Every now and again an otherwise grounded (at least relatively) show will go off the deep end. Miami Vice in it's fourth season suddenly decided it would be great to throw in aliens in "Missing Hours". Daria's third season features the largely despised Depth Takes a Holiday in which Daria meets the spirits of various holidays. The second season of the Baywatch spin-off Baywatch Nights (yes, that happend) suddenly went full X-Files in it's entirety, with David Hasselhoff facing off against vampires, sea monsters, unfrozen vikings and traveling in time. So yeah, all of that totally exists in the universe of Baywatch.

I was wondering if maybe You, good folk of the GOG forum, could help me track down more of such bizarre curve balls trown by well known and otherwise non-supernatural shows. Were there aliens on Grey's Anatomy? Wizards on CSI?

Baywatch Nights? I need to look that up…

One example that comes to mind is the last Season of Seaquest DSV. While that was always science-fiction, it went from deep sea exploration to aliens.

From Frasier, I remember an episode where the protagonist shortly visits a scifi convention. After googling, the episode is named "The Show Must Go Off".

First thing I had to think of, was one episode from "Buffy", where a "demon from space" (?) played a role.

But, of course: "Buffy" is not a "non-fantasy" series, so...that's moot here.

Community's "Remedial Chaos Theory" delved into sci-fi and popularized the expression "the darkest timeline".

70s show also had atleast this episode "A New Hope": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0720047/

MacGyver.

He encountered AI with robots, bigfoot, ghosts, and in the movies that followed the series found Atlantis among other things.

Not to forget how Murdoc kept coming back from the dead almost supernaturally to avenge his previous death(s).


Also, in one episode of Columbo the murderer uses Robby the Robot as part of his murder plans. It's not necessarily science fiction, but comes really close, because it's the actual thing that was used in Forbidden Planet.


There are plenty of other cases, but those came to mind immediately.

In series like Moonlighting it happened for laughs, so it probably doesn't count?

I'm pretty sure Murder, She Wrote slips into this a couple of times, on both science fiction & fantasy. There was an episode based on a fantastical version of VR, for example.

Yeah, MacGyver got wacky enough times I don't think it even counts anymore. The show exists in it's own universe of everything goes.

And even though I'm not a fan of the series as a whole, I do really like that Atlantis movie. As far as Indiana Jones rip-offs go, it surprisngly really is one of the better ones, and Brian Blessed is always just a joy to watch. That's a good one. Even if not strictly the kind of out-of-left-field total madness, it's fairly close and a connection to Forbidden Planet is always cool.

In the second season of the Fargo series,

spoiler alert!!!!!!!!!

a flying saucer (UFO) appears out of nowhere. It was a wtf moment I really enjoyed.

Some day I should rewatch MacGyver again for the LoLs. I did it a few years ago with the A-Team and I will do it again in a few years from now. Loved every second of the first three seasons and a half. But somewhere halfway the fourth season the series went downhill for some reason. Hence the big changes in the fifth with Franky and all that. It didn´t work. Sadly.

Sorry. What were we talking about? Ah yes, aliens and unexpected weird things.

Dead of alive, the film made in 1999 by the japanese director Takashi Miike. A drama film about jacuzas and a police detective ended in a very unique way. And I loved it!

Spoiler alert!!!!!!

From shootings to dragon ball stuff. Just fantastic!

Nice ninja! First thought was Sea Quest.

But ill add Quantum Leap, added god and the devil. I know this was science fiction but it was a wacky way to curve ball a science....ish show. Although I chocked it up to higher dimension being, trolling the little 3D critters for the lulz.