I have been talking with my co-worker lately about obscure genre shows we may have heard about or enjoyed. Stuff that only ran for a season or 2 (WAR OF THE WORLDS series), then disappeared. Mostly stuff that’s not on DVD Region 1.
5 I brought up:
SPECIAL UNIT 2 (AKA SU2)
Darwin was half right. Scientists think they have never found the missing link, when the truth has been staring at them in the face. The monsters of every child’s nightmare are the missing links, which is why every culture has the same fairy tales about the same creatures such as baby eating ogres, virgin loving dragons, 200 hundred year-old trolls. They are all real except vampires; they are complete and total fiction. If it is not man or beast, it is known as a Link. If it is something the rest of the world, doesn’t understand or acknowledge Special Unit 2 deals with it.
**THE OTHERS**College student Marian Kitt is terrified to discover that she has the power to see into the “other side.” Word of Marian’s vision spreads to Professor Miles Ballard, a student of paranormal and psychic phenomena. He introduces Marian to “the others,” a group of individuals with the ability to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others, and to help them understand paranormal phenomena. Famed medium Elmer Greentree is their spiritual leader and a mentor figure for Marian, whose potential to see “all of the light” is strong. With Marian now among them, they will help each other understand their abilities as they encounter otherworldly, often frightening, alternative dimensions. And all the while, a dark force looms over them.
CLEOPATRA 2525
An exotic dancer, cryogenically frozen in the year 2001, is accidentaly thawed out in 2525 by two female warriors who are fighting against evil robots which have taken over the world. The three join forces and try to escape the underground caverns to which humanity has been banished, meeting up with all sorts of strange creatures along the way.
EARTH 2
In the future, the human race is living in space stations orbiting a dead Earth. Faced with a debilitating disease attacking her young son, Devon Adair and a band of non-conformists leave their artificial environment and travel to a distant planet, where they begin a new life for themselves.
HARSH REALM
Lt. Hobbes volunteers to test the army’s newest tool, a virtual reality training machine code named “Harsh Realm.” Once attached to the machine, Hobbes discovers that the VR world is controlled by the renegade soldier Omar Santiago. While Hobbes body remains in a coma, his mind lives on in the VR world, where he must join forces with an underground force in their attempt to overthrow Santiago.
3 he mentioned:
THE CHRONICLE (my co-worker countered with this one in response to my SU2 mention).
Tucker Burns is a qualified reporter who can’t get a job. He applies for a job at the World Chronicle, where they are delighted to have an over-qualified (by their standards!) reporter on staff. It turns out that all the stories the Chronicle reports are true, but written as tabloid articles so that the public can slowly get acclimated to such things. Aided by photographer Wes and alien abductee/reporter Grace, and backed by his mysterious boss Donald Stern, Tucker investigates, ghosts, aliens, and other supernatural phenomena.
DARK SKIES
20th century history as we know it is a lie. Aliens have been among us since the 1940’s, but a government cover-up has prevented the public from knowing this. As the series progresses, we follow John Loengard and Kim Sayers as they attempt to thwart numerous plans of the alien Hive, most of which are tied to historical events and figures. In addition, the pair must stay one step ahead of a covert government agency, Majestic-12, tasked with fighting the aliens while maintaining the conspiracy of silence.
SPACE: ABOVE & BEYOND
Earth is embroiled in a desperate war against invaders and this series focuses on one squad of marines involved in it.
Strangely, they were all from the late 90s early 00s (why was there a glut of these kind of shows then?), and 2 of the shows were created by X-FILES alum, Morgan & Wong. I predict SANCTUARY will end up like these (and the 2005 crop of INVASION, THRESHOLD, SURFACE, etc). Any old forgotten favorites out there?