Londoners Magazine

Cheesy cult sci-fi shows. They were never my thing. I could never take them seriously. Star Trek bored me to tears (mostly because…of Captain Kirk’s…strange speech… patterns), Stargate SG-1 was, and is, bafflingly awful, and I’m pretty sure Buck Rogers was written by a team of chimps. Not even smart chimps.

As for Doctor Who, I guess it was okay when I was a kid, but the remake? If there’s anything more annoying than David Tennant running around grinning like a twat, it’s David Tennant running around, closely followed by Catherine Tate.

Then I watched Battlestar Galactica. It’s a remake of a pretty hideous 70s show about the remnants of the humanity, fleeing through space from a race of rebellious machines they created as servants. I know how it sounds, but shut up. I was sceptical too, but somehow the 2004 remake has managed to be unbelievably great.

It’s gotten rid of all the things that make other sci-fi shows so abysmal. No more camp alien races called the Glagnarians or the Slarm Empire. No more empty characters who are only defined by their experiences. And, most importantly, no more meaningless techno babble that alienates anyone who doesn’t jerk off over vortex thrusters and anti-matter particle deceleration fields.

What’s left after you get rid of all that crap? A damn fine show, that’s what. Battlestar Galactica introduces complex characters, a gritty, brutal setting, and convincing relationships that are compelling even if they do take place on a military space ship. It even has, wait for it, credible female characters. That’s right, it breaks sci-fi TV’s cardinal rule and portrays the women of the future as more than freaky alien sex bombs to fulfil the bizarre fantasies of spotty teenagers.

It got me all optimistic about sci-fi on TV. I thought that maybe there were other great shows out there that I’d dismissed unfairly. So, inspired by its high placing on Empire Online’s recent 50 Greatest TV Shows feature, I thought I’d give Babylon 5 a try. Apparently, it’s a credible depiction of life on a diplomatic space station, with a tightly woven, multi-layered story arc concerning humanity’s relations with a host of alien races. An intergalactic embassy is a pretty cool concept, right?

So I paid over twenty of your earth pounds for the first season of Babylon 5. And I knew from the first several seconds of the show that I’d made a huge mistake. Yes, the concept was cool, but the execution was another matter. It was the TV equivalent of walking into a five-star hotel room and finding out all the furniture’s covered in skunk piss.

The set looked like it had been made of cardboard. That fact alone somewhat breaks the illusion that the show takes place on a fucking space station. And I know it was made in 1993, but the shots of space looked like they’d been put together with construction paper. The acting wasn’t any more convincing. One character (whose name I can’t remember and don’t care enough to look up) proved she was a tough cookie by raising her eyebrow a lot and nodding resolutely after every sentence. A veritable dramatic masterclass, I think you’ll agree.

So, I was suckered. I let my guard down for one second and I got burned. Twenty quid down and an embarrassing box set which will mar my DVD collection’s reputation until I manage to get rid of it. I don’t suppose there’s anyone out there who has a bizarre fetish for utterly crap TV and wants to take this off my hands?