Have you all forgotten the originator of them all!!!

Is Asimov’s Foundation series only good for the Hugo award for Best All-Time Science Fiction series? I would think that would merit some recognition…

How about the Dune books? Surely they count?

Then there’s the issue of Superman. The Superman character has spawned numerous TV shows, movies, comic books, cartoons, and Halloween costumes. How many 5-year-olds have NOT tied a towel around their necks and pretended they could fly? I think he has become so mainstream, people don’t even think of him as SF any more, but hey, he came from another planet in a rocket ship! I’d be tempted to put him at #1. Leaving him out entirely makes the entire list suspect.

Still very hard to pick just 10 from the hundreds of superb shows, books and films in the world. On the whole, good job.

1) the “best” Sci-fi franchise (in a touchy-feely sense, such as “I really liked the characters in this show when I was growing up”, or “this show had a lot of different plots, instead of the same plot every week”)
2) the “largest” one (the one with most episodes, or spin-offs)
3) the most financially-successful one (star wars would have to win that!)
4) the one which has had the biggest impact on the popular culture of the day, such that even non-sci-fi people flocked to see it. Measured by things like the most-references on late-night TV.
5) the one which influenced the most people to jump into real science because they were excited about what they saw in a sci-fi world (such as you mentioned for Star Trek).

I think that several of the franchises would belong on the list no matter which criteria was chosen. The top 4 seem like mighty good choices for a top-4 to me.

However, I also think that Babylon 5 really deserves to be on the top-10 list, unless the list is only about criteria #4. Five seasons of the show, with the last season on a network which pretty much had no idea what to do with a sci-fi show. Hugo awards for Best Dramatic Presentation. One set of reruns on the Sci-Fi channel. The spin-off series called “Crusade”. Almost had a second spin-off series about “Legend of the Rangers” on the Sci-fi channel. Multiple *series* of books written about the B5-universe, from multiple authors. (one series of books on the technomages, one on the Psi-corps, etc). Four (or five?) made-for-TV movies. Very-successful DVD sales. And right now JMS is finishing the film-work on new episodes in the B5-universe which will probably be released direct-to-DVD. Right now that’s being called “The Lost Tales”, and if I remember right the first DVD should be out later this year.

You might say that “Crusade” was cancelled after only a few episodes, but that’s the *spin-off*. You have “Firefly” listed here, and the original series for that didn’t make it through a whole season, and only it has one movie. I can’t see how “Firefly” deserves to be on a “top 10 of ALL TIME” list, not based any of the criteria I suggested above.

If you’re going to list something like “John Carter of Mars”, and if we’re talking about an “All Time List”, then it seems to me that something like the popular sci-fi books of Jules Verne should be given much more attention. Jules gave us: “Around the World in 80 days”, “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea”, “Journey to the Center of Earth”, and “From Earth to the Moon”. Maybe those seem old-technology right now, but at the time those were pretty heady books. And those are just some of the FIFTY FOUR novels that he wrote as a series called the “Voyages Extraordinaires”. Several of his books have had *multiple* movies made of them. It seems to me that all this has be enough to earn him a place on any all-time sci-fi list!

With book-series, I think one might also consider “Dune” from Herbert, and “the Foundation Series” from Asimov — which ends up being tied to the “I, Robot” series that Asimov also did.

I’m not quite sure the “Twilight Zone” TV series, as a whole, can be called science-fiction, but some episodes of it certainly qualify. I would feel a little odd saying that it has to be on the top-10 list of sci-fi, but I do think it deserves some kind of honorable mention. But then, I always think that “Twilight Zone” deserves honorable mention… :-) You could also say it had spin-offs in “The Night Gallery” and “The New Twilight Zone” series, if you are trying to stick to the theme of franchises.

“The Outer Limits” was also a major sci-fi show, back when you had to capture time on a big three network to be seen, instead of just surviving on one of 1,000 different cable channels. There was also a “New Outer Limits” series, as a spin-off several years later.

I personally loved the first few seasons of “Quantum Leap”, but I don’t think it is quite good enough to be considered “Top 10″. Probably more like “Top 25″.

Some other people here brought up “Buck Rogers”, and I think that is a good candidate for a list like this. That’s another case where the series might seem pretty simpleton now, but was very inspirational for sci-fi at the time it came out.

If we stretch things a bit, perhaps “The Wild Wild West” would fit, although it was never billed as sci-fi. I don’t really believe it qualifies, but it was a favorite of my sister so I thought I’d mention it. :-)

“Battlestar Gallactica” is barely a franchise. I know it’s got some adamant ardent fans right now, but let’s be objective about this if you’re going for an “all-time” list. BG is one series, which has some devoted fans. Right now it has no TV or movie spin-offs, three or four books, it is pretty much unknown outside sci-fi circles, and it’s not clear that it’s been a big inspiration for much of anything — simply because it is too soon to know. Maybe it will prove to be as inspirational as “Star Trek” ended up being, but we can’t say that right now. I realize that “Star Trek” was cancelled for lack-of-ratings, and yet it grew into the number one franchise. Maybe Battlestar Gallactica will grow to have a huge impact over time, but *right now* it is just a mildly-popular TV show. “Outer Limits” was easily a bigger show, with a bigger following outside sci-fi circles, at a time when it faced much more competition on TV from shows from other genre’s.

And to muddle things up a bit more, should we consider video-game franchises too? The “StarCraft” and “WarCraft” worlds have multiple books out, and millions of players of the games. Or the “Final Fantasy” games? NOTE: I don’t claim that we really must consider them, I’m just wondering what other things might deserve to be considered. You seemed to list “book-only” franchises, by listing “John Carter of Mars”. And then movie-based and TV-based franchises. Why not video-game based ones?

I’m sure there are a lot of other franchises that we haven’t even thought of yet, but the omissions of Babylon 5 and Jules Verne seem especially glaring to me.

1. Alien
2. Predator

I really liked seeing these two go toe-to-toe in the last movie.

One can easily argue that it paved the way for the rest of television Sci Fi programming.

Good to see Star Trek and Quantum Leap, though

Actually, I’d replace Firefly with Buck Rogers

This is a great list. This is the sci-fi that everyone loves, not just us geeks (except for BG and Firefly, which are much more niche; but excluding them would have you hung by the fanboys).

(And that sounds painful)