Stargate Universe Discussion: ‘Air’ Part 3
Oct 10, 2009 by Bruce SimmonsThis is a short follow up to the second episode of Stargate Universe (SGU). The 2-hour premiere of SGU was counted as 2 episodes. That’s …
This is a short follow up to the second episode of Stargate Universe (SGU). The 2-hour premiere of SGU was counted as 2 episodes. That’s why last night’s (Friday, October 10th) episode, ‘Air’, is noted as part 3.
Without much character development needed in this episode after what was established in the premiere, the story moved forward and I found the pace of this episode a bit easier and more enjoyable to follow.
If people came back to give the show a second chance, I think they will be pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the episode this week and thought it was much more engaging and worth my while.
There are some form of SPOILERS following the break, so be warned.
Stargate Universe expounded on the use of the communication stones and it was odd trying to wrap your mind around the idea of the character we were seeing actually being in a different body. It looks like we will have ample opportunity to see the operations on Earth, if the creative forces behind the show do indeed employ the stones more often.
Though we know the crew only has 12 hours to go off-ship when the Destiny stops, I felt it was awful early on in the series to see how the teams will be constantly rushing against the clock.
Now tell me, if Dr. Rush had asked you to stick your arm in the event horizon in the hopes of engaging a safety feature of the ship, would you have just told him to do it himself? I’m just saying.
My new hero: Now tell me that Msgt Greer (Jamil Walker Smith) isn’t your new hero, the way he was kicking Dr. Rush around on the planet? LOL. Sure, he might be a little off his logic-rocker, but I’ll give him this one, for now.
I found it fascinating that when the Destiny drops out of FTL flight, it knows what Stargates are safe and not by locking out the dangerous addresses. Though the crew found a work-around and it seems we lost 2 crew members as they disregarded the idea of a dangerous gate address.
We also have a new mystery of sorts to look forward to in Stargate Universe – Anyone notice the blue shuttle / ball / probe thingy launch itself off the ship while the Destiny was in FTL? Any thoughts on what that was? I have an idea but I’ll share later on in the comments!
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I dunno, this show just tries too hard to be more like BSG than Stargate. BSG had the almost same premise (a bunch of different people alone in space with limited resources, fighting for leadership among themselves). Even shaky camera and FTL is a blatant ripoff from BSG. I don’t understand why did they do this? Stargate has 15 season of mythos. Stargate made it’s own in Sci-Fi world, made itself a separate entity from star trek and other series. And now it’s all gone to waste. You know the parody episode from SG-1? Stargate teens? Well, this is it. For real. If they wanted to to something different, they shouldn’t call it Stargate, because this, this is no Stargate.
@Huggy
LOL, I thought about that too, the episode was called 200, and they had a bunch of parodies, they even parodied Farscape when they had two of their cast members!! lol!!
Yah, one of the ideas was to make Stargate “edgier with younger and hipper actors” and yah, it has a lot of similarities to this Stargate, even the random making out between the two teens can be like that random sex scene in this show, hahaha.
Ken j, im well aware of the hirearcal positioning of a “butterbar” dont see the relevance of it but what the heck(just because i dont see it mean dont mean its not there, just means i dont see it ). I dont think rush is anything more than a scared,hotheaded little man with as you acurratly called it “a chip on his shoulder” the ONLY thing i liked about him was the way he handled Rush on the planet ,It was a little extreme but that contrast was needed for future episodes. miltary bearing was quite lax re: shirt, but to be fair I doubt ANY of the military caracters were concerned with spitshined boots, gig-lines,loose threads on the fatigues ETC-ETC.
Well being a fan of both Stargate SG1 / Atlantis and BSG, i liked the premise of the show, but after watching the first 3 episodes its become apparent that Someone just said “Lets just do an Edgier Stargate, with a BSG feel to it!” I was really looking forward to it. But in trying to do both they have seriously fallen short on both ends. Hopefully the stones will stop working soon and the Cameos from the old shows will stop as well. Than i guess we can see more air time given to character development of the new crew.
Not a fan of Stargate in general but a huge fan of BSG. Agree with most of the comments up there. I am not clicking with any of the characters – even after three episodes the only one I find interesting is the Robert Carlyle character ( I can’t even remember his characters name- oh, right, Rush). If there is more character development and better writing in general I may keep watching. Right now I am watching Dollhouse and DVRing SGU and sometimes I forget to watch SGU for a couple of days. Not a good sign.
Can we call it what it appears to be trying to be?
Stargate BSG
@Huggy – EXACTLY!!!!
You know, I can’t find the ratings for Friday’s episode (Air3). This makes me think that they can’t be that good. Last week, they released the ratings numbers immediately, and they were only so-so.
@ isk,
‘Apparently the “powers that be” are only looking for new fans and don’t care to retain the fans that built the Stargate success.’
I am one of those new fans. And I can say one of the things that always bothered me about SG1 (never watched Atlantis) was its hokey-ness. I can totally understand why loyal SG fans are worried about the “dark and edgy” new star gate, but for my money, this is the kind of direction I always wanted Stargate to take.
I also think they have hit a home run with the Eli character.
Huge BSG fan, and while this is nowhere near as good as BSG, I am gonna give it a chance because, well, what else is there right now?
@ Dan Lister
it’s better if we call it Stargate babies.
Or even maybe Stargate Hills 90210?
I hope, like someone else said, that they cancel this and divert the funds to making some really cool SG-1 and SGA movies, lol. I need to start watching SGA…
@Evan
I really hope you recognized all of the gimmicks they used in this. Even IF you like this style, you should still have recognized that they were basically just going “oh, let’s put this here and do that here because that will seem edgy and cool and will get BSG fans to watch it.” It’s so blatantly obvious…
But then again, BSG was full of gimmicks, so maybe you guys just like that kind of stuff… I personally just hate it when the show is obviously trying hard to be dramatic. Like they were aiming for the emotion and worked the story around it instead of having a story on mind and it just conveys that emotion because that’s what the story called for. Get what I mean? In this and a lot of BSG that I’ve seen, it looks like they were trying to get some reaction from the audience and they shape the story around that, so sometimes it seems so contrived…
Not stargate bsg guys, stargate voyager
@Huggybear-
Stargate Hills 90210 would require younger actors, playing self-centered, rich yuppie-spawn.
@tod-
Alas, we lack a female commander who sounds like a power-mad dolphin…
@Ken J
Of course. Every show has gimmicks. I am not saying that the show is pure gold. I AM saying that it is interesting. The premise is good. There is definitely some melodrama, and BSG had that too, but it was far from contrived. In spite of the sometimes forced drama (which I may say that most shows have), the story of BSG was great.
And I think SGU has similar potential. The problem it has to overcome is to be different enough from what it can be compared to: BSG, Voyager, and the other SG shows. It has to offer enough originality to avoid that. After 3 episodes, the jury is still out.
But they have kept me interested so far.
@Evan
I never said anything against the story. Quite the contrary, I thought the story itself was somewhat interesting, it was the execution that I didn’t like. I didn’t like any of the young actors’ acting, NONE of them were convincing, some were tetering on annoying. And all of the forced drama is so noticeable, same with BSG, that’s why I didn’t really like that either, it’s not because of the story, I actually watched a lot of the original BSG, reruns on Sci-Fi, I’m not old enough to watch them when they first aired, lol. So I didn’t mind the story, I just really really hate gimmicks, and all of this forced drama, and forced “edgy-ness” with that pointless sex scene, all of the crappy shakey cam that’s so popular now, I find it all pretty annoying…
Hopefully they were just trying to make an impact with the opening episodes and the rest would settle down a bit… Might not be what you want, but I’m sure most Stargate fans would like that. And seeing as how this is called “Stargate” Universe, that would make sense to not completely ignore the many loyal Stargate fans. Just like you wouldn’t want the next series based on the BSG universe to completely change their formula…
So far I think things are so so… Things are different and I will just have to wait to see how they plan out.
1. to the people that were wondering why gouald ships were attacking in the first episode, remember the lucian alliance from the later seasons of sg1. think about it before you ask stupid questions
2. Rush is already starting to get on my nerves.
3. Chloe is an unnecessary character
4. Eli will turn out to be a well liked character
@Tod
Lol!!! Stargate voyager made me chuckle! But seriously, does anyone remember the commanding officers name? That’s how poorly I think the writers have introduced his character. And like I said earlier I have seen that actor in other television series and is a capable actor.
And is the show just using Lou Diamond Phillips name value alone. Of course his name isn’t what it used to be. But how much can they use his character if he’s still on Earth.
I did like Fridays episode better than the premiere but they need to pick up the pace before viewers abandon ship.
And as I read more comments it becomes clearer to me that they BSG is not the only show they are imitating. Is it me or did that scene where Eli meets general Oneal and Dr Rush was borrowed from another movie or something. Somebody help me out.
JAMES:
There are no such things as stupid questions. Not everyone catches every detail of every episode from the last 15 years, and if they did, they may not have remembered.
Give ‘em a break and don’t be so harsh.
Thanks
@James
Remember a lot of people are only casual fans. I knew who they were because I own all 10 seasons of SG-1 on DVD and has seen every episode at least twice, and every episode in seasons 1-6 at least 3 times. But not everyone are fanatics like that…
Out of all of the young characters, I do have to say that I like Eli the most, but his acting is still not up to par in my opinion.
@Cookie
The commanding officer’s name is Colonel Young. He’s about the only character I like out of the entire show, everyone else I really don’t care about… But I do agree that they didn’t really do a great job with the character development, well, not evenly at least, some are developed more than others. Maybe they will be slowly introduced in future episodes, who knows. I personally would rather watch some more SG-1, but RDA wouldn’t be in it, so I didn’t mind the show ending, it’s not the same without him. So DVD movies is the next best thing because he seems to not mind showing up for those, just not a long term commitment like a tv series.
i miss Daniel Jackson, and O’neil, they were the best
aparently the shuttle was alien, next show deals with aliens. their commender is a hot chick ( Rhona Mitra )who will do anything to save her people. hope its not as horrible as it sounds
I just watched the first 2 episodes, and I have to say at the moment I’m not a fan, but I’m sure given time I will grow to be one.. Now don’t hate me for saying this, but I sorta get the feeling that the Dr Rush character is very much like the Greg House character, both are British, not great to look at, stubble, obnoxious, know it alls, the list could go on. I wonder if this was intensonal…
@Elaine
But Dr. House is a loveable character (by the audience, not the people he interact with on the show) and he’s funny. Dr. Rush is just annoying and sneaky…
I remember Oneil of sg1 holding the gate open from earth so the ( forgot their label ) the one’s looting technology could evade the Asgard beaming , so it seems to me that sgu’s comp.nerd was on the wrong side of the wormhole & conned by the COWARDLY rush into holding the gate open wich according to Samantha Carter of sg1 shouldn’t have worked.
@steve
I remember that episode, I believe he walked through leaving his arm, so it was like instead of sticking his arm in and leaving his body, he stuck his body in leaving his arm, lol. I don’t think he stuck his arm in from the earth’s side. I’m not 100% sure though, maybe I will watch it again one day…
But like any show that relies heavily on made-up science, sometimes they forget a rule here and there… So I wouldn’t be surprised if it was different…
@piratedan,
Uh, so tell me how would a probe (Kino) identify a dried lake bed or some other geographic landmark if it is a desert with dunes.
If there are dunes, there are must be sand storms or sand blown by winds.
The sand would most likely cover the dried lake bed. I assume that is why they brought along sholves!!
So how would Kinos identify calcium carbonate in a dried lake bed or some other geographic landmark given the conditions I just stated? So you would need a expedition with a lot of stuff.
There are no landmarks and they are in a desert so yes they would need compass to back track to the gate. Even though I have my doubts that a compass from earth would work on a different planet.
You have not produced any “plot hole canyon” yet. You can give it a second try if you want.
I thought there was actual water??
I actually watched SGA first, loved it and then went back as a regular viewer of SG-1. I have become a solid SG fan. Well, that is a solid fan until SGU came along. I have watched all three hours of SGU broadcast so far, and doubt seriously if I will watch it again. The best word I can find to describe it is BORING!. It plods along with uninteresting characters. They don’t like each other, so why should we like them or care what happens to them. But its greatest fault is not boredom. Its greatest fault is that it’s not Stargate. All the fun that made SGA and SG-1 so loved is gone from SGU. Finally, has anyone else noticed that the stargate in SGU looks cheesey. It looks like it came from a Halloween prop store.
I hope I’m wrong, but SGU could be a franchise killer. And of course there is always the nagging question….they cancelled SGA for this? I hope a fourth SG series is on the drawing board because I doubt this one will be around very long. SG-1 made it to ten years, SGA was on for five years (and should still be running). I give SGU one year.
Where are the Wraith when you need them? I miss Todd.
Anyway i think that SGU will have to fill my SciFi Void till Caprica hits. I’ll still watch it but probably TIVOed and episodes at a time.