The Obscure and Forgotten - Speculative TV Fiction

Our TV in the 1980s didn't quite look like this but was similar in several ways - it had push-buttons for each channel, stood on four legs, and had a brown faux-wood finish. Up until the late '90s TVs and other entertainment appliances were often referred to in the retail sector as 'browngoods' due to this plastic-wood trend.

I love television. You probably love it too, right? I have a longstanding committed relationship with the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, which originates with a childhood obsession with Doctor Who that was facilitated by the television. My love for Doctor Who will never die but over the years it has also broadened to encompass a lot of other stuff.

In the 21st century Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans are pretty much spoilt for choice. Star Trek and Star Wars have become huge franchises. Doctor Who has been rebooted to become a BBC flagship series. And then there's the Marvel and DC universes, which are this whole other thing. There are second tier telefantasies as well (remember the term 'telefantasy'? No? Just me?) - The X Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and all the stuff that's found on the SyFy network.

What I find endlessly fascinating though are the 20th century diversions that explored the genre for relatively brief spans of time. The TV series that were weird and wonderful, that failed because the market they were tapping into weren't interested in another X Files ripoff, or the shows that continue to command a cult following. How many of these do you remember?

British Telefantasy

The Prisoner

Did you ever see The Simpsons episode where Homer starts a website under the name 'Mr. X' and begins exposing Springfield conspiracies? He ends up on an island with a guy called Number 6, and gets chased by a giant sentient ball when he escapes by sea. This whole bit is lifted straight from The Prisoner, with the actor Patrick McGoohan (perhaps best known to more modern audiences as the evil English king from Braveheart) basically reprising his role as Number 6 from the original TV series.  

The Prisoner went for just 17 episodes and dealt with a British secret agent who wakes up in a mysterious village by the sea after he attempts to retire from the business. Each episode 'Number 6' would attempt to escape from the Village and enter a duel of wits with Number 2 (a rotating roster of characters who work as administrators of the bizarre prison). It was kept ambiguous as to whether the Village was controlled by the Russians or the British, and Number 6 would contend with all manner of Cold War Sci-Fi delights - hallucinatory drugs, identity theft, mind control, and Rover (the surreal giant ball that prevented escape via sea). A true one-of-a-kind series.

The Tripods

I only caught The Tripods occasionally. This was a 1980s British TV series that ran for two years and was based on a trilogy of books by John Christopher (he later wrote a fourth and final prequel book in 1987 after the TV series finished). In this series the human race has been enslaved by aliens who pilot giant three-legged machines (the Tripods of the title), society has regressed to a medieval state, and a human resistance force secretly plots the destruction of their alien masters. Primarily marketed towards a kids' audience and featuring teenage protagonists, The Tripods is something I've been meaning to revisit because I've been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic kick at the moment.

Survivors

There's this writer called Terry Nation who wrote the second ever Doctor Who story and due to this he's officially credited as creating the series' most famous monster, the Daleks. The rights to the Daleks have remained with Nation's family ever since and the writer even briefly took them away from Doctor Who for a few years in the late 1960s so that he could use them in their own spinoff series. This never eventuated but Nation would use his Dalek-profile to create other science fiction TV series for the BBC in the 1970s. One of these was Survivors, a post-apocalyptic series about a Cold War bio-engineered virus escaping from its lab and wiping out the majority of humanity. For three years, Survivors tracked the ongoing efforts of a small group of surviving Britons as they navigated their way through a lawless post-virus landscape. I watched this on and off when I was a teenager and there was always something about it that was both unsettling and compelling.

Blake's 7

After Survivors wound down, Terry Nation went on to create a more popular series, Blakes 7, which he pitched as 'the Dirty Dozen in Space'. In this show a political subversive named Roj Blake is arrested by the totalitarian Terran Federation and deported to an offworld penal colony. Blake manages to escape with his own ship, assembling a motley crew of seven, and begins a campaign of interplanetary harassment against Earth's authoritarian government. What sets Blakes 7 apart from its most similar contemporary, Star Trek, is its gloomy dystopian themes and cast of roguish antiheroes. Whereas Star Trek presented a utopian view of a future human civilisation focused on exploring the stars, Blakes 7 depicts a brutal and exploitative regime that must be fought against by its own oppressed citizens. And whereas Star Trek's characters were idealistic and of generally sound morals, Blake's crew of criminals are often outright immoral or - at the least - incredibly bitchy towards each other. If you can get past the very British 1970s production values this is a great antithesis to Star Trek with some fun, memorable, and highly quotable characters.

Ultraviolet

Back in 1998 there was a single series UK television show in 1998 called Ultraviolet, a show about vampires that quietly came and went before the market became completely oversaturated with vampire fiction in the 2000s. This six episode police procedural took a sleek, technological view of vampires - never once referring to the undead by the 'v' word but instead calling them 'Code Fives'. It's a creepy, well put-together time capsule of 1990s genre television, hybridising the crime and horror genres and featuring early turns from Idris Elba and Jack Davenport as the stressed out detectives who find themselves increasingly out of their element. Ultraviolet is a welcome and stylish diversion in an age when original takes on vampires have become increasingly hard to come by.

American Telefantasy

Alien Nation

Starting as a 1988 movie set in the 'future' of 1991, Alien Nation was a buddy cop/science fiction film that paired up a veteran police officer with a rookie 'Newcomer' cop. The Newcomers are a race of alien refugees who have integrated into American society, and the film generated enough interest to be spun off into a TV series - albeit one that lasted for only one season and a couple of TV movies. It's basically a police procedural show with an added sci-fi element used to explore themes related to xenophobia, migrant narratives, multiculturalism, etc. It's a decent concept and the culture and biology of the Newcomers is explored enough to warrant the sci-fi tag, even if the rest of the framework remains firmly rooted in the lighthearted tone of an early 1990s buddy cop show.

Quantum Leap

Unlike most of the other series in this list Quantum Leap is one that mum, dad, and the grandparents can enjoy due to the lack of obvious science fiction elements like aliens, spaceships, or lasers. For five seasons Scott Bakula played physicist Sam Beckett, a man who becomes unstuck in time and 'leaps' into the bodies of different people throughout the 20th century. In order to move on from each time zone Sam must 'correct' something that went wrong in this period of history. It's a great show and, as mentioned, it tends to have wider appeal than most sci-fi due to its focus on social commentary and drama rather than predominantly science fiction conceits.

Earth 2

Earth 2 was a one-series wonder that aired in 1995. Ambitious in scope, Earth 2 is set in the 22nd century when Earth has become uninhabitable and humans live mostly on space stations. A small group of colonists escape their space station to start the colony of New Pacifica on a planet with Earth-like conditions and, after becoming marooned and scattered across the new world's surface, they begin to pioneer a new beginning. There are a lot of good ideas in Earth 2 and enough angles to build a solid mythology that could have given the series longevity and depth - the colonists find themselves contending with two indigenous races, an Earth government resistant to the idea of the colony, shifting dynamics within the colonist group, and the planet's legacy as a secret penal settlement. At times the series could be a bit hokey and a little too American but I have to admit that I was quite bummed out when it was prematurely cancelled as it promised to explore some pretty interesting territory.

Dark Skies and American Gothic

Remember the mid-'90s when The X Files was a huge hit and the world seemed gripped by Muldermania? There was an X Files soundtrack with a secret track hidden at the start of the CD, a movie released at the show's height of popularity, and two spinoff series (Millennium, The Lone Gunmen). But perhaps the most interesting impact of the show was how it shaped a new wave of American television series. The X Files dealt with two completely separate strands of speculative fiction loosely aligned under the catch-all term 'paranormal': one being aliens and the other being supernatural events. Few shows seem able to explore both the fantasy and science fiction genres with as much balance and success so it was inevitable that the various imitation shows would opt to choose one or the other.  

Dark Skies was a science fiction series developed by a rival network as a direct competitor to the The X Files. Set during the 1960s, Dark Skies explored the idea that an alien race known as the Hive had infiltrated the American government and were manipulating human history in order to pave the way for invasion. It was basically like all the story arc episodes of The X Files but tied into real life events from the recent past, and it only lasted one season.

American Gothic was another series developed by a rival network in the mid-'90s, also only ran for one season, and leaned into the Americana-based horror aspects of The X Files. It focused on the evil machinations of Lucas Buck, a small-town sheriff with supernatural powers whose hobbies included rape and murder. I remember watching a few episodes of this show when I was 15 and felt very creeped out by it.

Space: Above and Beyond

Another mid-'90s one season effort, Space: Above and Beyond was created by two regular writers from The X Files but has more in common with Star Trek and Starship Troopers than the paranormal. Set about 70 years into the future, this series presented an early Earth Empire coming into conflict with a more experienced space-faring alien race called the Chigs. The writers had a plan to unfold their narrative over five seasons, with various subplots put into motion throughout these first 23 episodes. Fans were understandably frustrated when the show was cancelled before it had a proper chance to get going, however, I can't say I was ever particular enamoured with this one. Being a '90s show created by the same production team as The X Files, the lighting was incredibly dark and shadowy, and the militaristic aspect of the storyline gets kind of old when it takes 21 episodes to get around to even showing the audience what the aliens look like.

seaQuest DSV

Marketed as 'Steven Spielberg's seaQuest DSV' (though he had little to do with it other than chucking some money at it), this series basically became an underwater version of Star Trek despite initial intentions to do something a bit different. 

I don't know what it was about the 1990s but there was this brief moment when everyone in Hollywood seemed to forget how expensive it is to film on water. Waterworld and Cutthroat Island were two films from 1995 that blew out their budgets due to the difficulties involved with water-filming and seaQuest was reported to be quite expensive for a television series too. That said, it managed to stay afloat (sorry) for three seasons. Roy Scheider signed on as the lead but became angry when the focus of the show shifted from realistic near-future science fiction in Season 1 to things like aliens, water monsters, and psychic powers in Season 2. The third season limped along with new cast members and further efforts to 'retool' things with a new lead actor, Michael Ironside, who stipulated in his contract that his character would never be seen talking to Darwin, the ships' talking dolphin. I watched seaQuest on and off when I was a teenager and even back then I could see that the show was a mess; unable to settle on a consistent tone or purpose.

Sliders

Finally a TV series about tiny burgers. The impact of Sliders on fast food cuisine shouldn't be underestimated.

As usual with these sort of things the above list is by no means complete. Other shows I've heard of but never had a chance to watch include: The Last Train, Space: 1999. Star Cops, Tomorrow People, Doomwatch, Sapphire & Steel, V, UFO... at one point these shows felt like points of interest and were just a little bit lesser known than the more popular ones but, as time marches on, some of them seem to be becoming increasingly obscure and less spoken about.

Which is inevitable. But also sad.