What makes a good scifi show/movie

[Psyco Diver]

Well we've talked about what ruins a particular show or movie in mulitiple threads, so lets break it down, but kills a show. Honestly its when the writers, producers, and/or execs decide that instead of writing creative solutions to problems, instead use technobable or supernatural to win, that pisses me off. Trek and Star Wars fell into this. I like how they gave you enough info on technology but without the whole summary how it works, if its something they grew up and use everyday and then going to explain it all for usually no reason, you don't see us doing that with computers. Serenity was great cause it focused on the stories and characters, does it ever need to explain why all the guns look like weapons straight out of a western, no, but the story more than makes up for stuff like that, its part of the reason ST and SW was so great, it didn't explain any technology nor did it ever rely on it to get out of a problem every week. Anyways I'm curious to hear others on this

[Bones]

Star Wars died because of  Prequels and how sloppy was the screen writing... also childish characters like retarded Jar-Jar and dumbed down Jedi who now became canon fodder (AOTC, ROTS) spoiled whole SW spirit.

another good example of totally ruined scifi show is Seaquest, first season was awesome, second was a total waste of time... all those crap with aliens, lasers and silly creatures was pathetic, season 3 tried to fix it but it was even more hopeless...

yet another ruined show is ... Andromeda, why ? because of that stupid pink girl with tail... I laughed my a$$ off when they shot it of and then she was replaced with more serious version, dunno how it ended tho...

[Psyco Diver]

I forgot about seaquest lol I loved that show I never really watched the third season.

[Lionus]

SeaQuest DSV was good.. until the ocean gods, ghost ships and frozen reptiles and mutant plants got in..

[Bones]

exactly named episodes that ruined genuinly awesome show ...why they always have to ruin those in such a stupid way

[Lionus]

SeaQuest DSV reached crushing depth thanks to talentless script writers. So, Deep Submersible vehicle was.. scuttled?

[Mario]

Quite honestly I think that really is a matter of perspective. What you might like, others might not like.

While I'm very sure that many will disagree with me strongly... I loved watching BSG and thought the show was great up until the ending which was a train-wreck in my opinion. So in my book this is one example of how to ruin a very good show in a very short amount of time lol

As for SeaQuest, I'd agree that up until the aliens it was a decent show.

[1DeadlySAMURAI]

I don't remember aliens but I remember time rtavel. I actually liked that episode.
Mostly because I love cultural clash, not the story in it self.

[Bren]

BSG was great, my favourite show of the decade, but I think the rails started buckling at the end of the second season. The show's character changed palpably with the New Caprica thing. After that, and with every new development, the train wreck became more inevitable, though there were some great episodes along the way.

As for Seaquest, one of my overriding memories of that show was being scared poopless by the Ghost Ship episode.

Funny how this topic has become "How to ruin a good sci-fi show"

An attempt to make an on-topic point:

I think a good sci-fi show has to have a setting that is both fantastical, but familiar. The setting must be safe enough that we can come back to it each week and recognise it. So, a base or a ship of some kind. (The Enterprise, The SGC, Atlantis, Coruscant, etc, etc...)

If it doesn't have a nailed-down setting, it needs a cast of strong characters to keep the audience grounded. They don't have to be strong physically or emotionally, but their depictions must be strong - emotionally and morally consistent from week to week, with at least one character that the audience can really like. (Sliders is the only one I can think of that fits that bill, even Dr.Who has the TARDIS.)

It also needs that hook, the one story element, usually a bit of technology or a character, that makes it describable in a sentence - "The one with the Cylons", "The one with the Stargates", "The one with Spock", "The one with the talking dolphin". That helps spread it's popularity by making it more succinctly recommendable, and easily kept in the public consciosness.

Then again, two of the most famous Sci-Fi shows break these molds; The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.