Where should Stargate go now?

[gturner]

I think they should reveal that the Ancients were just followers of author and politician Thomas P. Ancient, a man who wrote a series of self-improvement books and later got into radical politics, preaching that mankind had a collective destiny out among the stars. They ventured forth, and everyone they met just assumed they'd been around forever because of the name.

[Drago-Kazov]

As far as i am concerned it could die.

[Starkers]

CSI:Abydos.

"Looks like he was shot twice at close range with a zat gun."

"Indeed, Ted Danson."

[teacake]

RoJoHen wrote:

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The first thing I would do is get rid of all the Medieval villages.

Yeah lets have the villagers living in.. domes or something. And not wearing long princess dresses.

[RoJoHen]

I would simply want the galaxy to be populated with a wider variety of civilizations. Way too many people were at the exact same level of advancement.

[gturner]

It got worse when they went all King Arthur in the last two seasons.

[JarodRussell]

Basically, you folks want bigger budget, and that's not possible in a TV show.

[gturner]

No, I'd like to economize on the budget, which is why I much earlier suggested the fundamental change of putting the gates on a class of standardized orbital stations instead of planets (getting rid of a ton of location shoots and reusing the sets over and over, which is why Babylong 5 was set on a space station).

But whereas Babylon 5 took place on the same station, and ship-based shows like Star Trek take place on the same ship, the idea here would be that you're reusing the same ship or station set, but not the same ship or station in the storyline, so the cast is immediately thrown into the action, encountering the aliens shortly after setting foot through the stargate without using a new location shoot every time.

Instead of building a different looking village (expensive), the planet is represented by its inhabitants (or occupiers) on the station, along with diplays of data about the planet (remote camera views, satellite views, history plots, etc). That's would just take cheap conventional computer graphics and stock footage.

If the briefing room scene is replaced by a similar mechanism that takes place on the stations, where they arrive and pull up the standardized computer displays, you eliminate most of the extras required to make the SGC look fully staffed and operational in every episode.

It also avoids SGU's issue with physically visiting planet after planet (back to location shoots) and having to fill the ship with every character who might be needed at some point, which is basically carrying all the SGC staff with you, and having to show most of them somewhere in every episode because they're on the ship and have nowhere else to go. That means all your recurring characters (and a bunch of barely used extras) have to show up for filming on most episodes.

If the orbital station story arcs involve lots of gate-to-gate-to-gate jump routes, you don't even have to return to the SGC for most episodes, so those cast members don't have to keep getting called in. Many of the stations could even be unoccupied (with the story centered around a technical problem with the station or planet, or an odd piece of history or technology stored on board), but you still can have access to the SGC, aliens on the stations, and a planet full of aliens if a storyline requires it.

I'm hoping this would reduce the constant baseline episode cost (every episode had to have much of the SGC or SGU-Desitny cast) and recurring location shoot cost.

[JarodRussell]

That would actually be pretty dull, don't you think?

[gturner]

If written badly, definitely.

I think if you made the stations seem very large (through CGI) and gave some of them some impressive and novel aspects, you might mitigate some of the visual limitations. SGU's Destiny and the seed ship I think failed in that regard. The ships didn't look impressive, they looked cramped, even though they were supposedly huge and advanced. The ship should've been more like a world unto itself, requiring major explorations and discoveries.

Even Atlantis, though technically huge, seemed fairly small. The external shots of Atlantis were impressive, kind of like looking at a super-Manhattan, but the place seemed to be a two-story gate room, a couple medical rooms, a cafeteria, and some halls and hotel rooms with a balcony. In none of the sets (except perhaps the gate-ship hangar) do you get the sense of wonder and awe you'd have walking into a domed sports arena or a really big multi-story mall. Air Force hangar scenes on the show (which weren't infrequent), conveyed a better feeling of large spaces than any of the supposedly huge space ships.

I'm thinking that when they gate onto a new station they either:

Run into the occupying aliens upon stepping out of the gate, kicking off some action because they've just boarded a ship without permission,

Find the gate room neglected, go out, and see that the ship is filled with ..... scary monster things - a thriving society - slaves - false gods - tiny ufos - virtual constructs - robots

Find the ship completely empty except for bodies, ghosts, or dust, all with a story to uncover.

Find nothing interesting on the station itself, except a blinking warning about something important on the nearby planet.

I think it could be done, but the type of stories might have to shift a bit.

[Spock/Uhura Fan]

RoJoHen wrote:

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The first thing I would do is get rid of all the Medieval villages.

There you go!

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I liked the idea of exploring another galaxy, and seeing beautiful wonders, and meeting new civilizations/fighting new enemies, so the Atlantis idea worked best for me. Where would I have Stargate go? Reboot Atlantis, and really DO it this time.

So much of that series was half-baked. Had they actually done world building, better defined characters outside of a couple of favorites, really built better defined cultures (like the Athosians), had us really learn more about the Ancients, really built up and defined enemies (see the Genii and Wraith...), explored the city for real, and really explored the galaxy more, all with good drama, action, some comedy, and great lore, then the series would have been EPIC!!

Even with missing out on its full potential, though, the half-baked iteration of Stargate is the best from my view, then SG-1, and well, SGU had too many problems for me...

[teacake]

My love of SG:A is influenced by my Rodney adoration.. also I always liked the word "Atlantis". I think the main cast by the last couple seasons worked very well together and developed a lot of chemistry, the show really became more about that chemistry than about the wraith or the galaxy.

[Spock/Uhura Fan]

And I think it was that chemistry that kept it going for the fans. The stories might have been half-baked (especially in the last years), but the chemistry wasn't.

[teacake]

I completely lost track of wth was going on with the wraith in the last few seasons, and I was watching the eps back to back. How many times were they abducted, lol. Trapped on a wraith ship or base OMG OMG again. Rodney panics and babbles and Ronan blows stuff up. And forget about the missing Borg infant, WHERE is Teyla's baby?

God I loved that show.

Also Vegas was the greatest thing ever.

[gturner]

They screwed the pooch by going to another galaxy where there were apparently only two different races, forming about three groups, and none of them were really worth talking to. An entire galaxy, with basically nothing in it. The only emptier place was the Ori galaxy in SG-1.

When SG-1 was in its early seasons, the team was running across all kinds of things, from the fish man looking for his lost wife, the little crystals containing sentient consciousness, the funny little mushroom trees with sentience and funny little elf helpers, the torment of Tantalos planet, the planet where everyone was in the matrix, the planet with the Dom Deluise entity, many planets with weapons that could stop the Goa'uld, both destroyed and still functioning, the planet with the Wormhole Extreme! creator, the Nox, and of course a variety of primitive or Goa'uld worlds. And we were just starting to explore. As time went on it came down to Asgard, Replicator, Goa'uld, and finally just Ori and a few Jaffa worlds. SGA reduced that down, to seem like a galaxy with a dozen planets and not much variety, instead of presenting a new galaxy with even more wonders. SGU was like flying through a post-apocalyptic void in a prison bus, looking for derelict gas stations.