The Stargate Franchise - A First Timer's Watchthrough

Now that we've reached the end of SGU, any thoughts on how the series might have concluded if it had continued for more seasons? Should Destiny or the crew have eventually come back to Earth or not? And should the series have solved the mystery of the ordered pattern in the background radiation?

 

Tomalak, I want to personally thank you for creating this thread and doing the first time watching. It brought back so many fond memories of great episodes from a great franchise. It even inspired me to rewatch a few random episodes myself... it was saying hello to an old friend and checking on how they've been. Believe me, it was pure joy reading your thoughts and reviews. (And everyone else who contributed their views... I thank you, too. A full treat, the entire thread.) I even got a few insights I never really thought about with episodes I've seen many times... which is ultimately why I love these types of threads and this site.

I think the best way I can sum my feelings up is to echo a favorite ending line from a game show.

If you had half as much as fun I did, than I had twice as much fun as you.

 

Stargate Infinity next?

 

^Do we have to?

 

Hard pass for me. Stargate Infinity which premiered in the early 2000's is basically your cheesy, 90's cartoon. And it has little to no connection to the live action series.

 

I think after what I saw in Epilouge, I saw Destiny becoming a generational ship. The longer they were on it the less important home started to feel and they still contacted home because a of the stones. In terms of solving the mystery pattern, I’m kinda glad they didn’t because your setting yourself up to be disappointed. This would be such a massive discovery that anything less than massive, which is hard to define anyway, would still feel too small.

 

I like the idea of Destiny becoming a generational ship. Maybe inspired by their alternate lives in "Epiloque", the crew decide to start real families on board Destiny and we see, for example, Matt and Chloe get married and have a child on Destiny in S3. I would also envision each season Destiny exploring and having a positive impact on a different galaxy each season. Going to a new galaxy each season would allow for new stories and new aliens like we saw from S1 to S2. It would also mean that by the time we get to the series finale, the Destiny would have made a big impact on several galaxy, truly making a difference in the universe itself which would be really fitting for a series called "universe".

In terms of the series finale, I see a few options:
1) After several seasons of the Destiny making a difference in several galaxies, the series end similar to "Gauntlet". The crew has fully embraced that they are a generational ship with a mission to change the universe and they go off to the next galaxy... the end.
2) The Destiny and the crew sacrifice themselves to save an entire galaxy or even to save the entire universe from some cosmic threat.
3) The Destiny does finally return home to Earth but only after decades have gone by. The series finale could jump 50 years into the future where some of the original crew are still alive but old, some of their children born on the Destiny are grown up, and Destiny arrives back to Earth only to find things have changed a lot. And Destiny returns to Earth and saves the Earth from some problem. The End.

Personally, I prefer #3.

In terms of the Big Bang mystery, yeah, I can see how solving it could be disappointing. Even if you came up with something that sounded cool, it would probably only be cool the first time. But there would be a chance it would disappoint, especially if the audience had unrealistic expectations.

Brainstorming, I do see a few possibilities:
1) The pattern in the cosmic background radiation is evidence that the universe itself gained a form of intelligence shortly after the Big Bang. So the Universe itself is self-aware in a way.
2) The pattern is proof of God or some God-like being that existed at the beginning of the Universe. This option is probably the most problematic as it would probably run afoul of people's religious beliefs. And the Destiny meeting God or God-like Beings could be seen as bad taste or cheesy.
3) The pattern was created by Ascended beings in order to ensure their own existence. It's a self-fulfilling time loop. The Ancients long ago discovered the pattern which led them to build Destiny and eventually put them on the path to Ascension. No pattern, no Destiny and no Ascension. So the Ascended Beings created the pattern to create the timeline that would lead them to ascension.
4) Destiny somehow will create the pattern by going back to the beginning of the Big Bang. So Destiny is actually exploring their own signal.
5) Everybody was wrong. It was all a big misunderstanding and there was no intelligent pattern at all.

Personally, I like #1 and #3 the best.

 

Yeah, even as early as the first season it seemed to me that the central premise of the show wasn't "a search for home" it was "the destination isn't as important as the journey." I mean the ship isn't named 'Destiny' for nothing, right?

Personally I kind of like how they ended the show; both from a thematic standpoint and as a reflection of the end of the franchise. Coasting into an unknown void, everyone in stasis, not knowing when or if they'll wake up on the other side but knowing someone was keeping the lights on and working to make it happen (for those that missed the implication there, in this analogy; Eli is the fandom...which he always kinda was.) It's oddly hopeful AND bleak, which is somehting I often appreciate in fiction.

 

That was the oddest thing about the finale. It was bleak, but it felt very hopeful. Maybe it was Eli's smile, but all throughout Stargate, it was always about the journey, except for Atlantis which they kinda just "brought home".

 

Damn, that's faster than I get through one season of my of the stuff I watch.

 

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus thanking tomalak301 for letting us all relive the glory days of Stargate through his eyes, and also to shamelessly promote the thread in the Fan Art forum about my new 3D model of the Stargate that I began working on pretty much entirely because of this thread. The Stargate party is just getting started!

 

Just finishing my own watch through today. SGU was better than I remembered, would have liked to see that one play out.

 

Now that it's been a few weeks since I finished this, the thing I will say about Universe is it took too long to really get going, and there was a lot of boring elements just to get where it got. I think in terms of character development and usage, it was better than Atlantis, but Atlantis as a whole was much more entertaining. Nothing will beat SG-1 though, as that series everything came together very well.

 

The problem was, I think, is that the showrunners' vision for the series and the characters didn't really solidify into something truly interesting until the second season--and by that time it was too late. Kind of sad that we didn't get more seasons of what could have been a really solid piece of the Stargate "universe".

 

I think SGU happened a few years too soon. I feel like it would have thrived on a streaming service with fewer episodes per season. The story and the tone they were going for has more in common with current shows than with the mostly episodic, generally light-hearted action-adventure shows it succeeded.

 

I agree with this completely. It could almost be rebooted now with whatever cast is left over--set ten years after the initial series--they have been traveling since that time.

 

Didn’t Universe start the season after Atlantis ended? I could see an Enterprise-like situation happening and the writers were just burnt out. I agree, a few years would have allowed the fans to really embrace something new, and I believe the series aired as Netflix streaming was just getting going. Universe would have been ripe for the streaming platform, kinda like how Daredevil provided something new to the MCU.

I am hoping if they ever do bring back Stargate, it is streaming only and maybe they could address Universe somehow.

 

SGU had a flawed approach. It would seem the writers wanted to branch out from the light-hearted action format of SG-1 and Atlantis into more serious character drama. Unfortunately, they had largely the same writing and production staff as they had on the other two shows, who are clearly familiar and comfortable with the light-hearted action format, thus leading to a tricky transition. The first season in particular feels more like writers trying to go intentionally against form, as a result we get a slow plodding show because the belief that this what character drama is, with the urge present at every turn to go into an action shoot-em-up. A common complaint was that the show was aping BSG, and in the period of 2009, merely six months after BSG ended, it's hard to look at SGU and not see a BSG wannabe. It also didn't help matters that the first season focused on the least interesting characters in the show's cast too.

By the second season, specifically the second half of the second season, the show seemed to be getting its shit together. We were getting some storylines that seemed to be holding my attention anyway, and the characters in the main and supporting cast who actually were enjoyable to watch were starting to get heavier focus, but alas it was too little too late.

If one were to Monday morning quarterback this show, it would probably have been a good idea to get someone with a background in arc centred character drama involved with the show in the first season, both in an executive position and among the general writing staff to help guide the other writers transition from episodic action storylines and guide the show into a tighter, leaner narrative. The situation with the characters may have been somewhat unavoidable, as I expect the reason why certain characters started getting more to do in season 2.5 was in reaction to seeing the work those actors were doing prior and writing accordingly. But they still could have avoided some of the mistakes made early on, like the constant heavy-handed implications that Rush was shady, or making Lt. Scott blander than a beige wall but still the focus of so much early on.

 

Just as a warning for anybody who watches the Stargates on Amazon Prime in the US, they will be leaving on July 20th.

 

Stargate Origins?

*two seconds later*

Wow. Just finished the whole thing