After the fight that will break out amongst us bookish, thoughtful fans of televised speculative fiction (OK, I mean "us nerds") in the wake of this poll's finding. Trust me, eyeglasses will need mending.
In this corner, direct from their parents' basements, are the scarf-wearing, faux-British-accent-having, jelly-baby-scarfing fans of one of the longest-running shows ever on television, Dr. Who. In the other corner, direct from their parents' basements, are the line-chewing, green-girl-ogling, fake-pointed-ear-wearing. red-shirt-avoiding fans of a fanchise that has spawned four TV shows and eleven movies (and counting), Star Trek.
Who fans come out swinging, pointing out that many of them first grew to love their show while watching it on a variety of PBS stations and that, plus its production by the British Broadcasting Company, means they are quite obviously much more intelligent, cultured and highbrow. Trek fans counterpunch by displaying the Benny Hill Show reruns available on the same venues, then mount an attack of their own by noting Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a fantastically optimistic, inclusive and idealized dream where equality and respect for all genders, races, ethnicities and such was the credo of the society he envisioned. Who fans retaliate by pointing out that in the original series, crewmen wear pants while crew-women wear long shirts, the lead character spends an awful lot of his time lip-locking different babes each week and the supposed Russian cast member is basically there to be the butt of accent jokes.
But the fight is called a draw as both groups read the rest of the list and, arriving at No. 8, wonder what in the heck The Quatermass Experiment was and how enough people remembered a half-century old, six-episode BBC show to vote for it in the poll.
ETA: There are, of course, actually five Star Trek series, not four. This mistake does not disqualify me from nerdiness. Trust me on that one.
2 comments:
Gotta say that I agree. Dr. Who is the best of the ones listed, but only for one simple reason: it appeals across so many age and cultural levels. It is simple enough for kids to watch and enjoy but complex enough to engage adults while allowing them to suspend belief. It doesn't get soap opera-y like BSG (with the exception of some of Davies' years). It doesn't take itself as seriously as any Star Trek. It makes the transition across the "pond" without anything getting lost in the transition. Sci-fi is not, and should not be, an American cultural influence on the world. And it is good that us Yanks learn that there is quality entertainment in places other than Hollywood.
And just to pick nits, Buffy was not sci-fi. Farscape would have been better situated in that place.
I could pick either one, depending on whether or not I had just watched one of the annoying "There must be a diplomatic solution!" episodes of one of the different Star Trek series or any Who episode that had Adric -- the beta-test model of the archetypical irritant known in another universe as Ensign Wesley -- in it.
But yeah, Buffy was urban fantasy and doesn't really fit in the genre.
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