Oh my god, Event Horizon. Collapsing the physical and psychological onto one another, with that design & photography work, and AND Lawrence Fishburne, AND it’s called Event Horizon and it’s about transgressing the limits of the perceivable!!!
Just look at this fucking movie. God damn 
What I find particularly interesting are shows that become budget, or at least budget-ier, as they go on.
My wife was binging Bitten on Netflix a few months ago. It was certainly budget to begin with, but by Season 3 they had more or less stopped showing werewolves on camera at all. The entire show was about werewolf clan politics. They clearly did not have the special effects budget of even the first season.
There are definitely seasons of Supernatural where it’s clear they’re scrimping on the effects. Like, say, “dragons” that are giant, glowing red presences off screen, and a couple dudes with scaly makeup on screen.
If you fancy some budget British TV sci-fi that isn’t 70s camp, try Ultraviolet (not to be confused with the rubbish film). Which is a very gritty take on government agents fighting vampires, featuring a young Idris Elba.
You can’t have a conversation about budget sci-fi without Red Dwarf!
It predicted, among other things, fully immersive VR:
I dig when low-budget projects inject sci-fi into places you wouldn’t normally find it. My favorite example is The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Ostensibly a show about Bruce Campbell as a bounty hunter in the old west who wanted to find the man who killed his father, John Bly. In the pilot they introduce “The Orb,” which is this big shiny metal ball that has vague powers. Over time we get info about how the Orb is from the future - and so is Bly. And there’s a bunch of time travelers. And lasers. It’s ludicrous and great.
I also dug the sci-fi ponds Buffy would dip its toes in from time to time. Adam was so goofy looking but I enjoyed it. I also was totally fine with the Trio and the Buffybot.
Andromeda is really memorable to me because the setting was vastly different from other space opera in a way that was really interesting, particularly in how it dealt with topics like AI and transhumanism. But even the little details of the setting were different, like how the equivalent of the Federation spanned three galaxies and wasn’t founded by humans. Of course, despite the ambition the show had a shoestring budget so the vast and cosmopolitan universe was made up mostly of disused quarries and Vancouver area sand lots. It also squandered a lot of potential in terms of characters and apparently went way off the rails after the second season.
Seconding Lexx here. I have no idea how anyone decided that funding a weird sexploitation/Cronenbergian science fiction tv show was a good idea, but leave it up to Canadians to make that decision for us.
I saw that show when I was young (way too young, to be honest), and it had a really profound impact on the way that I thought about what science fiction was. It wasn’t all Star Trek or Star Wars, but instead science fiction could be about the nihilistic last man of a dead civilization, a being who became the embodiment of all evil, and a spaceship fueled by biomatter. All of that kind of stuff has a long history in science fiction, of course, especially during the New Wave, but I certainly hadn’t been clued into that when I saw the show for the first time.
It’s a shame how far it went off the rails near the end of the show, but the first couple seasons (and the mini-movies that make up the first series) are just amazing.
I think that Season 3 started down that road, but Season 4 self-corrected and was one of the best since Season 1. I think the factions are always best handled like cyberpunk; they’re shadowy at best until the clones are able to strike. Seeing too much of the inner workings of the Prometheans spoiled the surprise for me. We’ve got a good balance with the Neolutionists, imo.
Season 5 should be the last. I’m hoping it’ll be a good ending. I love Orphan Black so much, because anything that hits questions of “what makes us people” and “how do we become who we become” is automatically something I’m interested in. Of course, those questions haven’t always been treated well (esp with how that connected to oppressed groups) but! They’re so gosh darn tootin’ interesting.
I dunno if I’d call it low budget, but I really dug SG1’s sense of escalation. At the start humans have a single piece of sci-fi tech (the Stargate) and are up against vastly superior aliens. By the end they’ve reverse engineered enough stuff to build giant starships and are the dominant force in the galaxy. It’s the closest thing to XCOM: The TV Series until someone actually commissions XCOM: The TV Series because come on people that is a guaranteed hit.
And it did it all with a kinda winking, fun self aware style. My favourite episode was always ‘Window of Opportunity’, which is the single best ‘groundhog day episode’ of any sci-fi show, simply because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Oh god, I loved VIPER so much. So, so much.
In retrospect, it was trash, but it was fun to sit down with dad and watch while drinking root beers as a kid.
Thanks for introducing me and my partner to Farscape on the cast pods, Danielle! That show rules. It got a little intense during the 2nd season, so we’re looking forward to returning to it after taking a breather. 
Too bad the Netflix contract dropped out.
My contribution: Repo Man (1984) was one of the first films to include punk rock in the soundtrack. It’s a campy movie with a weird scifi through-plot that makes 35% sense.
Not enough people talk about Cleopatra 2525
I’m glad I’m not the only person for whom this is a thing. My recommendation is Charlie Jade ( which you can watch legally for free at Viewster). Most of the shows that have been talked about previously have been set in the US when set on Earth, but Charlie Jade is set in South Africa. Other than District 9/ Chappie I can’t think of too many SF shows or films set there. It’s janky as all heck in places, but I really think there’s room for more SF shows that are set elsewhere on Earth.
I’d also like to give a special shout out To the Girl from tomorrow, an Australian TV show I watched in the UK on BBC. There’s a whole raft of wonderful SF shows that aired on British TV in this time period but this was one of the best. Female lead and massive amounts of nightmare fuel for the young me.
Just started Lost again and yeah, am dreading getting to this one. Also see the Jacob flash back episode in season 6.
Oh i didnt know that Battlestar was a Syfy show! Having headline shows make sense of course, so thanks for the clarification!
was that teal’c at the vagina monologues?
Oh I’ve had phases just like that. I even watched BOTH SEASONS of the post-apoc reality TV show The Colony. Which is terrible.
For a time I was pretty into Warehouse 13 on SyFy, but then fell out just because I unfortunately tend to do that with long-running shows. It had some pretty fun and ambitious ideas, but always stayed within a certain budgetary “feel.”
I’m still bummed they never filmed the final season of The 4400. 
I watched a TON of that with my rather sci-fi averse ex, because, while it was def sci-fi, it was lighter and had a lot of gently goofy mystery in it. Also, I think she had a huge crush on Helena.
