It’s better to have lost and loved than never to have loved a brilliant, genre-bending, beautifully written show at all. Joss Whedon’s scifi-Western Firefly lasted less than a season on Fox, but its impact has far outlived the series. The cast reunited briefly in 2005 for the movie Serenity, but for devoted fans—like us—there just wasn’t enough of what was, for a time, the smartest, most original show on television.

We decided to take a look at the butt-kicking women of TV, past and present. Some have super-powers, some are cyborgs, and all are as tough as nails (and sometimes tougher).