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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?"
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?
Someone had to do it.
nothing of value was lost.
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.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
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.
Pro wrestling and 7 flavors of fake reality ghost hunting shows.
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
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.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
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)?
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.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
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.
"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!)
Someone had to do it.
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.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
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?
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.
It is people like you that made BG a horror.
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.
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.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
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.
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.
Open Materials Database
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 ..
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?
The fact that said horror show also felt as if written by soap opera writers didn't exactly help either.
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.
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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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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... ;-)
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
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.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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.
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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?
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.
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