I got hooked on SGA. As with any TV show, they always have to overdo the bad guys so that you get that sinking feeling in your gut, and then tame them down quite a bit. The whole first season of SGA, you are thoroughly scared of the Wraith. Season 2 is much the same, but season 3 starts a twist to the story.

I don't think SGU necessarily needs an uber-bad-guy race. That just doesn't seem to fit the story as we have it now, though it doesn't preclude them from inventing a story-arc where one occurs. The basics of story-plot-writing is that you have conflict and resolution. Conflict can be of many types. People can conflict with other people. Sometimes people have to wrestle with their environment, and sometimes they wrestle with themselves. Stargate has used all three of them over its storied career, but the dominant over-arching conflict has generally centered around a bad-guy race. All other forms of conflict were subservient (person wrestles with a personal demon that allows them to do something to advance the plot against the big bad race). SO SG1 seasons runs a Goa'uld arc followed by an Ori arc. An individual episode might not deal with the main plot but the entire season comes back to the main arcs. Atlantis always has to deal with the wraith in some way. for SGU, the premise is necessarily different: How/When are we going to get home? Are we even going to survive? You can expect the majority of episodes to turn on those questions in some way. Anything else betrays the main premise of the show.

On the whole, I think the acting is pretty good in Universe, and the charcters' personalities clash just enough to make good episodes. Yes, the first 10 episodes were pretty slow, but the first 10 episodes of both SG-1 and SGA had their bland moments too.