Was Stargate Atlantis a good show?

Discussion in 'Stargate' started by Dream, Aug 13, 2013.

  1. Dream

    Dream Admiral Admiral

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    I'm making my way though SG1 right now, and remembered the somewhat mixed reaction from fans on Atlantis while it was on.

    How does Atlantis compare to SG1?

    Did Atlantis start slow and get better as it went along like SG1, or were the early seasons the best?
     
  2. Gepard

    Gepard Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Season 1 of Atlantis was its best by far; it went downhill in varying degrees from there.

    It was very effective at establishing setting and characters, and using those to tell an overarching story within the confines of an episodic, adventure-at-a-time format. Later seasons tried the same kind of pattern but didn't pull it off nearly as well.

    Later on, the show seemed to suffer from the belief that rotating out cast members was the best way to keep things feeling 'fresh,' but all that did was fall into the same old formulas with new faces. It's a fun watch, if you're looking for something frothy and fun, but much of SG-1 does that better.
     
  3. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Though to be fair depending on who you ask not all the cast changes were bad. At the fan reaction did vary depedning on the change, perhpas only one of them was a mis-step on the part of the producers who underestimated the fan reaction. i.e. Don't get rid of one of the fan-favourites.
     
  4. Sephiroth

    Sephiroth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    4 years in the city and they never found the ZPM factory
     
  5. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It was decent enough. It has its moments, but it certainly could have been much better.
     
  6. bullethead

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Season 1 is the best part of the show, but you can tell that in their zeal to avoid a middling first season like SG-1's, they rush things a bit and don't take their time to explore the city as much as they should. They honestly could've made The Eye S1's finale and pushed The Siege to S2 by making up the gap with city, planet of the week, and Genii episodes.

    I think where it starts to lose its luster is in S3, when they make the Asurans (aka Replicators Redux) the main baddies and then contrive reasons for the humans to not use anti-Replicator guns on their planet, because they couldn't think of plausible reasons for Earth not to wind up curbstomping the Wraith (such as personnel shortages keeping them from fully exploiting an entire planet covered in Ancient tech). Michael was also a bit of dud villain, although Todd and the Genii (pre-coup) were pretty good and could've been long term villains if there had been a bit more thought put into their stories.
     
  7. AJ86

    AJ86 Captain Captain

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    I would rank the seasons like this:

    Season 4
    Season 1
    Season 5
    Season 3
    Season 2
     
  8. Lucky

    Lucky Captain Captain

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    Atlantis is my favorite of all the Stargate shows. The seasons can vary in quality, but I enjoyed all of them.
     
  9. Romulan_spy

    Romulan_spy Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    SG:Atlantis was a fun, "popcorn" show. It had humor, action, big explosions and cool tech. I enjoyed it.
     
  10. USS Kongo

    USS Kongo Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I preferred SG-1, but Atlantis was very enjoyable in its own right. I didn't care for the Replicator storyline they ran with; they should have stuck the Wraith as their main baddies.

    The episode Midway is one of my favorites of Atlantis, along with Be All My Sins Remember'd, which has some pretty epic space battles.

    Sean
     
  11. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    The first season was a solid action adventure show with a slightly darker tone than SG-1. After that, it quickly fell apart, which makes it hard for me to recommend as a whole.
     
  12. AJ86

    AJ86 Captain Captain

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    Originally the plan was that the Replicators would be the main antagonist and the series would be set in the Milky Way, but when SG-1 was renewed again they had to come up with the Pegasus and Wraith storylines somewhat last minute. The vampire craze probably helped the latter come to fruition, and I suspect the reason that SGA did so much better in the female demo.
     
  13. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    I love Atlantis. I didn't at first, but in time I actually grew to enjoy it more than SG-1. I think the characters are more fun, and Season 1 tells an awesome story. It's a solid mix of standalone and arc storytelling.
     
  14. auntiehill

    auntiehill The Blooness Premium Member

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    I thought it started off well, but became worse as it went along. The stories were too repetitive and cheesy and the characters actually became less interesting as time wore on. It's my least favorite of the Stargate series, simply because it became very tedious and the choices the writers made were generally cowardly and cheap.

    I think it pales in comparison to SG-1, although it, too, did drag quite a bit towards the end.

    Your mileage may vary.
     
  15. bigdaddy

    bigdaddy Vice Admiral Admiral

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    To answer the question is no.

    Season 1 was fine, not perfect but decent enough, every season after that just got worse and worse. When the writers felt the need to have Replicators in everything is when I completely gave up on Stargate.
     
  16. captainkirk

    captainkirk Commodore Commodore

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    I prefer Atlantis to SG-1. It did get a bit repetitive and there was an episode in season 5 where half way through I knew exactly what was going to happen, including all the "twists". But for the most part the series was fun and exciting.
     
  17. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    As someone who's been doing a (very) long-term SG-1/Atlantis watch-through and is now at SG-1 S8 and ATL S1, this is making me fairly nervous.
     
  18. Sephiroth

    Sephiroth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^it's a decent watch if you are a fan of the lore
     
  19. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'd like to think I wouldn't own them all on DVD if I wasn't... :p
     
  20. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I didn't laugh nearly as much at Joe Flanagan's one liners as I did Richard Dean Anderson's.

    It aimed at being a serious action show, with a comic relief reluctant hero (McKay.) But basically everyone spoke English, so that couldn't work right.

    They also had villain trouble. The go'a'uld weren't hard SF plausible but they were still far more believable than the wraiths. The producers had convinced themselves that the foreign culture costuming of the wraith was stupid and contemptible (like all foreign cultures apparently.) They thought the new villains would be cooler. They were just generic instead. So none of them really had an undercurrent of genuine menace to sustain them as convincing threats, unlike the go'a'uld.