What? No Farscape? (Premiere date March 19, 1999 so it just sneaks into the window.)
Babylon 5
D’oh!
Zakalwe, well put.
Favorite is fine too. Stargate is my favorite show from the 90s, but I’m not sure it’s really the best. Though one of the reasons I’ve always liked it was because the idea was fairly simple: accept one BDO and an extension of the ideas in the movie and everything else is set in the present. And, in the beginning at least, simple tech on our end otherwise. No spaceships, no force shields, no beam weapons, and so on except for what our heroes eventually obtain through combat or trade.
I’ve got to go with Babylon 5, too, although Deep Space 9 is close in the running for me and the only one of those series that I actually watched during the 90s 
The first season of Babylon 5 starts off pretty slow and I was squirming through maybe the first 6 episodes. I don’t know if it’s the acting or the directing that is at fault but most of the scenes with Londo and Vir … ugh! If you are new to the series or just couldn’t get past the first few episodes on your first try I would strongly recommend starting with … oh … Signs and Portents … and going from there. You’ll miss a bit of backstory/character development, but S&P is where the main story arc of the series really kicks in. And once you’re well and truly invested in the series and you care about the characters, you can go back and watch season 1 in its entirety. Season 1 is much more enjoyable once you can spot all the hints-of-what-is-yet-to-come; you can realise just how ambitious the story really is.
While it was a struggle for me to get there, once I got to S&P it started me down a very slippery slope - I think I finished off season 1 that very night! What a great ride. Seasons 2 & 3 are non-stop story-arcing (and some of the best story-arcing I have ever seen in a TV show), halfway through season 4 it starts to slow down, and the series is well and truly wrapped up during the last 2 episodes of season 4.
Let us all pretend that season 5 does not exist. It is just … better that way. (We need a fingers-in-ears-la-la-la smiley!)
itching to participate in a B5 discussion thread
That was my point, though I didn’t put it very well. I don’t think Buffy, Angel, or Futurama are SF. Futurama strikes me as meta-SF, if I may be pretentious. It makes fun of SF themes. Mostly it uses SF to make fun of stuff in today’s media and society, and to be funny in general.
Thanks!
While not directly in the industry myself, I have a close friend who has recently shifted to full time writing (and got a pretty damn decent “pay raise” doing it) so I’ve been around it. The concept of genre/sub-genre and how rigid the dividing lines are is a topic we’ve discussed often and at length. It’s particularly meaningful to him because he is someone who writes what he wants without regard to what he’s “supposed” to be writing and has been attacked for it. One of the attacks came from someone my friend knew fairly well and respected greatly (he still respects his writing ability, but not the person), so it’s one of those buttons for him and I guess I’ve picked it up from him.
Babylon 5, definitely.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you want to count it) next.
Quantum Leap a strong third.
If Buffy can be on the list, so can Highlander(1992-1998).
Not always; there is some great science fiction that is also great storytelling. But it’s pretty rare that an author or direct has a good grasp on both, and the most popular sci-fi tends to be genre stuff that is scarcely either.
I’d still make a distinction between science fiction–both “hard” and “soft”–and science fantasy/space opera/green-eyed monsters in terms of the story being about ideas rather than action/adventure, but there’s no real point in dragging it out further. I’d love to see real science fiction on television, but with spare exceptions, it just isn’t done.
Stranger
Not always; there is some great science fiction that is also great storytelling. But it’s pretty rare that an author or direct has a good grasp on both, and the most popular sci-fi tends to be genre stuff that is scarcely either.
I’d still make a distinction between science fiction–both “hard” and “soft”–and science fantasy/space opera/green-eyed monsters in terms of the story being about ideas rather than action/adventure, but there’s no real point in dragging it out further. I’d love to see real science fiction on television, but with spare exceptions, it just isn’t done.
Stranger
*Buffy *and *Angel *would probably fall under urban fantasy more than science fiction. Primary emphasis is on supernatural forces and magic and there’s minimal emphasis on technology. I’d have to vote on *Futurama *from the initial list, since I almost fell asleep trying to watch the first episode of Babylon 5, and I enjoyed Stargate SG-1 well enough to finish the first season, but I haven’t even bothered to rent another.
See what I mean? Among other faults, hard science fiction is too repetitve. 
I do think the scarcity of “good story/hard science” fiction does have something to do with TV not picking it up.
But that’s just the difference between good literature and bad. All good writing, SF or not, is about ideas.
Note, though, that you can have action/adventure *and * ideas in the same story. One doesn’t preclude the other.
My list would be…
B5
Red Dwarf
Farscape
…BIG GAP…
Quantum Leap
SG-1
The BIG GAP separates those that have halfway interesting characters and those that don’t.
I don’t think you can count Buffy or Angel as Science Fiction … the rest I haven’t seen enough to comment.
On that list, I’d vote B5 & Futurama as joint tops.
A really good, mostly-hard SF show that I’m not sure qualifies under rule (3)[which is a stupid rule, BTW] was the the BBC/German co-production Space Island One. While the review on that Wikilink is less than complementary, I was very impressed. Dealt with a lot of the practicalities of real, ISS-style space station life in a way DS9 or B5 never could. Hell, there was even a story arc about space pregnancy. There was only ever one woo-woo Martian pyramid-type episode, the rest was all very hard, very near-future. Like, 2010.
Didn’t hurt that Indra Ové and Julia Bremmerman were stone foxes, either.
Oh, and one that needs mention, that isn’t on that list, is Total Recall:2070 . Make sure you see the uncensored version. I enjoyed it a lot - certainly better than its namesake Arnie film.
Wasn’t *Space: Above and Beyond *, or whatever it was, from the '90s?
Anyway, I’ll go with B5, Buffy seemed more fantasy than SF, despite the Buffybot.
I can’t pick one, but I’ll put Babylon 5 and *Farscape * (and *Buffy * and *Angel * if we’re counting them as sci-fi, which I probably wouldn’t have). I loved X-Files for the first several seasons, but it imploded so completely it left me unable to enjoy even the earlier, non-sucky seasons. I was a big fan of Quantum Leap back in the mid-'90s thanks to USA’s reruns, but watching it more recently I don’t think it holds up that well. Kind of fun, but not something I want to watch again.
Hey, are we counting Twin Peaks? That had some sci-fi elements, and probably should count if *Buffy * and *Angel * do.
I don’t know if anyone else remembers this show, given it was only on for a single season, but I thought Earth 2 was a great show, despite a few mediocre episodes.