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Sunday, October 09, 2005 More Quibbles with Best Sci-Fi List This is a rant. This is a rant and I'm not even arguing that any show should have ranked higher than another. The problem is that some of the shows shouldn't have been on the list in the first place. I finally browsed through the entirety of Boston.com's Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows of All Time--and realized that their net of "sci-fi" is rather broad. They've included shows in a number of genres: horror, comic book/superhero, and adventure. Since when did Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Tales from the Crypt, Xena, or Batman become science fiction? Even IMDB doesn't list them as such. (Seriously, people--Lost? How on earth could some editor have thought it belonged on a list of SF?) And then there are the questionable entries: does 3rd Rock from the Sun (number 48) count? Although its characters were aliens, the show was more sitcom/comedy than science fiction. Although the stereotypical fan boy who loves his Star Wars (which is classified as Fantasy by the purists rather than SF because it doesn't deal with science at all) is likely to watch the aforementioned shows, that criteria is a poor one on which to base a Top 50 list. That would broaden the possible inclusions to anime and video game spinoffs (remember the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter movies?) as well. But hey, why not? We've already started to include all adventure, horror, and superhero shows in our definition. It would have been more accurate for the editors to consider their list one of works that include elements of the fantastic, which would include science fiction and anything that deals with the otherworldly or supernatural. But then we would have to include magical realism and things like the filmed play of Kafka's Metamorphosis (which stars Tim Roth)--and we might as well, since it would fit with the offerings that made the ranking. Perhaps I'm too concerned with semantics. But I'd like to think that a respectable website would be as well. ^ Top | 10:34 PM | | | 
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