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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
I've got the Prisoner DVD set. It was a fun, but weird show. The main guy was also in Secret Agent/Danger Man, which I think was better. But the thing that was most disappointing about the Prisoner was the ending... very confusing, and no one seems to understand it. The symbolism throughout the show was just a bit too confusing to me, even though it was a fun show.
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The Prisoner bears re-watching. And if you can find it, Tom Disch did a novelization of it which is quite fun and a cut above most such efforts.
As for the ending, think solipsism.
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I remember Blakes 7 from my early days. But don't remember anything about it. It seems dark...
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It was, with a premise akin to Firefly, but possibly more pessimistic. IIRC, it did not have a happy ending.
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My favorites are basically the "big names" I guess. I could watch these shows multiple times - Star Trek (especially Voyager and TNG), Babylon5, Farscape, Andromeda and Firefly. So many people dislike Voyager, but I thought it was the best of the Treks!
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De gustibus non est disputandum, and all, but I have to ask: whatever makes you think
Voyager is the best of the Treks?
I'm old enough to have watched the original series when it premiered. It devoured it happily -- it was the best SF on TV at that point. I'd say the stakes have been raised in the years since. I thought TNG had flashes of good stuff, especially after they worked through the scripts in inventory that had been acquired for TOS but never produced, and were dusted off for TNG. TOS had been aimed at kids. TNG was written for adults, and it showed.
DS9 had some very good stuff indeed, especially when they got into the Cardassian war. Trek had always had a schizophrenic attitude about Star Fleet, stemming from Gene Roddenberry's attitudes. Star Fleet was a military organization, but Trek did it's best to avoid confronting that, portraying it more along the lines of an interstellar Coast Guard. But the galaxy wasn't always a nice place, and if there
was a war, Star Fleet would have to fight it, and the Enterprise
was a capital ship. In DS9, Trek finally faced that fact.
Of the stuff you mentioned, I considered Babylon 5 by far the best of the lot. Some folks were turned off by the dense story arc, and the necessity of watching regularly to comprehend what was happening. Personally, that was exactly what I loved. The problem with shows like Trek was the lack of real dramatic stakes. At the end of any episode, the Reset button got pushed. Whatever challenges the main characters faced, you knew you'd see them next week in a new show. Real life isn't so sanitary, and B5 wasn't either. Some of the characters
didn't survive. B5 is one of a
very small number of shows that have made me cry.
(And I'm one of an assortment of folks who thought the late Andreas Katsulas deserved an Emmy for his work as the Narn Ambassador G'Kar. To convey that depth of character and emotion while layered in latex is an astonishing piece of work. The other cast members were of the same standard of quality.)
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Dennis