Oh I love the Orville. Can’t wait for more of it 
Counterpoint: Whenever i see a scene which is supposed to be intimate (lovers laying around in bed after sex for example) and the woman or man is casually grabbing a blanked to hide her/his nudity as if there is a camera or 3rd person around, it brings me out of the movie.
Because nobody does this in real life.
Its unrealistic and based on a form of ancient prudery still present in modern American media.
If deadly and brutal violence is normalized, why is sexuality and nudity not? It’s just wrong and i can hardly tolerate this double standard. Its subtle but it is present and it annoys me.
There is a line which gets blurry and yes shows like GoT certainly did cross it, but i’d rather have a show which tries to incorporate nudity and sex as normal and fails, rather than stick to the usual prudish way of implying but not showing.
IMHO AC was perfect in that regard. Made it more fleshy and sensual, a good match with the theme of the show.
@mib2berlin
My father watched this when he was little, but strangely he never considered himself a fan of SciFi movies (he studied physics so most SciFi he says is too stupid and unrealistic)
I tried to watch Orion but i couldn’t tolerate it…its just too old and strange for me.
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Of all the shows you listed, this one for sure takes the cake as far as campy, and at times, pretty cringy, in my opinion.
But the reason I love this show is because they know it and totally lean into it. They constantly self deprecate about the bromance between the two main characters, and occasionally break the 4th wall with comments about how douchy they would be if they were really just characters in a TV show
-looks at camera-
It’s cheesy, unintelligent programming, but it’s a fun show. And every time I watch a horror flick, I just think, “Man, if only Sam and Dean Winchester were here to find the bones, salt, and burn 'em.” 
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I watched The Orville during season 1, and it was fun, but I never got addicted. Maybe another try and I will!
On Altered Carbon and nudity, it’s not the sensual nudity, more when they, fx, revive a clone and it just marches around, d**k or t*ts swinging, almost as if to prove something. The blanket thing, I totally agree with. But just because they CAN show D,T&A whenever they want, doesn’t mean they should. I feel the counter-prudish concepts go overboard a lot, sadly.
low budget scifi is something i grew up with.
shows like creature double feature,space 1999,star trek.and a bunch i can’t remember.
i have watched all the shows you guys mention as well.along with battlestar galactica (original)star trek tng.
Buck rodgers in the 24th century etc so on and so forth.but my favorite as a kid was U.F.O.
man i loved that show!the video shows the intro so i think youll get it.
no more linking youtube i guess,bah its wort a look anayway.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sGZWHbyXKs
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Oldies, but fun:
- Seaquest DSV (1993 ), watch only first 2 seasons though.
- The Visitor (1997), only one season
- Falling Skies (2011) was alright for a rainy Sunday streak
As some already said, Star Trek DS9 is a very nice watch, and somewhat different from the other series. Babylon 5 (+ movies) are equally awesome, and sometimes oddly similar story wise.
But most of the series mentioned here are a nice binge.
And my guilty pleasure: Reboot! (1994) Yes, I was a young lad at that time 
edit: Forgot one: Space 1999 (1975) Hurrah for syndication
Mind you, ds9 and Voyager are not low budget at all. They were too of the line vfx wise.
On the other hand, doctor who has a very low budget vibe to it, even if the modern incarnation is well budgeted.
so magic
I also loved the lost in space series.
Battlestar Galactica. “Gunsmoke” in Space, complete with Lorne Greene …
I don’t think anyone who didn’t grow up in Canada would know this, but THE STARLOST I’m nostalgic for. When I finally rediscovered it I was surprised it starred the guy from 2001 A space Odyssey. I still think it’s pretty good, but they literally used colored lightbulbs for special effects ;D. I also remembered Space1999 from back then when I was around 7 and had to investigate online a bit to find it, I love the vocal cadence of the acting in that… Prentis Hancock is the greatest cheesy scifi co-star actor imo, he’s really good at being an irritable stormtrooper third in command type roles, which were very few, but excellent.
I actually have the DVD set of that show. (Starlost) The production values are horrid, but the stories are actually kind of interesting. And I loved the design of the ship.
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I think most “current” people would have difficulty sitting through it Actually clear colored plastic items were sort of a futuristic special effect in that, Those black round environment kiosks were pretty cool too.
I saw “Starlost” on PBS in the 1970’s. I remember thinking “Hey those are the ships from Slient Running”. There was also the “Lathe of Heaven” based on a Ursla K. LeGuinn book. A guilty pleasure from that time was “Kolchak: the Night stalker” that was a campy tv show.
DS9 was good because it showed the Federation as not perfect. B5 was interesting because I think it was the first Sci-fi to have a story arc over seasons and not episode of the week like shows up to that time. I also got to work at Netter Digital for a bit before they went under.
The Expanse is a really good series. My all time favorite is still the original Twilight Zone series. That was some good writing on a low budget.
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But, y’know … they were doing “science fiction” at at time when the networks wanted us to “Leave It To Beaver.” They had nothing to work with. “Technically, it was friggin’ awful!” The scripts were what they could find. But they did it anyway!
Let the record show that the “geniuses” at Desilu wanted to cancel Star Trek, which was one day to become an enormous cash-cow, after only two seasons. (And, many years later, equally brilliant souls at 20th Century Fox told George Lucas “no one wants to watch a space movie,” and gave him all the merchandising rights. "D-oh!!" )
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omfg… I just did a search in this thread for a particular low budget sci-fi show… that I am absolutely stunned that none of you nerds have mentioned… Red Dwarf!!! What’s wrong with you smeg heads, that you could overlook that one?!!
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There was really good Sci-Fi show on TV back then, it was called The Twilight Zone (1959 almost 7 years before the first episode of Star Trek). The amount of episodes, and wide range of unheard of science fiction concepts launched the Sci-Fi TV scene into mainstream.
I read somewhere that the majority of those screenplays came directly from the mind of Rod Sterling. Dude had a big imagination!
We take for granted a lot of our modern Sci-fi “laws” and write our stories on top of the conceptual ground work from the original masters’.
In our modern era it’s almost impossible to watch a Sci-Fi show or movie and not correlate a part of the film’s concept to a Twilight Zone episode, whether it was through inspiration or coincidence.
With TZ and the entire Stargate universe it’s reminds me of the South Park episode “Simpsons Did It.” 
If the Op @Embassy_of_Time is getting into the entire Stargate universe, welcome; it’s a long but beautiful journey. I just advise that, like with most Tv series the first season’s production value can be rough until proper funding starts coming in. SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe are all really solid and span some 16 plus years (some having 20 plus episode each season) of Sci-fi TV.
Also be ready for Syfy Network’s traditional ending of a great series without a clear finally. It really is a thing.
I won’t tell you which Stargate series falls prey to this
And if you’re looking for more of that situational Sci-Fi TV checkout “Dark Matter” the first season is ultra low budget, you can literally see spray painted pallets glued to the walls, but it has a cool concept and is extremely entertaining. “Android” is now one of my more modern favorite Sci-Fi characters, which comes from this show. She really grows on you. 
And Killjoys is another that won me over really quickly. It’s budget seemed a little higher in the first season than previous Syfy productions though.
Tim
in my eyes… goofiness, impro, ingenuity, naiveness, innocence, easyness … making it feel good with what you got at hand and not worrying about the outcome is what i like above all… it kinda feels that the whole team had fun doing it and it flows on through the screen
just like a Bad taste or Space Balls on a Sunday morning… History of the world, SNL sketches…
I am of the opinion that blender will give low budget scifi new adrenaline and blood, and do you know why I’m happy with this?
because often good ideas from novices … there are people more willing to experiment with new ideas in this category.
You mean like JJ Abrams before he became a mainstream name and turned into Michael Bay 2.0? 
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