I want to go to there, still.

TNG is the heady vision of sci-fi tv (as opposed to say, J.J. Abrams Star Trek sci-fi, which is brawny). It’s weird, playful and thought-provoking. And though it may take some time before it gets really great, TNG’s cerebral storytelling separates it from much of what we consume. In fact, the cerebral vision of the world is so central to TNG, that it becomes the subject of the show’s best work; I am speaking, of course, of the Borg. But it will always be the vision of the future that holds me most rapt to TNG; the vision that says humans can evolve beyond our violent, power hungry ways.

3. The Twilight Zone

The lasting impression of The Twilight Zone on my youth is this: the show was terrifying. I remember nights in which The Twlight Zone was so scary that I had to turn off the TV before the story even ended. It is so brilliantly written, with characters rendered so human that watching what becomes of them scared the shit out of me.

Two endings in particular have seared into my brain: The Dummy (still among the scariest endings ever) and A Kind of Stopwatch (last man on earth stuff really gets me). If you’ve spent time watching The Twilight Zone, you already know what the show is capable of, and need no reminder. At its best, The Twilight Zone rivals any science-fiction ever produced. It was political, humorous, controversial, but mostly just scared me to death.

2. The X-Files

Mulder and Scully, FBI. Far as I’m concerned, that’s all one need say about The X-Files. The skeptic and the believer; conspiracy and reason; I want to believe vs. there must be a rational explanation. The relationship of the show’s protagonists is The X-Files.

But you know what’s more interesting? Scully is a Catholic, and Mulder is not a religious believer. This is not an obscure detail; it’s present throughout the series, though never much doted upon. But it’s the kind of detail that re-defines the parameters of The X-Files. Scully’s scientific rationality is always buttressed by the fact of her Catholic devotion. This is probably my favorite character trait of The X-Files, and a perfect example of the complicated-via-simple nature of the show.

The legacy of The X-Files on television, and on American culture in general, is difficult to overstate. It reshaped the modern FBI drama around monster of the week episodes, carrying over a seasonal narrative, building towards a series narrative that we never really understand even as it all unfolds. The paranoia/paranormal FBI aspect of the show made viewers as uncertain as Mulder; we never knew if the FBI or the gov’t as a whole was on the side of our agents, or working against them.

Descriptions like these may sound like the average traits of the television procedural. But they were anything but commonplace before The X-Files. You can see The X-Files in nearly every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or Fringe, or perhaps most obviously, Bones (which jumped the shark a few years ago).

The X-Files lives and dies, like all of the shows on this list, with its writing. Shot on the cheap with very little by way of sets, costumes, or special effects, the show depended on its characters and stories to compel audiences. Which is particularly difficult for a show that provides almost no resolution to almost any questions from episode-to-episode. And boy howdy, it succeeded. The show’s creators took themselves just seriously enough to make The X-Files the best thing on TV at the time, but not serious enough to wander into parody. The show was equal parts terrifying and hilarious, serious and ridiculous, and it knew perhaps better than any show I’ve seen how to carefully walk the many lines they drew. This is especially true of that central relationship.

1. Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is my all-time favorite television show. It contains everything that I love: politics and religion and science, the dangers of mixing politics and religion, the apocalypse, madness and psychology, civics and civil disobedience, the post-apocalypse, and bat-shit crazy sci-fi goodness. And its all dressed up in the unblinking seriousness of a funeral. If I were to make a list of the best political television programs ever, it would be on the top 5. Also, top 5 shows about religion.

BSG is complete in its conception, and executed with guile. Each of the central characters (and there are many) is provided room for growth (not always taken) and opportunities for failure (pretty much always taken). It’s character concepts are astonishing; the arc of Gaius Baltar is reason enough to put BSG on the top of any list of the best television shows. So says I, anyway.

In the years since I first completed BSG, the show has become a keystone intellectual reference point. It has reshaped the manner in which I read and think about the most central pop-culture experiences of my life. In BSG, as in Job, humanity must defend its very existence when threatened with the loss of everything. In BSG, like Moby Dick, mania encompasses pursuit to such an extent that all life is put in peril. BSG mines Shakespeare and Genesis, creating Adama, the man who anchors all things together, but who is never more than the man who feared retirement.

Even when BSG was weak (each of these shows has weak, if not terrible stretches; such is the nature of TV), it still maintained its composure through the richness of conceit the creators imbued it with. The show proudly bites off of the richest cultural, artistic, political, historical human creations, and is better for it. But in the end, all of this conceptualization depends upon Adama and Roslyn, Gaius and Six, Starbuck and Lee and how these people survive the threat of the end of all things.

BSG has changed the way I watched TV, think about sci-fi, think about politics and religion. It’s what the long-form TV show is meant for, and why science-fiction belongs on television.*

Also, THIS!

*I cannot avoid a note on the finale of BSG, that much derided and mess of a conclusion. It is indeed a struggle to endure, though it’s not as bad as the reputation it now maintains. But I am a firm believer in not allowing the finale to spoil 4 great years of television. Wrapping up any show, especially sci-fi, is notoriously difficult (LOST, anyone?). I’d rather experience the dynamic capacity of bonkers science fiction storytelling and have a messy finale than stay in the comfortable no-crazy zone only so things can come together nicely.