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Stargate Atlantis Coming This Summer
boog3r writes "According to this and SCIFI there is a new Stargate series on its way to your local passive viewing device this summer. Quickie for all the click-deficient types: "In the new series, a secret base left by the originators of the Stargate is discovered in the most unlikely of places -- on Earth, buried among the ruins of the legendary city of Atlantis." Sounds fun to me! I found more info here and here. Take these tidbits with a grain of salt, much misinformation about the new series is circulating right now. I just hope this great franchise does not go the way of Star Trek, post Roddenberry."
Has the Stargate series creator died yet? How is this analogy appropriate in any way if not, except to function in the capacity of allowing the author to express his/her feelings on Star Trek in an unrelated post?
SG-1 is one of my favorite shows these days. That and the Simpsons are about the only shows I watch other than the News and Jay Leno. I've missed about 3 seasons while I was in college, but making it up when I catch a show in sydication now and then. One thing that made SG-1 cool was it was actually orginial. Sure, same old sci-fi themes, but the casting was a good mix and the writing has generally been fair as well. Richard Dean Anderson's character was a complete departure from the movie, but his character is pretty funny.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I mean, really Stargate isn't all that "good" as far as TV goes, but for some reason, I too love Stargate.
I did watch it last night, it was a little disappointing. It was way too sappy for this Geeks taste. They made it *seem* like jack was dead, but he is alive. Dr. Frasier died. Too bad really, she was a good charachter.
And the series is actually good. You're mixed-up.
Dont get me wrong but I agree most SCIFI series are lacking now; ever since STNG ended they just fell. Voyager was "OK" and enterprise just rates next to Stargate.
This is just my opinion, seeing if other agree or maybe I'm just way out in LH field on this one. I just cant see how ANOTHER series based on this is coming.....
Please dont take this as trolling or whatever they call it now.
It's a shame my mod points just expired, as this is quite insightful. You'll notice the same demystification occurring in the Star Wars franchise... Metachloriates (sp?), little life forms, are now responsible for the force and the virgin birth of Anekin, instead of it simply being the way things are in the universe... a natural balance. But perhaps the veiwing majority prefers the tech aspect of scifi. They want to know how warp speed works and how dematerialization works, etc. Perhaps TV is itself responsible in part for taking the burden of imagination off of the viewer and putting onto the writers, etc. Special effects budgets could be better spent paying more talented writers.
Keep in mind that SG-1 is in a completely different situation than Enterprise. It started on a pay cable channel and now exists on a cable channel devoted to science fiction. Enterprise started on a broadcast network and still exists on a broadcast network as the only science fiction show. Its lead-in/outs have been pro-wrestling and African-American comedies. Stargate not only can produce lower ratings and get away with it, it also is the centerpiece of a sci-fi lineup on a sci-fi channel. And, unlike Enterprise, it has the bonus of being in syndication. Enterprise usually airs only a couple times a week, while Stargate is relatively ubiquitous.
I'd also rather watch SG-1 than Enterprise for the most part... if I existed in some bizarre hypothetical world where those were the only two options. In the real world, I find both to be acceptable, and better than most stuff on TV.
Yes, they did try to lead you early on to believe it was Jack, but as soon as they showed the video on the planet with the injured soldier and Janet, and how the reporter was talking, I got the hints that it was Janet that died.
My wife asked why would they kill her off. I told her probably cause she is headed to do something else. Janet was a decent character, but she was often just a bit character in the show. If they want a beloved character to die, but cause the least impact to the show, Janet was the one. In addition, notice how Cassandra was handled. Samantha mentions her, but she's never shown. I wonder if they even tried to get the actress who played her in for a brief cameo.
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...in Stargate, that is a rather natural development. We've got this lots of wierdo alien tech, where the Stargate is just one, that we don't really understand, wouldn't there be a buzz like hell to figure out wtf all this really is? Whereas in Star Trek the "tech" is just part of the setting.
:D.
Human science would leap tremendously, once you know it *is* possible and can observe it rather than speculate. Most great scientific break-throughs aren't really that hard to replicate, once they've been discovered.
Yes, I admit in some ways it is changing the show. On the other hand, if it had stayed "Well we go through this gate, and then we're 4 people exploring ruins/blowing up aliens of the day" I imagine that'd be pretty worn out by now, at the end of the 7th season.
No matter what direction, the most important thing is direction. There's nothing I hate more than a series where you can miss 10 eps, and still be just where you left off, same everything. And to make Stargate work, they need bigger and worse enemies. And to do that, the SG crew need more and better tech. You can't fight for the fate of the universe with rifles and hand grenades, or at least not just that
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Personally, maybe it's just me, but I don't think Atlantis will do well for the Stargate series. Just like how Enterprise damaged Star Trek, I think this will put a bad light on Stargate. I stopped watching Stargate SG-1 in season three, and watch it fairly sporatically now. Same thing with Enterprise...if there's nothing else to be watched I might watch Enterprise, get feud up, and pop in my ST:TNG DVDs.
I, really, really want to see ST:Voyager on DVD :).
How do they ever get back considering you can only have one stargate connected per planet...
That said, I think Stargate has become too sciency/technical. Did anyone else prefer it when all the technology like the Gates themselves were much more mystical and incomprehensible?
"Magic, in any sufficiently advanced show, is indistinguishable from technology." (Appologies to ACC)
Actually, I think what happens is that writers have to have some idea of what and how things work, in order to work with it consistently. Eventually, it works its way into the scripts.
We, as viewers, don't need to know how or why things work the way they do. It actually keeps things more interesting for us to be trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, that gets forgotten.
It's roughly analagous to seeing the monster in a horror movie: Less is more.
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They knew advertising killing off a main character would get audience share..
Scummy practice.. I actually boycotted last nights show beacuse of it.
Conversely, they know if they killed off one of the main 4, the show would be dead in the water, so i personally had no worries.. Worst case they just bring the character back to life.. hey, its sci-fi anything is possible..
Putting it on earlier in the evening would help though...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Kurt Russell is a big-name movie actor, he's not going to appear in a regular TV series. It was inevitable that both him and James Spader, another big-name movie actor, wouldn't appear in the spin-off TV series, just as it was inevitable that James Caan wouldn't appear in the spin-off TV series of Alien Nation.
I find it incredible that people seriously believe that getting an actor who's made it in movies (a medium within which an actor is better paid, less worked and more able to cherry pick his roles) would tie himself down to a TV show for one or more years. Sorry, but the real world just doesn't work that way.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Technobabble, not "tech". The latter implies some logic. What happens in series like Trek is that after first using writers actually familiar with SF, when they've got the format sorted out they go to using mostly mainstream ones, who who write what they know about (mainly standard plots in fancy dress) and use the SF aspects as deus ex machina. Even worse is when the actors start directing, or God help us, writing, episodes.
Meaningless self-contradictory words about imaginary science isn't "tech".
I think SciFi paid for an entire season of Tremors for the price of one episode of Farscape.
Star Wars fans are against the de-mystification. We're like "Midichlorians? WTF? No way, this shit is mystical, man! George, you a-hole!"
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
In the movie, Daniel learns Goa'uld (the primary language used) and is also a linguist. Would you want to watch an hour long show consisting of him translating to and fro throughout the entire episode?
Translation is assumed in most fictional (yes, fictional) tv shows/movies.
C17H21NO4
That's the reason Farscape was axed. It was just way way too expensive a show to produce.