Stargate
Stargate '94 has amazing costumes, sets, music, and lore, but weak writing and characterization. Stargate SG-1 has good characterization and writing, but it feels like a Trek knockoff, complete with generic English-speaking extraterrestrial civilizations and technobabble. I’d essentially like to craft a Stargate reboot which contains all the best elements of SG '94, SG-1, SGU, and the Bill McCay novels, and none of their worst.
I’d probably limit the humans seeded across the galaxy to north African stock rather than go gung-ho with Greeks, Chinese, Native Americans. etc. Also, no frickin’ Ancients/Ori/Ascension. That stuff wrecked Stargate for me.
Yeah, I can agree with that (partly anyway). As much as I love SG-1 up to Season 6/7 (since I pretty much liked Anubis and I do like the Ancients to a degree), I admittedly can see the humans across the galaxy being more North Africans (e.g. Berbers/Amazigh, etc.) than to being really close to what we perceive as the great ancient civilizations. And yeah, the Ori bits freaking sucked. I was okay with Ascension to a point since it gave me Anubis (one of my favorite SG-1 villains, even if he can be a Palpatine knockoff), but it really went off the rails after Anubis was defeated over Antartica.
I thought the Ancients were interesting until Season 6, when they were revealed as super-evolved prehistoric humans. That and the origins of the Replicators made the Stargate Universe too anthropocentric for my liking.
If I were to reintroduce the Ancients, I’d have to make them non-humanoid aliens. I’d rather just stick with Ra’s race as the builders of the stargate, though.