Sci-fi universes, ranked

This one juuuuust missed the cut.

Quick author’s note: Feeling kinda cute, might make this a standing Friday thing if everyone likes a little good-natured argument heading into the weekend. And if you have suggestions for future underexplained lists, please leave a comment or drop me a message. OK, onto this week’s list…

1. Star Trek (prime universe)

2. Dr. Who

3. Star Wars

4. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

5. Dune

Wait, they made Starbuck a WOMAN?!

6. Battlestar Galactica

7. The Expanse

8. Marvel Cinematic Universe

9. Stargate

10. Spaceballs

11. Alien/Weyland-Yutani Corp.

12. Babylon 5

13. Mass Effect

14. Firefly

15. Known Space

I dare you to see this and not sing the theme song in your head.

16. Flash Gordon

17. Buck Rogers

18. Foundation

19. Star Trek (Kelvin universe)

20. WarHammer 40,000

21. Getting hit by an interstellar transport

22. Rick & Morty

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar
About Clever Name Here dba "Black Rod" 106 Articles
Vell, Clever Name Here just zis guy, you know? Sometimes funny. Often annoyed. Once I saw a blimp.

49 Comments

  1. To this day I will never understand why they chose to make Starbuck a woman. The writers were trying way too hard with that character and it was distracting. Before anyone gives me grief about how it was nice to show some diversity in the new series, I present to you Colonel Tigh for your consideration.

    • I’m baised against him but I think Moore is a sleaze. He was more about sexing it up than being diverse. Not happy with his take on Trek and couldn’t stand to watch his BSG. I stopped when on Sy-Fy and ended up watching the last season or so on BBC America. I think I missed 2 or 3 seasons in the middle and didn’t feel like I missed anything.

        • Deep Space 9 might be my favorite Trek but I didn’t stay with it and kind of stopped watching after a few seasons. I think it was about the time Bashir finds out he was engineered. Time and other factors got in the way and I couldn’t find the time to fit it in.

          I watched Voyager until 7 of 9 came and bounced soon after. I’ll catch reruns on BBCA now and then.

          • …I never really kept up with any of them properly but I watched a fair bit of the various Treks one way or another & I always had a soft spot for DS9…not least for the one (maybe only) episode of any of the shows where Worf actually got to be a legitimate badass instead of the fact someone bested him being offered as proof of how big a threat they posed in some way

            …iirc he spends the whole episode taking on genetically-engineered super-soldiers one on one in succession until too fatigued to continue (as a way to buy time for others to effect an escape plan) the next of the soldiers in line refuses to kill him on the basis of the respect he’s earned from them & gets executed in his place?

            • Some of that sounds familiar.

              I’m pretty easy on Trek and will always peek in on it if possible. We don’t do any streaming services that aren’t available via Comcast so I’m missing all the new stuff on CBS.

              During the 1st season of Moonlighting there was a running gag where David was always pitching Maddie TV show ideas based on Arron Spelling shows or Irwin Allen movies. I though DS9 had the possibility of being both.

              I know DS9 got into a war and went into religion more than I feel Gene would have but I think getting away from the ships and travel was a needed change of pace.

              Enterprise is another I’d like to finish one day. I think I made it through 2 seasons and might have started the 3rd before I lost track of it. If I ever get to be Henry Bemis I think I’ll be binging Trek before anything else.

              • I liked Enterprise quite a bit, though I seem to be in a solid minority there. The first season was quite good, the second season was week, and the third season brought it back in a big way.

          • I will always be a TNG stan because I grew up on it (and c’mon, Picard) but I loved DS9 as well. There is a great documentary on Amazon Prime called What we left behind that is about DS9 and just how different it was from the other Trek shows.

      • I thought Battlestar was great for a while, but then fell apart due to a couple of dumb elements. One was the Cylon reincarnation stuff, which made no sense. The bigger one was the final four or five hidden Cylons, which really made mo sense. The show started out incredibly tight and well plotted, but then fell into the trap of trying to make things way too expansive, and Moore clearly was not smart enough to go past a certain level.

    • Personally, I liked that Starbuck was a woman. I don’t really understand why that was a problem.

      • …I’m not sure it was her being a woman that was the problem…or even particularly anything about the way the woman in question played the character…but I know/knew more than a few folks who found the probable reasons why they made that choice suspect in a number of ways

        …they drew parallels with 7of9…nothing against the character or the actor but the purpose of the role wasn’t exactly subtle?

          • See, I’d disagree with this, and not because of her specifically, but if they wanted to sex up the show they could go ahead and add a blonde sex robot … and oh wait, that’s precisely what they did!

            I was 0 when the original was cancelled, so I had no ties to the original. I appreciated the way he took the pieces of that world and bent them a little. (Also, in fairness, the insane right-winger in my office at the time absolutely lost his shit over Starbuck being a woman and so I’ll never not like her.)

            • …I liked the show well enough for the most part…& didn’t really have a problem with her being a her so much as sort of wondering if they really needed to call the thing battlestar galactica in the first place

              …the whole no-you’re-a-cylon thing might have jumped a shark or two along the way but it was pretty good in a lot of places to the extent that I kept up with while not being so good that I did that assiduously…so probably a lot of the stuff that seemed to get others a little heated one way or another (like the ending) didn’t bother me overly…I even watched some of Caprica?

              • I was enjoying Caprica when that was killed. I really thought that had some good ideas with AI and the ability to create life from our thoughts. I think there was a Gizmodo post the other day about that too.

                We had a fun thread about starting a Pyramid league over on the #GeneralSports page on the Discord a week or so ago. Relegation was getting put in the airlock…

                • I liked them both fine but that was before The Expanse

            • Again it’s not so much that they cast the role as a woman but what they did with the role. They were trying way too hard to make Starbuck this kind of ultimate warrior badass and it was distracting from what the actor could have done. Original Starbuck was also something of a fuckup but he was a happy go lucky fuckup. Overall I enjoyed the series enough to watch the whole thing so the Starbuck thing is essentially a quibble. I just think they took the wrong direction with that character.

  2. That pic is the wrong Battlestar Galactica Universe…

    I might have Dune in the top spot and I don’t recognize the Kelvin timeline at all (only 3 movies).

    I’d have the Alien universe higher on my list if not for the most recent films. I enjoyed the movies but really unhappy where they’ve taken the ‘universe’ with those.

    I miss The Expanse but the rainforest streaming service doesn’t have anything else I’d like to watch so I’ll have to let it pass.

    I’d add Planet of the Apes to the list. I think the reboots are better than anything else that has come out this century, including my beloved Star Wars and the MCU. That last film was oscar worthy and transcended the genre. And the original works hold up if you can get by the cheap 70s FX.

    I might even toss in the Conan universe if Fantasy is allowed as sci-fi. The reboot was bunk but I think it would be great as a TV serial today.

    • Apes is a great pick. Just wasn’t thinking about it.

      I specifically did not include fantasy because I think it deserves its own realm. My brain would melt if I had to try to pick Middle-Earth or Federation space.

      • I struggle with separating different genres and toss it all together. I don’t put in high-tech spy stuff like Bond or Bourne into sci-fi but I do fantasy and most post-apocalyptic stuff.

        I did think about adding Snake Plissken but didn’t think there was enough material (that I’m familiar with) to be included.

        • I was thinking about China Mieville, specifically the Bas-Lag books. They’re sort of scifi/steampunk/horror. Would they belong on a sci first list or fantasy?

    • The entire Apes trilogy was brilliant, way better than it had any business being

  3. Tangential at best here, but I was utterly disappointed by the failure to deliver on the cover image of I Kill Giants. Like I get the point the movie was making and it turned out to be okay despite advertising something entirely different.

    But how fucking awesome would it have been to have actually been about a teen girl with a giant sword that kills giants?! I am so there for this idea.

  4. Oh and for anyone who enjoys a hilariously campy B-movie check out The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. It’s more recent movie deliberately made to be a B-movie and I think it’s wonderfully terrible.

  5. The Expanse should be ranked much, much higher.

    Also, I don’t think Star Trek (Kelvin timeline) belongs on the best of anything. Ugh.

  6. …ummm…well…no offense but you seem to have mistakenly mistyped the bit where the top spot is Iain M Banks’ Culture universe?

    I can see how you might just assume it’s implied & all but the way the entries are numbered makes it easy to be confused…

    can’t really concentrate on the other rankings because that’s distracting me, I’m afraid…

    • People are welcome — nay, encouraged! — to create their own headcannon on these lists.

      I read a ton of sci-fi as a kid, but I never got around to Banks, which I have been told by a few people is definitely my loss.

      • …he’s undoubtedly one of my favorite authors ever…with or without that middle initial…but for the sci-fi you definitely need to look out for the M?

        …if you do get around to it there’s a book of short stories called The State Of The Art which is a pretty good place to get used to the setting before reading the longer novels

        …& I’d hold off on The Player Of Games & Excession for as long as you can just because I think maybe they’re my favorites & you don’t want to peak too soon?

        • The Culture books were definitely good. I don’t know if I ever got through all of them but I really enjoyed those I read.

          • …they’re a little dark in places but they’re pretty fantastic in all the right ways to my mind – so I’m a little sad in a way that I know I have indeed read all of them…in some cases multiple times

            …I miss there being a possibility of a new one turning up

      • …speaking of headcannon I always sort of assumed that MST3K & Red Dwarf took place in the same universe?

  7. Needs the original Lost in Space universe, which is probably the craziest one of all.

  8. And since I have so little going on at work, and I Fucking Luv Sci-Fi, here are some more recommendations.

    The Frontlines series by Marko Kloos is superb. Well written with compelling character development and fantastic world building. I feel the physics are on par with The Expanse.

    And Cry Pilot by Joel Dane is fucking amazing. I absolutely could not stop reading. It will be a trilogy, but only the first book is out yet, though I recall all are finished so it won’t be like waiting for Rothfuss to finish his trilogy.

    • …that Rothfuss fella could stand to hit publish on that sucker, it has to be said – but then I enjoyed the first two a lot & it would suck for the last of the trilogy to not deliver when it does turn up so I sort of sympathize with him a little…fingers crossed it doesn’t drag out into game of thrones territory

      …will check out those recommendations, though…always happy to find good sci fi tips…curious though, if you like the harder-sci end of the spectrum (cf: Expanse/physics) did you read the Three Body Problem books?

      …obviously to some degree the science element of the whole thing isn’t a natural fit for the hard sci-fi label but I thought the degree to which the premise was followed through on was very much in that sort of mold?

      • I have heard of the three body problem books, but I have not read them. I’m still wading through some of the newer Star Wars printed material The Mouse has commissioned. Just finished In the Shadow of the Queen and enjoyed it quite a lot. Though it certainly ended abruptly. But I know they are making it a series so I will have more to look forward to reading.

        Alphabet Squadron was also well written and sets up some truly inspiring pay-off. I hope it can deliver.

        Most of of free time has been mindlessly shooting NPCs in The Division 2 with my bestie or “driving” in Horizon 4. Books require a certain amount of mental energy that I just haven’t had lately.

        While it would do me some good to take a break from the news cycle, I just can’t not know what is happening. That shit takes so much out of you on the daily.

        Fuck I want this all to end and return to something approaching normal. And not the old US normal; but normal for like Canada or Scandinavian countries. Sigh.

        • I read the first of the Third Body Problem series and while I liked the story itself, I didn’t care for the writing. It was too dense for my tastes. I keep thinking about reading the others so I can find out what the hell happened but my brain keeps saying no to that.

          • …I might be wrong but I put a fair bit of that down to the fact that it was a translation?

            …personally I thought they were worth reading but I’d certainly understand if others would be happier with just the cliff notes for closure purposes

            • I’m not sure if it was the translation or that it was just a bit too hard sci-fi for my tastes or a combination of the two. Probably that last, actually.

  9. No love for Riverworld? I never saw the series, just read the books.

    • Riverworld was good but disturbing. I’ll be going about my day to day business, remember one of the nightmarish things that people did in that thing again, and shiver all over again. And it’s been more than 20 years since I read them.

  10. …no riverworld…no ringworld…no shellworld…not even flatland

    …lists are tricky

      • …yeah…felt that was a trifle harsh given that arguably it slides in under the Known Space listing…& the Shellworld thing is another Banks reference

        …Flatland was kind of cool, though – if a little odd

        …but I think the Ringworld idea was pretty cool…& I definitely would fail to make this list not go on for ever?

  11. firefly and the expanse are my favourites
    its a language thing more than a universe thing..i love fireflys use of chinese (i always figured chinese would end up being atleast part of the regular spokey talk one day)
    and well.. belter creole is just a thing of beauty

Leave a Reply