Dollhouse

It's pretty much like the earlier seasons of Smallville, but I watched it for the ladies.  Katherine Heigl was hot back then as opposed to hot, but annoying now.

Falling sky's

But only starts in June..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP7vrlvu9qk

All the reviews I've seen have been stellar. And  Lucy Lawless gets topless!!! What's not to like?

Maybe we need a Spartacus thread!

On the subject of sci-fi, these are my recommendations:

B5

BSG

SG1

Firefly

DS9

Well, being a fan of sci-fi, i have a huge collection of series... some of them was already cited but some other was not :

- Andromeda ( 5 seasons )

- Babylon 5 ( original : 5 seasons, Crusade : 1 seasons, 6 films )

- Battlestar Galactica ( TOS : 2 seasons, BSG 2004 : 4 seasons/few web episodes/films, Caprica : 1 seasons )

- Bionic woman 2007 ( 1 seasons )

- Earth Final Conflict ( 5 seasons )

- Farscape ( 4 seasons, film "The peacekeeper war" )

- Firefly ( 1 seasons )

- Harsh Realm ( 1 seasons )

- Heroes ( 4 seasons )

- Mutant X ( 3 seasons )

- Odyssey 5 ( 1 seasons )

- Outer Limits 1995 ( 7 seasons )

- Sanctuary ( 3 seasons )

- Space 1999 ( 2 seasons / 1 film )

- Space above and beyond ( 1 seasons )

- Stargate ( SC1 : 10 seasons, Atlantis : 5 seasons, Universe : 2 seasons, films )

- Starhunter ( 2 seasons )

- StarTrek ( TOS : 3 seasons, TNG : 7 seasons, DS9 : 7 seasons, Voyager : 7 seasons, Enterprise : 4 seasons, 10 films )

- Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles ( 2 seasons )

- The 4400 ( 4 seasons )

- The dead zone ( 6 seasons )

- V 2009 ( 2 seasons )

- Warehouse 13 ( 2 seasons )

- X-files ( 9 seasons )

... a total of 2469 episodes...

Have recently loose a harddrive with Blake's 7 ( 4 seasons ), UFO ( 1 seasons ), Red Dwarf ( 8 seasons ), and Doctor Who ( 32 seasons )... all UK sci-fi... 

Pretty sure that there is more sci-fi out there but i don't have them ( and don't know them )...

For family viewing, Outer Limits is very good because it is not a series in itself but more a short sci-fi novel by episode... with different themes for each episodes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Outer_Limits_%281995%E2%80%932002%29_episodes )... Andromeda is good too if you forget the last season... Babylon 5 is very good but not the Crusade series...

I second the nomination of Sanctuary, and append with Eureka.

Both are SyFy channel series; Sanctuary is kinda hard to describe IMO, you'd have to watch trailers/commercials and maybe an episode or two to get a feel for it.

I think it's still running, as it had a 'mid-season' finale. If it isn't slated to have a couple more episodes, then I am going to be pissed.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Most of the main characters die in the mid-season 3 finale; or that's what it looks like. If they are dead, I think I would have to write a gratuitous fanfic that involved the producers&writers getting killed in suitably gory and dramatic ways.

/END SPOILER

Eureka is easier to describe; premise is that former US Marshall dude catches delinquent teenage daughter. Both end up stranded in the town of 'Eureka'. US Marshall ends up as town sheriff, and daughter goes to school in the town.

Both of them are the only 'normal' people in the town. Everyone else is the equivalent of a genius. Most of them have a supreme lack of common sense. This ends up meaning that the sheriff is usually the only one who can save the day, because he actually has common sense.

It's a supremely awesome show; as a pure science-fiction show, it isn't really. It's more along the lines of scifi-based comedy/drama.

For your 'family viewing' thing, Eureka should either work very well or not at all. The writers and actors have above-average comedic skills, many episodes have at least a scrap of 'serious SF' in them, and bureaucracy is a major theme.

I've just finished Dollhouse on DVD via Netflix, and am more convinced than ever that there's Something Very Wrong with TV execs and/or Joss Whedon's choice of TV exec patrons. Some stuff in the DVD extras leaves me suspecting that Whedon knows what went wrong, and it was him not being able to get a deal with a premium channel for the show instead of going with Fox. If the 'rents are interested in technology and society questions, they might like the hat trick Whedon pulled off in the 'canceled twice' 2 seasons of Dollhouse.

The Siffy network miniseries version of Dune is definitely superior to David Lynch's film version. Terrible shame that they appear to have ditched any efforts to match the quality of those two projects.

Thoumsin's list seems the handiest reply in the thread so far. The pages for most of them at Netflix should lead you easily to the rest of the similar titles they have. At least for as long as they continue to support disc customers; if this streaming thing goes badly enough, the available titles might be much smaller in a few years.

yeah... its always a bit surprizing to us when the great ones get canceled.  And rubbish like heroes (which I loved season 1 of) can go on after jumping the shark for 4 more seasons or whatever they milked it for.  To my shame, I watched the entire series and hoped it would get better... turns out they only had plans for 1 season...

Thanks to the people who suggested Cowboy Bebop  .

Fantastic Series with movie. Dont watch the movie 1st though like I did. I think it's meant for after the series as it has all the characters where the series slowly introduces them all.

Yay!  Glad you checked it out!  A really good series.  The movie was ok, but a bit pale compared to the series.  Completely agree with you re: DO NOT WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST.  Glad you persevered and stayed with it for the good stuff.

Random off topic (hoping not to highjack too much here) - anyone pick up pluto yet?  Its a brilliant series that came out a few years ago that I'm just getting into - fyi  this is manga, not a tv series.  Anyway, if you have not, I suggest picking up a copy of volume 1 on amazon for $10.  I stormed through book 1 and very quickly ordered book 2 (which I start reading today). 

IMHO Andromeda is shit.... unfortunately, cause it started pretty good and one and half season is was actually very watchable, definitely worth it...then for some reason the TV execs decided to make it more accesible for causal viewer, episodic and "Kevin Sorbo centric"....and completely messed something, what could be a worthy competitor to Star Trek and Babylon 5. 4th and 5th season are absolutely terrible....they have very specific characteristic, despite the fact i saw all the previous episodes, lot of times the characters/the events were refering to something, what apparently happened before, but i had no idea about that...simply i felt like i missed half the season and was completely out of context, though i saw everything...

in the end it was more confusing then fun... not to mention in the final season it changed from classic space-opera to some comic like superhero masquerade... awful, just awful

I wish I still had my copies of Mai the Psychic Girl. Looks like you can buy it from Amazon & others still, and it is exemplary manga for grownups. Just learned from Wikipedia that there were efforts to do a film version (a musical, no less!). Hopefully someone will get around to it eventually, and not forget to include those fine little Japanese touches like dogs peeing in the background of a street scene.

Several times I've almost started a thread to ask for more (non-porn) anime for grownups. I'd love to find a few more series like Serial Experiments Lain. The main character is a teenage girl, but it is not a kids story (prodigies excepted).