As with the earlier lists, this is very incomplete. I left some obvious blanks (Star Wars) either because I didn’t want to discuss them or because I figured I would give the users an opportunity to fill some slots themselves. As usual, not much of that really happened.

2001: A Space Odyssey may be a high water mark for cinema, but try showing it to a kid. The kids may eat up their Power Rangers, but just watch their parents try to hold it down, never mind digest it. These shows and movies hit a sort of a golden mean, where even the snootiest adult will find some substance and even the most hyperactive kid will be entranced. Likewise, these are the tales that age with you. You liked ‘em when you were in overalls and a bowl cut, and you like ‘em even more when you’re 35 — and can afford the action figures on your own.

The Black Hole

Disney’s first PG-rated movie, and at the time the studio’s most expensive film project ever. While exploring a black hole, a research crew stumbles upon the hulk of a long-missing vessel. Upon exploration of the vessel, it seems that its entire crew, save one, has died; in its place is a collection of worker androids, over which the survivor Dr. Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) holds complete authority. Dr. Reinhardt reveals a curious and dangerous mission, while the crew of the research vessel develops suspicions about the robots.

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

One of Gerry Anderson’s later and darker supermarionation series, Captain Scarlet traces an unfortunate ongoing conflict between Earth and an angry Martian race. The titular hero, having embraced a certain Martian power, has become effectively immortal; after fatal injury, his body can rebuild itself and restore him to life. Compared to earlier supermarionation series, Captain Scarlet has more realistically proportioned characters and more serious themes, with increased violence accompanying a larger gray area between right and wrong.

Doctor Who

Since 1963, Doctor Who has ticked off just about every genre and tone you care to imagine — horror, fantasy, period drama, spy action, hard sci-fi, spoof, fairy tale, and educational series. It’s been complex, simplistic, adult, childish, boisterous, dry, cheap, and expensive. Its one common factor for nearly 50 years is that Doctor Who is made for the entire family. The kids enjoy the monsters and the danger; adults enjoy the dialog and interplay amongst the actors. As you age, there’s always something else that you never noticed or another era that you’ve never explored. Doctor Who is for everyone in a way that mainstream sci-fi rarely manages.

Flight of the Navigator

Kid from the 1970s gets a lift from a UFO. His robot space ship, with the voice of Pee-Wee Herman, makes a mistake; although the trip took ten years, by traveling in the neighborhood of light speed the trip was near-instantaneous for the kid. Thus he is plopped into the 1980s with no clue what’s going on, much to his own horror and that of his much older parents. Just from the description, you can see that the story operates on a few levels. It’s also iconic 1980s weirdness, with Paul Reubens on fine form.

Galaxy Quest

Not the most original or sophisticated satire ever, but a pretty and well-assembled set of observations about sci-fi movie tropes, all roped into a pretty entertaining and expensive movie. For the kids it’s got action, peril, and gizmos. For the adults, there are the jokes and the references.

The Last Starfighter

An often-neglected gem from the mid-’80s, The Last Starfighter is two stories in one. For most of the movie you’ve got a frustrated trailer park kid embroiled in an interstellar war just because he played a single videogame pretty well. Meanwhile on Earth you’ve got his cranky android duplicate, trying vainly to carry on a normal life in the kid’s absence. Wrap it up with the first CGI model shots ever in a motion picture, and you’ve got a neato adventure for the kids paired with a droll human story for the parents.

Tron

Another early landmark in CG effects, Tron made up for its box office and critical disappointment with pop culture saturation. Its influence on the videogame industry, ’90s cyberpunk culture, and a generation of now-adults is illustrated by the fervor around the 2010 sequel — again a bit of a critical disappointment, but now that Tron is a franchise there’s little way that it can objectively flop. It’s always interesting to see how people used to think that computers work.

WALL-E

One of Pixar’s best movies is also one of its simplest. Until the second half of the movie there’s barely any dialog, and basically no dialog that matters. Wall-E conveys a fairly high-concept story about consumerism, waste, and the human tendency toward sloth in every aspect of self-governance, through the filter of two neurotic robots who find love and wonder outside of their rigid original programming.