Posted on 02/15/2004 9:37:59 AM PST by mosel-saar-ruwer
Try it again. :-) I only managed to catch 1 or 2 episodes of Stargate SG-1 when they aired, but my wife had seen more and wanted the series DVDs, so I bought her the first season and sat down to watch them with her (after rewatching the original movie which inspired it).
And it was *great*. After finishing the first season, I went right out and bought the second season DVD set. We'll be getting the rest of the series as soon as we get the time to finish the second season box.
I've been extremely impressed by SG-1. Good writing, good acting, good characters, good plots, good twists... After the 99 different Star Trek series, I'd have thought that the "strange new worlds" theme would have been wrung dry by now, but I'm constantly amazed at how SG-1 can take "old" science fiction ideas and make them fresh and exciting again.
But it absolutely helps to watch it from the beginning, in order. Like any really good series, it builds upon what has happened before and isn't just a string of random adventures that have no connection to each other. An episode pulled out of context will lose a great deal since the viewer is expected to know the past histories of the characters, discoveries the team has made, and the "sociopolitical" situations of both the humans and the different alien species.
And although it's primarily an action/drama, it's quite often funnier than any sitcom, without being blatantly "jokey". There's just a great interaction between the characters and situations:
Daniel: Wow, this place is incredible. It's like we just stepped into the citadel at Mycenae.I'm definitely hooked.
Jack O'Neill: I thought you said it was Greek.
Daniel: Oh, Mycenae was an ancient city in the Southern Pelopponesian region.
Jack O'Neill: Where's that?
Daniel: Greece.
Jack O'Neill: Why do I do that?
To give credit to WB, they did try something by running 7th Heaven and Angel back to back.
Well, in defense of Angel, if he steps out into the sunlight, he has this real bad tendency of spontaneously bursting into fire and turning to dust.
Boreanaz looked like he'd been prepping for the show at the Bubank Krispy Kremes.
Yeah, Boreanaz has put on a few pounds. [Wonder if he was doing steroids?] Got so bad that they even wrote it into the script recently - one of the other characters was teasing Angel about it.
Come to think of it, Nicholas Brendon also put on a lot of weight. Wonder if they were popping 'roids.
Reality TV is more insulting than game-shows.
To get season 5, Whedon had to revamp the show into a mostly episodic format-- hence most of the self-contained stories this year.
I've always seen Angel as the little show that kept getting its plot lines screwed up by real-life.
Season 1: Glenn Quinn signs on as Doyle and quickly becomes the most popular character. Unfortunately, Glenn Quinn is also a coke-fiend, and gets kicked off the show for being high all the time. Hence, his midseason death with the forced vision transfer to Cordellia and bringing in Wesley.
Season 2: Julie Benz gets a film role and can't fulfill her season-long commitment as Darla. Therefore, the season's planned arc (Darla, Drusilla and Spike all teaming up against Angel) gets scrapped at the last minute-- hence the 4-part end of season trip to another dimension, written at the last minute to fillup now needed space.
Season 3: The only season that actually went off as planned, mostly-- although ironically, probably the worst season. Ruined by a very forced romance between Cordellia and Angel.
Season 4: Planned arc of Cordellia becoming apocolyptically evil scrapped at last minute when Charisma Carpenter gets pregnant. Hence, the unsettling Cordellia-Conner sex and use of Jasmine at the end.
Nyet, after her character was ruined the last 1.5 seasons, she had to be axed.
His big mistake was the forced C-A romance, which really didn't work and destroyed great C-A platonic chemistry. This forced romance led to the "evil Cordellia" plot of Season 4 (as a way to keep the two apart), which further destroyed the character.
I don't see SG1 as right-wing at all. Daniel Jackson is a big lefty. It is sharply written and a great show though.
I didn't mind the Willow-into-girls thing. I did mind when they turned her into an outright lesbian. It was pretty clear from seasons 1-3 that the character liked boys. Turning her into a pure lesbian (instead of a bisexual) stretched the character too far.
I think Buffy made a big mistake when they stopped doing college/high school stories and turned every episode into just demons.
That being said, I think the first half of season 6 is absolutely brilliant-- dark, deppressing, narcissitic. That was really the only part of the post-season 4 that worked.
I mean cmon.....A caption pic of AF1 is in breaking nwes,...why isnt this?
That was because it was a condensed version of the plot. But it still had almost no action.
And it wasn't no where near as fun to watch as Buffy/Angel, WB dealing with millions of fans is going to burn a lot of bridges doing this.
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