Amen to that. SG1 and Atlantis had amazing characters that turned an otherwise B-movie series into something worth watching. Jack O'Niell, Vala Mal Doran, and Rodney Mckay are heroes to me. SGU on the other hand completely fails to have anyone remotely comparable to make the show light-hearted and fun, and instead of having enough character depth to make a serious drama interesting, it just resorts to pointless bickering over irrelevant points to try and cook up false drama.

I found Lightwave/Modo to be incredibly easy to pick up from scratch and do amazing things with. Maya was a bit more tricky though, a lot of the default interface isn't immediately intuitive until you read through it a bit.

While Legos are the obvious choice, model kits (airplane / spaceship / etc) can be pretty engaging. I had many fond hours putting together and painting Fighter Jet models. 5 years might be a little early to start on that though, more suited for 7+.