Stargate Universe

Last night I finally scraped together the two hours to watch the premiere of Stargate Universe. Since the last two series really ran their course and deserved to end, I was skeptical. At first blush it appears that the show is just Atlantis + Voyager, shot in the documentary style that practically every sci-fi show since Firefly uses. But I enjoyed it, and figured we should have a place to discuss it. The TV landscape needs more real, good sci-fi: there's not a lot of it left, even on the moronically renamed Syfy channel. But maybe this one will have a solid season. I just hope that future episodes don't have so many commercials. I couldn't believe how many ads appeared during this thing.

Comments

Troubleshooting skills.

[eNygma-x]

I liked the show... but they they still need some thinking writers. Why not use a "Keno" to close the hatch?!

Re:Troubleshooting skills.

[chasmosis]

I thought the same thing. tape a pencil to it and have it press the "button"

Re:Troubleshooting skills.

[Barny]

But, someone would still have to die, who would hold the "shakey cam" while it presses the button?

Seriously, bad focus + shakey cam can just fucking die imho.

Re:Troubleshooting skills.

[tmosley]

Stargate always had problems thinking imaginatively. For example, once they developed the cloaking device, I would have used it as a proxy teleporter to make nukes appear in the center of Ori ships. When they had the ship with all the Asgard technology, they could have frozen time, reconfigured the ship so that it had a hole in it through which the beam weapon could pass and thus destroy both of the pursuing Ori vessels without issue. That is, rather than waiting until they started dying of old age. Sure, it would have taken a few months, or maybe even years to get through that battle, but they would have made it without a problem. Etc.

Similar lack of thought has plagued a lot of other shows. For example, why didn't anyone in the Star Trek universe ever come up with the idea of using warp drives as weapons in a systematic way? A runabout crashing into a borg cube at warp seven would do quite a bit more damage than a photon torpedo, I would imagine. I guess kinetic energy just isn't "futuristic" enough. Hell, Picard tried to use ramming speed with the Enterprise on at least one occasion that I remember, one would think they would have realized that would be a hell of a weapon, and that they could store hundreds or even thousands of them on a ship like the enterprise (assuming they removed the crew compartments).

babylon 5

[Shakrai]

I'd still like to see a B5 feature film. Too bad that JMS hasn't been up to it since the passing of Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. I still think that B5 is rather underrated/unknown in the general population (although it has a large following here on /.) and suspect that it could do very well at the box office with the right storyline.

I've watched a lot of Sci-Fi but I always wind up coming back to B5. It's the only series that I care enough about to invest the money to buy up all the DVDs. I can still pick up new things when I re-watch the series. How do you go wrong with characters like Londo, G'Kar and Garibaldi?

Re:babylon 5

[gedrin]

I'm a huge B5 fan, but we just can't keep looking for it to come back. The show, I'd even argue the entire setting, was built to run its story, and it did that job very well. Given the quality of what's come after, I'd be very wary of a B5 feature. That said, don't let your love of B5 blind you to something good that might come along. Before B5, nearly every sci-fi out there lived in the shadow of StarTrek, and B5 suffered for that shadow. I think it's fair to compare SGU to SGA and SG-1. It's probably just as fair to compare it to a recent contemporary that likely will share some of the same character dynamics (There's a Gould on the ship.), BSG. However, just like not everything can/could be StarTrek, not everything can/could/should be B5.

Commercials, What Commercials?

[k0ldsh4d0wz]

Who still wastes their time watching commercials?

Bad Commercial Breaks...

[TypoNAM]

I couldn't believe how many ads appeared during this thing.

Yeah really, luckily I watched it via DVR after it had started recording for at least 40 minutes before I began watching it. I haven't seen so many badly (and annoying) placed commercial breaks in a pilot airing since the Star Trek: Enterprise premier. After getting a 720p torrent of the show and then watching it again, it is far more enjoyable (Thanks SiTV!).

Appallingly mediocre.

[FlyingBishop]

All the contrived, pointless tropes of Stargate with none of the cheeky self-deprecating humor.

Also, Gaius Baltar has no place in the Stargate Universe. Honestly, practically every sentence that came out of Robert Carlyle's mouth it felt like he was being fed his lines by an invisible woman in a red dress. Only he wasn't. His character just has zero definition, and there's no way to sympathize with him.

Sadly, it's all we have.

Re:Appallingly mediocre.

[imgod2u]

Exactly. I wish I had mod points atm for you. What made SG1 and Atlantis good shows was entirely in its "oh wow...another sci-fi cliche huh, ya well let's get it over with" style of meta-humor. Let's face it, the stories, plots, acting, etc. weren't ground-breaking. They were cliche, guilty-pleasure sci-fi elements.

The "big bad guy" each season; the unfaltering hero; the strong-but-secretly-vulnerable female lead who had constant, unspoken sexual tension with the unfaltering hero; the comic relief side genius guy who would develop a spine throughout the series. Atlantis and SG1 was pretty much just this over and over. But it was fun, it was still compelling and most importantly, it didn't take itself too seriously.

McGuiver was classic. Towards the end, you could almost see that he wasn't in character at all. It was like he was reading his lines in this "God, this again? Really?" voice. Even the unfaltering hero had a goofy, self-deprecating wit about him. This is what made Mal of Firefly so endearing and it's something that so many writers these days don't seem to understand. The days of the Rambo-like tough guy hero are over.

Re:Firefly

[mrdoogee]

It was on Fox.

I wish it was more complicated, but there it is. US network TV has no patience for a new show, especially Sci-Fi or Fantasy. If it doesn't get good ratings (top 3 in time slot) within its first month, its more or less dead in the water.

Stargate B-Team

[gedrin]

I didn't like it. Seemed as if they rounded up the disfunctional people; from military personnel with discipline issues to an MMO geek who's living with his mom (who seems like a Wesley Crusher stand in for the show), and decided they'd be an exciting group of people to sail across the universe on a ship that's about as functional as its crew. I find the makeup of the "crew" absurd, and expect they'll spend the time SG-1 would have used to explore the galaxy, make friends, and fight bad guys to backstab each other and generally angst their way across the universe. Say what you will, but with Jack, Sam, Teal'c and Daniel doing their job, I felt like the people of their universe could at least know they had quality people on the line. Even the Atlantis group seemed to be made of folks with extraoridinary levels of competency in their fields. These guys...well...these guys open sealed doors with flashing red lights on busted up spaceships.

Re:Hulu?

[Junior Samples]

I downloaded the 720p High Definition Bit Torrent version Saturday morning and watched it with commercial free with my friends that evening.

The SiFy logo and animated banners, however, are still annoying.

Must.reply.to.thread.about.Babylon5.....

[B5_geek]

There are many things that make B5 awesome, but the single most compelling reason for its awesomeness is the cohesive storyline. It is the only video (tv/movie) that feels like you are watching a book. Great arc episodes, fantastic writing of dialog, and growth of characters that you have never seen before make it unique and memorable in TV history.

The StarGate Universe however has always felt like a high-school writing class in comparison. SG:U could develop into a good show, and as my TV sci-fi choices are limited I will watch it.

Re:Hulu?

[BriGal]

It detracts from the ratings. Unlike movies, where they claim torrents steal money from their pockets, shows depend on their viewers. The more legitimate viewers they get, the more likely the show will stay on the air. They can watch the viewers on TV, adding in +3 and +7 for DVR counts, and find out how many times it's been watched on iTunes and Hulu, along with other websites. What they can't count is how many people have torrented the show. More people torrenting mean less people being counted, which means lower ratings, which means cancelled shows. Torrent may be great for people outside of the country who won't see it, but within the viewing areas (in this case, US, Canada, and the UK), it hurts more than helps.

Re:Hulu?

[mweather]

What they can't count is how many people have torrented the show.

Then how do they come up with all those estimates about how much piracy is costing them?

Cynical attempt to milk BSG and Stargate franchise

[guidryp]

I watched it without reading a single review or press release. I had no expectations of what was to come. Warning some vague spoilers may be below.

Within 5 minutes it is clear that this is an attempt to graft BSG onto SG and in an attempt to milk both fan bases for the combined monetary gain. No doubt this idea seems brilliant in the board room.

But the execution is the worse of both worlds. It sucks all the fun, and chemistry among lovable characters out of Stargate and replaces it with a superficial BSG veneer of angry distrust and melodrama. Nothing is left of Stargate, but the gate mechanism and some tired cameos.

The have nothing of BSG world that made it great. Instead they assume dark, dire, angry, whiny = deep. It doesn't. It just equals annoying.

This seems like what you would get if your made your writers watch a few episodes of BSG and make a list of BSG items. Then crib the ones you can get away with (IE nothing to do with Cylons).

So we get dark dingy sets, angry distrusting characters, angry mob scenes, obligatory pointless sex scene, heavy flashback, heavy melodrama. None of the the heart and soul from either show.

After seeing this appear to be a cheap BSG knockoff a quick bit of googling revealed that they at least admit this is what they were trying to do.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/tca-press-tour-stargate-universe-producers-aiming-for-battlestar-galacticalevel-quality.html

"creators of "Stargate Universe," the upcoming spinoff of the long-running "Stargate SG-1," took the stage today, panelists promised a fresh, more "Battlestar"-like take on the space opera."

I am annoyed by the cynicism and lack of originality in trying to give Stargate a BSG makeover and by the end result which felt like punishment to watch.

YMMV of course. Some people apparently loved it.