5 Cancelled Genre TV Shows That Were Too Ahead Of Their Time

Every once in a while a show startles its audience like Marty McFly rocking 1955 with Johnny B. Goode in Back To the Future.

These shows bring a twist so innovative that the majority of television viewers just aren't quite sure what to make of it at the time. Small packs of devoted fans keep the show alive, with repeated viewings that launch discussions analyzing the smallest details of their beloved stories. It is only later on that these neglected concepts are vindicated by either successful future re-launches or series that, while technically unrelated, carry on the spirit of these pioneering shows.

These five series all featured innovations that were not appreciated in their own time. Only years later do fans reflect on "Why wasn't that a hit?" because the concepts in these shows seem to be typically successful elements of a hit show. Perhaps in a different day and age they would have had many more seasons of stories added to their legacy. However, in their own era, they were too far into the future.

Star Trek is, without a doubt, the most famous failure on this list. It doesn't have the relative obscurity of the other shows, but it was neglected in its time and abandoned just the same. Many casual TV viewers believe the series went on for a long run, but that was only the perception created by its rise in popularity through the following years of syndication. At the time it just barely avoided cancellation to last three seasons before the final ax.

The series was ahead of its time in both predicting the future's technological capabilities and more progressive social norms. The Enterprise's pocket-sized communicators were today's cell phones, and their main screen viewer was capable of the original Facetime. Beyond the hardware lay a series that showed a future when bias was overcome: women and men of any background treated each other as equals, and Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura famously participated in TV's first inter-racial kiss.

The 1960s were a time of great change and Star Trek was still just a little too far ahead of the culture curve. That would soon change in the next decade. As the more liberal seventies came and sci-fi popularity exploded into the mainstream thanks to Star Wars, the crew of the Enterprise received the enthusiastic welcome they missed over ten years earlier. The series was revived as a successful film series and became an entertainment franchise with award-winning spin-off series.