Battlestar Galactica, the brilliant reimagining of the cheesy old TV show, has fought tooth and nail to get to where it is, a fourth season where all of the stories can be wrapped up – and even still, we’re hoping that the soon to be ending writer’s strike hasn’t royally fucked that up. This show is amazing – not just for a science fiction show, but as a television show, period. And yet Battlestar, which has terrific, smart scripts and excellent actors, struggles to stay alive while Stargate Atlantis saunters into its fifth season.

Seriously, what’s wrong with the world of genre television?

I know, judging by the numbers, that there are people reading this who watch Stargate and not Battlestar, and I hate them. It’s one thing to be so caught up in a genre that you support every offering in it, but it’s another to watch poorly made garbage like Stargate and its spinoffs while ignoring a ballsy, often incredible TV show. Hell, it looks like Stargate Atlantis may well last more episodes than Angel, another genre show that was about a thousand times better than this tripe.

I’ve sort of grown used to getting recommendations from people to watch truly hideous genre TV – so many people told me to give Farscape a shot that I did, until I realized it was a show about a spaceman and some fucking Muppets. How someone who has outgrown soiling their pants on a regular basis could plop themselves in front of a show about a spaceman and some fucking Muppets is beyond me. I watched four episodes of this crap, and the idea of plowing through any more gave me the shakes. Then there’s Babylon 5, the TV show for people who felt their addiction to Star Trek wasn’t socially marginalizing them enough. I also understand that there’s a spinoff show from Dr. Who where people have a lot of sex or something; I’m too busy severing my cable TV connection to check that one out.

And these are just the niche genre shows. Heroes, of course, continues to draw in millions of thinking-impaired viewers, and it seems like every TV season brings a new batch of crummy genre shows. The good news is that junk like Moonlight and Amsterdam probably can’t compete in the network world – it’s only the SciFi Channel’s soft expectations that has allowed some 700 episodes of Stargate related television to be produced. I’m curious to see if the highly repetitious and bad Terminator series can hack it on Fox.

Again, I understand that there is a segment of the nerd population who wants to support all genre related efforts, but you’re not helping anybody by making Stargate a success. The actors on these shows are only having their hopes raised – when their time is over they’ll be getting no more roles and will live off the money they earn by signing autographs at local cons. The SciFi Channel sees that it’s easier and more profitable to make junk rather than spend the time and money on nurturing something like Battlestar. And by watching Stargate you’re pretty much closing yourself off from vagina. The time has come to turn your backs on this crap and to demand that genre shows be good, and not just settle for genre shows that have puppets or people in shitty latex nose bridges. SciFi Channel, I implore you to shut this Stargate down.