Ewww.. SGU let's have some freaking protocol

[Yoda]

^Sort of a quiet nerdy thing... not my usual but nice.

[AJ86]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Yeah. The thing is one is used to... rational characters, but that show is loaded with incompetent psychopaths. SG1 and SGA have problem solvers, SGU has problem procrastinators, I can't stand that.

They're just real people. Square-jawed heroes like Carter and Sheppard don't exist in real life. They're cartoon characters by comparison. You put real people in a hopeless situation and see what happens. Hell, look at some of the crap troops in the Middle East have gotten up to. Now times that by a thousand.

The child-like notion that they'd all play happy families and get along fine while they adventured though the universe is ridiculous, and wouldn't suit an adult show at all. If anything, I don't think they pushed the envelope enough.

[bullethead]

AJ86 wrote:

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They're just real people. Square-jawed heroes like Carter and Sheppard don't exist in real life. They're cartoon characters by comparison. You put real people in a hopeless situation and see what happens. Hell, look at some of the crap troops in the Middle East have gotten up to. Now times that by a thousand.

The child-like notion that they'd all play happy families and get along fine while they adventured though the universe is ridiculous, and wouldn't suit an adult show at all. If anything, I don't think they pushed the envelope enough.

Them not being all one big happy family isn't the problem. The problem is the fact that aside from Rush, none of the supposed leadership (Young or Wray) seems to be able to figure out that they should focus on increasing the odds of their survival instead of wasting time and energy on petty squabbles that decreased their ability to survive in the long term.

[MacLeod]

Well I would agree Rush tended to take the view of what they needed to do too survie. Whilst Young seemed to take the view of what needed to be done so everyone survived. Rush at times appeared to be willing to sacrifice someone if it improved the survival chances of the remainder.

Which is right or wrong depends on your point of view, but Rush appeared to be more willing to take the tough decisions than Young.

[Robert Maxwell]

MacLeod wrote:

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Well I would agree Rush tended to take the view of what they needed to do too survie. Whilst Young seemed to take the view of what needed to be done so everyone survived. Rush at times appeared to be willing to sacrifice someone if it improved the survival chances of the remainder.

Which is right or wrong depends on your point of view, but Rush appeared to be more willing to take the tough decisions than Young.

But then, that's because Col. Young had actual empathy for the people around him, and Rush just didn't give a shit. He scarcely cared about anyone but himself. If other people had to die so he could live, so be it.

Not that Young was any kind of role model, though. That's one thing I always thought was a stretch on this show. The Icarus base was a remote outpost, part of a DoD program so secret the general public has not even the slightest knowledge of it, and they would dare to staff it with anything but the best of the best of the best?

Rush made sense. He was brilliant and clearly understood the science of what they were doing at a level no one else (save Eli) could touch. But Young? Air Force Colonels command entire flight wings--they can't be incompetent or preoccupied with petty personal issues. He was a piss poor unit leader, and you don't get to that kind of position by being bad at your job.

The most gutsy decision he made was to leave Rush behind on that planet, and even that totally blew up in his face because he just can't plan and execute anything competently.

[bullethead]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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But then, that's because Col. Young had actual empathy for the people around him, and Rush just didn't give a shit. He scarcely cared about anyone but himself. If other people had to die so he could live, so be it.

I wouldn't say Rush didn't give a shit, but he was alienated from the crew by his overall shitty life and the crew alienated him by being stupid and/or assholes. But I wouldn't say Young had empathy for the crew (aside from his little clique of officers), at least in the first 1.5 seasons. A lot of the time he was an asshole and seemed to give the bare minimum of fucks needed to be perceived to be the leader. His alienation of the civilians by having his handful of closest minions do everything lead to the freaking mutiny and only the writers ignoring stuff that happened in one of the earliest episodes prevented a decent chunk of the military crew from turning on him. Some of that could be explained by his marital problems and that briefly mentioned mission that went bad, but the writers didn't really flesh him out enough to make anyone like him as a person instead of as a counterpoint to Rush.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Yeah, Col. Young seemed to have an attitude tailor made for alienating the civilian population. And since Dr. Rush seemed to be their best, if not ONLY, chance of surviving and getting home, I was surprised that Col. Young didn't try harder to stay on Rush's good side. Granted, Rush was probably always going to be a shifty bastard no matter what. But Young could have at least put in an effort to try to get Rush to trust him, which would have been better for everyone.

And on the list of bad leadership, I would also include Col. Telford, who also seemed hellbent on antagonizing everyone, including the military personnel.

Now, I suppose we're not supposed to judge them all too harshly because they're in such dire circumstances. But I would think, were I in a life or death situation like that, I would be more like Dr. Rush and work the damn problem instead of addressing all of the petty, irrelevant personal squabbles; which seemed to be the main focus of Col. Young, Col. Telford, & Camile Wray.

The Wormhole wrote:

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The stones generally didn't go over with the fans. Personally, I liked that they stayed in contact with Earth from the get-go, but the way the stones were depicted wasn't handled properly. Very rarely do we see them used for practical purposes like sending experts over to help out with Destiny.

This. I always felt that, had they used the stones to bring in Carter, McKay, Zelenka, & Jeannie Miller to consult with Rush & Eli, they would have all been home by lunchtime.

Yoda wrote:

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Ok that's pretty funny... but, the hotness ratings are a bit off.

Perry, a nine? Give me a break. Wray, a 6 is even still too generous, Chloe probably deserves more like a 7, but I can understand how watching her character can make someone not vote with a clear mind.

Agreed, mostly. He certainly underrates Chloe. Like you said, a 7 would be more appropriate.

I would actually rate Camille Wray a bit higher, like a 7, even if she was a bitch. And on the crazy bitch scale, I'd certainly say she's nowhere near as bad as Laura Roslin or Captain Janeway.

As for Commander Kiva, in fairness, I suspect the main reason why she was killed off so early was because Rhona Mitra was either too expensive or unavailable.

Ginn deserves a 10 on hotness.

And it really pissed me off when they killed her. I think it would have been a lot more interesting to see how her relationship with Eli would have evolved and how this might have impacted Eli's friendship with Chloe. Instead, it was just used as an excuse to make Eli just as mopey as everyone else.

But I think T.J. would rank closer to a 5 than a 7.

And when she kept hooking up with Col. Young, I give her taste in men a 1.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Also, since someone mentioned the Dr. McKay episode, I'd just like to say I was really disappointed with that one. When I heard that Dr. McKay was going to be on the show, my one & only hope was that he'd have some scenes with Dr. Rush. I was expecting his clashes with Dr. Rush to be even greater than his love-hate relationship with Samantha Carter or his brief fast-talking duels with Daniel Jackson. But instead, he & Rush never met each other once for the entire episode.

[bullethead]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

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Yeah, Col. Young seemed to have an attitude tailor made for alienating the civilian population. And since Dr. Rush seemed to be their best, if not ONLY, chance of surviving and getting home, I was surprised that Col. Young didn't try harder to stay on Rush's good side. Granted, Rush was probably always going to be a shifty bastard no matter what. But Young could have at least put in an effort to try to get Rush to trust him, which would have been better for everyone.

And on the list of bad leadership, I would also include Col. Telford, who also seemed hellbent on antagonizing everyone, including the military personnel.

Now, I suppose we're not supposed to judge them all too harshly because they're in such dire circumstances. But I would think, were I in a life or death situation like that, I would be more like Dr. Rush and work the damn problem instead of addressing all of the petty, irrelevant personal squabbles; which seemed to be the main focus of Col. Young, Col. Telford, & Camile Wray.

Telford mellowed out after he broke free of the brainwashing, at least until his bizarre personality shift in Twin Destinies. I would've gladly taken him as the military commander before he took his asshole turn. Varro would've been a good replacement for Young as well, although it would've been hard to see how the military would've accepted him.

But yeah, everyone should've tried to at least put as much effort into figuring things out as Rush did, if they weren't going to work with the guy at all. No one else seemed to do anything unless it was plot required, which made Rush seem all the more justified in his dickishness.

[46379.1]

bullethead wrote:

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No one else seemed to do anything unless it was plot required

Yeah, this is truly unique to Stargate Universe. No other tv show or movie have ever had characters to do things to move the plot forward.

[teacake]

Three episodes to go. Can the phone stop ringing please.

[AJ86]

bullethead wrote:

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Them not being all one big happy family isn't the problem. The problem is the fact that aside from Rush, none of the supposed leadership (Young or Wray) seems to be able to figure out that they should focus on increasing the odds of their survival instead of wasting time and energy on petty squabbles that decreased their ability to survive in the long term.

But... why do you think there are these "squabbles" are happening in the first place? It's because they're all desperate to survive, but disagree on how to best accomplish that. What sane adult would hush up and do what their leader told them to even if they thought he was inept and liable to get them killed? The military are trained to, sure. But the civilians? Fuck that.

[MacLeod]

^Perhaps, but the civllians did have a point the Stargate Programme is overseen by the IOA a civillian body. AS Wray was the IOA rep technically she out ranked Young (as Military Commader) and Rush (as Chief Scientist).

If we look at SG:A which had a more similar blend of military and civilian scientists, they worked better together but they had a civilian leader. So perhaps it was more a case of Young didn't know how to deal with civilians.

Yes I know in SG:A they knew it could be a one way trip to Atlantis, and in SG:U it was kind of forced upon them.

[teacake]

Okay I'm done. Fairly irritated that it finally started getting stargatey and then it was cancelled. I'm wondering if it had started out a little more exciting with aliens and stuff actually happening if the ratings would have been sufficient? Or was there some Stargate fatigue going on?

I really enjoyed Common Descent and Epilogue.

The finale was good too.. I'm going to assume that Eli on the observation deck with a grin on his face means he figured out how to fix the pod.

I think one of the shows weaknesses which the improvements of season 2 don't fix is the characters. So many are dull or one note. They ramped up the humor in season 2, the passive aggressive bickering with Brody and Volker was an upbeat addition. While SG;A had one note characters for the first couple seasons at least they were fun in their own way, they were colorful. Here the drabness is just too much, especially with the ship so drab. The arguing between Rush, Young and Wray is tedious, none of the color Rodney brought to bickering. If Rush had just confided in someone to tease us along and think that he had something really exciting in his plans..but no, just lots of terse condescension from all three of them.

Still, might have upped the drama in season 3

[cylkoth]

teacake wrote:

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Okay I'm done. Fairly irritated that it finally started getting stargatey and then it was cancelled. I'm wondering if it had started out a little more exciting with aliens and stuff actually happening if the ratings would have been sufficient? Or was there some Stargate fatigue going on?

As with Star Trek, the fatigue was entirely on the part of the powers that were, not the audience. I really hate the coining of the term ''franchise fatigue'' because it allowed Berman era Trek to dismiss the true reasons behind the waning interest in Trek-fatigue over the lackluster writing and stories, and place blame squarely on the shoulders of the audience, too dense to 'get' what the writers are dishing out. And the Gate showrunners, genre fans no different than us, chose to follow that example and blame hostile, disappointed fans rather than own up to the weaknesses that were actually behind the sinking of the ship.