In order of decreasing annoyance at missing an episode:
1.
Babylon 5 is just the best show I've ever seen, with depth of character and epic scope that runs rings around anything else. Watching the relationship between Londo & G'Kar change over the years is some of the finest writing and acting on TV. I've found more wisdom and spirituality from its five year run than from all my days in Catholic school as a youth.
2.
FarScape is currently the only thing I make a point to watch regularly. Its strongest points are eminently appealling characters, who you genuinely come to care about; and an unpredictable plot arc that takes nothing for granted and never presses the "Reset to Status Quo" button at the end of the episode. Even when they get wacky and experimental, it somehow works (as opposed to
The X-Files suddenly having no clue where it's going in recent seasons.)
3.
Doctor Who, mainly the Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker/Peter Davison eras, were deeply influential in my youth. The Doctor has always been one of my heroes, because he faces down evil with irreverence, and wins the day by using his wits over his fists or the biggest guns. Indeed, I sometimes ask myself "What Would The Doctor Do?" in ethical dilemmas. Admittedly, the sets are cardboard, the monsters are rubber, and the budgets are lower than your average grade-school Christmas Pageant; but you can tell that the actors are having a blast making it and that enthusiasm outshines all other drawbacks.
4.
Star Trek in all its sundry incarnations can't be avoided.
Deep Space Nine was my favorite, as during the end of the Dominion War saga it came close to
B5's level of drama.
The Next Generation really set the standard that all current series have followed with varying degrees of success, so they get props for reinventing TV SF after a long dry spell.
Voyager had its problems, but you could always expect a good performance from Robert Picardo & Jeri Ryan.
Enterprise may be too early to judge now, but I like the fact that the characters are allowed to be flawed humans instead of some of the bland ciphers of "Gene Roddenberry's Vision of the Perfect Future
" like
Voyager.
Classic Trek has its merits, but I tend to find too much to nitpick in comparison to the recent versions.
5.
The X-Files used to rate much higher back when it was unique and still genuinely scary, but it's really lost something lately. The addition of Robert Patrick's Agent Doggett as The Skeptic forcing Scully to reluctantly accept her role as The Believer is a nice bit of growth and development for a character that got caught in a rut as the technobabble-exposition source, but it hasn't compensated for what it's missing. I don't know if it went wrong when Morgan & Wong left, or when the comedy episodes outnumbered the scary ones that one year, or when Chris Carter was forced to expose the Conspiracy only to reveal that he was making it all up as he went along and had no secret plan, or when the studio caved in to every infantile demand David Duchovny made, but it hasn't been as good as it used to be for a couple seasons now. Still, the older ones are delightfully spooky.
Others that deserve a mention:
The Invisible Man. I love the chemistry and banter between the characters. Paul Ben Victor as "Bobby" Hobbes is an unmitigated hoot.
Batman: The Animated Series. Best Super-Hero cartoon,
ever. Best on-screen treatment of what Batman's truly about, ever. It's even better then the actual comics have been lately. None of that Knightfall/Cataclysm/No Man's Land sales-gimmmick nonsense here.
Star Blazers/Space Cruiser Yamato My first exposure to real anime, and probably set me down the path of Gear-head Otaku-dom with all those lovingly detailed starships. The rousing Yamato fanfare and the ominous Comet Empire dirge still give me goosebumps.
I'll deal with movies in a follow-up post when I have more time.