Big Star Trek fan here.

Are you a fan of any or all of these series?
Star Trek, particularly. I don't mind the Star Wars films but never fully got into them as much as Trek.

I've seen a bit of each series as far as Star Trek goes, but my favorite is The Next Generation. I've seen a handful of episodes from Enterprise and Deep Space Nine. I've also seen Star Trek movies II through IV, as well as the reboot.

Why do you like them?
I grew up watching The Next Generation with my dad. It's one of those things that's in your blood and never really goes away. It's also one of those things where you can't even express why you love the show because the reasons are so intangible. You just know you love it deeply, no matter what the reason why is.

I suppose, though, that I like it because of the depth with the show and the way it explores the human condition. The characters are written beautifully, in a way that makes you feel like they're your friends. And I can't tell you how many times I've wished I was an officer on a starship. It's something I really, really wish could be reality.

Who are your favorite characters?
Captain Picard, Data, Riker, Geordi, and Worf.

What are your favorite episodes?
The Best of Both Worlds part 1 & 2, Darmok, Data's Day, The Wounded (because of the beautifully heartbreaking singing scene at the end) and a few others that I'm probably forgetting.

Thanks to kat for starting this thread, and the SO mods for approving it! I'm thrilled. Looking forward to reading everybody else's answers!

Are you a fan of any or all of these series? All of em', although Stargate is the one I'm least well versed in.

Why do you like them? Why not? My life lacks all of the adventure and sci-fi goodness that they provide me.

Who are your favorite characters?
Star Trek: Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy. From TNG, Lt. Barclay. From Voyager I liked The Doctor, Tom Paris, and Ensign Kim.
Star Wars: Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and Wedge Antilles
Stargate: Colonel O'Neill

What are your favorite episodes?
Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine for as long as I've been watching TV. Others include Balance of Terror, Devil in the Dark, and Mirror Mirror. From TNG I liked Best of Both Worlds (and quite a few others whose names escape me), Voyager I liked Scorpion and anything with Captain Proton in it (ha!)
Stargate: I've watched about 3 seasons so far so I'm not very far in, but I do recall one awesome episode I watched in syndication where time would repeat itself everyday at the SGC and Teal'c always started his day off by getting a door opened on his nose.

I tend to be a Star Wars fan most of all, but I love Star Trek too, considering that the original series was a staple of mine growing up. TNG was good but Picard and crew spent lots of time negotiating when Kirk would have just fired the stupid phasers already and won the day. Voyager was great fun and brought the series back to its roots in many ways, in my opinion. I never really got into DS9...just seemed like a lot of talk and boring Bajoran religious stuff and very little space exploration of note. Enterprise (what I've watched of it) was fun but I think may have taken a bit too long to get itself up to speed. The new Star Trek film was a big step in the right direction.

Empire Strikes Back is the best of all Star Wars movies. I'm glad that they're doing more Star Wars flicks and think Abrams is a great choice for the project. And hopefully they won't let Lucas anywhere near the written dialogue portion of the script. Great idea man, very bad with dialogue.

I'm a huge fan of all!

Are you a fan of any or all of these series?

In order I fell in love with Stargate (the 1994 film first) and then once SG-1 came out I got into it too, then I watched Star Wars ep. 1 in theaters with my cousin and fell in love with it watching the original movies, and I'm a fan of the recent Star Trek film and soon to be sequel when it comes out.

Why do you like them?

I like space

They are just really great stories and I love the constant adventure and suspense in every category of these films and series.

Who are your favorite characters?

Stargate (film): Skaraa and Ra
SG-1: Jack O'neill and Sam Carter
Star Wars: Han Solo, C-3PO, R2-D2, Darth Vader
Star Trek: Chekov, Spock, Scotty and Bones

What are your favorite episodes?
All the original Star Wars episodes 4-6
And a lot of the SG-1. Love that show.

I like all of them as well. I grew up watching (repeats of) the original series of Star Trek in the '70s, and I particularly enjoyed the animated Star Trek series as they had plots which were very imaginative but would have been impossible or too expensive to film with the technology of the time. I enjoyed Next Gen though I think that the earlier seasons of that look very dated now, more so than the Original Series. Deep Space Nine I enjoyed sometimes, but I thought that some of the stories centred around the Dominion got a bit boring. I liked Voyager very much, and unlike many science-fiction series, it had an excellent final episode. Enterprise I thought was dull, and I was disappointed with Scott Bakula's performance as Captain Archer; maybe he was still shell-shocked after the unbelievably awful final episode of "Quantum Leap". Favourite characters: Spock and McCoy in the Original Series, Picard, Geordi and Barclay in Next Gen, Sisko, Quark and Odo in DS9, Seven of Nine, the Doctor and Tuvok in Voyager. My favourite Star Trek movie is No. 4 (The Voyage Home) - the punk rocker on the bus bit cracks me up every time.

I was 13 when the original Star Wars film came out and I loved the three original films, but they haven't held my attention as much as Star Trek as I've grown older. I thought The Phantom Menace was so bad that I haven't bothered to watch Episodes 2 and 3.

I didn't think the original Stargate film was that great, but I like SG1; the chemistry between the characters is just right. It got a bit confusing when they started going on about the Ori and Ascended Beings and the like; a touch of Farscape Syndrome (I missed a couple of episodes of Farscape and in that time, they'd introduced so many new characters and plot twists that I lost track of it completely). I'm not so keen on the other Stargate series (Atlantis, Universe) - the characters just aren't as engaging, and there isn't the same level of humour.

I enjoy all of these franchises as well. I wasn't even a teenager when Trek's original series aired, but remember seeing a few of them when they aired the first time. Oddly, these are episodes not exactly known for greatness: "The Apple" (how many ways to off redshirts are there?), "The Way to Eden" (the infamous space hippies episode) and "Wink of An Eye" (the best of this grouping).

But I really didn't get into Trek until it became widely syndicated back in the mid-70s; we'd watch it Saturdays at lunchtime right before Doctor Who.

TOS looks a bit dated now, and cheesy at times but still told some great stories ("The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Balance of Terror" among others) and invented a neat alternate universe concept ("Mirror, Mirror").

DS9 grabbed that alternate universe scenario and ran with it, airing a half-dozen or so episodes following what might have happened when Mirror-Spock followed Kirk's advice to change its Empire. DS9 also did a fun sequel ("Trials and Tribble-ations") and a great Bond spoof ("Our Man Bashir") among other excellent episodes - but I agree that the Bajoran stuff and the Dominion War arc bored at times and made it hard for new viewers to get up to speed.

I also like TNG and Voyager (favorite episodes too many to name), Enterprise not so much but it began gaining strength near the end.

Favorite Trek movies include The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, First Contact, and the latest Abrams reboot.

The original Star Wars came out while I was at university, and I viewed it with friends then. It's hard to overstate the impact it had in movie making and the popular culture. And, geeks that we were, after Empire we stayed up all hours speculating on who the other Skywalker was or whether Vader really was Luke's father. It wasn't all spelled out like it is now.

Empire remains my favorite Star Wars movie. The prequel trilogy was okay but I prefer the originals.

I prefer the SG-1 television series to the original movie Stargate. I've not seen all the episodes, and even fewer episodes of the spinoff series, though I do prefer SG-1 to the spinoffs. I'll sit down and watch them when the opportunity presents itself.

I am also a fan of all the series you mentioned.

Star Trek - the original is by far my favorite. The characters were very well developed - and the friendships between Spock, Kirk and McCoy were wonderful. This show was the first sci-fi show that I ever actually enjoyed. As for it's later incarnations - TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise - I enjoyed them, but they never captured me as much as TOS did. The biggest reason for that is that I didn't think the characters' personalities were as well developed. TNG - the only character that really had a personality in the beginning was the only character that shouldn't have had one - Data. DS9 - I liked it better than TNG, until they brought Worf on and then I didn't like it much any more. Voyager - it was okay, but again, it just didn't have that special something that the original series did. And Enterprise - I didn't watch it past the first episode when it first aired, but I did watch the entire series on Netflix a few months ago. It got better as it went along - but, still.... The main problem with all of the later series was that they all felt too PC - starting with TNG changing "Where no MAN has gone before" to "Where no ONE has gone before" Apparently the people who lived on the planets they visited weren't actually people. MAN stands for mankind which includes women. And before Voyager aired they were so proud of having an African-American Vulcan - well, you can't have an African-American Vulcan. You can have a black Vulcan, you can have an African-American actor playing a Vulcan. But you can't have an African-American Vulcan...think about it

Stargate - like the movie. Loved SG1! Again, the appeal of this show was the characters and their relationships. It didn't hurt that Richard Dean Anderson was starring in it - I've really enjoyed almost everything he's been in.

Star Wars - the original trilogy was great - that would be Episode 4, 5, 6. And I like they original cuts of those films best - Lucas did not need to go back and "fix" them. He actually lost a lot of the feeling of celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi when he changed the music. Episodes 1, 2, 3 are really bad movies. They really seem to be more about special effects than the actual story. Episode 1 was all about taxes - not really an interesting topic for a film. Episode 2 was suppose to be Anikan and Padme's love story, but it was really just creepy. Episode 3 was how and why Anikan became Darth Vader - and the answer was because he loved Padme?? Sorry, didn't buy it. (Sorry for not using the spoilers if you haven't seen these movies, but they've been out long enough that I didn't really think it was necessary) I also didn't like they way they changed the definition of the Force from the original set of movies and the prequels. That said, I'm looking forward to the future movies. JJ Abrams did a good job with the Star Trek reboot - he managed to keep the basic personalities of the characters intact even though they were living on an alternate timeline. So, I think he has a very good shot at being faithful to the original Star Wars movies too.

Star Trek: I'm not a Trekkie, I'll say that right up front. But the Star Trek reboot that J.J. Abrams put out a few years ago I really enjoyed, and I thought that was the most clever series reboot I'd ever seen in my life. I'm tentatively looking forward to Into Darkness, but in recent history either I'm turning into a wimp or movies are getting darker and more rough for my taste, and the trailer looks like it's heading into darker territory (no pun intended). So we'll see.

Star Wars: I love Episodes IV, V, and VI. Episodes I, II, and III are just sad and I try to forget they were ever made. I haven't seen The Clone Wars so I have no idea if I'd like that movie or not. As far as VII, VIII, and IX are concerned, I'm not holding my breath. I like J.J. Abrams just fine, but Disney's series tend to be more miss than hit with me. Plus after hearing they're going to do some spin-off movies in addition to another trilogy, it sounds like they're milking the series for all it's worth, but to me it just sucks the life out of it.

Stargate: I really like the original movie. As far as the TV series goes, it holds the record for the longest TV show I've ever stuck around with. I watched the original series, seasons 1-8, and for the most part, I enjoyed it a good deal. But watching the first episodes of season 9 made me angry so I quit the series. I started watching Atlantis, but quickly got bored of it. I'm just not a TV person I guess. I also watched the first few episodes of Universe, and it was like Battlestar Galactica. But my friends all told me how it ended (or rather, didn't end) and that it was a big space soap opera, so I didn't do more than two or three episodes of that one either.

I guess I have a love/hate relationship with all three series.

I have a question for those of you who have seen Star Wars Phantom Menace....I don't know if I have studied story structure too much or what. But were any of you actually surprised that the queen was Padme. I went to see it in the theater with a couple of friends and their teenage son. When Padme steps up from the side of decoy queen and confesses that she's actually the queen - all three of my friends gasped. I couldn't believe that they were shocked by the revelation. I thought it was obvious. So where any of you surprised?

I grew up watching the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV, V, and VI), so those are pretty much favorites of mine. I've always liked Return of the Jedi best of them, mostly because as a kid I could never make sense of most of the Dagobah scenes in Empire Strikes Back. I actually don't mind The Phantom Menace or Jar-Jar Binks that much, though I know most SW fans despise him. There are parts of the other two in the prequel trilogy I enjoy, mostly from a single character or the overall worldbuilding. Overall, though, I'm not a fan of the new movies as compared to the ones I grew up with. I'm tentatively excited about J.J. Abrams making the new SW film, but I've just about given up hope of the films ever being as good as the first three. I haven't seen any of the Clone Wars-related material except for the traditional animated series Cartoon Network aired between Episodes II and III, which I liked because of the worldbuilding and the introduction of General Grievous (who was far scarier in those shorts than in the film). My favorite characters are definitely Qui-Gon Jin, Obi-Wan, C-3PO, R2-D2, Mace Windu, Han, Luke, and Leia. (I also like the villains Darth Maul, Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Vader, not to mention Asaaj Ventress from the Clone Wars material. She's probably the character for whom I would watch the current Clone Wars series.)

As for Star Trek, I saw occasional episodes of TNG and the Original Series growing up, and all of the original crew films (though most of them are all blurred together now since it's been a while). My wife and I have watched all of ST: Voyager together, and we are currently watching TNG all the way through (we're somewhere in season 6). We're planning to go through TOS and Deep Space 9 after that. We may or may not watch Enterprise. I've heard mixed reviews about that series. We still have a few of the TNG crew films to watch, and she hasn't seen most of the original crew films, so we plan to watch through (most of) those at some point. (I refuse to put her through the first and fifth ones, though.) My favorite characters are (INPO): Picard, Troi, Data, LaForge, Worf, Wesley, The Doctor, Spock, Janeway, Seven of Nine, Kes, Naomi Wildman, Guinan, and B'Elana Torres. As for favorite episodes, I can't begin to remember.

I haven't had much experience with the Stargate franchise. I've seen the original film and a few episodes of SG-1. I want to go through all of SG-1 and Atlantis once we finish our Star Trek viewings. It may be a while, but it's the plan.

Would we include Battlestar Galactica in this thread as well? If so, what are everyone's thoughts about that show? I haven't seen any of it myself, but I would like to watch it since I've heard good things about it from various people in real life.

Ooo - Battlestar Galactica.... well, there's also the new and old series of that, plus a spin-off of the new one.

I remember really enjoying the original Battlestar (with Lorne Green). I watched them again on Netflix recently and thought it was still a good show - and I didn't really like the second series and was a continuation of the first with Boxy all grown up. I didn't like the "special powers" they gave them.

The new Battlestar was very good - and a lot darker than the original. But, I didn't care very much for final season. Caprica (the spin-off/prequel) was worth watching - but I doubt that I ever sit down and watch it again.

Farscape is one that I haven't watched other than an episode here and there - and I think it is supposed to be watched in order.

Another one that I really liked was Babylon 5 - but again, I didn't like the last season as much - it seemed like the storyline just took a huge left turn and while I like a plot twist - it just got too far away from the original premise.

It's been rather amusing... My husband has been suffering through Voyager when he's up in the middle of the night feeding our kiddo. He's determined to make it through in the hopes that it will improve, but I think he's a couple seasons in already and still hates it.

What's really funny is that when he describes it to me, all I can think of is GalaxyQuest, one of the best spoof movies of all time (imho). Has anyone else seen it? Like it? Hate it? I think my favorite part is the chompers. "Whoever wrote that episode should die!!"

I have seen Galaxy Quest, although it's been a while and I didn't get a lot of the references and jokes at the time (I was fairly uninitiated in Star Trek at the time, but not wholly so). I need to go back and watch it again sometime, particularly now that I can take more pleasure from Alan Rickman's performance by imagining some of his other performances.

I'm sorry that your husband hasn't been enjoying Voyager, Fantasia. My wife and I enjoyed it, though I'll admit the first few seasons weren't the best. Once you reach season four and the appearance of Seven of Nine, the overall quality goes up, IMO. I thought the Kazon were an annoying recurring villain and so I didn't care for many of the early episodes, either. The sad thing for me was the general absence of any real character growth for Kes, who I thought had immense potential as a character. With the exception of episodes ("Elogium", "Fury", and "Before and After"), her character remained very static, not growing as much as I wanted her to. Oh well.

Once you reach season four and the appearance of Seven of Nine, the overall quality goes up, IMO.

I let him know. He was aware of the popularity of Seven of Nine, but he was concerned that the popularity was due to ahhh... eye candy, rather than a decent character. He's currently in the middle of Season 2 so hopefully he'll get to the good episodes soon.

Sorry to hear about Kes. I haven't really been watching, but the few bits of episodes I've seen, she was the character I was most interested in. I call her elf girl.

He was aware of the popularity of Seven of Nine, but he was concerned that the popularity was due to ahhh... eye candy, rather than a decent character.

From the perspective of a guy who generally doesn't buy into eye candy appeal in shows, Seven is far and away more than eye candy. She certainly doesn't suffer as much from that factor as Troi did in Next Generation. The fact that it took them more than five seasons to get her into a regular uniform like everyone else is appalling.

Yes, Kes was always one of my favorites in the early episodes.