Given that we haven't seen 30 episodes of SGU yet, I'm curious how you're passing judgment on them.
Brad Wright comments on sagging ratings
- Thread starter Samurai8472
- Start date
Given that we haven't seen 30 episodes of SGU yet, I'm curious how you're passing judgment on them.
It's been especially clear during what we've seen of the first half of the 2nd season that they're running out of ideas. One week, we had an imaginary family and wedding, the next week we had an imaginary battle.
There's been several good ones too, but they were earlier on.
Mr Awe
There's been several good ones too, but they were earlier on.
Mr Awe
27 episodes. Close enough.
Saquist
Commodore
SGU SUCKS strikes again. I've not seen anything like what the fans are doing. There are about a dozen You Tube videos making fun of SGU at around 25,000 views.
In the entertainment and service biz runs...Word of mouth is carrying among sci fi fans that the show isn't worth watching. Never underestimate word of mouth. The critics that wrote favorable press on the pilot have disappeared while other just plain ignore it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGq-_wWK_PY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CVLP-_sT1k&feature=related
Oh, no he's right. The fans are using You Tube to spread their message as an anti advertising campaign and it's caught Gateworlds notice that they don't allow the use of the name and Bradwrights notice.
Yeah well...that's the press face.
They aren't Ferrari. They can't stop on a dime and change direction. These shows have to run because they've already made them, editing them will make them worse because there isn't much there in the first pace. I think you'll see improvement at the end of this season but honestly the damage has been done.
Indeed. The very concept of the show killed it. Just judging the 5 million Atlantis got in the first episode and the 2 million this show got from the pilot you can tell a large number of people didn't care.
You are so right. They are the Next Berman and Braga. They took such offense at the fans that it really cost them the entire franchise when they should have been kissing up and making it better. I'm finding that many of these producers coming out of the 90's era aren't used to Fan access of this level on the feed back.
Just imagine if there was a forum for your favorite restruant that was like these boards and we could all see that they constantly undercook the leg of lamb and the venison . We would go back knowing that they were ignoring our complaints when their are other places that would treat us better.
Given that we haven't seen 30 episodes of SGU yet, I'm curious how you're passing judgment on them.
It's felt like 60 episodes....
Last edited:
SGU Sucks isn't that influential. Hell, most of their bitching is about Brad Wright blaming SGA fans for SGU's poor performance and Gateworld censoring posts. Hell, if you go to any blog post that's about Brad Wright's comments, it's mostly negative stuff, which indicates that SGU Sucks just happens to be a vocal part of the majority of Stargate fans.
Berman and Braga at least had the excuse of network interference with Voyager and Enterprise. The SGU PTB don't and that's why they need to take responsibility for what they've done instead of blaming everyone and everything else.
If it was any other show I'd dismiss the showrunners as being in total denial. But the fan backlash against SGU has bordered on truly irrational among a very large number of fans. Much of the hate just plain comes down to they don't want something that doesn't depend on the humor and breezy plotting of SG-1 and Atlantis. They want a jokey squad of heroes who go through the gate every week and get into shoot 'em ups with wild plot twists.
Saquist
Commodore
The thing is as soon as you say "Vocal part of the majority" then by social standards they are influential. That's why I said word of mouth is a factor. People always underestimate word of mouth but extensive studies have concluded that even a seemingly small vocal minority can effectively alter the perception of an organization rapidly with out prior contact.
Those studies indicate one person can effectively spread a message to 20 people if that message is received with enough intensity. Marketing and Advertising live by this and Customer Service dies by it. So when it comes to WOM never underestimate it.
What these people have done is fairly impressive.
Where there is blog on Wright they have invaded it.
Last year before Google updated typing in "Stargate Universe" in the search parameters brought up suggestions of "SUCKS" first and second and least 5 other pejoratives.
I think they've done what they set out to do and I think Brad and others have SORELY underestimated them.
Coming from 6 Years of Professional Customer Service I am impressed at what they accomplished in just one financial year.
Indeed.
Still neither handled the fans very well.
Well, unlike you, I see them as a sample of the Stargate watching population and having been on other boards where discussion of SGU takes place, it's fairly obvious to me that SGU Sucks is an effect, not a cause. They just say what a lot of other people have been saying since the pilot in one spot that calls attention to itself. Sure, they might be having an effect now, but they almost certainly had none in the early days of S1 and the fact of the matter is that the writing and characters on this show have never been stellar, which probably contributes more to the show's poor ratings than SGU Sucks.
Saquist
Commodore
Of course, I didn't mean to imply they were the cause.
I was merely pointing out their obvious influence which I have to say again...affected an international search Engine in six months (by January when the show was on it's holiday Hiatus)
And yes while it's true Google does accept bids for link position the engine is also intuitive to the most common search criteria. That means a signifcant percentage of individuals had either frequented SGU SUCKS or it become a fascinatingly common phrase and I will say that the capitalization of the phrase on google mimicked the site's title and as I said...it was always the first suggestion before "bad and awful showed up with out have to type the "S" in the word SUCKS.
Companies pay huge bucks for what these people did.
I visited the Sucks site back during season one of SGU and realized a couple things about it.
1) There were only a handful of active posters(at that time).
2) Their episode discussions were much more interesting than the whitewashed discussions on Gateworld.
3) They all watched SGU rabidly.
I guess I should really revisit the site.
1) There were only a handful of active posters(at that time).
2) Their episode discussions were much more interesting than the whitewashed discussions on Gateworld.
3) They all watched SGU rabidly.
I guess I should really revisit the site.
While there's no doubt that the move to Tuesdays has hurt the ratings (the same thing happened to the already-cancelled CAPRICA), they've been in steady decline since 1x03. Blaming that on vengeful fans of STARGATE ATLANTIS seems kind of silly to me. Personally, I thought ATLANTIS fell apart after its first year and never recovered. I was eager for a series with a darker tone, better production values, and acting talent like Robert Carlyle, Ming-Na, and Lou Diamond Phillips. But STARGATE UNIVERSE has utterly failed to deliver, choosing instead to imitate all the wrong things from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I haven't watched the series since 2x01, and from the looks of things here, I haven't missed much.
STARGATE SG-1 had a rough first year, true, but it also produced "Children of the Gods," "The Enemy Within," "Cold Lazarus," "The Torment of Tantalus," and two or three others I cannot name off the top of my head. What does the first season of STARGATE UNIVERSE have that compares with that? I see "Time" paraded about as an example of what the series has to offer when it's done well, but if that's the best it can do, it deserves to be cancelled.
Either way, Brad Wright needs to take a break from the STARGATE franchise and find a little perspective.
STARGATE SG-1 had a rough first year, true, but it also produced "Children of the Gods," "The Enemy Within," "Cold Lazarus," "The Torment of Tantalus," and two or three others I cannot name off the top of my head. What does the first season of STARGATE UNIVERSE have that compares with that? I see "Time" paraded about as an example of what the series has to offer when it's done well, but if that's the best it can do, it deserves to be cancelled.
Either way, Brad Wright needs to take a break from the STARGATE franchise and find a little perspective.
It was always the humor and general light touch of SG-1 (at least) that made the mediocre writing and general lack of ambition of the Stargate franchise tolerable. Once they surrendered that to the notion that they could and should attempt Drayma they were screwed - there's no evidence at all that this bunch has anything grand to offer.
Saquist
Commodore
That's a little harsh.
I'm sure if SGU was actually good that people would embrace it. The fan mentality is usually obsession to the point of desperation.
We're not see that reaction in this case and it's poignant to the product on the table. You can't blame the fans like Brad does for recognizing a bad product and wanting what came before.
Think about everything you've had a dish you didn't like at a restaurant. Did you not go back to the restaurant even though you had the Chicken Parmesan before and it was fantastic? No most people just get the Chick Parmesan next time.
Exactly and there was some great moments in between that they did dedicate excellent writing too.
I was there too for a while but it's an uncensored site and I found the language too frequently questionable but the discussion was more interesting as a whole. Gateworld is obsessively moderated to a fault.
They have a policy called "say your piece and move on" which means you can Goo Goo and Gaga all you won't but they don't want the same excesses expressed negatively.
You should watch the episode that aired this week.
It really does puzzle me that so many Gate fans are against the new show.
For me, Stargate has always been a mythology that has grown and become more complicated. My view of the new show is that it has successfully turned itself into a more serious drama. The show takes itself more seriously, it takes it's audience more seriously, and this show is a heck of a lot farther away from Wormhole Xtreme than SG1 ever was.
Yes, there's problems with the show, especially with some of the younger cast members. Every time Chloe's life is in peril, I get a warm tingly feeling of hope in my stomach. Riley's death scene, on the other hand, was one of the most horrifying yet beautiful scenes I've ever watched on a sci fi tv show. I also like how the writers have allowed the resonance of that scene to echo on. Watching Young's struggle to deal with his part in Riley's death along with everything else he's having to cope with was the most realistic portrayal of how a real human being responds in a situation like that, and a very honest performance of someone who's found themselves chained to alcohol as their only means of freedom.
Yes, it's similar to BSG. BSG was really among the first sci fi shows to put real human beings into the cast, rather than the derry-do, always-politically-correct-and-perfect-in-every-way space crews that we've seen in Star Trek and many others. As television shows have come through the years, they have become more and more complex, and each time the bar is raised all others have to raise their game too. That's why we have reboots and retellings. We just saw Doctor Who reformat itself, new actors, new production values, and the show gets a new lease of life. Stargate has just regenerated, it's left behind it's 90s tv show format of the show where the brave and always good and right heroes go through a mysterious stargate in a secret military base, where they fight flashy eyed bad aliens that are really snakes posessing a human host, and where their guns work on a "shoot once to stun, twice to kill, and can we please all try to remember to forget that 3 times is supposed to vapourise you in a bad screen wipe".
We still get to see Jack O'Neill, we can still have ratings boosting stars of old shows pop up via the stones, but we have a show now that isn't week after week of renaissance fairs and the same damn forest, there's no twinkly music at the end of scenes with one of the stars standing with a confused look on their face. There's no good guys and bad guys, there's no generic alien race pegged as the long term bad guys, with hoards of mindless soldiers appearing out of nowhere, just to be shot down by the good guys. Those are all good things to not have anymore.
Let's take Star Trek as a parallel example. Voyager was an attempt to just change the actors, change the ship, change the premise of the back story a bit, but otherwise it was the same format that Star Trek had always been. Heroic crew arrive at planet, meet the locals, some stuff happens, the bad guys are unmasked, the bold and righteous crew save the day in the nick of time, there may be a recalibration of the deflector dish involved, and we end with a heartwarming display of crew morale to close.
It's my understanding that a general feeling was that Voyager was one too many trips to the well, and that the show never dealt satisfyingly with the harsh realities of being stranded alone on the other side of the galaxy, and to think that it would still be going boldly with a shiny "just out of stardock" spring in it's step week after week was just unbelievable. Giant gouges were taken out of that ship on a weekly basis, but every week there she was, perfect as the day she rolled out of space dock. Power was on a minimum, but there was always enough for the crew to use away at the holodeck willy nilly, creating entire villages for the crew to get drunk in and have a dance with a holographic paddy. The dangerous and "bad" Maquis just shrugged their shoulders at the end of the pilot and put on Starfleet uniforms for the remainder of the show, with one of their most headstrong and anti Starfleet members as the chief engineer. And let's not even mention what they did to the Borg.
Stargate would have killed itself with another run around the forest with the crew dressed up in ye olde generic villager disguise. We didn't need another pet alien with comedic catchphrases and their quirky insight to our earthly customs. We needed a show that deepened the mythology, brought the production values up a notch to keep up with television in general, and gave us some complex, human characters dealing with their situation as more than just a backdrop.
And we needed Robbie Carlyle
For me, Stargate has always been a mythology that has grown and become more complicated. My view of the new show is that it has successfully turned itself into a more serious drama. The show takes itself more seriously, it takes it's audience more seriously, and this show is a heck of a lot farther away from Wormhole Xtreme than SG1 ever was.
Yes, there's problems with the show, especially with some of the younger cast members. Every time Chloe's life is in peril, I get a warm tingly feeling of hope in my stomach. Riley's death scene, on the other hand, was one of the most horrifying yet beautiful scenes I've ever watched on a sci fi tv show. I also like how the writers have allowed the resonance of that scene to echo on. Watching Young's struggle to deal with his part in Riley's death along with everything else he's having to cope with was the most realistic portrayal of how a real human being responds in a situation like that, and a very honest performance of someone who's found themselves chained to alcohol as their only means of freedom.
Yes, it's similar to BSG. BSG was really among the first sci fi shows to put real human beings into the cast, rather than the derry-do, always-politically-correct-and-perfect-in-every-way space crews that we've seen in Star Trek and many others. As television shows have come through the years, they have become more and more complex, and each time the bar is raised all others have to raise their game too. That's why we have reboots and retellings. We just saw Doctor Who reformat itself, new actors, new production values, and the show gets a new lease of life. Stargate has just regenerated, it's left behind it's 90s tv show format of the show where the brave and always good and right heroes go through a mysterious stargate in a secret military base, where they fight flashy eyed bad aliens that are really snakes posessing a human host, and where their guns work on a "shoot once to stun, twice to kill, and can we please all try to remember to forget that 3 times is supposed to vapourise you in a bad screen wipe".
We still get to see Jack O'Neill, we can still have ratings boosting stars of old shows pop up via the stones, but we have a show now that isn't week after week of renaissance fairs and the same damn forest, there's no twinkly music at the end of scenes with one of the stars standing with a confused look on their face. There's no good guys and bad guys, there's no generic alien race pegged as the long term bad guys, with hoards of mindless soldiers appearing out of nowhere, just to be shot down by the good guys. Those are all good things to not have anymore.
Let's take Star Trek as a parallel example. Voyager was an attempt to just change the actors, change the ship, change the premise of the back story a bit, but otherwise it was the same format that Star Trek had always been. Heroic crew arrive at planet, meet the locals, some stuff happens, the bad guys are unmasked, the bold and righteous crew save the day in the nick of time, there may be a recalibration of the deflector dish involved, and we end with a heartwarming display of crew morale to close.
It's my understanding that a general feeling was that Voyager was one too many trips to the well, and that the show never dealt satisfyingly with the harsh realities of being stranded alone on the other side of the galaxy, and to think that it would still be going boldly with a shiny "just out of stardock" spring in it's step week after week was just unbelievable. Giant gouges were taken out of that ship on a weekly basis, but every week there she was, perfect as the day she rolled out of space dock. Power was on a minimum, but there was always enough for the crew to use away at the holodeck willy nilly, creating entire villages for the crew to get drunk in and have a dance with a holographic paddy. The dangerous and "bad" Maquis just shrugged their shoulders at the end of the pilot and put on Starfleet uniforms for the remainder of the show, with one of their most headstrong and anti Starfleet members as the chief engineer. And let's not even mention what they did to the Borg.
Stargate would have killed itself with another run around the forest with the crew dressed up in ye olde generic villager disguise. We didn't need another pet alien with comedic catchphrases and their quirky insight to our earthly customs. We needed a show that deepened the mythology, brought the production values up a notch to keep up with television in general, and gave us some complex, human characters dealing with their situation as more than just a backdrop.
And we needed Robbie Carlyle
Last edited: