Top Ten Sci-Fi Movies or TV Series

People will be very unhappy with me over this list, but I don't care.  I like my Sci-Fi of the hard variety. I'm not much on magic, fantasy and heaving bosoms, although that cannot always be avoided, nor should it be if heaving is somehow within the context of the plot and not just gratuitous.......

Never mind!

To wit, the list........

#10.  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - I love this one because of its devestating satire of bureaucracies and governments in general.  A Sci-Fi film a Republican can really love.  Best line. "Stand back, I'm British. If there's one thing we know, it's how to queue."

#9  Independence Day - Will Smith dragging that smelly alien through the desert and cussing him out the whole way!.  Best scene in the move.  Wonderful cast.  Upbeat ending, even though the Earth was pretty beat up by the time the war was over.

#8  Men in Black - The series is funny and intelligent at the same time.  Tommy Lee Jones is priceless and a perfect foil for Will Smith.

#7  Galaxy Quest - Fall on the floor funny spoof of the Star Trek genre. It gets funnier every time I see it. Tim Allen is a better Kirk than Kirk.

#6  Contact - I love Jody Foster in this and I loved that Carl Sagan wimped out a little on his anti-God argument in this one. Terrific scratch for an old mental itch.

#5  Star Trek - My favorite part of the series was II, III and IV with the loss and recovery of Spock and Kirk at his libidinous best.  The latest one in the series was stunning, however, and promises a rewrite of the entire Star Trek universe.  How cool is that?  I can't wait to see what happens next. You've got to admire the sand it took to make every Star Trek compendium in print obsolete in two hours.

#4  Outland - Sean Connery really carried this film.  It's one of my favorite hard sci-fi films.  High Noon on Io.

#3  Stargate SG-1 - The original movie with Kurt Russel and James Spader was pretty good, but it took Richard Dean Anderson and crew to make this a decade of sci-fi television unequaled in the history of television sci-fi.

#2  Star Wars - The first one will always have a special place in my heart, but I liked the whole movie series.  I even liked Jar Jar Binks, so there!

#1  Serenity - I have a real soft spot for Malcolm Reynolds and his crew.  The TV series was the best series science fiction ever on television with Stargate SG-1 running a close second.


I left out a lot of good ones.  Blade Runner (too dark), Matrix (too much like a video game), 2001 (would be my #11, but it kind of puts me to sleep and is a bit obtuse; I liked 2010 better).  Then there was Superman which was essentially Sci-Fi in the first episode, but went steadily more cartoony thereafter.  I liked Cocoon and Explorers and the Back to the Future Series.  BTTF would probably be my #12, if not further up the list for sheer fun.  The Alien series missed the list because it was too much of a horror movie and I don't like horror movies.

Honorable mention goes to a weird little John Carpenter film called "Dark Star" from back in the late 60's or early 70's.  This little gem has to be seen to be believed. It's just fun.  The conversation between the acting captain and the bomb over whether it should blow itself and the ship to bits was a classic.  And I completely missed the BBC's priceless offering - Red Dwarf.  You just have to see that one to appreciate it.  Dwarf probably lands at #13.  I may have to expand this to a top 20.

Lot's of you will disagree with my choices, but I don't care.  Make your own list.

This one's mine.

Tom