• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

You know what, I want more SGU

Brent

Admiral
Admiral
I'm not ready for the series to end just yet. It started off good in S1, then got a bit slow, then picked up, then got slow again, then picked up, while it has been a roller coaster of a ride, I'm just not ready to get off that ride. When it's good, it's GOOD. I want more.

SGU has given us some incredible "Space" SCIFI, remember the first episode the Destiny was flying towards the Star to refuel? Just brilliant that. The physics of space, the realness of space, all of it has shined through in this series. It is proper SCIFI.

Now that we have all these threads in the series: The artificially constructed planet, the possible Godlike aliens, The blue aliens, the drones, the question of where did alt Rush go, Destiny's mission, Chloe, TJ's illness, her baby, the miraculous shuttle, and now this whole new bit with the alt crew's decedents and their fate opening up a world of new stories, and lots of other ongoing plots; I want to see all of these threads resolved! We will now never know how it all ended up :(

I so badly want a Season 3, just one more season, to wrap up all this and bring the series to a finale. This is the part I hate the most, there is no ending, it's like reading the first 20 pages of a book and then burning it. I want to know what happens! I am disappointed, I am angry (mainly at SYFY channel for not giving them proper notice of the cancellation and not giving them another season to end it properly, it's like saying FU to the fans), I am sad, we are near the end of SGU, and the entire Stargate franchise at this point, and this is a sad time for SCIFI fans everywhere.
 
Honestly, at this point I'm completely apathetic towards SGU. I can't say I'm not interested, since the fact that I still watch it proves there's I have some interest in it. But at the same time I'm just not impressed with it. At its best the show is mild entertainment which works best when you're not thinking about it (like Seizure). At its worst, it's complete shit and the worst of the Stargate franchise (like Cloverdale).

SGU simply can't deliver. Let's take a look at things, the Smobreroids went nowhere. They're aliens so intent on having Destiny they're sending a fleet of ships to chase it across the galaxies. Why? We can't find out, damn creatures don't talk. And then, when Destiny was finally on its knees, Colonel Young asks them to cure Chloe and leave them alone, and that's exactly what they do. Huh?

The Lucian Alliance, they want Destiny so bad they're willing to blow up two planets to get there. Apparentally they're intially attracted to it because of the legends about the ninth chevron. But even after learning it's just a run-down starship from the Ancients' early days they still insist on having it. So after behaving like cartoonish bad guys and getting stuck on Destiny, behaving like cartoonish bad guys some more until they get defeated, they get turned into the domestic allies of the Destiny crew.

But really, the show took too long to get nowhere. It took us a season and a half to find out Destiny had a mission, and since learning about it nothing else has been done about Destiny's mission. Not that I care, revealing it had a mission didn't interest me in any way. But really, they should have taken this supposed five year plan that could have been told in one year and told it in one year.
 
My interest in SGU has really waned. While the last couple episodes were quite good, I just don't care that much anymore. Like The Wormhole said, it took too long for the show to start going anywhere.

For comparison, by the time BSG clocked this many hours (including the miniseries), we'd gotten to "Lay Down Your Burdens." Think about how much had happened in the series by that point. Now, compare with SGU. There really is no comparison.

I appreciate SGU's attempts to do something new with the franchise, but it just hasn't been done that well and there's been a lot of padding because the people writing this show just don't know how to do long arcs, they don't know how to effectively characterize, and they've had a handful of elements (like the stones and the pop music montages) that they constantly lean on like crutches.

Whatever strengths the show has, it's hard to deny that it is seriously flawed and it's no wonder people didn't tune in.
 
I'm not ready for the series to end just yet. It started off good in S1, then got a bit slow, then picked up, then got slow again, then picked up, while it has been a roller coaster of a ride, I'm just not ready to get off that ride. When it's good, it's GOOD. I want more.

SGU has given us some incredible "Space" SCIFI, remember the first episode the Destiny was flying towards the Star to refuel? Just brilliant that. The physics of space, the realness of space, all of it has shined through in this series. It is proper SCIFI.

Now that we have all these threads in the series: The artificially constructed planet, the possible Godlike aliens, The blue aliens, the drones, the question of where did alt Rush go, Destiny's mission, Chloe, TJ's illness, her baby, the miraculous shuttle, and now this whole new bit with the alt crew's decedents and their fate opening up a world of new stories, and lots of other ongoing plots; I want to see all of these threads resolved! We will now never know how it all ended up :(

I so badly want a Season 3, just one more season, to wrap up all this and bring the series to a finale. This is the part I hate the most, there is no ending, it's like reading the first 20 pages of a book and then burning it. I want to know what happens! I am disappointed, I am angry (mainly at SYFY channel for not giving them proper notice of the cancellation and not giving them another season to end it properly, it's like saying FU to the fans), I am sad, we are near the end of SGU, and the entire Stargate franchise at this point, and this is a sad time for SCIFI fans everywhere.

I am like you, I don't want it to end. Do a cartoon, comic, book. Something.
 
I hate to admit it, but the cancellation drove me to bail on the final ten episodes. SGU was my first Stargate series, and while I liked it enough to hang through to stay through 1.5 seasons, knowing that it'll end essentially on a cliffhanger that'll never be resolved soured me on the prospect of staying to the end...

As a Stargate newbie, the only thing I had to compare SGU with was the original movie and it seemed initially as a fairly logical extension of that. I understood from various discussions that SG-1 and Atlantis were faster-paced, more action-oriented shows that were lighter in tone than SGU, so this third series likely spent too much time trying to be different from its predecessors and wound up alienating many longtime fans, IMO.

In hindsight, I can kinda agree with the sentiment by some that where the show is now should have been in the first few episodes of the series...
 
I'm the kind of person that loves Stargate no matter how bad it gets. I stuck through SG-1's final 2 seasons, I stuck through Atlantis season 5, and I'm sticking through Universe. I can't get enough Stargate. I realize that when Universe ends there will be over 15 days of material that I can watch, but I want more. I'd love to see a 3rd season for Universe, hell I'd love to see a series based on Novus.
 
Were it to have gotten a resolution, I think it would have comfortably been the best of the three. It already blows Atlantis out of the water for me with half the material, it makes it look like a kids show by comparison IMO. It was always fighting an uphill battle though, even now there are still people trying to approach it like it's a plot driven action adventure, and then wonder why it doesn't measure up.
 
Based on these last two episodes with Novus, I think if the show would have started with that quality of storytelling we would have a quality show. Instead we ended up starting with angsty crybabies which turned me off to all of the main cast. The supporting cast, particularly the scientists, and Lt. James were the only characters that interested me (and James for completely different reasons than say, Brody).

If they can keep up with that they have now, then yes, I want more SGU. If we're going to get more blueberry aliens, and weird Chole, then I'll pass.
 
I loved SG-1, I loved SGA, and I've come to love SGU. SGU definitely started off rocky, and took a season and a half to really find its feet, but now that it's found a good balance between the new style and the old, I think the show has amazing potential, and I hate to see it canceled right when it was getting really good.
Had it been canceled after one season, I wouldn't have cared as much, but now that I see what it's become, I'm more and more sad to see it go. The second half of season 2 has been probably as good as any other Stargate, and it's a shame it didn't get a chance to keep growing. The first 2 seasons of TNG weren't this good. The first two seasons of SG-1 weren't this good. It's a shame that good scifi shows don't get a chance to develop any more, because most of them take longer than a season or two to hit their stride.
 
The first two seasons of SG-1 weren't this good.

The first season of SG-1 definately isn't its best, but it was finding its stride by the end, and I was a lot more interested in its finale than I was with SGU's finale last year. Season 2 of SG-1 is very solid, with many outstanding epispdes that even still rock after all these years. The Serpent's Lair, In the Line of Duty, Family, Secrets, The Tok'ra two parter, Touchstone, The Fifth Race, Holiday, Serpent's Song, 1969. Nothing on SGU matches those episodes.
 
The first two seasons of SG-1 weren't this good.

The first season of SG-1 definately isn't its best, but it was finding its stride by the end, and I was a lot more interested in its finale than I was with SGU's finale last year. Season 2 of SG-1 is very solid, with many outstanding epispdes that even still rock after all these years. The Serpent's Lair, In the Line of Duty, Family, Secrets, The Tok'ra two parter, Touchstone, The Fifth Race, Holiday, Serpent's Song, 1969. Nothing on SGU matches those episodes.

Until the second half of this current season, I'd have agreed with you entirely. SGU's S1 finale wasn't as interesting as SG-1's, despite how much they tried to have going on.
Both had rocky first seasons, and I'd probably say they both had about an equal number of standout episodes, but SG-1's remaining episodes were much better than SGU's, which were quite poor overall.
SG-1 really started to pick up in season 2, and you've named some great ones, especially Fifth Race which set up a lot that came later on, and overall I'd say it's a stronger season than SGU.
BUT that said, I still feel that SGU at the end of the second season (even though we've got 2 more to go) puts it ahead of where SG-1 was at the same point in time. If I had to go episode by episode overall, SG-1 would probably have a clear win. But some of these recent episodes have been as good, if not better, than anything in the first 2 seasons of SG-1 (imo). This final run of SGU has started to show some consistency that to me shows it could have continued to grow through coming seasons, and not just deliver the occasional one-off good episode.
It really depends on how you want to compare them.
 
Whilst comments have made about SG:U differences from previous SG shows being part of the reason for it's failure. I can't help but wonder if it had been more like previous shows and it had been cancelled after 2 seasons. Would we now be hearing comments it failed because it was too similar.

The producers are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. No matter what they do they'll always alienate part of the audiance. Really after 2 similar shows I'm glad they tried something new. Look at the other big Franchise known as Star Trek.

The first two shows where similar, ship of exploratrion. The third show tried somerthing new with a space station setting. The 4th show went back to the ship based setting and was sometimes reffered to as TNG lite. As for the last show many will say it only really started to come together in it's last season as it began to tell the types of story the fans wanted. i.e. Federation building
 
I believe that a light action adventure would have performed better than SGU has purely because that type of show has a broader appeal, at least to the typical Syfy audience, but I don't believe it would have performed significantly better. People like to compare the show with Atlantis, but if you look at the circumstances under which the shows premièred you can see they weren't even close to being on a level playing field.

When Atlantis started it was sandwiched between SG-1 in it's highest rated season, and the launch of the hugely critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica during the summer with 4.2 million viewers to hold on to. When SGU premièred it was on it's own, and in the fall against network competition with 2.3 million viewers to try and keep. And if you look at the first season ratings trends they weren't even that dissimilar, SGA had fallen from a 3.2 to a 1.7 in the space of 7 weeks, though admittedly it did start to recover toward the end. Even so, the comparison really has been unfair.
 
Whilst comments have made about SG:U differences from previous SG shows being part of the reason for it's failure. I can't help but wonder if it had been more like previous shows and it had been cancelled after 2 seasons. Would we now be hearing comments it failed because it was too similar.

The producers are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. No matter what they do they'll always alienate part of the audiance. Really after 2 similar shows I'm glad they tried something new. Look at the other big Franchise known as Star Trek.

The first two shows where similar, ship of exploratrion. The third show tried somerthing new with a space station setting. The 4th show went back to the ship based setting and was sometimes reffered to as TNG lite. As for the last show many will say it only really started to come together in it's last season as it began to tell the types of story the fans wanted. i.e. Federation building

"Familiar" stuff that makes sense and is well done can please the most people, but give the new show become it's own.

Shran in Enterprise is a good example...Being an Andorian, it fulfills the "TOS" fans. Then Jefreey Coombs, with his acting, created a new character that will interest new fans.


Enterprise was TNG-lite in that they basically had phasers, photon torpedoes & shields. i would've wanted lasers & scanners powered by backpacks (i.e bulkier & "lower tech") & no transporters. THAT would have been different.


For SG-U, we got familiar things done lazily (i.e. The Stones) but issed things like funny banter (other than Eli) early on.

i guess the real question is : what makes Stargate, Stargate?
 
Having seen how good it got, finally, I would like more. A series of novels (or even just one) to wrap things up at least.

Mr Awe
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top