Battlestar Galactica

The critically-acclaimed reenvisioning of the late 1970s space opera, newly laced with cultural commentary and soaked in philosophical brine.

The human homeworlds are destroyed; the population is down to a few tens of thousand refugees, shepherded through space by an aging hulk, the Galactica. At the end of the journey, a place of smoke and legend called Earth. Standing in the fleet’s way are the Cylons, former robot laborers that gained awareness and rebelled against their human masters.

The humans had fought the Cylons once before, to a standstill. Since then the Cylons have watched, waited, and evolved. In their efforts to climb the power chain, the Cylons have become close to indistinguishable from humans.

The Cylons are sleek and perfect. The humans are broken-down and flawed. Over four seasons the two sides struggle not just to survive but to learn how to live in this new universe.

Doctor Who

A man who looks human but isn’t travels through time and space in a ship that looks like a police phone box but isn’t. Along the way he continually stumbles into trouble that he feels obliged to set right.

A sort of a British institution, the show has been around since 1963 in some form or another. After a decade and a half off-air, the show was revived in 2005 with the numbering reset but continuity intact.

Torchwood

The second spin-off of British sci-fi adventure show Doctor Who aims for an older audience than its parent series, filling its first two seasons with blood and weird sex and its later seasons with complex high-concept scenarios.

Former Doctor Who companion Jack Harness (John Barrowman) leads a secret group of misfits to contain and investigate extraterrestrial threats. Although Torchwood is very old, its members are young and tend not to live very long. The group is also far from harmonious; most of the demons they battle are in their own heads. It comes down to new recruit Gwen (Eve Myles) to lend the self-absorbed group a social conscience.

The first two seasons are monster-of-the week shows in the mold of The X-Files and Buffy. From season three, Torchwood becomes a serial drama, using five to ten hours to tell a single story.

The Sarah Jane Adventures

The third spin-off of BBC sci-fi adventure staple Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures is basically a second draft of 1981′s K-9 and Company. Once again former Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) solves uncanny mysteries with the help of high technology and local schoolkids. This time K-9 is mostly in the background, and Sladen herself is often second to the teenage cast.

Whereas Doctor Who is produced as a family drama, SJA is aimed at the young set. Stories are simpler, less violent, and more Earth-based. Each story spans two 25-minute episodes; each season contains six stories.

The Sarah Jane Adventures also serves as a clearinghouse for characters, references, and plot points that the writers want to address without cluttering the parent series. Expect cameos and full guest appearances from other classic series companions (the Brigadier, Jo Grant), sequels to forty-year-old serials, solutions to ancient fan debates, background and follow-ups to current Doctor Who episodes, the odd visit from the Doctor himself.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

A man and two robots are forced to watch Z-grade movies as part of a deranged experiment. They retain their sanity by returning quips at the movies using their vast knowledge of pop culture. Over ten seasons and one major motion picture the entire cast may change, but the premise and the core writing team remain intact.

Due to rights issues the series is only available sporadically, rather than in full collected seasons. This should be only a minor problem for most viewers; although the last three seasons have a fair amount of continuity tying them together, overall the series is largely episodic.

DuckTales

For its first venture in syndicated TV animation, Disney chose to hark back to the vast creative resource of Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge comics. With a few minor changes, Scrooge’s pre-established world, friends, enemies, and adventures were ideal for a long-term animated project.

For about 20 years, Carl Barks developed Donald Duck as a character, gave him a home, family, and relationships, and sent him on epic adventures in all corners of the globe. Eventually Donald’s uncle Scrooge McDuck became the focus of Barks’ output. Whether protecting his fortune, squabbling with his rivals, or questing after ancient artifacts, Scrooge’s eccentric personality and prickly family dynamics made for dynamic reading.

The transition from book to screen isn’t totally seamless. Whereas Barks’ Donald is a real person with normal speech patterns and a nuanced personality, the animated Donald makes for a problematic dramatic or action lead. So in his place is original character Launchpad McQuack (and later, Fenton Crackshell). In the comics, villain Flintheart Glomgold is a Boer from South Africa; to sidestep any politics, he has become as Scottish as Scrooge.

DuckTales lasted for four seasons on-air, and was later capped off with a feature-length animated film. The show was successful enough to spawn a whole industry of syndicated Disney animation and at least one direct spin-off, Darkwing Duck.

Darkwing Duck

Building off the success of DuckTales and the recent popularity of Tim Burton’s Batman films, Disney’s TV animation arm crafted a spin-off about an inept superhero in a town just across the water from Duckburg.

Accompanied by sidekick Launchpad McQuack and adopted daughter Gosalyn, Drake Mallard fights crime in the problematic city of St. Canard, with the aid of his custom-designed vanity gear, secret hideout, and dual identity. Although the Batman parallels are obvious, Darkwing draws more heavily from early 20th century radio adventure serials and comics such as The Shadow and The Green Hornet.

Both the action and the overt comedy are more prominent than in the parent show. As Darkwing is aimed at a slightly older audience than DuckTales, the crossovers are kept to a minimum and all on Darkwing‘s end. DuckTales supporting character Launchpad is lifted for Darkwing’s sidekick, and his replacement Fenton Crackshell/Gizmoduck makes the odd appearance as a fellow superhero.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

A degenerate 21st-century spin on familiar 20th-century sitcoms. Dennis and Deandra Reynolds (Glenn Howerton and Kaitlin Olson), their father Frank (Danny DeVito), and friends Mac and Charlie (Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day) manage a perpetually empty dive bar in downtown Philly. To fill their meaningless lives, our heroes follow any given idea, however depraved or irrational, to its logical conclusion. The bizarre humor undermines sitcom convention, and the absence of a laugh track forces the viewer to confront the humor on its own terms.

Arrested Development

The Bluths were once a wealthy family, that made do in its insular little bubble. When patriarch George (Jeffrey Tambor) is locked up for embezzlement, semi-estranged son Michael (Jason Bateman) is forced to involve himself, both to run the family’s architectural firm and to hold together a now penniless group of eccentrics with no concept of the real world. All the while, Michael struggles with raising his own son without the pitfalls of his own upbringing.

In its brief time on-air, Arrested Development won just about every award it could lay its hands on. The writing is rapid-fire and complex, often with several levels of humor layered on top of obscure continuity and secret foreshadowing. The series is shot with a single-camera setup and no laugh track, to allow the comedy to breathe at its own pace. For the TV obsessive, there’s even a visit from Law & Order‘s Detective John Munch.

Spaced

The precursor to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End), Spaced portrays Pegg as an out-of-luck cartoonist in sudden desperate need of housing. While moping in a local cafe, Pegg meets a fellow apartment hunter (Jessica Hynes) and strikes up a strange friendship. The two find an ideal flat, and to abide with the landlady’s requirements they agree to pose as a couple.

In another story, this would all be setup for romantic tension. In Spaced, it’s setup for twelve episodes of surreal domestic adventures with new neighbors, old friends, and two very neurotic creative people in an enclosed space. Beyond Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright’s direction here also lays the foundation for his later work on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

The Orange Box

A 2007 compilation of 3 of Valve’s new releases, all too small to publish individually, each perhaps easily overshadowed by bigger releases. When teamed together, they all balance each other off to provide a rounded package of some of the most progressive game design to hit the mainstream in ages.

Puzzle adventure game Portal takes a simple, if heady, idea — magic doors that can connect two points — and extrapolates it to its logical extremes. Team Fortress 2 boils down online competitive games to their raw forms, then rebuilds from there. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 continues the epilogue to Valve’s modern masterpiece, with a few engine enhancements and improved design over the previous Episode.

Then to provide context for Episode 2 and to make the whole package feel meatier, Valve also tossed in the original Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. So in total there are five games — the original Half-Life 2, two games that build on that game’s narrative, one game that builds on its aggressive action elements, and one that builds on its contemplative problem-solving elements; three games that balance the male and female aspects, one that explores the macho, and one laced with the feminine.

At the time, a themed compilation like this was more or less unprecedented. In the years since, several more compilations have shown up in downloadable form (often over Valve’s Steam service). Yet The Orange Box still stands more or less alone as a testament to Valve’s lateral sense of design.