Let’s catch up on some of the science fiction(ish) TV shows I’ve been watching this season. I’ve mentioned three before, but we can talk about a couple others as well. It appears that some new science fiction shows will be coming up in the next season, so we’ll have replacements for the ones I’ve stopped watching.

Let’s start with the one’s I’ve stopped watching. FlashForward lasted 4 episodes for me. They took an interesting book and made it a boring show. While the book starts with a scientific quandary and shows how it affects society, the TV show decided to turn it into a procedural with bad guys. And then decided to make it a slow-moving boring procedural. It deserves to be canceled.

Heroes had an amazing season 1 and then decided to repeat it with season 2 by undoing everything that happened in season 1. Season 3 was worse and now we’re in season 4. Please someone, put this show out of its misery. The problem is that they’re only a few episodes away from syndication. Four seasons of 22 episodes lead us to 88 episodes and you usually need 100 episodes for syndication. Expect there to be a half season (12-13 episodes) next year to push it over 100 episodes and then it will be killed.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand should return the slow motion camera and extra blood to the set of 300. It’s a slow moving, boring show that combines bad dialogue, ridiculous fighting scenes and occasional flashes of nudity. Run away from this show.

Survivors on BBC America is based on a 1970s show of the same name and concept. The first episode was decent, but the second bored me. There wasn’t enough in the show to interest me, so I stopped watching.

Caprica is also slow-moving, but you can tell it’s going somewhere. The episode last week with Patton Oswald’s TV show was unexpectedly good. And this weeks episode starting bringing out more violence (Tamara in the holoworld and Willie in the real world) and the dual views of the Cylon (robot and teenage girl) are being used to great effect. The dance scene from last week and the parents fighting from the week before would not have been nearly as powerful if they had stayed with just a robot view. The Graystone and Adama families are realistic. They fight and make up and stay together and have each others backs. There have been complaints that it is too soap-operaish, but mainly people are waiting for more plot to happen. The beginning episodes have been setting up the characters and scenery. I expect the action to start ramping up as we head into the back end of season 1.