I’ve always thought of the Stargate franchise as the little sci-fi universe that could. Of television science fiction franchises, it’s second only to Star Trek for total number of episodes (354, over 4 shows), and it succeeded in developing galaxy-spanning stories and more than one overwhelmingly-scary sets of technologically-advanced villains for us puny humans to go up against. It also gave us space-MacGyver and one of the best female kick-butt science heroes TV has ever seen in Samantha Carter.
And friend-of-GeekDad David Hewlett (@dhewlett) played Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay, who was sort of a combination of Star Trek’s Scotty and Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.