Recently, in the spirit of the 90’s, I’ve gone back and watched all of the great science fiction television that was pumped out during that period. wonderfully so, might I add. I’m genuine when I say I feel like most of the science fiction that was produced in the period were absolute genius.
I’ve been collecting as much media as I can in the last year or so, and television from the 80’s and 90’s has been a leading priority as I file through all of these shows, and eventually decide which titles to add to my collection.
I will give a brief list of the most recent additions, and some of which I think were revolutionary in the progression of Scifi story telling. Before I start, I also want to add that I feel this chunk of titles, most of which many people have yet to hear of, are absolutely underrated. It’s a damned shame that so many people are unaware that they ever existed. It’s simply disgraceful!
Anyway, on to my chunk of titles: a random selection of titles which I’ve recently added to my library of television and movies. (which is absolutely massive!)
(give me a break if some of these shows on the list deviate outside of the 90’s and bleed into the 2000’s)
Farscape
Bablyon 5 (The best space drama science fiction series ever created before the re-imagined version of BSG which aired in 2004, which in my opinion completely broke the standards for storytelling. I think Babylon 5 laid the framework for the ideal ratio between episode subplot and series overall plot, they approached this and created a balance between the 2 with mastery, as if they’d done it 1 million times before.)
Stargate- SG1 (and ofc the following Atlantis and Universe that extended the storyline production into the late 2000’s, making it one of the more remarkable scifi franchises, and one of MY favorites!)
Star Trek (of course): The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and all of the movies. (these series were unprecedented, and as series aired you could see the evolution of how star trek’s storytelling evolved into what it is today in newer releases such as “Star Trek: Discovery”.) (Also, I felt that Voyager added wonderful ideas to the prospects of time travel, and all of the possible idiosyncrasies which surface when engaging in such an endeavor. I felt a lot of the plots were thought provoking.)
Aeon Flux, though this doesn’t fit the genre so it’s more of something i recommend as opposed to something that made the list, I felt it needed to be listed as it doesn’t quite have a real category. It’s extremely 90’s in spirit, so it really fit the thread. It’s a great piece of scifi like animated material to consume.
Lexx, this is a series that is a must watch if you like obscure absurdist humor. It’s not quite remarkable in any way, however it’s just impossible to look away from as it’s just bizarre. You get the “how in the hell did this get made?” feeling when watching it. It was also extremely unique in nature, the cast was refreshingly unlikely, the special effects were mediocre at best, and lastly the writing took on an extremely bizarre cult classic mentality never to be recreated or reclaimed again. This is most certainly one of a kind, and embodies that ultra weird hyper-unique feeling that only the 90’s put into motion.
I might as well include this, even though it was made in year 2000, and that’s DUNE. Well I mean it’s Frank Herbert how the shit could I deny the legendary DUNE a spot on this list. Besides DUNE looks like it was produced in the mid-80’s anyway, it had such poor production value it’s a wonder it was ever released in the first place, which is a staple of the 80’s and 90’s which I think technology has done away with altogether, unfortunately technology improves everyone’s production value with very little experience or cost required.
Independence Day, Men In Black – I list those together because, well Will Smith, he made some scifi flix, and they were mediocre, not really worthy of any sort of praise. That being said, these were some of my more favorite Will Smith flicks, and lets face it, I feel like everyone of us were bobbing our heads to one of that man’s songs. He was really a great artist around that time.
Tim Burton’s MARS ATTACKS – I mean come on, now this was a classic. Tim Burton’s genius embodied the 90’s, and for the benefit of our list, this story has aliens, which qualifies it as scifi. This movie was so good, so funny, and so 90’s. Probably my favorite comedy on the list, not that there are many, but this one is a classic for so so many reasons.
Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park 2 – These flicks were incredi-bones. Also bringing beasts of burden that went extinct before the existence of man, well that qualifies as science fiction because I haven’t seen any savage prehistoric lizard attractions at my local zoo. Jeff Goldblum called BTW, and he told me that apparently his cool calm 90’s boyish charm became the rubric sheet for men looking to reinvent themselves into something more desirable from 1993 until 1999, I mean lets face it, Jeff Goldblum was a 90’s fuckin’ STUD.
The X-Files, borderline Scifi or conspiracy theory. Was a great show, I’ve actually gone back to watch these recently, took me a few tries to get through some episodes, but once I had settled into that 90’s mediocrity of storytelling, it was a breeze.
Ummm, I really wish Seth Green was NOT popularized, but you can also thank the 90’s for that chump. I mean I love that mediocrity was so easily popularized, but that’s the same reason Seth Green has 2 feet to stand on. Oh how I miss the glorly days, I mean even “I could’ve been a contender” with standards such as that.
8 comments
I simply hope that another great era will come soon. And I also wish we could build something in the near future to travel in the past, I mean, at least using “the astral body” to achieve that.
How it would feel if we returned in the 90′?
Since I have almost recovered my energy and my body starts to feel again light like the body of a child I walk the alleys where I played with other children in my past. The air still feels interesting.
I wonder, did you guys play the video game: Starcraft 1 or Heroes 2?
I was a little too young for the games. My mom loved scifi, so I enjoyed a lot of it, and revisited it later in life. It’s my real connection to the era, that and the music at the time. Just pop culture music, I wasn’t really old enough to know about much more outside of that, just what I heard on the radio between my sister and my mom, and the stuff on MTV.
I had a pretty free selection of television at that age despite my maturity level, it really appreciate that now. To be able to go back and revisit everything too that’s been wonderful really. I watched the OJ trial reenactment, and suddenly things that were in black and white prior to understand the trial in full are now in technicolor, high definition. For instance, I watch The Sopranos religiously which took place in the mid 90’s. The show is loaded with references to the trial, the humor and background context which were the foundation of certain pieces of content presented in the show really made little sense to me until I watched the reenactment. I also get the familiarity with the wonderful air, the night air, the small town, the neighborhood kid dynamic, the genuine innocence of the midwest at the time, before the meth, before the heroin. Ffs those were great times.
Hi, man. Thanks for your post. I appreciate it. I will write a longer post later on covering what you said. It is thoughtful because I truly miss those times. The world was diverse and there was room for ideas and people were unique. One apparent thing I notice about the older generations is their human empathy and hope – things were less of a monolith back then; everyone today is so depressed about everything and they had a drained endorphin levels where they become digitalised. It is really sad. As a 90’s/80’s born kid, you noticed this manifestation. The 90’s really had a “smell” to it, so with the 80’s. To me, the extremely emotionless faces of today’s millennial is proof of a world were depression will become more rampant and human value declines. It is all about producing more and more kids into the world these days. The baby boomer generation were labelled “baby boomers” to shame. Even they admit this. Back in those days, for me, the 60’s, was a disgrace to the baby boomers. They admit they were being mass-produced; something that today’s will not be seen or acknowledged, as we have a greater production of kids down the pipeline, without the self-actualised knowledge of what is going on. They are certainly not happy, and become another drone for the media and the corporate world. I just think we were blessed to have been living in such an era. It was a luxury. Jobs become more difficult to do, firing people becomes the status quo, and no one is good enough anymore. I thing the only liberty we can achieve is bringing fellow 90’s/80’s kids together and rejoicing the past. Making our little bubble great again.
I played No one lives forever and Rogue Spear along with other Tom Clancy games. I have never seen a game like NOLF before – at least after the corporate bought the copyrights over and stopped producing sequels. Games today are loaded with graphics and pixels densities that exceeds what we had those days – but they miss the atmosphere and the awee. Like Kate Archer – her poise and charm was irresistable. I came to know her not only as a screen character, but as a real person. The games had that “ethereal” feeling and atmospheres man. It is something that I cannot describe to today’s games at all. The 90’s just had an atmosphere of “everything is well” and “oh, heaven is a place on earth”, to quote that song that played on the radio when my parents drove me to school.
Yes, people still had mansions of houses back in the 90’s, before the industrial era took another storm to crying-wolf post millenials with health conscious parents and boxed thinking.
When you got a 90’s game, you were so exited. And the games had humour in them sometimes. It was classic, and you could relate to it. You wanted more. I think today’s kids are showered with everything and they do not know who they are anymore – they are confused to if anything pure and holy could still exist. I think as a 90’s/80’s kids you can really appreciate a game – the gen z’s only look at the “graphics”. They almost always reject a game because the “graphics” and pixel quality is not up to standard.
There is no sense of wonder anymore. There really was something to be proud of in the 90’s and early 2000’s that I fail to see in todays gaming industries and world around us: You bought games in a game store with video games and archade games advertised on consoles around you. You had to go speak to the guy in the front counter and build a bond with him before you bought the game you wanted. You got to know him. He knew you by name. The games all had “classically” hand crafted art covers. They were crafted with emotion and joy – they spoke to you into the times you wer in. They had je ne se quo to it. The cover of the games drew you into a world synonymous with the current time. It resonated with you. The frustration from gen z’s is primarily because they cannot understand how a time like that could be so great. Why even the term “90’s” and “80’s” nostalgia exists today proves the point. And I claim it, because there was fucking purpose in life. How is it possible to be happy with scraps if you knew what life was and could have been? I can truly say, I am sorry for the kids being born today – they have no discipline, they are sour and melancholic, and they lost 2 things – integrity, and imagination.
The 90’s sucked. Most of it was so phony. People were phony. I don’t think anyone even breathed fresh air in the 1990’s. And all you guys who stay in your rooms and played games and watched TV are the phoniest of all. And here you are, still jerking off and thinking about the 1990’s! Haha!
Nothing you say makes any logical sense by the way; the 90’s weren’t tech rich and obsessed like today’s post millennials – and no, we actually GOT sex back in the 90’s; We had culture, dancing, music, awesome food, movies, etc. Stuff that you kids can’t understand because you are all part of the consumerist world where you are just 0’s and 1’s. Oh, and with such a millennial mindset, you are probably son to a street-whore? You would not have made it in the 90’s obviously.
I’m not sure if millennials would even recognize the 90’s. It was like a foreign country back then.
Seinfeld was on the air, payphones still existed, (as did postage stamps), not everyone had cell phones, and doorbells CD’s and movie theaters were still relevant – it was a different landscape.
Getting readily available porn on your phone was an unheard of concept, and legal, recreational weed? Haha. – No. Never happened in the 90’s.
And yet the 90’s and 80’s kids prefer to have those times back, and yes, to trade quality for technological advancements. The burden of proof is still to show how technology really makes us better and happier.