![]() In between, quieter moments of furtive eye contact among the women of the lower rungs hint at brewing insurrections, giving you just enough hope to keep watching - even if it’s through your fingers. The first ritualized rape of Moss’ defiant handmaid Offred is harrowing in its banality the public hangings and ceremonial stonings a haunting part of the show’s visual imprint. Elisabeth Moss carries the series alongside a brilliant supporting cast (especially Ann Dowd as handmaid overseer Aunt Lydia and Yvonne Strahovski as an elite commander’s wife), even as it extends beyond Atwood’s original vision. ![]() The searing prescience of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel - a dystopian nightmare in which the United States has become a totalitarian theocracy, its remaining fertile women enslaved to bear children for the ruling class - comes all too vividly to life in this dark, nail-bitingly tense adaptation for Hulu. Image Credit: Bbc America/Kobal/Shutterstock ![]() ![]() We’re sorry that David Fincher’s American version was ixnayed by HBO we’re even sorrier that the original show has never been officially shown on those shores. Featuring creepy sadistic assassins, a diverse cast of every-men and -women heroes, and a strong contender for the single most badass antisocial female character ever to grace the small-screen (we bow before you, Fiona O’Shaughnessy), the series started out weird and only proceeded to get weirder during its second season - and better. And when the members of an Internet chat forum devoted to the comic come across the last remaining copy … well, let’s just say there are people in power who’d do anything to make sure all traces of it are erased. “Who is Jessica Hyde?” There are paranoid-conspiracy thrillers, and then there’s Dennis Kelly’s extraordinary, sui generis show about a bootleg graphic novel that may contain hidden clues about a government plan too nefarious to mention. But over its three seasons on Syfy - and, thanks to an aggressive fan campaign, at its new home on Amazon - the series has wonderfully, er, “expanded” its scope and taken on a political resonance regarding the machinations of those in power and the people impacted by these interstellar policy decisions. Corey’s novels started out with a pinch of Blade Runner here and a sprinkle of BSG there. The small-screen adaptation of James S.A. Meanwhile, a police detective named Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane) becomes obsessed with a missing girl named Julie Mao, who may be the key to understanding an escalating cosmic Cold War. A distress signal leads to the mysterious destruction of a ship, stranding Captain Jim Holden (Steven Strait) and his ragtag crew in deep space. Two centuries from now, tensions have arisen between our planet and a colonized Mars a ring of blue-collar space stations called “The Belt” houses the solar system’s lowest social class. So what better time to count down the 50 best sci-fi TV shows of all time? From anime classics to outer-space soap operas, spooky British anthology shows to worst-case-scenario postapocalyptic dramas, primetime pop hits to obscure but beloved cult classics, here are our choices for the best the television genre has to offer - submitted, for your approval. Science fiction has been around in one form or another since the early-ish days of television, both here and abroad, and its legacy now looms larger than ever. You can’t turn on your TV/Roku/cut-cord viewing device without bumping into spaceships, alien invasion and wonky sci-fi food-for-thought. Today, there’s an entire cable network devoted to this kind of programming. But given the number of top-notch shows set in the far reaches of the galaxy and that used genre for pulpy and profound purposes over the last 30 or so years, it seems crazy to think that one of the most groundbreaking SF series was a network pariah and a ratings dud. ![]() Yes, a concept like Star Trek was both of its time and clearly ahead of it history has more than vindicated Gene Rodenberry’s notion of boldly going where no man had gone before. It’s odd to think that, once upon a time, a TV show set in space - one that declared, in its opening narration, as the cosmos being the “final frontier” - was considered the pop-cultural equivalent of an unwanted party-crasher. ![]()
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