I think it's absolutely their humanity that makes them more interesting as villains. The Wraith are essentially just hungry, like the nice Wraith lady says in Rising they don't require their food to agree with them. On the other hand the Genii are people struggling against the same hardships as the Atlanteans, only with centuries more history of struggle against the Wraith, they were on track to defend themselves before John et al pitched up and woke the sleeping Wraith.

Also, although some of what they do is a bit moally dubious, so is some of what the Atlanteans do to them. I wonder what would have happened had it been Teyla or Ford, or God forbid, Rodney left behind instead of Tyrus. The Atlanteans also stole the data device.

If the boot was on the other foot, I don't know that the Atlanteans, with their slightly dodgy ethics of experimenting on prisoners and shooting prisoners in cold blood, would behave all that differently. It would just be that we'd be rooting for the seizure of the city to succeed instead of fail, and we'd be thinking 'how clever of Sheppard to decide to take the city instead of just the C4' - maybe.

I also think, underlying all of the interaction between the Genii and the Atlanteans is the sad fact that they should or at least could have been allies. It just struck me as kind of Tollan-esque (to steal from the SG1-verse) to arrive in a galaxy, wake up a fearful enemy that the Genii have been fighting to survive for donkey's ages and then say 'you can't have our shiny A-bomb technology because you're too something- devious, ruthless, young, whatever (yeah, I know that was the Nox not the Tollan). Kinda arrogant, imho.

This is also what I really like about the 'heroes' of sga as opposed to sg1, they just seem more human, more fallible too.

Gonna stop rambling now.

Vive le Genii!!