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Premature Rumors about Stargate Season 7?
An anonymous reader writes "While some were excited about the news of Stargate's renewal, others remained cautiously skeptical. Those is who did might be interested in reading this story posted on Zap2it." I for one hope the show keeps going. With the loss of Farscape, SG1 is possibly the best straight up sci-fi on TV- and the last show on the SciFi channel I watch.
Was an excellent series until Daniele Jackson died, then it just went downhill. I wouldn't be suprised it it was continued, because of the trend that SciFi seems to be taking. But, if they do continue it, I will continue to watch it. KREE!
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
Not for the show's content itself, but so SciFi will lose such a large portion of their viewer base that they will realize (shortly before going under, should all go well) that canning good shows is not a good idea.
Without any new farscape episodes after the wrap up of this season, and if there were no more episodes of stargate sg1 after this series, would there really be anything worth watching anymore on scifi? (besides of course the good episodes of both when they are in reruns, but even that gets boring after repeated viewing)
Yeah, the movie sucked... but the TV series is produced by different people, folks who know what they're doing and actually understand science and science fiction. Try it. You might want to stay far away from the new Saturday morning animated show called Stargate:Infinity, though. It shares some concepts with the movie and SG1, but it's a real dog.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
They have had a few stories this season that have been a bit more fast and loose than the equivalents were on Showtime. Admittedly, the USAF has been working on alien tech for a while now, and they have been very good about making it obvious that while we can replicate and understand how to make some of the technology, once they moved over to the Scifi channel, tech starts popping out all the place. The fighter with the hyper drive, the warship (which cost a bit too little for it being made of such rare materials under such secrecy and with such one-off parts...and in a ridiculous shape for the task at hand too...sheesh), and so on.
Well, a good way of putting it is that there has been a lot of ideas thrown around without thought of what the consequences might be unlike before.
Don't get me wrong, it's still orders of magnitude better than Trek, but...the flavour change isn't quite as tasty as before. Think New Coke.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
The most powerful method of Pavlonian conditioning is to reward the stimulus sparodically. Just enough to establish there is a connection. Providing a reward with every stimulus isn't as effective for some reason. The sparodic rewards are why slot machines are so fun and addicting. Lots of crap, interspersed with rewards.
Which works out well in the television industry, since the filler they place in between rewards is inexpensive.
It's kind of never been the same, since James Spader never appeared in the TV series. That character (Daniel Jackson) is played by Michael Shanks.
And while the Egyptian motif is one of the most unique in sci-fi...
The Egyptian motif is relevant only to one of the continuing subplots... the Goa'uld, a race of parasitic nasties, hijacked Egyptian mythology several thousand years ago for their own purposes. We've also seen cultures descended from Mongolian horsemen, native America, and classical Greece, among others, plus a bunch that have no clear predecessors. One frequently referenced race of good guys, the Asgard, are related to the Norse pantheon.
I think the show is still fairly fresh... Daniel's departure has allowed them to do a few completely new things, and there's still a lot to explore (who created the Stargate system, for instance?). And come on, guys, this is a popular TV series that's managed to handle seriously abstract concepts like Von Neuman machines, and turn them into major plot elements! I do agree that they should recognize when it's time to quit gracefully, but I don't think that time has come yet.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
I have the first one on DVD. Seen it about 4 times (By myself, showing girlfriend, showing mother who read it in her youth, and with my stupid roomate.) For those interested, here's the /. posting about the next one.
Sci-Fi owns SG1 and can offset the show's cost with merchandising and endless reruns, plus they already have the audience SG1 established on Showtime and in syndication.
I do agree that SciFi engineered the circumstances needed to cancel Farscape. The 10 PM timeslot, delaying season 3's final four until April, and underpromoting the show in general gave Sci-Fi the perfect excuse to cancel the show; though, they hadn't planned on people finding out while there was still a chance to save it (a press release from the previous week even mentioned Farsape as a contributing factor to the network's ratings increase). Sci-Fi's assumption that science fiction fans are undiscriminating idiots who will watch whatever gets thrown at them didn't help matters either.
The network execs don't understand their audience or the genre.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Honest mistake. Whether it's by coincidence or by design, Michael Shanks's voice is incredibly similar to James Spader's. They don't look very much alike, but close your eyes and it's a challenge to tell the two apart.
(Unrelated nitpick on the subject of voices and dialects. Jackson is a linguist, right? Why, oh why, does he mispronounce "Goa'uld" as "goold" just like O'Neill and the other humans? As a linguist, shouldn't he be able to pronounce it "go-ah-oold" just like Teal'c and the other non-Earthlink characters do? Grumble-mumble.)
I write in my journal
Plus, you've gotta respect any series that writes in a cat named Schrodinger, and then doesn't explain the joke.
(Following their lead, I won't explain it either. If you don't know what Schrodinger's cat is, please turn in your Slashdot pass at the front desk and show yourself out.)
I write in my journal
That's too bad, because you've missed out on what is looking to be the best new sci-fi show of the year; Jeremiah.
Some of the episodes have been fairly cheezy, but the "plot" episodes have been excellent. It is reminding me alot of Bablyon 5 - slow beginning with some weak episodes. In fact, Straczynski (of Bab5) is doing this series, too, and I think it's going to turn out to be one heck of a show.
--The Rizz
"Comedians and politicians each tell the audience what it wants to hear. The difference is that the audience laughs at the comedian and the politician laughs at the audience." --Alexis A. Gilliland
The best SF on TV right now is over on Showtime. It's called Odyssey 5 and stars Peter Weller. It's about a Shuttle crew that is in orbit when the Earth is destroyed. They encounter a strange alien, who's homeworld was also destroyed in the same manner, that sends them back in time five years to attempt to discover what happened and prevent it. It is very reminiscent of Babylon 5 in tone and the overriding arc. Great writing and really interesting characters.