Stargate: Universe

Yes, I know Stargate doesn’t have the cachet that other franchises have, but, dammit, it’s got dudes with guns and spaceships. What’s not to love?

Anyway, new Stargate series, set on a starship, premiering this year. Who’s looking forward to it?

I’m a spaceship whore…I’ll watch it. I watched all the others. They get a bad rap but like most long running shows, they had their excellent episodes and crap ones. At its best, Stargate is really, really good.

I will say that their “This is the dark side of Stargate!” marketing makes it seem even more like the Voyager of Stargate than it already did, which is not a good thing at all.

Premise is all but irrelevent. It’s all in the execution.

So, I’ll give it a chance since there’s certainly nothing else good on.

The problem with Voyager is that they promised this completely different type of show than The Next Generation… and it just wasn’t. Still the same squeaky-clean ship with squeaky-clean crew and an infinite number of shuttlecraft.

I will tune in but I am not hooked by the premise. Since the are supposedly trapped on the ship how is this stargate? The whole premise of stargate is you can go to other worlds via the gate if you don’t have that what else is there?
Personally I am not a fan of darker either. Stargate has had some serious stuff but it also has always had a sense of humor. I hope they don’t lose that. It was refreshing in the presence of almost crushing darkness of BSG.

Robert Carlyle as the lead role?! Christ in a crap hat, I’ll check it out just for that.

Even if the premise sounds like a Lost meets Stargate Atlantis being pidgeonholed into the gap BSG’s left behind for gritty, dramatic sci-fi.

Darker? I had read that they were trying to skew younger with this one.

http://gateworld.net/news/2008/08/istargate_universei_has_a_go.shtml

“This is an opportunity to reinvent this franchise and make it relevant to a new generation,” SCI FI president Dave Howe told The Hollywood Reporter. “We really don’t want to be more of the same. It’s going to build clearly off the existing franchise but with a cast that gives it a younger vibe.”

I just can’t get into this stuff. It still makes me mad that a wonderful, beautiful show like Farscape get’s cancelled and mediocre franchises keep going on and on.

I really like Stargate, but I’m especially intrigued with Carlyle here. He’s a terrific actor and should do a great job in a Dr. Smith type role. I’m looking forward to it.

Farscape felt like it’d explored most of what it had to say after three seasons (I’ve been slowly watching the past few months, and only finished season 3 recently, haven’t started S4). The story arc seems to have mostly wrapped up at this point. I’m not sure what stories they have left in S4 to tell, and I’d rather then end before it jumped the shark.

Yeah, I’ve got to agree - with the two movies, Farscape came to an end at a pretty natural point. As attached as I was to those characters, their big story was pretty much over. They’d been defined in opposition to and on the run from the Peacekeepers and, uh, Lizard People… for so long that with the wrap up of that story, there was really nowhere to go. You’re at the point where (spoiler warning!) you’ve got a guy who can kill stars with his goddamn brain, annihilate fleets, and topple empires. You can’t really just tool back down to ‘exploring the galaxy’ or ‘looking for a way home’ after that. Hell, with all the ways he changed, John wouldn’t have been able to deal with a regular life on earth at that point. His transformation from confused astronaut to half-crazy commando wormhole genius was basically the best part of the series, for me - along with the relationships he developed along the way.

Well, that and Wayne Pygram’s Scorpius, of course. Best sci-fi villain ever, or just best sci-fi villain in the past 20 years? YOU DECIDE. THOSE ARE THE ONLY TWO CHOICES.

Watch Farscape series 4, it’s my personal favourite because I think it’s the most consistent in terms of quality, though it lacks some of the experimentation of series 3 and pulls a bit more out of its ass than usual.

Gotta disagree there, I wasn’t a big fan of Peacekeeper Wars and it’s because it was trying to fit a series worth of material into the space of four episodes. Judging from what I saw they really had enough to keep going for one more series before reaching their natural conclusion, they really needed to trim some of that stuff from Peacekeeper Wars.

Farscape became unwatchable when they added the old crazy herb lady. One of the most irritating characters in the history of TV.

Yeah, that decision was screwed up. She added nothing to the plot and was distractingly stupid.

The only reason I have the slightest interest in Stargate Universe is that John Scalzi is working on it, although it remains to be seen whether that’s enough to overcome the inherent franchise suck.

You seem to be confused. This is based off Stargate, not Atlantis.

I haven’t had an opportunity to watch season 4 of Farscape because it’s no longer available on Netflix. However, season 3 is one of the best sci-fi I’ve ever watched. It was experimental, yes, and I think what they did with Crichton was ingenious, letting the audience have their cake and eat it too.

I too think that a season 5 would have wrapped up the series quite nicely.

Oh damn, S4 isn’t on netflix?! :( I hadn’t checked yet.

Experimental is exactly the right word for S3. Come on, the one with him in the Road Runner cartoon universe in his head?

What they did with the character’s story arc that season was excellent for following through with a premise to its logical conclusion. That’s pretty rare on TV, when most things wrap up that same episode

I’d say that’s an affirmative.

Accusing Stargate of taking itself too seriously is about the looniest accusation I’ve ever seen leveled against it. Throughout its entire run, Stargate took itself about as unseriously as it could possibly get away with while still ostensibly remaining a drama.

Haha! That remains one of my all-time favorite episodes. Thanks for the laugh Zylon.

From what I’ve read, Universe will consist of an SGC crew trapped aboard an Ancient’s “Seeding Ship”, which is a giant ship that travels among galaxies manufacturing and dropping stargates along the way. I would assume this will give the writers a couple of paths to explore, form contact with the previously un-stargated worlds that are being seeded to revisits to those worlds worthy of such post-seed. With the tie-back to Earth no longer a factor, it frees them to simply become all “Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” instead of rehashing old plots of “we stirred up these folks, now they’re coming for Earth” and “Oh no, the SCG/IOC/whatever has been infiltrated by aliens (again)!”

With Atlantis they sort of started out that way, but quickly fell back on the crutch of tying everything back in to the SGC, Earth and the same themes we’d already seen played out in SG-1, just with different characters. I’ve read that the producers want to go “more Star Trek” this time, given that there isn’t currently a Trek show in production or development, and that’s where they’ve always wanted to go to begin with. As long as they retain the sense of humor they’ve had throughout the previous two series I’ll be happy.