A lot of shows try the spinoff approach once they get successful; that’s how you launch a franchise, after all. Just earlier this week we looked at Babylon 5‘s far less popular spinoff, Crusade, which died very early. The successful spinoffs speak for themselves: Star Trek TNG, or Stargate Atlantis. Sometimes, like in the former’s case, they practically eclipse the parent show in popularity, but those cases are few and far between. Most spinoffs don’t really go anywhere, dying quietly and languishing in the original’s shadow. Today we’re looking at these, 4 spinoffs that are nowhere near as well known as the popular programs that spawned them.

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After discussing the natural connection between sci-fi and animation on Monday, it seemed only appropriate to give you all a head start on finding some good animated sci-fi. Sure, some of them might be kids movies, but a lot of them have a level of awareness of their periphery demographic among older sci-fi fans that might just leave you surprised.

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One of the things that I, for whatever reason, rarely get around to talking about here is animation. When I recently highlighted the fact that some of those alien costumes and makeup application processes used in live action series can be brutal, I made sure to point out that one of the few exceptions to the “TV aliens must be human-like” is if CGI is used to create the alien from scratch. Which does, of course, bring up the question: why don’t we see more science fiction told exclusively through animation? Read more