Now what for the franchise?

[The Wormhole]

If SGU is cancelled, that will be it for the Stargate franchise. No one's going to want to do another TV series, and there will be very little demand for anymore DVD movies. And let's face facts, Stargate may have become a recognizable name the past decade, but it's hardly the most popular sci-fi franchise around. Therefore I'd rule out a revival of reboot at any point in the future. Stargate will fade into the past and be remembered only by us folk.

And I feel like right now, my beloved Stargate franchise could use a return to form.

You mean like the 1994 movie? If you mean SG-1 and Atlantis, all I have to say is... God, I hope not. I prefer the more serious take on Stargate that they're attempting with SGU.

Scoff all you like, but it was SG-1, particularly the RDA years that Stargate was its most popular. And one thing that nerly everyone enjoyed about that era was the humour. And I agree with the reason the writers decided to use comedy as often as they did, to be different from other sci-fi shows which took themselves too seriously. And now SGU is like those other shows taking itself too seriously.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Scoff all you like, but it was SG-1, particularly the RDA years that Stargate was its most popular. And one thing that nerly everyone enjoyed about that era was the humour. And I agree with the reason the writers decided to use comedy as often as they did, to be different from other sci-fi shows which took themselves too seriously. And now SGU is like those other shows taking itself too seriously.

I loved SG-1 and RDA's humor. Still do. But the BSG era was a big game changer for me and that's where I am right now. It showed us that televised scifi could be more than cartoonish characters, campy sets, technobabble, "shields down to 30%" and life-or-death situations resolved in 45 minutes, then forgotten about the next week. When I say I want scifi to take itself seriously, I don't mean they should do away with humor or occasional levity, I mean they should give us more stuff that does away with the campy and overly simplistic aspects of scifi. I want to see some real "what if" type scenarios and that's something televised scifi hasn't done much of. Sure, SGU does have some stylized and over-the-top drama at times, but what I like about it is that it's at least attempting to do away with the simplistic. In that regard, I'd say that SGU isn't like all the rest.

If the franchise did have to return to form, I'd hope that it would be closer to the 1994 movie than SG-1 or Atlantis. It had the levity and adventure people like, but it felt more realistic at the same time.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

GoldenPumpkin, I know what you mean: I like Battlestar Galactica quite a bit, for example. I just don't feel like Stargate Universe is living up to all that, and the humor and camp of SG-1 and Atlantis feels like it was delivered with more quality and oomph for what it was than Universe has given me thus far.

There are a lot of times in the franchise's 'lighter years' that I'd have loved to see the creators take more risks. Did you know it was considered a possibility going into the fifth season of SG-1 that the crew remain stranded in a far-off galaxy the entire season, trying to get home? Sound familiar? They decided against it because it was too risky, so they resolved it all in the next episode, minus the Teal'c thing they (thankfully) put off for one more.

 

[The Wormhole]

I loved SG-1 and RDA's humor. Still do. But the BSG era was a big game changer for me and that's where I am right now. It showed us that televised scifi could be more than cartoonish characters, campy sets, technobabble, "shields down to 30%" and life-or-death situations resolved in 45 minutes, then forgotten about the next week. When I say I want scifi to take itself seriously, I don't mean they should do away with humor or occasional levity, I mean they should give us more stuff that does away with the campy and overly simplistic aspects of scifi. I want to see some real "what if" type scenarios and that's something televised scifi hasn't done much of. Sure, SGU does have some stylized and over-the-top drama at times, but what I like about it is that it's at least attempting to do away with the simplistic. In that regard, I'd say that SGU isn't like all the rest.

BSG was a great show, but it was its own show. It was not tryiny to be anything other than its own show. SGU's problem is that it's trying to be BSG. In seaosn 1 the comparisons may have been convoluted and arbitrary (it's depressing, it has shaky cam, characters have sex on screen, military vs. civilians) but now the comparisons are becoming harder to ignore (hallucinatory characters, mysterious guardians which may be "gods").

I won't deny that Stargate franchise needed some stirring up. Atlantis in its later years was becoming formulaic and bland. However, SGU was not the proper direction. A better approach would have been to either have done another team-based adventure of the week, but with story threads building up to an epic finale each season, or a series aboard one of Earth's starships, which I think can be done in a traditional Stargate sense without becoming too Star Trek like.

And besides, despite all SGU's pretentions about being a relistic show or whatever, it still has cliched supervillains in the form of the Lucian Alliance. While it's true all of Stargate's villains are a bit over the top and campy, you can get away with that on a light-hearted action show since those villains are appropriate to the setting. But when you're trying to be a serious drama, those type of villains take away from your credibility.

Did you know it was considered a possibility going into the fifth season of SG-1 that the crew remain stranded in a far-off galaxy the entire season, trying to get home? Sound familiar? They decided against it because it was too risky

I thought that was just a joke? Didn't someone say in an interview about the S5 premiere "we considered leaving them stranded in the other galaxy, but didn't since we didn't have a robot that would say 'Danger, danger, Jack O'Neill.'"

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

You may be right. It's been a long time since I've been avid in keeping up with Stargate news. I might have gotten things mixed up, but I could have sworn they were serious about it at some point.

It's also entirely possible some delusional fan filled me with that interpretation. You know how it goes.

"Whoa, they should have done that! Ugh! Now I hate this show! Ugh!"

 

[bullethead]

I won't deny that Stargate franchise needed some stirring up. Atlantis in its later years was becoming formulaic and bland. However, SGU was not the proper direction. A better approach would have been to either have done another team-based adventure of the week, but with story threads building up to an epic finale each season, or a series aboard one of Earth's starships, which I think can be done in a traditional Stargate sense without becoming too Star Trek like.

Really, the problem with SGA was that they had tons of older writers who had been on SG-1 at some point and didn't cull off some of them to make room for new writers. Season 1 of SGA was pretty good with the adventure of the week building up to the finale (although it has the opposite problem of SGU S1: there's a bit too much stuffed in there) even though the writers had no idea what to do with Ford and S2 was decent, but after that they kind of couldn't figure out where to go and just ended up spinning their wheels. I think SGU might have been good if they had kept Martin Gero and some of the older writers who wrote some of the better SG-1/SGA stories and gotten a bunch of new writers, then spent a bit more time hashing out ideas in pre-production.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Yeah, the first season of Stargate Atlantis is fairly remarkable. I wish the remaining four seasons were as strong.

 

[Jax]

3 shows and not one of them had a proper series finale .

SG:1 had shows written as "proper finales" (as if they weren't getting a new season) for Seasons 6,7,8 & Ark of Truth.

So it can be easily argued that SG:1 had 4 series finales.

How are any of them series finales ?

Full Circle - Leave Anubis, Daniel and the rest of the snake head plots all OPEN.

Lost City - Leaves O Neill on the verge of death and the snake heads still run the galaxy.

Moebius - Comes the nearest but still the characters need a bit more closure. Jack/Sam relationship and what does Teal'c do now his people are free. Baal the last system lord left still out there.

Unending - Deals with nothing apart from giving Teal'c some grey hairs.

 

[The Wormhole]

You may be right. It's been a long time since I've been avid in keeping up with Stargate news. I might have gotten things mixed up, but I could have sworn they were serious about it at some point.

It's also entirely possible some delusional fan filled me with that interpretation. You know how it goes.

"Whoa, they should have done that! Ugh! Now I hate this show! Ugh!"

I think you may have confused it with the fact that the idea of dialling the ninth chevron and connecting to an Ancient starship on the other side of the universe was originally meant to be the plot of an SG-1 DVD movie.

Season 1 of SGA was pretty good with the adventure of the week building up to the finale (although it has the opposite problem of SGU S1: there's a bit too much stuffed in there) even though the writers had no idea what to do with Ford and S2 was decent, but after that they kind of couldn't figure out where to go and just ended up spinning their wheels.

Season 3 of Atlantis is when they ran out of ideas and season 4 suffered from unnecessary cast changes. Season 5 was getting better, but still suffered from being rather formulaic. "Wraith hiveship episode this week, cliched sci-fi plot next week, Dr. Keller in peril the week after."

I think SGU might have been good if they had kept Martin Gero and some of the older writers who wrote some of the better SG-1/SGA stories and gotten a bunch of new writers, then spent a bit more time hashing out ideas in pre-production.

Martin Gero did write the episode Lost, which was pretty decent by SGU standards. And he actually was pretty good at character-driven episodes, having written Sunday. Though Sunday would have been better had it been what it was originally intended to be, a quiet episode showing everyone relaxing and enjoying a day off as opposed being the episode that killed off Dr. Beckett. Still the desicion to kill off Dr. Beckett wasn't Gero's so he can't really be blamed for having his episode usurped in this manner.

The problem with most of the writers on SGU is that they're into writing action adventures, as evidenced by SG-1 and Atlantis. That's fine, that's what they were more comfortable with and that's what they excelled at. But SGU is meant to be a character drama, which I don't think is really their thing, and it's showing. Instead of writng good character drama, they're just writing what they think qualifies as character drama based on what they see in other shows.

The notable exception is Brad Wright, who actually wrote some of SG-1's best character oriented episodes like Threshold and Abyss. If SGU had episode of that calibre, it might be wroking out better than it has.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

3 shows and not one of them had a proper series finale .

SG:1 had shows written as "proper finales" (as if they weren't getting a new season) for Seasons 6,7,8 & Ark of Truth.

So it can be easily argued that SG:1 had 4 series finales.

How are any of them series finales ?

Full Circle - Leave Anubis, Daniel and the rest of the snake head plots all OPEN.

Lost City - Leaves O Neill on the verge of death and the snake heads still run the galaxy.

Moebius - Comes the nearest but still the characters need a bit more closure. Jack/Sam relationship and what does Teal'c do now his people are free. Baal the last system lord left still out there.

Unending - Deals with nothing apart from giving Teal'c some grey hairs.

In the cases of all those, there was a strong notion that direct-to-DVD was where the series was headed next. Well, in the case of "Full Circle", I think there were some temporary delusions of grandeur that they'd be returning to the big screen, but yeah.

As for "Moebius", it's really "Reckoning/Threads" that works as a series finale. "Moebius" was envisioned as a coda. Then they got picked up for another season so they started the Ori arc.

"Unending" was just that -- look at the episode title. It was a final one-hour story; Ark of Truth is really where things closed out. Which is why, I believe, I listed that instead of "Unending".

I think you may have confused it with the fact that the idea of dialling the ninth chevron and connecting to an Ancient starship on the other side of the universe was originally meant to be the plot of an SG-1 DVD movie.

Nah. I'm familiar with that as well, but I'm thinking of something else. Ah well.

 

[Noname Given]

This show will get at least 4 seasons as (like SG:A) they want enough fopr striped syndication down the road; and there's DVD etc.

nuBSG was way more expensive; honestly has less syndication value; and for all SyFy management's blustering that it was a 'critical success' really did about as much for th channels 'image' as the name change to 'SyFy'. Hell, the ratings for nuBSG's film 'Razor' were LOWER than ANYof its cheap B movies aired in the same timeslot on weekends; yet nuBSG still got the mess that was 'The Plan' (honestly, it should have been called 'The Joke' as it didn't really working in tying anything together and badly tried to recon stuff in an attempt to make the audiance buy the idea the Cylons - and the series writers - had a 'plan'.

Both SG:U and Caprica will get enough seasons to make syndication for local stations and NBCs 'Universal HD' station down the road (Universal HD shows lots of SG:A episodes still.)

The ratings for the SyFy channel (except for perhaps the garbage Wrestling) are SO LOW in general, it's pretty much assumed that ANYTHING on that channel is considered a 'loss leader' for Universal these days; but again, they figure they'll recover with syndication and other merchadising over the next decade.

 

[Mr Awe]

On a unrelated note doubleohfive I had to do a double take when I looked at your avatar and saw Kirk's face on the hippie dude from The Apple.

I've had that damn avatar for so long now, and you're the first person to notice. Well, the first person to notice and say so. Still...

Excellent job with it! I didn't notice before even though, as a TOS fan, I did note your avatar. That's how well merged it is, so natural.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

I actually hope that SGU gets renewed. Yeah, it's not great but it has been entertaining. The premise is interesting. There's some mystery left to figure out. I think there's enough for the writers to work with if they choose and if they're given the time.

They need to switch to action/adventure mode. And, that's nothing against character driven type shows, but SGU just doesn't have the characters/actors to support that. This week's episode really had nothing going on and tanked because the characters could not pick up the slack.

They may get another season if SF takes DVR recordings into account. And, they might figure out that the series would get better ratings on Friday, or at least give it a try. I can see SGU getting a third season.

Mr Awe

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I have no idea how one can state that nuBSG did nothing for the network, but Caprica is going to get enough seasons for syndication.

 

[bullethead]

I have no idea how one can state that nuBSG did nothing for the network, but Caprica is going to get enough seasons for syndication.

Nah, Blood and Chrome is probably going to be the next big BSG project because it offers the audience what they really wanted: the First Cylon War. Caprica was never what anyone wanted in terms of a prequel for BSG because no one really cared how the Cylons were created.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

That's a big part of why I can't understand what Mr Awe is saying. He seems to think SyFy cares enough about reaching golden syndication numbers to get Caprica, a heavily-serialized series, as many seasons as necessary to that end. Yet at the same time, he claims Battlestar Galactica didn't do much of anything for the network, plus openly admits its syndication value is limited.

Blood and Chrome is, indeed, exactly what many of us wanted. When Caprica was announced, the first thing that ran through my head was, 'the only way this is going to be appealing to a large canvas of fans is if they time-jump forward several years ASAP.'

 

[PsychoPere]

Caprica was never what anyone wanted in terms of a prequel for BSG because no one really cared how the Cylons were created.

Blanket statements are not your friend. I am interested in how the Cylons were created, and I've wanted Caprica since it was announced. I still want it now.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I hope it sticks around another season.

 

[doubleohfive]

On a unrelated note doubleohfive I had to do a double take when I looked at your avatar and saw Kirk's face on the hippie dude from The Apple.

I've had that damn avatar for so long now, and you're the first person to notice. Well, the first person to notice and say so. Still...

Excellent job with it! I didn't notice before even though, as a TOS fan, I did note your avatar. That's how well merged it is, so natural.

Mr Awe

Thanks, but I cannot take credit for creating it. Somebody in the Photoshop thread in Gen Trek made it a few months ago and I just cropped it to avatar size after laughing at it.

 

[The Wormhole]

This show will get at least 4 seasons as (like SG:A) they want enough fopr striped syndication down the road; and there's DVD etc.

nuBSG was way more expensive; honestly has less syndication value; and for all SyFy management's blustering that it was a 'critical success' really did about as much for th channels 'image' as the name change to 'SyFy'. Hell, the ratings for nuBSG's film 'Razor' were LOWER than ANYof its cheap B movies aired in the same timeslot on weekends; yet nuBSG still got the mess that was 'The Plan' (honestly, it should have been called 'The Joke' as it didn't really working in tying anything together and badly tried to recon stuff in an attempt to make the audiance buy the idea the Cylons - and the series writers - had a 'plan'.

Both SG:U and Caprica will get enough seasons to make syndication for local stations and NBCs 'Universal HD' station down the road (Universal HD shows lots of SG:A episodes still.)

The ratings for the SyFy channel (except for perhaps the garbage Wrestling) are SO LOW in general, it's pretty much assumed that ANYTHING on that channel is considered a 'loss leader' for Universal these days; but again, they figure they'll recover with syndication and other merchadising over the next decade.

Neither SGU nor Caprica are cheap shows to produce. SGU probably isn't that much more than the other Stargates, but Caprica is confirmed as costing more than BSG did. High production costs + low ratings = cancellation. Even on SyFy. It's that simple.