SF don’t get no respect

Boston.com has posted its top 50 science fiction TV series of all time. I’m not gonna get into the placement of shows in the ranking -- though the absence of Max Headroom, Firefly, and Farscape from the top 10 casts a dubious light on the list -- because these things are matters of personal choice, no matter how wrong they may be.

No, what rankles here is the writing, the explanations of the particular qualities of each show that make it worthy of our esteem. The number 5 entry, Babylon 5, is described as "arguably one of the best sci-fi shows ever made" -- surely, that goes without saying, seeing as how it’s ranked at number 5. Why is it ranked so high? Well, it’s just great! Number 6, Stargate SG-1, is a "great show with a solid cast." Number 3, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "nearly made our number one spot." Why didn’t it? Gremlins got into the computer the night before the piece was published? An editor who hates Data overruled the writer? No one seems to know.

Perhaps the worst example of how these editors fail to understand the appeal of these shows -- I wonder whether anyone involved in this project has even seen any of them, is this entry:

Number 8
'Dr. Who'
No sci-fi show list is complete without Dr. Who. The series ran from 1963 to 1989 and featured several men as the doctor - a time traveling, eccentric alien - and his comrades. Sure, many of the monsters were terribly cheesy, but it is a classic nonetheless.

Idiots. It’s a classic, in part, because the monsters were cheesy, not in spite of that fact.

Until someone who genuinely understands SF starts explaining it to the mundanes -- for at who else could such a list as this be aimed? -- SF will remain, unfairly, in its ghetto.