Stargate: Atlantis series finale

I did like the 2 SG-1 movies. Perhaps they can make an SGA movie not suck.

This isn’t so much sacrilege as inexplicable.

SG:A was simply a victim of limited budget. Ever since the last couple of seasons of SG:1 the producers have been trying to take the franchise in a new direction that incorporates more zipping around space, using alien technology and fighting battles and whatnot. SG:1 was great in it’s initial seasons because the formula was simple, send team through gate, explore weird new world, perhaps fight some aliens or advance a continuing backstory plotline, lather, rinse, repeat. Once they gave humans faster-than-light drives and energy weapons for their spaceships it simply became Star Trek in modern trappings. SG:A was originally meant to capitalize on the formula from the original series (exploration and first contacts) but quickly became more of the same Star Trek-lite far, especially after SG:1 ended.

The new series is simply the culmination of that direction for the franchise. Stargate will finally get it’s “boldly go where no man has gone before” setting, complete with enormous spacecraft to jet about the galaxy in and a whole universe of as yet uncontacted aliens to discover. The fact that Paramount has all but conceeded that there will be no more Star Trek TV shows in the near future cemented the deal. Stargate’s producers want to create the next Star Trek, but Sci-Fi only has the budget for one big space-themed show, so even with decent ratings SG:A is being sacrificed to move to the next level with SG:U.

As for the series finale, I found it rushed, disjointed and disappointing. I thought they should have given it more time and thought, creating something that would close the book on that mythos for good and give closure. Though I suppose if they do plan to produce more shows via movies/DVDs then it makes sense that they did it the way they did. I just hope the SG:A movie(s) don’t turn out like the Babylon 5 stuff they produced after that show ended. Legend of the Rangers anyone? Ugh.

My main issue with the Atlantis Finale is that Joe Flanagan is not a very good actor and therefore couldn’t really sell the conversation with Amanda Tapping about the passing of General Hammond. That scene fell flat and was a disservice to Don S Davis.

The rest of it, enh, whatever.

Ben Browder was the original choice for Joe Flanagan’s part, but couldn’t do it because he was shooting the Farscape movie at the time.

Really? Damn… they should have just killed off Sheppard and brought in Browder when he became available.

That gets down to my primary complaint with Atlantis-- the cast as a whole always felt like a weak, watered-down version of the SG-1 cast, missing the ensemble chemistry that made early SG-1 so watchable. Sheppard was a low-rent O’Neil. Ronon was an angsty, surly Teal’c. McKay was a twitchy, annoying Carter. Teyla was a hat rack. And Weir… Weir was Janeway.

I agree they had nothing to compare with O’neil (and Teyla was really, really boring), but I actually think Mckay was about the one thing that made the show passable.

Also, Ronan lines were sometimes so over the top they were (unintentionally?) hilarious.

I liked the addition of the Ronon character. It finally gave them an alternative outlet for humerous dialog other than Sheppard’s constant low-key sarcasm and McKay’s whiney annoyance factor which were both very old by that point. I also liked the inclusion of some of the perimeter characters more in the last season or so, people like Radeck, Major Lorne and Dr. Keller, all of whom added some depth to the show. I thought that the writers/producers seemed to finally be hitting the mark with these past couple of seasons, moving away from rehashed SG:1 plotlines and doing interesting things with “Todd”, the Travelers and some of the other stuff. Still, at it’s core it was always just SG:1 in another galaxy, with the core team having all the adventures. It always amazed me that as intergal as Rodney seemed to be to Atlantis’ daily survival they would let him go on missions still. Everyone else was pretty much expendable, but any military organization worth it’s uniforms would have grounded McKay as soon as he proved he was so vital to the continued success of the operation.

I assume that Stargate:Universe will solve this problem by throwing lots and lots of redshirts into the mix.

I actually think they probably made him the best ‘villain’ of the whole stargate series. He really seemed to have pretty believable motivations (to the point of making making the Atlantis people seem unreasonable), and beyond that had rather non-idiotic schemes.