dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
Pretty much.Stargate Universe very much felt to me like someone had seen the BSG remake and went "Can't we do that, but in Stargate?"
Episodic vs serial is also a artifact of the way shows were watched, you might see them once or twice a week, unless you had tivo or something. Which meant that if you missed an episode, it took a whole season re-run to see it again. Now people binge on a service like roku or netflix. It also informs us as a viewer as to how we watch TV; and not really being an American, I go for days without watching TV because when I was a kid, there were only three channels anyways, and the TV was always dominated by siblings and my parents.
Writing is another thing, it has always been hit or miss, with B5, JMS did everything, which is pretty amazing. Sometimes it all just falls together, such as I was reading about Blade Runner, and Roy Batty's dying word was just "Crap" and he improvised the whole "Teardrops in the rain" speech, Deckard was supposed to shoot Rachel in the head, and say if he didn't do it someone would, the street scenes were done by going to Melrose ave and getting a bunch of local punk rock and new wavers as extras, and the whole "dark and smokey" was them experimenting with neo-noir, which in turn has lead probably to the dark and edgy of today's TV. Ridley Scott called it the perfect storm.