Stargate Universe doesn't suck!

[bigdaddy]

I have been rewatching all 17 seasons of Stargate. I'm now onto the second season of Universe and about to watch Malice.

I have to say it's a lot better than I remember from the first few episodes. I'm now, already, kind of pissed at SyFy for not giving it a final third season.

SG1 went downhill, Atlantis did the same, but both were enjoyable a lot of the time. But now I know what the point of Destiny is and that's so cool they are looking for a message from the beginning of time.

I like most of the changes in the show, no set bad guys, alien worlds that seem alien, having a countdown was a nice, very Sliders. The issues of going to alien worlds that don't look like Canada and meeting weird things was really nice change, a MUCH needed change.

However there were some horrible cliche drama, the stones were overused in the first season, The Gould Alliance was just more useless drama, the deaths still felt weird (Stargate was never good with death.), the camera shaking was not needed and above all... it's too damn dark! Literally, turn a light bulb on.

But I really like the overall mystery of the ship and the big meaning of things. Atlantis never fully lived up to the promise of what the show was about, Universe already has that feel 28 episodes in.

 

[DWF]

No, it didn't suck and it orignally planned to be a five year show. But once it was moved to Tuesday night that pretty killed the show.

 

[bigdaddy]

No, it didn't suck and it orignally planned to be a five year show. But once it was moved to Tuesday night that pretty killed the show.

A lot of season 1 was pretty bad.

And it wasn't a 5 year show, it was a 3-5 year show that was based off of an idea for a TV movie.

And one thing I find annoying about all the Stargates...

Sam becomes Goul'd.
Girl Teal'c becomes part Wraith.
Chloe becomes more useless.... oh no that's not possible... I means she becomes an alien.

 

[cylkoth]

. But once it was moved to Tuesday night that pretty killed the show.

More like the bad writing leading up to season 2 is what killed it....

Honestly, all they had to do was give us good Stargate. The template for character driven drama with a sprinkling of action on the side was something they successfully did for over a decade. But instead we got a BSG imitator pretending to be all adult and mature, while ironically making the main characters as childish as possible.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

I rewatched Stargate Universe last summer, and despite it clearly being influenced by Lost and Battlestar Galactica, for the most part I enjoyed it. They did some stupid things character-wise, but something I wished we could've seen more of is, well....Stargate.

By the time Universe rolled around, the whole Stargate world was very well-realized. I wanted to see more of that. More of the new implementation of the Stargate program. More of Homeworld Command. More of the old SG-1 team against the Lucian Alliance. Tie all of that into the Universe storylines...

But it wasn't to be.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I found most of the cast completely dull and uninteresting. Eli and Rush were the only characters of any interest. The rest were simply not worth watching.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Of all three Stargate series, Universe is my favourite.

SG-1 was good, though O'Neill bothered me most of the time, and I liked Atlantis (probably a little more than SG-1 if I'm honest). But there was something about Universe that I just loved from the first time I saw it, such a shame they never gave it a chance.

 

[auntiehill]

EHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........it kinda did. Not like "later-seasons-of-Atlantis" sucked, but it kinda sucked . The show was really uneven--characters with inexplicable motivations, forced, over-blown "personal drama," and laughably cliched music-montage endings. Gah. It also didn't help that most of the main characters were unlikable, boring and fairly inter-changeable. It was trying to be "Stargate:Galactica," and it just didn't work.

 

[The Wormhole]

SGU is the weakest Stargate series. The first season is a horrible mess filled with episodes that are either pointless filler, truly idiotic concepts, or just plain bad. The first half of the second season isn't much better. But the second half of season 2 was actually starting to find its way with a few episodes which weren't bad, and they're started to figure out which characters work and were giving the good ones more to do. But it was too little, too late, and in the greater scheme of things, I don't miss SGU at all.

 

[Corran Horn]

I liked it a lot more than what both Atlantis and SG-1 had become at their ends.

 

[Saga]

but it did suck.

 

[auntiehill]

Yeah, pretty much.

 

[DWF]

We had had some 15 sesaons between SG1 and Atlantis of pretty much the same style of storylines and people were getting tired of it. It does seem odd that there'd be complaints about unlikable characters and similarities to the new Galactica or Lost when those shows were all that original to begin with and notall character need to be likable. And yes the show was doing fine the raings until Syfy decided to end the long running and successsful Friday night summer line up.

 

[bigdaddy]

By the time Universe rolled around, the whole Stargate world was very well-realized. I wanted to see more of that. More of the new implementation of the Stargate program. More of Homeworld Command. More of the old SG-1 team against the Lucian Alliance. Tie all of that into the Universe storylines...

Umm... no. SG-1 had two horrible seasons to deal with that. For 15 years they could have done that, it was boring. The Lucian Alliance was never a real threat with what Earth had tech wise. This is one of the things I liked most about Universe, it left all that grab behind, but with the stones we still got a quick look.

Stargate just started to solve the issues with some super tech from the Ancients. There were no real threats anymore, it was getting stale.

Then Universe looks into a mystery that even the Ancients didn't know. Planets stopped looking like Canada, we had real alien life forms, not human like ones. Things couldn't be solved by finding some super tech hidden on some alien planet.

It was nice to drop all that history for a bit and get back to exploring, I miss sci-fi that explores alien worlds. Universe had that feeling.

I found most of the cast completely dull and uninteresting. Eli and Rush were the only characters of any interest. The rest were simply not worth watching.

I agree. They tried to be a character based show with horrible characters. They is just something about the ship and mystery of the universe and god like aliens that I really enjoy. It's funny because at first I didn't like Eli, but I'd love to watch a show with just Eli and Rush in the ship and a new small crew of real characters.

EHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........it kinda did. Not like "later-seasons-of-Atlantis" sucked, but it kinda sucked .

I remember ditching Universe about 5-7 episodes in, and it's a lot better than I remember and a ton better than the last few seasons of SG-1. Plus I watched Atlantis right before it and that became nearly unwatchable, so I do have low standards.

I liked it a lot more than what both Atlantis and SG-1 had become at their ends.

Yeah, it was a nice change of pace from the shit Atlantis became. I enjoyed most of seasons 1-2 of Atlantis and a lot of season 3, but 4 and 5 were 90% crap.

The characters really do suck, Matt and Chloe are some of the worst characters I have ever seen. The guy playing Matt is probably the worst actor I have ever seen on a sci-fi show.

 

[Harvey]

The first season was awful. I can't comment on season two. I bailed after the second season premiere.

 

[RoJoHen]

I thought SGU was great, and it bummed me out when it ended.

A lot of great scifi shows tends to have crappy first seasons.

 

[sidious618]

I enjoyed a lot of the one off stories in season one, but the season ending storyline was awful and once I saw Mullozzi and Mullie were taking over I knew I was out.

 

[kirk55555]

I couldn't get into universe. The characters just sucked, and it just didn't feel like Stargate to me.

Also, I really liked the last few Seasons of SG-1. Ben Browder and Claudia Black were great as Mitchell and Vala, and while I liked Jack I wasn't so attached to him that his leaving hurt the show for me. I liked Daniel, Sam and teal'c well enough so that they carried the show without Jack, and Mitchell and Vala made it a great cast. I've only seen about one season of Atlantis, I should probably try to get into that show again sometime.

 

[bigdaddy]

I couldn't get into universe. The characters just sucked, and it just didn't feel like Stargate to me.

Also, I really liked the last few Seasons of SG-1. Ben Browder and Claudia Black were great as Mitchell and Vala, and while I liked Jack I wasn't so attached to him that his leaving hurt the show for me. I liked Daniel, Sam and teal'c well enough so that they carried the show without Jack, and Mitchell and Vala made it a great cast. I've only seen about one season of Atlantis, I should probably try to get into that show again sometime.

I wish Stargate SG-1 stuck to the idea of pretty much treating it like a spinoff. I had no problem with the characters, I had a problem with the storyline, the Ori were bad and really not needed.

But honestly they should have just ended it and worried about Atlantis because the first season was the best and everyone after that got worse and worse.

Universe needed to cut out SGC more and stop worrying about funding the project and stupid useless little attacks and worry about exploring and finding new things out in the universe. Something SG1 and SGA stopped doing. SG1 and SGA discoveries were lame or just needed to solve and attack. SGU had "This alien thing will cure us / fix the ship" thing in season one, but it felt more grand and yet more grounded than the other Stargates.

It's really the mystery and the ship and the mission I loved in the show. The fact Canada felt alien.

However in what universe would a Stargate move from a military base to the Pentagon? That never made sense to me.

 

[The Wormhole]

Planets stopped looking like Canada, we had real alien life forms, not human like ones.

That's only true about the first season. In the second, we went back to planets looking like Vancouver's pine forest and we were introduced to humans living out in the distant galaxy. Granted, they were explained as being the descendants of the Destiny crew after they got into some timey-wimey trouble, but it's still another human civilization all the same. Also, we only see humans working for the Lucian Alliance in SGU, though SG-1 showed us they employ aliens as well.

However in what universe would a Stargate move from a military base to the Pentagon? That never made sense to me.

I think it had something to do with the real Cheyenne Mountain base shutting down in 2006, and so the producers felt it was time that Stargate catches up with the real world. As for moving it to the Pentagon, since all the Earth-based action in SGU took place in Washington, I guess it was considered convenient for the Stargate to be there. I agree, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider at this point the Stargate program was supposed to be becoming more international.