Stargate SG-1 Gets A Seventh Season

An anonymous reader writes "Farscape may or may not have been cancelled [does anyone know?], and Enterprise is so politically correct I can barely bring myself to watch it, but with MacGyver onboard, it looks like Stargate SG-1 will be back for a seventh season."

Comments

Enterprise politically correct?

[kir]

Really? I've just started watching them and feel it's no where near as PC as TNG or Voyager. I guess if you compare it to something like Firefly... OK.

Just how bad is Andromeda?!?! Or is just me who thinks it's shite?

farscape still cancelled

[banky]

Farscape is still cancelled, but some people are trying to save it, and the jury is still out. It's a dead man (show) walkin' but it's not over till the switch is thrown.

Aah.. MacGyver..

[EvilCabbage]

I havent sat down and watched an episode of SG-1 yet. Seeing MacGyver without his mullet just un-nerves me.

Re:Aah.. MacGyver..

[teslatug]

Don't bad mouth McGuyver unless you want to get a royal wedgie from the sisters from hell.

Noooo!!!

[molrak]

That means we'll probably have to wait yet another year for the MacGyver Reunion Special, or the Richard Dean Anderson E! True Hollywood Story. Oh well, I guess there's always of catching him on the old reruns of General Hospital on Soap Network.

Question about SG TV series

[CathedralRulz]

Hi,
I have never watched this show but am curious how it compares to the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series in that does it have a story arc and continuity between each episode? I think the show started on the Showtime network, didn't it? How did it become syndicated?
Thanks.

Re:Question about SG TV series

[Cyno01]

its based on the movie and theres a lot of continuity between the episodes and its mostly based on hard science, for things they cant explain they make up simple solutions without a lot of technobabble, just about every episode the team visits a new planet, and every planet is pretty much like some period in the earths history, sorry if that sounds cynical, i really do like the show, anyways... it was originally on showtime, i dunno for how long but showtime dropped it and sci-fi picked it up, its syndicated, i dont know much about that, but watching it on saturday afternoons before we got cable got me hooked

Re:Question about SG TV series

[PythonOrRuby]

And vastly better dialogue.

Re:Question about SG TV series

[jpt.d]

I would say that it isn't as well planned as Babylon 5 (not that there really could be that much planning in another series [with exception of Jeremiah]) but the things get done. For example B5 didn't deal with so many things that were close to home, Shadow War, Earth War, Centari-Narn war, etc. SG-1 is faced with more direct threats to their survival. First season was being shut down (base being shutdown), then the attack of earth by Aphophis, then the Tok'ra taking over Carter (main character). All this in a three episode span. Eventually it is the replicators, system-lords, a planted asteroid, big bombs that can go through walls, the thing that can destory the stargate, etc. Need I say more? I wouldn't really compare it to star trek though.

Re:Question about SG TV series

[Marillion]

Showtime had the series for five seasons. They syndicated it - with a lag of about a year. A big complaint about SciFi picking it up is that they jumped into season six with a bunch of fans (including me) lost on the background of a cast change.
It doesn't really have a strong arc in that if you miss an episode you're lost for weeks. There's a few arch enemy races that are always lurking ready to pop up into some episode. There good aliens too who help out, sometimes.
They avoid "techno-bable" by just accepting that there are aliens out there who make cool stuff we humans just can't understand. "We don't know how that works," is a frequent line.
Another key success factor is the great cast. Anderson gets some great one-liners and brings a good dose of humour to the show. Tapping and Shanks are totally convincing as the shows eggheads. The supporting cast could easily lead in their own series.
I sure the show syndicated because there's money to be made.

Re:Question about SG TV series

[sql*kitten]

I have never watched this show but am curious how it compares to the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series in that does it have a story arc and continuity between each episode?

The show has great continuity and the technology is almost completely internally consistent. By that I mean, if a given piece of technology worked one way in one episode, then that's how it works. Unlike Star Trek where the technology is a crutch for weak script writers. You know the way in Star Trek the transporters or sensors will simply stop working for an arbitrary reason to prod the plot along? Doesn't happen on Stargate at all, and without that crutch, the writers are forced to be much more creative.

Another example: Enterprise is set years before Kirk, so deflector shields haven't been invented yet. But the writers are too lazy to do away with the "shields are failing" plot device, so they simply substitute in the technobabble "hull polarization" and write exactly as before. Star Fleet doesn't exist yet, but Earth's single, primitive starship can interfere with established, advanced spacegoing races with impunity, just like Kirk or Picard... how? Umm, because that's the only plot they know how to write.

Another thing that annoyed me about Star Trek and Babylon 5 was their Earth-centricness, Earth being the capital planet of the Federation and humans being the "chosen race" in Babylon 5. In Stargate, humans are in a complex universe in which often they are only bit players in the ongoing feuds of the Goa'uld amongst themselves, the Asgard have problems of their own in their home galaxy and often cannot be bothered with Earth's problems, etc. All the other races have been getting on with their histories without Earth even being relevant for large periods of time (i.e. Earth was ignored by the Goa'uld since the Egyptian period). This ongoing activity by NPCs means that the storylines continue between episodes.

Finally, the characters on Stargate are more believable. They are fairly ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, not like Star Trek (particularly TNG) in which each character is "special", the boy genius, the telepath, the noble warrior, etc. Star Trek characters in every series apart from the original are cliches.

Re:Fuck

[BigBir3d]

for those of us that did not watch it from the get-go, it did not make much sense.

that is the best way to guarantee your show will have a short run: confuse the new viewers.

Farscape degenerated into introspective whining

[pcx]

Farscape was super cool for a season or two when they really did romp around the universe and see what was out there.

Unfortunately near the end it degenerated into self-introspection and self-pitty that was made two billion times more annoying for criton's (sp) whining, indignant yelling.

If they could fire the writers and get people who had imagination and drive to explore the incredibly vast universe then sure, bringing farscape back would be a great thing. But as it stands now, it's a mercy killing, putting it down before it becomes a parody of itself and another star trek universe where they're more interested in psycoanalyzing everything than exploring.

Good!

[shadowj]

I've been a fan of the show since I stumbled upon it two years ago. OK, the premise is a little hokey... but the writing is SO good. The dialog sparkles, they avoid techobabble and use real science more often than I'd expect ("Y'see, Carter" [waving at ringed gas giant looming on the horizon], "this planet that we're on..." "Excuse me, sir, this is actually a moon, not a planet.")

Best of all, the show has a memory... every episode takes into account EVERYTHING that has happened in previous episodes, something that happens in real life but rarely happens on TV. Looks like the Enterprise people are starting to understand that... pity they haven't figured out how to write interesting stories, though.

I had my doubts about Michael Shanks leaving, but the show doesn't seem to have suffered. I'm very, very pleased that it's continuing... but I hope that the producers will have the good sense to pull the plug when they start to run out of steam.

Re:Good!

[muzzmac]

The avoid techobabble by having jack O'Niell tell scientists to shut up.

It's sooo good.

Cool, I just found out...

[RedWolves2]

You can get Season 1 and Season 2 on DVD.

Just because they cancelled Farscape...

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

Just because they cancelled Farscape does not make Stargate SG-1 a bad show. I think they are both great, and Richard Dean Andersen is *much* better in this role than he was in MacGyver... I mean, when the bad guys are chasing you never, I repeat, never toss away a perfectly good gun.

I think SG-1 has more of a "formula" than Farscape... and as another poster mentioned it is great how true to past episodes they are. They never break the "SG-1 Reality".

Farscape on the other hand is much more on the edge. The first couple seasons were pure genius but honestly this season felt more like the writers were making things up as they went. The best series have some kind of continuity. Anyone have any idea what changed?

Farscape rocks

[MacAndrew]

Farscape is/was uneven from episode to episode, but the good ones were amazing. Soooo many TV shows are just plain mediocre, with nary a flash of brilliance. Also, Farscape was the first strong break with the threadbare Star Trek straitjacket to make it on the air. I loved the substitution of largely organic technology for electrical, and was rather fond of Moia (in a platonic way). Aeryn's cool, too. Trek never really pulled it off I think with strong female characters, so rare in scifi.

I'm surprised to hear of the cancellation, but true it is -- see the horse's mouth. However, I doubt it's dead. Farscape has the backing of the brand-name Jim Henson Company, a great premise (IMHO), and a solid library of four years that breaks the magic 88-episode threshold needed for successful post-series syndication.

I bet they'll go to syndication, as all the modern Treks have done, and maybe even score a better channel than SciFi, which can have John Edward for all I care (gag). Keep an eye on UPN. The Farscape season was not set to start until February, being from Australia and all, so there's time.

Enterprise is in its childhood. TNG was VILE for its first three seasons and would have rightfully died if not for the intervention of the Borg and a stunning season-end cliffhanger ("Best of Both Worlds"). I think it will show some decent character development, and I appreciate that they've deprived themselves of 3/4 of the technology that yielded too many pat technobabble solutions on shows like Voyager. Scott Bakula annoys me, but I guess I can get used to him ... I just keep expecting him to "leap," you know?

Yes, I watch too much TV, but mostly science fiction.

Scifi Shows

[moniker]

Andromeda
First season was cool and funny... but as soon as they changed the title theme from cool riffs done by the guy from Rush to the "Hercules in Space" orchestral wailings... everything else seemed to begin to suck as well. My understanding was that some of the good creative talent was kicked out. Can't watch it anymore.

Enterprise
The captain strikes me as whiny... I prayed for the dog to die in one of the more recent episodes. But a lot of the episodes have a cool spooky atmosphere.

Odyssey 5
The science sucks... but the dialog is great. "Praise Jesus... and fuck you."

Firefly
Great funny dialog... poor science... (Still using gunpowder, but somehow they have excellent gravity generators and inertial dampeners) ... except... I do like how every explosion in space is not accompanied by these nifty sound effects that noone should hear. I also like how the captain has no objection to just outright killing defenseless bad guys.

Farscape
I loved the show... but it seemed to go down hill in the fourth. The end of the second season was fantastic. I liked how they never tried to explain the science... and especially how the aliens looked more like the guys in the mos eisley cantina that stupid trek aliens with head and nose ridges.

Re:Scifi Shows

[bdesham]

Enterprise
The captain strikes me as whiny... I prayed for the dog to die in one of the more recent episodes.

You're kidding, right? You want to kill the hands-down best character on the show?

Re:Scifi Shows

[Jerf]

(Still using gunpowder, but somehow they have excellent gravity generators and inertial dampeners)

This is one of the many ways Star Trek has simply ruined people's understanding of science. The fact of the matter is that given the place where Firefly takes place, using guns makes perfect sense.

Guns are cheap, they have around 1500 years of experience making and caring for them, cheap, they are easy to use, easy to make very durable, and did I mention cheap?

As I have written for a probably never-to-be-published game's guide,

One of the nice things about old technology is that it is easy to maintain. Sure, in a firefight, you might prefer a laser-guided smart rail-gun, but it's a bitch to find parts for it when it breaks. A shotgun, on the other hand, still kills people dead, and it's a lot easier to come by both parts and ammunition....

There's a certain *elegence* in the inelegence of a good firearm. Lasers can be reflected, guidance systems can be scrambled, electronics of all kinds can be confused or outright destroyed, particle beams can be deflected, but a bullet can only be stopped, generally not without doing damage to the thing stopping it. (I'd recommend against using your own flesh to do the job.) Very few things, even in 2088 [time setting of this game], can stand up to a concentrated barrage of firepower.

Simple is beautiful.

Firearms have an excellent bang-for-the-buck, pun fully intended, and are likely to continue to have it for a long time to come. The only real mystery is why Serenity doesn't have at least one hull-mounted machine gun.

Re:Good writing, horrible setting

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Their starship looks like a giant wrinkled turd.

Their engine is only 3ft DIA, 10ft long. It rotates. And this will push them faster than light? Should they fill the tank with regular or premium, and how fast can they do 0-60MPH ?

Their life support dies when the engine is off. Yet they don't start floating around because of lack of artificial gravity?

Enough with the technical nitpicks though. Let's talk about story development and plots that are so vapid, with none of the epic overtones that make other scifi shows interesting. Let's talk about characters that are assembled together according to occupation in some Canterbury-Talesque clone that is lacking any nuance, subtley or homage to that classic. Characters that never have any real decision to make, because things are so cut and dried, that even a retard could make them and never choose poorly. Except when the ship is "dead in the water" and the captain has to send everyone away even though they'll die, just so he is in danger with no help, when we get to the "suspenseful" part. And then said shipmates mysteriously return, for the hell of it, so that his lifeblood doesn't leak out much like my soul does when I commit the insanely stupid crime of attempting to watch it.

Now look what you've made me doing, I'm crying like a child in horrid memory of a show best left unwatched. They should seal up that studio with concrete and lead, like they do with nuclear reactors in meltdown. With the actors and director still inside.

Yes, they really do some things right.

Re:grumble grumble grumble - shut up lucky bastard

[Phosphor3k]

.Voyager is still in season 6!!

They get home.

The dog?

[GuyMannDude]

The captain strikes me as whiny... I prayed for the dog to die in one of the more recent episodes. But a lot of the episodes have a cool spooky atmosphere.

Let me get this straight: that episode featured a main plot of the dog getting sick and a subplot of Capt. Archer fantasizing about his super sexy vulcan science officer and you wasted your prayers on the fuckin' dog?!?

Man, I was on my hands and knees praying that T'Pol was going to help our dashing captain get "Long And Prosper"!

GMD

Re:enterprise PC

[GuyMannDude]

And I'm not clear on how racy pictures of Jolene Blalock demonstrate that Enterprise is PC.

Perhaps he's referring to the fact that Braga and Berman had the guts to cast a member of the woefully underpresented and discriminated-against minority of really-good-looking-women-wearing-hot-outfits on their show?

GMD

Enterprise: Americans Deserve All

[Vegan Pagan]

My problem with S.T. Enterprise is that, more than any Trek since TOS, its Captain expects things to go his way and it usually portrays foreign cultures as inferior. The societies that do have higher tech are shown as either evil or condescending; Archer calls genetic engineering one's own race a deal with the devil and he believes that humans are entitled to all Vulcan technology. And almost no time is spent showing the ways that their cultures are superior to human ways. The only really redeeming moments were when he did an elaborate apology dance to get some equipment, and when he refused to help either side on the Desert Planet.

Ultimately, Enterprise reminds me of USA today: ignorantly pushing itself on the world and expecting to get better treatment than anyone else. I suppose that's what now gets high ratings in terrorized USA, but it sure doesn't live up to the best of sci-fi, or even the best of Trek. The Q and the Borg are races that humans should look up to!

Re:Enterprise: Americans Deserve All

[GuyMannDude]

Just don't count the show out. The show uses philosophy by counter-example. Take it as such.

I applaud your attempt at defending Enterprise but I'm going to have to give the nod to Vegan Pagan. The show is borderline offensive because of the brashness of the Enterprise crew. We haven't seen an episode where the crew realizes they have definitely done something wrong. The closest we've gotten was the episode where the crew decides to withold the cure for a disease on another world. I'd be more inclined to agree with your point of view if we had an episode where the meddling of Enterprise clearly caused a serious problem. Off the top of my head I can think of a terrible missed opportunity: the episode where Enterprise exposes the Vulcan spy base to the Andorians. In later episodes, it is commented that that decision greatly increased tensions between the Vulcans and the Andorians, understandably. But the whole thing is played off (in fact I think T'Pol takes the Vulcan command to task on this) as it being the Vulcan's fault! The Enterprise crew feels fully justified in creating a volitle situation. It would have been nice to hear Archer weighing the issues and whether he did the right thing. Even better would be a concrete example of an unfortunate incident between the Vulcans and the Andorians that directly follows from Archer's decision.

I'm starting to ramble here and I'm not even sure I've made my point. What I'm trying to say is that if Enterprise is trying to make a show about how humans are learning from their first few mistakes in space, they aren't doing a very good job. We only see things from their perspective and it's always viewed in the light that Archer is doing the right thing.

GMD

Re:Enterprise: Americans Deserve All

[Stephen VanDahm]

"The Q and the Borg are races that humans should look up to!"

No, the Q and the Borg are even more self-serving than the humans on Enterprise are. Captain Archer may be ethnocentric, but he doesn't conquer and enslave the planets he visits (like the Borg), and he doesn't torture and experiment with innocent people like Q does.

I agree with you that Star Trek has a "my way or the highway" approach to morality, and that it's especially heavy-handed in Enterprise. Even when Archer goes through that apology ritual, he only does it to get the equipment, not because he actually cares that he offended the inhabitants of that planet they were visiting.

On the other hand, though, I think the fact that the humans are immature, ethnocentric, and a bit xenophobic is important to the series. They've only recently developed the ability to explore space and Archer and his crew are the first humans to encounter all these different cultures. It makes sense, then, that the Enterprise crew lacks the sophistication to interact well with other species.

What bothers me about Enterprise is that the character development is so heavy-handed. Like the whole Archer-T'Pal sexual tension thing. On TNG, you had occasional sexual tension between Picard and Dr. Crusher, but that was generally very subtle. On Enterprise, though, we're treated to Archer's bizarre sexual fantasies in which he and T'Pal basically fuck in the Detox chamber. Also, the whole crew-comeraderie thing is really sloppy. Lt. Reed complains about the lack of structure and discipline on Enterprise, then calls Hoshi Sato "Hoshi" rather than "Ensign Sato," and calls T'Pal "T'Pal" instead of "Subcommander T'Pal." It just doesn't gel.

But the worst part about Enterprise is, of course, the lame-ass time-travel episodes. I change the station every time they do that shit in Voyager and TNG, but when Enterprise started out, the central conflict of the show was this stupid "Temporal Cold War." Fuck that. If you're going to have a time travel episode, it had better involve travelling back to the early 21st century to bitchslap Rick Berman for writing such corny scripts.

Steve

Re:Good writing, horrible setting

[shadowj]

Their engine is only 3ft DIA, 10ft long. It rotates. And this will push them faster than light?

Of course, since every child knows that FTL drives don't look anything like that... oh, wait, we haven't invented them yet, have we? Unless you have a patent that you want to talk about?

Their life support dies when the engine is off. Yet they don't start floating around because of lack of artificial gravity?

Why are you expecting the gravity to fail? The layout of the ship makes it clear that they expect the artificial gravity and inertial compensation to be absolutely reliable... nothing is fastened down, items are left unsecured on flat surfaces, they even use a conventional stove and teapot. Perhaps the gravity doesn't require power; perhaps it's something analagous to a permanent magnet.

Enough with the technical nitpicks though.

Agreed. All I can say about your analysis of the characters and plot is that I disagree. You found the characters "Canterbury-Talesque" (that's a truly ugly neologism, by the way)? Well, of COURSE they're going to have neatly defined functions... they're a CREW, they were CHOSEN that way! Never mind their "mysterious" return... it's stated quite clearly that Zoe ordered them to return when she regained consciousness. If you're going to take potshots, at least pay attention to what you're shooting at.

It's unfortunate that you don't like the show. Change the channel, then, and allow those of us who do enjoy it to watch it.

Re:Good! (Spoiler?)

[DavidTC]

The great thing about Stargate is even when they do the cliche sci-fi episodes, they make them funny.

That episode is a 'time loop' episode...not only do they play golf though the stargate, but at one point Jack starts tossing some balls...then cuts to the next day...Jack and Teal'k are both tossing balls up in the air...cut again, and they're juggling perfectly. It's absolutely hilarious.

That episode is one of the all time best...the plot is, basically, that they need to learn an alien language to figure out how to stop the time loop Jack and Teal'k (Actually, the entire planet, and a few other planets are caught in a screwed up time travel experiment, but only Jack, Teal'k, and one other guy know it.) are caught in...but Daniel can't deciper an entire language in the eight hours or so the time loop is over...so Jack and Teal'k have to learn it. Which learns to a great scene where Jack corrects Daniel on some obscure alien language point.

And the straight forward time travel cliche episode was funny, too. it's called '1969', and that should give you some clue as to why it's funny.