Carl Lumley’s also on Alias playing Dixon. He was also John Parker in Buckaroo Banzai.
Confession time: My roommate and I used to make sure we caught Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades every week. Cleopatra because it was just such cheesy idiocy, and Jack of All Trades because, well, Bruce Campbell can do no wrong. (I also downloaded all of Brisco County, Jr.) Plus the fake-English-accent chick was really hot.
I own the first five seasons of Highlander on DVD. Season six comes out in a month or two.
I haven’t seen anyone mention VIPER. Anyone remember that? It was a show starring a Dodge Viper. And some guy who drove it. It was kind of a Knight Rider wannabe - the guy drove around in the Viper fighting crime. It could cover itself in armor when needed and sprout a variety of crime-fighting gadgets, a la the Batmobile. It also had the requisite black guy scientist in a wheelchair who invented and worked on the car.
And since the OP was asking why this type of show isn’t on any more, what about She Spies? That’s as cheesy as anything listed here. (Oh, hey, that reminds me - VIP should be on the list) It’s a Charlie’s Angels ripoff. Three beautiful criminals are granted a pardon by the government if they turn into crimefighters. It was on last night when I turned off the DVD I was watching, and as near as I could figure, an evil feminist organization was working to take over the world by convincing secretaries to kill their bosses and take over their companies. But, in the end, the organization was defeated when a karate kick from one of the She Spies removed the leader’s wig, revealing her to in fact be a man in drag. No, really. I’m serious.
Oh, and what was the name of that “Knight Rider: The Next Generation” show that was on a few years back? It had FIVE talking cars! All Fords, coincidentally enough. One was a truck. I think one was a Mustang. That’s all I remember about that.
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Earth 2.
The first few episodes looked promising. I liked the cast (mmm… Debrah Farentino, Jessica Steen, and Rebecca Gayheart :drooling smiley) and the premise. The stories were sometimes cheesy, but still entertaining. I don’t think it even lasted a full season, though.
The sad thing is that some of these shows were actually pretty good. Brimstone had excellent acting (at least, the guy playing the devil (John Glover) was very good and incredibly creepy).
The first season of * Witchblade * was very good. Then, for some idiotic reason, they hit the Big Reset Button and did it all over again the next season. Ugh, and ugh. That, plus the female lead’s apparent personal problems killed that one.
Cleopatra 2025 was much better than it should have been. They actually seemed to have a decent budget for special effects (although not much for dialog writing). And fortunately, apparently zero budget for costumes 
I couldn’t figure out why they killed The Invisible Man. It wasn’t particularly high budget except for the quicksilver effect, and it seemed very popular. A nice combination of humor, drama, and X-Files-like conspiracy theory. My only conclusion is that the SciFi Channel sucks.
The show Good Vs. Evil wasn't that good, but it looked like their budget must have come out of someone's lunch money. Even if they were deliberately trying to look retro.
In retrospect, the years 1998-2002 were pretty decent for TV fantasy/science fiction. As long as you don’t mind watching shows you like being cancelled.
OK, despite the OP’s claim that we’re sticking to recent shows, I don’t see anyone getting called out for The Phoenix, so…
Why the hell did they cancel Project UFO? Watched it religiously, I did. Without it there would have been no X-Files, I’m telling you!
And what about Probe? What the hell about Probe? Granted, one of their last episodes focused on an orangutan, which spell death for any show, but still…
If we are bringing up older shows, how about Alien Nation? After the series ended there were quite a few made-for-TV movies.
I agree that several shows mentioned so far were actually pretty good.
What is scary is how many of these shows I’ve seen and I don’t have cable. Most likely on Fox which has (or at least had) quite few hours that the network leaves to individual stations to fill.
Brian
HA! Well, as long as we’re dredging up crappy old series from beyond the mists of time dealing with UFOs, may I present UFO, a Gerry Anderson crapfest that came along LONG before his series about the moon being blowed out of orbit. It featured a moonbase staffed by ex-strippers with a thing for purple wigs wearing skintight space outfits and was worse than any 12 other SF series combined!
Speaking of vehicular cheese, anyone else remember Street Hawk? I remember almost nothing about it, except that in the pilot there was a scene in which Rex Smith was in a tube wearing nothing but tiny blue underpants, being covered with some sort of goop so that a form-fitting motorcycle suit could be constructed for him. Let’s just say that scene made a lasting impression. And not just of Rex.
If you want cheesy and in the 90’s, how about Super Force? Astronaut turned Cop/Vigilate with super-armor and a motorcycle, later unleashing his psychic powers. With Ken Olant fresh off a stint on Y&R, Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds, and Patrick Macnee. All guys who had at least some face, if not name, recognition around that time. Also had Patrick Swayze’s wife, replaced for the second season by Musetta Vander, who’s done her own share of cheesy SF/Fantasy. Yes, it actually ran for 2 years.
Really not great. And I watched it every week.
Sorry, I didn't like that one. The problem was that NONE of the characters were even remotely likable.
Jack-of-all-trades was great fun.
Anothor that I remember from that era that really sucked, was “The New Adventures of Robin Hood”. How bad was it? The FIRST episode had Robin and his merry band fighting off a horde (okay a dozen) of Mongols who were invading a small English village. Most shows wouldn’t have gotten that lame until later seasons when they ran out of ideas.
I still remember the Mongol leader complaining about his cousin Genghis, and later (in slow motion yet) waving his big aluminum met cleaver above his head and shouting "I will be the greatest warrior since Kublai Kahn". Historical facts aside, apparently Kublai's accomplishments pale before the act of looting a small English village.Actually, that was Amanda Pays as Dr. Tina McGee on The Flash, not Jeri Ryan.
Knight Rider 2010.
Actually actually, Ryan appeared in an episode and a post-series TV movie as Flash’s squeeze, Felicia Kane. Amanda Pays played McGee, a S.T.A.R. scientist who was Barry Allen’s costumer/advisor and while there may have been some sexual tension (I mean, c’mon, it’s Amanda Pays!), she wasn’t really his love interest.
OTTOMH
“Out beyond the limits of the world, where man and machine and spirit unite. It is the end of the beginning. It is the time of SuperForce.”
My favorite episode is the one with Lilith as a vampire who drinks spinal fluid and summons satan through a monkey head on an altar.
And you can’t beat lines like
“I’ve died and come back as Fred Flintstone!”
Back in the 80’s I remember a series call Other World about a family that was taking a tour of a pyramid and excited to a parallel Earth. That Earth with slightly more advanced, and a bit of a dictatorship. It really stuck in my mind because we had just gotten one of those new-fangled VHS machines and this was the first thing I ever taped.
They Came From Outer Space
“something something something, polyester pizza. Something something something, neon Mona Lisa! Goin all the way in red corvette, it’s the protoperfect dream! They came from outer space. They came from outer space. Outer space!”
A pair of twins from the planet Krouton are sent to earth to go to college. Instead, they use their matter transportation powers to restore a classic convertible and cruise America. They are of course chased by an incompetent group of Air Force officers.
The twins could also temporarily combine with inanimate objects, but could only remain for IIRC 60 seconds or they were stuck there for 24 hours.
And the twins transferred sexual sensations. So, the party animal twin was having all the sex, but the shy twin was having all the orgasms.
I was going to bring that up to see if anyone remembered the title. It was bugging me that I couldn’t remember. I remember really getting into it (well, duh, I was a loser who liked The Phoenix and mostof these shows – I blame it on having Sleestaks on TV during my formative years).
Other people already beat me to mentioning Viper, M.A.N.T.I.S. and Earth 2… but what about Seaquest DSV? (aka Seaquest 2020)
Aside from the talking/squeakin Dolphin (Darwin?), it seem to remember that it was pretty good in season one. Then the writers went insane or something.
I looooved Street Hawk as a kid, along with its Bizarro concept-twin, Airwolf. Cool looking motorcycle/helicopter, out fighting crime, vaguely secret identities…all that stuff.