I'm 29, and let me tell you, I find the older I get the less tolerance I have for complicated storytelling. Mind you, I haven't sunk to the level of being entertained by Michael Bay's Transformers, but sometimes simplistic is better.
Of course, my main beef is all these shows which try to go for complex involved multi-year story arcs. But there you are.
I'm 42 and I am the opposite.
The older I get, the more I WANT complex, serial stories and story arcs. I like my episodes to feel like a chapter in a book, not just a bunch of unrelated episodes strung together. If you are a fan of shows like Sopranos, Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Dexter, or Hannibal, like I am, for example, it is so hard to go back to a format where episodes lack story arcs and once events happen, are never referenced again. I love the mythology of shows, and sci fi one of the best forums for that.
Don't get me wrong, I love TOS, and without the show, we wouldn't have the sci fi we have today. But it wasn't until the movies that I felt that there was a continuity and cohesion between the characters, beyond the episode-of-the-week.
I like the fact that TNG was the first to bring a more unified continuity not to just the show, but to the Trek Universe as a whole. Though TNG was still episodic, it was the beginning of arcs for Trek. DS9 ran with that idea even more. Voyager took a back slide in story arcs. They still had them, but Voyager was more episodic could have been more serial than it was, but not to slam it because I think it did a decent job. Season 3 and 4 of Enterprise really returned to the serial feel of DS9, so gets kudos for that.
As for other sci fi shows, Xfiles had a great mythology, while at the same time balancing that concept with episodic, monster-of-the-week episodes, and its only real crime was staying on the air too long by a couple seasons.
Moore's BSG was a great show, at least up until new Caprica, but I still love the show as a whole. It still remains one of my favorite shows of all time.
Babylon 5, well, you either love it or not. I love it. Its downfall was it just didn't have the budget to bring in better actors or sets, but (filler episodes aside) it absolutely had so many great concepts and story arcs.
As for Stargate, give me SG1 seasons 1-8, and Atlantis, and I am happy. I think as far as long-lived sci fi shows go, Stargate deserves credit for having the most consistency in internal canon, the largest story arcs, and for me is an overall great show.
But for the record, I do like my less complex sci fi, too. I am and always will be a fan of Star Wars OT. I even like the PT, though to a much lesser extent. I am also a big fan of the Aliens, Terminator, original Robocop and Predator franchises. They still entertained me, even if less complex story-wise, and indeed they shaped how I see sci fi, today.
