Meh. I watched Farscape and it was OK-ish. But it can't hold a candle to Babylon 5 or Star Trek. Or Stargate. Or even Andromeda.

^ mostly true

there are some minor things, like Data and Yar having banged and the relationship between Riker and Troi, that have tiny moments within 7 years that come back to relate to previous moments, but it's severely lacking and superficial

I agree about Chakotay being one of the most boring characters - and that's saying something for Voyager, even though I like the show as a whole. Chakotay however just got worse and worse over time, with any episode that even remotely touched his native american heritage being among the worst episodes of all of Star Trek, in my opinion. Even Robert Beltran himself was very unhappy about how Chakotay was written and didn't even put any effort in playing him any more in the end.

The doctor is my favorite character from Voyager, though. Seven of Nine was good as well. All the others... meh.
Not entirely true... there had already been some character arcs and continuing stories, although they only started to do that around the third season (when it started to become good), with the Worf/Klingon arc, which was developed over several seasons, albeit only in single episodes at a time. There have been other things like this as well, but yes, you could still watch pretty much all the episodes on their own and compared to DS9 it's really not much. But it's there. Sometimes even more so than on Voyager, which was really awful with the reset button at the end of almost every episode, putting the ship back into shape and apparently reviving lost Crewmembers as well as magically replacing destroyed shuttles. It could have been so much better if they'd really showed the struggle of a single federation ship all alone in a distant part of the galaxy. In the end, most of the good Voyager episodes (and there are quite a few) would have worked just as well on TNG. The original premise was not nearly explored enough over the course of the show. There have been glimpses of what could have been, but mostly in parallel timeline episodes or things like that.

I also don't agree that TNG is "one of the worst" Trek shows. The Original Series was groundbreaking, but it is hard to get through many of the episodes today. Except maybe the first two seasons, TNG still holds up very well in my opinion.

I absolutely love Farscape. It's one of the few shows I have watched entirely more than once. One of the best parts is how the relationships between the characters evolve over time (and for that season one plays a crucial role, establishing the starting point). Unfortunately, the storylines and pacing of season one are not everyone's cup of tea. The awesomeness starts during the late part of the season (when Chiana and Scorpius join the series).
Seven of Nine saved Voyager for me. Of course, Seven of Nine was introduced as Miss Fanservice, but luckily Jeri Ryan turned to be a terrific actress who did an incredible job with her character. I can't blame the writers for forgetting about the other characters and having the show become the Seven of Nine show, since the rest of the crew were not interesting at all (except the Doctor and sometimes Janeway).

Humbug. I just recently rewatched it, and it holds up perfectly. The first two season especially are chock-full of great episodes that are still some of the very best sf you can find. In fact, it's downright silly to me to speak of TOS not holding up when I can't think of a single show made now that would be anywhere near as good.

I loved TOS and really enjoyed most of TNG, (I could have done without an entire season focused Klingon politics) but those are the only two that I was able to watch all the was through.
I never really got into DS9. I watched all of season 1 and never bothered with any more. Having a stationary station made it boring to me. I really missed having the exploration aspect. Voyager had an interesting premise but the stories were mind numbingly contrived. I actually liked Enterprise in the beginning, but it felt like the writers were trying too hard to be socially relevant. It started to feel like every other episode was written to showcase whatever cause de'jour the writers saw in the news that day. Suddenly Vulcans were vegetarians, they dealt with cloning, transgenderism and even managed to work global warming into one episode. Then 9/11happened and the entire series became an allegory focused on the Zendi. I know that TOS did this with issues like racism and the Red Scare, but outside of The Omega Glory I don't remember it being so ham fisted.

ohman, do yourself a favor and go back and rewatch season 1 of DS9 and then continue on with it! Season 1 is DENSE and feels really long because there's so much to it it's hard to digest. You've got about 10 main characters all vying for screentime to establish themselves and where they fit into the dynamics of it all combined with telling stories and setting up the entire rest of the series (and they know where they're going with it from episode 1.) Season 1 is just the seed, and understandably a little offputting at first because there's just so much to setup. The STATIONary aspect of the station really serves the series rather than detracts from it once you get used to it, and there is no real shortage of exploration or alien phenomena to interact with either, but they have to spend time character building before they can start to tackle the REALLY good stuff.
I tried watching Stargate ages ago and gave up partway through season 1. I keep hoping they put it back on netflix because I understand it gets better later in the series and with the offshoot(s). Plus they've got Ben Browder AND Claudia Black in the offshoots.

I've seen Babylon 5 twice and just don't get what the fuss is about. I also get lots of christian undertones that put me off on top of it just being mediocre.

Maybe I'll check out Andromeda

to me Farscape is hands-down the best sci-fi show ever, and I've loved Star Trek since I was 5.

not sure what was boring for you, but, the 1st season is hard to palette because it's sooo unusual, the production values are weird, and it kind of throws a lot of sci-fi tropes on their head (and plays into them wonderfully at times!!!)

I highly recommend sticking it out and if you get 5 episodes into season 2 and are still not liking it, then give up (:

What was boring to me was the complete and utter lack of anything interesting :D

Seriously, I don't know where you're getting all this "it's so unusual and strange" from For me it was about as bland and by the numbers as possible, I don't think there was a single episode with a strong story and the characters where uninteresting and unlikeable. Maybe it's because I've seen too many "a rag-tag crew of outsiders" sci-fi shows before.

Because it has The Inner Light. And Frame of Mind. And of course because There! Are! Four! Lights!

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

My personal favourite episode of all Trek.

IMO, Generations and First Contact is worth watching. Everything after that is meh....

That episode was an instant classic. However I keep wondering how a race who only speaks in metaphor is able to develop interstellar travel, or even function. I wonder what the technical manuals for their ship looks like, and how things like warp drive are taught in schools. I'd imagine that their written language, if even they have one, would be more like pictographs than letters and words.

Great, now I'm going to have to watch that episode again and then be up all night debating with my self whether the phrase "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" will need to be brought back and explained to their whole planet or if it becomes sort of a regional dialect for the crew of that particular ship.

If by offshoots you mean Atlantis and Universe, well... that's not completely correct. Stargate does get better after Season 1, true. In my opinion it was at its best in seasons 2-4, 5-7 were a bit weaker, but still had their highlights. Season 8 was great at times and less so at others, but it was the last with all orginal team members and brought the main story line of the series up to this point to a fantastic and in my opinion more than satisfying conclusion - it would have been the perfect finale if they had ended the series after that. But they got a new main character (Ben Browder replaced Richard Dean Anderson as the leader of SG-1, also Beau Bridges became the new general), added another one (Claudia Black) and introduced a new enemy, so it is almost like a new series, but technically it is still SG-1. However, I am not particularly fond of seasons 9 and 10, but I'm glad the show got the ending it deserved at the end of season 8 - the two DVD movies that came after season 8 to finish the story lines basically felt like worse versions of the final episodes of that season to me.

Atlantis, on the other hand, started really strong in my opinion, but by season 3 I was so unhappy with some things that had happened that I didn't watch the final two seasons until last year - which was a mistake because seasons 4 and 5 are really good again and it is just a shame that it was canceled after that and never really came to a satisfying conclusion. It's still worth watching and at least some of the story lines are resolved in the final episode. It's a good show all in all, but in my opinion it never really managed to find the right direction, as they would keep changing things from season to season, swapping characters, introducing new enemies and "forget" about entire story lines for whole seasons. For example, the first season has a great "alone in a distant galaxy" feeling to it, much like voyager, but in some ways even better, but from season 2 onwards this is completely gone as it suddenly gets much easier to travel from Earth to Atlantis.
This is also something I disliked about later SG-1 seasons (spoilers ahead): In the beginning, all was new and mysterious, and Earth's best scientist were unable to understand the alien technology they would come across, and the fact that the Goa'Uld were so much more advanced made them a threat, but at the same time that was also their weakness, as they were not prepared to deal with the "primitive" weapons of the humans. Even the aliens that were not hostile refused to share their technology. But around season 6, this all changed. Of course it makes sense that in time we would get more and more understanding of alien technology and be able to produce our own weapons and other things because of that, but in my opinion this went much too fast and at the end of the series, Earth has some of the best spaceships and the entire knowledge of one of the most advanced species in the entire galaxy. Well, considering Atlantis, make that TWO of the most advanced species.

Still, I like the Stargate franchise a lot, and while it is not as serious as Star Trek most of the time, and in fact sometimes can get quite silly, it is full of fun and adventure.

I have never watched Universe, so I can't say anything about it.

Yeah, while I love this episode to death and must have seen it more times than any other (and I've seen all the Treks in their entirety multiple times) I'll admit that the concept of the Children of Tama's language has some problems if you delve to deep into it. You start thinking about "how do they order breakfest? Is there some epic legend about a guy ordering a croissant to quote?" and so on. But then again I guess the concept would not be quite so fascinating if we could wrap opur heads around it too easily in it's entirety. It's so great because it's relateable and alien both at the same time. And anyway, the episode itself is such a metaphore, not supposed to be thought about too literally.

Oh, and we actually do see their written language.

I always regretted that we've never seen that race again. Just imagine how great would it be if they joined the Federation in some battle scene against the Dominion in DS9, when the Defiant is in trouble, their ship would show up to help, hailed the Defiant and the captain would say "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel!" to Sisko.

I was never a big Stargate fan, although I actually liked the movie. The show I only watched on occasion. Then I decided to give Atlantis a shot an watched the first two seasons... it wasn't terrible, but not very good either. Felt like knock-off Voyager. Eventually I just got bored with it and quit.

Oh, and speaking of Trek knock-offs, does anyone here remember SeaQuest?

Aye, I watched SeaQuest when it was on the air back in the day and had been rewatching it relatively recently until they pulled it off of netflix. It's pretty good. Weak episodes, strong episodes, perhaps more weak than strong but it has heart and ethics so it's good in my book.

(btw same creator as Farscape)