battlestar doesn't count?

I guess it depends on individual taste. I did not hate Battlestar, but it deffinetly did not reach "Epic" status to me, but I did watch it as it was fun to watch. I still don't have a favorite SciFi series, I just watch as many as I can. 

If you guys are looking for a new(well not REALLY new, show to watch check out this list.)

Babylon 5

Firefly

Star Trek (Deep Space 9, The Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise)

Andromeda

Dr. Who

Stargate (SG1, Atlantis, Universe)

Farscape (Haven't seen it yet, but heard good things)

Warhouse 13 (Maybe not actually sci fi, more fantasy)

Smallville (Oh comeon! It's Superman!)

Jake 2.0 (Fun, but short)

Heroes (No explanation needed)

Lost (Another I haven't seen, but no explanation should be needed)

Jericho

Eureka

Kyle XY

Being Human

True Blood (If you like that kind of thing)

4400

Supernatural

Okay, I'm going to stop before my list exceeds 100 shows.

Just look here:

http://io9.com/5347048/the-top-100-science-fictionfantasy-shows-of-all-time

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/toplists/the_top_10_scifi_shows_of_alltime/the_top_10_scifi_shows_of_alltime.html

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/gallery/topscifishows/

Tastes definitely vary; the new BSG was one of my favorites in many, many years. Many things on xGhost's list don't count as sci-fi at all for me, e.g. Supernatural, True Blood, and Being Human. (Dislike Supernatural despite the pretty leads, love True Blood, haven't seen Being Human.)

I finally let myself finish the Sara Connor Chronicles this week. It's really sad to see what happens to a good series when the showrunners need to wrap up because they got cancelled, not because they've finished their story arcs. Dollhouse was the same way. Sigh.

Oh I know! I wasn't to sure about Sarah Connor Chronicles until the second season premiere, that was an awesome episode and I made it a point to see everyone after that. Sadly it still got canned.

Oh and I basically looke at a few lists and just took any show I saw on there that I had either seen or had heard good things about. I'm not sure why they included Supernatural, Being Human, or True Blood as SciFi but whatever.

No.

Agreed.  Terribly disappointing that the show got canned.  That was another great recent sci-fi show, imo.  Caprica should be coming out before too long.  The movie was interesting (to me, anyway) and I've got hopes for the series. 

Dito - this is a fun series.  Season 1 is available on netflix.

Sci-fi doesn't work well on TV because most think it'll be some Star Trek rip-off, and people seems to be confused about the whole ''Bizzare'' angle Sci-fi generally have.

Plus it's harder to plug in some love story or some 'girl talk' moments, or product placement when you're telling a tale that's happening in the far future, another world, or whatever.

Season 4 of nBSG was totally awesome.  Especially the second half of that season.  The season finale was a bit boring after they jump out from the Cylon colony, but the conclusion of that episode is good.

And yeah, what sane and intelligent person wouldn't want more Firefly?

Pish and tosh. All the modern Trek shows have plenty of 'girl talk' moments, including ones for the guys (Enterprise's Commander Tucker got freakin' pregnant!). SCC and Dollhouse are almost worth calling 'chick sci-fi' because the tough women at the heart of the show are written like women, not charicatures, and love (not traditional romance, I admit) is a very important theme for both those shows.

Re product placement, yea, that might be a funding problem for a show like Andromeda or Caprica, but plenty of sci-fi shows are in normal enough settings to have well-lit snack bags and prominently-placed computer gear.

I'm halfway through season 2 now and still loving it.  Hope it doesn't get lousy like you say.

You are better praying for a reboot of the Firefly "franchise". Praying for a good one too. Considering the ending in Serenity, I somehow would prefer the reboot.

I feel doubtful about watching new series because of the "cancelling if not uber ratings" effect. I loved Jericho but I won't dare to watch the second season after being cancelled (again). Kudos to the team of The Peacekeepers Wars for wrapping the story pending in Farscape. It made me wonder if it'd not be better if series should have all less episodes (and therefore less filler, at least for some because for other series there are no fillers like in the X-Files) and focus more in the main storyline. Farscape is a good show but the last season dragged a bit in some parts. The new Galactica was great and the first season was mostly filler free but the later seasons with lots more episodes had some (unnecesary) fillers too.

Watching Andromeda now (finishing third season) and although it's a different style (and less level) than Galactica or Firefly, it's at the same level of fun as Stargate series (of which my favourite is Universe while still waiting for the complete edition of Atlantis so it can join the one for SG-1).

BY the way, I bought during Christmas the Star Trek TOS and I wonder how much of space explorers they could be if they were most of the time time traveling to Earth or visiting planets that were earth like. Loved it though (the series and the ingenuity of those times).

Second half of season 2 is bad. Season 3 is painful to watch.

STOP IT!... lolz.  I'm going to have to tune out this thread now.  Raining on my parade

Don't worry, season 4 makes the agony of the previous 30 episodes worthy.

I watch some DVD extras and read a bit of stuff from showrunners like Joss Whedon online. What you're vexed by here seems to be a 'normal' thing for episodic TV series, at least for SF shows.

The excecs are cross-pressured between knowing that a strong core of viewers will want everything to be part of a Big Story (similar to soap opera viewers) and knowing the market value of being able to reliably capture a large set of more casual viewers. That latter group are (at least perceived to be) turned off by shows that rely much on info from past episodes (kind of how like elections work).

There's also probably something in the production environment that can make the working folks prefer episodes that are not about the show mythos because they're open to more possibilities for writing, shooting, and acting. The X-Files is a great example. I rented series 1-8 on DVD, but skipped many episodes because I was busy and they weren't about the aliens/conspiracy stuff.

so true... because sci-fi doesnt usually give the schadenfreude feeling when some bimbo gets preggers or some guy gets dumped, or because they cant chict-chat like gossip girl or watch people fail like in a million reality tv gameshows out now, we lose like 98% of the population to the sheep that do nothing but make up numbers and consume resources...

i mean, Kyle XY was great, it was probably the closest thing to a sci-fi for teens there is so far, and yet it got canned after 3 seasons?

sometimes being humans shits me off no end =(

I disagree. I thought the first 3 seasons were awesome (with occasional exceptions. I can't think of a single show where *every* episode is great) but season 4 wasn't too great in my opinion. Even up to the last 30 minutes of the last episode, I felt like I had no idea how they could possibly wrap the series up.

The feeling I got from the finale was that the writers' room conversation went something like this: "Oh sh!t! We've got half an hour of air-time left to wrap up all the loose ends! What are we going to do? What are we going to do?" I just think they rushed the conclusion way too much.

What I generally found for BSG was that the beginning of a season and the end of a season were where most of the awesome episodes were. The middle of the season is where you're more likely to run into the not so great ones (like that boxing one. Laaaame )

My personal favorite episode came from season 3. Exodus Pt. II was just plain amazing. I won't give anything away for Pacov, but it had some awesome scenes in it.

Not only did I love BSG but I was able to get my family to watch it. Seasons 1 and 2 the whole family was hooked. Season 3 we lost ones interest. By season 4 we were down to just me. RDM just became obsessed with everything dark, dark and dark as possible. You can only take so much of that. That and dragging out the 4th season over a 2 and a half year period. By season 4.5 I was the only one watching and I think it would have been better to end the series with the bombed Earth and leave us to wonder what happened after that.

I know exactly what you mean. Although part of the problem was the writers' strike (or was that the reason for Season 3.5, not 4.5?)

I like that they continued past "Earth," because leaving it there would have bugged the #$%& out of me, and probably a lot of other people, but they could have done it better. They had 8 episodes to tie up all the lose ends, and instead they tried to tie them up in the last 30-45 minutes. Especially the Starbuck thing, and to a lesser extent the Six and Giaus that the real Giaus and Caprica Six saw. To me, those two things felt like a cop-out, like they had no idea what to do with them, so they "magiced" them away.

Which brings me to another of my pet peeves with BSG; the whole religion thing. I liked how they had left things rather unclear, where it was up to the viewer to decide if the Colonial's greek gods or the Cylons one god or neither were "correct." Then the last season basically said "The Cylons are right, stfu colonials." I don't want to turn this into a religous debate, but I thought the abiguity added to the story.

Ok, this has basically turned into a rant against all of the things I didn't like with BSG, but don't let that fool you, I still loved the show

A search for "joss whedon" and "writers strike" yields about 24,000 hits just now. He's more or less admitted that big names like his own didn't suffer that dramatically from the kerfuffle, but specific shows and the folks who seriously wanted to see them keep going did get screwed. I was a barely-teenaged boy when the first Bionic Woman aired. Thanks to the TV execs forcing a strike on the writers and us folks in the audience, I'll never know whether the new, nano-tech version of Jamie Sommers could have lived up to Buffy's standards...

omg the one god is the truth dont come in here and blaspheme you bastard =P

jks, had to say it

I <3 bsg, but i <3 it in two different ways. For me, the show is two parts. A more traditional space opera type, if you will, following in the footsteps of the miniseries. This part lasts to New Craprica. After New Craprica, it becomes more of a drama, which, while still very good, also had a different feel and tone from the first part. I guess it's sort of the transition whiplash that caught some people unawares.

And so that I'm not totally offtopic, yes, i would for sure watch new firefly. It'll never come back, though Captain Tightpants did say that Firefly was the best experience he ever had....

Cadalancea

Exactly!

Starbuck dies on large gas giant planet.

Starbuck comes back in shiny new viper many light years away.

Starbuck finds her own body on cylon earth. (but didn't she implode many light years away on differnt planet?)

Starbuck disappears on our past earth in the twinkling of an eye.

That makes no sense even if you say "god did it" Oddly RDM sounds really proud of the way he brought the whole question together in his podcasts. I give RDM credit for being able to create TV that makes you want to find out what's going to happen next. I just won't delude myself again into thinking he has any idea either.

---------

Firefly was a love it or hate it show which I loved! I think the Serenity movie did a great job of revealing a second seasons worth of exposition. I think if Whedon had more to say about the story he would make more episodes or movies. But my guess is that the movie Serenity was ment to be the bookend to the Firefly 'verse.