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."

Comments

Step through the gate

[ObviousGuy]

And drown at the bottom of the ocean?

Count me out!

Re:Step through the gate

[Acts of Attrition]

Atlantis? Darn. I was waiting for them to do Stargate Miami first.

"This stargate opens into the heart of Miami, a magical world full of bikini clad women and fast cars. Oh, And the cubans are using it to escape Castro."

I like SG-1...

[Ianoo]

It's much more watchable than most of the rubbish that seems to come out of Paramount's Star Trek franchise these days. I find Enterprise totally unwatchable and couldn't even be bothered to see the last film in the cinemas. I made the right decision too, cos the DVD was a major dissapointment.

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? Somehow, talking about Gates and DHDs in terms of lines of software code, mathematical equations and matter dematerialisation doesn't seem quite as mystical as the original movie and the earlier episodes, where much of it was still based in Egyption mythology and the technology seemed more magical (neither human nor Goa'uld understanding how it really worked) rather than increasingly Trek-like technobabble descriptions of how things work.

I will, of course, be watching Atlantis as Stargate and its spin-offs are still some of the most watchable sci-fi about at the moment. I just wouldn't have taken it in quite the same direction if it were left up to me.

Re:I like SG-1...

[FosterSJC]

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.

Re:I like SG-1...

[Cska Sofia]

Actually I like the technical aspects of the show. It's done in a way that grounds the storyline in reality (as far as is possible with a sci-fi show). I think it's human nature to try and reverse engineer a technology that isn't understood; the concept of having the gate hitched up to a giant bank of computers seems realistic to me.

After all, it's not like they understand it entirely. There's often talk of unimplemented protocols in Earth's DHD, which crops up disastrously in one of the latest episodes. This, for me, highlights one of the best aspects of the show: the fallibility. Things go wrong almost as often as they go right. There is an advancement in the plot, but in a 'two steps forward, one step back' way.

(However, lately Carter seems to have taken on Trek-like problem-solving skills: "well, we could [insert improbable but ultimately 100% accurate solution 60 seconds after being presented with problem]." That bugs me a little.)

I liked the Egyptian aspect, and the links with other past human cultures, but I think it would have been hard to spin that out over so many episodes, so I'm glad the show has evolved.

SciFi Channel ...

[SimplyCosmic]

No thanks, I've pretty much ignored anything from the network that killed Farscape so that it could pay for Tremors: The Series.

OK, Bruce, just swim right here...

[wowbagger]

The thing I like about Stargate:SG1 is that it is relatively sensible about its science and proceedures - these people really act more like military people than certain other shows I could name.

However, this sounds suspiciously like we might be calling upon the services of Bruce the Shark fairly soon - will somebody help me set up the ramps?

Re:OK, Bruce, just swim right here...

[Richard_at_work]

I personally think that this show could pull up some suprises. SG1 is pretty much all about introducing us to the concept, and fighting the Goa`uld, which they are just about done doing. Atlantis could go in a different direction, finding out more information about the stargate network (There are 9 chevrons on the stargate, 7 are in normal use, 1 more was activated to meet the Asgard, whats the ninth for?), discovering stuff about the ancients (it was surmised in one episode that modern humanity could be descended from a pre ascended ancient species, i would like to see more on that).

SG1 went military because thats where the film left off, Atlantis can be trememdously different.

Re:"go the way of Star Trek post-Roddenberry"

[Jahf]

Because the poster is worried that the series may have a significant drop in quality due to bad producer decisions, much like what happened to ST after G. Roddenberry was no longer in direct creative control (which started happening shortly before he passed). Many ST fans felt that the ST franchise tried to become over-techie ("Jordions") and derivative after that.

It has nothing to do with the death of a creator, and the poster seems to have -liked- Roddenberry's direction for ST and disliked what happened after. In this case his passing is a milestone for show quality, much like we -may- be saying in 3-4 years about "boy I hope it's like Stargate -before- Atlantis".

Personally, I don't see why "Atlantis" would need to be another show. That's one of the things I like about SG1, it has handled the various twists and turns that other shows like to use as spinoffs -internally-. However, it seems pretty clear that the writers may be about to run out of steam based on this season. I like this season (last night being an exception) overall, but it a) HAS become more star trek-like in focus and b) I don't see where the logical conclusion of SG1 would go after this season if it wraps up the way it seems to be. In which case, all "Atlantis" would seem to me to be is a way to keep the franchise going after the first series is properly finished.

Hey SciFi ... if you want to continue a franchise, why don't you go buy FireFly and kill off Atlantis, and anything similar to Tremors. It would be nice to have that series get their real conclusion and you might almost repair the damage done with Farscape's cancellation. Now -that- is an unrelated post.

Then again..

[Kjella]

...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.

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 :D.

Kjella

Misinformation?

[Xarius]

Ummm, that is just wild speculation. As far as I know, the new series is set in another galaxy, on an offworld human base. I think the name has something to do with the new planet being the origins of the atlantis legend, several people have already been cast.

This is relatively old news. For more info check out:

http://www.sg1database.net/atlantis.html

Again this is AFAIK, I could be wrong

RDA

[dickiedoodles]

The main reason the more recent episodes of SG-1 have been less good (but still very enjoyable in my opinion) then the previous seasons is mainly because of Richard Dean Anderson (jack) being unwilling to spend as much time on the show, every season he says he wants to quit to spend more time with his daughter and every season they negotiate a nice package for him which means less work. IIRC he works about 3 days a week now which is why there are so many episodes that he barely appears in or in some cases doesn't appear in at all. In the next season of SG1 (season 8) rumour has it that he'll be in a more Hammond like position in charge of the SGC. Atlantis is obviously a way to not only expand the series but to get away from relying on RDA signing on every year.

If anyone cares Gateworld is a fantastic site for information on all things stargate.

Re:The first series is BAD, now another one????

[fatboy]

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.

Stargate and Atlantis

[centauri]

This circle is now complete.

Some people saw some glaring similarities between the original Stargate and Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

- Brilliant linguist has goofy theory and is reviled by the scientific community.
- Senior citizen contacts scientist to reveal that his theory was right all along.
- Scientist brought along as expert advisor for military expedition based on aforementioned theory.
- Strange world reached via a twisting tunnel.
- Scientist teased and tormented by expedition members.
- Expedition utterly reliant on scientist for salvation.
- Military expedition has a secret adgenda.
- Scientist falls for beautiful native.
- Glowing eyes.
- A symbol like an upper-case lambda features prominantly in the promotional material for each movie.

There are probably more I'm forgetting and of course the differences are significant, but it is very suspicious.

Re:And how do they get back?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the show:

There are two stargates on earth. one was lost in the antartic and a second one was built. (By the ancients, millions of years ago or something). Only one can be used to receive at any time since they have the same coordinate, but both can send. (There was an episode where the second gate gets stolen/misplaced by the military)

An overload on the circuits makes the incoming wormhole jump to the second stargate. (Used in the episode where they discover the second gate, O'Neill almost freezes to death in the Antartic. They finally figured out what was going on and fly out to rescue him. Also used in the stolen gate episode)

The addressing grid size seems to be large. In one episode Daniel is on a Goa'uld ship that is about to blow, looks out the window and sees earth, and realizes he's close enought that he can use earth as an origin point, so he survives by leaving through the gate. So, yes, the gate address is the same to earth orbit at least.

Actually, I should say there were two gates on earth. In one episode the Goa'uld find a way to overload earth's stargate to make it blow up. The Humans send the gate to outer space on a ship with a experimental hyper-drive, and it blows up. The anti-gate weapon is destroyed, and the SGC gets the second gate from the russians.

Yes, I'm a geek.

One of the directors is excited

[gbulmash]

I'm in contact with David Winning (IMDb filmography, official site). He directed a lot of episodes of "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" (photos: 1, 2) and he's been hired on to direct at least part of the first season of "Stargate Atlantis". He's been getting a lot of recognition in the industry as one of the top directors for TV Sci-Fi in the past couple of years, so they're making some good choices for the series already. And the cool thing is that he seems really excited about the new series.

I've known David professionally for a couple of years now and he doesn't get this excited over every job, so that's got me looking forward to checking out series. It doesn't hurt that I'm a fan of SG1 also.

- Greg

Re:SG-1 and Jack

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:Slashdot Jinx

[g00z]

Enterprise enterprise enterprise?

- Enterprise