Karen Ruby

Top 50 Sci-Fi TV Shows

Here's a selection of Boston.com's Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows of All Time:

50. Earth - Final Conflict

48. 3rd Rock From The Sun

44. Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

41. Futurama

37. Space 1999

36. The Bionic Woman

35. Battlestar Galactica (Original)

34. The Avengers

31. Alien Nation

29. The Six Million Dollar Man

27. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

26. Stargate Atlantis

18. V

15. Logan's Run

14. Star Trek Voyager

12. Xena: Warrior Princess

11. Lost

10. Sliders

8. Dr. Who

6. Stargate SG-1

5. Babylon 5

4. The X-Files

3. Star Trek: The Next Generation

2. Battlestar Galactica' (New)

1. Star Trek' (Original)

Okay, I must be a real Sci-Fi geek, but I only selected the shows that I currently watch or used to watch from the Top 50 list and that comes out to 25 shows!

There's no way Stargate Atlantis beats out Buffy! I agree with ST:TNG though. Love that show! Also, I'm happy to see that Lost is on the list at #11, although I don't think it belongs in the top 20. Seeing's Logan's Run on the list brought back some memories. That show warped me when it first aired. As did the show 'V'. Scary! I used to love watching the Avengers with Mrs. Peel. And, one of my top Sci-Fi shows, Stargate-SG1 comes in at #6  - rightfully so!

What's missing from this list?

Going on Record - INXS

As tonight's the last night for Rock Star: INXS, I'm going on record to say that I think Marty will win and become the new lead singer of INXS.

The three finalists as of this post are J.D., Marty and Mig. While I would love for our fellow Canadian, J.D. Fortune, to win the show and be the next lead singer of INXS, I think Marty will win and I'm willing to go on the record to predict tonight's finale.

All three singers are exceptional and have showcased their singing and songwriting talents throughout the series, I just think Marty has a better chance to win, particularly since last night's episode proved how impressive his songwriting abilities were. Didn't you just love his new song, "Trees"? That song can definitely be playing on the radio now. Also, I absolutely love J.D.'s 'Pretty Vegas'.

If you haven't been watching the show, and I'm really surprised how this show hasn't gotten better ratings and promotion since the show is FANTASTIC to watch, 15 singers started out to audition to become the lead singer for the band INXS. I wasn't a big INXS fan, until I started watching this show and was re-introduced to all their great songs. I've forgotten how many really good songs this group produced!

I'll be updating this post with tonight's winner after the 10:00 finale. Let's cross our fingers that INXS picks the right guy to be their next lead singer.

On a similar note: A friend of mine was raving about the Rock Star: INXS show earlier in the summer so I took his advice and started watching it. I missed a few of the earlier episodes but caught most of the series and was hooked. This makes me think of what kind of advice our friends give us and do we take their advice? I've been raving about the series, 'Lost', to a couple friends of mine during the summer. They probably thought that I was a broken record because every week I had asked them if they had watched the latest episode and was so disappointed that they hadn't tuned in to the show yet. Well, Sunday night's Emmy Awards proved to a lot of people how great 'Lost' is when it won for Best Drama and a Best Director Emmy for J.J. Abrams. Yeah! When another friend of mine kept raving about the new show 'House' during the summer, I started tuning in to the show. Now, it's one of my favourite programs that I watch every week.

This makes me think that we should listen more to our friends when they try to tell us something is really cool or start watching some excellent TV shows.

[Update: So, I was so close. Marty came in second and J.D. Fortune won. I'm so happy that a fellow Canadian won it. It was a close call between Marty and J.D., but I just think that J.D. showed the band that he wanted it more badly than the other singers. He continually showed his confidence, his hunger to be the lead singer, and INXS saw that in him, and chose him to be their lead singer. Good for him. Congratulations, J.D. Fortune!]

Smello Vision

Apparently the Japanese are working on a virtual reality television to be ready by 2010 that would "allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor." Read the CNN article here.

You would be able to literally wake up and smell the TV. And, why not? This sounds pretty darn useful if you ask me. Instead of just looking at the mouth-watering images of a McDonald's burger, you would be able to smell the aroma of frying hamburger meat.  Or how about that Tim Horton's coffee in the morning? Now, that would get me out of bed and out the door to a store for my fix faster in the morning.

We'll have to wait another 15 years to see, I'm mean, smell this TV.

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond on PBS Tonight

I was checking out the TV Guide to see if anything interesting would be on TV tonight and discovered that Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" show is on tonight on PBS (Channel 21 on Rogers - Toronto).

For some reason, I have not heard of this book before and and all of a sudden I am seeing references for it everywhere. I'm definitely going to have to add it to my Amazon order (and my ever-growing pile of books that I want to read this year).

Here's the blurb from TV Guide that aroused my curiosity and desire to see the TV show tonight and buy the book:

"What causes one society to thrive while another fails? In tonight's intriguing three-part series, host Jared Diamond explores this question, among others, through the lens of geography, technology, biology and economics. Known for his controversial theories about the course of human civilization, Diamond travels to five continents to explain why various societies developed differently throughout the world. Tonight's episode questions whether simple geography allowed certain civilizations, like places like the Fertile Crescent, to flourish." (Lisa Ruffolo)

If you check out the website (http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/index.html) for the book and show, it poses some more very intriguing questions that are discussed, such as:

Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?

Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?

Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?

Why did farming never emerge in Australia?

And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

The PBS website is also offering full online transcripts of the TV show, so if you can't see if, certainly check out the site and read online the fascinating tales.

I was watching a TV show late last night about demographics and how the Earth is projected to have somewhere near 9 BILLION people by 2050. The show mentioned mentioned that for every 100 people on the Earth (numbers may not be exact, but they're pretty close):

• 61 were from Asia
• 21 were from Europe
• 8 were from Africa
• 5 from North America
• 5 from South America

I have said this before and I will say it again, for those of us living in North America - we are extremely lucky and have already won the 1 in 6+ Billion lottery ticket.

It's very interesting to look at the past and see just how lucky we are. Perhaps sometime in the near future we would not consider ourselves so lucky, if you look at the population statistics, global projections, and economic superpowers that are emerging, the Earth and our place on it, may be very different from what we enjoy today.

Just something to think about.

Have you read the book? Care to comment?

The Simpson's 350th episode

The Simpsons, my favourite animated tv show, is airing their 350th episode tonight. Congratulations!

It's hard to believe that the show is in their 16th year, and will probably go for quite a few more years. Sixteen years is a long time. I can't even remember when The Simpsons weren't on tv and I feel that I grew up watching the antics of Bart and Lisa, learning Homerisms and watching Marge be the centre of the family.

Some people don't understand why The Simpsons is such a popular show, in fact, some even suggest that the show has 'jumped the shark' and is in a downwards spiral. I just think those people need to get a sense of humour. This is one of the funniest shows on tv and I hope the show continues for another 350 episodes. The Simpsons is still funny and still very cool.