One of the things I loved about the Stargate series is that they took a lot of these questions somewhat seriously. Transporters are used as weapons in Atlantis to beam in big ol' bombs until the enemy eventually works out what's happening and how to prevent it. In some ways you can still tell it's ultimately a Star Trek sequel, but they did a reasonable job of thinking it through much better.
It also doesn't suffer from "Cool Technology in one episode -> never heard from again" syndrome, to give another example of an improvement over Star Trek.
If you've never watched it, I recommend it. It sort of dies with a whimper rather than a bang (opinions on the spinoffs are mixed), but SG-1 was very good for a very long time. Mainlining the first season episodes without commercials and in sequence is really a spectacular experience if you can stomach the "time wastiness". The first couple of seasons in particular really captured the sense of humans being thrust extremely suddenly into a new, huge universe without guides very well.