[I]t also revealed the upcoming launch of a new digital streaming service, Stargate Command, that will host the new show.
Are these guys nuts? They’re going to launch a streaming service that only streams Stargate? That sounds even worse than the CBS Star Trek plan.
I’m very happy to pay for my shows, and have purchased many of them on iTunes, as well as having Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, but I have no desire to be nickeled and dimed by every show having their own streaming service with their own monthly fees.
Also I’m not really sure on the topic of the show, they’re going back to the discovery of the Stargate in Egypt. I guess it could be fun in an Indiana Jones way, or maybe they’ll go back include flashbacks from Ancient Egypt because Gods of Egypt did so well … It just seems like it’s going to be tough to match the other shows tone, by going back to the 1920s.
Stargate was always just never fully satisfying to me. From the movie to the TV show to the spinoffs, there was just always something off. Such a great idea, and limitless potential. I love the idea. But it never quite hit that potential for me.
MGM is apparently confident that the Stargate fandom is still mighty enough to support the launch of not only a new Stargate series but a new subscription-based website to host it that will boast a wide variety of extras, assets, and new content pertaining to the universe.
MGM’s confidence is misplaced. Speaking as a total Stargate junkie who loved the original movie, loved the SG-1 series and even enjoyed Atlantis and Universe…there simply aren’t going to be enough people who would pay a separate subscription fee just to watch Stargate, especially a Stargate the travels back to 1920 and retells the story of Cathrine Langford, a character that was interesting in SG-1, but not interesting enough to base an entire series around.
While the Stargate program wouldn’t exist without Langford, it didn’t really get interesting until Daniel Jackson opened the gate and the Air Force started sending teams through it. The entire gist of what made Stargate a compelling TV Series in any of it’s incarnations was the week-to-week adventure of travelling through the gate, exploring alien planets and interacting with whomever was found there. This show seems to be set in a time before that was happening. Sounds pretty dull.
Lanford invents a ludicrously delightful steampunky way to activate and use the gate, has years of delightful wacky adventures, but eventually decides it is too dangerous and destroys all evidence of her project, leading to decades of useless stargate syndrome (USS)
Nothing against MacGuyver, but the show woulda been 300% improved by a scowling Kurt Russell.
Stargate SG-1 is okay, but I absolutely love Stargate Atlantis. It probably helps that I’m an academic and David Hewlett’s performance as Dr. Rodney McKay (Physics PhD) is just spot on perfect as an academic who is both brilliant and has a gigantic sized ego to match. The other characters are really great as well and I found the entire cast very likeable.
Also I think Stargate Atlantis has a lot more science fiction and speculative fiction in it than SG-1 does. There’s a lot of interesting stuff with a race based entirely on AI. There’s also a lot more space fighting going on. The Stargate Atlantis team has DS-9 Runabout-like space craft they use and larger Enterprise size space ships that get called in on occasions, and there’s actually a fair amount of space battles that happen. I really enjoyed their space combat. Also there’s another society based on 1950s technology that’s a lot of fun
SG-1 comes across as mostly an adventure show, whereas Stargate Atlantis has a lot more SciFi thrown in the mix. [Disclaimer, I haven’t watched that much SG-1, so maybe it gets better, but although I really liked the movie, I bounced off of SG-1 a bunch of times, and finally gave it another try very recently only because I love Stargate Atlantis so much, and have only got up to SG-1 Season 2 midway through the season so far.].
Finally Stargate Atlantis follows a more modern format, where a lot of its episodes are interconnected. Not always, there are definitely one-off episodes, but the seasons definitely progress with changes in relationships between the different societies and threads and events tying the different episodes together. Actions that occur in one episode often have profound impact on the show universe that colors all the episodes after that.
@BrianRubin and @ArmandoPenblade seriously if you guys like the idea of Stargate, but were disappointed by the first TV show, give Stargate Atlantis a try. I think it’s just really terffic fun. It’s one of my favorite shows ever. Currently on iTunes and Hulu.
Atlantis sounds kind the kind of TV I like, but it also sounds like it has already nothing to do with the things I enjoyed about the original movie, if that makes any sense at all.
That’s definitely my take as well. I really don’t get it. It’s supposed to be setup as a limited 10-episode series only, so if they’ve got a clear story to tell, with a definite ending* in mind, it might be decent. But it just seems a strange direction to take the franchise in, particularly if they’re using it to launch a new whatever the heck it is they’re trying to launch portal/network/disaster.
* One thing I was surprised to discover when I started learning Japanese is most Japanese TV shows are one season only. They have a story to tell, they tell it, and then that’s it. Even if they’re popular, they typically don’t have a second season. I think it really helps with their story telling. Sometimes if they’re popular they’ll have a follow on two-hour TV special, so you can visit with the characters again.
No. I watched it without having watched more than an episode or two of SG-1 and I got along just fine.
I assume you watched the movie. But even that’s not really necessary. It’s not as closely related to the movie as SG-1. It’s in another quadrant of the galaxy, with another enemy replacing the Egyptian god enemies of SG-1. Really all you need to know is what a Stargate is.
I forget what season I stopped watching SG-1, but it was the great episode they were stuck in some time loop and the Col ended up teaching Latin to Jackson. I felt that episode would be the high-water mark.
The later episodes/seasons were we got starflight didn’t appeal to me at all. I liked that humans were basically bumbling around areas they were technologically behind.
I loved the chemistry with the original cast, though.
