Top TV Episodes of 2002

With the first round of "Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)" Hugo awards coming up for nomination, here are my ten favorite episodes of the past year. Naturally, you should try to nominate shows that you've seen; this guide is just intended as a reminder of the better things that have been on in the past year.

1) "The Knight, Death, and the Devil" (Andromeda)

Andromeda is as ambitious in scope as the original Star Trek, as detailed as Babylon 5, with as much character depth and conflict as Deep Space Nine and much more actual science per episode than any of these other series. This single episode explores the Pinocchio theme of artificial intelligence in greater depth than the entire Data story line throughout Star Trek: the Next Generation.

A group of High Guard starships, with no crew other than their own AI's, are trapped in an isolated region of space. The Andromeda crew are led here by an android named "Ryan", who is the detached AI android from the starship Clarion Call, played with subtly ambiguous charm by Michael Hurst, (who played Kevin Sorbo's sidekick Iolaus from Hercules). Captain Hunt tries to persuade the reluctant AI's to rejoin the High Guard cause and save themselves from impending erasure by the Nietzscheans, but they have little trust for any human, especially one representing the fleet that abandoned them centuries before, and they want to stand and fight. But in the end he gives them the right to choose their own destinies, and they choose to sacrifice some of their number to escape the Nietzscheans and follow Dylan, forit is the act of making a choice that makes them people.

2) "The House Always Wins" (Angel)

Angel has gotten so good that it's become slightly self-conscious, but it hits the mark over and over; it's a must-watch series lately.

Our favorite green-skinned singer takes his act, complete with Lornettes, to Vegas, where he is coerced into performing for a sinister casino manager who is manipulating Lorne to get information about the audience. The casino also has a game where destiny is the bet and, of course, the house always wins. The casino collects the future destinies of the players, and sells them on the black market. Angel's destiny is captured in the game, and he goes mindlessly into the casino to play a slot machine. However, from heaven, the mystically-enhanced Cordelia fixes the odds and helps Angel win a million-dollar jackpot. Angel is pulled into the office to collect his winnings, where Gunn and Fred have also been captured. The casino owner threatens Fred with a gun. But even on his worst day, Angel is still a champion; he destroys the casino's mystical device, freeing Lorne and all the future destinies that had been collected. Overall, it was a very fun episode, working on many levels.

It was hard to pick a best episode of Angel for the 2002 calendar year. I also liked "Waiting in the Wings", in which Angel and Cordelia first kiss, while possessed by the spirits of ballerina and her lover, another very stylish episdoe of this great series.

3) "Freak Nation" (Dark Angel)

This was the climactic finale of the James Cameron series that ended too soon. See my article, "Dark Angel: Being and Becoming Human", which ends with a discussion of this episode.

4) "Hell's Bells" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Some people are calling the new Hugo the "Best Buffy", perhaps in response to the show's very strong third and fourth seasons. I don't think Buffy is quite at the high level of previous years, but it is still usually very watchable, and occasionally excellent. Different people have their own favorite episodes of the seasons, but this was mine.

Xander and Anya's almost-wedding certainly hit all the marks. It brought together many of the complex relationship strands, without sinking to brooding intensity as the show (and Angel as well) often falls to. Watching Xander's relatives and Anya's "circus" friends striving to reach a lowest common demoninator puts a humorous underline of the theme of the entire series. Depth is added to Xander's not-entirely-platonic frienships with Buffy and Willow. Where many episodes work through terror to find a positive ending, this show works through a lot of humor, but ends in a very human tragedy when Xander leaves Anya at the altar, fearing an unhappy future; the episode fractured Xander and Anya's relationship, and many other friendships as well.

5) "Drone" (Smallville)

In this classic episode of a newly great series, Clark Kent runs for the presidency of Smallville High. Many thematic notes allude to Clark's perspectives and potential. Lana Lang is Clark's greatest supporter, while Chloe endorses another candidate in the pages of the Torch. The show operates on many levels. The action plot (or perhaps subplot), involving killer bees and Clark rescuing an obsessed fellow student from her own hubris, is an excellent example of the Smallville story structure. This episode highlights Clark's possible fuure without the exaggerated drumbeat of drama that the show occaisionally sounds.

I couldn't pick a second choice, if only because there are so many strong examples. Smallville is definitely becoming one of the best shows on today, despite its teen-angst overtones.

6) "The King is Undead" (The Chronicle)

In the series about tabloid journalism, the episode about vampire Elvis impersonators is archetypical. Just when you think they've squeezed every laugh out of this idea, they detonate another cliché, and yet they maintain continuity with the rest of the series. In order to blend into the background, our heroes are found in large polyester lapels and big sunglasses. And of course, a confidential source reveals the possible truth about Elvis, who may or may not have faked his own death to go underground to hunt vampires.

7) "The Long Road" (Jeremiah)

Jeremiah is J. Michael Straczynski's latest vehicle, set in a post-Apocalyptic world devastated by an artificial plague called the "Big Death" that killed every adult in the world, a couple of decades back.

"The Long Road" is the pilot of the series, and it lays out the setting, characters, and conflicts. Jeremiah strolls into Clairfield and performs a good dead, saving the lift of Theo from a dissatisfied constituent. Jeremiah and Kurdy come together and find their way to Thunder Mountain, where they join Marcus's quest to rebuild civilization. Straczynski is at his best when he is working with the big picture, and he covers all the bases in this pilot.

8) "Ariel" (Firefly)

Joss Whedon makes the top-ten list a third time with his "space western" series Firefly. The series is a bit odd, both understated and exaggerated, dark but funny. The background is so different that it needs another season or two to develop into something really consistent; without that, it seems to fall back on western stereotypes that don't really convey its depth. Unfortunately, the show appears to be cancelled, though with Hollywood anything is possible.

After an unexpected knife fight where River injures Jayne, Simon persuades the Serenity crew to break into the hospital complex to steal valuable pharmaceuticals from the Alliance. Jayne, typically, sells out his comrades to the Feds, wanting to get River off the ship and out of his life, but sinister men-in-black also arrive at the hospital, out to retrieve River. They kill the hospital security who spoke to River, and then they take control of the arrest of Simon and River, arresting Jayne for good measure. Jayne resents being triple-crossed, and he breaks out of confinement with Simon and River. Back at the ship, stolen cargo safely stowed, Mal worries about the others being missing. Mal and Zoe go back to the hospital to rescue the others, while Kaylee and Wash guide them from the ship. The rescue succeeds. Back at the ship, Mal locks Jayne in the airlock for his betryal as the ship lifts for orbit, but he does close the outer airlock door before lifting out of the atmosphere.

9) "Fail Safe" (Stargate SG-1)

Stargate has such an open-ended format that it can go in any direction during an episode, from galactic conflict to strange new life forms to terrestrial political intrigue. The Stargate crew deals with 24th-century problems with 20th-century technology, not least Colonel O'Neill's trusty automatic pistol. Part of the series' success is that it's relatively unambitious; unlike, say, X-Files, they don't let a continuing subplot drain the strength from a good story. The charaacter interactions are not overblown, but they are quite rich, even in the context of a military heirarchy where roles are very clearly defined.

In a great homage to the movie Armaggeddon, the Stargate team is dispatched to destroy an asteroid which mysteriously appears on a collision course on Earth. Earth's usual spacefaring allies are currently unavailable, so humanity is left to its own devices again. Of course this mission is far more difficult than the Bruce Willis movie, because this asteroid has a naquada core, which means impacting the Earth or blowing up the asteroid with a nuclear detonation will not merely crack the crust but leave the planet reduced to bite-sized chunks. So after planting the nuclear explosive, they then have to go back and defuse it before it goes off, and then they have to think of another way of saving the planet from the gigantic explosive asteroid. Fortunately the Stargate crew pulls it off in a classic action climax.

10) "Rapture" (Odyssey 5)

The crew of the space shuttle Odyssey witness the destruction of the Earth. A being known as the Seeker, perhaps an AI, explains that he has witnessed the destruction of fifty worlds, and this is the first time he's found living organic beings afterwards. He sends the crew back in time five years to prevent the destruction of the Earth. ("Again", as the credits say.)

In "Rapture", a new drug spreads through the teen rave scene. Aside from the emotional high, it also lets users form a telepathic link with each other. The drug turns out to be a compound engineered by a sentient AI that puts the formula on a web site, which a student named Deckard downloads. "Rapture" allows the primary user in a group to draw on the mental processing abilities of the other members in a version of parallel processing. Commander Taggarts (now 17-year-old) son Neil takes a hit of Rapture in order to infiltrate the circle of users, but he overcomes the effect and helps distract Deckard while Neil's time-travelling friends rescue Deckard's victims from his control.

There are lots of other things worth watching these days. A lot of people like Farscape, though it's apparently in its final season. The third incarnation of Twilight Zone shows promise, though the half-hour short-story-ish vignettes lead it to little punchline climaxes rather than actual stories. Enterprise has a lot of potential and almost made this list, though it needs a bit of work (think "consistency" and "Vulcans"). For every series that's worth watching, there's at least one more that could develop into something great, and one or two more that deserve to be cancelled (whether they are or not), though even the weaker shows have occasional great episodes. Be sure to nominate your favorite shows, and be sure also to turn your friends onto whatever you think is worth watching.