Everybody talks about Star Trek, the various Star Wars TV shows, and Battlestar Galactica. But space is way, way bigger than that—space is, in fact, pretty freaking vast, and there is room for way more interstellar adventures.
Here are ten live-action space-based TV shows that deserve way more love and appreciation:
Space Cases
Peter David and Bill Mumy created this YA TV show about kids exploring space, including a young Jewel Staite. It aired for two seasons on Nickelodeon, and it was cute as hell, not to mention quite subversive at times. George Takei plays an alien conqueror named Warlord Shank, and when I say Takei chews all the scenery… You’ll see tooth marks all over the sets. This show was sort of a precursor of Star Trek: Prodigy, and I remember it being fun as all heck.
Quark
Quark was a short-lived spoof of Star Trek and Star Wars that aired in 1977, featuring a host of campy characters. The thing is, it had so many cool ideas in the mix: Long before Firefly (or even Alien), this is the story of the crew of a humble blue-collar starship—a garbage scow, in this case—getting involved in vital, dangerous shenanigans. There’s a gender-fluid character, a pair of clones who both insist they’re the original (just like the Maulers in Invincible!) and a plant in humanoid form. In many ways, Quark was ahead of its time.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Yes, I know… this is a list of shows that don’t get enough love, and Hitchhiker’s is one of the most famous science fiction properties of all time. And yet, the original TV series of Hitchhiker’s really does not get the love it deserves, thanks in part to Doctor Who-level VFX. And I love the 1981-1982 TV version with all my heart: it’s got more or less the same cast as the original radio drama, and uses the format of television to good effect. The guide’s narration is actually quite well animated, and the fake-looking prosthetics they fit Zaphod Beeblebrox with actually look perfect. The story of Hitchhiker’s has been told in pretty much every format by now, but I think this TV version covers the first two books extremely well. And it’s zippy fun space action!
Thunderbirds
Gerry Anderson made a whole bunch of puppet-based science fiction TV shows in addition to Space: 1999, and this is quite possibly the best. The story of a family of space heroes who go out and get their Flash Gordon on, Thunderbirds is both campy and thrilling. They live on their own private island and each have their own space jet! There have been a few attempts to bring Thunderbirds back, most notably a 2004 movie directed by Jonathan Frakes, but scandalously this show is all but forgotten nowadays.
Space: Above and Beyond
A dark, somewhat more realistic space-war show from two of the X-Files writers, Space: Above and Beyond features humanity at war with some ruthless aliens who’ve destroyed some of our colonies. This show plays with some interesting notions—for example, humanity lacks the ability to travel faster than light, but our alien foes have limited FTL. I recently rewatched the pilot episode, and it’s definitely aged badly—there’s a whole subplot about discrimination against artificial soldiers created via in-vitro fertilization, or “in vitroes,” that feels like a ham-fisted attempt at an allegory on real-life prejudice. But this show remains groundbreaking and this type of (somewhat) more realistic space war still hasn’t been depicted on television that much.
Lexx
Okay, back to campy spoofs. This Canadian show with a rock-bottom budget is just a silly delight. A group of misfits commandeer a living spaceship that wants to eat planets, and one of them is kind of a space vampire assassin? The main character is basically a space custodian, and everyone seems endlessly horny. There’s a disembodied head that’s madly in love. This show sometimes veers into actual pathos and weighty storytelling—especially about the imperfectly brainwashed sex slave and the undead assassin—before swerving back into silly camp. We need more low-budget Canadian space opera! (See below for more low-budget Canadian space opera.)
Space Island One
Okay, seriously. This is one of the greatest science fiction TV shows of all time, and when I get a moment I’m going to do a whole newsletter about why it’s the greatest. (I expect that newsletter to be read by dozens of people.) Space Island One takes place on a corporate-funded space station that’s doing pure science—with commercial goals. The crew includes a veteran astronaut struggling with bone density loss after too much space travel, and the show often grapples with real ethical issues. Like, in one episode, they are given the last remaining sample of smallpox to study, and some of the scientists on board want to destroy it. The space science is handled much more carefully than is typical on television, and the implications of allowing science to be controlled by corporations are endlessly debated. This show has some clunky episodes—what show from the 1990s doesn’t?—but it remains a high-water mark for science fiction television.
Star Cops
Chris Boucher wrote for Doctor Who and then became the showrunner (sort of) of Blake’s 7. Then he finally won the ability to create his own show about a space-based police force. Don’t let the silly title fool you! This show starts off great, with dark, conflicted characters, some of whom are very ethically compromised. The storylines are more grown-up than most SF television of the era would allow, and Boucher’s flair for wickedly sarcastic dialogue is on full display. Over the course of its one and only season, the show kind of falls apart—in the DVD special features, Boucher talks honestly about how he wasn’t ready to run his own show, and he lost control of it. But the early episodes are incredible.
Vagrant Queen
Now for two recent shows, both of them Canadian (and aired on Syfy in the U.S.) Vagrant Queen, based on a graphic novel by Magdalene Visaggio and Jason Smith, is the story of a space queen whose mother is apparently killed in a coup. She goes on the run and becomes kind of a bandit, teaming up with two other misfits and roaming the galaxy. But there are loyalists who want to return the Queen to the throne. This show was utterly delightful, with a really beautiful mixture of humor and feels. Tim Rozon from Wynonna Earp plays a very different character than Doc Holliday, with hilarious results. Unapologetically queer and subversive, Vagrant Queen is one of my favorite TV shows of the past five years, and it deserved way better than it got.
Killjoys
And finally… this show is just everything. Dutch is a bounty hunter, along with her two friends, but she’s also a former assassin who was under the thumb of a creepy dude. There’s a whole walled-off city of undesirables, who are constantly being oppressed and attacked. Killjoys takes the Firefly template (small scrappy crew of underdogs against powerful entities with secret conspiracies) and gets much weirder and more irreverent with it. During the brief era when Killjoys and then Vagrant Queen were on Syfy, you could almost pretend we were back in the 1990s golden age of fun, devil-may-care space television.
I really hope one of the gosh darn streaming services out there decides to make some space TV shows that (A) aren’t Star Trek or Star Wars, and (B) don’t feature characters who scowl at each other.
Note: I know I’m gonna get hate mail for not including shows like Farscape, Babylon 5, Blake’s 7, Andromeda, yadda yadda. But consider: I would also get hate mail if I did include those shows, because I’d be implying they don’t have large robust fanbases. Which, y’know, they do. I feel comfortable saying the shows listed above don’t have the fanbases they deserve.
This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.
With the exception of “Space 1999,” television science fiction looked like hell in the seventies and speak of the devil, where the heck is “Space:1999” on this list or “UFO” for that matter? I wouldn’t call either particularly popular or well remembered (at least stateside).
Earth 2 was pretty good, at least at the time.
Don’t forget Killjoys’ contemporary, Dark Matter, by Stargate SG-1 alums Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, about a crew of amnesiacs who wake up from stasis to find out that they are/were the most feared mercenaries in the galaxy.
If only the writers of Dark Matter not felt the need to start passing around the Idiot Ball as quickly as they did, it might have lasted longer and had more fans.
As it was, Killjoys was the vastly superiorly written and plotted show for at least the first two to three seasons, until the writers seemingly decided that they had to kill off an important character every season.
I wish they’d kept both shows. I feel like Dark Matter was getting into some really cool plots and character beats when it was SyFyed (a.k.a. cancelled before it’s time…)
It’s nice to see some love for Star Cops. There was a short-lived but enthusiastic fandom for it in the US.
Yes! I loved Space Cops, and I’m pretty sure I watched it with my friend who had a European VCR …. PAL, maybe? And she had a contact in the UK where he sent her recorded episodes of Space Cops and Sapphire & Steel, and she sent him something only available in the US – like, the amount of **effort** it took to watch it was incredible!
I liked Dark Skies
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Skies
The two standouts from Space: Above and Beyond are James Morrison and Tucker Smallwood. The episode that centered on the fight against an alien von Richthofen was the highlight of the series.
I loved that show. I remember it being my first exposure to Fox’s “death time slot”, Sunday nights between football and The Simpsons. But since games often went overtime it was constantly cut. If I remember right they also aired it out of order.
Also the slang for the in-vitros was “nipple neck”, which still makes me laugh.
I recognized the names of all but one of these, and have seen at least bits of most. The exception is Space Island One – which is explained by the fact that it seems never to have aired in North America (or if it did, it was under some extremely obscure umbrella). And judging by the Wikipedia stub, it’s unclear whether there was ever any home-video release on either side of the pond.
This being the case, where would one look for viewable content of the Space Island One persuasion in 2024?
https://archive.org/details/space.island.oneTV/Space+Island+One+02.avi
I’m watching ep 2 right now – a google search should get you there …
Space Island One ran on at least some PBS stations. I remember Maryland Public Television ran it when they tried to expand their Saturday night showing of Doctor Who into a full-on sci-fi block, pairing it with Red Dwarf and Blake’s 7. Sadly Dwarf was the only one that stuck around. I think they got through all of SI1, but they killed B7 around season 2.
Space Island One did air here in Canada under our science fiction channel Space: The Imagination Station, sometime around 2003, I think. Sadly, when CTV bought out Space and renamed it CTV Sci-Fi, a lot of the shows it carried vanished, including Space Island One. I’m not sure where it can still be watched.
I’m glad I didn’t hallucinate Space Cases. What a fun show. Babylon 5 will never get enough love, but I’ve come to terms with it. The cult status keeps it from turning into the sprawling divisive mess that Star Wars is becoming. Speaking of B5, some of the minds behind that series produced Hypernauts, a show that ran for only 8 of a planned 13 episodes, making it an understandably, if lamentably, neglected show. I don’t think there’s ever been a home release either. Finally (heh), Final Space deserves a mention. Predating Lower Decks by a couple years, the show was admittedly a bit uneven but full of heart. It seemed like it was marketed as something closer to Futurama than what it actually ended up being.
!!
I too have fond memories of Hypernauts – it was arguably ahead of its time, and definitely among the best-written SF series ever developed for Saturday morning television. AFAIK, you’re right about there never being a home release – I think, based on my recollection of long-ago online posts by writer/story editor Christy Marx, that there may be confusion about exactly who controls the rights nowadays. [FWIW, Wikipedia indicates that the series did complete production of all 13 episodes, but the show was cancelled early enough that only eight were actually aired…and if the rights are clouded, one wonders if copies of the unaired episodes could even be found. Ouch.]
I grew up in Halifax and knew people who worked on The Lexx, and I was very excited for it! Yet, sadly I was a bit disappointed by the show itself. It wasn’t funny enough or campy enough for my tastes.
Now, Vagrant Queen! I have never stopped praising this show to everyone around me. It was so good, and you can watch it on Tubi for free right now. Episode 8 is a murder mystery on a spaceship that is an homage to the movie Clue. What more do I have to do to get your to watch it?
I also am a fan of the TV version of Hitchhikers. I got a chance at a con to talk with Douglas Adams about it before it had come out and he was quite happy with the results.
“There are no good plants or evil plants, just plants.” – Ficus, in the inevitable Mirror Universe episode of Quark.
No love for Space Precinct? A cop procedure that just happens to be set on an alien planet where the main character, a human, has been transferred from Earth. It has all the cliches of the cop show, with psychic powers, psychotic holograms, genetic engineered creatures, alien drugs, time travel and the like. Only a single season, but I still found it a lot of fun.
No only Jewel Staite in Space Cases, but also Walter Jones, who was Zack in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
I do love me some Thunderbirds. Gerry Anderson lives large in the mind of a young Orca: Captain Scarlet, Supercar, Fireball XL-5, and my second favorite, Stingray! It’s really interesting to watch these shows and see how Anderson’s puppeteers gradually improved their craft and technical sophistication. Supercar especially looks antedeluvian.
Side note: Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet each received rebooted CGI series in the early 2000s, with varying degrees of success. I’m still waiting for Stingray and Fireball XL-5 reboots, though. Well, Netflix? Get on it!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Big Finish (producer of audio dramas mostly in the Doctor Who universe) has lines of stories for a lot of the shows mentioned in this article and the comments. Space 1999, Star Cops, Thunderbirds, Space Precinct, Terrahawks, and more. A lot of people have trouble getting into audio stories, but if you can, it’s worth the effort. Personally, I like to listen to them while exercising, but there are other options.
Thunderbirds isn’t exactly forgotten in the UK – children’s channels still run the rebooted version. Plus I think all of Gerry Anderson’s 60s and 70s shows have a certain level of cultural cache. Stingray is my favourite.
I love Lexx – rare example of a show getting better as it went on. I particularly liked series 3.
I have some VHS’s of Starcops – but unfortunately not the first few episodes!
If anyone likes the idea of persuing sci fi shows of yester year, I can recommend the TV Times Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction. Any of the three editions are pretty good, and you would be amazed what you haven’t heard of. It’s a british publication, but covers as much US-only stuff as it can – don’t know how many made it across the Atlantic, or if something equivalent is there.
Geeked on “Space: Above and Beyond (All Reason) when it first aired. For about threee episodes.
Yeah; it was gritty, but the acting and the plotlines sucked.
The fighters (ships) were kind of cool, though,, imho.
Earth: Final Conflict is a Roddenberry franchise that lasted 5 seasons and even in the middle of its run, at science fiction conventions, in Star Trek panels, I could never find anyone else who watched it, let alone liked it.
Counterpart is a Starz series that lasted 2 seasons and in spite of J. K. Simmons giving his best Tatiana Maslany “I am pretending to be my other self” impersonations, also had a viewership of about me and one other sf friend.
Millennium is Chris Carter’s unloved companion to his behemoth X-Files.
I watched the first couple of seasons of E:FC and liked it. It’s clear that things went south from budget and writing standpoints after season 1. Season 1 was excellent.
Please add my wife and I to the list of Counterpart fans. I even downloaded the theme music. Unfortunately, it seems to have disappeared from Crave, which was streaming Showtime’s series in Canada.
Another 90’s Canadian/US series was DeepWater Black, based on a series of New Zealand science fiction novels under the same name (series aired in the US as Mission Genesis). The show was about six people aboard a ship designed to restart the human race after a plague wiped us out. A single season of 13 episodes aired on YTV in 1997. It starred Nicole DeBoer and Gordon Micheal Woolvett (both of whom moved on to other series; DeBoer to DS9, Woolvett to Andromeda).
I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers Deepwater Black. I recall enjoying it when it was on, but it pretty much disappeared after its one season aired.
I would like to add Hyperdrive, a sci fi comedy starring Nick Frost as the rather bumbling captain.
And Red Dwarf, but that’s been around 35 years
The original Thunderbirds series is currently airing in the U.S. on the MeTV network, which can be seen on Comcast (at least here in Eugene OR and presumably elsewhere). I vaguely remembered it from my early childhood because my dad had watched it, and I’ve now seen most of its 32 episodes twice. The sets are elaborately detailed and the stories are suspenseful and entertaining, while the social norms are stuck in the mid-1960s and so is some of the technology (AM radio! reel-to-reel audio recording!). In the episode I was just watching, Brains has created a robot (but it’s analog) while Tin-Tin becomes the first woman astronaut, as the team races to save a spaceship from crashing into the sun.
ditto on Killjoys & Vagrant Queen!!
2 that didn’t make the list, but I loved:
Salvage 1 – Andy Griffith as a lovable junk dealer who wants to get all those valuable minerals from the space junk on orbit and left during the moon landings. campy & fun.
Falling Skies – aliens attack and a Massachusetts National Guard unit with added volunteer fighters and a huge tail of civilian refugees conduct a fighting retreat along the Mass Pike. the first couple seasons were great – it got uneven (to be kind) after that & the ending was rushed to the point that it made season 8 of GoT look well-paced and well-scripted.
Falling Skies could have been great if it wasn’t all “family, family, family” all the damn time. I got really tired of everyone dealing with their daddy issues, including both the hostile and friendly aliens…
I immediately thought of Space Academy and Jason of Star Command. Available on YouTube, these are almost unwatchable now but when I was five watching on Saturday morning in the 70s they seemed pretty cool. Also have to shout out for the second season of Buck Rogers exploring deep space in the Discovery. Not great art, but the space vampire episode scared the hell out of me!
I loved Space: Above and Beyond but I will not be checking it out again. I’ll keep my memories of it being amazing. One of the rare shows where earth is constantly getting it handed to them with some tiny victories mixed in.