Something you can never really count on these days is for a television show to get it right. With the networks cranking out reality TV shows, the same ol’ standard hour-long procedurals and only a smattering of sitcoms over the past several years, the odds of a television network putting together a quality scripted program are at an all-time low. Sure, I enjoy all of those from time to time, but there are only a few shows that I simply cannot go without watching every week. It’s a rare thing that I find something on TV that I will essentially schedule my life around, even in the days of DVRs and online viewing.

It’s only fitting, of course, that the two shows that I’ve been looking forward to the most, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, are also in the final stretch of their respective stories. I knew they would have to end some day. I was just hoping that day would be much later. Then again, I’d rather have quality over quantity any day.

If you have any interest in seeing these shows and/or maybe aren’t caught up yet, consider yourself warned, there be spoilers ahead.

I’m sure this is the case with most folks, but I was originally introduced to Lost through ABC’s intensive marketing blitz over the summer of 2004. I had mistakenly thought it was maybe a two-hour movie or mini-series (which, you may have noticed, simply don’t exist anymore) and kept it in the back of my mind. The one lasting image I had was of Charlie and his famous line “Guys, where are we?” to hold on to until the show premiered. Sure, I knew of Matthew Fox and Terry O’Quinn, but at the time, Dominic Monaghan was the most recognizable face, fresh off his role as Merry in The Lord of the Rings. The only other thing I remember hearing was that the show was not about an island full o’ dinosaurs or aliens or any supernatural phenomena, but would be based on real-world science. Perhaps it’s only an indication of how uncreative television had become, but that sounded kind of far-fetched at the time. Still, I was willing to see for myself.

Once the show premiered in September 2004, I was surprised at how un-sci-fi Lost was. There were the noises/creatures/smoke monster, the “ghosts”, the archaic experimental hatches and as the show went on, the mysterious Others who also inhabited the island, but those always seemed to be kept intentionally vague and largely unexplained. Looking back, I can see that those were simply the standard tropes that Lost used to reel in viewers, but anyone who paid close attention knew there was more to the show than that.

The one thing I didn’t expect was the unique way the show handled such a large ensemble cast (Season 1 featured fourteen distinct characters) by dedicating each episode to delving into a single character’s past. I thought the flashback device was an unusual choice at first and wondered how long the show could sustain that approach, but as the show went on, I found myself watching a group of survivors that, whether I liked them or not, were entirely familiar. I knew that Jack had doubts about his marriage, I knew that Locke was too willing to trust in people, I knew that Sawyer was more than just a tough guy scam artist. By not just telling audiences about a character’s past, but actually taking them to that moment in time, I’d argue that the survivors of Flight 815 might just be the most well-developed characters on TV.

With the show now on a set course for a 2010 finale, the fifth season of Lost has finally let off the brakes and is about to take these established characters and put them through the sci-fi ringer. After the early theories of dinosaurs or aliens were dismissed pretty quickly, the idea that the island was some sort of purgatory or limbo still seemed a possibility for the first three seasons. But it was the Season 3 finale that shot a giant hole in that one, showing two of the survivors back home after being rescued. As Season 4 progressed, the idea of time travel started to creep into the plotlines, making itself fully evident in “The Constant” as Desmond must endure his mind-boggling slips between his past and present. While the finale featured a “moving” island, anyone who asked themselves “where did it go?” simply needed to tune into last week’s premiere to find that the proper question should have been “when did it go?”

Lo and behold, here’s the sci-fi we’ve been waiting for! And I suspect not simple Back to the Future time travel we’ve seen a dozen times before, or even the hardcore time travel a la Primer, but a new kind of time travel. After all, isn’t redefining conventional storytelling what Lost has excelled at?

Once again, the show’s strength of posing real dilemmas against human frailty and morality only stands to become amplified against the backdrop of multiple locations and points in time. As much as some of the DHARMA-speak points to a potential world-changing event, rest assured that it’s the humanity of the characters that’s truly at stake.

Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, was a different kind of discovery for me. The name itself was tainted with memories of the cheesy ’80s TV series and therefore fell off my radar shortly after the new series was announced. Still, I did eventually catch the mini-series/pilot when it aired on NBC in early 2005. While I was fully impressed with it and it’s allegorical take on 9/11 and a society in disarray, for one reason or another I never got around to turning in for the first season of BSG on Sci-Fi Channel. I’ll always regret that.

Fast forward a year and I’m flipping through the channels one Friday night and land on Sci-Fi during the Season 1 finale. The discovery of Kobol, Starbuck’s return to Caprica, the military coup, and the most shocking moment–the attempted assassination of Adama–all had me completely enthralled from beginning to end. It was then that I immediately decided to get in on the show. Fortunately, I was able to record the entire first season in reruns and was ready for whatever Season 2 would bring.

The single greatest moment I’ll remember Battlestar Galactica for came during the Season 2 finale–the proverbial “game-changer”, if you will–when the show, with so many characters and plotlines on the line, took a surprising leap a full year into the future and didn’t look back. Once again, here was a show that focused so strongly on characters that I couldn’t help but go along with it, and it’s in Season 3 that Battlestar Galactica wandered into some of its most relevant (and probably most controversial) story lines. Foreign occupation, terroristic plots, suicide bombers, insurrection, treason, torture and disillusioned goverment all weighed in heavily, which spoke to one of the show’s grandest aspirations–to reflect and examine the struggles of our own modern-day society, warts and all.

Meanwhile, the biggest sci-fi element of Battlestar Galactica took shape in the form of ourselves. The looming threat of the Cylons was always present, but when they appeared on screen, they were in the captivating form of men and women who were all but human. While the Battlestar Galactica shares some sentiments that can be found in sci-fi classics like Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Matrix, the show takes things several steps further, with the Cylons experiencing crises of identity, religion and even parenthood. More than just “man versus machine”, the one single element at the focus of all conflict has been humanity itself and how the characters struggle to keep a tight grasp on it.

Now, as the final season is unraveling on the airwaves, Battlestar Galactica is poised to end either one of two ways for our fleet of survivors: on a really high note or an absolutely bleak nightmare. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be completely intriguing and I’ll be watching with a full heart.

Over the years, I’ve followed plenty of good shows, but in terms of science fiction, these two are the only that have consistently kept me coming back. Yes, there are spaceships and robots. Yes, there’s traveling through time and mysterious locales. On the surface, shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica could seem like a bunch of empty hocus-pocus, but they just go to show that when you put an emphasis on characters and storylines first, audiences will genuinely appreciate what science-fiction can bring to the fray.

Also, I think it’s a nice touch that the producers of both shows (Damon Lindelof/Carlton Cuse from Lost and Ronald D. Moore from BSG) have taken advantage of podcasting to reach out and communicate with fans, which is something I don’t think anyone ever expected.

So here’s my hearty “thank you” to “Darlton”, Ronald D. Moore, the casts and crews of Lost and Battlestar Galactica for all they do and even ABC and Universal for giving shows like these a chance. Even though each has had to deal with audiences’ tolerance for annoying characters and dawdling storylines (and the haters, of course), viewers that have stuck with them have undoubtedly seen what I think is some of the greatest science fiction on television. With Lost in its fifth and penultimate season and Galactica in the “back nine” of its fourth and final season, I can’t think of a better and more exciting time to be a fan of both of these shows.