Stargate Universe Cancelled

Torino writes "SGU has finally been cancelled, with the remaining 10 episodes to air in Spring. Apparently, the cast wasn't told ahead of time, and some of them learned of the cancellation via Twitter. SGU has had its share of problems, even spawning a community of people who dislike the show. Can it be saved via fan support, given the steadily declining viewership numbers? Do you think the show had the potential to improve?"

Comments

good

[greymond]

The Stargate series started off great, but it should have ended long before Atlantis even kicked off, let alone Universe.

Re:good

[uncanny]

I think it had potential to get good, it just took too long (since it hadn't yet)

Re:good

[flowwolf]

What was wrong with Atlantis? While it was airing, there was nothing better on TV. I challenge you to provide reasons why it shouldn't have gone that far.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Because before the show started the producers stated "We're going to have two seperate shows, without any characters crossing over."
and then like mid second season they found a way to travel back to earth again.....

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

Well I agree with you in principle, but not your timing. I LOVED Atlantis, mainly because of quirky characters like Dr. Rodney McKay. The last two seasons of SG1 (the Or'i seasons) were lousy but I enjoyed watch SGA.

And SGU had me on the edge of my seat for the first 10 episodes or so, but then you could tell the story writers ran out of ideas. The ship "deep in space & out of contact" setting didn't work just as it didn't work for Star Trek Voyager.

So yes cancel Stargate SG1 and SGU, but not Atlantis.

Re:good

[metrix007]

Everything was wrong with Atlantis. It was like a cardboard copy of the original without any of the soul. Shepherd was like a copy of Jack, Rodney was a stand in for Sam, Ronin was a satndin for Teal'c etc. It was worse because while the original characters were likable and had history, the Atlantis team were cliched and forced. I mean, they called the muscle guy Ronin FFS. The only original episode they ever did was when the shuttle was stuck halfway between the gate. That was it.

And what the fuck was with the last episode where they just wormholed across time arbitrarily? Why the fuck has that not even come up in SGU as a way to get them home?

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

No it hasn't.
At least not as a Stargate series.

Stargate was always about one thing.
Explore other worlds by people who want to do it by their free will.
Show how humans explore the galaxy solving riddles of great age.

Stargate Universe is basically a survival horror series.
And a bad one as well. You can see all plot twists from a mile away and
all the characters act like they are all stupid to no end, just like a old horror
movie.

Good it died.

Re:good

[Galactic Dominator]

I beg to differ. SG-1 had some of it's best work in it's last few years and the series finale was IMO the best one I've ever seen. Atlantis was also good, maybe not quite the level of SG-1. Then again, SG-1 was pretty brutal it's first two seasons. I never watched SGU because of what SciFi did to Atlantis which was a premature ending. It had decent ratings for SciFi so any series that isn't a blockbuster will on the chopping block there.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they could have spun off the ori saga into a separate show, and made it good with the new characters. At that point the show was a lot different from its roots. The story arc episodes outnumbered the monster of the week episodes by a lot. It was just a different show, and should have been treated as such. That being said I still enjoyed it.

Re:good

[God'sDuck]

My new rules of sci-fi:
 
1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.
2) Just because the special effects are awesome doesn't mean you don't need great writing.
3) Episodic shows are sitcoms (Star Trek I), and each episode needs to stand alone in a compelling and memorable way. Progessive shows (BSG reboot) need to have a sense of progress in each episode. Using episodic episodes in a progressive shows is OK for a break, but not because you've run out of ideas for progress. If you have run out of ideas for progress, KILL THE SHOW now, on your own terms, before it is cancelled. Take a few months off, pick a new story arc, mix up some characters and start again. If you don't, be sure to buy lunch for your writers so that they will proofread your resume at the end of the season.

Re:good

[skids]

"What was wrong with Atlantis?"

1) Dreadlock surfer-dude badass strained credibility -- and ability to suppress gagging
2) Villiains stolen wholesale from Earth Final Conflict's Season 5 -- incidentally the worst travesty of a final season till she ruined Andromeda, too.
3) Once you thought the lame humanoid replicators were finally gone, here they come again! (Bring back the legos!)

Re:good

[rwven]

Bah. I think Universe was the only good stargate series they ever made.

Re:good

[The MAZZTer]

The wormhole thing was supposed to play a big role in the Atlantis movie, so that was supposed to be a hint I guess. But it was still a weird decision to stick it in like that.

Re:good

[interkin3tic]

My opinion: the first series' only asset was an oddly funny MacGyver faced with alternate realities, usually having to shoot his way out. The show really seemed like a one trick pony. Without MacGyver or the humor, what do you have? Sliders with alien gods that are incredibly advanced but somehow so incompetent that they always lose to 4 people with guns?

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

I can tell you never watched beyond the first few episodes (but I'm just guessing - could be wrong). Yes SGA was pretty "blah" to start but it got better towards the end of the season, and seasons 2,3,4,5 were almost as good as SG1's first five seasons.

I especially liked the concept that the Bad guys were humans that had been bitten by a bug, and the two genes intermingled to create a new species. I also liked learning more about the Ancients, the further development of the replicators (which were an invention of an Ancient scientist), and the exploration of ascension.

SG1 fell into the trap of being a war show, but SGA was free to explore a new idea in each episode (like reading a Short short anthology). Reminded me of the greatness of Star Trek DS9 or the original trek.

Re:good

[Galactic Dominator]

Rodney wasn't anything remotely close to resembling Sam's character. All your points are ridiculous. It's stargate TEAM, of course the team member talents will overlap.

Re:good

[Tiger4]

I liked Universe, but they could have skipped Atlantis altogether.

There are only so many times you can go to the formula well and pull up a winner. And apparently the "fans" punish you if you decide to try a different formula. One where characterization and plot and growth and unpredictability actually mean something.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't help that it was going smoothly, then *bam* off the air for months followed by reruns played out of sequence.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Rodney was NOTHING like Sam.

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

>>>And what the fuck was with the last episode where they just wormholed across time arbitrarily?

Maybe I need to rewatch the episode, but that's not what I saw. If I recall correctly Atlantis turned-on its warp drive and flew across the gap between galaxies, just the same way the Earth ships had done dozens of times (and the Ancient ships did routinely). It was not arbitrary but a well-established fact that it could be done. Neither was it instantaneous, although it was very fast (just a few days).

Re:good

[pooh666]

It is people like you that made BG a horror.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary. SG-1 started well. It was even realistic and plausible, like Sci-Fi is suppose to be. Then it degenerated, one season after another into an unrealistic fairytale.

But this is what tends to happen to all types of shows where the heroes learn and adapt. The writers write more crazy scenarios for each season and eventually you end up with humans on Earth repelling alien conquistadors-equivalents using technology neither of which can understand, but somehow they control it..... What happened to Star Gate is equivalent to what happened to Star Trek after humans beat the Borg.... The story became fantasy, not sci-fi.

Re:good

[arth1]

What was wrong with Atlantis? While it was airing, there was nothing better on TV. I challenge you to provide reasons why it shouldn't have gone that far.

One reason is that, like BG, it turned into a soap, where character interaction became more important than plot and vision.

Re:good

[uradu]

It did have an at times great soundtrack though. I discovered several bands through them, including the Eels (yeah, I know, more than a decade late)--specifically Agony, which played during the very steamy blue lighted opening sequence of an episode in spring. So it wasn't a total wash for me.

Re:good

[metrix007]

They didn't just overlap, they were straight up copied. The young good humored wise cracking leader. The socially bumbling scientist. (The difference is that sam changed to be very sociable whiel Rodney never did). The peaceful translator and anthropologist archetype. The troubled warrior. SG1 worked because of the chemistry and that the stories were original. This was not the cast with SGA.

Re:good

[icebike]

They never said anything about no characters crossing over, you made that up. The whole premise was that dialing back to earth was not initially guaranteed. From earth to Atlantis was always part of the story line.

Simply because it was useful to tie the plot lines together does not make the series bad, in fact it proves you wrong.

Atlantis had more draw than the original, and Atlantis was used to prop up the original for the period that they both ran concurrently.

The original had run out of story.

Atlantis was fresh, and the Wraith were a godsend. Makeup budget overruns necessitated episodes back on earth and invention of other adversaries. But the story was solid.

SGU has nothing to sustain it other than a creepy old ship, and even they need the "Stones" to fill the story with fluff episodes.

Re:good

[icebike]

It was an end-of-budget dodge. The show was already known to be likely to be canceled when that was written. The wraith thing was played out due to several hours of makeup time needed for each appearance. It was simply too expensive.

Re:good

[metrix007]

I watched all seasons over the course of a week.

I couldnt help but feel I was watching many of the same stories told on SG1 but in a different setting. Not to mention the shameless recasting of actors from SG1 in different roles on SGA....way to screw up continuity....

SGA just never got past feeling like a cashgrab for me. The Icarus bug was interesting but never really explored....instead we got lame gothy vampire villians that simply were not interesting.

Also, just to point out the SGA replicators were completely separate from the SG1 replicators...something I also found annoying for several reasons.

Out of curiosity what new ideas do you think SGA explored?

Re:good

[flowwolf]

They cover the time travel wormhole physics in the final SG movie. You can't just rewrite the time line because the people in alternate time lines are separate people. The original stranded time line of SGU would still be stranded. Ronin and Teal'c are nothing alike. The back stories are richly different. Almost every character in the show had depth and development through out the entire season.

I don't think you truely understand what makes characters flat or developed. Cliche Ronin may have been, but cliche's are a powerful literary tool and carry much weight with them.

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

>>>decent ratings for SciFi so any series that isn't a blockbuster will on the chopping block there.

Probably because it's not Sci-Fi anymore, but Syfy. Slang for syfylis? ;-) The executives appear to be converting the channel from science fiction to fantasy & horror with new shows that have zero basis in reality (like that Stephen King show, and Amanda Tapping's supernatural-whatever show). Plus the addition of Wrestling to replace what was SciFi Prime/Friday for almost 15 years.

I'm afraid sci-fi is dead on Syfy. Perhaps it's time to start a new "Science and Science Fiction" channel (to borrow the title from Analog) and restore some of those classic shows like "SF Trader" and "Convention Watch" and "Inside Space".

Re:good

[metrix007]

Abstractly he was. The socially bumbling science expert. Sam became a lot more sociably capable after season 1, but the similarities are plentiful.

Re:good

[icebike]

I definitely agree with your number 3.

I am so sick of tossing in the tear jerk episode (usually lifted directly from some other series) simply because they don't have enough plot to carry a full season, or they have to give the female writers something to do. (Ok, I've said it, flames expected).

 

Re:good

[metrix007]

No, in the finale of SGA Rodney has a "Wormhole Drive" which was never mentioned previously on SG1 or SGA, and got them to earth in seconds. It was bullshit, and should have negated the entire premise of SGU.

Re:good

[metrix007]

Timetravel has absolutely nothing to do with anything that I wrote. I was talking about the finale of SGA and the Wormhold Drive.

WHile Ronin and Teal'c had very different backstories, the end result was the same, at least abstractly -- except Teal'c was always a lot more deep and complex while Ronin never was.

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

>>>Without MacGyver or the humor, what do you have? Sliders with alien gods

(hurt look). Hey! I liked Sliders. And I liked SG1's exploration of a new world each week (i.e. the first five seasons on Showtime). I like shows that test out new ideas, like the original Trek used to do.

Re:good

[arth1]

1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.

I'm sure you mean backwards time travel. Forwards time travel doesn't change anything.

And to ban backwards time travel, you also have to ban FTL travel. Because FTL violates causality, it allows backwards time travel.

Different authors have come up with different contingencies for dealing with this, but none that's believable (perhaps the most amusing was Alaistair Reynolds' blackening out the Andromeda galaxy to prevent information flowing back to the Milky Way once someone had traveled between the two with FTL. Without considering that you not only have to block STL information, but FTL too, thus making FTL a paradox).

I'd like to add: You don't need sound effects in space. The original airing of the new BG was impressive because it didn't have sound effects in space. That made the space battle much more intense and claustrophobic. Then some asshat probably asked "but where are the sound effects?", and they were retrofitted, and the series went downhill from there.

Re:good

[amandaisfun]

Let me guess...you stopped watching SG-1 around season 4-5 and never watched Atlantis? Par for the course for a certain group of SG-1 "fans".

Re:good

[lennier1]

The fact that said horror show also felt as if written by soap opera writers didn't exactly help either.

Re:good

[elrous0]

It's people like you that make scripts and acting tertiary to FX and big, cool 'spolsions!

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[Moryath]

SGU was "beating a dead horse."

Then again so was SGA.

And so were the last few seasons of the first series.

Re:good

[rwven]

Funny, I didn't think I had anything to do with the TV industry.... :rolleyes"

Re:good

[venuspcs]

I loved all the Stargate shows and eagerly await each new episode of SG:Universe. I will sorely miss her when she is gone.

Re:good

[Culture20]

SGA didn't have a peaceful translator and anthropologist archetype until Daniel Jackson joined for a couple episodes.

Re:good

[metrix007]

I *loved* sliders until they killed the professor and introduced the Kromags. A damn shame to see a show gone so wrong.

Re:good

[SuricouRaven]

As a nitpicking semi-fan, the Destiny is very, very fast already. It's also been traveling for millions of years. It would take an equal amount of time to go back again.

Re:good

[EdIII]

And what the fuck was with the last episode where they just wormholed across time arbitrarily? Why the fuck has that not even come up in SGU as a way to get them home?

Let me see if I can geek out here and offer an explanation...

SGU is to Stargate Atlantis as Star Trek Enterprise is to Star Trek TNG.

Keep in mind, that the SGU ship is very old compared to the already very old Ancient technology. We are talking a span of a million+ years here. From what I gathered from the show, the FTL method used by that older ship is not even the same as the "newer" ships.

The newer city ship is equipped with 3 zero point modules while the older autonomous ship was designed to gather power periodically directly from the stars. The level of energy required to initiate a galaxy-to-galaxy wormhole is already tremendous. It took all the power they had to wormhole the new ship from one galaxy to another.

Bottom line is that old autonomous gate deployment ship was never really designed to take on crew and pop around galaxy to galaxy. It was designed to be very redundant and reliable and create and deploy stargates for as long as possible at a nice slow pace.

I would imagine that if actual Ancients came aboard they could not only take full control of the ship, but might actually bring advanced power sources with them to go back home from any stargate available. Only their descendents have a penchant for gate travel without thinking of how to get back.

Re:good

[Surt]

Rodney was exactly like Sam except:
He was less competent, casting scientists in a bad light (go go sci fi channel appeal to nerdy science types)
He was male (go go appeal to sci fi male viewers!)
He never grew, personally (go go appeal to nerdy types)

He was Sam, with all the good parts removed, and a dose of embarrassing nerd caricature thrown in.

Re:good

[ichthus]

Those are good rules (though I think I disagree with #3. Serialized story lines make a lot of good ideas possible.)

My main rule would be:

4) No supernatural bullshit.

This includes wormhole aliens (DS9), ascended beings/o'ri (SG1), angelic guides (BG), and the limbo/afterlife state of attaining illumination (LOST).

Re:good

[metrix007]

Wrong. Teyla filled that gap nicely.

Re:good

[bhcompy]

What was wrong with Atlantis? They killed Robert Patrick in the first episode. That's what was wrong with Atlantis.

Re:good

[metrix007]

Not with the wormhole drive.....

Atlantis was in the Pegasus Galaxy. SGU are just in a third different galaxy....is it necessarily that much further away?

Re:good

[Z00L00K]

I would say that SGU was at least something different from Atlantis, but it also looped back on itself. It's a closed environment that is hard to develop.

But in a way it's more psychological than action. Unfortunately the writers have never been able to keep the tension for the viewers right. Too much negative feelings.

And SGU is certainly not for the same audience as the original Stargate series. It's completely different. And I think that the "stones" feature where the minds are swapped between Earth and the starship is just degrading the story rather than improving it. I really dislike the parts where someones mind is transferred to Earth, it just blows the suspension completely.

However some kind of communication with Earth could have been a good feature, just ordinary voice/video would have done better. More viewer suspense and a broader spectrum of acting and more progress with the ship would have pushed the story forward a lot more.

Mind - you can do a lot of good stories with only a few special effects and simple costumes. And SGU at least have mostly simple costumes aside from a few aliens.

Re:good

[morgauxo]

No, they said in the begining that there would be some crossover, it just wouldn't be all the time or easy.

Re:good

[metrix007]

It would have been nice if that at least addressed why the wormhole drive couldn't work to get them back home.

Re:good

[Captain Splendid]

I'm sure you mean backwards time travel. Forwards time travel doesn't change anything.

2 problems with that: One, traveling into the future is, from a narrative standpoint, fucking boring. Two, as an illustration of the first point, someone please point a major work, besides HG Wells' original, that featured nothing but forward time travel. After all, they always have to come back.

Re:good

[Surt]

God is speaking through me today:
#1 is exactly why I forbade it in this universe when I created it. In older versions of the universe some asshole time traveler was always killing my son, and thus un-saving the souls of billions of people throughout history. The bookkeeping and transfers between heaven and hell were an absolute mess.

Re:good

[DragonTHC]

that is the death knell for all series.

when they stop it mid season for something else, it's going to be cancelled.

Re:good

[clone52431]

someone please point a major work, besides HG Wells' original, that featured nothing but forward time travel

Most of them do, but I think you’re intentionally forgetting that time usually travels forward at its normal rate.

Re:good

[Opportunist]

It was worse than that, if you ask me.

There's like a billion generic sci-fi series today. So you have to have a twist in yours to make it interesting. The whole "Ancient Egypt Gods travelling through ancient world gates" angle worked great for Stargate (the original). It was great Sci-Fi without a lot of space opera. Their main angle, at least for me, was "plausible today sci-fi". You could believe it, stretching your imagination a bit. Usually, when you try to place a sci-fi setting into our current reality, you're facing a few plausibility loopholes. How comes no amateur astronomer finds the space ships? How do you mop up and hide all the fights happening on earth (after all, what's a sci-fi show without lasers?)? How do you keep governments from wanting all that spiffy alien technology and using it against other countries?

Stargate solved all that pretty well, originally. The Stargate is hidden in an underground base, and traveling to other planets is done through that gate, where we conveniently also place all the fights. Great solution. Nice plausibility.

It went downhill when, for some godaweful reason only the script writers could explain, we had to add starships. Why? We had a formula here that worked and that was refreshingly different from the usual "aliens vs. humans, fighting a battle in space" generic formula.

Seriously. The series died for me a long, long time ago. When the "explore strange planets and fight the Goa'uld" formula was replaced with "oh hey, let's have space battles".

Re:good

[Tubal-Cain]

No, in the finale of SGA Rodney has a "Wormhole Drive"...

Zelenka (or however you spell it) was the one that mentioned it. IIRC, Rodney & co. had gated to the super-hive.
Yes, that bit was completely stupid.

Re:good

[Surt]

I'm pretty sure that people who are inventing FTL are inventing single-clock universes as well.

Re:good

[lennier1]

To be fair, Atlantis started out interesting, but the forced changes every season did lead to rather underwhelming later seasons.
And while the fact that they had to start out without knowing when they'd find a means of returning was an advantage of the early episodes it was only logical to discover a solution after a while. After all, the discovery of new civilizations and technologies was the core of the Stargate program.

SGU already started out handicapping itself. And no, I mean apart from the soap opera characters and the overdone pop music montage at the end of an episode.
Such a huge ship to explore to find means of survival after their unplanned arrival and instead everything progresses at a speed which even a snail would consider comatose?
And the already mentioned communication stones (which the writers constantly used as a crutch) further undermined the pretense of the cast being trapped on an out-of-control ship in unknown space.
Pretty much the only thing that actually worked in Universe's favor were the aliens, which were different enough to require digital effects instead of costumed actors.

In the end I'm surprised they actually canceled Caprica before Universe, since the latter was practically begging to be put out of its misery.

Re:good

[Culture20]

And to ban backwards time travel, you also have to ban FTL travel. Because FTL violates causality, it allows backwards time travel.

But it doesn't allow stationary backwards time travel. You can "travel back in time" in the strict physics sense regarding special relativity, but you can't do it and end up where you were before you left. Science Fiction FTL is more like teleportation than special relativity FTL.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

The ship "deep in space & out of contact" setting didn't work just as it didn't work for Star Trek Voyager.

Actually, it did work for Voyager. How else can you explain Voyager remaining on-air until the series completion (with the destruction of the Borg Collective, and finally Voyager's return to not only the Alpha Quadrant but to Earth itself)?

Voyager had Q (I don't ever remember any Q in Deep Space 9 or Enterprise). Voyager detailed the Borg more than STNG or ST:First Contact ever did. Voyager introduced Species 8472. Voyager, the ship itself, was fucking badass and its technology was constantly being upgraded (eg, an astrometrics lab with Borg tech, Delta Flyer, etc.).

SGU sucked from the first 5mins of the pilot episode. It lost me before the first Stargate cast cameo (was there even one?).

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[Captain Splendid]

It is people like you that made BG a horror.

"Please show us on the diagram where George Lucas touched you, Mr. Pooh."

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[arth1]

2 problems with that: One, traveling into the future is, from a narrative standpoint, fucking boring

Evidence to the contrary: Multiple works of Vernor Vinge and Poul Anderson.

Re:good

[lennier1]

You mean apart from proving that Canadians don't like to do things by halves?
Sam wiped out a sun, Rodney a whole solar system. ;)

Re:good

[Sanctuary]

Yes, that is in my opinion why SGU and Caprica lost viewership too, inconsistent air times Just as one was getting back in the story, they take a break and the thrill of a *series* is out the window. If they would just show the entire season back to back every week and only have long breaks between seasons I think the shows could have kept/gained viewers. Even W13 and Eureka are hard to follow with all the breaks and they don't have as many story arcs.

Re:good

[AmigaMMC]

The Stargate Universe series sucked since episode 1, and I'm a huge Stargate fan. I couldn't wait for this show to die. Finally!

Re:good

[Rick Genter]

Not to be a total geek, but:

In SGA, the "Pegasus Galaxy" is supposedly about 3 million light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy.
In SGU, the Destiny is supposedly 7 *billion* light-years from Earth, or ~2300x as far.

So the Wormhole Drive would have to run for hours instead of seconds....and as we all know, the dipolarized unobtanium that powers it goes supercritical if used for more than 30 seconds and destroys the universe, so SGU *obviously* couldn't have used that... ;-)

Re:good

[interkin3tic]

I didn't mean being like sliders was bad, that was a good backdrop. The bad part was the kromag equivalent, except this one was omnipotent, yet incompetent alien gods.

To be fair, the whole gods aspect was often quite well done. Still, I'm saying it wasn't the real draw for the show, and got silly after a while.

Re:good

[Culture20]

(hurt look). Hey! I liked Sliders.

I did too. Until the writers killed the show. At least one original cast member survived.

Re:good

[morgauxo]

Come on, any 'nerdy science type' that is offended just because Rodney has issues really needs to relax OK, Sam was female. I'm not saying she was ugly or anything but I wouldn't say hot either. If her inclusion in the series was for sex appeal than someone really missed that message. I wouldn't say Ammanda Tapping is hot but she would be noticeable if she were the only girl in the room as she appeared in some of her out of character interviews. In SG1... no. She isn't uggly or anything but she is just more like one of the guys as far as that goes. Now, some of the rarer female characters... maybe but I can't even think of their names, that's how rare they were. If you watched SG1 for that kind of scenery you really need to get out and get laid, or at least turn off "SyFy" (blah new name) and switch to cinemax or something. Um.... actually I thought Rodney grew quite a bit personally. You must have stopped watching early on.

Re:good

[ph0rk]

No it hasn't. At least not as a Stargate series.

Stargate was always about one thing.

Sucking as hard as possible with sophomoric humor and mediocre rehashed music? A solid B- sci fi show, sure, but really not that great.

Just because there aren't a lot of A level sci fi shows doesn't mean we should worship a mediocre one.

Re:good

[lennier1]

The problem wasn't the human factor per se.
A lot of entertaining science fiction stories only need a couple of decent actors and not much more (The Man from Earth, Exam, ...). It's the "how", in this case the stories that turn a science fiction show into a third-rate soap opera.

Re:good

[Rick Genter]

traveling into the future is, from a narrative standpoint, fucking boring.

Actually, Futurama handled this really well. Just go forward until you loop through the next Big Bang cycle. Then stop moving forward when the new universe it up to the point in its history where the old universe was and where you want to change things. Oops! Missed Hitler; quick, fast forward to the next cycle!

Re:good

[HTH NE1]

I loved all the Stargate shows

Even Stargate Infinity? Or did I violate your mental block? (Confession: I bought it on DVD.)

I'd like it if they could get Showtime to give the franchise a home again. Stargate Universe could do with being on a more mature channel, especially with the more mature themes in this series.

Re:good

[arth1]

And quite a few authors have exploited that the normal rate shifts quite a bit as one approaches light speed. Not the least Poul Anderson's Hugo winning novel "Tau Zero".

Other ways of forward time travel outside the normal rate include stasis fields. Vernor Vinge's "The Peace Wars" is an excellent example. Alastair Reynolds also uses this, but on a smaller scale.

Then there's the recording/replaying means of time travel, as used in P.J. Farmer's Riverworld series. Hardly a minor work.

Other uses of time as a plot device that doesn't violate causality includes Asimov's masterpiece, the Foundation series, where prediction becomes the means of time travel.

(Heinlein, on the other hand, blatantly and humorously violated the grandfather paradox, not by going back and killing one's grandfather, but by going back and fucking one's grandmother.)

Re:good

[numbski]

There's always a certain level of irony when faced with "MacGuyver" and "shooting" in the same sentence.

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[afidel]

the end result was the same, at least abstractly

That's like saying RPG's are bad because almost all of them have a healer, a warrior, a mage, and a ranged character. Just because there is a formula doesn't mean you can't make a good story using it.

Re:good

[Frosty Piss]

"What was wrong with Atlantis?" Day-time SOAP set in space.

Re:good

[lennier1]

It didn't help that the whole "enemy of the season" thing became rather boring after a while, leading to the whole Anubis thing and followed by the Space Taliban in their flying toilet seats.

Re:good

[Captain Splendid]

God, how fucking sad is it that a sarcastic half hour cartoon did scifi better than 99% of the expensive movies and tv shows that we've had these last 20 years?

Re:good

[Rockoon]

The reason they are cooled Cool Explosions is because they are.. well... COOL!!

This is slashdot. FX gives us a chubby.

Re:good

[i_b_don]

Yeah, but i'd rather have a mediocre one than none at all. Now granted, I don't watch much TV, but the last time I looked, the SyFi channel just played Ghost hunter bullshit. Where the hell IS good Sci Fi?

I for one enjoyed the Stargate series. It's not exactly deep.... but if you've seen today's TV lineup, it doesn't appear that "deep" sells these days, if it ever has.

d

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I thought I was the only one feeling this way. I hate fantasy/sci-fi, but for some reason I stuck with SG for many seasons. Really, the thing that made the show for me was MacGyver and his humorous one-liners.

Re:good

[GooberToo]

And here is your geek card!

Stand proud!

Re:good

[lgw]

Actually, that's the best description I've seen. The show had some cool elements, and I'm a big SG fan in general, but this was just sad. Exactly like a survival horror show written by soap opera writers!

Re:good

[omnichad]

I really don't find the addition of starships to be a huge problem or all that forced. It was also always a story of the underdog Earth, beating the odds using technology that they don't understand. The one planet among many that overthrew their oppressors even in ancient Egypt. think it would be harder to believe that the military DIDN'T try to build fighters and starships, especially with the looming thought that Earth is now a target.

Re:good

[Rick Genter]

That's because Groening and Cohen and math/science geeks...

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly well said.

Re:good

[venuspcs]

Yes even Stargate Infinity. There is not an episode or movie of any of the Stargate's that I haven't seen. I wouldn't call myself a FANBOY but I LOVE THIS SHOW/CONCEPT.

Re:good

[clone52431]

Cryogenic freezing / hibernation is one you forgot to mention, and that’s been a plot device ever since Rip Van Winkle. (For a more recent example, Idiocracy or Avatar.)

Re:good

[omnichad]

They cancelled Atlantis to have the budget to do SG-U exactly how they wanted.

Re:good

[Abcd1234]

where character interaction became more important than plot and vision.

Yes. God forbid one should build a show based on character interaction...

Let me guess: you're a B5 fan, aren't you?

Re:good

[lgw]

The space ships didn't bother me until parhaps the final season, when they had started to replace the "go through the stargate an discover something" theme entirely. I really liked the fact that the setting evolved in SG1. We started capturing all this cool tech from the enemy, and we learned from it, and some of that was game-changing. I can't think of another SF show that has followed things through to some (vaguely) logical conclusion like that.

Re:good

[Surt]

No, I watched it through to the bitter end. I was glad they finally gave up on SGA, frankly.

Re:good

[omnichad]

Don't get me started, that show jumped the shark so many times, you'd think they were in a rubber room full of sharks (pardon my lack of creativity).

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stargate Universe is basically a survival horror series.
And a bad one as well. You can see all plot twists from a mile away ..."

No kidding! [spoiler alert]

If you've been watching the 2nd season, remember when Telford left in the "gate ship", seemingly surrounded by hostile aliens with the expectation he was dead/lost forever at the end of the episode? At the time I was confident he'd show up later in the season, riding in like the cavalry to save the main ship and its crew, and that the "hostile aliens" wouldn't be hostile, just misunderstood.

What happened a half dozen episodes? Exactly that. And it's hardly the first time. The nasty Lucian Alliance guy kills Eli's new female friend. Didn't see that coming. HA! Not a single fricking surprise.

I thought the acting was actually okay, the stories occasionally interesting, but what the writers probably thought was "building tension" was just "spoiling the surprise" over and over again. Terribly predictable. I swear, the writers couldn't develop a plot twist if their life depended on it.

It doesn't have to be that way. I kept thinking of Straczynski's writing on "Babylon 5", where some episodes would have 3 or 4 layers of twists back and forth in a single episode, none of which you'd see coming -- EVEN if you'd seen a vision of the future event happening in an earlier episode!

Re:good

[quercus_jones]

Battlestar Galactica was sort of deep...until the final episode.

Re:good

[IgnitusBoyone]

You took a sci-fi show that was famous for not taking itself to serious and turned it in to Battlestar Galatica style drama it wasn't going to work out. Half the characters didn't trust each other which ruins the team dynamics that fans of SG-1 and Atlantis liked and while I don't think you need a single alien race to make a SG-1 series having nothing isn't idea either. I watched the show, but I can tell you I am thankful it was canceled. Maybe the show would of worked with a more Voyager style set-up, but I found the we don't even know what were looking for time and time again dulling.

Re:good

[metrix007]

Well done :-)

Re:good

[lgw]

Bah, they just would have needed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flux - that always works.

Re:good

[metrix007]

That's true, but thats because the story fleshes out those cliches. SGA did not.

Re:good

[lgw]

A special effects budget and SciFi setting doesn't nothing to make a soap opera better. There are plently of soap operas on TV, there's no particular point to having one that pretends to be SF, or even SciFi.

Re:good

[mikael_j]

There's like a billion generic sci-fi series today. So you have to have a twist in yours to make it interesting. The whole "Ancient Egypt Gods travelling through ancient world gates" angle worked great for Stargate (the original).

The "egyptian angle" along with something about the shows which I can only describe as a "plastic" feel made it uninteresting. SGU was the first Stargate show I was mildly interested in...

Re:good

[IronChef]

As a big Stargate fan, I watched it, but never with any great enthusiasm. It tried so hard to be different that it left out the things that made previous Stargate shows work.

Re:good

[peragrin]

Since in the first episode they stated they are 1000 times farther away than pegasus was(billions not millions of light years) , I would have to say yes.

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination - (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Simple math 20 days to travel by the daedalus to Pegasus. that makes 20,000 days to travel to the Destiny or 54 years of constant flight time. If the Destiny wasn't moving. You might be able to cut that in half each way if the two ships turned toward each other. So under Ideal conditions 27 years. WE don't live in the ideal world, especially over a 27 year journey.

Re:good

[foamrat]

Two, as an illustration of the first point, someone please point a major work, besides HG Wells' original, that featured nothing but forward time travel.

Ice Pirates, IIRC.

Re:good

[lgw]

Actually, time travel is fine as long as you are unable to change the past (or to change it in a lasting way that affectes the future). It's also good if used for humor - I like a nice evil villian who exists only in a time loop, eternally fighting the hero.

Re:good

[Phoshi]

Young? O'Neil was certainly not young - *they* asked *him* to come out of retirement, remember!

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

You had to have starships because it's dumb to think that only one race would conceive of them or that everyone with them would disappear.

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

Did we watch the same show?

Re:good

[bill_mcgonigle]

God, I don't mean to go full-geek on you here, but:

We know that Destiny can handle 27 years, no problem. We also know that the Daedalus can as well, since there was that episode where they all grew old on it (or one of its sister ships).

Re:good

[metrix007]

Except it took less than 2 seconds to get from Pegasus to earth with the wormhole drive. So what, a few months to get back home at most?

Re:good

[bill_mcgonigle]

I *loved* sliders until they killed the professor and introduced the Kromags.

I suspect the professor heard about the Kromags and asked to be put out of his misery.

Re:good

[natehoy]

I would say that SGU was at least something different from Atlantis, but it also looped back on itself. It's a closed environment that is hard to develop.

Yes, at least Atlantis wasn't a starship. Oh, wait... were there any sharks in the water when it took off the first time, and would a vertical launch be considered "jumping" them?

Ah, well. At least they had the brains not to come right out and call it "Stargate: Voyager"

The show certainly has its moments, but I basically watch it because there aren't really any better science fiction series running at the moment. When Universe became my favorite currently-running science fiction series, I died a little inside.

Can't we get something original again? BSG was at least an inventive retelling of the original, even though it was a spinoff. Caprica read like a soap opera. Universe took the same path, although it was markedly better than Caprica.

I'd love to see something in the spirit of Farscape or Babylon 5 come back, though. Something totally off the wall and not based on rehashes of franchises I was watching before I was old enough to drink (and drinking age was 18 back then!). The problem is, if it's not based an an already-successful franchise, it's hard to justify taking a risk.

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

He was less competent, casting scientists in a bad light (go go sci fi channel appeal to nerdy science types)

Sam gave Rodney props on multiple occasions and everyone on the show came to depend on his ability to save the team (or occasionally the universe or something) at the usual dramatic last second.

He was male (go go appeal to sci fi male viewers!)

They mixed it up a bit, and moved characteristics around to different characters, but all the character traits are still present in the group somewhere. You may have noticed that it's a sequel to a formula show based on a formula established in a movie.

He never grew, personally (go go appeal to nerdy types)

If I were slightly more nerdy I could probably even remember the name of the episode where some other nebbish is dying and gives him props for actually becoming part of the team. His emotional development is minimal but progressive and marked by major events.

I don't think SGA is one of the best Sci-Fi shows of all time or anything, but I watched it with my lady who is much pickier than I am. I forced her to watch enough Babylon 5 to "get it" (but just try getting her to rewatch it when you insist on including season one...) and we've watched most of the various Trek shows together, and all of the Stargate material. She and I both feel that SGA was more convincing than SG1. RDA has gravitas but that's it, sorry. Or maybe she just thinks the bouncy guy with the dreads is sexy.

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

I didn't watch all of SGU and even I know it's either because it can and Rush won't let it or because they don't have full access to the ship's systems or because something is broken either beyond repair or beyond their current understanding. And if I hadn't watched any of the show the only thing I wouldn't know is the name of the character most likely responsible for any skullduggery.

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

Uh no, that was Babylon 5. Which, mind you, is still one of my favorites. Maybe that's because I watched All My Children growing up... Curse you, mom!

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

Actually, it did work for Voyager. How else can you explain Voyager remaining on-air until the series completion

Female characters that female nerds wanted to be and male nerds wanted to fuck.

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

And to beat this particular point to death, it's one that shows up again and again in the Stargate universe (as opposed to Stargate Universe) both in conjunction with backwards time travel and on its own.

Re:good

[peragrin]

ACtually no it didn't.

it took 2 seconds to go from the edge of the milkyway to Earth by the wormhole drive, draining a huge part of the power supply in the processes. They traveled by hyperdrive for most of the trip. As they didn't have to use intergalactic dialing when they dialed earth and got the wraith ship.

I know far to many details of those shows

Re:good

[Abcd1234]

A special effects budget and SciFi setting doesn't nothing to make a soap opera better.

And a special effects budget and SciFi setting with no character interaction doesn't make a science fiction program better.

There is a balance to be had, of course, and SGU failed to reach that balance, particularly in it's early goings. But the most memorable moments in science fiction are those where that balance is exquisitely achieved. One need only way "The City on the Edge of Forever" or "The Best of Both Worlds" to see that. These episodes were great specifically *because* the science fiction elements combined with the human elements to create something that resonates with the viewer.

Re:good

[johanw]

Well, Babylon 5 comes to mind. Earth eventually learns a lot from the Minbari and something of the Vorlons to build cool new ships like the Excalibur.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

The show certainly could have been better. But you know what? I was watching it.

If you don't like it, you don't have to watch it. Remarking that it's "Good it died" is ignorant. I can't stand 99% of shows on TV, but I'm not going to tell other people what they should and should not be watching based on my tastes.

I've had it up to my eyeballs with TV stations cancelling shows in the midst of their runs, and little snots like yourself telling us what's "good" for us.

Re:good

[Amouth]

I watch SGU because as you said it's the best sci-fi on the air right now..

but sadly there have been times i felt like i would rather watch Lexx just to try to figure out what the writers where thinking..

it would be the same experience as watching SGU.

although i'm sad they are pulling it i'm still more annoyed by them yanking Atlantis in two episodes with zero warning - and leaving a huge story line just sitting out there.

it all comes down to money.. SG1 did well and made them a lot of money - Atlantis took that idea and added a lot more special effects and Cost to it (i'd hate to see their costume bill compared to SG1) but adding all that didn't make the profits come in any better so it is shown as less profitable (even though it was doing well). so they cut to SGU to try and change that - dumb it down and try to pull a BSG - and they have just failed..

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

There is noting worng with seeing things comming. If you want to be 100% suprised all the time watch The Young and the Restless where crazy shit happen all the time for no logical reason.

Re:good

[Desperado]

I'm afraid sci-fi is dead on Syfy. Perhaps it's time to start a new "Science and Science Fiction" channel (to borrow the title from Analog) and restore some of those classic shows like "SF Trader" and "Convention Watch" and "Inside Space".

Heck, I'd be happy to be able to rewatch LEXX and Farscape episodes. Too much frelling drenn on SyFy these days.

Re:good

[Amouth]

The only original episode they ever did was when the shuttle was stuck halfway between the gate. That was it.

I give the writers props for the way they pulled off spoofing CSI with the Vegas episode - that was while not exactly original was very well done.

Re:good

[arth1]

Um, no, I actually thought B5 was crap. Special effects and repetitive plot. My Amiga friends thought me insane for not liking it, given that the gfx was modeled on Amiga, and I was a more die-hard Amigo than most.
Firefly never worked for me either, with the ping-pong dialogues.

For a series that worked, the first few episodes of BSG (new version) was pretty damn good, until they spoiled even those by retrofitting sfx, and crashed the rest of the series into la-la-land.

Re:good

[h8sg8s]

Well, good or not, my reasons for subscribing to SyFy just ended too. Tired of crap ghost series and wrestling. Looks like there's just no interest in SCIENCE fiction in Hollywood anymore, just fantasy and occult. And wrestling. Oh joy..

Re:good

[Amouth]

just pulse it man -.. if it goes in 30 seconds use it for 29.. wait a min and do it again.. that seems to work.. at least until they "lose containment"

Re:good

[Zumbs]

1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.

This is the only one of the three that only applies to SF (the others apply to pretty much all shows), and it is a very important one. While I have nothing against the odd Star Trek time-travel episodes ("Trials and Tribulations" from DS9 comes to mind), making time travel the core story for the Enterprise series were probably the worst decision made for that series. It just turned everything to crap.

Re:good

[amandaisfun]

Atlantis had much, much better space battle scenes than SG-1 ever had. If you like starship porn, then that's one area the series did pretty good in.

Re:good

[Spellvexit]

I tend to agree that it was the best so far, but I also think SGU had so much untapped potential that became entangled with the trappings of soap-opera caliber relationships and irritatingly pointless antics where they returned to Earth via the stones. I don't care about what's happening on Earth. I don't care that the HR lady's lesbian relationship is strained being 20 kabillion miles from her lover. I'm in this more for the science and the vast promise of the entire universe.

I did think a few things were quite well-done:

• I greatly enjoyed the universe. Instead of landing in yet another deciduous midwestern forest like every stargate seemed to point to, the planets in SGU had radically different terrain. Ice planets, deserts, wastelands, jungles... very few of which had even signs of civilization. Space in SGU was much emptier, mysterious, perilous, and realistic.
• Along with that, I enjoyed the music (not the crooning pop montage at the end of the episodes). It... really felt "spacey" to me. :)
• I thought the aliens were very well-done in this series -- especially the little guys on the seed ship. They were truly alien and unknown, unlike the Wraith, who stomped about in their dingy scary ship wearing scary makeup and scary clothes and hissing scarily at the camera for the umpteenth scary time. The scariness of the wraith was so exaggerated that they simply became ludicrous caricatures of antagonists.

I'm not going to shed tears at its departure, because while it had potential, I got the feeling the writers would never really get around to harness it, being instead trapped with a middle school mentality amidst the intrigues of the crew. It's a shame, though, because they did get many things right.

Re:good

[ctd600ftlb]

Depending on how you want to define time travel, Haldeman's The Forever War may fit this bill. IIRC, the main character didn't specifically set out to travel through time, but as a side effect of their method of space travel, quite a bit of time passed while they were in transit. I believe space travel worked much the same in Card's Enderverse, though I'm not sure they ever returned to the same planets after traveling in the narrative itself, so the effect may not have been visible (not counting travel inside a particular system). Also thinking one of Bester's short stories may have dealt with only forward time travel, and of a more deliberate sort, but I'm drawing a blank as to which one, so I could be mistaken.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call it survivor horror but survivor emo-teen drama. Exacerbated cheesy love and fear feelings of mundane situations dragging allong half-time if not more of the a whole episode.

Although im sad to hear they were cancelled, because these last episodes where they finally have full control over Destiny and enconter some alien race in another ship with the technology to build/mount stargates was actually strong line of thought they could have explored. A solid point where the series could go beyond soap opera drama.

Re:good

[Delarth799]

You forgot that stupid wresting crap they are starting to play more of now to. Seriously how the fuck is wrestling in any way shape or form related to sci-fi. Hell with Ghost Hunters you could at least argue at some angle as to how it would work in with sci-fi.

Re:good

[Delarth799]

Because they don't know how to control it because they need to find the control room. While I'm a few episodes off at the moment but last I checked the only person who even knew where the control room was would be Dr. Rush and he wouldn't tell anybody about it since he doesn't want to go home.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

although i'm sad they are pulling it i'm still more annoyed by them yanking Atlantis in two episodes with zero warning - and leaving a huge story line just sitting out there.

Really? They pulled it at the last minute? You'd never know it from the way the show ended. I sort of expected it to end after the standard 5 seasons, just as it did. They didn't do a season-by-season contract extension for five more years like they did with SG-1, but it was pretty clear from watching the finale that they at least somewhat expected the show to end. The season 5 finale wasn't a cliffhanger like most or all the previous seasons. It ended with the wraith attack stopped and Atlantis sitting safely in the San Francisco Bay. They even wrapped up most of the minor plot lines---whether McKay would get together with Keller, who Ronan's love interest would be, etc. All in all, it felt like a really solid way to wrap up the show.

Re:good

[HTH NE1]

As I disclosed, I liked it enough to buy it. But there are some things in its animation that are painful to watch: being off-model on inanimate objects, when the number of chevrons on the gate would jump from 5 to 12 with a change of viewing angle on the same planet; failing to understand how props work, as the time they dialed the DHD like it was a rotary phone; messing up basic tenets of the science, when the Tlak'kahn arrive out of an outgoing wormhole; and simple editing errors, when they dial the gate with a wormhole already present, or open/close an already opened/closed iris.

And you can tell they just don't care about continuity with the franchise at all when, in the opening sequence, wormhole travel sounds like being shot with a Zat. I'd rather watch Wormhole Xtreme.

Re:good

[Antisyzygy]

What is stupid is that the rest of humanity is kept in the dark about it. It would not be possible with massive starships. With that sort of technology some upstart company of ex-military individuals involved with the Stargate and spacecraft would start mining asteroids or something and out-compete all other mining companies on earth.

Re:good

[bertoelcon]

You mean apart from proving that Canadians don't like to do things by halves? Sam wiped out a sun, Rodney a whole solar system. ;)

5/6 of a solar system, and it was uninhabited.

Re:good

[tbannist]

On the other hand, I never really liked the new BSG at all (I actually prefer the old one, believe or not). The characters in the new BSG were thoroughly unlikeable, the drama was over the top, and they spent way too much time talking and not enough time doing. I was often profoundly bored by the unlikely characters and the attempt to generate constant tension.

I liked Babylon 5 because it captured a more epic feel (not including Season 5 for obvious reasons). It is (plausibly) at the center of events as the Universe (as they know it) is plunged into war. The types of drama feel very different. I think it might be because, frankly, I don't really give a damn about how fictional people feel about the fictional situations they're in. I'm a lot more interested in what they do about them because that's the entertaining part to me.

I'm saddened by the cancellation of SGU. I was finding the show interesting enough to watch, though many of the criticisms that people have about it are correct. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything better to replace it.

Re:good

[Antisyzygy]

4) Do not have noise in space battles.

Re:good

[omnichad]

You just wrote the next season of SG-1. Now we just have to get SyFy on board and rebuild the sets. Sounds better than SGU.

Re:good

[Roman Coder]

No it hasn't.
At least not as a Stargate series.

Stargate was always about one thing.
Explore other worlds by people who want to do it by their free will.
Show how humans explore the galaxy solving riddles of great age.

Stargate Universe is basically a survival horror series.
And a bad one as well. You can see all plot twists from a mile away and
all the characters act like they are all stupid to no end, just like a old horror
movie.

Good it died.

And it drag out so slowly. Sad thing was it was actually starting to get good (better pacing, more story and not just emo time), just before the cancellation.

Re:good

[0100010001010011]

The damn 0.5 seasons that every (#@*& cable station seems to be doing is what is killing cable TV IMHO.

11 episodes, 4 months, 11 more episodes. No. 22 episodes back to back. Summer off. Or winter off. It's like the writers spend so much energy making sure episodes 10/11 are cliff hangers that they forget how to write a decent story arc that spans 22 episodes. And rather than getting people interested in coming back for season 2.5, people just forget about it.

Also the cast is also too large. SG-1 had a core of a few people. Then you had some kick ass occasional characters like Bra'tac, Dr. Fraiser (I think I was quite upset in the episode where she died). Instead I've literally had to look up on Wiki who certain people are. "Wait, wasn't the blond with that one guy and having the baby, no that was the breasty brunette".

In the first 2 seasons of SG-1 alone we had the Tok'ra, Jaffa, Goa'uld, Asgard. A good backstory about each race, how they fit into everything. The writers made a great Mythos. Visited a new world almost every episode and a cool new race of people, usually "descended" from some culture on earth. Hell some episodes had me going back and looking up mythology and how it all related.

What have we got in 2 seasons on SGU? 1 alien race. A few random empty worlds. And a whole lot of time on a dark ship. Oh and shooting, and some earth scenes.
-
I was late to the SG-1 game. I watched seasons 1-8 in a little under 4 months. I loved it. It was like one long movie. Character Development. Inside Jokes. MacGyver. It reminded me quite a bit of DS9 (which I watched back to back in around 6 months).

I was unsure of Atlantis at first, but once it got going. I really got into the story lines. The new enemies, etc. Then I watched the last episode, not knowing it was, wow. They're back on earth. This is kind of cool. When's the next season. WTF THEY CANCELED IT?

Stargate Universe... meh so far. It's better than Voyager and with Rings. They built up this entire history about Aliens being old Norse/Egyptian Gods. All the stuff with the Ancients, on Atlantis. Yes, Destiny is an Ancient ship, but we don't learn a damn thing about them other than they have seed ships. BUILD THE STORY. Maybe run into the Furlings.

Re:good

[multipartmixed]

You bastard, I haven't seen the last season yet!

Re:good

[Roman Coder]

Can't remember the episode of SGA, but didn't they say travel from Milky Way to Pegasus galaxies was a "weeks" trip?

So yeah, you could still do the trip if it took a year or two, but you'd have to find them too, once you got into the same galaxy. The show doesn't really cover the whole navigation/big-assed Universe thing much.

Re:good

[Roman Coder]

You know, people like kicking Stargate Infinity around, but it really wasn't that bad of a show, considering it was written for a young audience.

Re:good

[tycoex]

Each Stargate got a little bit worse. SG1 was fantastic. SGA was decent. And SGU sucked.

What SGU really reminded me of was a crappy version of Battlestar Galactica.

Re:good

[TheEyes]

It would have been nice if that at least addressed why the wormhole drive couldn't work to get them back home.

Maybe because they didn't have one? May as well ask why they don't just wire a ZPM or three into the gate and gate back home.

Re:good

[kangsterizer]

I haven't watched Atlantis cause I thought it's not SG1 it sucks etc..

then later I did watch it and Atlantis is GREAT.

Universe is pretty crappy however... they could have made it good, but they choosed to replace action by romance and shit like that.. seriously.. which Stargate fan cares about endeless romance and crews "oh so bad feelings"?

Re:good

[TheEyes]

It didn't help that the whole "enemy of the season" thing became rather boring after a while, leading to the whole Anubis thing and followed by the Space Taliban in their flying toilet seats.

Eh, Anubis was sufficiently eipc and different, but I definitely agree that the "Space Taliban" was a big step backward. I felt I was watching a poor remake of the first couple of seasons: didn't we just get through the whole "We are here to get you to worship us as gods" thing? Do we really have to hit that same theme again, for another two seasons?

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not stand the leader character in Atlantis who was played a sociopathic erotophobic bitch who would take a chance that would kill everyone on Atlantis to attempt to save her unconsummated lover.

Re:good

[Bo'Bob'O]

1) Dreadlock surfer-dude badass strained credibility -- and ability to suppress gagging

Yeah, I think only thing he would be worse would be him in the role of a sword wielding, musclebound conquer.

Re:good

[zhong-guo-1]

This was the best thing to come out of sci-fi [sic] in years. Without this show the channel is a total loss. Hugely disappointed here.

Re:good

[Amouth]

oh i don't like how they wrapped it up nor how they ended it..

i was just commenting on the overall feel and cinematography of the Vegas episode on its own free standing merit as a spoof of CSI.

in no way was i supporting the way they ended it.

Re:good

[linzeal]

This is Slashdot, many of us don't watch TV.

Re:good

[Rick Genter]

The "Wormhole drive" was introduced in series finale of SGA and allowed Atlantis to travel from Pegasus to the Milky Way in seconds - normal hyperspace travel took three weeks.

And yeah, NO SF show has ever addressed the "how do you find a starship in a galaxy" problem (Star Wars, Star Trek, SG, BSG, whatever).

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no plot without character interaction.

Re:good

[after.fallout.34t98e]

I've always liked the idea of one-way time travel:

You can get into the past, and change it, but never in a way to affect your own past or the past in the universe you were in before.

Like stepping through a door into the past, then changing something. Back on the original side of the door, the past hasn't been altered but through the door a different future may unfold. Fortunately most of the time travel in Stargate is of this type. It is the Dr. Who style time travel which I have problems with.

Re:good

[Dachannien]

Actually, this concept was mentioned on Lexx several years before Futurama started.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.

Actually, I think Babylon 5 did a great job with time travel. It consisted of one episode in season 1 ("Babylon Squared") and a two-parter in season 3 ("War Without End" part 1 and part 2), which was the flip side of the season 1 episode.

Re:good

[positivew]

I have to agree. The pilot episode was promising, but it went downhill from there. Too much drama. And about the "cheesy" shows like Eureka - I, for one, actually like that kind of sci-fi. I'm not trying to force my opinion, just saying that if I want drama, I'll read the world news or something.

Re:good

[RLiegh]

Battlestar Galactica was sort of derp

Indeed it was, indeed it was...

Re:good

[Opportunist]

It's not so much the addition of starships. Granted, that pissed me already off a lot, turning SG into "yet another space opera". But that was not the main problem I had with it.

It's that you cannot really do a credible "now-setting" science fiction show while at the same time keeping everything covered up, unless you give a really good reason why nobody catches on. There's astronomers. And even if you can keep the "official" ones under wrap, what about those thousands of hobby astronomers, some of which also looking for UFOs. Not to mention all the thousands of UFO hunters out there who'd jump on even the smallest indication that there MIGHT be something. Then there's aliens who attack Earth (else it's kinda moot to fight them, why bother when they're not even in the slightest interested in our planet?). They have to come here, and they have to open the big ol' can of whoop-ass. How do you keep that under wrap? Every tabloid on this planet would be all over it. Thousands of bloggers writing about it. How do you keep this out of circulation?

SG originally solved this very neatly. The gate to the other planets is deep within Cheyenne Mountain. A military base which, how convenient, really exists. And 99.99999% of all the viewers never set a foot into it. So it COULD be real. Could as well have done it in Area 51, but that would've been way too cheesy. Besides, deep in CM you can also fight as much as you want and nobody will notice. In A51, there just MIGHT be a satellite that happens to fly across and that might spot something. A perfect, believable present day science fiction setting.

Besides, another thing that made SG believable is that humans were not THAT far behind in technology. Our weapons worked well against the enemies. Most of the advanced technology of the Goa'uld was either stolen or more suited to shock and terrorize than to actually gain a military advantage. Not to mention that their soldiers were not really the most motivated people.

If you add space ships to that formula, it falls apart. We do not have space ships. It doesn't mix well with the "now" setting.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: TWO alien races. Also, we just found out why the Ancients launched the Destiny mission in the first place.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Poul Anderson's Tau Zero was a lot earlier than that ... although in Tau Zero they don't get back to our Universe, they just colonize the Next One.

Re:good

[digitalunity]

I liked the concept of SGU but they fucked it all up on execution. Good actors acting out bad scripts with a plot going nowhere.

Now that I think about it... it is a lot like Battlestar Galactica but without the awesomeness.

Re:good

[dgbrownnt]

Star Trek actually has addressed the problem with subspace transponders (carried in ships) and subspace relays (dropped along during exploration and in a network in territorial space). So during normal operation and exploration, ships are broadcasting their positions to the network and other friendly ships (like a fleet-wide loopt app). If they lose contact with a ship, they then have to look at it from its last-known position.

In cases where the distance is too great, they actually don't have a solution, which has comes up at least several times. When Voyager was sent across the galaxy, it was in fine, working order, but nobody back home knew what had happened to it or where it was until they were able to find a method of communication (which ended up being a similar network of relays that someone else had set up).

Re:good

[dgatwood]

Rodney was a stand in for Sam.

Whoah. Stop right there. Rodney was a non-regular recurring character in SG-1 for at least two seasons before Atlantis. Calling him a stand-in for Sam is a stretch. If anything, he was the complete opposite of Sam. She was a cool, calm, rarely cocky scientist/soldier. He was a smartass, arrogant character that doesn't really parallel anybody in SG-1. If anything, Teyla was closer to a stand-in for Sam than McKay, both in personality and gender. I do agree about Sheppard and Ronon, to some degree, though Jack was never that sarcastic.

Weir was an awesome character, though, nothing at all like any SG-1 character. Ditto for Woolsey. I particularly liked how that character evolved over the course of the show. And both doctors were good characters in very different ways.

The problem with Universe is that there are exactly zero strong characters.

• Their fearless leader broke down under the stress and resigned from the world, one little bit at a time. "A sharper, tougher Jack O'Neill?" Hardly. He's no Jack O'Neill. He's at best a General Landry, if that.
• Chloe is an okay character, even showing potential for leadership in the early episodes, but in spite of her potential, they haven't really done much with her---it's like they forgot who she was and suddenly replaced her with a fragile little flower that needs to be protected. Totally lame.
• Chloe's boyfriend is the most irritating character in the world. He's completely uninteresting---a very flat character with minimal backstory, minimal personality, and he nearly dies in almost every episode, but never actually dies and stays dead, to such a degree that I've started referring to him as Kenny.
• Ronald Greer feels like basically a rehash of Aiden Ford---your standard military stereotype. There should probably be more characters like this, but such characters demand at least one strong foil with more common sense and restraint, which this show very much lacks.
• The main scientist is a sociopath. He is completely unlikable.
• Camile is okay. She's not very likable, but at least she is interesting in an early Woolsey sort of way. Her character desperately needs to develop, though.
• Lt. Johansen is... well, she seems like she is usually relegated to the background, and the plots where she is in the foreground are all painful.
• The gamer boy is pretty much the only really likable one of the bunch, but too much of what he does is completely implausible; there's no way a civilian would get sent into harm's way a tenth as often as he does.

And none of the characters have a history. In Atlantis, the main characters got an interesting backstory fairly early on. Many of them had an interesting backstory before the show even started. The backstory continued to grow throughout the show. About all we know about any of the characters is that the colonel had an affair with Johansen, that the gamer boy's mother has AIDS, and that the sociopath scientist had a girlfriend on Earth who is now dead. So after almost two seasons, the characters are all remarkably flat. That's not to say that characters have to have a backstory, but it is a quick way to do character development, and I guess the real point is that there's not much character development going on in Universe at all. Everything they do is pretty much predictable based on stereotypes and very shallow understandings of the characters' nature.

And the plots aren't all that interesting. In previous shows, they interacted with some other race or group of people in nearly every episode. In Universe, they mostly interact with planets full of plants. Each episode, I felt like I got maybe 15 minutes of story packed into 45 minutes of show. They can't kill off very many characters because they would run out too quickly. They can't add new characters very easily, either. And half the plots lately seem to be pure fantasy, with things happening th

Re:good

[Opportunist]

Yes, but in Bab5 it didn't break the story.

In SG (original) we also learned from the Goa'uld and we captured and reverse engineered their weapons. Hell, the whole Stargate story rests on a huge reverse engineering job: The Stargate itself. But that didn't break the story, because it makes sense and it does not violate anything in the setting. These weapons are not being used outside the Cheyenne Mountain or the other planets, i.e. they do not get to "our" Earth, which is important in a "now" setting to stay credible.

Likewise, learning from the Minbari and Vorlons (and even the Shadows) in Bab5 did not break anything in the story. Humans had starships, humans made contact with the Minbari, humans made contact with the Vorlons, it did not make a single bit implausible. It is credible that everyone knows about this, it would even be plausible if Earth anticipated something like this, because they simply KNEW of those contacts.

Space ships in SG did break the story, because we simply don't have any, and they would be spotted sooner or later.

"New technology" only breaks the plausibility of a series when they cannot exist without SO much disbelieve that it becomes too unlikely to be possible.

Re:good

[omnichad]

Necessary suspension of disbelief aside, we did not have the technology for space ships. They started by hybriding alien propulsion with U.S. aircraft. They had alien help for that, and even more alien help on their ships. That was almost all Asgard help. There was an irony in that Earth, much like the Goa'uld were stealing others' technology, which seems to be taboo to the more advanced races.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

Begging your pardon, but Daedalus survived that long sitting still and Destiny can't travel for more than a few hours at a time without cooling down.

Re:good

[arth1]

The characters in the new BSG were thoroughly unlikeable,

... which is one of the reasons why I like (the early version of) the series. Gaius Baltar and Saul Tigh are flawed and therefore easier to feel something for, unlike the spit shined larger-than-life heroes of many other series.

Then again, I kind of like anti-heroes, like Dr. House, Rick Deckard and Thomas Covenant.
And even well-developed antagonists like Dexter Quinn and Angus Thermophyle. As long as I get a glimpse into why the characters are as they are, it gives me much more than any number of goody-two-shoe heroes or one-dimensional Bond villains.

Re:good

[Opportunist]

All nice and fine. Have them on the other planets and go wild with them. It's just hard to have them on Earth and still continue the pretense that the show is dealing with our Earth of our time. Because (drumroll) THERE ARE NO SPACESHIPS around our planet!

It makes sense that races have space ships. It does not make sense that they orbit our planet and we can't see them. You can work around this by simply letting all those space battles happen around planets far, far away. The reason why we don't build them on Earth? Because it would be near impossible to keep them under wrap that way and the ensuing panic would certainly cause more ill than good.

Re:good

[Black Parrot]

I think what the producers/writers don't understand is that we loved SG-I because it was mostly about some lovable characters. The sequels put unlovable characters into some of the major roles, and frankly I don't enjoy watching shows about assholes.

Re:good

[Opportunist]

The problem is not so much that we reverse engineer technology. They have done this from the very start in Stargate. The Stargate itself was reversed technology.

It's that these starships could not be built, launched or flown without anyone learning about it and spreading that information.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

May as well ask why they don't just wire a ZPM or three into the gate and gate back home.

No, that's actually a much better question. When they gated to Atlantis, they brought along Naquadah generators. They rushed to plan the Atlantis trip in a couple of days. They had been planning this mission to wherever the eighth chevron led for years, apparently---long enough to develop a computer game send it out to the population, have someone solve it, then bring that person out there and have him figure out how to solve the real thing. You mean to tell me that the Atlantis mission, planned in two days, was planned better than this mission, which had been planned for years? Sure the decision to go through the gate at the end was rushed, but they hauled tons of equipment through. Why no Mark II naquadah generators or ZPMs? They might not be able to gate home with them, but it certainly could have solved a fair number of their more serious problems. They're either all Too Dumb to Live or it's a really bad case of Plot Induced Stupidity. Either way, it's painful.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

That was supposed to be a CSI spoof? I thought it was a spoof of Las Vegas.

Re:good

[The Master Control P]

The problem was that following the "captured tech" conclusion through ultimately doomed the show.

Because with every bad guy SG-1 beats, they have to escalate with a newer badder guy (Apophis -> All the System Lords -> Anubis -> RepliCarter -> Ori) and once you get to Ori, now what? It escalated it to the point that when SG-1 ended, they were flying around in starships that can destroy the previously invincible Ori motherships in 3 shots (and along the way to getting there they'd killed off every other interesting plot thread that'd been left open) - now what? It didn't have to be that way - I mean, after the System Lords fell there were plenty of ways to go - plenty of new worlds, chaos after the power vacuum, diplomacy, the Trust, etc... but they went with Newer More Evil Baddie again and again. They sort-of managed to resist doing the same thing in SGA ("McKay, how many times are we going to manage to NOT acquire the Aurora-class battleship?") until the economic crash killed it and then went full retard in the last episode.

SGU was their attempt to escape from the exponential spiral-out that had trapped the first two series (and the production costs that doomed Atlantis). Might've worked if they hadn't turned McKay 2.0 up to 11 in the form of Dr. Rush. I mean, seriously, they screen for that kind of unstable personality before they tell you the neat stuff exists.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when a show doesn't need to care about logic, or continuity, they can do things that other shows can't?

Re:good

[dgatwood]

Voyager's ratings sucked compared with previous Trek shows. On a broadcast network, in an era when cable networks were only beginning to gain steam and cut into the networks' ratings, it got barely 2.1 million viewers on its next-to-last episode (the lowest rated episode for that series). Stargate Universe is doing almost that well in a much more fragmented market and on a cable-only network with many fewer potential eyes. Voyager was a flop by comparison. It ran for five seasons in spite of its ratings because Paramount execs were scared s**tless of going down in history as "the guy who cancelled Star Trek again". It took Enterprise being a similar dog to convince them that they had worn out the franchise.

SyFy isn't canceling Universe because of poor ratings. It's one of the higher rated shows on the network, last I checked, comparable to Atlantis in its last couple of seasons. They're canceling it because NBC Universal doesn't give a flying f*** about science fiction; they know they can make ten times as much money by showing professional wrestling and absurd paranormal crap like Ghost Hunters. The same company that cancelled the first Star Trek series has once again shown exactly what they consider entertainment, and it's reality TV shows, paranormal shows, and other such dreck.

I say screw 'em. By pushing science fiction fans away, NBC Universal is sealing their fate. Science fiction lovers, being highly technically savvy, are far more likely to find a way to make internet distribution work, eliminating unnecessary middlemen like the NBC Universal and going straight to the production companies (mostly in Canada). Once such a model is proven to work for one genre, it will only be a matter of time before the other genres follow, and dinosaurs like NBC Universal will shrivel up and die. No great loss.

Re:good

[Mspangler]

" 1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable."

That goes too far. Time travel is fine, but since everything you did in the past has already happened before you left, nothing you did had any effect. Or it was already accounted for.

Connie Willis did it right in Blackout and All Clear. And in To Say Nothing of the Dog as well. You think you are changing the past, but the past is undoing your changes just as fast. And if you get too far out of line a wall falls on you. Stupid time traveler.

(No that's not a spoiler, but that's the way it works.)

Re:good

[JamesGecko]

1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.

But one of the best episodes of Universe was about time travel. I saw the first reset switch coming, but man! That second reset switch was completely unexpected.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

The Stargate series started off great, but it should have ended long before Atlantis even kicked off, let alone Universe.

The appeal of Atlantis is that it served as a sort of reboot of the enemies. The original humans vs. Goa'uld/Jaffa dynamic of SG1 was great: In any given skirmish, humans had a reasonable chance of being able to win a fight, but they had no way of going head-to-head with the entire Goa'uld armada. But over time, the enemies were replaced by more powerful creatures requiring constant a constant stream of deus ex machinas to defeat them on a daily basis.

However, with Atlantis, the Wrath return to that earlier ideal. Unlike a replicator or an Or'i, the average Wraith tends to react badly to being shot. That doesn't stop them from being a serious threat -- so much so that they apparently even threatened the ancients. But they still bleed, and they still die.

Re:good

[kaizokuace]

The main thing I would say about SGU is that it's not a bad show and it got me into the Stargate series without having previously seen the other shows. It didn't assume that I am a rabid fan of Atlantis or SG1 or whatever. I also like starships and space battles. So it worked for me. I guess there isn't enough of me out there : /

Re:good

[definate]

No.

Never have segue episodes in a progressive show. these episodes destroy the show.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

I could deal with the Ori. They were mostly a fairly natural extension of the whole Oma Desala thread, which, short of freezing, was about the most plausible way to have Daniel Jackson leave the show for a while in such a way that he could either come back or not. If they'd killed him off, there would be no going back. If they had sent him to do something somewhere else, there would have to be a timeline for his return. And it would be pretty out-of-character for him to quit, much less return after doing so.

The notion of worshippers giving them power was pushing the realm of believability, but at least it was central to driving the plot, and central to the show's overall theme (that mere power does not necessarily make something a god).

The wormhole aliens were just plain bizarre. The angelic guides were just a bad deus ex machina. I never saw LOST.

Re:good

[captjc]

Just mostly conjecture on my part, but naquadah generators are no where near near as powerful as ZPMs. It is supposedly like the difference between a 'AAA' Battery and a nuclear power plant, just magnitudes difference. They were used mostly to power their own equipment for Atlantis, not the city. As to why they may not have one, if it was powering their equipment, there may not have been time to disconnect it before the place blew up. Especially if it was powering things like the lights and rail guns.

ZPMs, on the other hand, are very rare. It has been a while, but Didn't Atlantis spend like half a season or more just looking for a ZPM just so they could power the shields after the last Wraith attack? I doubt there was a ZPM to be spared much less three.

Re:good

[pooh666]

You used the word tertiary, so that means I have to just go ahead and hate you. If you want to think READ A FUCKING BOOK!

Re:good

[pasamio]

Maybe all of those things were sitting in a store room somewhere elsewhere in the complex that was inaccessible due to the attack or too far away to go off, grab and hope the planet didn't explode in the mean time. It felt like they picked up everything near by and just ran through since there was no way back out the other way. Atlantis was planned better and they went there on their own time, weren't rushed and most importantly was more organised.

You've never forgotten something when you're rushing out the door?

Re:good

[dgatwood]

I can't believe Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father!

Re:good

[dgatwood]

Well, a couple of the Mark IIs could power the ancient chair, which normally would suck down all the power in a ZPM, so presumably they were at least within an order of magnitude of a ZPM's output. Either way, even a couple of those would have been enough to allow them to reach distant gates to pick up people who got stuck, would have powered the shields during the alien attack, and would have solved dozens of other problems that they shouldn't have had to deal with. And that was my point---not ZPMs so much as Mark IIs.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

The emergency nature of it might have been exacerbated by the attack, but even before the attack, they knew that if they managed to make a connection, they might only get one shot at stepping through. I don't know about you, but when I know ahead of time that I'm going to have a tight rollout in the morning, I put everything I need right by the door....

Re:good

[arth1]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

There is no plot without character interaction.

One of the best movies of last century (and a sci-fi movie to boot) has extremely little character interaction. But the vision, plot and execution makes it a gem.
I'm talking about 2001, of course.

Then there's Westworld, which also is extremely low on character interaction, but that doesn't make it plotless.

In fact, an overabundance of talking, facial expressions and romances often serves to mask that the emperor has no clothes -- there's no plot.

Re:good

[nametaken]

The even shorter way of saying all of this is... it was boring as hell.

That said, it was finally starting to pick up, but only at the very end. Too bad.

Re:good

[gblfxt]

you didn't take into consideration that while in their wormhole, they might have accidently went through ANOTHER wormhole? :P

Re:good

[captjc]

I mean, the whole premise was bonkers. They can dial to this galaxy only from one particular planet, but they never discovered that this planet could dial that far previously? So why could they not have used that planet to dial Pegasus and reach Atlantis the whole time? The entire basic premise breaks canon in irreconcilable ways unless it was supposed to take place before Atlantis, but then they wouldn't have known about the eighth chevron, so they wouldn't have known to look for the ninth. It just doesn't make sense. And it's ridiculously convenient that the Lucian Alliance found out about the base at the exact moment that they figured out how to dial the ship. And you mean to tell me that they had a base on the planet, but no working shields? And so on.

As I understand it, there is nothing special about the planet itself that makes it the only place in the galaxy to dial Destiny from. The planet had some type of Geothermal energy source or something that gave them the power needed to dial in. They could probably tie a couple of ZPMs together and dial the gate. But since ZPMs are so damn rare, it is just more practical to use the planets natural energy. As to why they couldn't have used it to dial Atlantis, they probably could have. We don't know when it was discovered. Maybe the whole base was designed as a way to contact the Pegasus Galaxy after the Gate-Bridge failed before it was appropriated for Rush's research.

As for the Lucian Alliance, Yes it was convenient but what in a TV show isn't. When I first watched it, the lack of shields kind of bothered me too. With the Asgard library of knowledge, they can give shields to large ships but not a small base? While it is probably just sloppy writing it could probably be explained as "shields could have given the location of the secret base away", or "The harmonic distortion of the the shields would cause a inverted feedback within the trilithium power conduits of the ODN nodes creating a negative feedback into the plasma relays...", or even "They don't arrive until Tuesday"(TM).

IMO, the show has many problems, but for me the premise wasn't really it.

The biggest problem with Universe, though, is the word "Stargate" in the title. That brought along with it the expectation that the show would be similar to the previous shows. When it wasn't, it lost most of the traditional Stargate fans, and the word "Stargate" drove away many of the folks who might like this sort of series.

I couldn't agree more. I felt the same thing about BSG. But while the first couple of seasons of BSG were interesting, SGU just seems boring. I won't say that I dislike the show, just that I lost interest after the first season holiday break.

I bought the first season on DVD, so I am willing to give it another go. Lets just hope they give the series a proper finale and not just leaving it to the hope of a DVD movie that never gets greenlit.

Re:good

[HeronBlademaster]

They didn't have enough power to make a wormhole back to the Milky Way. They repeated that pretty much every episode. SGU had a lot of problems, but "why can't they get home yet" was not one of them.

If you want an example of a show that really had that problem, take a look at Star Trek Voyager. In the very first episode they could have gone home without stranding themselves and without handing the station over to the Kazon (I guess they forgot about timers in the 24th century?), and offhand I can think of three or four other episodes where they could have gotten home much, much quicker, but didn't because they're morons. The SGU characters haven't had a chance to get home yet, that I can recall.

Re:good

[metrix007]

CSI is set in Vegas....but the TV shows Las Vegas didn't really have detectives or such...definitely a spoof of CSI.....

Re:good

[captjc]

I thought B5 was more of West Wing in space--that turned into Star Wars for Season 3 and 4.

Can't say I liked the whole Franklin is a stim addict thing. I really hated the Garibaldi turning into an asshole story arc as well. Though I do appreciate the effect of purposefully taking the most easily likable character and flipping their personality around to the point of turning them into a villain.

Still one of my favorites, though.

Re:good

[tzot]

I see you said nothing about the "All you zombies"... er, loop (or it might not be a loop, but I have zero knowledge of naval or boy-scout terminology in English.)

Re:good

[WCLPeter]

They pulled it at the last minute? You'd never know it from the way the show ended.

Really? The introduction of the Evil Asgard, the ongoing war with the Wraith that was really starting to pick up, the whole thing with Michael, etc... They were introducing all kinds of new plot lines for the future all throughout Season Five, luckily they found out early the show was being cancelled because very quickly they started to wrap everything up. Based on what I was seeing it was supposed to go for at least another year but they were so eager to get Universe started and after the whole SG1 / Atlantis at the same time deal MGM wasn't really interested in repeating that experience so they rushed the ending of SGA and green lit Universe.

Universe isn't favourite show, though Eli is definitely one of my favourite characters and I'd definitely like to spend some quality time with Chloe and Vanessa ;-), but it doesn't bore me like Battlestar does (Universe actually moves at a decent pace in comparison) and I get the sense each episode is going somewhere. Its a nice distraction and I'll be sad to see it go, I hope they've been notified early enough that they can tweak the ending to give us some kind of closure, but I'm not going to get all "Lets do a campaign and save it" over it, its just not that good.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you can't mean Janeway? Seven of Nine didn't show up soon enough to explain how it ever made it to season 2. I don't know why it hung on, although I did like that series.

- T

Re:good

[captjc]

Then again, I kind of like anti-heroes, like Dr. House, Rick Deckard and Thomas Covenant.
And even well-developed antagonists like Dexter Quinn and Angus Thermophyle. As long as I get a glimpse into why the characters are as they are, it gives me much more than any number of goody-two-shoe heroes or one-dimensional Bond villains.

And you don't like B5? The characters are well written flawed human (ok, aliens too) characters. It takes a very different approach from Star Trek where you have the best and brightest solving problems or as someone put it "A bunch of pleasant people going happily about their day." The leads of the Captain and Ambasador Delenn kind of followed the old formula, though Bruce Boxleitner's character was way more colorful. We also have An XO with daddy issues who starts coming off as Mrs Chekov with a hatred of telepaths (especially one played by, ironically enough, Mr Chekov), a Doctor who was a hippie Galactic hitchhiker who becomes a drug-addict and Two security chiefs with questionable backgrounds, one of who is easily the most likable character suddenly turns into an asshole then into villain. The best parts of the show were Ambassadors G'Kar and Londo. G'Kar journeys from a character fueled by anger and revenge against Londo's people to a spiritually filled holy man advocating peace. Londo is the most tragic of all of them as he does many questionable things and downright horrible acts with the best intentions of helping his people.

Even the Villains are very morally ambiguous. The main antagonists, The Shadows, are not evil and have the best intentions in mind by doing horrible things--using chaos and conflict to spur survival of the fittest. Hell, the Vorlons and the Shadows later come off more as squabbling sibblings fighting over the best way to take care of their pets. Then we have one of the best Sci-fi villains, Bester. A Man who will do anything for his fellow telepaths but has little regard for human life as he sees them as we would see monkeys. In a place where the Psi-corps is Mother and Father, one can see why.

Babylon 5 is far from a Black and white world. I see it more as Star Wars meets the West Wing. Everyone has their own agendas and many will do what is necessary, good and bad, to complete their objectives. BTW, Season 1 is very slow, but season 2 onward is where it really comes into its own.

Re:good

[WCLPeter]

11 episodes, 4 months, 11 more episodes. No. 22 episodes back to back.

No one does 22 episode seasons anymore, you're lucky if you get 19, or even more rarely 20, these days.

And its more likely you'll get a 2 hour season opener and 8 more episodes after that, expect at least a week or two off for some kind of "sporting event", then a five to six month hiatus (it usually ends in November and doesn't come back until April or May) followed up by another ten episodes. Then you wait another six months and the whole thing repeats again.

I really miss the days when you had ST:TNG with their 26 episode seasons so you'd get it pretty much straight through, with a break in December for Christmas, and then only have to wait the summer break while you were off school before you'd get to see it again. Nowadays the shows are so far apart, and they keep releasing those incredibly expensive for what they are 0.5 Season sets on DVD / Blu-Ray, I often forgot I was watching the show; note to show runners, if you end your show on a cliffhanger I don't buy them on DVD either, it'd be like buying a book with the last 5 chapters ripped out of it. Then there's the whole cancellation aspect, I've been burned on so many shows I like being cancelled at cliffhanger moments that I just can't get bothered to like a show anymore.

Unless you're into boring "reality" TV, there really isn't anything good anymore and what does look interesting I just won't take a risk on because I know if it looks even the least bit interesting it'll be cancelled before its even had its first year done. And don't even get me started on Fox, I steadfastly refuse to watch anything on that network anymore.

Re:good

[pearl298]

TRUE!

Why don't I have mod points when I really need them :-(

Re:good

[IgnoramusMaximus]

And to ban backwards time travel, you also have to ban FTL travel. Because FTL violates causality, it allows backwards time travel.

Actually, no. It allows for accessing information about events faster than the relativistic model says should be accessible after they occurred (i.e. propagating with the speed no faster then c). That is not the same as "traveling back in time". Given that the theory of relativity has really very little to say about the nature of information itself and its relationship to the Universe in general (about which relationship we really know didley-squat) this is not even technically a violation of the general relativity assumptions.

Most FTL ideas involve "dropping out of the relativistic universe" into some kind of super-dimension and then coming back in another location (usually demanding that the event occurs in areas of space with least gravity/particles/enery/etc present). This does not violate the relativistic model itself as it is simply bypassing it.

Is it possible? Who knows. But it is not an outright violation of causality as you would have is believe.

Re:good

[makomk]

But it doesn't allow stationary backwards time travel. You can "travel back in time" in the strict physics sense regarding special relativity, but you can't do it and end up where you were before you left.

Actually, if special relativity is correct - and it pretty much has to be for various reasons - FTL travel means you can travel back in time and end up where you were before you left.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

"It ran for five seasons in spite of its ratings because Paramount execs were scared s**tless of going down in history as "the guy who cancelled Star Trek again"."

Seven seasons! Like TNG and DS9. DS9 deserved more :9

Re:good

[drinkypoo]

Surely I do mean Janeway. There's a huge host of nerds that miss their mom who want to stick something in her.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a Goa'uld mothership in the film (essentially the pilot for the the series). The gates were the basic form of traveling. Ships were on of the "just out reach" goals in the first seasons. Eventually they had to progress.

It's possible (ok highly likely :( ) that SG1 went on slightly beyond it's time. But then I'm not sure it's possible for a series to hit that sweet spot where they end at exactly the right moment - before they jump the shark, but not leaving fans feeling like there was legitimate room left to explore. SG1 went just beyond that point in my opinion, but I'd rather that than to be left feeling like I missed out.

Re:good

[stikves]

Well, they can be, and they actually are (in real life). We know that there is at least one military shuttle orbiting earth for several months, nobody in the public knows what's its mission is.

The initial SG1 spaceships where X101, which are retrofitted F-series fighters with alien tech. It's very similar (I'm not saying it actually is an alien hybrid space ship, but the concept is plausible).

Re:good

[arth1]

No, FTL is a direct violation of causality, and allows for time travel.
See here for a fairly good explanation of why this is.

And if time travel is possible, then (to paraphrase Fermi), where are all the time travelers?

The simplest solution is that time travel isn't possible, ergo superluminal travel is impossible.

Re:good

[lgw]

I've noticed that TV SciFi writers are terrible at including what I most want to see: spac combat between foes of about the same technological strength. One side or the other needs to be "nearly omnipotent" it seems, until our heroes think of something clever. Meh. This is why I liked Bab5 - most of the actual combat invoved technological parity, or close enough to keep it interesting.

Re:good

[lgw]

Well, Dr Who was always very particilar about refusing to interact with his own personal timeline - at least he never had the freedom to go back and fix his own mistakes. I guess you could say the mechanincs in the show open the possibility of very annoying time travel, but the writers show better discipline than most.

Re:good

[CAIMLAS]

1) Because Te'alk was such a believable character? IMO, "dreadlock dude" made a much better "Chewie" than Tealk.
2) Never seen it, can't comment.
3) The humanoid replicators were a bit of a Borgish type enemy, I think.

On the SGA characters... IMO, they were one of the best "science fiction" casts for a TV show in quite a long time. They were quite complimentary. The characters were all fairly well internally developed by the actors, too - particularly the "geeky" ones (Rodney, the Scottish doctor). Those guys made the show worth watching.

Yes, there was a strong correlation between the SGA characters and Star Trek: TOS. They had the "Kirk" character, the "Scotty" character, and the "Bones" character, sorta. The surfer dude was also a decent "Spock" stand-in (and you saw it in their interactions).

Re:good

[eugene ts wong]

I didn't watch more than the first Universe episode. Are you saying that it was supposed to be scary in some moments, and then in other moments, the characters would live through dramatized relationships?

Re:good

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That is one arrogant attempt at bludgeoning everyone over the head with the general relativity as if it were some kind of religious doctrine.

At no point in time did that Rich dude (horrible diagrams notwithstanding) actually proved breakdown of causality. All he demonstrated was that by using FTL communications one can receive information about events faster than by the means of speed of light, but at no point before they occur. Also simple experiments such as this demonstrate that general relativity is far, far away from explaining the nature of the physical Universe, never you mind the nature of far more convoluted concepts such as information.

You remind me of the physicists of the Newtonian establishment who used to strut around with their "infallible" "Clockwork Universe" ideas and who downright ridiculed anyone who tried to point out that their model was somewhat deficient.

And if time travel is possible, then (to paraphrase Fermi), where are all the time travelers?

Since FTL does not imply (colourful pictures notwithstanding) backwards time travel, there is no paradox.

Re:good

[CookieForYou]

Never been much of a fan of the cardboard "fire moon from hell" sets and "all teh super-villains wear gigantic gold headdress and have uuber transparent names like 'Anubis' and parade around speaking like some Marvel comic bad guy"

"haha! Now I have the power of the [insert ancient race here], with which my minions will crush your puny planet. But first, I must imprision the same four people in my lava-filled prison planet and chain you up with fake looking vines and give you three hours to escape. Ha Ha! Bow before me."

After the tenth episode of that, I was just about done, and then they introduced uhm "Merlin". Yeah, srsly?

At least SGU has some class.

Re:good

[quacking duck]

I would say that SGU was at least something different from Atlantis, but it also looped back on itself. It's a closed environment that is hard to develop.

Yes, at least Atlantis wasn't a starship. Oh, wait... were there any sharks in the water when it took off the first time, and would a vertical launch be considered "jumping" them?

You do remember that Atlantis took off for the first time (from the viewer's POV) about 2 minutes into the pilot episode?

Re:good

[CookieForYou]

and I'm a huge Stargate fan

See, there is the problem.

SGU was the antithesis of SG-1. SG-1 was scifi kitch, almost to the max. Aliens pretending to be gods, everyone has big grandious sounding Latin names, regardless of what planet they are from.

SGU was a subdued psychological sci-fi.

Personally, I ALMOST didn't watch SGU at all because SG-1 and SGA were terrible. But I really like SGU.

Re:good

[natehoy]

No, it was submerged and came to the surface. It was suspected to be a floating city for at least the first season or two, then they discovered it was a spaceship as a "wow, we're running out of stuff to write about on this planet" plot device.

Re:good

[arth1]

All he demonstrated was that by using FTL communications one can receive information about events faster than by the means of speed of light, but at no point before they occur.

No, he clearly showed that given two stationary subjects (A and B), and two subjects traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light (C and D), how information sent by FTL from A to B, picked up by C and sent by FTL to D would get to D before D arrives at A's location.
If D then transmits that information to A by FTL communication, A will get it before A sends it. I.e. a direct violation of causality.

If FTL travel, and not just information transmittal is the premise, the overall diagrams and logic is just as valid. Then A can transfer herself to B, board C's ship as C passes, then FTL transfer herself to D, and finally FTL transfer herself to her origin, and arrive there before she left, meeting herself.

The reason why this would be the case is because the light cone shifts when traveling at relativistic speeds (which C and D do), and the whole frame of reference changes when transferring the subject (data or people) from stationary B to moving C.

As for "horrible diagrams", I can only presume you're not used to Minkowski diagrams, and tried to read them as "normal" 2-dimensional physical (X/Y) maps. Then they would be horrible, indeed.

Re:good

[quacking duck]

I'm sorry, you're simply wrong about "when it took off for the first time."

The pilot episode's very first scene, set "millions of years ago," showed Atlantis taking off from Antarctica:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaUBvCfRxWI

So even if the SGA characters didn't know it was starflight-capable for a year or two (I don't remember if this was actually the case), we as viewers knew it was, so it wasn't a jump-the-shark feature of the city that they retconned in.

Re:good

[Opportunist]

Ok, but a shuttle in the sky would not cause an uproar in the astronomy community. It's a shuttle, we know that thing well, even if we have no idea about its mission. That might circulate in astronomy circles with speculation about it, but nobody outside of that would bother to take notice.

If there's something "alien" orbiting our marble, you bet every halfway sensible newspaper would carry the story. Twice so during Summer when there's nothing else to report.

Re:good

[IgnoramusMaximus]

No, he clearly showed that given two stationary subjects (A and B), and two subjects traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light (C and D), how information sent by FTL from A to B, picked up by C and sent by FTL to D would get to D before D arrives at A's location. If D then transmits that information to A by FTL communication, A will get it before A sends it. I.e. a direct violation of causality.

Huh? He showed nothing of the sort. In fact it is not possible even with the FTL information transfer, no matter what combination of relative velocities of A, B, C and D you can come up with. All he did was to fool himself by drawing pretty diagrams and linking colourful lines on them. Which is frequently a problem with applying some fancy visualization method one falls in love with while not realizing that in actuality it obscures - or has no relationship to - the nature of the problem. See also under: "technical trading" in the stock market.

Consider this simple fact: all of the hypothetical people in A, B, C and D have clocks running forward relative to each other. Even the extreme cases when all of A, B, C, D move away from each other at c, or move towards each other at c, at worst the clock of any of them is stopped in relation to everyone else, that is at speed difference of c, the time stops for the other object from the point of view of the reference object. The case is less severe for any other combinations of velocity vectors. So no matter what instantaneous jumps do I perform between the points, because at no point their clocks run backwards in relation to each other, all I am doing is, at best, to deliver information which is at least 0 seconds old, even in relativistic time frames. There is no way for me to jump and deliver information that is in the future relative to any of the participants because my local and all relative departure times are always at least 0 seconds behind the arrival times. And this does not change with addition of any new points, E, F, G and so on or any jump order between them.

His diagrams merely obfuscated this simple fact.

Furthermore, mathematical "elegance" notwithstanding, we actually have no clue what happens should some object manage to exceed the speed of light even completely within the relativistic universe, never you mind in many proposed modes of FTL which cause a "bubble" of a relativistic universe to be separated out and then merged back in at another location. The math indicates that the time should run "backwards" at speeds exceeding c but there is absolutely no proof that the relativity theory even holds at this point. What if the time simply stops at velocities past c, messing up all the pretty and completely unproven at this point for such a case mathematical model?

There are however other severe effects that would limit FTL capabilities, for example jumping from point A to B while A is travelling at c relative to B is likely to be impossible because from the point of view of B it would not only take an infinite amount of time for the captain to press his "jump" button but it would involve infinite energies. So even a "jump" type FTL is bound to have a lot of limitations (such as only being able to jump without changing any relative velocities upon return) that will prevent it from violating causality and many relativistic principles even with the whole business of leaving the Universe and coming back into it.

As for "horrible diagrams", I can only presume you're not used to Minkowski diagrams, and tried to read them as "normal" 2-dimensional physical (X/Y) maps. Then they would be horrible, indeed.

Diagrams, no matter how convoluted, are merely visual representations of some kind of underlying premise. If I can defeat the premise without the diagrams then they are completely superfluous.

Re:good

[atamido]

My opinion: the first series' only asset was an oddly funny MacGyver faced with alternate realities, usually having to shoot his way out. The show really seemed like a one trick pony. Without MacGyver or the humor, what do you have?

Yeah, but that was really all they needed. Sometimes you just need a few great elements to make a good show. Sure, if all of the characters had been great actors, and they'd had great writers to develop the story lines it would have been a really amazing show. But it was good as it was. (Of course, MacGyver moved on eventually and the show petered out.)

ST:TNG was in a similar boat. Most of the actors there were just terrible, and the writers even worse. But when Patrick Stewart would get paired up with some decent writing, the show would turn amazing.

Re:good

[flowwolf]

Ronin was massively fleshed out. Satida and his fellow kinsmen appeared in numerous episodes including flash backs. His character is different in many different ways, when his wife is still with him before he was a runner. His hatred for the wraith is with a passion that no one else in the show can rival. I don't think you truly understand what a fleshed out literary character means.

Your opinion on the show is understood, but your reasons for having it are misguided and not well thought out, imho

Re:good

[flowwolf]

This is one reason I will agree with! They did this in Universe as well. Shooter McGavin got offed.

Re:good

[saratchandra]

Couldn't agree more. I'm ecstatic they killed this crappy show. Mission fucking accomplished!

Re:good

[Lanteran]

I personally think the series was great, but IMO, it ended with the last episode in season 8. 9/10 should've been part of a seperate series. There were a few gems, but in general, it all crashed after season 8. Would've been the perfect ending, even though it seemed a bit superfluous, it was the closing of a circle. Atlantis was decent, but not quite SG-1, and good riddance to universe, it was like the star trek enterprise of stargate. Wouldn't mind a few more stargate movies though, especially for some closure on the wraith.

Re:good

[Lanteran]

I think the entire last episode was terrible. If they can open a gate to the hive ship, why didn't they just toss an overloading naquadah generator in? Atlantis had more than a few, and those things are nearly as powerful as nukes.

Re:good

[Lanteran]

I disagree about the borg, the few episodes they were in TNG, they were uberhard to defeat, taking dozens of ships, nearly losing all of them all the time. Voyager neutered them. I believe Q was in DS9 btw.

Re:good

[Lanteran]

thank you. Wrestling on a scifi channel? Seriously? You're showing wrestling on the geek/nerd channel? I wonder what the owners are smoking...

Re:good

[Lanteran]

I'd have to agree somewhat. I liked the concept of ascension, but it started to loose traction from about the moment they started telling the asurans "you can't ascend, you're machines". Before that, it had been a scientific (or psuedoscientific) process, not spiritual crap.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Voyager was a flop by comparison. It ran for five seasons in spite of its ratings because Paramount execs were scared s**tless of going down in history as "the guy who cancelled Star Trek again".

Hmm. Voyager aired a full 7 seasons, not 5. Enterprise on the other hand, was less.

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

Probably the same thing that TNT was thinking when they tried to advertise wrestling on Babylon 5, and vice versa.

They look at the demos and see that WW and SF are both popular with young males, and assume the two types of show complement each other. They don't realize that these are *different* groups of young males - dumb versus smart. Jock vs geek.

Re:good

[commodore64_love]

Precisely.

Voyager was a #1 show on a 6th place network. That's the only reason it survived. Compared to all the other shows Voyager routinely ranked in the 80s out of ~100 shows. It's ratings were 2 million viewers lower than its sibling DS9, and ~10 million viewers lower than its ancestor Next Generation.

As for Enterprise, same deal. It was #2 on a 6th place network. The reason it eventually got canceled was because a new president took-over UPN, and she specifically said she doesn't like sci-fi. So she canceled Enterprise at the end of season 3, but Paramount offered to pay the cost of season 4 to get a full ~80 episodes (easier to sell in reruns), and then that was the end.

BTW that wasn't the first time Paramount did that. When the Next Generation was born, Paramount provided the show's first season free-of-charge in order to get local stations to buy it. It was a gamble but it paid off in the long term (sales of reruns, tapes, DVDs, and merchandise).

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

It kinda sucks that you never watched the show.

Re:good

[AmiMoJo]

It always struck me as odd how B5 managed to have a well written over-arcing plot and well developed characters but at the same time suffered from some really, really bad dialogue and acting. Garibaldi was probably the worst offender of the main cast.

Re:good

[Surt]

Watched it all the way through actually, but you're right about the sucking part.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to read that second sentence twice...this time I hope you *do* mean Janeway...

- T

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda sucks that you were sleeping the entire way through both series, then.

Re:good

[Surt]

No, only the second was dull enough to put me to sleep.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, explains it.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

They sortof explained the incompetence of the Gua'uld by the fact they didn't invent the tech they were using, it actually being invented by the Ancients, and that they were only used to dealing with primitive humans. Still a bit far-fetched but the show didn't really take itself too seriously.

First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

What about closure for the fans? Will everyone die? That would be hilarious.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully. except Rush, who ascends to the next scifi drama.

Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[skids]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

And

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing of value was lost.

Re:And

[omnichad]

What was lost is that all the good ideas that made up their situation will never be resolved or even explored in the "Stargate" way. It was a brilliant idea for a terrible show. It was painful to watch, but even more painful to see it go.

Re:And

[Mashiki]

Well I don't know about it being painful to see it go. It was a terrible show, and whoever thought that horror-story based tv programes were a good idea should be shot. Or flung into the sun, either one works. I hated SG:U for the same reason I hated the revamped BSG. It was the same thing, with shitty camera work that's supposed to make things look 'cool'.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Stargate Atlantis. This is what was lost when they decided to focus on SG-U instead.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get the hate for SGU, it wasn't anywhere near as hokey and lame as Atlantis (wtf? you couldn't get more lame than that). It was building solid character backgrounds and was starting to get rolling on the story line. Complete shame they cancelled it.

I quit watching SG1 after it started getting stupid with it's story lines and lame commentary (joking as they're being attacked and running around shooting like the A-team and no one getting hurt but the bad guys), etc... And Atlantis? lol... You had a guy running around in dreadlocks, and an annoying as hell Canadian doctor / scientist or whatever on top of everything else.

Fuck SCI-FI, they're headed down the path to the other lame networks out right now. Thank god AMC still has Breaking bad and the Walking Dead.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

So name 3 new si-fi shows on at the moment that are better?

Pfft.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in total agreement. Just another hormonally challenged drunken college students who thought they could write a story line.

Re:And

[replay TV Guy]

And I thought Stargate Atlantis was poor... Well, it still is poor, and this was just plain shit. I stopped watching after two episodes it was so bad. I'm glad it's gone. Now, with a void someone may be want to fill the void with something of quality. Or at least I'll see re-runs of Babylon 5.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing of value was lost.

I second that. Good riddance.

No chance to wrap up?

[crow]

It would be nice if they at least had a chance to wrap it up, but I suppose the last episode will be a cliffhanger with no resolution.

Re:No chance to wrap up?

[Anonymous Coward]

They ran our of food and water, then died. The end.

Re:No chance to wrap up?

[elrous0]

If only they had the guts. That would actually be one of the more memorable series finales ever done.

Re:No chance to wrap up?

[Anonymous Coward]

They fraked the fans again. Word is that the last episode does end with a cliffhanger. Production has wrapped, and SyFy is extremely unlikely to fund a new ending.

Re:No chance to wrap up?

[ildon]

I read that as "fraked" like Jonathan Frakes, instead of "frakked" like the BSG expletive. Is "fraked" really the "correct" spelling? "Fracked"?

Re:No chance to wrap up?

[93 Escort Wagon]

It would be nice if they at least had a chance to wrap it up, but I suppose the last episode will be a cliffhanger with no resolution.

That was the worst thing about Twin Peak's cancellation. In both season finales, David Lynch basically did a send-up parody of the prototypical season finale by rolling about 10 simultaneous and separate dramatic cliffhangers, each one involving a main character, into the episode. So after the show got axed we were left permanently hanging in almost a dozen different ways!

Pardon me - just showing my age.

bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

shitty characters who make stupid decisions (e.g. not dumping nerve gas into the ducts when your ship is being overrun with superior forces ? wtf? this guy is a general ?, leaving your only scientist with any knowledge of ship systems stranded on a planet ? etc), crappy acting and dumb dialogue, shitty plot.
kill that show and bury it.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Manos_Of_Fate]

wtf? this guy is a general ?,

He's a colonel. And the show's basic premise was "these are the wrong people in the wrong place".

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. It was Twilight in Space. Disgusting when sci-fi is turned into soap opera dogshit.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

they dont have to be idiots even if they are the wrong people in the wrong place.
the difference is that mckay on atlantis was the wrong guy in the wrong place (getting scared of shooting a pistol, going on away missions) but it worked fine. thats because viewers and the person on the screen arent idiots and dont have to be portrayed as such.
sgu's entire cast were idiots and the bad acting just topped it off.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[GooberToo]

That's a great premise to defend some of the horrible writing, but it quickly breaks down once you apply even a modest amount of critical review.

He's such a wrong leader that he's been selected to travel to one of the most important events within a super secret, most important project known to man kind. Really? In such a situation, even the worst would still be far better than average - and most here border of flat out ineptitude.

In that situation you might have people make decisions which seemed bad after the fact, but these are bad decisions both before and after for absolutely no reason other than to create a poor story in hopes of hiding a poor writing style.

I actually believe most of the acting is okay. The primary problems I've seen is when the actors have had problems choking out some of the horrible lines and idiotic sub plots.

Universe could have worked if they had decided that details such as plot and story arch mattered. But rather than do that, they decided that they'd be dumb and trendy and follow JJ Abram's poor plot style; which fails to deliver almost every time. Ultimately, the "just make shit up every episode and the viewers will believe you're really fucking deep and mysterious", is what ultimately doomed Universe.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Tiger4]

and that was a great premise. "Everybody into the lifeboat, we'll deal with the other problems later!"

That sets the stage for all kinds of good interaction and dynamics in the crew. Which I thought were playing out pretty well. the main leadership had worked up a truce in hostilities, the secondary characters had mostly worked out their personal frictions and hook ups. Then the writers had the option of playing on those notes again, or introducing new external threats. Which they did.

A bit too much recycling of soap opera style plots, but in the end a good mix of character development, external threats, and sense of unknowns. A multi-faceted adult sci-fi show, with some T&A for the fanboys. But apparently not formulaic enough.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[tibman]

I'm really enjoying the "fingerprint of god" thing they came up with. Hope they flesh it out a lot more. Most Stargate shows live from episode to episode and eventually run into a big enemy that turns into the long-term story/war.

I read that the writers have already created a 5 year story arc though.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[ArhcAngel]

You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation. It's like a fiction reality show. Don't tell me you have never been faced with a situation where you had a right and wrong decision and you chose the wrong decision for personal/emotional reasons. Smokers do this every day. Hell I'd beat the snot out of Rush myself on a regular basis just for recreation. I must admit I was off-put by the first season but the recent episodes are starting to gel better and they actually have a "mission" even if it is chasing after ancient static noise. I think they should give it at least one more season to flesh out all of the plot elements they've set in motion to see if they can improve viewership. I mean are there actually that many people watching these ghost shows?

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[guybrush3pwood]

He's a colonel. And the show's basic premise was "these are the wrong people in the wrong place".

You mean the writers, right?

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[omnichad]

When nothing changes from episode to episode, it's easy to have a 5 year story arc. The first few disaster survival episodes were interesting, but draining to watch. Then there were mostly episodes where nothing important happens, followed by a crappy music video. Then, at the beginning of the end, they come up with a plot. The funny thing is, when you want to make the show about the characters, you need to give them something to react to, AND have an outcome. Essentially, you still need a plot.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where would he have gotten this nerve gas from?

Maybe he is not a robot. Perhaps the stress of it all causes him to make non rational decisions.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[strugglz]

Ultimately, the "just make shit up every episode and the viewers will believe you're really fucking deep and mysterious", is what ultimately doomed Universe.

I agree. I was on the fence for the first half season, being both excited for more Stargate and annoyed that visually it was very much a BSG clone. I like where the story is headed (beyond the CMBR to find god or some ascended or something). But objectively, there's not really any villain or antagonist to provide focus for the crew for more than a couple of episodes. The "I was tripping last night and had this idea for an alien" crap made me want to bore my eyes out with a Dremel.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Mongoose Disciple]

But apparently not formulaic enough.

Nothing against you personally, but I never think variations on "This show was too creative for the plebes with their beer-swilling and their NASCAR to get!" are very good responses to why something is cancelled.

Sometimes a show is just bad. Sometimes it's got a bad schedule slot. Sometimes the producers have no idea how to effectively market it or get people interested. But too formulaic? What a cop-out excuse.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[GooberToo]

You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation.

Maybe the civilians, but not for the military people. For the military people to be there likely means they would be there for exactly the reasons they are not like the civilians.

Don't tell me you have never been faced with a situation where you had a right and wrong decision and you chose the wrong decision for personal/emotional reasons.

Never? I dunno. The vast majority of the time? Absolutely I would do what needed to be done. Then again, that's also my personality. I tend to be the type that can separate emotion from duty; as would the military leaders in this situation.

Smokers do this every day.

Not really. Smokers are not in a situation where they are saying, if I smoke this, I might die a few minutes later. That's basically Russian Roulette and you might have noticed its not very popular.

I must admit I was off-put by the first season but the recent episodes are starting to gel better and they actually have a "mission" even if it is chasing after ancient static noise.

I agree. I realize most shows have a pretty rough first season; with trying to work out characters and plot and get some feedback. That's the only reason I've checked out season two. Just the same, while season two has much more merit, they've been unable to address any of their core flaws, which consistently destroy the show for the reasons I previously outlined.

I think they should give it at least one more season to flesh out all of the plot elements they've set in motion to see if they can improve viewership.

They probably would have if the first season hadn't been such a complete flop. They've basically chased away everyone but the die-hards, such as you and me. And getting those viewers back would require several more seasons with really good material. And at this rate, there is absolutely nothing which suggests they have, "really good material." Which means a huge gamble on an unknown from the studio. By both of our own admission, we're basically hoping they can pull it off even though realistically, there isn't much reason to assume they can.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Have Brain Will Rent]

But too formulaic? What a cop-out excuse.

He said not formulaic enough, not too formulaic. And sometimes "This show was too creative for the plebes with their beer-swilling and their NASCAR to get!" is the actual explanation. Except it wasn't beer swilling and NASCAR it was juvenile basement dwellers, literal and/or figurative, looking for BEMs being killed and foes miraculously being beaten, all without any of the messy character development stuff.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can agree that this is what real people would do in such a situation, but this is not a reality show, viewers expect entertainment not a social experiment.
Entertainment requires a balance of fun and credibility. Too much credibility and not enough "fun" (i.e. humor, action, heroic moments for the main characters, etc...) will kill entertainment. Just like too much fun and not enough credibility will also kill the entertainment.

Note also that many SG-1 fans felt cheated by SGU. SG-1 had it's bad moments and viewers kept it alive by demanding that it not be canceled. The people who worked on the show made it's success, but the fans kept the show going when it was close to being canceled. No show = no successful franchise. SGU was way too different from SG-1 and did not appeal to many SG-1 fans. It appealed mostly to another kind of audience. The fans felt like SGU was not a Stargate show but only exploited the reputation of the Stargate franchise. A reputation that would not have existed without the fans of SG-1. It was basically like telling the SG-1 fans "Thanks for making the franchise a success, now we're going to use the name to do something entirely different. You don't like the new show? We don't care, we found a new audience anyway, fuck off".

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Isaac-1]

As I see it the primise of the B team in space was good, the problem is we did not get the B team, we got the reject team. We can compare this to the early days of Astronaut selection for NASA (or even the current days), you have hundreds if not thousands of people that score perfectly on every test, had spotless records, etc and only a handful of job openings. Sure there would likely be a few exceptions, mostly people with very specific skills and perhaps interpersonal skills problems, or those that accidentally found out about the program and were given the choice of joining up as a cook or being too big of security risk.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghost shows are cheap.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

shitty characters who make stupid decisions (e.g. not dumping nerve gas into the ducts when your ship is being overrun with superior forces ? wtf? this guy is a general ?, leaving your only scientist with any knowledge of ship systems stranded on a planet ? etc), crappy acting and dumb dialogue, shitty plot.
kill that show and bury it.

You're right, killing main characters with exploding tumors would be signifcantly less stupid.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

shitty characters who make stupid decisions (e.g. not dumping nerve gas into the ducts when your ship is being overrun with superior forces ? wtf? this guy is a general ?, leaving your only scientist with any knowledge of ship systems stranded on a planet ? etc), crappy acting and dumb dialogue, shitty plot.
kill that show and bury it.

Personally the people who created Stargate Universe are the morons. If they had used the money they were spending on Universe to continue creating Stargate Atlantis, instead of being tight fisted bastards that show would have carried on and we wouldnt have a problem. I never really understood why they cancelled that show cos it was fucking awsome. Then they cancel it and we get a shitty substitue. I watched it purely to see if the show would get any better. Episode after episode I prayed it would get better, and every time it never did. I can think of 1 episode out of the first season and half of season 2 combined that I actually enjoyed. That is how bad it was. But atlantis I did love, And I know a lot of people who also loved Atlantis. They are also of the same opinion as me when it comes to Universe, Like I said, the people who created Stargate Universe are morons.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. This show is the best in recent years. BSG was crap, especially anything after the first season. Bottom line is that Universe had a believable plot within the SG universe and great character development, not the hipster shit on tv now. Universe is about people struggling in a difficult situation and not always making the right decisions.

I guess Universe was too complicated for even the sci-fi crowd. Another great series wiped out.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Tiger4]

Hey it is easily possible that the show was pitched to the wrong audience. The Stargate fans are looking for what they've always seen. They got something different and they didn't like it. Call it something else and different expectations get attached to it. Me I was never a big Stargate fan, so when something different did come along I was ready for it.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation. It's like a fiction reality show.

If you selected people randomly of the street maybe, but only maybe. But that's not what supposedly happened here. There shouldn't be single person on that ship that wasn't way above average in many if not most respects. Otherwise they wouldn't have been anywhere near that original star gate.

Put another way. If this were a reality show it ought to have been "A day in the lives of the crew of the international space station", not "Big Brother 17". There's quite different selection processes at work here.

So no, having everybody acting like incompetent, needy, stupid, children doesn't make for either "depth of character" nor actually "realism". Quite the opposite. Read some real military history or real survival stories for how this think ought to have played out had the writers not been brought up on the emo reality soap shit that is the current trend. There's plenty of room for both strong and deep emotion and a "get on with it" attitude without it turning into Biggles or the Commando comics.

Good riddance I say.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[noodler]

Personally, I was much more appalled by the soggy emo cream that oozed freely than any lack of formulaics...
It filled nearly all of the available spacetime (but to be honest, i count the re-caps).
The only reason of existance for the characters, it seems, is to become emotionally disstressed about something.
Some episodes were so bad that their ONLY function was to deliver you to the cliffhanger at the end.
Unfortunately the cliffhangers very quickly became a bitter taste when you learn that they are almost exclusively used to drag you into another episode of oozing emo cream.
For me, it broke whe they used aliens (that featured for a whooping 1.5 episodes) as a reason to emotionally distress characters for months.
This series was not about aliens, it was about how incredibly emotional people can get from them. More ooze, more cream.

I have seldomly seen a series that was so deprived of actual important or cool stuff that happens.
The whole stargate, for instance, is an afterthought. Bar about 15 minutes of footage throughout the series it might have been left out completely without changing anything particular about the plot.

The mission statement for the writing team must have been 'Let's take one episode and inject so much filler into it so that it becomes a season'.
I once noticed that they never ever put more than 3 sentences of plot into any one episode. I dare you to find an episode that has more (as you will probably find there are often less than 3 sentences of plot in most episodes).
An episode might be described as "Crew gets food off of unknown planet while still contemplating their personal problems" , or "The ship is still under control of militant faction while crew tries to retake it. Meanwhile some crew members contemplate their personal problems.". Cue cliffhanger.

You say it lacks a formula, but to me it was soo obvious.
Character does something illogical and then the logic is explained with some or other mental disorder, preferably from the past (be it missing your lesbian mate, your brain was screwed by aliens or your boyfriend may have been cheating on you AND your brain was screwed by aliens altho it is still uncertain if it had any effect).

It is so overdesigned to trigger an emotional response that they utterly fail to cover it up with sciency fictiony elements.
To me it was a clear sign that there is no hope left for humanity (and sci fi writers in particular).

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation." Ohh come on, You really think most educated science people as per the characters here, would Be so Dumb and choose the wrong option at Ever single turn....?

take the crap writing that produced the lets loose our only fully working shuttle in a crash landing, have the scientists survive for several seasons then freeze to death in that perfectly good wreck that THEY DIDNT EVEN BOTHER TO STOCK UP ON FOOD AND Insulate with grasses and earth ready for the known coming cold winter ?

even though they had plenty of time , they didn't bother to make a door you can seal against the wind chill at the one entrance or even made a simple make shift wood fire oven and piped chimney stack inside the wreck so they didnt choke, or or even make simple bailed hay bedding and insulation Inside this refuge.... they people are science dudes, they wouldn't freeze before they starved given the long time line.

  and Many More crazy writers idea's these actors had to perform, id say they did a reasonable job and id like to take them all and put them together with a good set of writers, alas these writers are no more, all the original Drwho writers for instance where they all knew the story is king as is Long Term flow, as most people dont have OCD and cna actually remember what happened 3 seasons ago, and know that something uresolved was going to re-surface and finally get resolved.... for instance.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[GooberToo]

Exactly!

With the civilians its perhaps excusable because they would be there strictly for their expertise but would likely still have had some screening. Even with the civilians there would be the exception; meaning they would do well under survival pressures. Furthermore only the most competent military people would be there with perhaps only a tiny minority as the exception (inverse of the civilians). But the show seems to have nothing but inept people who crumble under pressure and can't even follow the most basic of military training or doctrine.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[CookieForYou]

He's a colonel you turd, and the whole POINT of the show is looking at the mistakes people make when put in a tough situation.

The drivel in most SciFi is the fact that everyone always responds by formula, rather than acting as flawed people that humans essentially are. The faulty assumption is that some high technology automatically improves the people behind it too.

Do you think people find "Apocalypse Now" hackneyed and fake because they often fucked up in the face of difficult situations? Or do people watch it and say "wow, people are messed up sometimes." and understand its a great story with messed up characters?

Sheesh. I'm so tired of the clinical "he's a general, therefor he is always perfect" and "he's an evil doer, so whatever he does is insanely evil" style of sterilized scifi. It's just painful to watch.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[CookieForYou]

Well, if you look at what is replacing SGU in the lineup, I might have to agree this time.

Yet another "ghost hunter" show and increased "WWE" coverage.

SRSLY?

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Mongoose Disciple]

He said not formulaic enough, not too formulaic

Yup. That's what I get for not using preview. I think my post makes more sense if you pretend I said 'not formulaic enough' as would be correct.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[RivenAleem]

SGU writers should have read the Rama series.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your sentiment, but have two additional thoughts to add. First one being, SGU should never have tried to mix the Stargate world with the Battlestar Galactica world. The whole whiny "I don't wanna be here, I didn't sign up for this so therefore I don't have to be a functioning member of the crew and f everyone else to save me" mentality just grates on me and I think most of the viewers who tried to watch this show out of loyalty to the Stargate franchise. Man up and do what you have to do to keep the whole crew alive, not just screw everyone else over to take care of yourself. I loved SG-1 and slightly less so SG-A. Those are my go-to shows when nothing else is on. But SGU just never hit the mark as a Stargate series. Secondly, however, and this may sound like a contradiction, it saddens me that SGU is going away simply because there is no other space based sci-fi tv now. All there is are these lame ass reality shows which are the sole reason I refuse to pay for any cable or satellite tv service. I want plot. I want scripts. I want real actors. I want the networks to have to actually spend money in order to entertain me. If I wanted reality I wouldn't be watching tv in the first place. I understand that I am in the minority when compared to the fist pumping Jersey Shore addicts, but who really wants to be like those simple minded cretins anyway?!?! Anything that is actually worth watching is available on Hulu or Netflix and I get to choose what I want to watch, rather than being forced to pay for 100+ channels to get the 5 that I will actually watch some of the time. All us scifi lovers are left with is tripe such as Warehouse 13 and Eureka. Star Trek is gone, Andromeda is gone, Firefly is gone. Now the Stargate franchise has ended. What a waste. SGU could have been so much better. It could have been THE show to reignite the scifi genre. But now scifi is dead. Sad day indeed. Guess I'll hafta go outside and entertain myself with nature for a change. Now get off my lawn!!!!

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are u serious saying young is a bad leader.... Like watch the show he is supposed to be a bad leader I'm pretty sure he was kinda gonna leave the stargate program before he got stuck on destiny. As to the other guy who said why would he leave rush behind; the answer to that is alot of testosterone. (pls don't reply to this if all your gonna say is the grammar and spelling is bad cause honestly I could care less if u wanna see some grammatical talent go read a book)

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll post as "Anonymous Coward" as the last thing I need is another "account" to gather dust as I would never use it.

The "SyFy" network has over the past several years declined into such sophomoric fare as to be nearly unwatchable -- wrestling and serial "mockumentary" programming indicate an audience mentality not much older than 10 years of age.

I really liked "SGU", and while I am extremely disappointed at the decision to cancel, given the roster of shows available on the "SyFy" network, I cannot say that I am completely surprised. This is a show for grown-ups, for the educated among us who like a little science with our fiction, a little more drama to explain the action, and don't necessarily need a laugh track to be told when something is funny.

It was just okay

[elrous0]

Heavily influenced by the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, SGU felt much more "adult" and real than any previous SG series (some of which were just downright hokey). And the characters and actors (especially the always-reliable Robert Carlyle) were interesting and pretty well fleshed-out. But the stories were a little weak and it was only moderately interesting viewing. Like Caprica, it kind of felt like Battlestar-lite. And at least Caprica had a powerful pilot. SGU never really had a stand-out episode. It was just sort of there, sort of mediocre. With a great cast, a decent premise, and okay writers--it certainly had the *potential* to be a lot better. But I suspect that if it had stayed on, the Scfy inclination wouldn't have been to smarten it up--but quite the opposite, to go for more action and tits and less character development and moral dilemma.

Re:It was just okay

[PhxBlue]

Heavily influenced by the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, SGU felt much more "adult" and real than any previous SG series (some of which were just downright hokey).

Only if, by "adult," you mean "emo."

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, they learned the wrong lessons from BSG --- the director got it in to his head that "shaky-cam" + "poor lighting" are the only things needed to create dramatic tension. The first season was just plain annoying to watch. I gave it up after a few eps.

I gave it another chance in season 2. It is now more watchable, but too little, too late. Quite frankly none of the characters are likable.

Re:It was just okay

[AfroTrance]

The BSG 'style' that was used in SGU is lame. Dark lighting, shaky cameras, overly melodramatic, unrealistic pointless interpersonal dilemmas, etc. I only saw the pilot of SGU and it was like an episode of Days of Our Lives in space.

Re:It was just okay

[Nemyst]

It wasn't adult, it was trying to be adult and ending up being depressing. "Adult" doesn't have to rhyme with constant infighting and tension. If they want to be realistic, then comic relief actually has to be part of the show, but as it was it was always "ah, shit" over and over and over without the slightest high point. Concluding on a high note for them meant not losing too many cast members but otherwise not making any progress. All the characters seemingly hated each other and, as they were stranded alone lightyears away from Earth, merrily kept on being angry at one another despite the odds already being quite stacked against them without their best efforts to scuttle themselves.

It was a horrible show full of nonsensical plots, clichés and unlikable characters.

Re:It was just okay

[Metabolife]

Yeah, that one dude was crying in just about every scene. I wanted to smack him.

Re:It was just okay

[ArhcAngel]

Quite frankly none of the characters are likable.

AW COME ON! You can't tell me you don't like Greer

Re:It was just okay

[EdIII]

The first couple of episodes were definitely adult. The very first episode itself had a pretty steamy sex scene it, what is not adult about that? I wish SG1 had an episode like that with Sam....

Then it just got dark and morose. Not so much emo as it was Castaway in space.

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I agree that SGU was more adult. It had better acting, 3 dimensional characters and plots that weren't totally linear. That's why the ratings were so bad - if it is any guide take a look at the comments on Episode World... almost all complaints were that there wasn't enough shooting and there was too much "soap opera" and "drama" (I guess that's the term for anything involving emotions). The real problem is that most of the SF audience is juvenile - and I don't mean physically.

Yes it had some problems - most shows have growing pains. But I think it was the best of all the SG series. The people were more believable as real people. There was none of the virtual invincibility displayed by the characters of other SG franchises every time some technological problem was faced.

For example compare Rodney McKay to Nicholas Rush. MacKay was completely two dimensional - I think the actor playing MacKay did a great job with what he was given but the character was ridiculous. Rush was more believable as a human being, had motives that weren't completely transparent, showed a bit of the dark side of human nature etc. Or compare Rush to Carter on SG1... same thing, Rush is far more interesting and believable.

Remember the scene where Rush has been abandoned and regains conciousness to look up at the alien night sky, all alone half way across the universe. Great scene - it wasn't hard to imagine how you would have felt in his place. Yes I wasn't impressed when I found he had gotten off the planet and how but I can't think of anything as good as that scene in any of the other SG franchises. Given a bit more time to mature it could have been a great show. Oh well - RIP SGU.

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually think it was the best of the stargate series. Finally, no stupid jokes (Eli is a bit annoying though), but it wasn't cheesy. Colonel Young is a strong leader but totally unprepared and needs to learn along the way. He's the "moral fibre", but dealing with civilians is difficult. Rush is the extreme idealist, egoistic but getting there. I was astounded to know there were so many not enjoying the series. If you really like SG1 and SGA, how can you possibly call this shallow?

Re:It was just okay

[alexo]

The first couple of episodes were definitely adult. The very first episode itself had a pretty steamy sex scene it, what is not adult about that?

In my dictionary, an "adult" show is one that makes you think. I've seen my share of "steamy" shows that were quite juvenile.

Re:It was just okay

[metrix007]

Just because there was a shift in tone away from episodic plots with a bit of humour and action, does not make the show more adult nor does it make the characters deeper. I think the characters in SG1 were far deeper and complex than anyone in SGU despite the format. SGU was more dramatic, but that was it. It was in no way better or more adult.

Re:It was just okay

[metrix007]

Oh, you mean Sergeant Hate.

Re:It was just okay

[Tanuki64]

The people were more believable as real people.

Yeah, and to see real people I watch a scifi series. Call me juvenile or worse, but I don't give a shit for other people. I want light, interesting entertainment. Preferably scifi, fantasy, or horror based. Modern fairy tales. A more adult scifi series is bull. For most nerds like me it is close to disgusting, for other more 'mature' watchers it mostly remains too corny because of the juvenile genre.

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Just because there was a shift in tone away from episodic plots with a bit of humour and action, does not make the show more adult nor does it make the characters deeper.

Of course not. The show was simply more adult and the characters deeper because the show was written to be more adult and the characters were better developed. It had nothing to do with "tone", "episodic plots" etc. - whatever gave you that idea?

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Call me juvenile or worse, but I don't give a shit for other people.

Ok Alex I'll take "worse" for $200.

Re:It was just okay

[BitZtream]

(especially the always-reliable Robert Carlyle)

The reliability of his character to be a douche was not impressive, it was just annoying. You know he's always doing something you don't want him to do and it just got old ... after about the 5th episode I was sick of him.

I'll admit, I was biased from the start after he said the only reason he did it was because the show was supposed to be 'entirely different than previous shows' ... his doucheiness didn't help then and his shitty character didn't help after it started.

It was just Day of Our Lives in space, and that was just retarded.

I've had to force myself to watch any episode since Fire, which was the last show where Destiny seemed even slightly plausible, now we're just seeing shit that isn't even plausible in a sci-fi series, just downright silly with not even a hint of explanation ... yes, I know its supposed to keep me interested, but it doesn't, it just gets annoying.

Re:It was just okay

[metrix007]

Not sure what you were saying, but my point was that the show was not more adult at all, it was just made to look that way.

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

My point was that it actually was more adult with more believable and well developed characters, and that this is so regardless of your apparent belief that it was an illusion.

Re:It was just okay

[modecx]

shaky cameras

I want to find the stupid bastard who first thought shaky camera and short-take editing are valid cinematographic techniques to purposefully apply to an entire film/tv show/whatever... I'd kick him in the nuts so hard that his testes would make like pinballs whilst traveling up his digestive tract (complete with sound effects) before exiting through his ears at some incredible velocity.

Yeah...the very thought makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Re:It was just okay

[antdude]

Caprica pilot was not powerful to me. :/

Re:It was just okay

[RedHat Rocky]

The best part of SG1 was that it was a little cheesy and played to it. Hence the inside jokes and what not, such as the longest golf tee off EVER.

SG1 never intended to be a super serious sci-fi show.

Re:It was just okay

[billhuey]

The show was absolutely better than both SG shows and possibly better than BSG in a number of areas regarding per episode human interaction. The problem with the show was the audience. The audience isn't sophisticated enough to *get* the writing for the most part, the depth of the characters and how they're used in the arc.

Keep in mind, instead of watching Charlie Rose for being informed of our of political process folks think that cable news, CNN, FoxNews, etc... is new. That's what the US culturally degraded to, sports and detachment from people and things around them. Same for our own self-awareness. The same crowd complaining probably doesn't have any.

Re:It was just okay

[NoSig]

I'd say equating sex with adult other than as a euphemism is itself juvenile.

Re:It was just okay

[NoSig]

He's the least likable person on the whole show, including the evil aliens and invaders. He's the sort to decide he doesn't like someone because they wear striped clothes and brutally murder them for it.

Re:It was just okay

[Larryish]

I want my Firefly back.

DAMMIT!@@Y(*&#Y(&#(OYRW(DWGUI(SIG(SDGIOUDSO\

Give me my god damned Firefly back, you stupid network executives.

CEOs? More like C E Assholes.

Re:It was just okay

[Uzik2]

Storys were weak and badly thought out, Little action, and characters I could not care about. The writers/producers/directors need a wake up call. This is it

Re:It was just okay

[NuShrike]

It was like watching Voyager's "Year of Hell" down to every second. Really not exciting and a ratings killer.

Give me the dog episode from Enterprise for more character development.

Re:It was just okay

[Pharmboy]

Take a look at any complicated show, that requires you to *think*, and has a dark edge, and it gets cancelled because the average person today wants a laugh track so they know when to laugh, and wants everything tied up neatly at the end of each episode. The *good* shows, SGU, Carnivale, Dead Like Me, etc. manage to make you think, no matter how flawed they were at times, which was their downfall and why they lasted a couple of years is all. The average person doesn't want to have to commit to a show, to watch it sequentially, to pay attention while it is on. Of course, this sucks for those of us who want a show to do more than have a canned laugh every 45 seconds.

I would rather shoot myself than watch "Seinfeld" or "Two and a Half Men", while the average viewer finds it safe, predictable and entertaining and doesn't have an attention span long enough to get into more developed characters and story lines.

Re:It was just okay

[Eudial]

Heavily influenced by the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, SGU felt much more "adult" and real than any previous SG series (some of which were just downright hokey).

Only if, by "adult," you mean "emo."

I think the term used in the industry is "darker and edgier". But yeah. Emo.

Re:It was just okay

[metrix007]

I love that whenever people don't like a show the fans blame the audience as not being sophisticated enough. What rubbish.

In the case of say...Better off Ted or The Wire or Futurama or whatever it can be true....because a lot of references are made and issues are parodied....but in the case of SGU there is no prerequisite knowledge, and bad acting and the multiple issues are simply a deal breaker.

Re:It was just okay

[metrix007]

You really shouldn't put Seinfeld in the same category as anything starring Charlie Sheen. For a show about nothing it was remarkable intelligent and well written, and even tackled complex issues a few times quite well.

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never seen the original version of the SG-1 pilot, have you? Full frontal nudity, though not from Amanda Tapping.

Re:It was just okay

[captjc]

You've never seen the original version of the SG-1 pilot, have you? Full frontal nudity, though not from Amanda Tapping.

At least that was tasteful. As opposed to some pointless fucking.

Re:It was just okay

[noodler]

".. almost all complaints were that there wasn't enough shooting and there was too much "soap opera" and "drama" (I guess that's the term for anything involving emotions)."

I think you seriously underestimate the ammount of soap and drama that the writers managed to put in there.
If you were to take out all the drama and personal problems of the characters you would barely have enough material left to fill 2 episodes.

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

It had better acting, 3 dimensional characters

I'd say they were more like 9 dimensional characters, and all the interesting stuff was performed in those 6 dimensions we can't see.

Seriously, I'm a long time sci-fi fan alright, watch and read enough, and I have to say, SGU belongs together with all the other wonderfully uninteresting bunch of most boring shows with stupid plots there could be. Sadly idiotic talks and arguments, weird decisions, unrealistic acceptance of certain situations, and so on and so forth. I know it's sci-fi, but still, there are limits.

Most of the time I don't agree with show cancellations, those cancelling guys must be from Mars or something, but this time I have to agree. Enough is enough.
 

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Well gee, since I watched the episodes I'm pretty sure I know how much "drama" was in there. I think the show was a reflection of what normal life, with all its "drama", would be like when put into that sort of high pressure fish-bowl. Maybe you just have an abnormally dull life and so can't relate to that? :)

Re:It was just okay

[Stevecrox]

No people's complaint about there being too much drama is because good science fiction has a plot and you watch as the characters react to that plot. Character interaction is important but without anything to drive it you have little more than a Soap Opera. Until the end of season 1 the only 'plot' was having the characters attack each other. In season 2 Rush discovers something and it takes 5 episodes for the truth to come out. That story arc would have worked well in a single episode but dragging it out over 5 was boring.

I've tended to skip the earth stories because apart from seeming like something like from Lost they don't really add any depth to the characters.Most of the characters were unlike-able, you have a Colonel who is incapable of making any good strategic decisions, a second in command who won't take command even when he knows he must, a series of incompetent scientists, Eli who's naive to the point of idiocy, most of the soliders are cliche and Rush who I actually like.

Even when action occurs its filled with plot devices and the whole story seems more about god than science. They would often jump and skip big events only to drag out minor issues. For me the worst part was when Rush made it back to the ship, rather than show Rush dealing with being kicked off, or show how the ship starts failing without him, he comes back within the next episode.

The idea of the wrong people in the wrong place was a bad one, the Stargate program was supposed to involve the best and the brightest but most of the characters were so flawed I'd doubt any of them would have achieved their positions let alone be good enough to send off world.

Re:It was just okay

[CookieForYou]

LOL. "Adult" has nothign to do with sex. Steamy sex scenes in a scifi drama screams "teenage boys, come watch!!!".

The concepts of intractable moral dillemmas is what makes good fiction. The decision between two evils is powerful.

SG-1, Star Trek, etc gets out of this by always finding "magical third answer that saves everyone with no casualties" but that's so trite as to be almost funny sometimes.

Having some character flaws is valuable to a good story.

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Have you ever served on a military ship in battle?

Comic relief is required for it to be "realistic"? LULZ

As for people who are intrinsically untrusting of each other suddenly automatically getting along all fine and dandy simply because they are off somewhere dangerous. I also refer to you to any number of real world situations. I know a number of people who served on real navy ships (especially submarines where you have limited space) and it caused constant bitching and fighting, often escalating to fist fights.

The BSG plot device of having boxing matches to bear out grudges amongst crew, so they can get on with their job, despite hating each other, was actually a real practice on navy ships.

Maybe for you to enjoy it, it must be much more cliche and mellow, but that's not the reality of human nature.

Personally, I find them to be often too quick to "make up", given the circumstances.

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

No people's complaint about there being too much drama is because good science fiction has a plot and you watch as the characters react to that plot.

I don't know where you get your information to make your huge unsubstantiated assertions but let me refer you back to what I originally said - most of the comments on Episode World were that there was too much drama and not enough shooting (of aliens) - specifically they didn't want human interaction they wanted mindless shoot-ups.

You "tend to skip the Earth stories because they don't add any depth to the characters" - interesting that you know what they do or don't do when you haven't seen them. Let's see - one episode exploring the failure of the commander's marriage and how he is dealing with it, another episode exploring Rush's feelings about his wife, how he behaved while she was dying etc., another episode where we find one of the major characters is a brainwashed spy... yeah nothing important there.

most of the characters were so flawed I'd doubt any of them would have achieved their positions let alone be good enough to send off world

You obviously haven't spent much time around really smart people - I mean the real outliers in intelligence and ability - because it isn't at all unusual for them to also be dysfunctional in many ways. But if you want the smartest guy there is in some field you accept his deficits as well.

Anyhow I'll waste no more time on this so have the last word if you like.
Merry Christmas!

Re:It was just okay

[hovelander]

I also thought SG:U was the best of the ridiculously long franchise. The cheese and endless plot repeats of the first 15 YEARS is what was tiresome. The Wraith was by a LONG way more emo than anything in Universe. Hand sucking, life force vampires with Kiss makeup and LITERALLY FACELESS soldier drones? Jesus. Crispy. Fucking. Christ.

There were bright spots in 1&A, don't get me wrong, but those bright spots were when a character displayed an emotional depth that made us care about that character even more. (Example: Daniel dying the first time in SG:1, Rodney stuck in a puddle jumper at the bottom of the ocean in SG:A.)

Saying that Universe was too much like a soap opera is a bullshit whine. Any show with character evolution could have this pegged to it. (The first 15 years of SG more closely resembled soaps with their stock characterizations and shallow motivations.)

What I LOVED about SG:U is the same thing that BSG and now "The Walking Dead" were/are doing; exploring the stories of flawed characters who are in situations where they are COMPLETELY fucked and fighting to just survive.

Serialized SciFi with emotional depth is what is rare and in danger right now. Especially if/when Fringe is canceled and Supernatural stops living on borrowed time.

Fuck all the haters. You can watch crap like Sanctuary (I can DANCE!!!) and PrimeEval (so bad that I don't even want to quote a line) for poorly done cheese. (Not Dr Who's excellently executed cheese, mind you.)

The AMC or Starz model may be the only way great, non cheesy, SciFi will have a chance in the future.

Re:It was just okay

[hovelander]

Pointless fucking isn't what happened in the SG:U episode in question. This scene and the reasons surrounding it were what made SG:U great in my opinion. Great writing and plotting there. (Not to mention it leads to Lou Diamond Phillips getting his ass kicked, which just makes for great television!)

The stones led to some of the best shows of the series!

Re:It was just okay

[Stevecrox]

My huge unsubstantiated opinion comes from listening to my friends who like me feel the same way. We've begun to refer to the show as Stargate: Eastenders. Admittedly those only the 20-30 people I know but as you said most people were as for less drama and more shooting. Sure that is just anecdotal evidence but reading this thread shows it is a common opinion.

People were not asking for no drama and any good action story will require a plot. It doesn't need a great plot but one needs to exist. Stargate SG1 and Atlantis both had multiple plots and story arcs, they were not great or even complex but they were compelling. SGU had none until a quarter the way through the second season.

I have watched some of the earth stories but after the first few I decided it was best to skip through them. That doesn't mean I missed all of the story I simply fast forwarded and checked nothing interesting was happening. The only ones I've seen that were meaningful were the Greer story and when Rush was in the chair. The rest have generally screamed filler.

I went to a school in the top 30 in the UK, most of my friends went to Cambridge and Oxford Universities because of their ability. Most of my life has been spent with people with IQ's above 140. I say this not to insult or intimidate but to clarify where I am coming from. While the social awkwardness of character's like Sheldon, House and Bones is funny, it is not a requirement of intelligence and in my experiences isn't even that common. The dysfunctional are often perceived to be intelligent even when they aren't, for example most people assume geeks are smart.

Even assuming anyone with an above average IQ would be heavy dysfunctional that would only explain Rush, Eli and the scientists. The colonel, Scott, Greer, Cloe, etc.. should be reasonably capable, however even the normal civilians and military personnel are deeply flawed to the point where it would have be hard to see how they achieved their positions in a normal environment let alone how they would qualify to be sent into space.

Re:It was just okay

[Anonymous Coward]

From above--> "I agree that SGU was more adult. It had better acting, 3 dimensional characters and plots that weren't totally linear. That's why the ratings were so bad - if it is any guide take a look at the comments on Episode World... almost all complaints were that there wasn't enough shooting and there was too much "soap opera" and "drama" (I guess that's the term for anything involving emotions). The real problem is that most of the SF audience is juvenile - and I don't mean physically."

Isn't this kinda the problem with TV in general? Almost every show I find interesting, and worth paying attention to from week to week, seems to get cancelled within 2 seasons. Meanwhile, "reality" shows (nothing more than idiots willing to put themselves in stupid situations and cry about it publicly), and CSI multiply and carry on season after season.

Like Have Brain, Will Rent implied - people apparently don't want to think any more. They want to sit on the couch and look at other people make fools of themselves (reality TV; makes me feel better because someone else just proved they are a bigger idiot than me). Or they want to sit on the couch and look at boobs. My impression of CSI and almost all the other cop shows: detectives make $75-$90k per year in real life, but on TV, I like to see them dress, drive cars, and live in houses like CEO's of major companies; female cops are ALWAYS gorgeous, near-super model looks with great bodies & big boobs, and do police work while dressed like they're going out on a dinner date - hair done, makeup on, nice shoes, cleavage, lip-gloss, etc; and finally, lets all pretend that the CSI / lab techs of the world can solve any crime in the world with a Q-tip and a fancy computer.

I feel better now - Thanks for letting me vent!

I didn't even know it was in trouble

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Weird. Easily my favorite of the Stargate series' and the only show on SciFi I ever watched.

And yay; since no one knew it was getting canned it will end with everything unresolved. Probably on a cliffhanger. That would be swell.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

Final episode's already been filmed. It does end on a cliffhanger.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[1984]

Me too. Apparently we're in quite the minority.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[ildon]

Are you kidding? I was amazed it lasted longer than Caprica. No one I knew watched it or cared about it, even people who loved SG1 and Atlantis. Even I only watched it begrudgingly, hoping at some point it would stop being so bad.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[doodlebumm]

Well at least there were three of us. I quite looked forward to the new episodes each week. I think that there was more to the show than most people cared to figure out. It was definitely more gritty and more of a moral dilemma show. Not many shows would have written a story where the captain suffocates one of his men to make it so that he didn't have to die alone when he was left behind. I thought much of the stuff was very thought provoking. I'll miss it.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[HTH NE1]

So did Farscape. SG-1 got some video-to-air movies. SG-A is/was going to. Perhaps SG-U will have.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[Shadow99_1]

Make that 4.. I thought it had potential (though needed a bit of work at times) and I watched it regularly. Though since I don't own cable tv (not enough on it I want to actually watch), I watched it on Hulu... Until Season 2 started and they nuked Hulu support (wait a month between episodes, wow yeah that's a great idea)... Then I was left to watch it less legally online...

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[Darinbob]

Some people probably wanted more explosions and enemies to shoot.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[ninjamonkey26]

Make that four, while I didn't hate SG-1 and SGA because I do try to find something good in all Sci-fi. I wasn't overly impressed with their general cheesiness. I could stomach the occassional SG-1/SGA ep but sitting through an entire season was... a little too much like saturday morning cartoons for my tastes. SGU grabbed me (just as BSG reimagined did) not only because of their more realistic character interactions, for example not all of the crew on either show got/gets along like an afternoon tea party at Aunt Betty's. Both shows' settings were dark yes and not a lot of pick me ups along the way, but honestly (BSG example) how much humor is to be expected when if you pay attn to the opening credits, thousands were dying off at a time? I appreciate the (sci-fi) realistic approach that both these series took at exploring the human condition in scenarios that we aren't really prepared to handle. Also Rush with the dinosaur assasination FTW! (there's your humor :-) )

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[cyclomedia]

Me too, i actually said "holy shit!" out loud after the suffocating incident. Admittedly the setup for the episode itself seemed a bit run of the mill but then they turned the cliche around. In fact they did that in quite a few episodes, just when you thought "i've seen this before on x-trek" some different shit would hit the fan.

Just hope they have enough spare time, resources and episodes to finish it all pleasantly (or indeed, unpleasantly). But at least this way it wont end up being dragged out for years and feel like the middle half of Lost :)

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[tgd]

The thing that really shocked me is how hard SyFi worked to kill it.

The only thing more ignorant than running a split season in the first season of a new show that people aren't yet caught up in (*cough*Caprica) is splitting your first season into THREE chunks spread out over a year.

That pretty much guarantees no chance of getting a following.

Not to be all conspiratorial, but there's no way a decision that stupid was made accidentally -- someone there wanted to kill the show.

Re:I didn't even know it was in trouble

[CookieForYou]

The problem is that they had expectations from the old "Stargate" fans. the bad guys would be unspeakably evil and have minions of bald dark skinned servants and giant gold head dresses and names like "Aphophis". And the hero is ALWAYS captured by the bad guy half way through the episode and it ALWAYS looks hopeless, but they are ALWAYS rescued in the last 3 minutes through some absurdly improbably confluence of events with absolutely no casualties.

This is what they expected, and didn't get, therefore this show is "emo and too dramatic". It's "too dark".

I agree, its the only show I still watch on regular TV. Now I can cancel my cable and save $50/mo. Sweet.

NBC BETTER NOT MESS UP Comcast sportsnet

[Joe The Dragon]

NBC BETTER NOT MESS UP Comcast Sportsnet what carp like this after comcast buys NBC.

Is there any hope that comcast can save scifi channel? or will the nbc buy out end up with G4 / CSN / VS being comeing more like syfy that more WWE and other crap.

it was getting better

[ShaggusMacHaggis]

I do think it was trying too hard to be Stargate: Galatica , however it was getting better as this season went on. I think it's a shame that SyFy seems to be cancelling all of the 'serious' shows.....they are left with only the super-cheesy shows (like Eureka, Warehouse 13, Haven...all got renewed..I don't understand how anyone can watch Haven...it's awful) - these cheesy series, along with their b-movies seem to be the only shows that get ratings. It's a shame.

Re:it was getting better

[Surt]

I'm pretty sure it's all about budget. From what I hear the budget on a Eureka/Haven is 10% of the cost of a SGU. That's a drastically lower threshold for advertising profitability. The cost / episode of WWE is even lower.

Re:it was getting better

[elrous0]

Every time I've tried (God knows I did try) to watch Eureka, all I could do was feel sorry for the cast. Poor Joe Morton went from great roles in movies like Lonestar and Terminator 2 to that turd--what a sad way to end a career. The premise of the show actually wasn't that bad. But the dialogue, writing, and some of the acting were so horridly, horridly godawful that most of its laughs were unintentional. I think the final straw was when they brought in poor James Callis. Yet another actor capable of so much more who has been wasted on that altar of shit.

Re:it was getting better

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, haven is dirt cheep.

SGU has a TON of CG and a massive cast

Re:it was getting better

[CyprusBlue113]

If you want to talk budget, lets go really low ball, Ghost Liars.

Re:it was getting better

[MoldySpore]

Agreed. It was getting better. The direction they have been going for the last 5 or 6 episodes was shaping up to become a really good show. What is SyFy's problem? They have shit ratings on all their other TV shows...not sure why they can't let the show try to live up to its potential.

I am so confused. It seems as if there is this unspoken rule about Sci Fi shows (on any network) that if they don't pull down the MOST AMAZING RATINGS EVER IN THE HISTORY OR SCI FI it gets cancelled, usually before any kind of resolution to the storyline can be gracefully made. This really pisses me off.

Re:it was getting better

[kheldan]

It's because NBC owns SyFy, and just like the re-branding of the channel implies, NBC gave the once-decent SciFi Channel a case of syphillis, which has now gone to it's brain and is in the terminal stages of completely destroying and killing it off. NBC, for those of us who remember, has a long history of completly fucking up anything even scifi-related, and I've been waiting to see how long it would be before they fucked up the SciFi Channel; I now have my answer.
Not only is there nothing of value on the channel anymore, there really isn't much of anything left on TV that's worthwhile to TiVo, either.

Re:it was getting better

[lennier1]

True, and Eureka has the advantage of being able to do some episodes with next to no visual effects, allowing them to save up money for more effects-heavy episodes down the road.

Re:it was getting better

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I didn't think it was trying to be BSG - seemed like a very unique flavor all its own. But in a way I'm glad it's going - I'm sick and tired of 10 or 11 episodes then a 4 month break, then 10 or 11 episodes then a few more months break. To really enjoy a show you have to have some sort of emotional tie in to the characters and the situations and this practice of just enough to get interesting and then stopping just doesn't work for me - it was the single biggest problem wit BSG for me as well.

With the passing of SGU there isn't much left on TV that I want to watch outside of Discovery Channel, History Channel type stuff and movies. House? Should have stopped when he entered the asylum. Sanctuary? OMG *retch*. Fringe? Mind boggling that Fringe still goes on and SGU is cancelled. Heroes? Justifiably cancelled. Supernatural? Well it's a zombie so I guess it's kind of fitting. Smallville... there should have been a global green Kryptonite shower a few years ago. Big Bang Theory - this was hilarious but just isn't as good as it used to be. Dexter and Rescue Me were kind of interesting but only because I'd never seen them and then I did marathon viewing of all the episodes over a few days... can't imagine maintaining any interest seeing them as TV shows.

Nope, TV is dead for me.

Re:it was getting better

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but I don't watch those shows so the sponsors should drop their support. Shows like Stargate and Galatica put SyFy on the map.

Re:it was getting better

[Darinbob]

So you think if we could just shout "someone please cancel Haven" it would happen?
After all, that's apparently what happened here. Rather than just ignore the show some people made it their mission to get it canceled.

Re:it was getting better

[Jahf]

Agreed. This was the last show on SyFy I cared to watch. It wasn't great but it was better than the other shows that tried the "ship stranded away from earth/home" storyline. This was the only one of those types of spin-offs I actually enjoyed watching. Oh well.

HBO has suffered lately too, which was the other channel I really enjoyed weekly (Rome, Sopranos, etc). I pretty much don't have any story arc dramas left to watch.

Re:it was getting better

[l0ungeb0y]

What's wrong with Eureka? it's a fun show that doesn't take itself too seriously, I always viewed it as a sci-fi sitcom.
Granted, I haven't seen the last season since I cut cable in favor of streaming, but seasons 1 - 3 were ok by me.

Re:it was getting better

[broken_chaos]

The problem I had with this was how the same thing seemed to happen in the first season. Rocky start, but the second half started building up to something decent... And then it felt like several reset buttons had been smashed as soon as the second season started... Only to begin slowly climbing back up there.

The other big issue is with how so many of the characters are unlikable, unremarkable, or uninteresting.

Re:it was getting better

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even cheaper when you count the scripts they ripped directly off Star Trek TNG. Search and replace the character names, and you're sweet.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[makubesu]

I was thinking Tremors 5.

Cancelled?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know it existed... :/

Gutted

[nickrw]

I thoroughly enjoyed SGU. It took a while to get off the ground during season 1, but it was really starting to get good during season 2. Never realised so many people felt so strongly against it.

Re:Gutted

[grub]

Yeah, I'm with you. In fact SGU was the only Stargate series I watched. Only saw 2 or 3 eps of the previous ones and didn't care for them.

Re:Gutted

[UID30]

I enjoyed SGU as well. Watched pretty much all of the previous series as well, and SGU was by far the least "campy". The episode that started out with the Flogging Molly track hit the nail on the head ... a bunch of unprepared people in a REALLY bad situation, each struggling with their own personal demons just to make it to the next "worst day since yesterday."

I will be sad to see it go, feeling that it was (by far) the best thing SciFi had going for it. I guess now they can concentrate on more wrestling shows... *sigh*

Re:Gutted

[kriyasurfer]

I'm with all of you. The show is awesome and has many metaphorical layers in there. That's difficult to pull off when trying to make it realistic in tone.

I loved how the story was set up as walking up Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. That took a lot of guts and artistic integrity, since it required a slower first season while they go through the "physiological" needs, before the needs of "safety", "love/belonging", "self-esteem", and "self-actualization". It's a story of both an individual person -- everyone has a Dr. Rush, a Col Young, a Camile Wray as impulses in their heads and body ... just trying to do the right thing. It's a story about humanity in general, with the same kind of characters at play in politics. And after the turning point where the crew takes conscious control of their "destiny" was a big win. Destiny isn't as hopeless as it seems.

And it's going to get cancelled.

How metaphorical is that?

Re:Gutted

[GravityStar]

Ditto, with you all. Feels bad having to let the show go...

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: Caprica also got canceled

About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched every episode of SG1 and Atlantis, and I couldn't stand SGU. It had way too much drama, infighting and incompetence to be an enjoyable series.

I think they were trying to make something like Battlestar Galactica, but forgot to add a plot.

Cast learned of the cancellation via Twitter...

[clone52431]

But don’t worry... posting twitter updates doesn’t cost the producers a thing. They have an unlimited data plan.

(Am I the only one who’s thinking of those commercials?)

Shouldn't have been canceled

[trickeyOne]

I think it shouldn't have been canceled yet. Did it have a rough start? Yes, but so did the original Stargate and Atlantis, so do most new shows. The show itself was just starting to have a true life of its own and starting to take on its own storyline. It shouldn't have taken almost 2 seasons to do so, but... I mean they JUST got control of the ship, lol!

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Surt]

SyFy canceled Caprica a while ago. So they now officially have zero shows I'll be tivoing.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eureka but that's it.

Pitty

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, pitty, SGU was actually the best show in the SG, uhm, Universe, and after a very bleak sequence of episodes, it started to be very interesting looking-forward-to-next-week-episode kind of thing. It does seem to have lost a little bit of its original path, though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

why can't stuff like wcg ultimate gamer be on g4?

[Joe The Dragon]

why can't stuff like wcg ultimate gamer be on g4?

why does it and WWE have to be on scifi?

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Nadaka]

Pro wrestling and 7 flavors of fake reality ghost hunting shows.

I can answer that question for you:

[Weaselmancer]

Can it be saved via fan support, given the steadily declining viewership numbers?

Firefly.

If the rabid Firefly fans couldn't resurrect that show, then you guys don't have a prayer.

That being said, I welcome you all as brothers and sisters and feel your pain. You can't take the sky from me.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it be saved via fan support, given the steadily declining viewership numbers?

Firefly.

If the rabid Firefly fans couldn't resurrect that show, then you guys don't have a prayer.

That being said, I welcome you all as brothers and sisters and feel your pain. You can't take the sky from me.

Firefly had nowhere to go. How far can you take a Space Western? Don't get me wrong, the movie was great and the series I enjoyed but I could see getting tired of it in season 2 - like I did with BSG.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[metrix007]

The counterpoint to that argument would be to point out the success fans had in resurrecting Family Guy and Futurama.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are you making that counterpoint or are you just pointing out that it would be a good one for someone to make?

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[LoyalOpposition]

Well, there was always the question of where Book learned so much about crime. And shooting. And hand-to-hand combat. Then there was the question of why Inara would leave the, supposedly lucrative, inner planets for a ship filled with miscreants. And what was in that hypodermic. And whether she had a way to keep from dying. Then there was the question of whether Malcolm would ever return to his Christian faith. And how he really felt about Inara. And whether he could get a steady source of income when seemingly every one of the border planets were against him. And why he entered the war. Then there was the question of why Jane seemed to get along so well with Book. And why he sent so much money home to his mother. And whether he could ever respect Simon. Then there was the question of what the Hands of Blue represented. And how the Blue Sun corporation was involved. And what exactly they were doing with River. Then there was the question of whether River would ever get well. And find true love. And live a normal life. And how Kaylee's relationship with Simon would work out. And whether Saphron would come back. Or Jubal. Or Badger. Or Niska.

I'm thinking they could have made it through season two.

~Loyal

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[BondGamer]

Resurrecting an animated show is a whole lot easier and cheaper than rebuilding sets, getting back actors, etc. Everything about an animated show can be replaced, even voice actors.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[metrix007]

I don't know......

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[clone52431]

And then there was the Serenity movie, which explained a whole list of other stuff to which your list was strangely mutually exclusive. Did you do that on purpose?

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[EdIII]

Those shows were animated. It really just came down to voices. Futurama had to negotiate pretty hard with the cast to get them to come back too.

FireFly is dead for sure. Jane is on Chuck now. The Captain is on Castle right? Not to mention they killed off how many of the cast in the movie?

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Huge difference in resurrecting a cartoon. Both of those shows were off the air for years and brought back because they were able to build a larger stronger audience through DVD sales. With a live action show, once it's been off the air for a year it's pretty much over. The actors will all commit to other projects (voiceover takes a fraction of the time and can be easily squeezed in between other jobs) and they also age which makes picking up where you left off pretty much impossible.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[EdIII]

No shit.

I kind of like SGU, but it is no FireFly. Not by a long shot. Acting was superb on that show. Characters developed well, you really cared about them all by the end of the season. Everyone pulled their weight on that show. Then there were the sets and the production value. That always blew me away. Better than Stargate Atlantis by far, and that is saying something.

If it came down to a choice... FireFly.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[nullifi]

Bravo, dear sir, bravo.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[yotto]

If only Firefly and SGU were 30 minute cartoons. /I'd actually watch a 30 minute Firefly cartoon.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Fnkmaster]

Man, reading that list just made me sad that they never made a second season. I enjoyed the Serenity movie thoroughly, but there was so much more to be done with this show. I figure two more seasons before it jumped the shark.

On the other hand, I'll never have to hate the show or become disgusted with what it became like I have with so many other shows that had good first seasons then went down the crapper. In fact, maybe the *reason* so many of us still love Firefly so much is that it didn't get crapped on in later seasons, with played out plotlines, bored writers, and desperate attempts to keep things interesting.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[alexo]

Firefly.

If the rabid Firefly fans couldn't resurrect that show, then you guys don't have a prayer.

I'll call your Firefly and raise you one Farscape.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[lennier1]

I'll give you Futurama, which still has a few things to offer. But Family Guy has deteriorated so much it's almost physically painful to watch.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't take the sky from me.

Looks to me like they did.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[UID30]

The unfinished story of Shepard Book is what I most regret about firefly. Did anybody ever find out whose cheerios Joss peed in to get the show first schedule-raped, then canned?

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely that also has more to do with the comparatively low cost of restarting a cartoon production compared to restarting a full live action production than the attitude of fans. Perhaps you need significantly more fan boys to justify the greater financial outlay and therefore risk.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[clone52431]

Did anybody ever find out whose cheerios Joss peed in to get the show first schedule-raped, then canned?

If anybody finds out, let me know. I want to pee in his cheerios, too.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I dont even bother watching it. It should not have been resurrected. Futurama doesn't feel 'well' either, but its still viable.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[H0p313ss]

Firefly.

If the rabid Firefly fans couldn't resurrect that show, then you guys don't have a prayer.

I'll call your Firefly and raise you one Farscape.

Firefly > Farscape > Waterboarding > SGU

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch Serenity:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/

It answers some of those questions.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Zumbs]

I sort of figured that Serenity was the main plot for Firefly season 2 condensed into a movie.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Shadow99_1]

Farscape had massive budgets problems though... I still remember the channel complaining about 'million dollar episodes'... I don't think there was any reasonable way with traditional tv to keep Farscape. Firefly though had a much much lower cost per episode...

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[winwar]

"I don't think there was any reasonable way with traditional tv to keep Farscape."

I don't know. Lucas can do amazing things with CGI. Give him some script input and ....

So that's the sound of ultimate suffering.....

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[cyclomedia]

I really like SG:U but someone please award parent mod points for making me laugh really really fucking hard

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Black Parrot]

I enjoyed the Serenity movie thoroughly, but there was so much more to be done with this show.

I didn't much care for it, because IMO it tried to wrap up too many story lines in one outing, and because the kickboxing-babe-saves-the-day stereotype was stale long before the series started.

I suspect that the writers didn't actually have answers to most of the questions the GP asks, to provide mystery and leave flexibility to grow in whatever direction inspiration took them.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? I enjoyed Firefly very much. The movie was even better. However, the characters were not nearly as well developed as they are on SGU. The sets were - the ship, and the wild west. Not sure how that blew you away...

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[DiEx-15]

I have seen Firefly, Serenity, and Stargate Universe. Let me say that there isn't a comparison and shouldn't be uttered the way you uttered it.

I say this because Firefly had something that SGU doesn't. It is called a "story". Firefly had a story that was enjoyable to watch and made sense, SGU feels more like Battlestar Galactica: Emo Edition. This coming from a person that loved Atlantis and the original SG-1. Heck, Andromeda had a better story than SGU and it lasted five seasons!

Well, SGU fans can probably take solace in the knowledge that it won't get a box office rape that Serenity was...

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[PrimaryConsult]

I'd counter this with Roswell... a show even more emo than SG:U, and with (what appears to be) a similar target audience, saved by fan pressure (and lots of bottles of Tabasco sauce).

Still, network TV is a different beast than cable...

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[quacking duck]

Seriously? I enjoyed Firefly very much. The movie was even better. However, the characters were not nearly as well developed as they are on SGU. The sets were - the ship, and the wild west. Not sure how that blew you away...

The characters on Firefly had a dozen episodes to develop (a few more if you count the DVD episodes, or the pilot which they aired at the *end* of the series). SGU has had 30.

Despite the unfair comparison, I learned far more (and cared far more) about Firefly's characters in that half-season, than I did most of Voyager's characters despite the latter running 7 seasons.

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

inb4 read the comics for some of those points

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Well said sir. If I actually had an account here instead of reading and posting AC for so many years you would get all of my mod points. I loved the SG franchise until SG-U. Unfortunately I didn't discover Firefly until it was too late, but I believe it to be the best representation of a realistic space based sci-fi series made so far. A truly amazing show. Not that my opinion could have saved it, but I digress. You can't take the sky from me indeed!!!! Sad days for sci-fi fans. I fear this may signal the end of the genre. However I thank you for your support, brother. We are few but strong. FUCK REALITY TV!!!!!!!

Re:I can answer that question for you:

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget they got a movie out of all that fighting.

Effing SyFy

[intellitech]

First, SG-1. Then, Atlantis. How about somebody points out that their poor ratings may have been due to resent from the sci-fi community FOR CANCELING SHOWS THEY OBVIOUSLY SHOULDN'T HAVE CANCELED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Re:Effing SyFy

[Dalzhim]

Totally agree. At first I didn't like Stargate SG-1's cancellation. The problem wasn't with the cast but with the amount of "filler episodes". Then Dr McKay made StarGate Atlantis actually be a nice series and it got cancelled too... I mean c'mon. I like stargate's universe. Why cancel all of them?

Re:Effing SyFy

[tibman]

They can't even give the SG:U cast notice. They were basically fired over twitter. F'ing Syfy man

Re:Effing SyFy

[ildon]

As much as I loved SG-1, after 10 seasons it was (arguably past) time to call it quits.

Re:Effing SyFy

[Darinbob]

SG-1 was seriously dying. All the good episodes and themes had been in the past. The last season was pretty grueling to watch. SG: Atlantis never really went anywhere I thought, maybe a few interesting episodes but it was never a "I gotta get home to watch this!" feeling to it like with SG1 or SGU.

Re:Effing SyFy

[intellitech]

I agree, but Atlantis? I mean, they ended it right after they had finally fixed the damn thing up!

I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[type40]

SU premiered right when I needed it. I had just moved to a new city half way across the county to be a Police Officer in a pretty rough area. I kind of related to the whole being away from family/ friends and not knowing if you were going to see them again.

Watching SU Saturday mornings on Hulu was one of the little things that kept me sane.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[bpfinn]

I'm bummed too. I never really got into SG-1 or Atlantis, but I downloaded the first episode of SGU and got hooked. Now, I'll never know who created the universe or if they get home. D'oh.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[LanMan04]

Why the heck would you move so far away to become a cop? Can't you get a job as a cop pretty much anywhere? Every hamlet/town/city/metropolis in the world has a police force....

Not trying to be a dick, genuinely curious.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[StikyPad]

Hold on, just hold on. Are you saying there are nerd cops? Nerd cops?!? Have you considered the possibility that you're some sort of robot sent from the future? If you're not sure, do you have a habit of consciously altering your appearance just by thinking about it, or melting into tiled vinyl flooring?

If so, then stay here. I'll be back.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[corbettw]

I had just moved to a new city half way across the county to be a Police Officer in a pretty rough area. I kind of related to the whole being away from family/ friends and not knowing if you were going to see them again.

Dear FSM, I hope that's a typo. Otherwise, you've got to be the most emo cop out there, what with being upset about not seeing your family when they're at most an hour's drive away.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[bug1]

You could always watch Star Trek Voyager re-runs instead.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who's bummed.

[Anonymous Coward]

you're not the only one... the show had it's flaws, but it drew me in.

i don't watch tons of TV, but what i do watch, i rather enjoy. i'm not surprised that TV execs respond only to dollars, but when they sabotage a decent show, and then cancel it to make room for drivel... it's disappointing, to say the least.

no more TV for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was literally the last show on TV I watched. Oh well...

SGU on Netflix

[mazumi]

I was catching up on SGU via Netflix with the intention of watching it on TV and in the last episode of season 1.1, the audio track is about a second and a half behind the video. All of season 1.2 is the same way. After waiting for weeks to see if Netflix would fix it, I gave up and started in on BSG instead. Now I *really* hope they get it fixed.

Latest episodes getting better

[lp_bugman]

The first season as plain wrong and awful. Watched 2x9 and 2x10 last night they are getting much better. Now that the crew has control over Destiny and the top dogs made peace.

Re:Latest episodes getting better

[kangsterizer]

yeah that's right, it was getting better. However, they likely would go back to the boring stuff next season ...

Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyFy

[Winchestershire]

More proof that SyFy is well on its way to become just another SpikeTV/MTV/G4 clone. Remember when the Sci-Fi Channel showed showed Science Fiction B-Movies and TV shows (I sure miss Mystery Science Theater 3000)?

Why the Hell wasn't it on Friday Night's?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Scifi Channel is severely dysfunctional. I never understood why they replaced they're strong Friday lineup with wrestling. Do they really get that many more numbers? During the week I'm just to busy to watch anything between work, study, and family. Friday night is the only time I can catch any tube time. Personally I think the Scifi Channel has gone down hill with lots of crappy made for TV films over the last few years. It went from some really decent one's like the first Dune Series to Shark verses Giant Mutated Wombats. (Maybe it was giant Octopus but I personally find Giant Mutated Wombats more scary.)

Maybe the channel is being populated by squirrels bent on cornering the nut supply because they're programming is certainly nuts. I barely catch it much. Mainly I've focused on FX, and AMC. The Walking DEAD rocked. If the SCI Fi rrrr SYFY channel had aired that they'd be racking up the advertising revenue.

Did it have the potential to improve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, did it have the potential to improve? Well, duh! Of *course* it had the potential to improve. It was practically nothing *but* the potential to improve. Now, a more interesting question would be "Did it have the potential to get any worse?" The answer to that is almost certainly also yes. It turns out that the writers best-worst efforts still leave *some* potential for it to get any worse.

Long may Battlestargate: Univoyager be remembered.

This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Mindragon]

How many more? How many more uncompleted series, idiotic product placements and other Brainwashing Network TV Executive decisions are we going to face before we finally get away from the middle man? I’m probably going to disconnect my DirecTV box now because there really isn’t anything left to watch on network TV. The networks keep eliminating anything resembling creative content and continue to deprive America of some of the finest writings out there. How much longer do we have to wait before enough of us get together to form an online media company that works? I’ve got a nice monitor / computer setup. For what it costs of DirecTV for one year, I could afford a very nice Computer / Monitor setup. And if I’m patient enough to time-shift my TV, I could do the same for online content. The model would be extraordinarily affordable if folks were to band together. One million regular viewers of a TV series on network TV is laughable. One million regular viewers of online content is a smash hit. Add in some micro currency ($0.99 cents a month / viewer) and for twelve million a year, anyone certainly could put together a creative and production team that works. I don’t know why Network TV folks don’t take content and put it in web only mode if it works better. For example, SGU and Caprica maybe is a better model for the online universe. That is where the audience is anyway. So put ads up on TV saying “Exclusively online”. If viewer-ship rises enough on the web then maybe transition it back to TV. Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore? This is the 21st century for frak’s sake.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

@mindragon

What you are saying makes a lot of sense. Looking at the takings of the top films in history, so many of them are scifi and fantasy, yet the moron TV executives only want more reality TV and wonder why TV viewing figures are dropping! The film viewing choices show people love scifi and fantasy and will pay good money to see it.

As broadband gets better its got to go over to a direct connection between fans and tv shows that listen to what fans want and kill off the ignorant, arrogant TV executives with their old fashioned distribution networks, because they are no longer needed. They don't give customers what they want and the Internet is our means of distribution.

Also cutting out the greedy TV executives and their corporations cuts a lot of production cost out of making series, so it becomes even more financially viable to go direct to fans online.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to tell the tv execs is that the show only seems to do poorly. They probably don't even realise that 90% of the shows real viewers torrented the fucking thing. Especially their international viewers that want it early | at all. /sigh

I guess they will never get it through their thick skulls... so um.. lynch the fuckers? I *really* wanted to know what the big ending was. This is just so fracking rude.

- If anyone wants to know what really happened, it was likely too sci fi for syfy. They have girls watching (or so they say).

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Surt]

People are already trying the web-first model. It isn't going well for them yet, basically because people don't seem to be willing to pay the cost/episode that it takes to get a new series off the ground with a small (100K) initial viewership.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[StikyPad]

Not that I feel anything of value was lost here, but did you really hold out hope after they changed the name of the network to SyFy?? That's sadder than battered woman syndrome. Seriously, you can leave your abuser. You don't even need to find a shelter -- just change the channel.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame reality TV and the drooling masses that watch it. The network executives see how cheap it is to make and that it still gets ratings, so why bother risking captial on something more expensive? Pretty soon there will be nothing left on TV but a hundred 'Housewives of Cleveland Baking With the Stars while Surviving Guatemala' clones.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[ScentCone]

. Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore? This is the 21st century for frak's sake.

Yup, the 21st century, with an entire upcoming generation that thinks everything should be free, on their terms. Your post reads like the classic meme:

1) Get idea for show
2) Get some online people together
3) Make the show using consumer electronics and desktop software
4) Remember to do some excellent writing
5) Post on YouTube
6) ???
7) Profit!

The thing you're missing is that the networks and studios risk piles of money up front when they launch a show. The cash has already left the barn, and it's buying talent, studio and production time, post, etc. Typically, all of that money is lost. Once in a great while, it pays back in the form of advertising sales. You're suggesting that it will pay back in $0.99 transactions (say, about $0.20 after transaction costs). You'd need 200,000 people agreeing to pay in order to gross $1m, and we haven't even touched on things like taxes, insurance, etc. If you're not selling advertising, you're going to need people to pay a lot more for their subscriptions, and you're going to have to do a lot to prevent your content from being instantly and widely ripped off.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[tzot]

> ...before we finally get away from the middle man?

You mean with something like this, I presume?

http://www.pioneerone.tv/

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[magus_melchior]

Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore?

You do realize just how obscenely lucrative advertiser-sponsored television is, yes?

In a few years companies will no doubt shell out billions of bucks to advertise during the Super Bowl. Television and cinema are starting to face the fact that the Internet will drastically alter their media as it did to music-- and given the behavior of the media cartels, they don't like to lose a business model. That's why they cut costs again and again, and allowed advertisers to jack up the volume on their commercials (until the Senate put the kibosh on the idea). And that's also why they want to make it really painful for anyone to stream video online and make a buck off of it.

They used to care about entertaining people, because that meant people will transfer the positive feedback to their sponsors-- that, and being an asshole to your customers was universally recognized as anathema to business no matter how profitable it was. Now, just about every fucking business is running on the idea that they can piss off their customers all they want by being cheap bastards, because there's always a thousand goddamned suckers willing to buy. Meanwhile they present rosy earnings reports to their shareholders and skirt any form of accountability.

Oh, I can take my eyeballs elsewhere? Sure, if I give Apple or Netflix money, and guess what, as soon as they own bigger chunks of the market, they will do the exact same thing. And if I'm not willing to pay out the nose in the USA for hefty Internet access, I'm stuck with the aforementioned fucking businesses dominating the digital TV broadcast market.

If we as consumers want real change, the corporation itself must be changed. Too bad the fucking businesses figured that out to begin with and decided to buy off Congressmen and pour cash into think tanks that train judges. Yeah, yeah, they're not being directly paid, they're getting campaign contributions and lobbying jobs after public service-- same fucking thing.

Makes me want to get rich by investing in bastard companies and retire somewhere secluded.

(end rant)

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Phoobarnvaz]

There is another option that I've looked at. Getting a subscription to a UK proxy server to be able to watch BBC content online.

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[damnfuct]

Truly, it's the ads that support any show, and people need to realise this. Without ads, we wouldn't have had TV. The thing is that most of the money that you pay to get these channels on your box doesn't really go to the shows you want to watch; rather, the ads pay for that. Cutting out this "distribution middleman" and replacing it with "multipurpose internet provider" could kill two birds with one stone: you get your internet *and* also your TV subscription is cheap.

The current problem is that places like TPB have shown people a better content-delivery system: one with a vast amount of content (old and new), good quality, few loopholes, no bundled garbage (unwanted channels in your lineup package), etc. In my opinion, the problem is that a broadcast company is set up to distribute and make money through a certain means that was established and refined over the past 75 years (before the internet); with the advent of the internet, the world has been radically changed and their model threatened. These companies know how they need to change, but it'll take too much money to do so, and so they don't.

It seems like when it gets to this point in a corporation's life, capitalism dictates "hey, let's let someone else figure out the details while we keep making money, then copy them"; that, or "well it doesn't pay off in 5 years at 20% profit, so we're not doing it." This inflexibility and denial is the crux of economic and technological stagnation. The sad thing is that consumers know what they want and they'll try to achieve that as best possible, even if that means the creation and side-stepping of obtuse laws (which is already happening)

This brings me to question why is everyone always so blind with regard to history? These companies seem to be suffering at the hands of "rampant piracy," yet only push control even harder; does no one remember prohibition? Outlawing alcohol did nothing except make gangsters rich. When people want something and it's not available, they'll try to get it by whatever means they can. The best way to curb such illicit behaviour is not through increased "Orwellian" control of aspects of citizen's lives, but by just selling the public what they wanted in the first place. Is it that fu**ing hard to figure out?

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[ScentCone]

The sad thing is that consumers know what they want

I'd argue that they don't, really. They know what they think the want (free stuff). But what they really want is for talented people to be making what they want in the first place. If they don't want that, then they don't want the end results, either. But because most people don't stop to think about what it takes to create (and pay for) all of the stuff by which they want to be entertained, they take some very short-sighted positions on things (like the efficacy and ethics of ripping off the entertainment they desire).

Re:This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[ShooterNeo]

Actually, an hour of prime time television nets less than $1 per viewer to the network. $0.99 an episode would be an extremely sustainable business model if there were a sufficient number of subscribers.

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

While I really liked the first season, this doesn't surprise me. The world just wasn't ready for a non-campy Stargate. People want to like the characters, believe in them, not stress out understanding their emotional complexities. Plus, Stargate really needs a nice decade hiatus, hopefully making a comeback when reinventing the franchise makes sense.

Groan, SCIFI channel is clueless

[haplo21112]

I refuse to use that other stupid name.

The Series had a highs and lows, I think the thing that killed it was to much character development, not enough conflict and exploration. Its a show about going to some unknown place, but they have never gotten anywhere. And for Christ sake, turn the DAMN lights on! The Ancients could build Atlantis and the Destiny, but they couldn't equip the ship with a decent f**ing light bulb.

Re:Groan, SCIFI channel is clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

"SyFy" deserves that stupid name.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

Mansquito II!!!!!! ROFL!!!!! Why is it that they have excellent shows and such cheezeeeeee movies??

This is a good excuse...

[Dripdry]

Finally! A good excuse for some of my friends to not have to stay indoors all the time talking about how they're trying to catch up on Stargate.

Their lives have ground to a halt, their relationships have crumbled....

Yeah, it's a bad argument, but at least now it's one LESS excuse for them to hide from the world all the time.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[SupremoMan]

Eureka? Sanctuary? Those two are decent. The of course they have scare tactics, which I don't like, and ghost hunters, which I loathe.

BSG Lite, sesame lite

[Servaas]

Biggest problem for me with the show was they never really knew what they wanted to be, sometimes felt like a slapstick then they went all hardcore drama. One week the diabolical evil mastermind pulled some shit and they went "Oh that rascal" next week they would leave him to die...

Only "Stargate" in title

[HikingStick]

It was such a departure from the previous two shows that it really bore little resemblance to the other two. I realize the trappings were there--space travel, alien races, military teams--but from the start the show seemed like it wanted to be more "soap opera" than sci-fi. Some have said it was trying to copy BSG. I just think it, like SyFy, was just trying to distance itself from its original sci-fi base (and, yes, that meant that the originals appealed more to sci-fi geeks than to a general audience) and reach to an audience that it assumed would be there.

Well, I guess they couldn't get a lock on that final chevron, because this Stargate is going nowhere.

Re:Only "Stargate" in title

[crossmr]

The problem wasn't only in style. The problem was in content. The show wasn't about "stargate". Even if they wanted to have a whiny psychological show, it should have still focused on the stargate universe. One of the first bits of alien tech they discover (that planet with the tower/spire) is covered in a montage. A fucking montage. We finally get something interesting, and instead we get some shitty emo song played over top of a couple shots.

That was the entire problem of the show. You want to add lots of boohooing and extra character development? Fine, but do so while they're still talking about, using and learning about the mythos of the universe.

Re:Only "Stargate" in title

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between soap opera and drama are bad acting and plot. SGU was actually improving quite a bit this season and I liked it much more than season 1. I get tired of just fighting aliens on space ships. Most SGU storylines concentrate on the people and their integration on an alien ship, not the other way around. That's good sci-fi. The original series was very spotty for me and I never really got into it other than the occassional show while flipping through the channels. So yeah your opinion is wrong and you can't even tell the difference between human relations and soap operas. I'm done here.

Not surprised, but not really disappointed

[enjar]

I was happy to hear that the new Stargate series was going to move away from the "SG" model of a small squad versus the universe. SG-1 was enjoyable, but Atlantis was definitely watered down and tired. SGU went off in a very different direction, and definitely showed that SyFy was trying to do the BSG thing again. The thing is, I had trouble getting into the characters and the show was lacking some of the fun camaraderie that existed in the earlier gate series. Sure, it's serious business out there on the Destiny and all, but I like a little levity in my Stargate.

I could see that they were going somewhere, but as my time becomes more constrained due to family/work/life, the bar I set for what I do in my scarce free time gets higher. Sadly, there wansn't enough compelling in SGU to keep me coming back for more.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[elrous0]

Don't forget wrastlin'! Definitely science fiction at its best.

I'm glad it's cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a diehard Stargate fan since the pilot of SG-1 aired, and despite it's problems I enjoyed Atlantis. That being said, SGU made me sad - I didn't even bother watching any of the second season. The characters are weak, the situation is weak, the plot is weak, it's just a weak, disappointing show all around. I'm glad it got cancelled - maybe they'll go make that Atlantis movie they were talking about earlier. At least that has a chance to not fail miserably.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Winchestershire]

Admittedly, I've seen better acting and script writing for the wrestling programs than on some of the shows on "SyFy" lately.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eureka isn't being picked up again, from what I've heard - so it's effectively cancelled and Sanctuary is also facing a very uncertain future - so don't count on a future for that show either. SyFy is just executing all of its shows to become a lame version of Spike Television (if Spike wasn't lame enough)

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[skids]

frak.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[AndrewNeo]

Where's the Warehouse 13 love? (Also Eureka, but others have mentioned it above me)

I admit SGU wasn't that good

[Lazypete]

But there are far worse on TV.. I mean ghost hunter... who the hell watch this show... Please.. just stop the spinoffs.. be original.

Re:I admit SGU wasn't that good

[Surt]

Indeed. I really wonder about ghost hunters. I don't know anyone who watches that. Even if the production budget is like $500 / episode, how do they make that up in advertising?

Um.

[Jethro]

Of all the shows AciFi has cancelled (*cough*Farscape*couch*), I really don't think this is the one we actually need to save. They should never have started it in the first place, it was a pointless Milking The Franchise show. I hear it eventually got "better" but I kinda gave up on it midway through. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters.

Re:Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't really get better, it's just that after watching a season without a single "real" alien and most of the time spent on Earth drinking alcohol and sexing people, crappy aliens and lousy space drama do sound better.
Actually its only problem was that the writers are retarded. Whoever owns the rights should release the footage to public domain, so that some Youtube kid can improve upon it without having to face jail time.

As someone who watched SGU regularly...

[SheeEttin]

As someone who watched SGU regularly, I can say it wasn't too bad (it was getting better), but it didn't have a theme of its own. Sure, you're on a ship, but you're not trying to get home... You're basically just along for the ride. It's not that interesting. At least be human and try to build on what you've got...

I miss the planet exploration of the old Stargates. :(

Re:Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyF

[Ephemeriis]

More proof that SyFy is well on its way to become just another SpikeTV/MTV/G4 clone. Remember when the Sci-Fi Channel showed showed Science Fiction B-Movies and TV shows (I sure miss Mystery Science Theater 3000)?

That is why I originally started watching the SciFi channel. They had all the good old sci-fi stuff I loved. Random monster movies, classics, great old TV shows... I actually went out of my way to get a package that included the SciFi channel.

Then they started phasing that stuff out... Adding more recent, mainstream stuff... But that was OK because it was generally decent stuff...

And then they started turning out one SciFi original movie after another. And some of them were fun... But most of them just sucked...

And then they started carrying wrestling, and changed the name to SyFy... And I really just stopped caring.

Now they can...

[Hangin10]

afford to make more than 12 Warehouse episodes a season.

I was a huge fan of SG-1, and Atlantis was better than nothing, but SGU was about to lose my interest. The reveal of the bridge ALMOST took me back in, but it was not enough to overcome the poor writing. Death of Ginn. QED.

Oh, and not to mention that the premise of them being "the wrong people" doesn't jive with how they got to be the scientists and the defense of one of the most secret bases.

Re:Now they can...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to the death of Ginn. I was so happy when (what's his name) finally got a girlfriend, and then they kill her off in the exact same episode. Really ticked me off. I seem to be one of the few people here who actually liked the series, but that cheap tactic had me stop caring for the next 2-3 episodes.

Re:Now they can...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree the Death of Ginn was a bad move; I assume she was always slated to die, but the actor had surprising charisma, good cast chemistry, and Ginn did a lot to make Eli more enjoyable and less sad sack, so I wish the producers had been as aware as Joss Whedon had been when characters who were meant to be throwaways, like Spike or Anya, really sparked and so had their destinies altered.

Re:Now they can...

[PrimaryConsult]

Gin had greatly improved the atmosphere on there... god forbid anyone on this show can actually be *happy* for a little while. Reminds me of the fail that was Buffy season 6, a contest to see who could get into a more depressing situation. Without her, Eli is like Harper on Andromeda... the genius who ends up forever alone.

I really liked the show...

[paulsnx2]

. . L i k e d t h e s h o w...

. . . . l . i . k . e . d . . . t . h . e . . . s . h . o . w .....

. . . . . . . l . . i . . k . . e . . d . . . . . t . . h . . e . . . . . s . . h . . o . . w .....

eh? What's with the echo?

Re:I really liked the show...

[EnsilZah]

It might be a side effect of the mind probe that's trying to convince you you liked the show to get you to feel comfortable enough to divulge some secret information that would eventually lead to your whole civilization's demise, only now that you've noticed it you will inevitably discover the ruse and will come up with a way to foil it.

Oh, yeah, I forgot, spoiler alert for like six different episodes in the Stargate franchise.

Re:I really liked the show...

[LanMan04]

. . L i k e d t h e s h o w...
. . . . l . i . k . e . d . . . t . h . e . . . s . h . o . w .....
. . . . . . . l . . i . . k . . e . . d . . . . . t . . h . . e . . . . . s . . h . . o . . w .....

Are you yelling into a large room with a continually receding back wall? Sort of like the Doppler effect.

Re:I really liked the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked it too.

I felt it was getting better, building to something. It was darker. I like that.
Could have done alot with it.

Warehouse is just a rehash of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th:_The_Series to me

I hate shows that done complete that don't end.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[StuartHankins]

The beginning of the end was when they renamed Sci-Fi to Syfy...

WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only my favorite Stargate, but the only series recorded on my DVR and the only thing I watch on SyFy. Sad...

Good!

[ericdano]

Ok, first, the story lines SUCKED. And they had access back to Earth. That was lame. And Eli is a terrible character acted by a terrible actor.......I so wished for him to just die......

The whole Civilian vs. Military thing in the beginning was stupid. And the whole "I lost the baby but the aliens took it"......really? Who writes this BS? It's like it was written by a 16 year old nerdy girl who's at an away camp missing her family and her female lover. Sorta like if the Twilight series author wrote SciFi (or SyFy).

So much potential and it was squandered.

Re:Good!

[jedidiah]

Well the whole nonsense about the civilians trying to seize power seemed a bit stupid but not entirely out of character with human nature.

I could easily see those sorts of shenanigans going down in real life.

People are idiots. Just don't make your characters so "realistic" that the audience wants to see them lose.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the entire pseudo-religious/(supreme aliens) plot lines being annoying. BSG had a lot of that as well. I figure either the writers are religious, or they are pandering to the religious masses that make up a large percentage of our population.

Re:Good!

[snowgirl]

zOMG U hateses mah story why?! :( I /3 u people who dont appreciate all my work. I put ALOT of work into SGU, an u all just hate on me for it.

Well, Im have to get going to my flute session here at camp now, but I told my BFF though I should of pitched my stories to someone who appreciates it!

Re:Good!

[bill_mcgonigle]

So much potential and it was squandered.

Last two seasons of Stargate, all of Atlantis, heck, ST:Voyager for that matter.

I think I read they were averaging 2.5 million viewers and the shows cost about a million to produce. That's what, 50 cents a download?

Time to get out the old Society Wrench...

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "lost the baby but aliens took it" storyline is the key to understanding what's wrong with SGU. It's not a science fiction plot. It's a paranormal drama plot.

Syfy is not a science fiction channel. It's a ghost story channel. Its base viewership are not curious people, quirky people, people who enjoy good plots and can relate to making stuff. You know, geeks. Syfy's base viewership are people who enjoy paranormal stories: formulaic plots based on whatever is currently fashionable (and that's how Crystal Skull got into Stargate), the persistent insistence on self-importance and strong emotions as the only good basis for knowledge and scientists or engineers as dogmatics, utter lack of curiosity, readiness to submit to whatever Higher Power is nearby and satisfaction with Just Being There for the Ride. (Of course, Stargate franchise has suffered from the presumption that equipment is found as derelicts of Higher Power, not manufactured, for a long time.) The channel executives have attempted to cater to two very distinct viewer groups in one show, with predictable failure as a result.

The only good thing is that they're open about it, this time. When the very same channel was trying to get rid of Crusade, they first did all they could to damage the series so they would have an excuse.

Re:Good!

[billhuey]

Agreed, this show was just too sophisticated for folks to *get*. Depressing ? fuck what are folks thinking about in the US ? You'd be too if you were running out of food and don't know what the hell is going on next.

So many parallels to real life yet the audience for that show just didn't have the self-awareness to get how identifiably the characters are to actual intelligent people. It might have done better in Europe or another audience.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

ELi seems like a typical nerd to me. I think that was the idea. What makes you think his acting is bad?

The aliens didn't take the baby. It was the ship stopping the only doctor from breaking, which would have compromised the mission. I thought that was a neat and original take on the whole AI ship thing.

As for the whole Civilian vs. Military thing, you don't think these kinds of conflicts would ever happen in that situation? Some of these filler episodes seems a lot better than many of the other Stargate series episodes to me.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you where stuck on a ship with military forces telling you every thing to do, would you not be pissed off?

Have you ever seen a mother lose their child? Honestly STFU because it's obvious you havent stuck your dick in something to even worry about kids.

It's traumatic and it realllllly can fuck with a expecting mother. This is why this show is getting canned, Brain dead dip shits and the Nielsen families. I mean 2000 people to represent the whole of 120 million tv watching Americans? Really? If you dip a glass in the ocean and you don't see any fish in it you automatically go "Look it's empty, HA I knew it"

This is the world is flat delema of our generation. Untill we can all have the option to put a box on our tvs that tells them what we watch, (Which I would fucking pay for) We will keep losing good shows. Oh and now we have no more space shows on the whole of tv. That pisses me off.

Ridiculous... I hate network execs

[anlashok]

The channel had great ratings for BSG, and had a lot of potential wasted by execs that didn't understand or care about a scifi audience that built the channel up. Could have done a better budgeted B5 show, or one of the many Fox shows killed too early like Firefly. Why the heck is wrestling and ghost stories on a scifi channel?
I actually like SGU more than many of the episodes of the SGA episodes. Previous commenter was right in calling it more adult. It could be great, but NBC doesn't know what it has. Its a good money maker for a niche that doesn't have competition in the subject matter.
I'd invest in a new SciFi type channel if I could. Maybe Speilberg, Lucas, or Cameron would see the possibilities.

Re:Ridiculous... I hate network execs

[billhuey]

I like SGU better than both previous SG series in general. What folks called 'soap opera' I call psychological which is something that the normally male dork demographic doesn't connect to. The series is a bit of a mind fuck and you can tell it's converging on something a season or so in the future which is a sign of writing that's better than most on SyFy. The writing has been better overall than the SG[A] shows and has had less filler shows as a percentage than BSG overall.

The only problem here is that I'm one of the few defenders of the show and therefore one of few ardent watchers of it.

The A-Team

[ProfBooty]

While one must admit that SG1 did have quite a bit of the A-Team feel about it, I am unsure why SGU coopted the Stargate Name. audience expectations might have been a bit better without the history attached to Stargate fans.

I'm not sure why so many people think watching "whiney" adults who are acting like teenagers is adult content. I guess its more adult than wish fufillment fantasy, but not that much. The show might have had a better chance if they dumped the first 6-7 episodes and moved those events forward to give the show purpose.

Re:The A-Team

[Darinbob]

I know plenty of adults who act this way. I know extremely few adults who continually act like bad-ass scifi heroes like the earlier Stargate series. Reality has whiny adults. Reality has adults who cry when given too much stress. Real adults don't work well together.

The only real problem is all these military personnel who act like generic military personnel. Even the lowliest janitorial job involving the stargate program would be handpicked from the best of the best, with the most thorough security and psychological screening.

The first 6-7 episodes were the best ones. The latest episodes are the more hokey ones, and adding a special "mission" just means they're going back to stereotypical scifi.

Re:The A-Team

[CookieForYou]

I'm curious which characters you find "whiny"?

I'm not sure if you've ever experienced being forcibly removed from your own life for a period of months, but I know a few people who have and those real people make these characters on the show seem downright stoic.

To me it seems pretty realistic, though people who have never suffered much in their life might find it a bit corny to witness exactly how much that upsets people.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Tiger4]

What does it have going? What a silly question! They have WWE, they have Sharktopus (or is that Dinocroc?), they have Ghost Hunters AND Ghost Hunters International!

I mean, what else could a SciFi (or SyFy) fan want ??

nbc was devaluing it's networks to make it easier

[Joe The Dragon]

nbc was devaluing it's networks to make it easier for comcast to buy them.

I hope that deal fails!

first caprica, now SGU... Syfy going downhill

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm totally p##### at how they cancelled caprica, one day is was there and the next day gone, mid season, no cleanup, just done. Now they've gone and killed SGU just as the series was really starting to move (it had a pretty slow start IMO because they spent a lot of time building characters). Why even bother starting to watch any new series on there, they're just going to cancel it and leave you hanging. Wasn't SciFi always about fringe shows???!!! They aren't CBS, it's not survivor, the base of the channel is science fiction enthusiests and there just isn't a lot of them. Cancelling shows because they don't have stellar ratings comparible to the crap on the other channels is a great way to kill your base. Next to go, Eureka and Warehouse 13, then i'll just stop watching SyFy completely.

Re:first caprica, now SGU... Syfy going downhill

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm totally p##### at how they cancelled caprica

Are you that faggot who kept spamming 4chan with Caprica combos?

May all of your favourite TV shows be cancelled and everyone you love die a horrible death as you watch.

Re:first caprica, now SGU... Syfy going downhill

[HTH NE1]

I'm totally p##### at how they cancelled caprica, one day is was there and the next day gone, mid season, no cleanup, just done.

And instead of running out the remaining episodes, they put up Star Trek: The Next Generation in its place? WTF?

"They tried to fail?"
"They tried to die."

The reasons for failure

[rar]

My take at some reasons for failure:

1. Most of their viewers identify with Eli (the slacker nerd genius), but he ended as a minor support character, often just tangentially involved in the plot. He should have been SGU's Rodney.
2. Unlike previous Stargate iterations and BSG they tried to pull off 'crew against nature' plot lines rather than 'crew against enemies' . To get such plots feel like 'action' is really hard. A lot of them (especially in the beginning) was "crew lands on planet, somehow gets stuck, must get back in time before the ship leaves". There is only so many times you can do that before it becomes repetitive.
3. Point '2' got even worse since the planets often were ridiculously uninspired, "Desert planet", "Freezing planet", "Jungle planet", etc.

All this said, I think the show was heading in an interesting direction. I'm sad to see it go.

Re:The reasons for failure

[metrix007]

Eli was a slacker teenager with absolutely no place on the ship, let alone as a stand in for an expert scientist.

Re:The reasons for failure

[omnichad]

Agree with all your points. Well-written. I'm definitely an Eli-identifier. I just want to point out that if it were more crew against nature than it was, it might have been better. It was really more crew vs. crew - whether militarily or romantically.
 
The problem is, Stargate SG-1 made you love the mythos. Atlantis fleshed it out. And SG-U has them on what is ultimately the last remaining legacy of the Ancients, and nobody cares. It's even less than a minor plot point. You can waste half the episode on soap opera, and still come out with a good fan base if the sci-fi storyline at least inches forward in each episode. The ship, where it's going, and what it means for those who are on it.

Re:The reasons for failure

[TheRaven64]

And number 4: They completely ignored the international market. I just checked, and there's still no region 2 DVD, even though they're half way through season 2, and season 1 finished in June. When there is, it will go straight on my rental list, and they'll make money from me. Well, it would have done - if the show is going to end in a cliff hangar then I might give the whole thing a miss (at least it will get a low priority flag in my queue so I only see it when I've run out of things that don't finish in the middle to watch).

I'd imagine most people in the UK who want to watch it have already seen torrents. Other shows manage to get out the DVD for the first half of the season during the mid-season break. It's amazing that they're in the cycle of trying to find funding for season 3, and still aren't trying very hard to make money from season 1. Quite a few SciFi (sorry, SyFy) shows over the past few years have barely broken even on TV, but made significant profits on DVD sales and rental. You'd have thought they'd have learned by now: Geeks don't like adverts, so if you make shows aimed at geeks, you make them available in an ad-free medium as quickly as possible.

Re:The reasons for failure

[mikael_j]

Actually, according to the backstory Eli was an MIT dropout who moved back in with his mom who had HIV.

Re:The reasons for failure

[rar]

I am with you all the way on that the ship and its role in the mythos was tragically underused. Had they focused more on that, and tied the plot to it, the series could have been brilliant.

You make a good point on the crew-crew interaction. However, it may still be that this was caused by the "main plot" being so thin in most episodes, as it did put more focus on the soap opera part. I mean, also in SG-1 the character interactions could be cheesy at times, but this was less evident as the focus typically was on an engaging plot. A counter-example is one of my least favorite SG-1 episodes 'Solitudes' where O'Neill and Carter spends the whole episode stranded in a cave, with O'Neill dying. It is one of the few 'crew against nature' plots in SG-1, and to me, it mostly falls flat.

Re:The reasons for failure

[rar]

I think the pilot episode did motivate Eli's place on the ship, and he *could* have been a great character if the series had stayed consistent with the picture of him as a "highly unmotivated genius". Previous SG scientists have all been highly motivated and hard working, driven by a need to prove themselves. Eli could have been a nice contrast to this, with someone who is brilliant but really doesn't care much.

But you are right, in the rest of the episodes he was turned into just "a slacker teenager" who doesn't show any of the genius that brought him onboard in the first place. The writers pretty much use him as a button-mashing monkey for times when the story keeps Rush away from the console.

Re:The reasons for failure

[TheEyes]

Eli was a slacker teenager with absolutely no place on the ship, let alone as a stand in for an expert scientist.

Eli was their "The Last Starfighter" character: unwittingly trained by a videogame to be an expert in Ancient tech, supposedly second only to Rush in actual working Ancient knowledge (and apparently smarter). They spent the whole pilot playing up Eli as the guy to identify with, the nerdy Everyman character, and then they proceed to marginalize him for a large swath of episodes.

Re:The reasons for failure

[Araes]

1. Most of their viewers identify with Eli (the slacker nerd genius), but he ended as a minor support character, often just tangentially involved in the plot. He should have been SGU's Rodney.

Whenever he was used, he also tended to just be a punching bag. Every second plot with him was "How can we sexually frustrate or emasculate Eli?" He's interested in a girl. He gets to see her endlessly make out with his 'friend'. He actually gets a girl. "Quick, kill her!"

Speaking of his initial crush. That girl should have died a horrible death in the first season. Her scenes were not just bad. They were painful. They were channel switchingly, mute the TV painful. No word exited her mouth that wasn't twisted into a whining plea.

Fuck Syfylis

[otis wildflower]

I hope they turn into the Wrestling With Giant Insects channel and leave room for an actual Sci-Fi channel.

Also, "History" can eat a dick, and change their name to the Ice Road Truckers network.

Plus, IFC, you suck balls with commercials now, and have no worthwhile series to show for it. I can barely tolerate or forgive AMC, and only because they have _Breaking Bad_.

Why do channels even have themes anymore? Why not just 'Network Blue' or 'Shazbot' or something stupid? TLC did that, there's no more Learning there (and I fuckin miss the James Burke series' they used to show regularly)..

Meh, who cares, the only 'network' that matters anymore is eztv.it ..

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[zero0ne]

AMC has:

Breaking Bad
Mad Men
The Walking Dead

all 3 are amazing shows and have seen some awesome highs and lows
**except walking dead, which is the first season with only 6 episodes... but it was still some of the best 6 episodes of a Zombie themed TV series I have seen)

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[snowgirl]

Why do channels even have themes anymore? Why not just 'Network Blue' or 'Shazbot' or something stupid? TLC did that, there's no more Learning there (and I fuckin miss the James Burke series' they used to show regularly)..

Blah! I totally know what you mean, I hate how all of the channels seem to have just up and made a universal decision to drop niche markets and become generic channels of randomness pushing whatever series they happen to manage to grab the rights for.

OBTW, I think TLC stands for "The Lil'people Channel" now, actually...

(Thank you mandatory preview for showing me that I totally fucked up my tags so I can fix them, and not look like an idiot.)

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[StikyPad]

The Science Channel sticks to its theme, but it's about the only one. It's also relatively young at 11 years old. Soon it will experience teenage angst, lash out against the people who created and cared for it all these years, and seek acceptance from anyone who shows the slightest signs of interest.

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[corbettw]

I agree with you about all three of those shows. But come on, none of them are movie classics (even if they are American). Why does a network supposedly dedicated to showing classic moves 24/7 need original programming?

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, while "The Walking Dead" is vaguely interesting to watch, it has plot holes you could drive 4 lanes of trucking through.

Really, virus wipes most everyone out and turns them into zombies and the ONLY place you can think to go get food is a big city? I'm pretty sure there'd be a small town with a grocery store full of canned food closer to camp.

Likewise in Georgia the only place you can find guns is a police station... REALLY... no gun stores. Hell I hear even K-Mart has guns in the US.

Also... you can't find additional RV's.... oh and you park what you have next to a wooded area rather than in an open field.

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[Jarnin]

The problem with The Science Channel is that they only show "intro to science" material. Every other show is a disaster special: Super Volcanos Erupt! Asteroid Collides with Earth! Global Pandemics! Tsunami hits Chicago! It's just as bad as any other cable network, they just hide it a little better by saying, "It's science". Yeah, it's science. But just barely.

Re:Fuck Syfylis

[StikyPad]

Well, yeah, but it's as good as any science channel that's ever been on TV, which was my point. It's 100% either documentaries (of varying quality) or science-related series. And yeah, it's introductory, but pretty much everything on television is introductory. A particular show might go into a little more detail, but they're not going to go into the mathematics behind string theory or anything because that would narrow its audience from those who are interested in science to those who are actual scientists (more or less).

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Narcocide]

Sanctuary really isn't all bad.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Tiger4]

Sanctuary is a snoozefest. Amanda Tapping is still lovely, but even she can't save a show that barely has anything to say. I mean really, if you missed three Sanctuary eps in a row, would you even notice?

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[jedidiah]

"High Plains Invaders"

Dr. Who

[Viewsonic]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

Where did the market go for shows like Star Trek and ST:TNG?

What is going on?

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

Where did the market go for shows like Star Trek and ST:TNG?

What is going on?

Perhaps Dr. Who is so good that every other sci-fi show looks like crap in comparision?

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we (people who like this kind of sci-fi) just started watching all of our shows online. And by online i mean torrents, not Hulu or something else officially licensed.

Re:Dr. Who

[ChunderDownunder]

It's a cash cow for the people of Wales. I suspect Dr Who would otherwise be given a hiatus so that the writers could dream up some credible storylines.

I mean c'mon, killing off Rory and then bringing him back a few episodes later?

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

Cynicism reigns.

Re:Dr. Who

[Kjella]

CGI happened.

Remember how everyone on Star Trek looked? Humanoid. Oh you might have given the Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Borg, Cardassians etc. a few superficial changes but it was all rather simple for an actor to play. Even all the "race of the week" encounters were humanoids. BSG pulled a nice trick with skinjobs indistinguishable from normal people but I think that card has been played out. Long story short, doing it today wouldn't be nearly alien enough. We've seen what big budget can do now, I want to see aliens like Gollum or Shelob or the Na'vi. The problem is that this is awfully complicated and expensive, which puts the cost through the roof. Just doing it half way with masks and puppets, well it just doesn't have the exotic feel it ought to. The wraith were really the minimum of "alienness" I'd expect these days, even with them being a half-humand breed and just that cost a fortune in makeup time.

Re:Dr. Who

[s-whs]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

Where did the market go for shows like Star Trek and ST:TNG?

What is going on?

I'll tell you what's going on: Idiot writers and producers have been making soap opera pseudo-sci-fi and it's good the trash that is SGU and Caprica will be gone soon.

I heard a complaint about the writing in Fringe. Well, Fringe is a million times more interesting and enjoyable than either of them. It looks fine to me. If I want real drama, I will perhaps go read Shakespeare, I'm certainly not interested in the rubbish pseudo drama (a.k.a. soap opera level drama) that is presented in series such as SGU and Caprica.

This announcement about SGU made my day. I'd been searching for "SGU cancelled" a few times this year...

Re:Dr. Who

[omnichad]

Now even so-called "niche" channels want to appeal to the mainstream crowd. You have Court TV getting overrun with COPS shows and turning into TruTV, Sci-Fi has to come up with a new name that sounds like they aren't just making it up, and Food Network is about cake contests more than it is about good eats. By the way, not sure if you've seen MTV lately, but they don't even show music videos anymore.

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

Fringe. It's turned into 100% balls-to-the-wall science fiction.

Re:Dr. Who

[Kjella]

I mean c'mon, killing off Rory and then bringing him back a few episodes later?

You're trying to apply logic to Doctor Who, they've blown up the entire universe except for earth and brought it back. Besides if you didn't know the Nestene duplicates are another one of the "old" enemies they brought back, personally I love the absurdity of their story lines. It just wouldn't be Doctor Who without it.

Re:Dr. Who

[SheeEttin]

I have my DVR set to record SGU, and it actually catches the tail end of the credits for TNG. So they're running TNG before SGU. I guess SOMEONE at Syfy isn't retarded...

Re:Dr. Who

[snowgirl]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

Where did the market go for shows like Star Trek and ST:TNG?

What is going on?

You do realize that Star Trek only ran 3 seasons with 79 episodes, right? Sure SGU will go off the air with only 2 seasons and 40 episodes, but still.

Actually, I'm peeved that they decided to delay the webcast on Hulu by 30 days. Grats idiots, all your total viewership stats per episode are now delayed 30 days...

Re:Dr. Who

[Tanuki64]

Well, Fringe is a million times more interesting and enjoyable than either of them.

Season 1 and 2: Yes. Season 3 is currently on a slow slope down to the same drama crap. No fun anymore, but plenty of emotional yada yada.

Re:Dr. Who

[ChunderDownunder]

I just think the whole disposing of a companion's boyfriend, so she can get a little Doctor 'action' is a little too convenient and become something of a cliche.

Rose's fella Mickey fell victim to the Autons too. Then there's Donna's fiance being seduced by a Spiderwoman.

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

What is going on?

Science fiction is about the future, and you pathetic humans don't have one anymore. Entertainment is a reflection of a culture, which is why shows about government enforcement and regulatory agencies are so much more popular than shows about scientific exploration. The dreams and desires of most of humanity are simply to create a lot of arbitrary rules and use the power of government to impose those rules upon others.

Re:Dr. Who

[angelbar]

I cant see Sci-fi on Hulu from Mexico, u insensitive clod... I remember when there was a chance to get my shows in the frontier... now its only torrents.

Re:Dr. Who

[l0ungeb0y]

Reality TV is what's going on. SciFi has always had big overhead, from writers, props and makeup and CGI.
The SyFy channel is merely following the same formula ABC and NBC are following: kill of interesting shows for cheap Reality TV crap.
I'm looking forward to the premiere of Extreme Ghost Wrestlers this Fall

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

that's easy, Enterprise killed it

Re:Dr. Who

[Jarnin]

Science Fiction is a cerebral medium. It always has been. Television series got away with making sci-fi series because they made them as visceral as possible. SG-1 is a perfect example; it balanced the aliens and technobabble with military action and explosions. Star Trek hit this wall when Enterprise came out and suddenly there was a need to have a phaser fight in every episode.

The fact is, most people don't like science fiction. They simply don't have the want or will to try and contemplate the issues that science fiction raises, so they turn on a reality show, or a celebrity gossip show, or any show that doesn't make them think. Hell, I had a friend who once told me, "I don't like Sci-Fi. I have to think all day at work, why would I want to come home and watch that?".
This is why there's wrestling on SyFy. This is why SyFy has opened the gates to all the paranormal, horror, and otherwise non-scifi content. They're trying to broaden their audience because they feel science fiction can't carry the entire channel. The sad thing is they're probably right.

Re:Dr. Who

[Kozz]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

And yet, Sir Terry Pratchett himself opined that Dr. Who isn't sci-fi.

Re:Dr. Who

[Grumbleduke]

Doctor Who first aired in 1963, 3 years before Star Trek (and aired continuously until 1987 when TNG started), so it is quite easy to imagine a time when it was the only scifi show on the air.

As for where the market went - I assume it is partly that "real" scifi is no longer exciting; a combination of having seen it all before (with 700+ episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek each, 300+ Stargates etc. it's quite hard to find an original scifi plot), becoming too nerdy/geeky rather than mainstream (the early shows were family-orientated, so had large market shares) and the rise in other media for the young, intelligent and inquisitive viewers (such as computer games). Plus there is the general shifts in public attitudes away from the "bright, exciting future" (TNG being a classic example) to the dark, grimy present (Dollhouse, Fringe, Heroes) and from science, fact and reason to superstition, pseudo-science and the supernatural.

Then you have expense to consider; a reality show must be significantly cheaper to produce than sci-fi and all that money on CGI (which we've all seen before) means less to go on writing (Doctor Who is a great example of this - while the new series have impressive CGI that the original couldn't have dreamt of, the writing and acting seem much more solid), and then with more channels and more shows, there is less money to go around in general.

Of course, that's just my depressing side, looking at the list of stuff I've watched over the last few years, there have been plenty of ... at least average sci-fi-esque shows; BSG/Caprica, Bionic Woman, Doctor Who*/Torchwood*, Dollhouse, Firefly, Fringe*, Heroes, Sanctuary*, Stargate, Terminator - tSSC, The 4400, V*... and they haven't all been cancelled (the * ones are still going - the others have all been airing in the last 4ish years aside from Firefly). There is plenty of stuff to watch, perhaps the problem is dilution rather than a lack of market - too much stuff, only so many good writers/producers/viewers, whereas when TNG was on it was so big that there were few strong competitors.

Re:Dr. Who

[Maxo-Texas]

Do you mean MTV2? MTV hasn't shown videos since the 80s.

I remember the night MTV started (video killed the radio star) and years of glorious 24x7 videos. Some cool and psychodelic, some bland and just the band, but it was always music or *brief* music news.

Re:Dr. Who

[captjc]

I don't know, Farscape was done with a bunch of Muppets and Masks and was excellent. Then again, it also had entertaining writing.

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

Fringe? Isn't that the weak-arse X-Files rip-off that couldn't hold the attention of most of the world for the pilot?

Yeah, that's the one.

It was shit.

Don't hurt your ankle when you get off your high horse.

Re:Dr. Who

[Anonymous Coward]

Fringe. It's turned into 100% balls.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Dr. Who

[omnichad]

I was being extremely absurdly sarcastic with that reference. I was referring to the original MTV. This despecialization of channels has been going on a lot longer than people realize.

The epic return of Farscape!

[Narcocide]

Admit it, you clicked here hoping I could at least claim it was true.

Re:The epic return of Farscape!

[UID30]

The loony tunes episode was ... epic.

Re:Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyF

[jedidiah]

No. This is not the Sci-Fi that would cause me to hang up on my local cable provider telemarketer over...

while ( $them = "no" ) {
Me: "Do you have the Sci-Fi Channel?"
Them: "No"
[click]
}

MST3K

[Viewsonic]

I would give anything for them to go back to the format of showing the same five MST3K episodes over and over all weekend long. Seriously.

Re:MST3K

[Darinbob]

Yeah, I liked cable when it felt like it was being done by a bunch of indie people in their mom's basement. Channels would exist up for smaller fan bases and no one cared if they didn't attract the masses. Now we've got 500 channels all trying to appeal to the same person.

damnit

[tibman]

Damnit syfy. It's a great show! Keep it on and make some money with it. I read that the writers already have five seasons written out with a true ending. People comparing SG:U to Galactica obviously weren't watching either show. SG:U is more like Farscape than BSG.

SG:U's timeslot was taken by WWE wrestling or something and moved to Tuesdays. Also a big portion of SG:U's fanbase doesn't watch it on normal TV. Syfy will either have to cater to mindless TV watchers or put the episodes on their website. I would pay 5-10$ for each episode as it comes out if i could watch it ad-free on my media-pc (without pirating). Having to wait 1-2 weeks to watch an episode on Hulu is stupid.. what tech-head is going to sit patiently and wait when they can torrent and watch it within 20min?

I'm actually really pissed if it's canceled. Listen to me, i'm in disbelief saying "if it's canceled". Fucking syfy.

Re:damnit

[glwtta]

SG:U is more like Farscape than BSG.

I take it you've never actually seen Farscape?

Re:damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

I would pay 5-10$ for each episode as it comes out if i could watch it ad-free on my media-pc (without pirating).

Wow, if all the devoted fans of SGU did that, SyFy could make... TENS of dollars per episode!

Re:damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

I subscribe to SGU (and The Walking Dead) on Amazon's video on demand. Works out pretty well, and only a couple bucks an episode.

Re:damnit

[ThorGod]

You've got an interesting point calling it more like Farscape. It's sort of like farscape, but less silly. I think the half crazy nature of John Criton (sp?) really brought that show home. Oh, and they had truly alien, aliens (minus the sebatians).

I'm old fashioned..I watched it on syfy's cable channel. I watch most of my tv off of cable. Why? Because I don't have to shirk moral responsibility and sitting infront of a 'self programming' tv is much more mindless than cueing up a torrent.

SGU was annoying at times but I would have gladly watched 5 seasons of it over 1 hour of WWE:Lame.

Re:damnit

[tibman]

In Farscape they were all searching for a way home (this should sound familiar to SG:U).

Farscape also had crazy drama with lots of in-fighting until an outside force threatened the crew. Then they banded together to defeat the enemy. The crew of Moya also fits the "wrong people at the wrong place" line as well.

Farscape is my fav scifi of all time. People forget how much drama the show had. Like two John Crichtons and one falls in love with Aeryn who of course dies leaving an extremely complicated love scenerio. Or when D'Argo finally finds his son and his son becomes fuckbuddies with D'Argo's wife-to-be. Or when Aeryn is pregnant with John's child and leaves "forever" without telling him about it.

Both are good shows, imo.

SG1 was cool to watch

[Anonymous Coward]

but the characters were basically mary sue. Humans not in the SG1 team were always wrong. The main characters were perfect. And not only that but the whole base were kissing their ass all the time. Just watch "disclosure" to see what I mean. At least, in SGA, the secondary characters were not only used as comic relief as in SG1 and the main characters weren't mary sues anymore. In SGU, they made the main characters even more flawed which was interesting. Now don't be wrong, I liked SG1 (except for the last two seasons) but the mary sue characters were at time super annoying.

Bring Back Atlantis ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and get rid of the "Universe" turkey. God, that show is awful.

If it sucks then why save it?

[edmicman]

I've never seen it, but just from the summary....if it has a community that dislikes it and no viewership, why are we crying over its disappearance?

Re:If it sucks then why save it?

[metrix007]

Because now the view antisocial diehard SG fans that liked it have nothing to do on a Tuesday night.

Re:If it sucks then why save it?

[Tebriel]

Because now the view antisocial diehard SG fans that liked it have nothing to do on a Tuesday night.

They could always take a page from you and troll threads. But then again, they'd have to free up the rest of their nights to compete with you.

Re:If it sucks then why save it?

[Ksevio]

Because it's not being replaced by another better show, so syfy only has wrestling and ghost hunting available

Re:If it sucks then why save it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The community who dislike it are rabid Stargate fans who didn't want a serious show. The problem with SGU is that SG part. If your favorite show is McGuyver mugging for the camera but with aliens, a BSG clone isn't going to work for you. The problem is that the premise only works if you accept the idea of a stargate that works pretty much like the ones from Stargate. If they could have found some other way of getting them all on that ship accidentally, the show might have picked up all the Galactica fans. Personally, I thought it was better than the other Stargate series, and better than the Galactica follow up, Caprica. Now Caprica, on the other hand, should simply have been done as a kind of "Thirteenth Floor" rip-off and stuck with just the "religious nuts and corporate guys fighting over an alternate reality populated by copies of dead people created by a young genius scientist who died in a religious terrorist attack" parts of the plot, rather than trying to get the Cylons and Bill-Adama-as-a-kid into it. People come up with these very good ideas, but then try to hitch them to other shows that were popular as though the same audiences will like them. The rabid BSG fans wouldn't like Caprica, but they'd like SGU; the rabid Stargate fans wouldn't like SGU, but they might like yet another kind of show.

The other problem is that SyFy is trying to attract women, and to them that means focusing on conflict and more realistic emotional and social situations and fewer explosions - women simply are less forgiving of shallow characters and less enticed by space battles and chase scenes. You can have SF with more character depth and fewer explosions - Thirteenth Floor is one example, Warehouse 13 is another; and actually, Firefly is another (the "space battles" in that are pretty brief, if you think about it; it's more about personality conflicts and intrigue - it's basically a cross between a caper movie and a Western, but set in interplanetary space), and it can work in a way that will pick up both women and men over 25 - but it won't keep the Stargate fanbase.

Re:If it sucks then why save it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool!

[Sits back to watch the troll on troll action -- ew, gross]

sucks!

[hemna]

I really like SGU more than the other Stargate shows. This completely sucks! Not much of a reason to watch syfy now at all.

A terribly flawed show.

[Anonymous Coward]

The characters and writing were horribly flawed from the start. They were all largely unlikeable, so why should I care what happens to them? The premise of the show was supposed to be that the wrong people got sent on this mission, and now they're all stuck together on this ship. The characters were all essentially a series of individuals with no sense of group among them. The writing was such that they constantly pitted one character against another, but none of the characters had any particularly admirable qualities. With no sense of group purpose, we're only left with individuals to latch on to.

Which one am I supposed to identify with? The megalomaniac brilliant doctor guy who's unpredictable and can't be trusted to help anyone, but has to be since he's the only one that knows anything? The crappy leader who nobody respects? The brilliant nerdy guy in the dumb shirt whose only purpose seems to be lusting after the young hot chic? The young hot chic who's only purpose seems to be hot? The backstabbing hot lesbian chic? The other leader guy on earth who makes the crappy leader guy who nobody respects look good by comparison? They're all two dimensional cardboard cutouts that I couldn't care less about. Having a few unlikable, horribly flawed characters is fine, and adds to the quality of the show. Having a whole cast of them is a disaster.

I watched the first season, hoping it might get better. It never did. I bailed and decided the series was hopeless. Looks like I was right.

Re:A terribly flawed show.

[Anonymous Coward]

With no sense of group purpose, we're only left with individuals to latch on to.

That's what's it's supposed to be....up until the end of the 2nd season where a sense of purpose is proposed. That's what "the mission" is supposed to bring. Before, they were all (well, most) just desperate to get home.

Whenever someone harps on about how bad a character is, I often wonder if they're mainly just projecting their own issues onto the character.

To answer your question, you should be aiming to identify with all of them. If you can't identify with a single one of them, you have probably spent too much time in a basement somewhere.

I'm glade the series was taking it's time to develop the characters into something, rather than just having them be what they needed to be right from the first episode.

Wasn't up to the challenge.

[tempest69]

It was pretty. But it was missing on too many spots. The writing was bad, poor plot, poor dialogue, and they didn't connect the audience to the characters. The Sci-fi parts didn't have solid thinking parts. The enemies were boring and just kinda there. It seemed that ammo was super abundant.
The characters didn't develop, with the exception of Greer. And given the alien infestation and lost baby I would have expected some depth of character to start coming out.

Compare it with Firefly or BSG.. Most of the principle characters have some depth, the dialogue worked. And enemies were everywhere and complex. SG1 managed some solid character development.
I liked the FX, the acting was good, and I'd still probably keep watching, because there isn't jack out there to watch in space based sci-fi genera . But they can do better.

Seriously? The *ONLY* decent one?

[knavel]

That's a shame. Aside from the original movie, it's the only stargate-related storyline that was even good.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the shows they have that pull in steady viewers, Eureka, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary...are not "Dramas", they are Science-Fiction stories. They focus on a "sci-fi" problem and a solution for it. The characters reaction to the problem, drives the human interest.

Caprica and SGU decided to take a different approach. They made the characters the central part of the story. The robots and spaceships are just there to make them mad at each other. That's not science-fiction, that's afternoon-soap-opera crap.

Syfy needs to stop trying to pull in a "female" audience and just make good stories. Tin Man was good. Alice sucked. I hope Red is better.

Well, it's all been downhill...

[forkfail]

... since Babylon 5 got cancelled anyway...

Re:Well, it's all been downhill...

[zero_out]

Sadly, most series don't have their entire storyline planned out from beginning to end. B5 truly is the magnum opus of space operas. I rewatched the entire series last year, and was amazed at how good the storyline was, even after I already knew it. Other than the change from Sinclair to Sheridan, and from Winters to Alexander, the entire storyline was 100% compelling and consistent from beginning to end. It was a Shakespearean epic in space.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[flowwolf]

Ever since W13 introduced that punky intern girl, it's been all about teeny girl issues.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Chris Burke]

Don't forget wrastlin' [syfy.com]! Definitely science fiction at its best.

It could be! Think about it, if they decided to start making Smackdown seem more at home on the channel normally known as SciFi:

Interviewer: standing next to a big muscle-bound man wearing cybernetic shoulderpads and with circuit board face paint]: So, Planetcrusher, tell me what's going to happen on this Sunday's Galactic Smackdown?

Planetcrusher: [gravely, earnest-and-out-of-breath wrestling smack-talk voice]: I, Planetcrusher, intend to step into the wormhole to the Delta Quadrant, and find the lost technology of the Ashkari, and when I do, I will activate their Body Revivification Engine, and infused with its power, I will return, and step into the ring as a God, and when that happens, the Replicator Rampage Rally, who could not stand up to my mortal form before, will find themselves crushed in midst of the black hole that I will open, ripping them to shreds, trapping them at the boundary of the event horizon, where time will cease to have meaning, and they will know only sorrow and darkness for eternity! [gasp pant]

Interviewer: Well good luck with that! Should be exciting, folks. Replicator Rampage Rally says they have a new Plasma Suplex that they think will let them defeat Planetcrusher, but I don't know if they counted on this!

Good Riddance

[BJ_Covert_Action]

This is going to be a rant, a biased rant, and a personal opinion rant. Nonetheless, I think it is a rant worth posting.

SGU needed to be canceled. That stupid show needed to be canceled far more than 90% of the other shows canceled in T.V. history. I watched the entire first season of SGU with high expectations. I even watched most of the second season hoping that, somehow, against all odds, the writers would hoist that heap of dramatic crap out of the soap-opera-hole of stupidity it dug for itself. It wasn't going to happen though.

SGU was crap, total, utter, worthless crap. Every stupid freakin' episode followed the same storybook recipe for building superficial drama. The characters spent 45 minutes of the damn show running around, talking about what a difficult situation they were in, arguing with each other, and doing nothing to fix whatever problem they had at hand. Then, in the last few minutes, they implement a "daring" and "risky" plan of action, that they spent the rest of the episode crying about. The episode ends with a major cliffhanger that wouldn't be present were it not for the unfathomable stupidity and dramatic nature of the characters involved. Then, in the next episode, rather than develop the problem and solution dynamic more, they magically mop the cliffhanger up (all Deus Ex Machina style) within the first five minutes of the new episode, thus allowing a whole new insipid, dramatic issue to be developed for this episode.

Sure, there were one or two interesting episodes that did something curious, like the time loop episode, or the seed-ship episode. But 95% of this stupid freakin' show was contrived drama and useless blubbering. I've heard some folks say that the characters were the major plus of the series. I call bullshit. The characters were stupid. With the exception of Rush demonstrating the borderline between genius and sociopath, none of the other characters were even remotely interesting, much less realistic. Col. Young continually flip flopped between a dramatic, lost soul, to a take charge, settle this shit military commander with no apparent continuity to his decisions or personality. He was weak and useless when the plot needed him to be. He was a take charge ass kicker when the plot needed him to be. Lt. Scott was basically the science fiction version of that stupid vampire from Twilight: a soft, sensitive boy stuck in the troublesome present where being a man just isn't as simple as it used to be. Eli could have been an interesting character if he didn't spend every episode crying about how nobody loves him. Chloe was an emotionally useless tramp, just like the female role from that dumb Twilight series. TJ did well enough, but she needed a bigger part and should have had access to more guns. Greer, well, Greer was at least consistent in his character, in that he was a lock, stock, and barrel military type that would shoot first and ask questions later. Oh, and the HR representative that has a take-charge attitude from the get go? She was a complete tool. Her character's only purpose was to sit there and moralize about what everyone else was doing wrong, while doing little more than causing problems for everyone else on board by proselytizing to the wrong people at the wrong time. She served no other purpose than to generate drama and conflict in what is supposed to be a damn science fiction series.

And that's the crux of the whole matter. the Original SG-1 had numerous plots, problems, and solutions driven by scientific phenomena and Sam Carter (or Daniel Jackson's) intelligent and creative thinking. SGU was nothing more than a dimly lit teenage soap opera on a dark spaceship. Maybe 2 or 3 episodes out of an entire season could be deemed to have any scientific underpinnings. The rest was nothing more than a bunch of pissy, useless teenagers crying on each others shoulders about how hard it was to be them: Fucking useless as science fiction.

I'll be honest, since the first season, I have been waiting for this stupid series to get canceled. It is an insult to the original Stargate movie, to the original Stargate series, and to the genre of Sci-Fi in general. Good fucking riddance.

Re:Good Riddance

[Tanuki64]

Perfect. 100% the way I felt about this crap series, but was too lazy to write myself.

Re:Good Riddance

[corbettw]

Wait, I'm confused. Did you like it or not?

Re:Good Riddance

[omnichad]

I don't agree with every bit of that but - well said! The only thing you missed in the generic episode formula is the 5 minute music video at the end of each.

Re:Good Riddance

[Fantastic Lad]

You just described half the people I've known over my lifetime. Why would I expect socially advanced humans to grace the screen just because they happen to be in space?

And that was the very reason I couldn't stand BSG. Petty, self-serving, over-wrought people doing stupid things. I know art imitates life, but I'm loath to watching sad people do painful things on my computer screen when I can do that just by walking around downtown. It takes work to be happy and successful in life, and I want to see some decent examples, not a bunch of fictitious people mired in misery. I want to see people being their very best. That's why STTNG was so great! (Though, those old episodes seem extremely dated and abrupt today).

SGU, with all its high production values, was a huge leap over the super-fluff SG series, but where it won out in increased attention to detail, both social and technical, it lost through being so hopelessly derivative. It seemed like a production company's attempt to cobble together aspects from fan favored items, (BSG in a big way, and that Summer Glau clone who was even playing a character like River and that Terminator). The whole thing was disingenuous. Any good things in it were accidental bits of story which evolved on their own, though so many of the script ideas were Star Trek re-treads asking the question, "What if inadequate, burned-out miserable people were faced with Star Trek problems? Maybe the public will like that. They sure ate it up in BSG."

The one thing which did interest me was a bit of meta-story.

If the old SG1 McGyver crew were to have been dumped on the Destiny, they would have wrapped up the whole adventure in one or two episodes. They wouldn't have gotten stuck out in space for months on end. Why? Because they were happy and brilliant mythical figures and they would have found solutions. There was an episode where Young was being upbraided by McGyver for dragging his ass on the mission, and I was thinking, "Yeah, if McGyver had been there, none of this crap would have happened." -Now, I know it was not done on purpose, but it struck me that maybe when characters are happy, advanced and brilliant, their adventures just seem fluffier and more up-beat as a direct result of the character's outlook. Perhaps misery is linked to ones level of social advancement? I mean, honestly, can you see any of the old SG1 crew acting like selfish, whiny pricks?

Me neither.

The annoying part was that just as the characters in the show began showing some decent qualities, just as they were pulling together, and just as they were beginning to question the nature of reality itself, that's when the show got canned.

-FL

Re:Good Riddance

[Skywolfblue]

Amen to that. SG1 and Atlantis had amazing characters that turned an otherwise B-movie series into something worth watching. Jack O'Niell, Vala Mal Doran, and Rodney Mckay are heroes to me. SGU on the other hand completely fails to have anyone remotely comparable to make the show light-hearted and fun, and instead of having enough character depth to make a serious drama interesting, it just resorts to pointless bickering over irrelevant points to try and cook up false drama.

you can't get much live sports online so I need D*

[Joe The Dragon]

you can't get much live sports online so I need D* to get CSN EPSN VS NHL NHL NBA MLB CBS college Bigten NCAA FSN and more

No comedic relief

[spectro]

I don't know you but I watch TV to be entertained. The formulas that always work on long running TV series have some sort of comedic relief in there. Goofy characters or funny moments no matter how dark a situation they are going through.

Galactica managed to pull off a dark drama but their ratings felt season after season. I for one didn't feel like watching much of the last 2.

I don't think SG-U (or BSG/Caprica) before it really reflects how human beings really deal with adversity. Even in the darkest moments we manage to at least laugh about it, it's part of our psychological makeup.

Do you want to know why both SGU and Caprica got canceled meanwhile Eureka keeps going?, just thing about when was the last time you saw someone on both these series smiling.

Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[NewtonsLaw]

I watched the first season of SGU and have recorded subsequent episodes but really, I doubt I'll ever watch them because even watching paint dry is more interesting to me.

When I watch SciFi, I want something that makes me think, something that presents truly possible scientific scenarios in an exciting and entertaining way, a sneak peek at what could be in our future.

SGU struck me as being just another daytime soap opera, using space as a backdrop.

Too much "deep" character interaction, too much angst, anger, human emotion.

Call me old fashioned but I like a good dose of *science* with my fiction and SGU just didn't deliver.

There isn't even any real comic relief (like that which made SG1 so enchanting) to relieve the unending tension between the characters in SGU.

I've got the entire SG1 and SGA series on DVD (store-bought, not downloaded) and, apart from the obvious episodes when the writers were clearly in a "oh my gawd, I'm clear out of new story-line ideas" episodes, they're all a good watch. What does pee me off however, is that the DVDs seem to have episodes out of sequence and the disks are littered with promos for other SG episodes, movies, etc -- plus the obligatory, unskippable copyright warnings. When I get time, I *will* rip these disks to DVDR so I don't have to sit through all that crap!

I wouldn't buy SGU -- in fact I wouldn't even wast the bandwidth required to download it.

And in future, I'll check out any TV series DVDs I might wish to buy before I lay down the cash. If they insist on selling me advertisements and treating me like a criminal -- I'll just find a friendly P2P network and show them that: if you treat me like a criminal, I will behave like one.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[omnichad]

Stop while you're ahead. The most recent few episodes of SGU give a glimmer of hope of an interesting storyline. If you don't watch it, you'll never miss the fact that it will never be resolved.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[stalky14]

The first few episodes of Universe were quite boring (the joke around the house was calling it "Stargate-YAWNiverse"), but it did pick up speed and got interesting. Now, looking back, I can see the point of those early episodes. When this ends I'm going to miss it.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to understand why SGU and BSG were Science Fiction, you really have to step off your soapbox and consider Sociology and Psychology to be science, which they are. Those two shows didn't explore hard science themes. They explored what societies would form in a tightly enclosed space, or with certain exterior forces threatening the survival of the group.

The fact that they existed in a backdrop of space was merely an attempt to cater to people who scoff at soft sciences. They could just as easily have taken place in a large underground complex or something equally tightly enclosed and barren.

I really enjoyed both series because for once technology wasn't the interesting character saving the day. For the most part both shows were good because they attempted to minimize Deus Ex Machina.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[MtHuurne]

What does pee me off however, is that the DVDs seem to have episodes out of sequence and the disks are littered with promos for other SG episodes, movies, etc -- plus the obligatory, unskippable copyright warnings. When I get time, I *will* rip these disks to DVDR so I don't have to sit through all that crap!

It might be easier to fix the player: unskippable sections are a misfeature and any user friendly player should ignore that flag. On a computer you can use for example VLC. I don't know what devices are available that obey the user's commands rather than the disc author's, but I'm guessing that at least the ones with open source firmware will (or have fixes available in the community).

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[blarkon]

Blood and Chrome will fail for the same reason that SGU did - the audience prefers to watch Torrents of shows to watching it at the scheduled time. SGU was one of the most torrented shows - but couldn't get enough people to actually watch it during broadcast time to keep it on the air. There is no money to be made in creating media for an audience who don't believe in compensating content producers.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really enjoyed both series because for once technology wasn't the interesting character saving the day. For the most part both shows were good because they attempted to minimize Deus Ex Machina.

Really!? BSG, especially the last two seasons, were just filled with acts of god and divine intervention. Then there was the whole "screw technology, lets live off the land thing" at the end. I can tolerate religion in my entertainment, but for a show that is supposed to be gritty and realistic there was sure plenty of prophesies and angels lurking around.

Re:Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi!

[captjc]

While I cannot speak for the entire country, much less the world, I would say that I believe that not to be true. I and probably many other people are not just some freeloading assholes that download stuff because it is free. I would love to compensate the content creators directly. I would gladly give money to the shows I watch if done in a fair way.

However, think about it from my perspective. TV shows are free. I pay for cable which is the service that delivers the channels. With the exceptions of HBO and Showtime, I don't pay per channel. I get all the channels my cable plan gives me. I am not a Neilson home, therefore (as far as I know) there is nothing logging what I am watching when I am watching it. Even if I was watching a show, the network doesn't know. At that point what does it matter If I watch the show on TV or via Bittorrent. Commercials, you say! I don't watch commercials. I either go do something when they come on or just fast forward through them via the DVR that I rent from the cable company. So to sum up: the network doesn't know I am watching and I don't pay attention to their commercials anyway. As far as they are concerned I might not as exist even though I am a paying customer. Now what is the difference? The cable company still gets my check and I still watch my show commercial-free.

Now, what could the content producers do to compete with bittorrent for paying customers? Bittorrent videos are DRM-free and can be watched in the player of my choice on my computer and can be transcoded to be watched on other devices. They are commercial free and (usually) free from those crappy on-screen ads. With software like Miro they also download automatically with no effort on my part. Plus If I wish to burn them to a disc for later watching, no problem. For most shows, I can wait for the DVD to come out and then rip it with handbrake. It is much effort on my part but it makes watching shows easier for me and the content producers get paid. Unless people can rip a DVD like we rip CD's, just pop in and press go, this will never catch on in the mainstream. Download services would be fine if the videos came out same day as TV, are cheap, can be purchased cheaper with an automatically downloading season-pass type of deal, and can be watched on nearly anything or if the videos are free with limited commercial interruption--think cable TV with a DVR for my computer / video player. Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes may be good, but they have a long way to go before they can replace bittorrent in many people's minds.

I do not consider myself a freeloader. I pay for cable and I buy most of my shows on DVD. I won't defend people who decide to watch shows they don't "have the right" to watch. Is it a bad justification, probably, but tell me what is the difference between time shifting something with a DVR and downloading the torrent other then the device rental fee. I doubt I am alone in all of this.

Fuck the middleman: Pioneer One

[Anonymous Coward]

Pioneer One is attempting to do what you want. Go there, watch the episodes, and pay them money if you think it's any good.

http://www.pioneerone.tv/

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[metrix007]

W13 is strictly fantasy, not sci-fi. There is no science or technology just fantasy. A warehouse which is a mystical force headed by a mystical woman overseen by a mystical group of overseers. With a mystical history. The warehouse also contains mystical objects which have to be tracked down and put in mystical goo to negate the mystical damage it may have caused or will caused.

Eureka on the other hand is plauisble most of the time, enough to suspend disbelief anyway.

Also the leads of W13 are extremely annoying and I feel like I am watching some of the kids from saved by the bell.

Really too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry to hear this. I agree it had a rocky start, but the show has become good enough that I eagerly anticipate the next episode.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[commodore64_love]

I downloaded Tremors the Weekly Series. It was incredibly stupid but made me laugh. So of course it got canceled by Sci-Fi. :-|

Maybe they could do a remake of Voyagers! which was an educational history show. A bit kiddy but fun.

>>>Eureka? Sanctuary? Those two are decent. The of course they have scare tactics, which I don't like, and ghost hunters, which I loathe.

Eureka's been on since, um, 2004? - it's time is almost done.
Sanctuary I find incredible dull and lifeless (like SGU).
Ditto most of the other syfy shows except Ghosthunters.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[badboy_tw2002]

It doesn't have caprica either.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So basically we have no more sci-fi on TV?

[halfdan the black]

I liked SGU, I liked it a lot. I really liked Rush a lot, I'm a physicist, so I can relate. I really liked the idea of a signal embedded in cosmic background radiation. Mostly I liked the concept of discovering and learning about and ancient starship from a long vanished race.

So, no basically there is not a single sci-fi show left on TV (The Event does not count, even though Laura Innes is hot). Sci-Fi, err Sy-Fy (barf) is all about what now, WWF wrestling, some lame ass reality TV spook hunting plumbers. I'm feeling really ripped off because I just bought a 2 year contract with Dish about 6 months ago, and no there isn't dog shit left to watch. Had I of known how bad Sy-Fy was getting, I never would have bought any TV service.

Re:So basically we have no more sci-fi on TV?

[guru42101]

What makes the ghost hunting stuff even worse is that none of it is authentic. Ghost Hunters in their early days were about finding the real causes, and 95% of the time it was something mundane, 4% of the time it was nothing but rumor, .99% of the time it was a hoax, and the last .01% was something unexplainable. But Syfy kept pressuring them for more unexplainable and exciting. Eventually they had to follow orders if they wanted to continue getting paid, which isn't much.

The other "ghost" shows were never real in the first place.

Unfortunately my wife and I actually enjoyed SGU although there were some silly parts. But we actually got emotionally involved enough to get really pissed off that Eli's girlfriend got killed.

Re:So basically we have no more sci-fi on TV?

[zelbinion]

I also liked SGU and will be sorry to see it go. I initially didn't like SG1. Hated the theatrical movie that started it all. I thought the concept of aliens running around with Egyptian head gear was irredeemably stupid. However, it got better, and I started to like it. SGA started out pretty stupidly, too, IMHO. However, it got better for a few seasons, and then things seemed to escalate to such a degree it all became preposterous. Every week the crew was able to accomplish some seriously unbelievable feats with systems and technology that was far more advanced than anyone could comprehend and wrap everything up with a little bow at the end. What I liked about SGU is that humans were back to where things were at the beginning of SG1 -- nothing is easy, they aren't the top dog, nothing makes sense, and progress came through a lot of effort rather than pushing the button on the twinkly machine and presto! problem (galactic race of vampires, race of super powerful god like creatures, unstoppable sentient machines, impending destruction by natural forces of unbelievable power) was solved. Yeah, SGU started slow. Just like SG1 and SGA did, but it was getting really good. I liked the messiness of it all -- the grasp on leadership, survival, the ship, the unknown, peace among the crew, etc. were all tenuous, and added tension to the story. What was it Hitchcock said? Something about suspense isn't having a bomb under the table, but KNOWING there is a bomb under the table? In SGU, everything was a bomb -- the ship, the social order, the ability to survive stranded far from home, any of it could come apart with a moment's notice. The writers could have done more with that, but it is still an important and interesting part of the show, unlike SG1 or SGA. With SGU gone, there is nothing to watch on SyFy anymore. I don't have cable or a dish, and now I'm glad. I think SyFy and Hulu shot themselves in the foot by releasing some episodes the day after they aired on TV, and others 30 days later. It was so inconsistent I gave up and watched several episodes on you tube. I guess with nothing else to watch, I won't need to worry about that anymore. SyFy used to have some really good shows. Farscape? FireFly? BSG? Even the Dune remake was pretty good. (Yeah, I know, some people hated it, but it was more faithful to the book than the version from the 80's.) What has SyFy got left? Wrestling? Ghost Hunter? Really??? Goodbye SyFy. You have nothing to contribute.

Maybe this needs to happen. With the move and more internet-based TV viewing, I think the profit is going to fall out of a lot of shows, and they will get canned. With the reduced number of shows, people will realize they are paying too much for TV, and drop some of the higher-priced cable/dish offerings. This could lead to networks failing, reducing the number of networks. Hopefully that will concentrate viewership on the networks that are left, allowing them to charge more for advertising, and regaining enough income to do high-budget interesting shows again. We can hope....

Elyse Levesque

[Anonymous Coward]

Is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Hope she turns up in something else.

Re:Elyse Levesque

[Elbart]

There's always the chance of a "leaked" sextape.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Surt]

Well, wrastlin involves physics, and fiction, so science fiction it is!

Any show has potential to improve

[roc97007]

Any show has potential to improve, but I don't expect it to happen. The current vogue appears to be to (1) Insert copious amounts of "gritty realism" which, since the writers appear not to understand what that means, rapidly devolves into soap-opera melodrama, (2) String out the main story arc as long as possible to (2a) save on writing costs and (2b) increase the number of episodes available for the rerun market, and (3) pull plot threads out of their arse like tapeworms and then drop them unexplained and unresolved.

These features combine to make the series (1) boring, (2) more boring, and (3) incomprehensible.

Everything meaningful that has happened so far could be condensed into 13 episodes, *including* reasonable amounts of characterization. But they chose to string out a few pages of plot for one lugubrious episode after another after another after another until we were ready to watch *anything* else (except Caprica, which had exactly the same problem). The root problem is a production system where the cast and crew can lose sight of the purpose of the show -- entertainment -- and nobody corrects them on it.

yay more wrestling!!

[inerlogic]

SG:U was a pale shade of SG...
believe me, i watched it religiously (and also watched the even more soap-opera-y Caprica)

simply because of the fact that there isn't any other decent sci-fi on tv anymore....

Enterprise (worst theme song EVAR) got cancelled just when it was getting good,
Galactica was long in the tooth, and then they gave us a cop-out ending...
DON'T even get me started on Firefly... i'll start killing people....

so yah... syfy will put out another Galactica prequel (which will probably suck)
personally i think we need a 6th star trek series (the new frontier books were well written, why not go there?)

either that or the stupid-assed syfy channel should just add more wrastling to it's lineup and call itself "The USA Network 2"
because they certainly don't have any sci-fi shows in their line-up....
Ghost Hunters? Scare Tactics? Fact or Faked? Hollywood Treasure? that crap belongs on Fox or discovery....
Smackdown.... sci-fi? really? REALLY??
WH13, Eureka, Sanctuary? hey, i like Amanda Tapping, and i couldn't stand sanctuary.... Eureka i could barely get through season 1, WH13 i watched just because there was nothing else....

STOP FEEDING US SHIT...

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

i still like eureka... that isnt canceled right?

Ghost Hunters, obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

they no longer work as plumbers, they're Ghost Hunters full time

MUST.JOIN.GEEKERY

[Unka Willbur]

OK, here's the *real* breakdown of the 3 shows. Everyone else has been pretty much wrong! ;P

• • SG1: Groundbreaking for TV Sci-Fi. Season 1-4 great, 5-7, meh. 8-10, decent.
  • SGA: Fun Sci-Fi in an ST-TOS vein. Conscious of the fact and used it. Last season suffered from "We know we're cancelled" syndrome.
  • SGU: I don't watch soap operas.

Now that we all know the only correct opinions, we can close the thread. :))

Re:Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyF

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[EdIII]

Fuck SyFy.

I am little upset that SGU has been cancelled. I got into the first season... but on Netflix.

SGU would have at least one more viewer if those cock monkeys at SyFy had stopped those annoying animated overlays. They are so much bigger than any other network and so damned intrusive. They cover up to much of the scenes and one time covered Rodney's face as he was talking on Atlantis.

I'll take the opportunity to complain again about those fuckstick retarded executives.... but seriously..... viewership must have taken a hit when people can't stand watching it because of the interruptions and choose Hulu or Netflix over the more lucrative cable company fees.

I was worried about this. This could happen to not just SGU, but any other really good show out there for the same reasons. They have no real handle on the statistics and demographics of the cord cutters out there and the only way they can speak (at least myself) is by renting and purchasing full seasons of the shows while they are still on the air.

Why I watched it

[bokmann]

I watched it out of desperation - I never thought it was great, but I want some sci fi that is actually thought-provoking and it was much closer than crap like Eureka. It was just getting interesting with the chick turning into an alien, the mysterious message in the background radiation of the Universe, etc.

Oh well. Here's hoping the Walking Dead stays good/gets better.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[interkin3tic]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A radical bitchin' hip name! SYFY! Makes my faux-hawk stand on end just saying it! Or maybe that's just all this mountain dew I'm chugging! It's like, Halo meets extreme sports!

(Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm mocking, haven't watched it since it was "scifi", and the only person I know who drinks mountain dew is a professor.)

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[scharkalvin]

Well there is Warehouse 13 which is pretty good and has lots of possible plots. Also Eureka, though the last season started with a throwback to the Philidelphia Experiment.

NBC suck

[samw5]

Shocker... the show wasn't bad at all but NBC has the habit of canceling shows good or bad, half way through the story... way to go... their next hit's gonna be the fattest gayest loser and I'm sure they'll make plenty of money out of it, making us just a bit more dumb in the process! FOX/HBO FTW!

To be expected

[rossdee]

Its sad, but then the owners of the network don't want the expense of science fiction. They should just cancel the entire network. They can have a separate channel for wrestling.

The only channel that has science fiction on now is the BBC America. They also have reruns of ST:TNG (I am not sure what the connection to Britain is in that show except for Patrick Stewart.

Say did "The Event" on NBC get canceled too?

Re:To be expected

[thunderclap]

Its sad, but then the owners of the network don't want the expense of science fiction. They should just cancel the entire network. They can have a separate channel for wrestling.

The only channel that has science fiction on now is the BBC America. They also have reruns of ST:TNG (I am not sure what the connection to Britain is in that show except for Patrick Stewart.

Say did "The Event" on NBC get canceled too?

And they can call that channel: Ghost Hunters Wrestling Channel. And it can be sponsored by Brawndo: Its got electrolytes!

Guilty Pleasure

[morgauxo]

I watched them all and you know... the Stargate franchise was pretty bad. "Deus ex Machina" pretty much sums it up. Everything gets all messed up and they are obviously all doomed and then some abandoned super weapon is found or a alien entity intervenes at the last moment... over and over again.

You know what... I miss it. That's how all the best Sci Fi is. That's why we like it. We secretly all want to find that abandoned alien super weapon or get the alien entity ally. Life sucks, none of us are really in control and fantasy like this appeals because we all wish we were. I think that's why so many Stargate fans hate Universe. Here are a bunch of people who are handed exactly what we all think we want and all they can do is wine about it and fight amongst one another like spoiled children. That's also why Atlantis was the perfect followup to SG1. It was the same thing but they freshened up the backstory and scenery. They should have just ran Atlantis a few more years and then done the same thing again.

Re:you can't get much live sports online so I need

[Surt]

You can hand in your slashdot ID at the door on the way out, thanks.
We don't cotton to sports round 'ere!

One of the very very few shows I not only stopped

[Tanuki64]

...watching, but also deleted all eps. I found the first season incredible boring, but kept watching. First seasons of many series started somewhat weak, but after the second or third ep. of season two I deleted everything I had. Nerd factor: 0. Whiny, emotional women crap: 5000. Thanks, but no thanks.

Stargate is baaad Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

SG Atlantis: Location based = Star Trek Deep Space 9
SG Universe: Vehicle based = Star Trek Voyager

And still they make fun of st, keep pretending no to be what they strive after. And so many episodes pure remakes of ST-episodes.

Stargate is recirculated kebab. Eat if yo must.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[lennier1]

They canceled that one a while ago, but just like Universe there are still some unaired episodes left.

Revive Buck Rogers - Gil Gerard needs work!

[jzarling]

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century needs a comeback - Gil Gerard needs work!

Re:Revive Buck Rogers - Gil Gerard needs work!

[Anonymous Coward]

bidibidibidi ... I hear you fanboy ... bidibidibidi

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[afidel]

No Warehouse 13 or even better Eureka?

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[lennier1]

Wrestling probably still offered better writing and acting than the soap opera drivel in Universe.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[lennier1]

For a while they were picking their scripts from the absolute bottom of the barrel, but the show has redeemed itself.
But part of the fun are Sanctuary's over-the-top stories and it's rather easy to take that too far.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[alexo]

Well, the shows they have that pull in steady viewers, Eureka, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary...are not "Dramas", they are Science-Fiction stories. They focus on a "sci-fi" problem and a solution for it. The characters reaction to the problem, drives the human interest.

Caprica and SGU decided to take a different approach. They made the characters the central part of the story. The robots and spaceships are just there to make them mad at each other. That's not science-fiction, that's afternoon-soap-opera crap.

I think you got it backwards. Characters being the central part of the story and robots and spaceships just serving as background and mood-setters are the hallmark of good Science Fiction. The other way around you get afternoon-space-opera crap.

Yes! More cardboard characters shooting blasters!

[Quiet_Desperation]

The geek universe, where any human emotion or interaction is "Soap Opera". They should have had the Destiny staffed by only IT guys bent over keyboards trying to get Ubuntu to install onto the ship's computers. In episode three they could have gotten the ship to synthesize Mountain Dew.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Surt]

I gave up on WH13 when they introduced the nerd girl and it became a teenybopper show. I gave up on Eureka the third time they reset reality, and I decided I didn't care about any of the characters any more because they'd just decided to change their natures unilaterally again.

I liked but did not love it.

[Maxo-Texas]

I had trouble keeping up with it, even with a DVR.

I found the character conflict realistic but unpleasant.
I didn't like adding the new characters- it was already a huge cast.

I thought it had a few really original episodes and ideas.
I thought it handled the "lost out in space on a dying ship" handled better than voyager.

I think part of the problem is just salaries and expenses. Would this series have been cancelled if union rules allowed cheaper salaries for everyone involved (not just actors- everyone) with the series?

I see this last problem in so many areas of life these days. Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s (hell even part of the 80s) many things were "too cheap to measure"-- getting space to do things was dirt cheap.

Now, you maybe looking at $5000 to put on a small convention which might have run $500 back in the 80's. Meanwhile, strip centers and malls sit empty. It may be liability? Or perhaps people's standards are "too high".

Anyway, sad the series is gone. But there are more I haven't seen yet. Not enough hours in the day to keep up with everything coming out.

Not disappointed

[sircastor]

I initially liked SG:U. I thought it was a good, clever mix of BSG and ST:VOY. I liked the characters, I liked the issues they were facing.

Then season 2 came along. It seemed all of the good-will and constructive storyline was thrown out the window. The show just got weirded, and I stopped watching. I'm not sad SGU was cancelled, I'm sad that they took it the direction they did...

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[GooberToo]

I missed a whole seasons and no...I didn't notice.

fed up the through with syfy

[Anonymous Coward]

To me this was the only credible stargate beside the motion picture there was. great dramatic acting and story telling. You wanna talk about Hokey lets talk about SGI . Thats as hokey as it gets. A gay ball headed black man with a cheap cheasy fiberglass cobrahead helmet. Dr. Daniel jackson who didnt hold any weight or believabiltiy compared to james spaders character in the original flick. And do you really expect anyone to take Beau Bridges Serious. Come on!!! And all the cults and elder gods or whatever you wanna call them. This series was on par with the 1970's Buck Rodgers crap !!. Thats how bad it was ..... But now SyFY finally had a legitimate show that had actual acting in it and they go and pull the plug. I must say its about par though. Everything good on syfy gets shit canned. Look at the crap that were left with. Sanctuary is ok and Eureka is descent, but come on, do you really take them serious. And for Gods sake, why the hell are we Watching WWE on a SyFy channel... what releation is this at all to Syfy. I see know reason to even pay for this channel anymore. Its crap !! But for gods sake thell go for overkill on the cheesy Disaster movies or frankenfish, or the giant alligator/ velociraptor on an island full of bikini clad bimbos. Thats all I have. In through venting and Im through with this stupid channel.

TLC stands for The Learning Channel !?!?

[paulsnx2]

... I thought it was "Tender, Loving Care"!!!!

I changed my 24/7 channel to TLC when SiFi became SyFy and turned its back on Science Fiction. I was devastated by the loss of hard hitting Science Fiction, and I just needed Love to see me through... ... Then TLC was there for me, and they implied that they me!!! But now with your blunt revelation, I now see they just wanted me for a host in which to heartlessly implant their ideas! It wasn't my fault! I just didn't know! Now my thoughts and dreams are dominated by their sinister concepts! I can't rid my mind of them!

My life is over.

I am going back to Fox. I know I can trust them; They are Fair and Balanced.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[east coast]

No, that just marked the 5th year of the beginning of the end. SyFy has been a disappointment for years.

Re:One of the very very few shows I not only stopp

[Sprouticus]

you got further than me. I watched about 4 episodes on netflix. Once I realized that it was not going to settle down and become an actual sci-fi series I just quit

Getting Thin

[GWBasic]

I've generally been enjoying SGU on an episode-by-episode basis; but the twists have been getting a little ridiculous. The energy signature thing was a little too hokey for me. I was hoping they weren't going to do the American thing and draw the series out faaar too long, given that Stargate is a decent franchise; but now it seems like they got too ambitious and won't get to put in a good plot ending.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[mibe]

Eureka is surprisingly fun, if that question wasn't rhetorical.

The Gate

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only so much you can do with a gate, yo.

This is upsetting.

[t3sser4ct]

I was a fan of SG-1, and I enjoyed it for (almost) the entire run. Atlantis wasn't so great, but I watched it anyway. When SGU aired, I was a little disappointed at first, thinking it was just a mix between Atlantis and BSG. (And maybe that's all it is anyway...) That said, after a rough beginning, I really started enjoying the show, and I was hooked by the end of the first season. Now we're well into the second season and things are starting to get even more interesting (control of the ship, new interesting aliens, Destiny's mission). I feel like the show is breaking new ground where SG-1 and Atlantis stagnated, and there is a lot of exciting potential. I don't really understand why so many fans turned against SGU. It's a different format, given, and there are some sappy moments, but in all, I think the good elements outweigh the bad, and there is a lot of potential. SGU is a great sci-fi series, and apparently that means it's destined to be canned.

I really hope someone else picks up SGU. SyFy is dead to me. (FWIW, I watch exclusively on Hulu.)

seems to me that

[Agarath]

Shows that are half decent, or at least better than the alternatives, are being given less & less chance. What will replace SGU? Take a look at Defying Gravity. That show too was dumped off quite unceremoniously, and in my opinion, quite shortsightedly. Is this due to impatient, and unimaginative viewers, or impatient and unimaginative show execs?

The only way to save it - Allesandra from Caprica

[WillAffleckUW]

After seeing her on G4TV, I have to say that the only way to save this zombie SGU is to infuse it with the acting skills and charm of Allesandra from the Caprica series.

And then have the cast of Glee guest star.

What is happening...?

[Anonymous Coward]

This series did seem like a cheapo BSG. Storyline was boring although Robert Carlyle was decent as usual.

For me, Sci-Fi never recovered after Babylon 5 ended. There was a series (albeit a long one) that had decent writing, acting and effects. Loved it.

Ah well, back to the B5 and Red Dwarf re-runs!

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I could careless

Wow, just... wow.

Liked SGU

[Anonymous Coward]

SGU was the only Stargate I've ever watched/liked.
They took a more realistic approach to the concept of the Stargate universe. I guess I could be wrong though, people wearing make up, Egyptian gods, moronic twists on future tech and warfare. Just, my god. Then I heard people talking about Caprica, which sort of started off well, but for anyone with an IQ above 130, the show's a fucking joke. It was written for moron's who aren't smart enough to see the gaping logical fallacies. Gaping.

SGU was the best SG series. I guess the world just wasn't ready for it (like family guy when it was originally cancelled). Let them have their infantile earlier series with face make up, Xena acting, and story lines, lets the rabble have their children shows.

For CHK6, come on man, I have no clue what the back story of the stone's are, but hell, if they use entanglement it doesn't matter where in the universe you are. They did screw Eli's character over, but it was realistic. The likelihood of running into life/galaxy/stargate would be very low, so they got that one right.
I personally believe, the show should've tackled more theoretical concepts for stories. Imagine new technologies, finding the graveyard was a little silly, but the AI ship drones still there and being reactivated was within the boundaries of realism. The show was good. Too bad it was cancelled, better writers, and a smarter population would've seen it through to more seasons.

Re:Liked SGU

[metrix007]

Family guy was crap...not surprised you like SGU as well.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad that Caprica has been cancelled too. The last of the episodes are going to be available on Netflix on Tuesday (12/21). I think that SyFy has gone tits up.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.. Didnt you get the memo? Caprice was cancelled too.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

They canceled Caprica as well, so the answer to your question is "nothing"

Bad, just bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The show is just plain AWFUL, end of story.
they (meaning Syfy) tried to capitalize on the vastly popular take-your-self-overly-seriously style of BSG by simply transplanting the style straight onto a new show.
The only hiccup is, a show really MUST be a superior work to pull this off, and SGU just falls flatter on its face every damn episode.
I'm glad it's dead, hopefully it can make way for a show that sucks less.

Very, very sad

[tjanke]

I thought SGU was pretty awesome, far better than SG-1 or SGA. Try thought I might, I could never get into the others, but SGU hooked me from the start. I greatly looked forward to it every week (when it aired). This is a bummer.

Also watched SGU regularly...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the planets looked like BC to me if there were trees and desert if there weren't.

The captain wasn't nailing any of the chicks. That was the problem. More spandex and latex wouldn't hurt either. A whining girl that may or may not be pregnant just bothered me. Being true to the story is fine - provided that sexy women are allowed to be sexy women. Ming-Na needs a hotter girlfriend too. The men that I know will chase pretty much any women until they get a date ... and more.

The show is missing some comic relief from anyone. Humans aren't serious all-the-time. Some of us actually crack jokes at improper times, especially when under stress.

I miss the constant new-technology that almost every SG-1 show had. Mind blowing future-tech is missing.

Re:One of the very very few shows I not only stopp

[Tanuki64]

Yeah, I did not expect much from the beginning. But I was surprised too often. Did not like season 1 of Supernatural. Now it is one of my favourites. I noone can say I don't give new series a fair chance. But I stopped SGU when I noticed that I was not only bored, but became more and more disgusted of the people in the show.

Not Enough Dream Sequences

[JumperCable]

If only they had a few more dream sequences where everything that happened turned out to be fake, the show would have succeeded.

No loss

[bryan1945]

I think I got though 3 episodes before I said "meh." But at least SyFy is "the new home of WWE wrestling"! Ugh.

Reclaimed disk space

[Ynefel]

The most excitement I got from this show was the thrill of deleting it off my NAS drive...

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

Uhh....Caprica has been canceled already. Yeah that's dead to.

no SGU but Star Trek?

[__aatirs3925]

I'm no SG/ST buff but they were both good series in my opinion. Star Trek in particular was great, and I was really fond of the Enterprise series. I hope that this ignites someone's brain and says "let's bring back star trek". If not, then maybe I'll be content if they revive SGA hahaha

Too True

[kid_oliva]

The acting was the only thing that kept it going. When they focused on developing the characters, they ended up with some of the better shows. The ineptitude of the command structure is ridiculous. Our men and women in the Armed Forces are smart than they are portrayed.

I will miss Robert Carlyle's character and David Blue's character the most, followed by Peter Kelamis.

community of people who dislike the show

[Darinbob]

Who cares if people dislike the show? When has this ever been a criteria? There were millions of people who hated Friends, but it stayed on the air for years. Just change the damn channel if you don't like it!!

I think it's a great science fiction show. Rather than a crack team of experts armed with witty comebacks, we've got a lot more average people tossed into an impossible situation. This is a lot more compelling than Stargate Atlantis ever was.

John Rhys-Davies was awesome

[voss]

Sliders without him was a mess.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the other memo: Caprica was canceled too.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Caprica has been cancelled too, right?

Hallowed are the Or'i

[Anonymous Coward]

The Or'i sequence was my favorite.

No one cares.

[ianm.phil]

That's why it was cancelled.

Going cartoon worked for Star Wars

[perpenso]

If only Firefly and SGU were 30 minute cartoons. /I'd actually watch a 30 minute Firefly cartoon.

It worked for Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Well...

[RedHat Rocky]

when you keep watching a show only to hopefully see some hated characters DIE, it's not going to last.

My happiest moment from SGU was when Rush was lying bleeding and left behind to die. AWESOME! HATE RUSH!

"Rush, why are you such a dick?"

"Because the writers write me that way."

Stupid.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

Nothing now but coming in the future... Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome

Veronica Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

My new rules of sci-fi: [...] 3) Episodic shows are sitcoms (Star Trek I), and each episode needs to stand alone in a compelling and memorable way. Progessive shows (BSG reboot) need to have a sense of progress in each episode. Using episodic episodes in a progressive shows is OK for a break, but not because you've run out of ideas for progress. [...]

I liked how Veronica Mars did it (especially the first season): they managed to have an overall mystery for the season that usually progressed bit by bit, but there was individual sleuthing done each episode to keep you entertained and to hook new viewers. However I don't think the writing (and comedy) was mainstream enough so the ratings weren't there (but it managed to last three seasons).

Not worth...

[BlackHawk-666]

Not worth explaining why I didn't like it, just that I thought it was second rate TV even compared to the original Stargate and other spin-offs.

Doctor Who is Gallifreyan for Deus ex machina

[cutecub]

personally I love the absurdity of their story lines. It just wouldn't be Doctor Who without it.

I agree with you its the absurdity that makes Doctor Who.

The problem I have with the rebooted Doctor Who is that the plots make absolutely no sense - even within the framework of the show. Its like the writers continually write themselves into corners that they aren't clever enough to write themselves out of. So... they just keep letting "impossible things happen."

My favorite counter-example: the movie Time Bandits. That film was totally absurd, just like Doctor Who, but it all made sense. You never got the feeling the writer was messing with you.

-S

Battle Star Replacement

[smellslikefoot]

Bah. This was my BSG replacement, granted it was BSG with down syndrome, but I'll take it.

Says you.

[KingSkippus]

The sad thing is that it's probably the whole "Stargate" aspect of the show that killed it, that it's its own fans that are twisting the knife.

I never watched the original Stargate series (well, maybe two or three episodes here and there), and I didn't watch Atlantis, either. I saw the movie way back when, thought it was moderately cool, but never really associated Universe with it because it was so long ago.

But I was looking for something on Hulu to help me kill time, and I started watching Stargate Universe. I really liked it.

Maybe as a "Stargate series," you think it's a bad one, but as someone who isn't invested in the Stargate, um, universe (lower-case u), I thought just as a series, it rocks pretty well. It holds its own very well against the state of the dreck that is pretty much all sci-fi on television these days.

It was definitely getting to the point where it would have to change to stay interesting, but that doesn't change that to date, it has been interesting. I'm sorry to see it go, and if this is how fans of the other series think of Universe, then it really turns me off of wanting to go back and watch those series. If watching those series makes me so elitist that I will no longer like Universe, then to hell with it, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.

Re:Says you.

[AmiMoJo]

I think a lot of the resentment towards Universe is down to people being upset over SG1 and SGA being cancelled. Actually it had been building up for a while, ever since O'Neil left SG1 and Weir left SGA. The last series of both were upsetting too... You could see the shows being run down by a lack of budget, using the same crappy sets over and over again and not being able to show the exploration and adventure we had come to love. Things seemed to be heading back in the right direction when the 3rd SG1 film came along and was actually pretty good, but then the 4th one was cancelled as well as the SGA movie.

Then Universe comes along and it is very different in tone and style. The exploration and adventure aspects are almost non-existent (but when they were there they were good). I came to like the show because of its own merits but I can see why fans of the first two were upset that they were getting SGU instead of what they really wanted.

Re:Says you.

[robnator]

Don't give up so easily, KingSkippus! I started on SG1 (in the "using Hulu to kill time" mode) even though I had seen many of them when originally aired, then went on to SGA (although I never groked the series when it was on)... I still liked SGU, and I'm sorry to see it go. One of only three prime-time drama shows (others: the Event and Fringe) that grab me from the current selection. So, check out the older series; there are a few gems among those episodes to satisfy any fan's craving.

Re:Says you.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you about 50 percent of what you say. I thought this show was totally interesting. I have watched every show and like every series there will always be bad shows amongst the good. You just take the bad with the good and enjoy the rest of the show. The only thing I disagree with you on is watching the other SG shows. I just ran a train on every episode of SG-1 (All ten years!) followed by Atlantis and I still like Universe. Don't let these naysayers turn you off from two very good shows. They (including me) are just bitter about not getting more of what we loved in the original show. That being said, Universe was still quite enjoyable in it's own right. I can't believe people complain about "aliens rescuing TJ's baby". Hello?!? Even though the channel changed it's name to some faggot-y (Syfy) spelling, this is still Science Fiction. Writers are allowed to pick absurd shit absolutely at random. That's what gives it the Fiction part. At least the kept the Science part and made it aliens. Ugh. Here I am about to start ranting. Just watch the previous shows. If you like Sci-Fi, they will be worth it.

SouthernGenius
(No, I don't want to register)

Re:Says you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you just have low standards, the first series started off in a very dull fashion with a problem a week (Air, Water, etc., etc.), and I didn't feel it got much better, I'm surprised they even comissioned a second series. Maybe it has got better with the second series, I haven't watched it yet, but I will anyway.

In my opinion SGU was just poorly written, and that you felt the need to qualify your opinion by comparing it to "the state of dreck" that is other sci-fi currently showing is somewhat telling.

I suppose it could just be my personal taste because SGU has a different feel to it than SG1 and SGA do, which mean SGU is just not the type of show I like, although I do feel it is more than that. Anyway why not at least give SG1 a chance, maybe it is not your thing, but even if it did somehow turn you off SGU (its unlikely becuase you've already formed your impressions of SGU) there are far more SG1 (most good) than SGU, so it would be a net gain.

Re:Says you.

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that it's probably the whole "Stargate" aspect of the show that killed it, that it's its own fans that are twisting the knife.

I never watched the original Stargate series (well, maybe two or three episodes here and there), and I didn't watch Atlantis, either. I saw the movie way back when, thought it was moderately cool, but never really associated Universe with it because it was so long ago.

But I was looking for something on Hulu to help me kill time, and I started watching Stargate Universe. I really liked it.

Maybe as a "Stargate series," you think it's a bad one, but as someone who isn't invested in the Stargate, um, universe (lower-case u), I thought just as a series, it rocks pretty well. It holds its own very well against the state of the dreck that is pretty much all sci-fi on television these days.

It was definitely getting to the point where it would have to change to stay interesting, but that doesn't change that to date, it has been interesting. I'm sorry to see it go, and if this is how fans of the other series think of Universe, then it really turns me off of wanting to go back and watch those series. If watching those series makes me so elitist that I will no longer like Universe, then to hell with it, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.

All previous stargates sucked, I couldn't stand them, maybe just because Robert Carlyle was involved, I thought I'd give it a go, and because it was different to all before, I liked it! Flaws and all, but who am I?

Re:Says you.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've watched every episode of Sg 1 and A and all the movies. Multiple times. The stories were so simplistic and cartoony I could predict the exact outcome of any new episode within 10min of watching it.

They are not elitists they are just dumb asses who like to feel like good guys win and bad guys lose and no one can die lol. They had one minor permanent death on sg1 and one major death that only lasted 3 episodes. Don't get me wrong I love the shows but SGU was soooo fresh to me, I really love it. It's filled with moral ambiguity, space battles and exploration and it was going to end the SG franchise with a BANG. Now we are left with no SciFi shows on tv.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[LowG1974]

...but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

Don't forget Eureka and Warehouse 13!!

Wow.

[stalky14]

|My reasons to keep paying $50 a month for TV just keep dropping left and right.

That's a shame

[Eggbloke]

I quite liked Stargate Universe.
I haven't watched the latest episodes but they have just got control of the ship and that would have been interesting because they could have gone and explored some planets properly. It's a shame that it has been cancelled but they will probably make some new stargate thing later.

IMO - Here's what I'd done...

[Nichole_knc]

SG1 or another group finds an intact ship, really old, from the yet to be identified race, left out there with minimum power. Could have been planet bound or gate to required in space but not 'out of reach'. Then they could have had a season of getting to know the thing, founding out how to use it and find it can 'jump' via self made wormholes really great distances but only where it has been before in its' address database. Then the writers would have had a whole lots more playroom for adventure as Galaxy jumping and the whole gambit of possible lifeforms opens up.. Star Trek on roids!

SG Fan

[rossz]

I loved SG1. I liked SGA. I own the complete DVD sets for both series and the various movies (Continuum, etc). I absolutely hated SGU halfway through the very first episode. Decided I was being too harsh so struggled through two more episodes before giving up entirely.

TV executives are morons. MTV doesn't play music, and SciFi doesn't do science fiction. It's appropriate that they've changed their name to Syphilis.

Well

[Randyll]

The show's only merit besides using a Scottish accent on one of its pivotal characters was its plausible portrayal of aliens. Unlike the traditional English-speaking, bipedal vaguely homo sapiens-y aliens we encountered most of the time on SG-1 and SG:A, these aliens were, in fact, alien. If they were humanoids and capable of communication in one form or the other, they didn't understand our language. If they understood anything, it was Ancient, failing that, it was a few words ("Surrender" being one of them).

What essentially killed the show was the plot, or rather, the lack of advancement thereof and the ever-lasting status quo. Almost all serious conflicts were solved by the end of their episodes or at the beginning of the next. Serial storytelling requires progress, otherwise all you have is a boring sitcom, in a big ship that is essentially a submarine, in outer space. Characters were developed, relationships were made, but the first major advancement happened only by the middle of the second season. The reasons for that are anyone's guess, but it shows a distinctive lack of skill from the writers.

Had they focused on the aliens this show might have been worth something.

SyFy Channel is Clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

SyFy Channel is CLUELESS.

We'd rather watch 20 yr old SciFi shows than Wrestling or Ghosts or er .... what else do they show?

Star Wars cartoons would be fine.
Space: Above and Beyond would be GREAT!
STV, ST:NG, ST-DS9 would be nice too.
Reruns of BSG 1978-81 would be good too.
Buck Rogers 25th Century - spandex = goodness.
Space 1999
Firefly reruns
Sliders
Quantum Leap

SciFi anime like Robotech - FANTASTIC.

I even watch those cheesy Saturday night movies ... in the background.

So the keys to viewers for SyFy executives:
  - Something in the future or
  - Something in space or
  - Something with technology that is central, but doesn't really exist

There are lots of non-US scifi shows that would fit too. Cheesy doesn't mean bad. Retro-weekdays are great. Lost In Space is just fine. Outer Limits can work too.

Please stop the ghost and wrestling crap (unless there are green women in tights involved from another planet).

Deja vu.

[Arancaytar]

So, when can we expect a Destiny feature film?

Re:Deja vu.

[PrimaryConsult]

Atlantis first, please.

HBO

[Mateorabi]

Treme is pretty interesting when its on.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Caprica was canceled too

No more SGU...

[Anonymous Coward]

This stinks.. I liked SGU for the most part. Whatever problems SGU had it is still easily better than everything else on the syfy channel.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[yahwotqa]

I totally dig the vampire in Sanctuary, it is a very well written and acted out character. That, and Tapping's smile still has me captivated, ever since I first saw her on SG1. Other than that, it's sometimes hard to suspend disbelief watching it, but it's not a bad show.

It's show BUSINESS for a reason...

[BobSutan]

The studio and network liked the show, it was just too expensive to make right now with the studios in the financial bind they're in.

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[GryMor]

Hypothetically, Eli was the tech nerd everyman viewpoint character.

Destiny left 'the galaxy' eons ago. If you mean the specific galaxy it was in when they first boarded Destiny, there was nothing special about that galaxy, no particular reason the stones should stop working when leaving it. As for different bodies, I always found it amusing that they never seemed to have any accidental transgender events (or if they did, I completely missed them).

Can't really comment/dispute anything else you said, except that, their science consultant (Scalzi) seems to have done some good.

Fringe and Sanctuary

[AlphaGremlin]

Exactly. There's also Sanctuary, leaving at least two more sci-fi shows on at the moment. Still, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. What's the point of a sci-fi channel that shows barely any sci-fi?

Stargate Universe Cancelled

[infiniphonic]

That sux.

Adventuring Re:good

[NuShrike]

What kept SG1 alive and SGA somewhat was the adventuring theme. The same theme and spirit that kept Tomb Raider, The Mummy, National Treasure, Indiana Jones, etc going and with great success -- a semi-steam-punk 1940s era story-telling.

As soon as the SG producers destroyed that formula and left only a semblance of it while chasing BSG is why SGU should've been DOA.

The only scifi currently that keeps to that great adventuring theme of the "old is the new-chic" is Sanctuary.

Re:Adventuring Re:good

[Opportunist]

That's maybe the best description thereof. Thanks for putting the finger on it, I couldn't pinpoint it.

But this is it!

Sanctuary Re:Dr. Who

[NuShrike]

What about Sanctuary? Occasionally filled with Stargate alumni, and has more of the SG1 story-writing feeling than any of SGA/SGU ...

How to make it better?

[SilverJets]

Cut out the filler crap. I mean all that crud of them using the stones and going back to visit their wives, moms, lovers, etc. I record the episodes specifically so that when I watch I can fast forward through that boring dramatic garbage that adds NOTHING to the story.

Too similar to Lost.

[postnormal]

The basic theme/plot was too similar to the production Lost.

Re:Too similar to Lost.

[dbIII]

The Lost plot?
Characters walk through the jungle and run into a (rolls dice, looks up random event table) Polar Bear!

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Black Parrot]

I enjoy Eureka. It has been several years since I watched more than four episodes of any of their other new shows.

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Double fail?

Did people really miss the story? I mean, really?

[kriyasurfer]

Holy crap, maybe the main theme of Stargate Universe is so subtle, people just missed it. I thought it was subtle as a sledgehammer.

The story is about walking up Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs, starting from the most fundamental need at birth: Air. Then water. Then food. Predictably, we’d expect it to progress through “safety”, “love/belonging”, “self-esteem”, and “self-actualization” and beyond. The seventh episode of Season 2 is the major turning point in walking up this tree when the crew (as it represents humanity as a whole, or a single individual) takes conscious control of their destiny.

The melodrama and the edgy anger and despair was put in context of the most incredible environment — humanity’s “destiny”. You think about your own life and what kind of petty, dark desires. How many people wake up and really think about how improbable life is? Or how most people grow up not knowing who they are, what they are here for, or feeling they really shouldn’t be here at all. And yet to continue living?

Come on people, wake up. Look deeper into the story. This is classic Robert A. Heinlein stuff, of ornery, disagreeable, petty, violent animals called humans that for all that has some incredible moments.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

you find caprica worth your time? Seriously, read some books, they are far better.

Re:Did people really miss the story? I mean, reall

[kriyasurfer]

I guess people want entertainment value not transformative value. They want titillating adventure and "good acting" (meaning acting conforming to their fantasies). They want to numb themselves with a good beer and leave a show on in the background so they don't have to think about how much their life -- their destiny -- sucks. People will happily flock towards a flawed fandom like Star Wars -- accidentally following Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey ... and then lying about it after the fact -- but not something that is too realistic in tone like SG-U.

I don't know about everyone else. I'm rooting for the home team. People are just not ready for a series like SG-U today, but maybe they will in the future.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Omestes]

Haven't watched it, but you just made it sound like the old Friday the 13th series.

Which wasn't terrible (todays episode is about an ancient Egyptian toaster possessed by the Demon of something-or-another, who turns unsuspecting house wives into cats!), mind you... But was a bit trite.

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[Jarnin]

My complaints: *Eli's character was what after the first two episodes? I know, boring interruptions. Good actor, just the writers screwed him over.

Eli was the good to Rush's evil scientist part. It's just so happens that, by total accident, Rodney McKay was a fully formed character. Truly 3 dimensional! So the writers took that character, split him into good and evil versions and created Rush and Eli. It's quote obvious once you know to look for it. Eli is the playful, joking genius. Rush is the angry, arrogant genius.

*Once Destiny left the galaxy, the stones should have failed to work. Point of no return and cut off. Could have been interesting seeing people trapped in another's body.

The stones were a stupid concept in SG-1 season 9, and they were stupid concept in SGU. Personally I would have had the crew of Destiny completely cut off from Earth; no communication and no hopes of ever getting home. That way they could actually get on with telling stories about human exploration and survival, instead of keeping some ridiculous hope of returning the crew home. But that's just me.

*Very little contact with life on other passing planets.

OK, you mean intelligent life, right? Because they ran into several planets with breathable atmospheres (a sure sign of life) and plenty of plants on their journey.
As for aliens, I was pissed that when they finally did run into aliens, they turned out to be CGI humanoids. In fact, the show runner Brad Wright said prior to SGU's premiere that the aliens in the show would be like nothing we've ever seen before... Lets see: 1 head? Check. 2 arms and legs? Check. Head has 1 mounth, 2 eyes and some nostrils? Check, check and check. LAME.

*There needed to be more space on space action and not planet surface shoot and scoot battles through the gate.

How is it that this ship, which clearly predates the construction of Atlantis, can possibly still be operational after millions of years? It's fantasy, not science fiction. Atlantis was a joke in itself, because it was only about 5-6 million years old. Destiny is approximately 20 million years old! My suspension of disbelief almost disintegrated when I started watching this series.

*To many filler episodes that progressed actor development. That stole from the over all story line and slowed things down. I could careless who is a lesbian, divorced, or wanting to see their mommy.

Right! You just want to see ship-to-ship combat against aliens we know nothing about. See, this is why science fiction series can't survive.

For me the writers deserve 100% of the blame of the failure, not the actors, set crew, or other support staff.

Well, the writers deserve some of the blame, but mostly it falls on the shoulders of Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, the show runners. These are the same guys that continued to take these series out of the Milky Way and put them farther and farther away from what made them cool! I mean, the whole concept of StarGate is that it's happening, now, in the real world. By moving the series farther and farther away from Earth, it diminished any worries that Earth was in any sort of danger, which is what viewers on Earth care about! I don't give a shit about a couple hundred people stuck a few million light years away. And I care less about a couple dozen people stuck a few billion light years away even less. HINT: The further removed Earth became from the series, the less I cared about the series. Make sense?

BattleStargate Voyager : A Human Drama

[urbanriot]

Originally, Stargate was a show with open ended possibilities. You had doorways to an *unlimited* number of worlds and the possibility of occasionally peppering a season with the sci-fi wet dream of temporal malfunctions. Create a team of four people with unique personalities that most viewers could relate to, toss in some humour and we had an enjoyable, adventurous romp through space that started and ended with practically every episode. How can you go wrong!? How can you not have 10 seasons of fun!?

Fast forward a few years and we take that formula, add in an overarching story line with an evil warring race, maybe a few extra characters to the team and, while it's not the same, it's still pretty damned good.

Fast forward a few more years and we take the mythos, remove the humour, and apply what we'd seen in the successful Battlestar Galactica franchise minus the deadly yet cool robots, and we have... a cancellation.

It seemed as though we were moving in a decent direction at the end of the most recent season, where they were finally gaining control of the ship and moving in a Star Trek Voyager direction but maybe it's too little, too late. Where's the sci-fi? Where's the space exploration? They're in deep space for crying out loud, why aren't they encountering bizarre worlds with amazing effects, aliens with odd customs and why are they continually engaging in human drama. How many episodes of Rush friction do we have to deal with?

Re:BattleStargate Voyager : A Human Drama

[captjc]

I prefer "Stargate: Voyager 90210". But that's me.

F*ck you. I like SGU!!

[KugelKurt]

Sure, SGU is not perfect. When they started to use the communication stones extensively the series' original premise of isolation, claustrophobia and actually concentrating on the characters, the series lost its touch a bit. But when they backpedaled on that aspect and no longer let half the episode play on earth, SGU became good again.

But hey... why am I bitching? Ever since the very definition of science fiction crap (Andromeda) ran for over five years and people watched that shit, I know that most other sci fi fans are retards. Now the same retards watch Clone Wars.
Apparently you can have any bullsh*t TV series on air -- it just needs to be either called "Star Wars" of have the "Gene Roddenberry" label...

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[metlin]

SGU was shit. The original Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis had a lot of potential. Even Continuum and Ark of Truth was badass. SGU? To say that it was utter crap would be an understatement.

Why would you create an entire universe with a great following and completely tear it down, only to be replaced with something subpar at best?

Good riddance, I say. At least now, maybe they'll bring back the original series, which had a way better story line, cast, and cinematography.

Lack of spunk

[akayani]

Obviously the characters lacked sex appeal. What's the point in watching science fiction unless every character is so hot that you feel horny or so evil that you want to be an alien killer. Or evil, sexy and a shape-changer.

Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stargate Reality" - What would you do if you had a portal to the universe?

SGA, Caprica, Sci-Fi

[Anonymous Coward]

I want Stargate Atlantis, Caprica & especially the Sci-Fi channel back. Period.

Re:Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyF

[Anonymous Coward]

More proof that SyFy is well on its way to become just another SpikeTV/MTV/G4 clone.

Oh, they got the channel to be imitated wrong. Instead of the SpikeTV it should have been the SpiceTV. The result would have been delicious, cinnamon flavoured blending of Sci-Fi, adult themes and STDs. They already have a the perfect channel name for just that.

what?

[celle]

"Lost" for "Stargate" lost!

Film at ... aw who cares.

STU did seem to get better but I was getting tired of everybody suffering all the time. At the rate it was going I was looking for group suicides next. It just seemed the writers wanted to abuse the characters as much as possible, might as well watch WWF at least they're more honest about it.

Finally, hopefully replaced with a good SG Series

[is2gu]

I am a die-hard SG fan; I still can't believe they cancelled Atlantis. I keep watching SGU thinking the show would get better but the writers have no idea where they are going. It's about time they take it off the air.

I disagree

[Device666]

The show had an unprecedented less is more approach to quality. It baldly went beyond to the edge where even Uwe Boll wouldn't dare to go. This level of film-crap-nirvana is cult. You either love it or (most probably) hate it. Though I think it would be nice if they would cast Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies (a vacuum cleaner with eyes) and give him the voice of a Daleks. Maybe some characters from other SyFy series to have a guest role (in their role of the series they belong too) as a way to make commercials for the other shows.. And put a celebrity also in it, like they do in the muppetshow.That should revive interest a lot;)

You know they would probably sell it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if someone organized some kind of escrow account for people to pay in $20 or something similar if there would be enough money to buy the rights from the studio.
Then you could either make it public domain and let anyone make episodes or make some kind of Stargate only production studio for people to pay into to get new episodes if they want them.
The worst thing that could happen is to convince the current owners of the show to revive it, right?

Hopeless, only 10 episodes in.

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Trek Voyager didn't do well with this particular plot line. I dont know what made Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright think it would be a good one to rehash. Nothing happend in season 1 and nothing has happened in season 2. The show is generally depressing to watch. The only thing that keeps me watching is loyalty. Why SyFy decided to allow a show to air about a delapidated ship crossing a vast expanse of NOTHINGNESS with a handfull of morons is beyond me. My list of complaints about this show is longer than it was with Voyager. No aliens except for hostiles? The planets they encounter all have some extremely negative attribute that prevents them from setting up a base of operations. The constant retarded music at the end of every episode. At least they finally stopped that. Last but not least we end up with some frakking spacefaring ewoks running from cylons. Dont cancel the show without at least getting the ship to earth. Give us another lame made for tv Stargate movie.

  SyFy has made a lot of extremely stupid calls lately. Stargate Atlantis and The Dresden Files should still be on. SG-1 should have gotten proper closure. FIREFLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN PICKED UP!! Caprica should have never existed. Maybe we should cancel SyFy.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[metrix007]

Heh, never saw the F the 13th series but thats quite a common comparison apparently. The fact that I did it accidentally kind of backs it up.

Re:Did people really miss the story? I mean, reall

[spectro]

Well, that tells you how crappy a job the writers did since I just realized this when reading your post

Re:Did people really miss the story? I mean, reall

[kriyasurfer]

In America, the speakers and writers are expected to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the message across. I get that. It's their job. But don't you ever wonder how different your life would be if you didn't sit there passively expecting meaning to get spoon-fed to you? What ever happened to RTFM and actively wresting it out yourself?

Why all the hate?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I don't get the comments here.

Maybe you didn't like Universe. I certainly didn't like every episode. I'm not a fan of the soap-opeara dynamics either. But it seems like everyone stopped watching from the second episode and decided to hate it based on that. Universe has a solid story arc (even if it's a bit derivative), interesting characters, and good production values. That's more than you can say for just about any other sci-fi show that's on right now.

All these comments talking about the multitude of good sci-fi shows puzzle me. What the hell is on right now? SyFy is now loaded with ghost investigation shows and wrestling, BSG is over, Caprica got cancelled, Terminator got cancelled, Dollhouse got cancelled.

Maybe you didn't like Universe. But it's not going to be replaced with another sci-fi show when SyFy can get better ratings at a lower cost with wrestling.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Phoobarnvaz]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

Due to the job situation...had to cut back on the satellite TV channels...so wasn't able to get SciFi for the past year...while watching whatever on Hulu and such. With improving prospects...was going to add it back in with all the other channels I enjoy. Now...that's not going to happen...especially since I want to watch wrestling or idiots chasing ghosts...I can get other channels other than SciFi to watch that garbage.

They've canceled the two shows I've enjoyed. Funny thing about NBC...when they canceled "My Name is Earl"...I haven't watched anything on NBC after that...but ABC/CBS has plenty of stuff to watch when I'm in the mood for American TV. If I could just get a subscription to ITV/Channel 4/BBC on the dish...wouldn't have to watch any American TV.

metrix007 the troll got played. He played himself

[Anonymous Coward]

metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files against a person he was trolling there. metrix007 got played. He played himself, and right on his first attempted trolling reply and he ran like a scared beyotch after that. Hilarious. Then, metrix007, who was still stinging from his bad fuckups due to his skimming and trolling, attempted to troll that same person again and failed once more http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34528502 because the +5 moderation still stands strong versus metrix007's trolling and blatant technical screw ups.

metrix007 the troll got played (he played himself)

[Anonymous Coward]

metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files against a person he was trolling there. metrix007 got played. He played himself, and right on his first attempted trolling reply and he ran like a scared beyotch after that. Hilarious. Then, metrix007, who was still stinging from his bad fuck ups due to his skimming and trolling, attempted to troll that same person again and failed once more http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34528502 because the +5 moderation still stands strong versus metrix007's trolling and blatant technical screw ups...

metrix007 the troll got played: He played himself

[Anonymous Coward]

metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files against a person he was trolling there. metrix007 got played. He played himself, and right on his first attempted trolling reply and he ran like a scared beyotch after that. Hilarious. Then, metrix007, who was still stinging from his bad fuck ups due to his skimming and trolling, attempted to troll that same person again and failed once more http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34528502 because the +5 moderation still stands strong versus metrix007's trolling and blatant technical screw ups.

metrix007 the troll gets played: He played himself

[Anonymous Coward]

metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files against a person he was trolling there. metrix007 got played. He played himself, and right on his first attempted trolling reply and he ran like a scared beyotch after that. Hilarious. Then, metrix007, who was still stinging from his bad fuck ups due to his skimming and trolling, attempted to troll that same person again and failed once more http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34528502 because the +5 moderation still stands strong versus metrix007's trolling and blatant technical screw ups.

metrix007 the troll played himself, lol!

[Anonymous Coward]

metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files against a person he was trolling there. metrix007 got played. He played himself, and right on his first attempted trolling reply and he ran like a scared beyotch after that. Hilarious. Then, metrix007, who was still stinging from his bad fuck ups due to his skimming and trolling, attempted to troll that same person again and failed once more http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34528502 because the +5 moderation still stands strong versus metrix007's trolling and blatant technical screw ups.

Sci Fi is not comfortable with Science Fiction

[RalphSouth]

If the can't morph a show into alien abduction, an old fashioned monster movie, or a search for the supernatural, they aren't interested in. They have their formula and their sticking to it.

Highschool Drama

[Anonymous Coward]

IF I wanted to watch a bunch of selfish emotionally stunted "adults" try to get one over on each other and cry to a fake private cam all while jostling the camera around in agitating ways I'd watch jersey shore.
The first time they sent back people with the stones I thought "ok, this needed to happen at least once". after they made 5 episodes completely revolving around that premise I stopped watching.
Really? an hour of the general guy ( I dont even remember his name) talking and having dinner and sex with his ex wife while his 'nemisis' trys to kill everyone on the ship because he's more stupid than anyone else?

I enjoyed SGA, You knew what you were getting into, there was plenty of mystery and cool toys. There's one cool toy in SGU, the ship. they turned Eli into a camera man. They turned the only attractive girl that didn't turn out to be a lesbian into a shallow, jock seeking slut. Highschool in space. OMG THEY'RE YELLING AT EACH OTHER FOR 30 MINS!!!! add a shaky camera ti make it watchable....lets do that EVERY EPISODE. I'm glad this show was shot. The actors didn't deserve it and if they could have actually had everyone act their age they wouldn't have been risking everyone elses lives for their own poorly conceived ambitions. "I hate this guy, I'm gonna leave him on a planet to die....oh wait he's the only one that knows the ship at all...thats ok, this will make me feel better."
Thats basically the whole show, do stupid things to make yourself feel better and there-by putting the rest in jeopardy. They were all winy bitches. I've been stuck with people in a cave for a week and we didn't go at each others throats ever. But they didn't make it 10 mins without yelling and passing blame onto everyone else...why? because they were all 12 years old. at least that would have been more believable
Rush should have died right then and there, the general strung up for doing it, and Eli forced to solve the problems with help from the rational people. That would have at least made sense.
rant rant rant rant. huff huff....ok thats out now.

Just great

[Anonymous Coward]

The one Stargate show that was any good at all, other than the movie, and they cancel it.

I have never seen cheesier plots and writing, poorer acting, lamer effects, than the sad sad sad line of Stargate shows. Finally, with SGU, there was one that showed the other shows what they should have been, but fell far far short of.

SGU was the best they ever did with that story. The other shows were pitiful embarrassments. They belonged on cartoon network. A bunch of washed up tv drama actors, models hired obviously for their looks alone, bad set design, and cheap effects.

what will ScyFy do next? Have the cast of all the SG shows wrestle to see who gets a show? the whole network is an embarrassment.

Never got into it

[umarekawaru]

In my opinion, SGU had the same monotonous feel as Star Trek Deep Space Nine. The only difference was the show was stuck on a ship instead of a star base.

I'll miss SGU

[thunderlive]

I've been a long time fan of the Stargate series, I liked that SGU was a bit different its a shame that its being canned. I looked forward to each episode. God damn it, you took away Firefly from me to quickly now your doing it to SGU.

All just a little bit of history repeating ...

[old_fortran]

For me it is all quite simple.
- SG1 is like ST-TNG / but "Doorway to the stars" instead of "Wagon train to the stars". Biggest issue is they were supposed to have done the Stargate concept because ships were costly; this was cheaper (at least initially).
- SG Atlantis is like DS9 / "Gunsmoke to the stars". Both involved setting up in a remote alien environment with new enemies and new friends, and using that as a base for exploration.
- SGU is like ST-Voyager / alone and far, far away from home, under constant threat.

Unfortunately, SGU (a) doesn't seem to have any ability to get the cast members home, and (b) the ship is heading away from earth. I also think they should have brought the Lucian Alliance in much earlier / maybe by show 8 or 10 in year 1. Remember - Captain Janeway and Chakotay basically buried the hatchet by the end of the the 2 hour pilot; we are in season 2, and Colonel Young still has his counterpart locked up under guard.

I do agree, however, that it was worth a shot. BSG was just a great show, and much better than I ever expected when I heard the news originally that it was going to be redone. Just as Star Trek didn't want to just keep doing the same show over and over, StarGate needed to do something different. My problem with the show was it was so sparse; almost all desolate planets, or deadly jungle planets. How many times did they find even ruins?

Secondly, they have killed too many possibly good characters. What the hell happened to the leader of the Lucian Alliance? She was introduced as a major character, and was gone in two shows. Then there is the quadriplegic scientist from Earth who just died, and the guy Colonel Young had to kill with his bare hands.

SiFy - have a talk with the BBC folks doing Dr. Who. The last 5 years have been wonderful (mostly), and quite "modern" compared to "Dr. Who - TOS" (Doctors 1 to 7 in my book). IF they can extend the life of a show originally broadcast in the early 1960s yet again, you folks ought to be able to get something else going (just no submarine shows please).

"Eth needs more b!"

   

One link babes.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/firefly-takes-flight-again-with-browncoats-redemption/

If these guys can resurrect firefly anything is possible!

My problem with SGU

[Klobbersaurus]

Episode ending musical montages, they're just awful. You can use them once a season (at most!). Leave that garbage for shitty teenage girl dramas.

cancel it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it's just been beaten to death. Time to rest.

RIP Stargate

[bgibby9]

Stargate has been a fantastic inspiration and source of relaxation for me and will continue to be so for a long time to come.

It sux that it's not going to be renewed, though certainly not surprising given the numbers.

Pity I live in Australia and couldn't have contributed to the viewership!

It's sad to say that we're living in a day where no more stargate is being produced!

RIP Stargate, you will be missed.

Nit Pickers!

[robnator]

Oh well, this is Slashdot, I shouldn't be surprised. Let's try to remember, folks, as Brian says "You're all different" with differing tastes, different likes and dislikes. I know of some who wouldn't watch SGU just because they didn't like the Rush character, some who only became fans after the head-butt. The bottom line for me (as it should be for SyFy, or Hulu, or Netflix, or Roku, or Tivo, or Comcast, or anyone else expecting to make any money on distributing content) is this is one less show I'll be watching, a few fewer advertisers making their living hawking me their goods, a couple more actors waiting tables, one more step on the path to economic oblivion.

How can anyone expect to develop a following (in the age of ADD) moving a show's airtime and throwing hiatus everywhere? Not even capable of posting episodes in order? How hard is it to find both cheeks -- you have two hands!

I guess I should be happy; since SyFy's dropped the ball, as soon as my kids are too old for Disney Channel I can dump cable altogether.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Nadaka]

Pro wrestling has some of the most ridiculous soap opera like drama possible. Te big difference is the actors have a slightly harder time reciting their lines, the male cast are all body builders and the female cast are all in porn.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Nadaka]

You mean something like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiju_Big_Battel

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Chris Burke]

Yes! They should have that on SyFy.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

SGU’s failure, in my opinion was due to the fact that the pilot wasn’t screened to mature stargate fans. You know, the fans that have money, not the teens that can’t decide on buying bread, cable bill, or a stargate dvd.

If the pilot was screened properly, then SGU would have seen a complete re-write before airing.

The lesson learned in this expensive mistake called SGU, is that you can’t change an Sci-Fi, Action-Adventure brand like Stargate into something that fans can’t recognize.

I hope this is a lesson learned to producers, directors, executives and writters that you can’t change a brand without proper market research.

Just because some producer says something will work, doesn’t mean that it will.

Please, next time, use a focus group of brand fans, and one of non-fans. Make sure that the existing fans like your changes, and THEN see if the non-fans will be reeled-in by your new changes.

It falls under the technical term: DUH!

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It was already established that the stones work on intergalatic scales in SG1. THe stones don't work when they are in hyperspace, but why would they arbitrarily stop workin when leaving a particular galaxy.

Online viewership counts!

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to take into account all the online viewers. I do not even have a real television and I certainly don't have cable. I watch the shows I'm interested in online-only.

Re:For me it was a love hate thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of your complaints were (starting) to be addressed in Season 2 such as the fatal mind/soul switch, almost desert planets and increasing space conflicts.

I believe the biggest problem with series such as SGA (which I really love and hate to see disappearing from the screen!!!) is the lack of patience of the viewing audience. When reading a book, do you skip through till the end to know what happened or do you get yourself "welcomed and introduced" into the different world(s) and character(s) the book is taking care of presenting to you?

I believe the cancellation of the series says more about the increasing mainstream audience than about the content itself which is a real shame...