What do Star Trek fans think of Stargate?

Discussion in 'Stargate' started by Civ001, Jul 19, 2011.

  1. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, certain conventions and conveniences are necessary to keep the episodes from getting bogged down. That much should be obvious.

    But they could have done a better job of varying the planetary topographies. BSG also shot in the Vancouver area, yet they managed to find a deserty/scrubby part of British Columbia to film in that looked strikingly different from the usual Pine Trees "R" Us situation.

    This "convenience" bugged me because it contributes to popular misconceptions about science, whereas it should be obvious to everyone that aliens won't really be speaking English (tho maybe I shouldn't make that assumption, either.) :rommie:
     
  2. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    Aliens looking human and speaking English is a contrivance. The less attention you draw to it, the better. Trying to explain it in-universe using "science" is just absurd.
     
  3. Star Wolf

    Star Wolf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I didn't watch it with my Star Trek trained mind but rather my Combat, Space Above and Beyond, Rat Patrol....trained mind
     
  4. Admiral2

    Admiral2 Admiral Admiral

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    I liked it better than Star Trek. It was in it's fifth season by the time I starting watching it, but I loved what I saw.
     
  5. DeepSpaceWine

    DeepSpaceWine Commander Red Shirt

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    This is long, but I'd just like to give my experience, having watched almost all of TNG-era Star Trek and the Stargate franchise first-run. I will say off to bat that I like Star Trek more than Stargate, but recognize both as good sci-fi franchises (that did decline in their last few seasons).


    I started watching Star Trek in the early '90s as a kid. I loved TNG and saw all the seasons I was too young to see/notice in syndication while the series was still airing new episodes. I watched TNG first-run, then Voyager first-run, then ENT first-run all through their run. DS9... I saw part of the first season but it bored me. I tuned in intermittantly in Season 3, more regularly I think with the spring eps/summer reruns, and watched it all through in Seasons 4-7 (I do regret not tuning in to Season 2, one of the most underrated Star Trek seasons). That's my Star Trek background.


    I started watching Stargate SG-1 from the very beginning, on Showtime in 1997. Season 1 was pretty good for a sci-fi show, but the episodes were rather weak. Decent, but definately needed to grow. The cast was very likeable. Richard Dean Anderson, well known from MacGyver then, was likeable, presenting a competent military figure/team leader but also having sarcasm, and a flippant attitude. Both Carter & Jackson were likeable characters and the team had a great configuration of different positions/attitudes/skills. Teal'c was clearly the stock proud warrior.

    I thought the Jaffa were going to end up like Klingons, but while Stargate's writers got more unoriginal and dull late in the franchise compared to even ENT's writers, the development of the Jaffa over the series was one of the things Stargate did best. The premise was very interesting, foot travel across space, villains that are parasites using humans as hosts and Egyptian mythology as their motif.



    SG1 started to really grow with the final arc in Season 1. 4 linked episodes weaving together a mirror universe, the crooked politician's agenda against the SGC, and the Goa'uld invasion of Earth. Those kinds of arcs were not that widespread then (but were growing. Beyond B5, DS9 just did it with the 6 episode exile/retaking DS9 arc).

    And overall by each season...
    - It got noticeably better over Season 2, introducing the Tok'ra, the rogue Stargate operation, and the story quality was getting better.

    - Season 3 got better; episodes finally felt fully polished. Apophis 2.0, though he looked stupid with the Seven of Nine ripoff on his face, was a far more interesting villain than Sokar (a proto-Anubis), who had a cool menace early on, his troops looked cool, but he was too one-note. The Goa'uld need face/personality to sell their side of the show.

    - I personally liked Seasons 4-5 the most. There were many very good episodes. Apophis was replaced with Anubis at about the right time, and Anubis in the shadows, using agents was good, but the suspense about his face was contrived and the revelation was so lame. The explanation of Anubis' origin (he cheated on a test!) was dumb. "Watergate", "The Warrior", "The Sentinel", "2010"/"2001", "Window of Opportunity"... so many good episodes.

    - I felt Season 6 was too bland (too many episodes set on Earth, a very disjointed 2 parter) and the leap to Earth having spaceships (Prometheus et al), while it seemed like a necessary step in storytelling, the development seemed paper-thin flimsy and came out of nowhere. It's all of a sudden "we have starships!". Oh, and Jonas Quinn as the wallpaper to read Daniel Jackson lines. Anubis was handled cool in Season 5, but once he became the top Goa'uld, he devolved into Sokar, just a faceless evil Emperor with melodramatic lines. Daniel Jackson ascended seemed a lame explanation, but it seemed like "whatever, so long as they bring him back". Tetronin and the Jaffa rebellion were good developments that really propelled part of the show that felt like it was stagnating.

    - Season 7 had better quality stories than S6, but Anubis's menace seemed very contrived. Supersoldiers made it even more so. They looked for the Lost City (the billed mission that season) as much that season as OJ looked for "the real killer" in the decade he was free after his murder trial.

    - I know many people end at Season 8 and hate the new order, but I actually felt the Farscape guy & Beau Bridges were good and the new menace, Ori, new mythology (Arthurian) blended together well. RDA > Farscape dude, but he was capable of carrying a show. BB almost = DD. Season 9 felt like a fresh wind. Season 8 felt very stale. The Goa'uld were no longer a menace, it was Replicators out the wazoo, and Anubis as a oooo scary ghost. For the first time, I lost interest in SG-1. "Moebius" was very good though. It felt like a show cruising sleepily towards its series finale.

    Season 9 was the best season since S5. Most of the episodes were interesting (not "Prototype", AKA Anubis redux, though). The Ori felt like a very good menace (as strong as the Borg felt early on). Would've been nice to have Vala all season, but I understood her RL pregnancy forced her to be written out til S10.

    - Season 10 wasn't as good. Some good episodes, lots of decent to mediocre episodes. The V lady as an Ori avatar, while she was easy on the eyes, felt like another contrived rapidly aging baby and an effort to create a Goa'uld System Lord like figure for the Ori (an Ori pope of sorts).

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    Stargate Atlantis... saw the pilot, didn't care for it. The Marilyn Manson video extra as the Wraith queen seemed like such a lame ripoff (though TNG "Phantasms" ripped off a Tom Petty video) and it seemed too much like the EFC Season 5 Atavus. When the next episode was an utterly worn out sci-fi cliche, I tuned out. Only by seeing the 2-parter with the Genii & the hurricane, a real pale Wraith in "The Defiant One", and "The Brotherhood" was I hooked. I saw SGA Seasons 2-5.


    - Yeah, I generally agree with people that Season 1, then 2 are the best. Late Season 1 is far better than the first half though.

    (SPOILERS)
    - Season 3... The Asuran Replicators were good initially, but they came to be so overused in their 1 short year, I was glad they got rid of them in Season 4. They pulled a Trip at the end of Season 3, but at least they were forced to undo it. Carson Beckett >>>>>>>>>> Keller. She sucked in Season 4, became tolerable in Season 5. Outside of Replicator overload and that Irr- jackass, most episodes in S3 were fairly good.

    - Season 4... Carter didn't feel like a good fit. She was like Worf in DS9- didn't add anything. Many episodes tended to be blander too. I think this was the weakest season.

    - Season 5, I know people hated the show getting its 3rd new leader in as many seasons (shades of EFC) but Robert Picardo (the Doctor) was the best person for it. A skilled actor, he can make likeable characters and made what could have been a woeful season enjoyable. Episodes were overall mediocre, but there were a lot of interesting concepts- the rogue Asgard, the secret Pegasus council, "Whispers" was a great atmospheric episode, interesting things like Teyla posing as a Wraith queen and so on. Their "Parallels" ("The Daedalus Variations") seems to be considered the season's best episode.

    S5 summed up the series: interesting concepts, fairly good acting/likeable characters, mediocre stories/writing.


    Overall, the show had interesting concepts and the actors really made their characters interesting (particularly Joe Flanagan as Sheppard, who managed to make a character as watchable as O'Neill), got them to rise above the phoned in scripts. The Wraith were developed well before the Replicators, and they were starting to get back to developing them when they ended the series. The Genii they should have used far more than they were. Getting rid of the credible faces (Robert Davi, Colm Meaney) hurt them. They needed to be more active because they were interesting villains (should've tried to bring in Avery Brooks as a new Genii captain. Who else would've been a cool Genii?). They neglected the Genii, the Travelers, and overused the Replicators & Michael.



    I did not watch SGU. I didn't consider it Stargate and from the information available before it even hit the air, it didn't seem even remotely appealing.


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    Watching Stargate, especially from around 2002 or 2003 onward, it seemed clear their writers were borrowing from Star Trek, broad concepts and even being inspired by specific episodes ("This Mortal Coil"= "Course: Oblivion", "Moebius", well it seems to draw from a number of time travel/alternate reality stories, even beyond Star Trek, "Threads" is from some movie, I forget what) and broadly from other works. "Uninvited" is a blatant ripoff of the 1979 film Prophecy. Originality was not their strong suit, especially the writers that joined around the middle of SG1's run, which explains why SGU was such an abomination.
     
  6. archeryguy1701

    archeryguy1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ^It's not particularly fair to say that they "borrowed" from Star Trek and use that as a basis for why originality was not their strong suit. Trek is a show that's been going since the 60's and has hundreds of episodes.... they've probably run the gauntlet of sci-fi stories over the years.

    You might consider checking out SGU before declaring it an abomination. It certainly wasn't as popular as the first two, but it's not as bad as your second-hand opinion suggests. It starts off pretty bloody slow, but it gets going towards the end.
     
  7. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Like many of my favorite shows, it gets cancelled right when it starts getting really good!
     
  8. poundpuppy29

    poundpuppy29 Commander Red Shirt

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    interesting topic I was a Trekie before I saw SG but I love SG more than Trek SG got me on the boards where as Trek I stayed in the shadows and I had to get all of SG on DVD to catch up on what I missed where I have Trek on my to buy list on amazon. I discovered SG in 2006 I watched TNG & ENT first run
     
  9. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Borrowing is okay when it's creative borrowing. Farscape borrowed the well-worn trope of "characters switching bodies" but then did a better version than anyone else. Stargate was just no good at that kind of ante-upping.
     
  10. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    Speak for yourself I really liked Holiday and there's no way Farscape did it better than anybody else, their version certainly wasn't as funny to me as the Gilligan's Island version.
     
  11. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Eh, Stargate's version was pretty uninspired, par for the course for them. But I admit, Gilligan's Island was a long time ago and the details are a tad fuzzy... :rommie:
     
  12. brian577

    brian577 Captain Captain

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    So in other words, after 6 years of having access to non terrestrial minerals and advanced technology Earth has made zero progress, yeah that makes so much sense especially if the primary goal of the program is to find and I quote "technologies that we can use to defend ourselves against the Go'auld"
     
  13. DeepSpaceWine

    DeepSpaceWine Commander Red Shirt

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    ^
    6 years? They didn't have access to all that technology when the Stargate program started. They only got bits and pieces over the years. And it's quite a stretch to accept going from contemporary space shuttles to hyperdrive and incredibly advanced technology only a small number of people have been exposed to/have knowledge of for a few years and build a whole starship out of it in just a few years.
     
  14. 46379.1

    46379.1 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Why? They did have help, it's not like they created it from scratch.
    And Area 51 worked on it for years, you don't know how many people who work there.
     
  15. spooky spice

    spooky spice Commander Red Shirt

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    The first TV show I remember watching was Star Trek, first run - this was back in the days when it was just called Star Trek and not Star Trek TOS, cos you didn't need to differentiate it from other Trek shows

    *feels very, very old*

    Anyhoos, I watched every version of Trek there was on TV, and I fell in love with all of them for various reasons. Then SG-1 came along, and I decided to watch as I'd liked the movie, and I liked the show. I felt a bit guilty about cheating on Trek but I got over it.

    I love Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis (seasons 1-3 only) I watched Stargate Universe for a while but gave up as I didn't give a toss about the characters, where they were going, how they were going to get there, or anything else about the show...

    Ah, a kindred spirit!

    Obviously the stargate itself acts as some form of translator device, much like the TARDIS does

    The Asuran Replicators were a mistake IMO, trying to bring SG-1 fans who hated SGA into the fold...

    THANK YOU!!! Totally agree, they ruined Carter by taking her to Atlantis - and again (IMO) it smacked of trying to get the SG-1 fans to watch


    True


    ...got rid of Cauldwell, Zelenka, Lorne, diminished Dex to a grunting Neanderthal


    (And didn't I read somewhere that Rob Cooper admitted that they'd "gone the wrong way" in seasons 4 and 5?)

    I initially was happy to watch SGU, after all it's Stargate, right, it can't be bad. Then I started hearing rumours about the cast being in their early 20s and people were up in arms, so they brought in two older characters to [artificially] raise the average age to 30something, and the doubts started to creep in. There were more rumours and more flailing wildly by the producers trying to make the show sound like it was a worthy successor to SG-1 and SGA, but to me all they were doing was making it sound like they were panicking - trying to appeal to too many people; angry SG-1 fans, angry SGA fans, and draw in BSG fans...

    But I trusted Cooper'n'Wright and to bring something great to the table.

    They failed.

    It was woeful. I was bored, how the hell could I be bored watching Stargate?! People [BSG fans who were loving the show] kept telling me to "give it a chance", but why? I didn't have to give any other show I watched a chance to grow on me, I liked or loved them from the start. SGU had none of the elements that made SG-1 or SGA enjoyable... death's too good for it.
     
  16. 46379.1

    46379.1 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    One person in the cast under 25 years old when they started. All the others 27+.

    Average age 33,8

    Average age for Atlantis 2004, 33,2
    SG-1 1997, 38,8
     
  17. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    The Asgard fabricated the entire engine system for those ships, basically assembling many of the engine systems and having the Humans slowly build the ship around them. Two Daedalus are worked on at a time, with nearly the entire Stargate Program budget spent on them, taking a year to produce the two.

    Since the Asgard are gone, there are a limited number of Hyperdrive cores lying around to use, the Daedalus project will come to a halt with a specific number of ships that they'll have to take very good care of.

    After that, Humans will have to build a new generation of much less advanced ships entirely from scratch taking years per ship, that will bolster the existing fleet. This is a temporary boom of technological progression with bucket loads of alien help. It won't last.
     
  18. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    Indeed and it took Carter years to perfect the naqahdah generators to power the ships.
     
  19. spooky spice

    spooky spice Commander Red Shirt

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    Really, I read that the average age on SGu (originally) was 27...
     
  20. brian577

    brian577 Captain Captain

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    First of all we're talking about the Prometheus the first intersteller craft constructed, secondly they built the Sun Tzu, and the Hammond after the Asgard died. Finally, with the Asgard computer and replication technology there is no reason to assume they would be pushed back in terms of technological progression.