Hmm.  I glanced through all the responses and find it hard to believe that I didn't see Babylon Five (unless I missed it).  It's more or less Star Trek DS-9 on reality steroids.

That is to say that it was a darker and dirtier space station than DS-9.  Anyway, there are several seasons and you definitely want to watch the shows in chronological order...

My two cents.

SK

PS.  Who knew Melissa Gilbert would grow into such a hot looking woman...  (She appears in one or two of the last few seasons).

I'm like yourself trying to find a decent Sci Fi show.  Sci Fi is interesting to me because of the setting but in general Sci Fi shows writing is terrible, throwing pseudo science in as plot devices and then just basing it around that.

After Battlestar Galactica I found V to be watchable.  Some terrible cheesy moments but overal fun and some good moments.

Caprica was terrible, there wasn't one character that you actually liked, all mean spirited and selfish to a fault.  I think they copied the fact that BSG had flawed characters but forgot to add redeeming qualities.

Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome will be around soon I guess but I'd prefer something original, afterall we know how the Cylon War ends pretty much, and we know our protagonist survives.

Firefly was good fun, a little more of a family show than BSG but excellent at what it does.

Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex as someone mentioned is not bad.  Some good moments and decent characters but can be boring some episodes.

I would strongly recommend you take a look at an anime series called Cowboy Bebop if you can stomache animation.  Brilliant writing, sometimes good fun, sometimes quite emotional and Sci Fi but not an in your face black holes/antimatter/crazy evil alien kind of Sci Fi.

Can't wait for them to get on with the next season but hopefully the prequel will tide us over till the lead actor can get better. Stupid Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma!

I also recommend Cowboy Beebop.  Even if you don't like Anime, you might like this one... 

fake bill adama died and then became the real bill adama.  There. 

Stargate.

1 movie + 212 episodes + 100 spinoff episides + 2 more movies. + 30+ (10 havent aired yet) more spinoff episodes.

Good job on getting B5. I do not think James Callis played on B5 ever.

there's a reason for that. they were in direct competition back in the day and those behind ST saw a magnificent show being created by JMS, and it shaped DS9 to an extent. B5 had a much tighter, less episodic narrative than DS9 for the most part.

i envy your first watching! and the fact you won't have to wait week to week for episodes at strange times at night. as much as a huge BSG fan as i am, i still think the B5 story is unsurpassed in scifi television.

I would recommend Seaquest and Sliders.  They kinda... start to suck in the last two seasons especially Sliders, but I think they're still worth watching.

To be more specific, JMS tried to sell B5 to Paramount who turned him down.  He even showed them his B5 bible which had all his plans for the entire series.  Speculation has it that they used or were inspired by a lot of it, and looking at how DS9 was so similar, it's hard to think otherwise.  That's not to say I didn't enjoy DS9 especially with the introduction of the Dominion.

I cannot condone your recommendation of the David Lynch rendition of Dune. It simply does no justice to the books.

If you want Dune, go for the miniseries. Scratch that, go for the Chilren of Dune miniseries from the SyFy channel. The original Dune had some, well, nekkidness, in it.

Not a good choice for son, mom&dad to watch together. Note that the Children of Dune miniseries doesn't really need more than a passing knowledge of Dune.

Also note that the David Lynch's movie rendition of Dune was pretty good. It just wasn't accurate to the novels, or the Dune universe. On its own, or as an adaptation of the book, it does pretty well.

Well I just did a quick search and gave up trying to find these so called reviews for Spartacus. IMDB gave it 8.8/10.

You seem to be pretty passionate about a show you never watched. Please link me to these reviews. The guy that wrote that one probably thought Driving Miss Daisy deserved an award. 

Amen to that, brother.

Anyway though i prefer the continuous storyline of B5 to DS9, some of the DS9 episodes not related to main story arc: like Visitor, Duet or Its only a paper moon were really top notch.... and the main story arc episodes (Die is Cast, Call to Arms, Sacrifice to Angels, Tears of the Prophets...etc...) were indeed on par with B5 ones...

Both shows are IMHO alongside BSG the best what sci-fi genre has to offer...

One that I will recommend you dont see is Roswell.  We tried it recently and it was pretty awful.  It's basically a teen drama (I wasnt aware of that beforehand...oops), but some of the angsty teens happen to be angsty teen aliens.  The writing and dialogue are terrible, the story moves along very slowly, and the lead character may have well as been played by a manikin, he's so wooden.  Seriously, a life-sized cardboard cut-out would have had more personality.

Avoid!

Sentient species taste better...