Stargate Universe

[BouncyCaitian]

Is it just me or is the show really this bad?

A pilot should not put the viewer to sleep. And has far too much feel of Ron Moores Battlestar Galactica for my taste (The great brown and grey depress-a-thon that it was)

Let's see: People at each other throats for really very little reason. Check.
Over-the-top Melodrama. Check.
Ship done out in brown, rust, and tarnished metal. Check.
We have no idea where we are going or what's going on. Check.
Ultra-smug Scientist who's face you would like to cave in because he grates on the nerves. Check.
Gratuitous Sex Scenes. Check.
Existentialist, Nihilist themes. Check

Do I really need to go on?

Stargate hasn't jumped the shark on this one. They've Jumped through the Stargate to the Pegasus Galaxy.

What tripe

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I've never been a big Stargate fan, but you're really selling this new show to me.

[Dan Gurden]

I wasn't too impressed.

But then they lost me during atlantis when they started recycling some of the old plots in the middle season.

But I try to give it a fair hearing, and watched the first three. And promptly forgot number 4 last week. From first impressions it felt like they were trying too hard to recreate the recent success of BSG with the darker edge, when the SG series has always seemed to be a much lighter tone, closer akin to Star Wars and Trek in its black and white hats for good and bad.

The scenario of the ship just felt like a direct recycling of Atlantis, minus the preperation, and then they forgot to add either characters that you care about (no. Directly transposing the average Sci-Fi geek target audience into an on-screen character does not mean we immediatly care about him), and then decided to go for a realistic science-fact enemy (yes, being able to breath is a very i,portant staple in space ravel, but making this the main 'enemy' of your 3-part pilot does not translate into entertaining TV).

If they wanted to go down the Science-fact route thats fine, but this being Stargate, I suspect that this is not actually going to be the case.

End of the day. Its harmless. And growing up in the 80's I remeber a time when there was bugger all Sci-Fi on telly, and long may we get a regular show or two. (Although it would be nice if TPTB could re-evaluate which shows should carry on a season or two and remember that sometimes its good to go out with high viewing figures than to keep going until you bored averyone to death.

Learn from Trek. Too much, too long, non-stop killed off the franchise for a few years. And the same seems to be happening with Stargate, and Doctor Who... Now has a Fourth spin-off with the new K9 series... Please dont kill off doctor who... We waited too long to get it back!!!

[Tricky]

Case in point about the new show: I guessed how the latest episode would end, by just watching the last few minutes of the previous episode.

And yeah, I didnt think the ship would be destroyed, but I shouldn't be able to EXACTLY FIGURE OUT THE ENDING DOWN TO THE MOMENT IT HAPPENED, either.

And I'm tryin to figure out who the characters we're supposed to like are. Even on big bad gritty BSG, you had people you liked from the get-go. So far, the only one that seems likable is the geek kid, and he's just wish-fulfillment for the fans.

[Tobian]

it's just you, I am loving this show!

and I like all the characters, because they aren't perfectly prepared for this, it's a very cool idea. The only thing which does annoy me is the 'why can't we go home already' whining, which is blatantly stupid: They are FAR too far of the map to use the stargate, with such low power Makes you wonder how the ancients intended to get back, but then they could have just taken a suitcase full of brand-new ZPM's

[Tricky]

Its not that we specificly hate the show, and the 'thrown together party' is a novel idea, its just that this show seems more intent on being "not-Stargate" then being it's own show.
So, instead of obvious white hats and black hats, everyone is wearing grey. They may seem very real, and therefore "gritty", but if I wanted to watch realistic people on my tv, I've got several hundred reality shows to chose from.

Oh, and this ship doesn't take Zpm's.

[IceGiant]

To me it seems just like regular SG but just with the added the ship will kill us.

Instead of dialing random addresses from earth and going thru to explore and what-not the ship does it for you. ANd then you send folks thru to try and find stuff that you need. It's ....nothing new or doesn't feel all that different for me.

[Aldaron]

I am still jaw-droppingly astonished that SG:A was cancelled to make way for this drek. Nine episodes in and I still:
1) Despise every single character (with the possible exception of TJ)
2) Can't see why everyone thinks Dr Rush is a cool character...he's a clone of Lost in Space's Dr Smith.
3) Don't give a rat's about what happens to any of them...in the episode "Time", there is an early scene in the alternate timeline where Chloe gets killed. My reaction was to laugh and say: "Awesome!", followed by disappointment when I realised she wasn't going to stay dead.
4) am Oh-So-Over the BSG-derived "dark and gritty" sci-fi concept. If I want dark and gritty, I'll watch 24. I'd like the future to be better than now, thanks.
5) Think the characters are about the most incompetent, stupid and badly-motivated characters I've seen in anything since BSG. Real people learn from their mistakes unless they're congenital idiots...oh, wait...
6) Get sick of every second episode taking place on Earth via the communication stones (which now magically work through a little blue box instead of the enormous onion-shaped thing from SG-1)
7) Miss the humour of SG-1 and SG:A. Any humour. SG-U simply has none. Real people make jokes, even in dire situations. The only attempts at humour in SG-U come from Eli and are the most pathetically forced and contrived and lame attempts I've seen. (Yeah, we all know what Hoth is. He doesn't need to explain it in excruciating detail to the cabbages around him).

I honestly find it hard to believe SG-U is made by the same people who made SG-1 and SG:A.

[Tricky]

I've read quite a few complaints that the stones, which should have been a plot device have instead became the main focus of the story. It would be like if on NG every single episode took place on, or started and or ended in the holodeck. (ok, think of how the holodeck on VOY became such a big thing, and you get the idea) Some fans have called for the stones to get broken, just to clean up the plot lines a bit.

I do like watching the show, but as I stated before, grim and gritty just for its own sake does not a show make. I mean, they even have those guys DRESSING like BSG characters (apperently, 'Homeplanet Security' gets it's own unique uniforms, which are styled after the uni's of either a fictional show or Nazi stylings? OH, and somehow, they still fit into the chain of command of the other branches of the service). I get it, these people are not the best of the best. But sometimes, they seem at odds even when no sane person would be fighting someone else.

Look at it this way: about a season until they meet a race of aliens that are basicly human, and fit the typical SG villian pattern (big hulking faceless badguys led by smaller, more personable officer/master guys, with some really charasmatic person at the top); and 3 seasons before they get total control of the ship; and 4 seasons before they are able to contact Earth on a regular basis.

[Cut]

German Scifi just aired 'Air' parts one and two.

Gee, that was bad. And it wasn't even Stargate to me. Too bad. Could have used a new SciFi series about now...