Alien Nation is on there twice.

shouldn't Trek be the only option.

Anything but The Prisoner. By hook or by crook, anything.

This was a hard choice to make, but I had to go with Lost In Space. It's so irritating. I know, I know "but in its historical context," blah, blah, blah. Irritating. And it spawned an irritating movie that almost made me stop loving Gary Oldman.

Gotta vote for Lost In Space. Trek could be uneven, but every iteration has had a few classic sci-fi stories.

Lost In Space is more of a Sid and Marty Kroft goof-fest than sci-fi, and everything else on that list isn't rated highly enough to be over-rated.

Except Sliders, which is awesome. The best thing Kari Wuhrer ever did, ever.

Definitely Buck Rogers ... talk about blowing a great opportunity! Bidibidibidi, my patoot.

I'll probably be the only vote for The Prisoner because the show is SO OVERRATED. Seriously, paranoia chic makes me want to stab my head. The only thing good about that show was the song Iron Maiden sang about it.

V was pretty bad. I tried watching a few years ago and couldn't handle more than fifteen minutes before I started to gag on the overt political themes, bad hair and worse effects. And I loved it as a kid. But wow, it was awful.

There's a case to be made form everything on that list. But then that could be said about 9/10s of everything when judged by current standards. or any standards, for that matter.

Doctor Who. It's old by now.

At least for me, ST:TNG has not aged well 21 years after its debut. The smugness that humanity would mysteriously overcome its own stupid tendencies (which captured the post Cold War era in which it was born) seems vapid and all those "reasonable" solutions seem trite considering what has gone on the 21st century.

I would have voted for Star Trek, too, but it redeems itself by acknowledging humanity has quite a ways to go.

Space 1999, V, BG (classic), Lost in Space and BRinT25C are not overrated by any stretch.

@Marcus: Fixed it. Thanks!

@Annalee Newitz:
Oh, dear lord.

Ignoring that idiotic statement, I'll just say that most of these aren't even "classics". "Sliders"? Are you kidding?

Listage. Feh.

@SavannahJack: Buck Rogers is pretty bad...but do you really think it's overrated? Most people put it down, I think. I almost didn't include it, or Lost in Space... but wanted to be complete.

@DCI Gene Hunt: Almost left out Lost in Space and Sliders, for the same reasons I almost left out Buck. Those shows are pretty bad... but overrated? I would say The Prisoner, or maybe Star Trek: TNG.

@Annalee Newitz: But what about the penny-farthing bicycle? I challenge you to find a better use of the high wheel anywhere in science fiction.

Original BSG is Horrid, so it got my vote. Lost in Space and Buck Rogers were as bad or worse, but I never heard anyone claiming they were ever that good in the first place.

If I could pick an aspect of a show I thought should be forgotten, I'd have to go with the Federation from ST. I'll buy Klingon's, Transporters, and Warp Speed over the shear absurdity of an organization like the Federation ever existing. The future is Dick's, not Roddenberry's.

@ManchuCandidate: That Darmok episode was pretty awesome.

Thank God you didn't put Kolchak on that list or else I would have to start cracking skulls.

@braak: Also, while I'm here and talking: Twilight Zone episodes often, upon closer inspection, turn out to be way cheesier and melodramatic than I expected, and yet they still hold up extremely well.

@braak: Cursed by his own hubris.

@braak: I totally agree with that. I can get sucked in to a TZ marathon at the drop of a hat. It drives my husband crazy because they're so slow-moving and have little-to-no ambient background noise. But I love it!

@Gyrus:
I read that between takes, Marc Singer was constantly combing and messing about with his hair. I think they could have just done away with him all together and have his hair save the planet from creepy lizard people in disguise. It would have been a better show.
I confess, though, I thought it was a neat show too. 'Course, I also thought Buck Rogers was cool around then...(I don't know what's more embarrassing, the pictures of me wearing "Mork" suspenders..or my viewing habits back then.)

@braak: They had several thought-provoking episodes like that, though they were usually drowned out by fluff episodes. That's why I took a liking to DS9 -- it was grittier and "realistic".

Hooray demographic. It says something for this blog's audience that there are people reading it that even know that "The Prisoner" was a TV show. And that they can have an opinion about it being cool or overrated.

@NefariousNewt: Yeah...I recognize my preference for TNG over DS9 as being solely an echo of my youthful enthusiasm.

Still, Patrick Stewart talking to aliens that only speak in EPIC METAPHOR...

@Gyrus: Okay, V may not hold up, but I can't go against a show that spawned an entire playground culture when I was in elementary school. All the girls wanted to be Diana and all the guys wanted to be Donovan (or Maxwell if they were of a more evil inclination). Anyway, we played that game for hours during recesses. We played Transformers, too, so maybe I just went to a lame elementary school.

@Miranda Kali: Doesn't everything we knew as kids seem a little cheesier now that we're older? Buck Rogers and V were cool before we had a chance to put any thought into it. Dr. Who for all the cheap sets and camp had fun stories and interesting characters. I'm not sure I'd call any of these shows truly overrated, but I would say that some of them have been venerated too far beyond their original eras. Very rarely does a TV show stand the test of time without a few bumps and bruises.

The Prisoner overrated? From a lover of SciFi's Flash Gordon? Is tomorrow's list going to be "5 Ways Joss Whedon Could Be More Fan-Servicey"?

i once blew a job interview for not preferring OG star trek to start trek TNG. the editor of a Toy-collecting magazine (whose title includes the word "Fare") didnt say two words all morning, and when the rest of the crew finally warmed up to me at lunch he just puts his fork down and says "so which is it: Original Series, or Next Generation?" Dead silence followed. stupidly, i gave the honest answer: "next generation, hands down." the whole table kind of grimaced and some of the lesser-apes even looked down at their shoes. Editor flipped his lid. I was not offered the position.

...A-AND it's THE most over-rated TV show ever, not just scifi. BLECH.

@braak: I always tried picturing Shatner trying to do that episode and I fall on my ass laughing.

@NefariousNewt: Plus, it had Hawk from Spenser for Hire in it, and Avery Brooks did that awesome flying cars commercial for IBM.

Where are the flying cars?

How this list doesn't have the Jetsons on it, I'll never know.

@Rasselas: The Prisoner is like Flash Gordon for people who read Thomas Pyncheon on the bus to show off.

@Plague: Yeah--how are you defining "classic" anyway? More than ten year old? Camp classic? Black & White? Cheesy sets/special effects? Each of those categories would have a different Star Trek series as the winner here at IO9-but-I-Hate-Trek.

@Rasselas: How did you know? Actually, it's "10 Ways Joss Could Be More Fan Servicey Please Please God Please Yes"

@foolish-rain: We cast a broad net for this poll... are you saying the Star Trek shows aren't classics?

@Annalee Newitz: Annalee, you are obviously too young and tender to have experienced the downside of waaayyy to much pot and the "creative" paranoia it engenders.

Hard to judge Lost in Space since it really was two different series: I'll be as harsh as anybody on the color episodes of the later seasons. They ran the gamut from modestly entertaining to outright pathetic, but the original B&W season had some pretty tense moments, considering how little budget and production time they had to work with.

grrrrr, why is Quantum Leap up there?

18 votes for V compared to 3 for the Avengers (one of which is mine, in spite of the catsuits)? Did you all misread this as *underrated* or fear a Friends of the Visitors-issued death fatwa?

@Annalee Newitz:
At least we can spell Pynchon correctly.

Can I be the first person on this thread to suggest the idea that the Prisoner is proto-Lost? They just need to have the episode where they find the Others in the Village. Locke is the new number 2.

I actually love the Prisoner tho. I'll be very sad if that or the Twilight Zone wins this poll. That's why I voted for Babylon 5. I never quite "got" why that was supposedly such a great scifi show.

Calling stuff "overrated" is overrated.

@Charlie Jane Anders: Well, I minored in Latin, so my definition of a "classic" might not really apply. I guess I'm just feeling pedantic.

But I really to wonder what classic means in THIS context.

DS9 was a great show, except when I watched it, it was called "Babylon 5".

//I'm part of that 4.6% picking on DS9.

@NefariousNewt:
"...When. The. Walls.
...
...
Fell."

@foolish-rain: Cicero is SO overrated. Ovid doesn't get the appreciation he should these days. Damn kids.

@Annalee Newitz: Paranoia Chic didn't exist until The Prisoner. Thats like saying you don't like Star Wars because Space Fantasy is so played out.

To me, overrated means that a medium-size or larger group of people has to think that a show is the cat's meow. So really, this list should be cut down to:

Star Trek - OG
TNG
Twilight Zone
The Prisoner
Doctor Who
Battlestar Galactica MK II

Outside of Buck Rogers fans, I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who cared about Buck Rogers. The shows on the smaller list have some heft and relevance to mainstream culture at large... And that's where 'overrating' really happens, when a show starts to symbolize the genre, or becomes a reference point for non-hardcore fans.

Boil the list down to that essence, and I'd vote in two ways. Either the original Trek - for being the oldest, and least culturally relevant show that has been dwarfed by countless imitators. Or the new Battlestar Galactica, because it has generated an obscene amount of hype, but because it's so new, it hasn't demonstrated any long-lasting cultural impact.

And V the TV show? or V the Miniseries... Big Difference.

@Annalee Newitz: Nice. The riposte disparaging SciFi's Flash Gordon is impossible, because that show was not for people who can read.

@Annalee Newitz: i'd just like to remind you that some of us read Pynchon because he is funny and fun A-AND effing brilliant. i recommend Vineland, which features ninjas, punk bands, anti-government agitators, and what may or may not be Godzilla. Against the Day, which is daunting in its physikal aspekt, features time-traveling vampires, anarchist cowboys, lost cities, sand-submarines, subterranean trolls, super-intelligent dogs, tesla's energy beams, tons of gay sex, and, uhm, World War I. It's pretty awesome, and it's all io9 material.

@DCI Gene Hunt: Word.

@Annalee Newitz: I wanted to like Pynchon, I really did. But I found Gravity's Rainbow so juvenile and puerile that I haven't been able to read anything else of his. And I was reading it for my Comprehensive PhD exams.

Babylon 5 is not aging well. But it was never overrrated.

Star Trek is always overrated, but that's tempered by raging fan wars and mainstream derision.

I've got to go with Dr. Who.

@Garrison Dean: no, cause Jane Badler's in both

I'll always remember that it was Doctor Who which taught me how to make a Molotov Cocktail.

My vote is for V.

It was crappy then, and it's old and crappy now.

Man I am shocked by the V hatred on here. It has to be in my book one of the best miniseries ever to hit TV.