You're thinking of another show...
Posted on 10/24/2009 1:18:24 PM PDT by pabianice
I’ve been a fan of SciFi since my first Tommy Tomorrow comic book when I was eight years old. I joined the Science Fiction Book Club when I was twelve and have been a member since. SciFi was my major flotation device, helping me survive the rough seas of a lousy school life until I went to college. Stargate SG-1 is my second favorite TV show, after the original Twilight Zone. That said, I am dismayed and disappointed that the same people who created Stargate SG-1 have laid such an egg with Stargate Universe.
The producers and writers seemed to have everything going for them. SG-1 long ago surpassed Star Trek as the top science fiction show in the world. The original concept from the film was what in lesser hands could easily have become just another adventure series but instead gripped the viewer with imaginative stories of the underdogs (us) managing to defeat seemingly invincible and egregiously bad-assed villains. Writing, casting, pacing, production, FX – all were second to none. The actors made the stories seem real. Endings were always in doubt. The first spin-off, Stargate: Atlantis, was a faded copy of the original although it, too, had imaginative concepts and story lines. If the writing wasn’t quite as sharp, it was still tolerable.
Now, however, we have the third incarnation: Stargate: Universe. In this show a motley collection of whiners, bullies, losers, and other misfits are thrown together in a survival situation. Through an unplanned event, they find themselves aboard a decrepit spaceship "Destiny" so far from Earth that the distance is described as “the other side of the universe.” The story line involves trying to keep their creaky ship running long enough for them to get home. It seems sure that the creators of “Universe” thought back to the popular lifeboat genre, in which the survival of each person, as well as the entire crew, is always in doubt. The tension builds, or so the writer hopes. It doesn’t work on Universe. It, instead, reminds one of the worst high school reunion they ever attended.
Instead, we get to spend an hour each week with characters who are so poorly incarnated and so disagreeable that we wouldn’t save them from crossing the street in front of a bus. The ship presents us with about 100 losers. The inscrutable colonel. The insufferable academic genius, about whom you spend all your time wishing you could just reach through the screen and bitch-slap. The 23-year-old, unemployed and misunderstood blob who is so smart he lives in his mom’s basement where he spends all his time playing video games. The senator’s daughter whose job it is to whine and feel bad for herself. The soldier/airman/Marine (we’re never sure) who was released from the brig just in time to find himself aboard the ship and who is clearly dangerous, insubordinate, perhaps even psychotic. The chiseled Lieutenant Dudley Dooright. And so it goes. Where SG-1 had a small band of selfless, admirable people who won each skirmish through bravery, smarts, and teamwork, Universe is just the opposite.
Perhaps, in a temporal way, this makes sense. When the theatrical movie “Stargate” was released in 1994, audiences were looking for adventure in which traditional Americans overcome the odds and win against a bad guy. Fast forward to 2008, the year President Obama was elected. The public has changed. Now it’s the loser who is heralded and catered to because he's a "victim." The 23-year-old Moorlocks living in dark basements are just "misunderstood." The kinder, gentler, liberal military has arrived, in which insubordination and incompetence are not only no longer punished, but are celebrated as bringing a richer, more open, multiculturalism to the military. A place where self-important, snot-nosed academics now run the show through intimidation and temper tantrums. A place where any sense of team work has evaporated. I love science fiction. I am dismayed at what it has become. The recent movie “reboot” of Star Trek was perhaps the leading wave of this new entertainment philosophy. James Kirk is recreated as a boorish, fool-hardy narcissist who is given command of Enterprise as an academy cadet because he “looks cool” during a fight sequence, talks fast, and takes nifty chances. Please. The new Kirk is the daydream of every slacker and coward – reward without meeting job requirements, glory through chances taken on the backs of others, and a mirror in every room in which to admire one’s image. All the very antithesis of the 1990s Jack O’Neill and his team, or James Kirk and his. In these cases, the new science fiction may be true to its target audience but fails as either entertainment or literature. A double loss.
The writing is as dull as can be. I found myself, in Friday's ep, moving my hand in a circle trying desperately to get them to pick up the pace of the dialogue.
I'm not really attaching myself to any of the characters, or feeling like I want someone to succeed. I seriously hate the Dr. Rush character as played by Carlyle.
The other problem that I see with the episodes, so far, is how visually boring they are. Everything is so dark. With SG1, and SG-Atlantis, the sets were a little more interesting (especially Atlantis) and they could go offworld to different settings. The one time some of the crew gets off Destiny they end up on a desert planet --- which is also really boring, visually.
I liked the orderliness of the military/civilian structure of SG-1, Atlantis, Star Trek x. The SG Universe show, lacks the cohesiveness and structure that is required for believability in this type of show. If this were a real setting, all personal would be a select group, used to keeping state secrets, having passed multiple psychological tests. The interactiveness of the people needs to be lifted to a structured, dependable level quickly as it will lose my interest. If I want to see senseless arguing indecision and mayhem, I’ll watch PMSNBS/MSLSD or network TV. The other thing I feel let down about is, I was expecting to see Lou Diamond Phillips as the major character. I’ll give it more time but it could use a big face-lift real quick.
That is what I said. They didn't put a woman in charge because they didn't want it to be just like "Voyager". Besides "Stargate" had already done that a couple of times.
I thought it was bad also as it was obvious that the ship was up to something and was never off course as the crew decided without giving it much thought. 5 minutes in I was certain that the ship was refulling - was only logical for a ship running around the universe for mabe 5 million years to have a way to refuel.
Personally, the now (maybe) canceled ABC show, Defying Gravity was shaping up to be a good scifi effort.
You mean you didn't like the last ep with Tinkerbell from Jersey??
I have a problem with comparing 23-year old kids living in their ma’s basement to Morlocks. Morlocks seemed to be physically fit, hard-working, and capable of harnessing technology into something useful.
Babylon 5 could be a contender for the top sci-fi show. I am still mixed on SG-U.
I really like it.
Other than the engineering brainfade with the leaky shuttle.
Hmm, hole is x by x, chief bring me two pieces of metal luggage and a hammer. chisel off paint, slap on metal, voila, instant patch. sorry about the window.(metal to metal contact in vacuum creates a more or less instant (w/in a few minutes) weld. that why spacecraft hatches have teflon and serious coating over metal to metal contact.
I have greatly enjoyed the writing.
You have a lot of folks who are *not* where they want to be.
add creaky lifeboat stir, serve me a episode week.
They have to use *all* their resources to stay alive.
woerm.
(Which is one reason I always loved Gilligan’s Island comedy or not, they never, never gave up)
woerm
You're thinking of another show...
quote
decrepit?
It can fly into a sun can’t it?
Hey, a Phoenix has to do what a Phoenix has to do.
Go Sunbird!
woerm
Every show on TV now has to have one homosexual character.
I watched the great USA Network’s White Collar last night, great show, but again the female lead is a lesbian.
They even referenced the Army’ don’t ask, don’t tell, so the FBI chief said, “That’s the Army, we’re the FBI,” so he’s great with his fellow agent being lesbian.
It’s so bizarre, this pandering.
Ed
I have been enjoying FlashForward, but this week they turn the female FBI agent into a lesbian and I have to put up with watching women kissing each other. I just don't like having Hollywood's values shoved in my face. I was also appalled at how much time was wasted on this storyline, which had nothing to do with the show's premise. Both my husband and I were not happy.
I don't know, do these people in L.A. really think that we just can't live without their programming. I like FlashForward, but I could stop watching it and that would be just fine.
“I liked the orderliness of the military/civilian structure of SG-1, Atlantis, Star Trek x. The SG Universe show, lacks the cohesiveness and structure that is required for believability in this type of show.”
I agree, if there is one common theme among the various sci-fi shows, they all had a strong and ordered command structure. Voyager even made it a point when they were thrown to the other side of the galaxy.
What’s hurting Universe is the lack of a foe. The first episode of SG-1 introduced Anubis. The first episode of Atlantis introduced the Wraith. Battlestar/cylons, Voyager/Kazon, etc. Yes the crew is fighting for survival but that story can’t go very far.
There is a lot of good sci-fi out there, most of it ran on fox for one season and then canceled :)
Earth 2 (NBC)
Space: Above and Beyond
Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
Firefly
BTW: Deep Space Nine is the best sci-fi show ever! Stargate SG-1 second followed by Babylon 5.
>>>The ship presents us with about 100 losers
I’m not really a Stargate fan. I saw the original movie once and never felt the urge for a second view, I gave the first series a chance but after a few episodes I just couldn’t get into it, and I’ve never bothered with the successor series’ at all. So I’m not really standing up for the show when I say the idea of following some losers isn’t the worst concept for a show.
The dedicated heroic square jawed colonel and the babe scientists and such, you expect them to win. That’s par for the course. The mooks have to work harder. Depending on how its handled by the producers/writers you get at least the potential of more dramatic latitude.
To illustrate the point, look at Babylon 5, particularly the first season. A passed over Commander in charge of the base, a dry drunk security officer with a record of failure, an emotionally crippled first officer, alien ambassadors considered embarrassments to their families assigned just to get them out from underfoot, and so forth. That worked out pretty well.
Babylon 5 is the top sci-fi show ever. Followed by Farscape. Both shows followed the theme of love from different perspectives: Babylon 5 (The War Between the Love of Order and the Love of Strife), Farscape (The War of Love).
Now days, nothing comes even slightly close to these two in over-arching themes. Defying Gravity, as I mentioned, had a lot of potential, but since no one has picked it up from ABC, we will never know what that potential might have been. Love was part of the theme, so it might have been very good.
bump
Bring back Firefly!
You are delusional. Both those shows almost made me swear off SciFi for a decade. They were both about futuristic orbiting UN buildings! We were even privileged to see their boiler rooms from time to time! What a bore!
In B5, you had second stringers, not the population of the lobby of the local welfare office.
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