Name a Sci-Fi show on air today that's as good or better than Stargate SG-1

[BladeVenom]

I did see one episode of the new Dr. Who. They were riding flying flamingos, or whatever bird like whatever it was, was.

I didn't want to watch anymore for the fear of me questioning "why" in my mind was becoming too overwhelming.

Must have been the drugs you were taking; I don't remember Doctor Who ever riding a flamingo.

 

[AdamK47]

I'm sure they were riding something of the birdious nature.

 

[eits]

I did see one episode of the new Dr. Who. They were riding flying flamingos, or whatever bird like whatever it was, was.

I didn't want to watch anymore for the fear of me questioning "why" in my mind was becoming too overwhelming.

i'm into season 4... haven't seen any flamingos thus far...

 

[bearxor]

The last season and a half of Enterprise was great. Somewhere in the production of season 3, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who had been running ST since Roddenberry's death, stepped down and let Manny Coto take over the show and it's a pretty fantastic turn around. Except for the series finale, which Berman and Braga did. It was pretty bad.

Babylon 5 seasons 2-4 are completely awesome. Season 1 is meh, but you really have to watch it as 1-4 are really intertwined and all part of one story arc. Season 5 was a tack on after they moved to TNT, and it's ok, but not really worth watching, IMO. The TNT movie, In The Beginning is really great as well.

 

[techs]

LEGO Bablyon 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD5vyF1xO9U

 

[Childs]

You might like Farscape. Trying to replace SG-1 will be tough, especially since it ran so long you probably end up liking the characters more so most of the stories.

If you like time travel, also check out Day Break and Journeyman.

 

[shadow9d9]

The final season has a number of fantastic 2-3 part stories.

1) Augments
2) How the Klingons lost their ridges (to explain the TOS look)
3) 22nd century Mirror Universe & how the humans came to dominate
4) The reform of Vulcan society from the arrogant jackasses of the 22nd century to the less arrogant jackasses we know and love
5) How the humans were able to bring together the disparate founding species that would become the Federation
6) Earth overcoming its own xenophobia (especially in wake of the Xindi attack)

And then it had a couple of running threads through the entire season, including how humanity inadvertently stepped in the Romulans' scheming (beginning the setup for the Earth-Romulan war), and the ramifications of Tucker and T'Pol getting their freak on.

It was the Star Trek prequel that Enterprise was always meant to be.

Mirror episodes were bad, even when the amazing DS9 did it... It is just a poor gimmick imo.

The rest of that season were long, drawn out, episodes with terrible dialogue, terrible action sequences, and pretty much no stories imo.

 

[shadow9d9]

I'll also add in my Babylon 5 comments, in case I didn't earlier. I'll never understand the love for that show. TERRIBLE and absolutely corny acting, awful stories, entire arcs ended as jokes(mommy and daddy alien species come and tell their younger aliens to stop slaughtering people by the million.... or the series end where absolutely nothing is explained so the guy could sell books), and a deus ex machina ending to almost EVERY episode...

 

[shadow9d9]

I don't think I would ever enjoy watching Dr. Who. People can keep telling me how good it is. To me it's just typical British cheesy Sci-Fi. Just don't get it I guess.

Dr. Who's 2005+ run started off abysmal. The first season's Doctor was terrible, aliens were super corny, stories were terrible. After Tennant came in, the show is still low intelligence and has mostly poor episodes.. but if you look at it as light entertainment and some unique semi horror stories, you could find it semi enjoyable. I prefer it once Moffat took over.

 

[shadow9d9]

Then we can't help you. You aren't interested in Sci-Fi. Torchwood blows BSG and any of the later US scifi out of the water...that is..until Starz bought the rights to it and brought it to the US. Season 4 was ok, but nothing like the previous 3 seasons.

Haha. I enjoyed Torchwood, although season 4 was an absolute joke..one of the worst seasons of tv I have ever watched... but BSG was and remains the best show ever to appear on tv...

 

[ImpulsE69]

Haha. I enjoyed Torchwood, although season 4 was an absolute joke..one of the worst seasons of tv I have ever watched... but BSG was and remains the best show ever to appear on tv...

I tried to get into BSG numerous times and everytime I just got turned off by it. I think it was the "fracking" that did it crazy as that might seem.

And ya...Season 4 of Torchwood, while I didn't hate it, was to point out that once it came to the US, it was not nearly as good as the British ones. But I think you would agree, it's nothing like Dr Who in cheesiness.

 

[shadow9d9]

I tried to get into BSG numerous times and everytime I just got turned off by it. I think it was the "fracking" that did it crazy as that might seem.

And ya...Season 4 of Torchwood, while I didn't hate it, was to point out that once it came to the US, it was not nearly as good as the British ones. But I think you would agree, it's nothing like Dr Who in cheesiness.

Torchwood is definitely less cheesy than Dr Who.

It is spelled "frak" btw : ).

 

[eits]

I have been grinding through Doctor Who because I heard how good it was. The first few seasons pretty much sucked. However, there were enough good episodes to make it enjoyable. I finally got to ending part of season 4 and it got SOOOO much better. Just started season 5.

My favorite episodes, so far, are Midnight and The Waters of Mars.

The darker episodes and the ones where Donna says some funny shit are my more favorite episodes. Donna annoyed me at first, but then she became increasingly awesome and hilarious.

I described the show to a girl I'm seeing as a combination of Sliders, ST:TNG, Quantum Leap, and a bit of James Bond.

 

[torpid]

Midnight was really good. One of my favorite episodes. It might be my favorite if not for a little weirdness at a couple of points that might have been poor editing choices.

 

[eits]

The darkness of what happens to the Doctor as well as the darkness and arrogance that becomes the Doctor is what I love the most between those two episodes. I am drawn towards the more ominous and twisted stories... some of my favorite lines are the ones where the Doctor gives a clue as to how fucked up he can be and how he only gives one chance.

I also really loved the ending of Left Turn, where "Bad Wolf" popped up all over. It got me pumped.

 

[Midwayman]

Damn, I can't believe I'm in the minority on SGU here. I hated on it the first few episodes but by the middle of the first season I was all in. I thought it was really wonderfully shot too.

I was ready to quit SGU by episode 3 or so. After the break the show came back much stronger. By the end of the season I was disappointed to see it go. However it was still below SG1 and SG1A in terms of quality

Other shows I liked-
Firefly- does without saying.

Farscape-Kinda out there in weird land for sci-fi.

Dr Who (only the most recent ones though season 6 I think of the newer shows) Been hit or miss for me. Some stuff is soooooo corny, but it grows on you..

Babylon 5 Nice complex plot written with a story arc across seasons. It was one of the first sci-fi series to do this IIRC.

new BSG- pretty good expect for the one season they holed up on that planet.

Fringe has been pretty good, but I'm on season 1.

 

[BladeVenom]

Donna annoyed me at first, but then she became increasingly awesome and hilarious.

The scene were they were trying to communicate on opposite sides of a room through glass was hilarious.

 

[techs]

I don't think people in the US get that Dr. Who had to satisfy fans of the older versions when it came back in 2005 and therefore some of the "cheesiness" was intentional. The episode called "Rose" with the plastic villain was a perfect example.
As time passed the show was able to move away from that and the intentionally poorly done effects have been mostly phased out.

 

[felang]

I take it you mean Outcasts
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1697793/?ref_=sr_1
With Earth rapidly becoming uninhabitable, pioneers seek to colonize the harsh terrain of the planet Carpathia. 10 years later, the town of Forthaven faces danger as the planet's dark secrets are revealed.

Something very similiar from the US would be Earth 2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108758/?ref_=sr_1
Colonists, crash-landed on an alien planet, begin the long trek to their originally designated landing place, facing both alien and human threats.

I was liking Outcasts, it´s a shame it was cancelled so quickly.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Cspan?

 

[Childs]

I was liking Outcasts, it´s a shame it was cancelled so quickly.

It was a good show. Whats strange is its one of the few British shows where they ended on a cliffhanger, and there was no resolution in any way.

 

[eits]

The scene were they were trying to communicate on opposite sides of a room through glass was hilarious.

haha yeah, it was.

 

[motsm]

I honestly can't think of any good sci fi television shows, period.

 

[cubby1223]

Fringe has been pretty good, but I'm on season 1.

Fringe is very good for a while, but near the end it becomes obvious they're dragging on as long as they can until they hit the payday that comes with 100 episodes.

 

[mikeymikec]

Dr. Who's 2005+ run started off abysmal. The first season's Doctor was terrible, aliens were super corny, stories were terrible. After Tennant came in, the show is still low intelligence and has mostly poor episodes.. but if you look at it as light entertainment and some unique semi horror stories, you could find it semi enjoyable. I prefer it once Moffat took over.

It depends on what you were hoping to get from it. Dr Who (and when I say this I should point out that I haven't watched every / most seasons since the creation of Dr Who) isn't really meant to be gritty sci-fi for adults, it's the sort of thing that gets shown at the same time as something like The Simpsons. It's a lot less serious than a lot of sci-fi.

Since the 2005 reboot there's been some absolute gems of episodes ('The Empty Child', parts 1 & 2, for example) and some absolutely terrible ones ('Victory of the Daleks', 'The Stolen Earth' parts 1 & 2, and the terrible ones outnumber the brilliant ones IMO by quite a stretch). The last 2-3 seasons of Dr Who were pretty mediocre as well.

I haven't ever got into Stargate SG:1. It seems like mediocre sci-fi that tries to take itself seriously but doesn't do anything interesting at all. Perhaps I've been unlucky in the 5-6 episodes I've watched, but there was one in there particularly that made me think "I'm not watching this again" because it tried to do something serious then the ending looked like it was written by a teenager rushing their creative writing homework, and I haven't looked back since, though I'm kind of tempted to find the episodes that have been listed on this thread as good ones and see where they take me.

IMO, the award for best sci-fi series to date goes to BSG (the 4-5 season series that started in 2004). Episodes didn't follow a 'generated script', the characters actually had character as well as character development, they weren't afraid to kill off established characters (and they didn't do dick-ish things like having the 'one episode ensign'). I also liked the fact that they didn't "tech the tech" (google the term if you're not aware of it). I think it also achieved character development which wasn't sci-fi driven but wasn't soapy either (ie. these are real people with real lives).

TNG used to be my favourite, there are some brilliant episodes of it, and as I grew up with it I'll always have a soft spot for it despite its many flaws. I've got seasons 3-7. My main problem with TNG is that most of the characters have no depth and very little development. The only two characters I can think of who couldn't be pretty completely described in less than two lines are Picard's and Worf's (and Worf's takes a distant second place to Picard's).

DS9 seemed like a soap in space, I didn't manage to get into it at all. Like SG1 I've watched say 5-6 episodes of DS9, though a few YouTube clips made me wonder whether I ought to give it another try.

ST: Voyager was just dull, dull, dull (though I watched a lot more Voyager than DS9), as was Enterprise. After Enterprise, I felt that they ought to put Star Trek into cold storage until someone with some vision and some original ideas was ready to take the helm.

I've watched some others like Andromeda or Farscape (did I watch the whole pilot for B5?), but I didn't ever seriously get into them.

I honestly can't think of any good sci fi television shows, period.

Then why bother posting on a sci-fi series thread. It would be like my mother posting on this forum and saying "I don't think computers are interesting at all, you all ought to read a book or get some fresh air or something".