Space: Above and Beyond (1995)

Humanity, believing itself alone in the universe, has one of its off-world colonies destroyed by an alien race.
Thrown into an interplanetary war against an enemy they didn’t know existed, Earth forces take anyone willing to fight.
With the elite 127th squadron wiped out, the half-trained hog-podge 58th “Wild Cards” are sent against the alien threat, nicknamed the Chigs.

Review:
I watched this show as a kid and re-watched it as an adult. The CGI doesn’t really hold up anymore, they reuse the same 6-8 clips of the space fighters zipping around, if that kind of repetitive video gets to you then this is a pass; I don’t mind it at all.

I still love this show.

They change up the action by having land and space battles so it isn’t the same old “awooga” / get to the space ship / space battle – in every episode.
The characters are all individual people who came from a place and generally have places to go back to, this seems to be a concept lost by some modern writers who just plug in a character trait of a person into a situation.
There was a proper sci-fi world built that existed further than just the Chig war that I would have really liked to see in additional seasons but as with all good sci-fi on FOX, it was canceled as soon as possible.