The Stargate Franchise - A First Timer's Watchthrough

"Dark" and "gritty" are always very relative terms. For a late 90's sci-fi adventure, DS9 *was* pretty dark and gritty, or at least it could go there without it seeming out of place.

Personally, I have a lot of affection for SGU and I suspect had it gone on longer and continued to work out the kinks it may have been my favourite of the three. As of right now though It just about edges out SGA for the #2 spot.
For me the appeal can be boiled down to two main aspects; the cast had a very strong ensemble (with one caveat) , and it managed to make space travel feel both awe inspiring and *dangerous*. You never really got that from SG-1 or SGA.

As for the cast caveat; I really really really do not care for Scott. Partly because he started out as an immature, vain, insecure fuckboi (not only did his character fail to evolve from this state, he seemed to get rewarded for it.) And partly because for some reason they decided the do the "friendzone" thing with a straight face.
There's a few other aspects that feed into this assessment that I won't go into since I honestly can't remember at which point they get brought up and I don't want to get into spoilers.

As for the domestic drama by way of the stones; thankfully they throttled back on that after the first half of the season as it's my least favourite aspect of the show. I do like it as a concept and it's used interestingly at certain points, but early on they really leaned on it for cheap, tawdry drama, and it almost made me jump ship on this show.

 

I know Scott was Catholic but there was a lot of religious overtones in this one.

 

I just thought it was interesting and good, especially in light of our past discussion about the Ori arc and the role of religion in SG1.

 

And this is where I disagree. I thought besides Rush that everyone else pretty much sucked. You can't have a character driven space drama with such shitty, boring, useless characters.

That said I wish they got a finale third season.

 

This is the first time an "earth" religion has been portrayed on Stargate right? Kind of interesting that with all the stuff about false gods and religions as cults, in their darkest series they would bring in earth religions, specifically Christianity.

 

Yep. Mitchell made a couple of references to his grandmother taking him to church but this the first time we see characters exercising a religion on screen AFAIK. And yes, they chose Christianity to portray too.

I think with that scene of Scott praying, the writers wanted to show Earth religions, specifically Christianity, as a source of comfort and hope in times of great trouble and despair.

 

I always thought Carter was religious based on a couple of implications (the way she dodged brainwashed!Teal'c's question about if she'd deny her god, the way she seemed to be the only one to expect everyone to say "Jesus" when Vala asked about virgin births).

 

Human

Rush reminds me a little of Annorax from Voyager's Year of Hell. He's so consumed by his work that life passes him by. This episode we got a lot of good backstory on Rush's character and I appreciated seeing Daniel Jackson again. Hopefully they can crack the code soon because then those four will not be the only ones left behind. We did find out there is a source within the Lucian alliance. It was an ok episode, but overall I was a little bored from it.

 

It wasn’t that the show was dark. It was because it was boring. Says a lot that not even Richard Dean Anderson guest starring was enough To keep me interested.
I did later from my brother about what the overall plot was about and that does sound interesting. Very comic book like. If they told us that earlier on I might have stuck around.

 

At what point did the writers think having the Lucian Alliance in this show was a good idea?

 

The point where they'd removed the Goa'uld and Ori as threats and had nobody left?

Never saw SGU and not sure I ever will. Reviews of it have been so mixed that I honestly can't tell whether I'd enjoy it.

 

Don't waste your time. However this was a NEW show so maybe act like it and have a new bad guy for it? The season 2 baddie they introduce is amazing and perfect for the show. If they did that shit in season 1 it wouldn't have been so hated.

 

My own experience was that while it starts off rough early on it really improves and turns into something pretty great, and I've seen the same from a lot of other people over the years. Obviously that doesn't apply for everyone but if you're a fan of the franchise I still think it's worth checking out. If nothing else it's a relatively smaller time commitment compared to its sister shows.

 

Lost

There were moments in this episode I kind of fell asleep. Maybe I'm just tired or maybe I'm kinda focused on other things today (Honestly, with current events happening in our country it is hard to be focused on this show), but despite that there were many things I liked. I liked that Eli, Chloe, and Scott were not rescued at the end. They were gate hopping hoping to fall within the trajectory of Destiny and they were not successful. I was surprised by that. I also liked Greer having to survive on his own and flashing back to his childhood and abusive father (Even though it was this storyline where I was dosing off some). I'm also glad TJ told Young about the pregnancy.

I think I'm going to stop here for the night. If I'm falling asleep during this show, my opinions on the show are impacted. Also, like I said, what is happening with the riots and protests is making it incredibly hard to talk about this 10 year old show tonight. I still hope to finish the first season by the end of the weekend but I had wanted to get further along than I did.

I hope everyone stays safe out there.

 

Back at the time when I was in full fan mode I was able to hold whole conversations in O'Neill's voice with my friend playing Carter alongside. Great fun!

I basically learnt all my English by reading Stargate fanfictions and picked up a lot of O'Neill slang that way too.

Maybe next time TV will have an SGU re-run I'll give it another chance. I think they just finished though. Now that I'm older and have seen more space shows, I might see it with different eyes. But at the time it was such a different show from what I had come to love, that I figured I don't need to watch a show just because it has the Stargate sticker on it. Life's too short and all that.

And yeah, I got the feeling poor RDA did not have a clue what he was doing there when they brought him along to burst up ratings.

Some pages back someone in here mentioned he wished he wrote a book? Never going to happen I'm afraid. He's a too private man for that.

 

The humour and sense of fun was the whole appeal of the Stargate franchise back in the day. Stargate works best as escapist entertainment, which is largely a reason why SGU failed, IMO. And besides, if anything SGU is the one that feels like a product of its time given how obviously it's trying to ape BSG.

If they still want USAF support, they're still going to need to provide a positive depiction of the USAF. Even SGU did that with the only military characters who were definitely not positive portrayals being Greer and the depressed guy who was hoarding rations and eventually committed suicide in the first half of season 1 were in fact Marines.

Spoiler

And before anyone brings up Telford, yes, he was Air Force, but we eventually learn he was an asshole because he was victim of Lucian Alliance brainwashing. After that's undone, he becomes a perfect nice guy and strong ally of the Destiny crew.

Another situation where the actress really was pregnant and they figured the easiest thing to do was simply incorporate it into the show. Trying to hide it in this instance could have created problems given the nature of the show, how do you explain TJ's sudden absence when the actress needs time off to give birth?

Sort of. Yes, Scott does say a prayer in one of Eli's kino interviews, but later on when we see the rest of the crew praying, Scott's not with them having already boarded the shuttle that was meant to evacuate the chosen survivors off the ship.

Well, that's not too surprising given Christianity is one of the more common religions in western society and the US. Indeed, I suspect the main reason why SG-1 always avoided actual religions was because so much of what they did on that show was deconstruct religion and religious belief, but they didn't want to touch any religion which are still being practiced on Earth for fear of offending anyone by saying "you're religion is totally bogus."

I got the impression Carter probably had a religious upbringing but stopped following as she got older. She does comment in the first season when her and Daniel are sneaking into a Jaffa temple "it's been a while since I've been to church." Jacob was implied to have some sort of religious belief when we see him in the hospital talking about God and Heaven in The Tok'ra story.

 

As I said, not something that’s aged well in my opinion.

I think SGU has a lot in common with Another Life, which was enough of a hit for Netflix to go out of their way to make S2 and a possible S3 happen. I don’t like either show, but SGU was accidentally ahead of it’s time, as its general tone and style is now the standard aesthetic for modern globally-appealing science fiction.

 

Well, that's a good reason to do that kind of story then. I didn't know Huffman (The actress who plays TJ) was pregnant at the time. Good for her, even though having just seen it with Luttrell in Season 4 of Atlantis, I guess the timing is a little impeccable.

 

Sabotage

This episode had my full attention so by default (lately) it was a great episode. I loved how they used the stones here, calling in a hyperdrive expert to come in and help fix the FTL systems so the Destiny can make it across the void. I think ever since "Life", the writers have started to use the Stones better and I like the idea that if you need an expert or just help with someone, that someone is just a stone-call away. I wasn't really a fan of how quick Eli, Chloe, and Scott made it back. We spent an episode and a half with them being left behind and then, woosh, they are found. The reason for them being back was too quick and too simple as well. I loved the relationship between Nick and Mandy and just learning more about them. Also, Nick and Young are finally working together for the greater good is helping move this plot forward. It seems like this episode finished some of these storylines, like the ones dealing with the aliens and set up a new mystery on what happened to Franklin. Overall, this was a whole lot better than the last couple and, like I said, I was into it the entire episode, so that was a huge plus.

 

You are getting close to the S1 finale, "Incursion Part 1 & 2". I don't think it is as good as the SG1 or SGA season finales but it is a climax in the SGU story arc.