Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
PLOT TWIST!
This year, Wanderer has decided that the last Thursday Movie Picks of each month will be a special Television Edition! While I'm excited for the diversity, I'm also kind of annoyed, because I've watched WAY less TV shows than I have movies, and I hate to pick things more than once. This might get difficult when we get to December...
But anyway, let's focus on the here and now, shall we? This week, we're talking Sci-Fi TV shows. I have to admit, the first two shows I immediately thought of I ended up discarding for various reasons, one of which being I'm sure everyone else will pick them. Bonus points if you can guess what they were. The ones I did pick this week are two shows from my childhood that honestly may not have been very good at all, and one SciFi Channel Syfy show that I really love.
Land of the Lost (1991-1992) I'm SO SORRY. But I remember really loving this Saturday Morning TV Show as a kid. An update of the old Sid & Marty Krofft show from the 70s but with (slightly) better special effects, Land of the Lost is the story of a Dad and his two kids who get accidentally sucked back in time (or something) to a world where dinosaurs and cavemen run rampant, and have to survive or find a way back home. I remember liking the Swiss Family Robinson living-off-the-land survival elements the best, but other than that I really don't remember much. Except that I liked it.
SeaQuest DSV (1993-1996) My grandfather is a seafarer. He came to America from England working on a boat, and jumped ship when they got to New York, and he's been on or near the water ever since. Both of my grandparents volunteered at a local aquarium (my grandmother basically built their education program from the ground up), and they had a boat on Long Island Sound that we would go out on in the summer. So when this show, which is basically Star Trek under water, aired, it was appointment viewing for my family. Again, I don't remember practically anything about it, except that I looked forward to it every week. And that the cast, led by Roy Scheider, is pretty much all REALLY good-looking.
Eureka (2006-2012) The newest and BY FAR best of my picks this week, Eureka is the story of an average cop, who (along with his teenage daughter) stumbles across a city populated entirely by geniuses and, through circumstance, ends up becoming the town Sheriff. Naturally, since the town factory is a high-tech corporation run by the Department of Defense, something life-threatening (or at least, VERY weird) happens on a pretty regular basis, so Sheriff Carter has plenty to keep him busy. And while everyone around him may have a (much) higher IQ, Carter's street smarts and ability to connect with others makes him far better at the job than anyone expected, himself included. What started out as a more serious, mythology-and-mystery-driven show ended up becoming much more lighthearted in its middle-to-later seasons, so much so that even the objectively bad episodes were enjoyable just because the characters were so pleasant to spend time with. It's an incredibly endearing show, and I actually miss it quite a bit.
