Entertainment
Save This Sci-Fi: 8 Movies And Shows Being Erased From Existence
By Joshua Tyler
| Published
The age of streaming has, in theory, been a boon for older content, which is suddenly available for everyone to watch in a way it never has been before. That’s how it looks on paper, but the reality is that streaming platforms only stream content they think they can make money off of, and sometimes, the rest isn’t worth their time.
That wouldn’t be a problem if physical media were still a viable format, but fewer than 50% of households still have access to a Blu-ray player, and as a result, Hollywood has stopped supporting it. Odds are, if you’re looking for something old, it’s out of print, and you’ll be forced to dig through boxes at garage sales hoping to find a diamond in the rough.
For certain content, this won’t be a problem. Obviously, a version of an iconic movie like Back to the Future will always be available to watch. Other sci-fi, though, hasn’t been as lucky, and some of it is on the verge of being erased from existence altogether.
These are the eight sci-fi movies and television shows most in danger of being deleted from reality, ranked in order by which I believe is the most in danger of vanishing forever.
8. Buck Rogers
Released in 1979 first as a movie and then as a series, Buck Rogers was based on characters created in 1928 by science fiction writer Philip Francis Nowlan. For two seasons, it followed its title character half a millennium after he was accidentally frozen.
Revived 504 years later, Buck Rogers tries comically to adjust to the social changes of the future, all while helping the Earth Defense Directorate fend off warring factions from the planet Draconian. Along the way, he befriends a robot and the hottest babe in the future, one Wilma Deering, played by the iconic Erin Grey.
Buck Rogers is the kind of show that should be getting endless rewatching by old and new fans alike, but no one can do that. For a brief time, it was available to stream on Peacock, but the show was yanked without explanation and hasn’t come back. The cause could be a lengthy legal battle over the rights, but that has since been settled, which makes the situation strange.
Whatever the reason, you can’t watch it on streaming services, and while older physical media copies can be found online, they’re often only available at very high prices. Buck Rogers is a major media property, and Hollywood always seems on the verge of resurrecting it, but if things continue the way they are, it’ll be forgotten long before they get around to it.
7. Cocoon
Cocoon asks: What would you do to be young again? At first, Cocoon is a laid-back movie about the residents of a retirement home. One day, they show up for a swim and see large rocks at the bottom of the pool.
The misery of old age begins to vanish. They regain their health. They start dancing.
In parallel, there’s 1980s icon Steve Gutenberg taking a group of nice people out on his character boat. Out at sea and lusting after the female member of their group, Guttenberg accidentally stumbles into the truth: they’re aliens, and those rocks they’ve been bringing up from the ocean floor are alien pods.
Despite being one of the biggest and most acclaimed movies of the 1980s, Cocoon is not available to stream anywhere, and it’s out of print on DVD. Why? The movie’s director, Ron Howard, has been asked, but refuses to answer.
Basically, blame the estate of the film’s composer, James Horner. The way Horner’s contract was negotiated may have been odd compared to the other movies he worked on. That likely turned into an even bigger problem when, sadly, James Horner died in 2015 at the age of 61, and now there’s confusion over who owns his work in Cocoon.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no movement at all to rescue this movie and bring it back to the public. It was last released on DVD more than 20 years ago and has been out of print on all physical media for a long time. Copies of Cocoon have become so rare that eBay sellers are now charging significant money for them.
6. Space Above and Beyond
Space: Above and Beyond tried to do something different from all the rest: it was first and foremost a military series. Centered on a group of fighter pilots, the prime directive of the series was to find bugs, kill bugs, and make it home in one piece. Space: Above and Beyond aired on Fox, which means that you, the discerning sci-fi fan, know exactly what happened to ensure that the series never received a second season
Today, you can’t find Space: Above and Beyond on any streaming network, not even through Video on Demand. There are bootleg copies available on YouTube, but those will likely only last until the IP’s current owners do their next copyright sweep.
You can find it on DVD, but it’s out of print, so you’ll pay a premium and maybe have to look for used copies. Worst of all, after their buyout, Disney owns it, and they’re unlikely to care at all about a one-season show that was canceled decades before they owned the company.
5. The Lone Gunmen
The Lone Gunmen was an X-Files spinoff from the mind of Breaking Bad and Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan. The show revolves around the titular trio, the show is named for, as they get in over their heads in various conspiracies.
Unfortunately, it proved to be too good at predicting the future. The pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen involved a plot where rogue government agents try to pilot a major airliner into the World Trade Center and make it look like a terrorist attack. Further, the episode’s revelation that secret government forces merely wanted to use terrorists as scapegoats echoes many real-world conspiracy theories about the role that George W. Bush or other powerful government forces may have had in the attack on the Twin Towers.
That was enough to get it canceled, despite good reviews and decent ratings. It’s also enough to make sure that no one will ever be able to watch it again. It’s not available on legitimate streaming services, and DVD copies are long out of print.
4. Time Trax
Time Trax aired on television from 1993 to 1994 as part of the iconic, syndicated television “action pack.” In it, criminals from the year 2193 use a time machine called a Trax to go back to the past of a parallel universe. Police Captain Darien Lambert, played by Dale Midkiff, goes off in pursuit, aided by SELMA (Specified Encapsulated Limitless Memory Archive), his version of Al, and he can’t return until all of them have been apprehended.
What Time Trax did differently was to make the future humans superior, ranging from higher IQs and rapid memorization to the ability to move faster and, in what were frequently the best shots of the series, the ability to perceive time faster, giving the appearance of slowing down time around them. Time Trax was delightfully charming in the same way as other 90s syndicated hits like Hercules and Xena. And now it’s being erased from existence.
You can’t find it on streaming anywhere, and physical media copies, while available, are all basically used since it hasn’t been in print since 2012, when it was released on DVD. That means the cost to get a copy is rising rapidly.
The mess the show is in is caused by the tangled web of who owns the actual rights to it. Gary Nardino Productions developed Time Trax, while Lorimar helped get it to air. The problem is that Lorimar was bought by Warner Bros., while Paramount purchased Gary Nardino.
The rights to the series were split between two studios, and nothing has been done with Time Trax since. Given the short run of the series and its limited fanbase, it’s safe to assume that nothing ever will be done to preserve it, unless people start making noise about it.
3. Ernest Goes To Camp
Alright, I’m cheating a little on this one, because this is definitely not a sci-fi movie, though you could argue that the Ernest movie Jim Varney followed it up with, Ernest Goes To Jail, is. But Ernest Goes To Camp is a movie for the kinds of people who watch sci-fi, the geeks, the outcasts, the oddballs, and it’s being erased from existence.
The movie is a standard 80s summer camp film, following a group of outcast kids, the Second Chancers, as they attend Kamp Kikakee, a struggling summer camp run by Chief St. Cloud, a Plains Indian. It’s the usual outcasts vs. evil industrialist plot, as Sherman Krader wants to shut down the camp and mine its resources. It’s elevated to instant classic levels thanks to Varney’s portrayal of Ernest as the camp’s maintenance man.
Unfortunately, Ernest Goes to Camp has become a victim of cancel culture. Worst of all, neither Jim Varney nor the Ernest character did anything wrong.
The problem is an actor named Iron Eyes Cody, who plays a minor role as a Native American in the movie. His real name was Espera Oscar de Coti, and he was actually Italian. No one knew that Cody was a fraud when Ernest Goes to Camp was made. He fooled everyone, including his close friend Walt Disney.
Embarrassed by their founder’s faux pau Disney now classifies it as a racist movie, alongside other past productions like Song of the South. They’re determined to make sure it’s erased from existence. You won’t find it on streaming, and physical media copies are long since out of print. Disney has no intention of ever making it available again.
2. Harrison Bergeron
In 1995, Showtime adapted a Kurt Vonnegut short story into a TV movie called Harrison Bergeron. Harrison (played by Samwise Gamgee himself, Sean Astin) is still an abnormally bright kid, but when he is taken away by the government in the movie, it’s under the pretext of being given a lobotomy. In reality, Harrison’s been selected to join the secret organization that actually runs the world.
Harrison decides to work in the government’s television division and eventually plans a variation on the short story. He takes over the broadcast room and begins playing classic movies and music for the public that have been hidden away for generations.
It’s no secret masterpiece, but Harrison Bergeron is the kind of challenging sci-fi movie we shouldn’t leave in the dustbin. That’s looking like the case. As I write this, the movie is not available on any streaming or video-on-demand service, and it’s out of print on physical media
Worst of all, because it was a TV movie, and even though it was a really good one and a popular one, there’s no real urgency from Hollywood to preserve it or put money into it. They’re happy to let it rot. Without some sort of outcry, they probably will.
1. Misfits of Science
The sci-fi most in danger of being permanently deleted from existence? Misfits of Science. Misfits of Science was pure 80s with a sci-fi twist. A team of super-powered oddballs work for a think tank called the Humanidyne Institute, studying “human anomalies.”
Misfits of Science was lighthearted, funny, and packed with heart, perfect for kids dreaming of superpowers. It’s Ghostbusters meets The A-Team, with madcap energy and zero budget for subtlety.
Misfits of Science lingered in pop culture for years after its disappearance, but now it’s gone. You can’t watch Misfits of Science legally anywhere in the US. It’s not available anywhere on streaming, and definitely not legally. And because it was a failed TV show, good luck finding it on physical media.
You’d think NBC would throw it on Peacock, because, why not? But no, the show isn’t there. Some episodes pop up on YouTube, bootleg-style, but that’s not a dependable way to watch it.
Why? The theme song may be a cause. The show’s theme song is one of the all-time best opening credits numbers, and it seems to be mired in extreme levels of copyright policing. Try playing a few seconds from it on YouTube, and you’ll see what I mean.
That song, “Feels Like Science”, was performed by Karen Lawrence and composed by the great Basil Poledouris, the genius behind the score of movies like Robocop and Conan the Barbarian. Work like his often ends up locked in studio copyright vaults, and that may be part of the problem with Misfits. It just isn’t worth the trouble to sort all that out.
Protecting the rights of musicians and creators is important, and I support it. But it’s not so important that it’s worth erasing a vital piece of cultural history in the name of it. Far too many of the shows and movies on this list are being forgotten, simply because someone who owns the music rights has an inflated sense of their own importance.
Cultural Preservation Trumps Copyright
Does refusing to let NBC stream Misfits of Science unless they pay big fees help the estate of Basil Pouleoris? No, it only helps people forget about his music and everything he was ever involved in.
You know what would help? Letting people hear his music.
That’s the answer for most of these. There’s no real money left to be made here, but there is a history worth preserving. Let people preserve it by lifting copyright restrictions and allowing fans to upload copies on YouTube.