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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.
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.
>>Dont get me wrong but I agree most SCIFI series are lacking now; ever since STNG ended they just fell.
I guess you didn't watch Farscape then eh? If you like Sci-fi at all, you'll want to check that one out. If you don't, then quit saying that all the Sci-fi shows suck since it's obvious that you won't like them anyways.
...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
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.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Yes, the acting has been poor (it improved as time went on; watching Teal'c from one of the first seasons is unbearable). At least half the plots are lame, yes, but the other half (or quarter, third, etc) are relatively original (which is very rare in sci-fi). The one thing that is great in SG1 is character development. If you forget the first few episodes and movie (which don't make sense with the later ones, anyway), the characters are extremely complex yet perfectly consistant. I really can't name any show/movie that has had characters as well-crafted. I tip my hat to the writers for their work in that department (but not for plots, which have been on a downward slide for years).
That said, I have no intention of watching the spin-off. Not only will it lack the characters which had been molded to perfection over years, but they're clearly running out of plotlines.
G
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 ----
It's funny how people split on this divide. I love SG-1, I think its one of the best bits of Sci-Fi programming in years, I rate the series way more than I rate the film. I think Enterprise and Voyager are the best of the Star Trek canon. I couldn't stand Babylon 5 or DS9 (ST:NG got was especially ropey at points) and I think Farscape is simply the most ridiculous nonsense masquerading as Sci-Fi. My sister lives for Farscape and thinks its the best thing every to appear on TV. Horses for courses I say. One mans poison etc...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
I suspect the reason you like the shows you do, is because the ones you like are what I call 'episodic television'. Bab5, DS9 and Farscape require that you see many more episodes to fully understand what is going on. Enterprise, Voyager and SG-1, for the most part, can stand on their own as single episodes.
Not that one is better than the other, I like all of those shows. My favorites are DS-9,SG-1,Farscape and Bab-5, in that order.
--fatboy
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.