this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Babylon 5 and Farscape are great.
Babylon 5 is more like Trek with diplomacy and semi-realisitic plots, while Farscape leans a bit more toward Star Wars; fun, campy, weird at times but well-written.
You may also like Red Dwarf which is like the IT crowd, but in space.
I found Farscape impossible to watch because of the main character. The show suffers because of the classic misogynistic writing where all the female characters are tripping over themselves to get noticed by the bland, aggressive, stupid, and overly cocky "average Joe" that was thrust into an unusual situation. It's extremely dated writing and as a woman, it really irritates me.
The rest of the show is great! But the main character just ruins it for me completely. Unfortunately that kind of writing is everywhere in older sci-fi. I started and gave up on Stargate: Atlantis for the same reason. I wish someone would release an edit with the more obnoxious parts removed because I can tell that I'm missing out on some great sci-fi but it's just unwatchable to me.
On the other hand you've got shows like ST:TNG, ST:DS9, Battlestar Galactica, even Lexx, where either women are treated with respect and not overly sexualized, or if they are sexualized then so are the men, and the men are kind, intelligent, and curteous, or if they're not then they're probably a villain.
Mmm, I know exactly what you mean. I'm tired of limp lead characters who just tick the boxes of a target demographic to self-insert into.
The Expanse suffered a bit from that (the main guy had all the magnetism of limp celery) but was saved because every single other character was genuinely interesting. Farscape had a much smaller cast, so there was no escape!