Third.  Stargate SG-1 is third on my list of televised sci-fi. My list:

1) Star Trek.  I cut my sci-fi teeth on this show.  My dad used it in lectures to his history classes.  It has colored my entire existence, although not to the extreme that I am ever likely to be asked to appear in Trekkies II.

2) Babylon 5.  A seminal moment in television period, never mind sci-fi. One man's vision, if he's allowed to run with it.  The fifth season kind of wobbles, since J. Michael Straczynski wasn't expecting to get it, and the first season is slow but necessary, but the three middle seasons are literate, enlivening and cohesive, vibrant with characterization, interaction, dynamics and dialogue.  Straczynski may or may not do anything else, but this was -- and is -- brilliant.

3) Stargate SG-1.  It has all the elements:  a good premise, engaging characters, action, and humor.  I like that it's taking place in present day, with characters who are less than perfect.  It makes for interesting television, and I am trying to convince my cult that they need to take it up, bearing in mind that the last show I recommended to them was B5, but so far my sojourns among the Great Unwashed have born little fruit.  Never fear: I shall persevere.

4) Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (the Joel Episodes).  Who's cooler than Crooooow?  What's funnier than Joel and the 'Bots showing you why the director of Attack of the Eye Creatures "just didn't care"?  I have to confess that even with the snide comments (and we all know how I feel about snide), it was very hard to watch these bad movies, so I usually tuned in for the first half-hour and the action on the station, and then, if I remembered, the final moments.  But it's a pretty darn clever idea, and I wish I'd thought of it myself.  Keep passing the tapes! 

5) Star Trek: The Next Generation.  For the first two seasons I thought they had made a dreadful decision to revive a classic, and I wondered who this wimpy captain was who kept turning to his crew for help in making decisions.  But I stuck with it, and once it found its feet somewhere in the third season, this turned into a good show.  Up until the seventh season, when it got kind of tired and flat, and somewhere in there I did have to wonder: doesn't anyone in the 24th century know anything about birth control?  Everyone on the show ended up with a son he never knew about, and they all had siblings they didn't know about, too.

6) Earth 2.  It only got one season, and the Grendlers looked totally stupid, but the Terrians were pretty cool -- and the place the pilgrims holed up for the winter was fabricated by Hansen Weatherport, late of Gunnison, Colorado, and now headquartered in nearby Olathe.  Morgan was annoying, but Bess made him bearable, and Danziger and Adair were always entertaining.  The producers, fearing cancellation, apparently thought they could force another season by ending on a cliffhanger, and sometimes I still wonder:  what was going to happen to Devon?

7) Pigs in Space. All right, so it wasn't really a series: this Muppet spoof was still pretty darn funny.  Just the names alone: the Starship Swinetrek, Captain Link Hogthrob . . . and how can you ever go wrong with the deswine Miss Piggy?

8) Red Dwarf.  I can't ever keep Rimmer and Lister straight, namewise (I know they're completely different characters), and I don't tune in enough to understand the changes the crew undergoes.  Where'd Kryten come from? But it's funny, irreverent and refuses to take itself seriously, and those are all things worth admiring.

9) My Favorite Martian. The coolest thing about this show?  Uncle Martin's antennae.  I haven't seen it since I was a kid, although Ray Walston has shown up in Trek incarnations as Boothby the Starfleet Gardner (now there's a title), but I fondly remember Bill Bixby's neurotic attempts to keep a blase Martian under wraps.  Plus, isn't the word "Martian" just totally fun?

10) The Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman. I never considered these sci-fi when I dutifully tuned in each week, but when you think about it, that's what they were.  Stronger than silent E, able to leap capital T in a single bound . . . oh, wait, that's Letterman from The Electric Company. Well, anyway, Steve Austin was darn fast (nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh -- who didn't try running across their yard in slow-motion to be just like Steve Austin?) and Jamie could rip the L.A. phonebook in half with her bare hands. Bonus:  both shows featured that other Richard Anderson, playing Oscar Goldman.

11) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I gave this one about three seasons, same as I did for Next Gen, decided the characters were complete cardboard (if a Ferengi is your most interesting character, you've failed somewhere along the line), and quit watching.  I checked in a few times after Worf joined the crew, and then decided to watch the last several episodes.  Somewhere in there they developed characters and arcing storylines!  I think the credit probably goes to Ira Steven Behr, but I'll never know for sure. Certainly it wasn't anyone who then moved on to Voyager.  I probably should watch more episodes, and maybe some day I will.

12) Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. This guy creates more shows when he's dead than most people do while living.  I watched most of the first-season episodes and wondered why I kept coming back.  It's an okay show (gotta like Beka Valentine!), if completely unbelievable, and I may keep watching.  Or I may not.

13) Lost in Space.  Bad sets, implausible situations, Dr. Smith, women who did absolutely nothing to further the cause of humankind ("You girls get below and wait until the action's over; then you can come back for the wrap-up.") -- there's not a lot to recommend this show.  On the plus side, there's Guy Williams (Zorro!), and really, this is a tribute to his other show.  Lost also had a young Bill Mumy, who grew up to be Lennier on B5, and the music was by "Johnny" Williams, who went on to score (get it?) really big in the movies, many of them sci-fi blockbusters like Star Wars.

14) The X-Files.  I watched this show when no one else did, in the first season, and I liked it.  Then I got tired of flashlights as special effects, and tuned out.  I tuned back in to discover some idiotic alien conspiracy (lying dormant for millions of years waiting for just the right moment to take over Earth, with help from Earthlings), tuned out, decided to tune in for Mulder's abduction and subsequent recovery, and wondered why.  Chris Carter has no facility for arcing storylines, and his master plan is all over the board.  Some individual episodes stand out (my favorite: baseball-playing aliens in Roswell), but most of them just suck.

Not The Lost Saucer, but the one we keep around the shop. It was only lost once, after Connor played with it, but we found it again, so now it's a Found Saucer.

15) Mork & Mindy.  If forced to, I will admit that I watched more episodes of this show than I should have.  Hey!  It was set in Boulder; I was in Boulder; I was a teenager --what the heck did I know?  I even saw the Happy Days episode where Richie had a dream about Mork from Ork, which is where it all started.  But I did draw the line at the stupid episodes with Jonathan Winters.

16) Third Rock From the Sun. Something to watch when there's nothing else to do.  The characters were pretty fun, and William Shatner as the Big Giant Head was entertaining, but nothing there to make it a weekly event.

17) The Lost Saucer and Sigmond and the Sea Monsters. Saturday mornings in front of the TV as a kid (I liked Fruit Loops too, just like Jack O'Neill). I don't remember a whole lot about either of these shows (I liked the sea monsters better), but both of them have fun titles.

18) Farscape.  I try, but I just can't get into this show.  The characters, including the tall guy with the braids, are just too Muppety to take seriously.  I like the soldiers, the guy from Earth and the woman he's attracted to, and Virginia Hey has everything to recommend her: blue skin, and a last name that's one of my favorite words.  But there are just better things about Friday nights, including Stargate.

19) Dr. Who.  This would probably be much higher on the list except for the part where I've never seen an episode.  I like the concept of the Tardis, though.

SHOWS I FORGOT (that belong somewhere on this list): Quantum Leap, Sliders and The Twilight Zone. I haven't seen many episodes in the Zone, although I've watched Burgess Meredith get left with all the books in the world several times, and seen William Shatner and the airplane hitchhiker. Sam Beckett was cool, but we'll see what an affair with Enterprise does for Scott Bakula. Anyone seen Jerry McConnell lately?

DEAD LAST: Tie between Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica.  Yes, I watched episodes of both and no, I'm not proud of this.  But at least when I watched Voyager it was usually at a fest and we were making fun of it, very much in an MST3K vein.  And I didn't waste too many brain cells on Galactica--the Cylons were cool, and it did have Pa Cartwright, but it also had Richard Hatch.  Bleah!

Those Canadians! Can they turn out a TV show or what? [You won't find SCTV or Kids in the Hall here because I never watched either.]

1) Stargate SG-1.  Technically, perhaps not a Canadian show, but half the cast calls the country home and it appears to be eligible for Canadian Emmys, so we're going with it.

A more-or-less genuine souvenir from the Great White North, surrounded by what we're sure is the Official Fish of Canada, the orca. And yeah, we know that dolphins aren't really fish, but let's just go with it.

2) Bordertown.  It's a western with a Mountie, so how can you go wrong? And it follows the rule that all Canadian shows have to have a character named Jack.  This one went even further and had a character (dead, but talked about a lot) named Jacques as well.  No offense to the Mountie, but I liked Marshal Jack Craddock better.  I think Dr. Marie Dumont did too.

3) The Red Green Show.  How can you go wrong with a show that offers pertinent advice?  "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy," and "Keep your stick on the ice."  Plus, most of Red's inventions call for massive quantities of duct tape, and what could be cooler than that? 

4) Danger Bay. Veterinarian action was never so exciting!  I can't help it: I liked the cast, the house on the bay, the airplane, and even the scenes at the aquarium were okay.  Plus, our lovely pilot went by her intitials, J.L. -- and the J stood for Jackie.

5) Due South.  I should have watched more episodes, because I liked the ones I did see. My reference book says there was a detective named Jack among the regular cast members, so there you go.

LAST) The X-Files. Filmed in Vancouver until David Caruso -- I mean, David Duchovny -- threw the first of many, many temper tantrums and got filming shifted to Los Angeles.  If I were Canada, I wouldn't have been sorry to see him go.

---------------------------- "Because life should be a party" -- the Solo Cup Company