I think a TNG-style SF show may well work again if it's well-written, as TNG was in its prime.
Absolutely. I think there's an untapped demand for a solid space opera series. But it's not a big market, so we can forget about seeing it on broadcast, and since skiffy seems incapable of producing anything worth watching nowadays, that leaves basic cable like AMC or TNT, or premium cable like HBO.
AMC scored a hit with
The Walking Dead and HBO has a modest success in
Game of Thrones. Both of those shows premises that are no less outre than a space opera series, even one featuring funny forehead aliens. Use that approach - solid storytelling, compelling characters - and place the story on a spaceship. It can work just as well as either of those shows have.
TNG was the best of sci fi as ratings go. It's equvialent to SG-1 which also had pretty steady ratings but it being on Saturdays for 7 years out of the way primetime juggernaunts and out of the intenet era can account for that as well as it's pretty solid stories and good effects. Now that's not good enough. Look at Doctor Who...they're on Saturdays too.
Not in America. Saturdays are where shows go to die. But there's no reason why a space opera series needs to be treated like a poor relation. Why can't it be prime time Sunday night material?
Stargate in general has never been about smart writing it was good writing with standardized beatable villains, it was about the fun, the adventure, the character's experiences and their good intentions.
Stargate depended on the casting to keep afloat. RDA was very popular, and Joe Flanigan had some of that compelling quality as well. What really sunk
SGU is that they didn't find an actor like that and shove him front & center. The producers were apparently unaware of why people were really watching their shows. It sure wasn't for the great writing!
I think the Stargate concept is just too viable to let languish forever.
They should really go back to the basics and reboot the spit out of it: people discover a portal to other worlds, which is part of a system created by powerful aliens who style themselves as gods and pose an ongoing threat to Earth.
Then start over from there. It doesn't have to be run by the US military, it doesn't have to be based in Cheyenne Mountain, it doesn't have to be secret from the world, the powerful aliens don't all need to be evil and insane, they don't need to be mind-controlling parasites (although I still think that's a workable angle), the Jaffa don't need to be in the picture (although human slaves taken offworld long ago is still a good idea), and there certainly don't need to be elements like the Ori that have nothing to do with the core idea.
Maybe keep the Goa'uld only as specifically Egyptian pretenders, possibly you could throw the Maya and Aztecs in - anyone with pyramids, that can be the governing factor. It got pretty loopy the way they started delving into Greek, Roman, Norse and Arthurian mythology as though humans were incapable of coming up with mythology on their own.
