"Stargate Universe?" Topic

Did you see the premier episode?

If you did, did you think the acting was as wooden as I did?

The 'starship' reminded me of either a Galactic Knights casting or a GZG battleship.

The show comes across as a rip off of Star Trek: Voyager with a dash of Battlestar thrown in for flavor.

The ship looked OK. As for the rest, well, give them credit for trying to expand the original series. But not for much else. I am a big fan of SG-1 and SG-A, but this show better get a lot better real fast.

I was thinking the same kinda rip off. But I like the Scottish Guy.

So now the scruffy guy with the bad accent is the boss. It was bad enough when they let a GIRL be in charge!
It badly needs a Rodney McKay. I had high hopes for the pompous Senator, but no such luck.

I was like.. Meh… I thought the acting was very poor…

None of the characters so far are even vaguely interesting. I'll give it another week or two, since pilot episodes tend to be lackluster compared to the actual series.

My take on it was that it was SG Atlantis, on a Space ship. Which is basically what Star Trek Voyager was. But they also threw in a Dr Smith character from Lost in Space.

Now I expect the show to devolve into Star Trek away missions on the planets they travel past so the main characters can have adventures.

So far nothing original.

Did you see the premier episode?

I saw the previews and it didn't interest Me enough to tune in

It was really dull. SG:Atlantis and Star Trek Voyager. I hoped it was a one off movie and was disappointed to find it was series premier.

The problem is that the SG universe ran out of steam years ago, when they launched SG:Atlantis, and this is just another bad idea.

I had to watch the premier twice cause Imissed the first 15 minutes and couldn't figure out how they were on a starship and a military base at the same time.

Who every edited that into a chopped up mess deserves 50 lashes with a cat-0-nine!!!!

yes, Dr. Smith. That is EXACTLY what I thought.

Personally, I owu;ld end the season with his eyes flashing indicaqte3d he is a Gould.

Now had be been Dr. McKay the show would have been 2000% better. As it is….

Well, any show that brings in dweebie teenage computer nerd starts in trouble.

Hi

Mostly agree. Where I disagree is with Pilot episodes. Too often, the pilot is fun and then it rapidly goes down hill as the writers realize they had no idea but the first one.

Thinking Battlestar Galactic(recent) here.

I really WANTED to like it.

Rocky

All Rip Offs

SG-U: Out of Control Home Base and no way home
Stolen From:
Moon flung from orbit in Space:1999

SG-U: Bad Guy at the Top
Stolen From:
Baltar in BSG

SG-U Presentation: Guy wins computer game and is recognized as indispensible
Stolen From:
The Last Starfighter

What Guiscard said. Especially it being a Space 1999/Battlestar hybrid.

Although to be fair there are very few really original ideas these days. Most have already been done in some form or another somewhere at some time in the world, if you look hard enough. Even when writers think they are being original and try hard to be, they rarely actually are. After all, we've been telling stories for over five millennia, and after all that time, there really isn't much that is really new. It's mostly just old tales recycled, sometimes a mixture of several old tales mixed together, with a little added fresh twist for flavour.

For instance, just look at all the vampire stuff being spewed at us right now. Nothing truly original in any of it. Doesn't stop them being made though.

It is early days for Stargate Universe. Some shows take a while to get up to speed and to expect them to be on top form with the pilot is perhaps unreasonable, when characters, relationships and even storylines have yet to be properly developed. My verdict is still out for the moment and am willing to give it time to find itself.

Stargate SG-1 didn't excatly have the greatest pilot itself, what with Tealk's utterly irrational inexplicable leap of faith and all. So let's wait and see how this one is doing say, after a season or so. That would be a truer and fairer evaluation, I would suggest.

The editing was terrible, the swapping back and forth between the flashbacks and present was annoying. The computer geek was not interesting. The senator getting killed off was premature I thought. Having Dr. MacKay would have been a good idea.

I really want it to be good, but I have my doubts.

Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

And General Jack O'Neil got fat !
What's next? Colonel Carter is going to grow a mole on her nose?

Richard Dean Anderson is fifty nine. The weight is perfectly understandable – although I grant that it was rather a shock.

I tuned in late and was confused by the flashbacks. Not sure i'll watch.

Thanks,

John

Stargate Atlantis + Battlestar Galatica – any of the good parts = Stargate univerise.

I think that covered it.

And General Jack O'Neil got fat !

It's called aging and he's still recovering from orthopedic surgery, according to info on the IMDb forum.

Slow pacing in parts, but I liked it, as it went back to its roots: Showtime SG-1, not the lighthearted SciFi version.

Beeing a HUGE HUGE ing fan of SG1, I real didn't see the point of this series, I would rather had 10 more seasons of SG1.

Univeerse seem to me like Star Trek Enterprise, they were trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and like enterprise I think it will be a big mistake and kill the franchice just like enterprise did

The problem was SG1 explored it all. There was no real need to do SG:Atlantis. When that finished it should have been left to reruns.

I found myself watching reruns of Criminal Minds yestderay rather than going back to this dog.

Hi

I saw the first episode, and it kept pegging my BS meter.

R

SG-1 couldn't have gone on and on. We would never have got "ten more seasons". In actual fact, we were lucky to get as many seasons as we did. SG-1 was threatened with cancelation several times on its run and many times the cast were never quite sure if they were going to be picked up for more. But every time they were (eventually)picked up and they were ultimately able to do their thing.

But after eight years the cast had had enough and were ready to move on. SG-1 had done it all by the end of season 8 – which was supposed to be the actual real ending of the whole show, hence the wrap up of storylines and the feel good "all gone fishing together" ending. The story was told, the show at an end and the cast were ready to walk off into the sunset.

But then some exec decided he wanted to milk the SG-1 cash cow for all that it was worth. The show continued but it is noteable that Richard Dean Anderson decided around then to call it quits (barring the occasional special appearance). Don S Davis had of course already left (also barring special appearances).

Seasons nine onwards with the Farscape crowd were no more than cash cow cash ins. The story had been told, the intended run wrapped up, yet the show creeked on. And it shows. They invented a new enemy to try to give the team a purpose, but, in essence, it had all been done before, they were just retreading old ground. The cast was different, the dynamic between them different and the style, the content, also different. It wasn't to my taste, wasn't the SG-1 that I had been a fan of, wasn't even SG-1 as far as I was concerned.

It is actually very rare for any show to last longer than a few seasons. Eight seasons was jolly impressive – more than TNG acheived. For SG-1 to reach double figures was quite a feat. But just like X-files, SG-1 argueably continued for the sake of continueing, long past its prime but not knowing when to quit.

There comes a time that one has to say goodbye, when one has to acknowledge a show has had its day. Perhaps we could revisit with the occasional movie, but otherwise, farewell.

As far as I was concerned, SG-1 had reached that stage.

If anything it is Atlantis that was pulled before its time. I was somewhat surprised that Atlantis ended so quickly and abruptly. The way the storyline had been going one got the impression it still had some mileage to go, yet it was very suddenly finished and in a hasty rush, almost trampled over in the haste to release Universe.

Acutaly the Ori arc could have gone on for quite some time,
I agree that season 9 was a low point of the series, but season 10 was on the same level as season 7 and 8.
And as my favorite character was Jackson I never missed RDA.
The Daniel Vala story is also good, the interaction bewteen them was the new Jack Daniel interaction, that gave both humour and drama. It worked very well.
You had atleast 2-3 more ori season left in the show.

Never liked atlantis that much, season 4 was good, but never liked it the same way as SG1, not as good charaters(other then Mckay), the Wraith enemy was silly and wanaby goth, and when replicators showed up in atlantis I rolled my eyes

I watched the opener but will reserve judgement until I've seen a few more episodes. Its definitely striving for that darker "BSG" feel. I was also put off by the back and forth, I felt the transitions were handled poorly. I could see why it was done in a few places but was happy when the flashbacks caught up to the main plot line. Sadly, there are few sci-fi options at present.

I enjoyed SG-1 in general but agree with the idea that the last couple seasons were forced (the Farscape crew episodes). I did like Atlantis and thought that ended too soon.

After watching the first two episodes of SG Universe, I've been underwhelmed so far. I'll probably keep watching just to give the show a chance.

What's the deal with the ancient stones that lets them communicate with earth? I never saw very many episodes of SG-1, so I'm not sure if the stones existed in that series, or if they were invented for Universe. Seems a bit contrived to me.

I believe Gene Roddenberry himself put forward the view that no program could run for more than 7-8 series before "wearing out". Certainly seemed to be true with SG1. I agree with the above comments though; Atlantis had a little way to go before burning up on re-entry!
Non space opera SF isn't too bad at present:
Fringe
Flashforward
Eleventh hour
Warehouse 13
I know some of these may have ended in the US but some are only just starting in the UK.

Yes, the stones show up in season 8 of SG1 and get a bigger part in season 9.

For me SG1 was reborne and total fresh in season 10.

You had 200 episodes of backstory and character development, but there was nothing stopping the new arc from becomming very cool. and it deserved more then a dvd movie to finish

SG-1 lost most of its edge when it moved from Showtime, after Season 5, to SciFi.

link

5. Will there be a military advisor for Stargate Universe? If so, who is he/she?
Don't know if there is a specific military advisor but scripts went out to both the USAF and Marines.

The referred to Scotsman is Robert Carlyle, who starred in Trainspotting, Full Monty, and Gun Powder, Treason and Plot as James I among a long list of films. He is listed as starring in twenty episodes of SGU, so load your crystal balls.

I have a wait and see attitude, however, there are too many similarities to BSG with its visual gymnastics for my taste. I do like BSG for its unique approach, however, I am looking for links with SG-1 and SG Atlantis and am not finding them. The story line has also too many similarities with Earth 2 which ended after two seasons.

cheers,
Robert

I went back and watched "Earth 2" thanks to Netflix…and its even worse than I remembered. The pilot was passable – getting them into space and surviving the crash. But the hokey 'new age' fantasy approach dumped it out of the 'sci-fi' bin and into the 'lame' bin for me.

Tim Currey as the evil "Dances with Aliens"?

The periodic appearance of Richard Dean Anderson just reminds me how much I miss classic SG-1. They might do better to loose 'the stones' and work on developing the character dynamics. Continuing the Voyager analogy, getting to communicate with Earth was a rare treat…and important for the characters. In SGU its like a phone call back home.

Having written that, I now wonder if that's not exactly what they are modeling…and how much stress that can add to the characters.

Still not liking the acting, but I'll see if it grows on me.

SGU is just plain boring. I like the characters, but it is WAY to much of a soap opra and not enough of a SciFi action flick.