Oh. I saw that part but didn’t think it was meant to be BSG. More Smallville or that X-Men ripoff one. Or just generic teen angst show.
The Sci-FI Channel said that Farscape was prohibitively expensive – around $1.5M USD per episode. Rockne O’Bannon (the show’s creator) once said that Rygel was the most expensive alien on TV. Also, 35mm film. It was around a half a million less per hour than Buffy or Enterprise – but my guess is that Farscape simply didn’t have the merchandising muscle to offset the production cost, even though that was split 50/50 between Sci-Fi and Henson. The channel’s then-owner Vivendi was also reported as not being in good financial health, which might have contributed to its cancellation.
firefly never had a chance, you can look at the many threads on this board alone for the story if your interested.
That being said this is a guilty pleasure show for my wife and I. Since it went to the sci fi channel we’ve been able to watch it with my kids as well. Some of the episodes have created some very nice conversation starters with them. So we really enjoyed this episode, very much made for fans of the show.
My wife and I watched the first 7 or 8 seasons of Stargate and liked it a lot but once the Goaouaououooolld became less of a presence and the Orai arrived we sort of lost interest. Of course that was also around the time McGuyver left the show so that was probably a big part of it. Still it’s a fun “popcorn” show.
Stargate SG:1 and it’s spinoff Atlantis are not hard core SCi-Fi in the least. They work because they have decent writing, entertaining stories that are sometimes encapsulated in a single episode and sometimes part of a long term story arc (the variation helps keep it fresh), and most of all a great ensemble cast that bring their characters to life better than most shows on television.
A snarky male lead (O’Neil, Mitchell, Sheppard), strong female roles and a multi-dimensional supporting cast all combine to make the shows stronger than you would expect from a Sci-Fi show, and broaden the appeal. I know several women and teenagers that aren’t into Sci-Fi but will watch Stargate regularly.
The 200th episode was pretty funny. The Farscape ripoff was the best one, especially the line the film producer gives at the end to Valla, something like “OK, you got me, I have no idea what show you’re talking about”.
I cracked up at that line, particularly because my wife and teenage daughter were watching it, and didn’t get it. It was doubly funny because Claudia Black was telling the producer the idea.
http://www.gateworld.net/news/2006/08/istargate_sg-1i_cancelled_iatlan.shtml
The future of Stargate is in question today, as SCI FI Channel has cancelled the long-running Stargate SG-1, Multichannel News reported today and a GateWorld source has confirmed. The news regrettably follows the airing of the show’s milestone two-hundredth episode on Friday.
Stargate Atlantis, meanwhile, has been renewed for a fourth season, with the network hoping to see that the spin-off series can stand alone, according to a source.
:(
There’s a few rumors around that say they might just relaunch the show under a new name, like “Stargate Command or something”, or that they’re readying a 3rd Stargate show.
I’m sad, but not that suprised. Ever since RDA left, the show hasn’t been the same, and I have a feeling that that’s what has caused a drop in the ratings.
Sci Fi channel has also been really mishandling a lot of the shows they’ve had (Dr Who being a good example) and making some questionable programming choices … I mean, wrestling?
Yeah I stopped watching it as often after RDA left as well. I remember reading the interview Ign did with him saying that he would like to be in a few more episodes. I still don’t understand what scifi has to do with wrestling.
Ouch that really sucks about Sg1 being cancelled, and after the big 200th no less.
edit: I just remembered on last year’s stargate inside episode, Claudia Black said something like “Let’s hope we don’t ruin another show” to Browler.
Well I guess this means the writers will finally get to dust off that “series ending wrap-up” they’ve writeen like a half dozen times now (every year SG:1 was rumored to be cancelled, every year until now they were renewed).
I does kind of make me wonder though, maybe it’s just with RDA gone, Tapping wanting out, Shanks wanting out and so many new people, they may just “cancel” SG:1 and rebrand Browder, Judge, Black and others as “Stargate Command”.
Speaking as a slavering SG-1 fan, it should have been put down a season or two ago. The show has completely lost that “big scary universe” feeling that made the early run so entertaining. Now they’re buddy-buddy with the Asgard, have their own freaking’ starships, and blow up stars for breakfast. Everything they do now has that bone-tired been-there done-that feeling to it. The presence of Beau “I’m just a simple country general” Bridges isn’t helping.
As for Atlantis, I’m still waiting for it to get good. The entire cast is, at best, tolerable, and it continually relies on idiot plots.
I can’t believe I’m actually doing this but, it’s Browder not Browler.
/killme
We haven’t got Atlantis S3 over here yet, but I thought the first two series were complete crap. No menace from the badguys, main characters so badly written that the comedy doctor turned into Dr. Mengeles between an episode break, and just a total lack of any reason for the show to exist. Spend years and years looking for Atlantis, and what happens? Quick! To the woods just outside Vancouver!
I understand where the people who don’t like SG-1 are coming from, I really do. That said, I fucking love SG-1. Atlantis… eh. But SG-1, hell yes. But seeing isolated episodes of this show just won’t cut it, unless they’re key episodes. The show only picks up when the plot pulls together in your head. The problem is that, while the plot is arguably the strongest element, the writing itself is character-based, not plot-based. This makes it a hard show to just get into. But the following is what I think is the source of its success (with a little of why I like it thrown in)
Not only does it capture the same McGuffin as the original Star Trek (with the same archetypes), but its inner concept is a great one: aliens have been visiting Earth since time immemorial, our mythological figures throughout history are actually aliens making contact with the natives of Earth (us), the Stargate network was really built by an Ancient Civilization which may or may not have been human, and was then used by a scavenger race to enslave the human race, transport them to other planets, thus isolating their respective cultures.
It all ties together really, really well, and the only weak point is the fact that every world they go to speaks modern English. This is, however, unavoidable unless you want to waste time every episode with some translation scene (me, I’d have used a “Babel Fish” approach).
So you take that backdrop, throw in a few shallow mythological references for people who like that, and you put modern-day America into Space. The plot is also fairly cohesive. When they need a new direction, they pick up dangling plotlines from previous episodes and expand on them. Thus, while the show is episodic in nature, it also ties together if not as well as a planned miniseries, at least better than your standard episodic television.
SG-1 also has an unusual fanbase of… get this… classisists. I kid you not, but of the Classics professors I’ve known at my University and two others, a good number of them have been huge Stargate fans. Go figure.
I really like the development of Earth over the series - from incompetent explorers constantly getting their asses kicked, all the way up to major intergalactic power.
Well, the producers are now saying Stargate SG:1 will continue, in some form or another : http://gateworld.net/news/2006/08/cooper_isg-1i_will_go_on.shtml
Not sure of that’s good news or not.
Part of this I do like-- SG-1, compared to most sci-fi shows, has absolutely gobsmackingly excellent continuity. If they discover a really cool gizmo in an episode, they’ll actually remember and use it in subsequent episodes, or go to lengths to explain why they can’t use some seemingly-handy device. It’s the polar opposite of the Star Trek reset-button approach. And they do common-sense things like scavenge the high-tech weapons off the aliens they take down.
But as noted above, the downside of this is that they’re now so technologically fortified that the thrill is gone. They tried to overcome this with the Ori, but fighting gods is so over-the-top that it’s obvious only a deus ex machina (perhaps literally) will save them. And those are boring.
The last seasons of both were just insane - doing a reboot by getting rid of the whole ‘aliens pretending to be gods’ thing by not only doing the exact same thing with the Ori, but getting the Wraith in on the action too. And then doing that great backpeddle episode early on where they all sit around the table and say “Uh, but you know, just because these seventeen different species have done this doesn’t mean there’s no REAL God, okay?”
Me, I was hoping for a Goa’uld called Jehovah.
I dunno, I have a suspicion that the Sci Fi Channel is being slightly influenced by some sort of religious… force. When the Da Vinci Code movie came out, they aired this horrendous “documentary” that totally rips it apart (a littel with merit, mostly without), and then comes to the conclusion, “For the truth on all of this, you only need to turn to one book… it may even be on the shelf in your local library… the Holy Bible.”
You’re only making it worse for yourself!