Automan.

I don't even know if I need to explain this one. It's another Glen Larson show, along the lines of the original Battlestar Galactica, except it's about a guy who's a holographic computer game image come to life. And he goes out and fights crime! — but only when the city's electricity usage is at low levels. If too many people plug in their electric blankets, he vanishes. He's like Tron, only in the real world. And he has a sidekick named Cursor.

Blake's 7

This one is an even bigger WTF, given what a cult following this show has in the U.S. Yes, there are U.K. DVDs, so if you're willing to pay import prices and have a region-free player, you're all set. There were rumors of American DVDs of this show, about a freedom fighter who teams up with criminals to fight an evil galactic federation, several years ago when a TV revival was first floated. But they never materialized, maybe due to rights issues. Also not on U.S. DVD: Blake's 7 creator Terry Nation's series The Survivors.

M.A.N.T.I.S.

Still no DVD, but ooh! Looks like it's available as a video on demand! Still, I am disgruntled. This was announced as coming out on DVD back in 2003. WTF? For those who missed it, this was an early Fox show about a paralyzed scientist (the awesome Carl Lumbly from Alias) who puts on a super exoskeleton/armor suit, and goes out to fight evil. It also boasted an early appearance by our ruler, Gina Torres (I shouldn't need to put anything in parentheses after her name.)

Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future

We posted a couple clips from this one a while back — it's an early show from Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. It's like a post-apocalyptic saga, with evil cyborgs and laser gun fights. It's pretty much the perfect TV show.

Journeyman

I'm actually kind of shocked about this one. I would have thought this show would do really well on DVD, since it's like a novel in episodes, about a guy who finds himself zIpping between the past and the present, while trying to save his marriage and job and stuff. It's like a metaphor for our modern dislocation. Also available as a video on demand though.

Alienated

Okay, I know almost nothing about this show, but I need to see it on DVD after reading the description: "The plot centers on the Blundells, a typical suburban family living in Victoria who undergo strange (often sexual) changes after being abducted by space aliens (who remain unseen throughout the series)." Plus it's Canadian,which means it's automatically really sophisticated.

Cosmic Slop

This was an African American Twilight Zone-esque anthology show that aired on HBO back in the 1990s. I have been seeking it on DVD for many years. It was co-produced by Reginald Hudlin, and took its name from the famous Funkadelic song. In the first segment, aliens turn up and promise to make America fantastically wealthy forever — if we'll let them take all of our black people away. Another segment is based on a Chester Himes story about a poor squabbling couple who have a rifle mysteriously delivered to their door.

Space Island One

I loved this show when my local PBS station showed it, and we included it on our list of great unsung TV shows. Here's what I said then: The crew of a corporate-funded space station mostly deals with scientifically plausible problems (with a couple of exceptions) and the stories focus on the ethical problems that come with profit-focused science. I should add that the characters get deeper and richer the more you watch this show, until you suddenly discover that the nicest guy on the show is deeply fucked up in a way you never expected. I would maim for DVDs of this show.

The Clangers

Okay, I have no clue if this show would hold up today; I've only seen a few tiny clips since I was a little kid and I watched it religiously. It's a stop-motion claymation show about little aliens living in peace and eating blue-string pudding. You know it's a great show because it's the favorite entertainment of The Master, the evil time traveler from Doctor Who. It's like acid induced proto-Teletubbies in space. I freely admit I may have rose-tinted glasses on when it comes to this show. Here's a clip.

Max Headroom

This one is really a no-brainer. This show influenced so much of today's television and was such a seminal cyberpunk masterpiece. Its brain-exploding superfast adverts, "blipverts," are like a warning of how ADD-focused advertising is becoming. We need a box set that includes his early appearances as a music video show host, his short-lived TV series as an investigative reporter, and his various TV commercial and music video appearances.

RoboCop

Okay, I mostly want to see this because it sounds incredibly cheesy and hilarious. I included it on my list of the worst TV shows based on movies, but it also sounds pretty amazing. RoboCop doesn't actually kill anyone because it's kid-friendly viewing, and villains include Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo and Boppo The Clown. Also not on DVD: the TV series of Logan's Run, Starman and Timecop.

Mann And Machine

I found out about this show when I was doing our round-up of human-A.I. buddy comedy chemistry. And now I can't believe there are no DVDs! It sounds so awesome. It's about a human cop who hates androids, but he has to team up with a hot gynoid partner. And then he sends her on dates with serial killers, and they end up living together. Come on? Why isn't this on your shelf right now?

The Middleman

It is definitely not too soon to start demanding our DVDs of this awesome show's first season. This could turn into one of those big-selling DVD items that converts tons of new fans and indoctrinates them in time for the inevitable second season. (Inevitable, I tell you!) Seriously, in case you're new to io9 and our obsession with this show, this Avengers-esque story of a young artist who goes for a temp gig and becomes the sidekick to a nameless man who fights alien monsters is one of our fave recent TV series, and the real reason DVDs exist is so we can proselytize about shows like this.

Life On Mars (British version)

This head-injury time-travel cop show was a hit on BBC America, and now there's an American remake with name actors in it like Harvey Keitel and Gretchen Moll. So why are there no DVDs on the horizon? After the American remake totally fails to recapture the British magic, we'll need to see the real thing. (I'm still watching the Brit episodes, thanks to the magic of TiVo.)

Space Cases

This Nickelodeon series featured a young Jewel Staite as Catalina, the super-cool space kid with the yelling powers. It was written by Peter David and Lost In Space's Bill Mumy, and featured weird plots and joyously silly acting from guest stars like George Takei (playing the stentorian Warlord Shank.) It was one of the few kids' shows that you'd want to watch with your kid the requisite 20 times. Your kids demand these DVDs!

Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends

For some reason I've been hearing about this show a lot lately. It's the seminal Spider-Man cartoon where he teams up with Ice-Man from the X-Men and Firestar, plus a super-dog. Graeme recently suggested Spider-Man 5 should be based on this awesome cartoon. So why can't we watch it and judge for ourselves?

Time Trax

Okay, you're going to start questioning my sanity now. But I loved this show when it was on the short-lived PTEN syndicated network back in the early 1990s, because it was so goofy. Dale Midkiff is a cop from a dystopian future (where white people are a persecuted minority) and he has to go back to our time to chase down time-traveling criminals. In every episode, a boxer from the future uses his future-boxing powers to win boxing matches. Or a future car mechanic uses future car mechanic powers or whatever. And the future cop has a holographic sexy librarian helping him! It's so awesome. Why is there no DVD?

Tripods

And finally, the BBC TV adaptation of this classic book series about teenagers fighting War Of The Worlds-esque alien invaders was brilliant and arresting. It featured then-cutting edge special effects and a cool alien-fighting coming-of-age storyline. I haven't seen it in 20 years, and I'm dying to see it again.

Runners up: Jake 2.0 never really won our hearts, because we were waiting for Jake Panther. Also: Animorphs; Charlie Jade; Century City; Century Falls; Dark Skies; Doctor Who: the TV movie; the Star Wars Holiday special (does someone really want that on DVD?), Exosquad; First Wave; The Man From Atlantis; Future Cop; Hard Time On Planet Earth; Manimal; Men Into Space; The Night Man; Now And Again; Out Of The Unknown; Probe — when you search for this on Amazon, you get lube!; and Project UFO.

Max Headroom was created and first played by Matt Frewer — he made his first appearances on U.K. television as a talking head in a music video show called The Max Headroom Show. He was also a personality on an interview show in the U.S. Though I loved those Max Headrooms, my favorite will always be the anarchic alter-ego of investigative journalist Edison Carter. He was like the rebellious subconscious of media itself, the voice that refuses to shut up and questions everything even while also enjoying all pop culture indiscriminately.

Bring back Max! Give him a movie! Aw hell, at least give us a freakin DVD box set. Currently none is available. [Max Headroom via Wikipedia]

We're focusing on really unsung series here, which means the list doesn't include shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Blake's 7, which get plenty of love. Also, we're not including any shows currently on the air, on the theory that they could still get more love.

10. Space Island One (1998)
Why it's unsung: This German/Canadian co-production isn't out on DVD, and all of the websites about it have been down for a few years. There aren't even any clips on YouTube.
Why it rules: This is one of the most hard-science-focused SF shows. The crew of a corporate-funded space station mostly deals with scientifically plausible problems (with a couple of exceptions) and the stories focus on the ethical problems that come with profit-focused science. Yes, some episodes are a tad slow-moving, but the best dozen eps feature high drama and high weirdness. Sample plot lines: a lonely old NASA astronaut spends thousands of dollars calling 900 sex lines from the space station. The station gets the world's last sample of smallpox for safe-keeping, and the crew debates whether to destroy it.

9. Star Cops (1987)
Why it's unsung: This show about a police squad in the "Wild West" of space stations and moonbases suffered from a cheesy title and a ridiculous ELO-esque theme tune. (Which I've sort of gotten to love, for some dumb reason.)
Why it rules: Series creator Chris Boucher wrote some of the best episodes of the original Doctor Who, and then masterminded the scripts for Blake's 7. Several Star Cops episodes feature tons of Boucher's trademark razor-sharp dialog, plus the show fumbles towards a space-noir aesthetic, with the cop squad including a bribe-taker and a thuggish slob.

8. Surface (2005-2006)
Why it's unsung: Cancelled after just one season, this show about undersea intrigue failed to rope in the kind of audiences who were devouring Lost's tangled mysteries.
Why it rules: Dude, it had sea monsters! And there was a government coverup! And we had a strong female character — a scientist, even — investigating the emergence of a new and potentially world-ending form of sea life. And we never got to learn what was really going.

7. Odyssey 5 (2002)
Why it's unsung: This Canadian show about space shuttle astronauts who witness the destruction of Earth never got enough publicity during its initial U.S. run on Showtime. It felt like an attempt to do a mature extended-cable show like Big Love, only with a science fiction premise, and it failed to reach either audience. Showtime didn't even bother to show all of the first season, until 2004.
Why it rules: The main characters are all well-rounded and flawed. And the show's set-up, in which an alien sends their consciousnesses back in time five years to try and avert the world's destruction, generates tons of potential. The show is appearing intermittently on Sci Fi, and it's worth catching despite the inconclusive ending. The show was created by Manny Coto, who went on to mastermind the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

6. Journeyman (2007)
Why it's unsung: The first few weeks this time-travel show was on, its nickname was: "Gah, post-Heroes buzzkill!" The drama of Kevin McKidd struggling to hold onto his job and his marriage, while he kept slipping into the past, just felt a bit too draggy. But then something funny happened: Heroes started being the pain we endured to get to the reward of Journeyman.
Why it rules: The mystery of why Dan Vasser is traveling in time gets more intriguing, once a weird physicist starts spouting about wormholes. And all of the characters get more nicely complex as the show goes along. Most of all, though, all of Dan's meddling in the timestream has consequences he can't predict — and they only pile up more alarmingly over time.

5. Lexx (1997-2002)
Why it's unsung: At least in the U.S., this Canadian show never quite crossed over and gained a broader audience.
Why it rules: Just the fact that they're in a planet-eating bug ship is good enough for me. Not to mention the weird robot head with the love-slave programming implanted in it, while the cluster lizard/slavegirl who was supposed to get the programming runs free. It's a weirdly campy show, but actually has moments of genuine greatness.

4. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974)
Why it's unsung: I know: How can a Star Trek series be unsung? But this one really is. It only recently got a DVD release, and people often skip over it in discussing Trek lore.
Why it rules: Thanks to a writer's strike that didn't apply to animation, the show managed to get some decent science fiction writers to contribute scripts, including Larry Niven and Larry Brody, plus original series veterans like David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. The episodes are pretty fast-paced, thanks to their 22-minute runtimes, but that doesn't stop them dealing with ambitious ideas like antimatter universes, an "ultimate weapon" and time paradoxes.

3. Farscape (1999-2004)
Why it's unsung: Even for a Sci Fi Channel series whose name doesn't rhyme with "cattle car," Farscape flew under the radar. The muppet-esque Henson animatronic character probably made a lot of people think it was a kids' show.
Why it rules:Farscape had smart writing, good science and believable aliens — plus, it featured Scorpius as a villain Crichton's head long before BSG ever did the head-villain thing. Plus, we love the Moya, the living ship that Crichton finds himself on. The Sci Fi Channel is supposedly going to make 10 webisodes, but their status is uncertain.

2. Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993-1994)
Why it's unsung: This sci-fi Western ran in the "Friday night death slot," and breathed its last after only one season. Like many of the shows on this list, it has a cult following, but seldom gets much props as a science fiction show. And star Bruce Campbell in general deserves way more accolades than he ever gets.
Why it rules: It smudged genre lines with total abandon, and you never knew what sort of crazy gadgets would turn up, from an otherworldly superpowered orb to the Mobile Battle Wagon and the Amazing Rocket Car. Co-creator Carlton Cuse now works on Lost.

1. Max Headroom (1987-1988)
Why it's unsung: It's still not out on DVD, except for an out-of-print DVD of the original UK TV movie. The show has a cult following, but not as much as it deserves.
Why it rules: This cyberpunk show was prophetic in so many ways — TV ads feel so geared to short attention spans and DVR-skipping, they might as well be "blipverts." — and paranoia and corporate dystopias have seldom been so entertaining.

Actually, there are two lists here: a list of pre-Murdoch stories that predicted the rise of a media omnivore; and a list of more recent works which use a Murdoch figure to make a point, either satirical or serious. For convience's sake, we'll date the Murdoch era as beginning in full force in 1985, the year Murdoch took on American citizenship so he could legally start buying up U.S. TV stations.

Stories which predicted Murdoch:

Diana Christensen in Network. Faye Dunaway's character gets some dynamite footage of terrorists robbing banks, which propels her to the top of her network. But she's not satisfied, and ends up merging the network's news and entertainment divisions into one monster, which she controls. Then she decides to give some Maoist terrorists their own TV show, and their first episode consists of killing the last "mad as hell" newscaster who clings to truth and all that crap.

Palmer Eldritch from The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick. Eldritch is the ultimate media mogul, because he controls your dream afterlife, via his substance Chew-Z. Forget controlling what you watch on TV or at the movies — getting to be in charge of your eternal afterlife is the ultimate media-whore rush. At least this guy is convinced Palmer Eldritch is a Rupert Murdoch archetype.

The Great Zapparoni from The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger (1957). The Great Zapparoni runs a huge entertainment empire that depends on animatronic robots. He's achieved "global domination" in the information and entertainment industries thanks to super-sophisticated artificial intelligences. But he's paranoid about the scientists who work for him selling his secrets, so he tries to hire a war veteran to be his head of security and keep tabs on his employees. Bruce Sterling praised the novel's prescient social commentary and technology.

Stories which poke fun (or a scorching-hot poker) at Murdoch:

Christof from The Truman Show. The creator of the ultimate reality show, Christof crosses over from media megalith to mad god. He wants to keep Truman terrified of water, so he'll stay trapped in the fake reality Christof has created for him. And when the two of them finally speak to each other, Christof sounds both paternalistic and omnipresent, his voice echoing out of the sky.

The Jagrafess from Doctor Who, "The Long Game". At first you think the Editor, in his natty suit, will turn out to be the Murdoch of this far-future dystopia. After all, the Editor is the one making the eloquent speeches about how you can control people completely by feeding them fake news and emphasizing just the right word to create a "climate of fear." But it turns out the frozen head office of Satellite Five, the huge media empire, is really run by a giant slug overhead, the Jagrafess, which spits venom down at the pathetic Editor.

Grossman from Max Headroom. The head of Network 23 has an evil scheme to create "blipverts," which cram 30 seconds worth of advertising into just 3 seconds, so you can't change the channel or walk away. The only problem is, they make people explode after watching too many of them. Reporter Edison Carter starts to uncover the truth, so Grossman orders him dead. But instead, Carter is transformed into the cyber-personality Max Headroom.

Hiram Patterson from The Light Of Other Days by Arthur C.Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Patterson's news company OurWorld develops the WormCam, which uses wormhole technology to spy on anywhere in the universe instantly. And then Patterson also develops the SmartShroud, the only thing which can hide someone from the WormCam. And eventually, he can even use his WormCam to spy on events in the past. But his ultimate aim is even more sinister — to use wormholes to suck power out of the Earth and the stars, all to help his energy company crush the competition. The greedy and psychotic Patterson has "certain elements" of Murdoch, Clarke conceded. (Clarke and Murdoch are very close friends. After a Murdoch paper reported the accusation (later discredited) that Clarke was a pedophile, Murdock assured Clarke those reporters would never work again. And Murdoch's Harper Collins published Clarke's anti-Murdock novel.)

Daniel Siltz from Cold Lazarus by Dennis Potter. It's the 24th century, and everything has gone to shit. Britain is dominated by American media oligarchs, and all real experiences are illegal. The only legal experiences are virtual ones, which you have to pay for. Siltz, who's clearly meant to be Murdoch, wants to resurrect the mind of dead 20th century author Daniel Feeld, so he can make money by selling Feeld's memories on his virtual entertainment network. But Feeld's mind becomes conscious of his predicament and begs for death, arousing the sympathy of anti-VR guerillas, who eventually kill Feeld and Siltz. Potter wrote this TV drama while he was dying of the pancreatic cancer which he named Rupert after the man who represented everything Potter loathed most.

Linderman, from Heroes. He's an evil omnivore who controls everything and manipulates everyone from behind the scenes. And actor Malcolm McDowell says he's lost count] of how many times people have asked him if Linderman is based on Murdoch. (I can't quite see it, myself. But then again, McDowell himself says the alleged Murdoch resemblance holds true for many of the characters he's played in recent years.)

Fred in Planet Fred, a movie which Dreamworks optioned back in 1999, and which probably will never come out at this point. Supposedly it's about a microscopic alien who settles on the head of a Murdochian media boss. It sounds sort of How To Get Ahead In Advertising-esque, so it's too bad that we're getting Eddie Murphy's new Starship Dave (about tiny aliens living inside Eddie's head) instead.