Stargate: Universe (Syfy)

Princess Kate, Stargate Universe is the first Stargate series I will be watching. This time, our heroes traverse not by...Stargates, but by a starship. I am interested also in seeing more of...Ming Na, who stars in this series. She was terrific as...Chun Li in...Jean Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter, and I am glad that she is in a weekly Sci Fi series. There should be cool action sequences, as our heroes try to get home. The only other new shows I am interested in are...The Human Target, Broadway Empire, and The Pacific, but those series do not premiere til 2010.

This is the first Stargate series to look mildly interesting to me, which is either a compliment to it, or an insult to the previous attempts at Canadian scifi.

I'll say it now: Stargate Universe will beat Dollhouse and Smallville in the ratings when it premieres. I wonder if one of the 4 major networks has ever had a non-rerun show land in 6th place?

From the Syfy website:

group of soldiers, scientists and civilians, fleeing an attack, find themselves stranded far from Earth on a mammoth Ancient ship known as the Destiny. They must live in the limbo of time and space, cling to the notion of hope, locked on an unknown course in search of home. Now the group's fates lie at the mercy of the ship as they face the challenges of meeting the most basic needs of food, water and air. Through the danger and adventures, some will be revealed as heroes, some will be shown as villains...and some won't make it out at all.

I imagine this show's premise is supposed to evoke fond memories of Battlestar Galactica, but what I've seen of the Stargate franchise so far makes me afraid that we're getting another Star Trek: Voyager.

If there are any Stargate fans here who haven't seen it, a Stargate MMORPG is in the works. Developers Cheyenne Mountain had a bitch of a time with funding at one point, but they claim development has continued and a Beta test will come soon. The gallery's worth checking out, if only to drool over the screenshots of playable Tau'ri, Jaffa, and Asgard characters.

Voyager + Battlestar?

I can kinda see that. I'll be happy if we don't have the villains from the previous Stargate series.

Ming-Na is a lesbian in this.

I enjoyed SG1 and Atlantis... watched every damn episode, so I'll watch this. Hope that it has the humor of the other two series, even though it looks to have taken a darker tone this time around.

John Scalzi, witty writer of fun, Heinlein-esque sci-fi, is a creative consultant on this show. That's the only reason I'll give it a shot.

Same here.

Based on the premier and the 'This Season...' preview, it looks like it's going to pretty much follow the established Stargate formula, with the addition of BS:G's sex, camera work, and lighting, and Lost's flashback structure.

It gets a couple more episodes from me for Carlyle, but I'm not hugely impressed thus far.

I really enjoyed it. It doesn't exactly invent the wheel, but fuck, if you're going to "borrow" styles and conventions from shows, you could do A LOT FUCKING WORSE than BSG, Lost and The Shield (has the same director of photography as the latter).

Amount of good sci-fi on TV? Not a lot. Amount of good space/ship based sci-fi on TV? NONE. For that reason alone, I'm definitely buzzed for where this could go.

Do you really want another Andromeda? I think not. This was pretty damn good.

Oh, and Justin Louis is the shit. Anyone seen Durham County? If not, you should.

I can only assume you never actually watched Stargate. This looks nothing like the established formula. This is a shameless aping of BG. The similarities don't end with the visual style, they have their own Baltar, their own Apollo, their own Adama, their own exasperated Chief, and etc... This is BG with more world jaunting.

Not bad. Though I didn't like the back and forward retelling of events.

Christopher MacDonald deserved better.

This show is kind of bizarre. It's of a much higher quality than regular Stargate or even diet Stargate (Stargate Atlantis), but it pretty much requires you to have a fairly good working knowledge of Stargate lore for it to be comprehensible.

Also, how come after eighteen bajillion years the ship has beds with sheets?

Those are space-sheets don't you know?

The last two episodes were really damn good and I haven't liked any of the Stargate shows. It's worth checking out.

Huh. You and I agree about a lot when it comes to TV, so this makes me interested in checking it out.

Same here. Most of what I've seen/read about the show makes it look like Battlestargate.

I'm enjoying it alot too. It started off a bit slow, but I really enjoyed the last episode, and I can usually find enough to enjoy with each episdoe. I usually watch it in Hulu the day after it airs, and looked it up, and noticed something about the titles of the first seven episodes. Air, Darkness, Light, Water, Earth, Time and Life. That remind anyone one of something?

Laziness when it comes to coming up with titles? Smallville?

its alot like BSG, and the similarities are overt and seem to be attempts to copy the formula or whatever ... but I agree, I kind of like it, especially the more its gone on.

Confused a bit about the last episode ending ... was that the end off tha tplot, and we are to assume they worked everything out? ... because the scenes from next week look like an entirely unrelated plot.

Also, I think the show would benefit greatly by cutting the ties to earth-- Its pretty dumb, and makes the whole thing seem less impactful, as they can go say hi to mom or the wife whenever they want ... it would be better if it were more like BSG where they were literally stranded and lost

I'd just start with the last two episodes. "Earth" was really solid but "Time" was a damn good piece of genre TV. It's absolutely worth watching and not just in a time waster sort of way.

If you want to tough it out and watch them all, "Light" is pretty damn good. The pilot is rough and has a non linear structure that adds no tension or mystery to the show and "Water" is pretty damn bad (but sets up a threat later in the show).

I don't think that was the ending. I just think they were avoiding spoiling the resolution in the "next time on" teaser.

Why do they need to show you what happened? They set up how time travel works, and since the show isn't ending, Scott tossed the Kino through the gate. We don't need yet another iteration to get the point.

I watch so little TV regularly these days, but this series has earned my love.

The pilot was all over the place, but it's only gotten tighter since then, and these last two episodes have indeed been a highwater mark. I can't say I would support them cutting ties to Earth. For one, you couldn't have wonderfully fucked up things like Lou Diamond Phillips Colonel character fucking Justin Louis' wife on the sly even though he's done it openly AS Justin Louis. For two, if you have to have a regular villain, I'd rather it be a jerk back on Earth than some latexed "alien" species.

Pardon the geek felony I'm admitting to, but I never got into Battlestar Galactica. By the time I felt any interest, it was a season or two in, and when I tried to watch it, there was too much backstory and "frak"-laden dialogue to engross me. Same goes for the previous Stargate shows, which were just silly. But even with that little exposure, I recognize they picked up some style choices from BSG. That random zoom style of shooting has spread elsewhere now, so I have no problem with this show using it too.

Beyond the look and feel, this thing is really well cast and I like where they've gone with it thus far.

How much knowledge of the Stargate Universe do you need to watch this? I've watched a couple episodes of the other series, and haven't been crazy about them, but this one has piqued my interest.

Nah. You can go in without any real background. They touch upon some prior mythology but no more than say 5 minutes per 3 episodes, if that.

On another note, I was really surprised with how good the last episode turned out. I started out getting annoyed with the geek but just as I reached that point, the show flipped the script and got really good. Very nice.

It's also been amusing watching this show with my wife while at the same time she goes through Battlestar Galatica.

I saw the Showtime pilot when it first aired. Maybe ten minutes total since. I knew nothing. But you should watch the first few okay episodes of this season to at least see where this series is coming from.

I realize this thing is dormant, but this show has really been loads of fun lately, and last night's episode was a pretty kickass deviation from the norm to boot.

Couple of very Hurt Locker shots too.

I totally forgot about this thread, but I've been keeping up with the show. Last night's episode was definitely a good one.

This show has been pretty great. I was really shocked at what they did last night, killing off two characters with one fail swoop. The Eli \ Rush dynamic is going to be crazy now. Hard to believe Young was Rush's biggest supporter tonight agains the civilians. There's a nice switch!

Eli kinda looked Kirk-like while sitting in the captains chair and saying "leave me alone" in one shot, that was kinda cool!

From a show I almost gave up on (the early episodes really wavered in quality) to a show that is now a must-see for me, I'm extremely glad that I stuck around. Almost every episode since its return has been amazing and last night's was a great showcase for Carlyle. Great actor. Knepper too was amazing.

This show better not get cancelled. It's replaced Fringe as my favourite current science-fiction show and will probably stay that way until Doctor Who returns.

Yeah, when Knepper went into her quarters and closed the door last episode, I was intrigued, but who knew it would be the start of an extended kill streak?

The showdown between him and Carlyle was just wondrous.

This show is definitely a must-see. I've been loving the hell out of this second season and have been hooked from episode 1 of season one.

It's basically Stargate: Lost, but it turns out that's not a bad thing. I'm enjoying it for as long as it lasts.

I was sad to see cute leather-clad redheaded girl die, but the narrative push it looks to give the show should be great.

A few of the things that I really like about this show:

- It's significantly darker than the previous SG series, but in a way that feels organic to the televised Stargate universe, and not 'We need to go grim'n'gritty because that's where the audience is now'

- By being well outside of any space that had been colonized by the Ancients (did I mention that I've followed all of the SG series?) it's allowed them to have aliens that are genuinely alien, instead of even more planets populated by humans. Or humans in make-up.

- Alien encounters are rare, so when they do show up it's a bit more tense (though the aliens all seem to be hostile. I kind of wished the weird pod aliens in the seed ship had actually turned out to be friendly(ish)), and they've proven able to actually mine a good amount of drama just out of the character interactions.

- They're actually toying with some kind of cool Clarke-level BIG Sci-Fi ideas. An alien race technologically advanced enough to create an entire solar system from scratch! Some sort of hidden structure in the microwave background radiation! It was almost always 'generic alien doomsday machine/plot' in SG-1 and Atlantis, so it's nice that they've moved away from that.

And the cast is pretty great (except for the guy who plays Lt. Scott. That guy just bugs me and I'm always hoping he dies).

Thing I don't like: End of episode music montages. They've done WAY too many of these (I will admit to liking the one where they used Mumford & Sons. They peaked with that one and should have stopped doing them after that).

Eli's Walkman should be running out of batteries soon...

They have the recharging plates. It's why they still have functioning radios and electric razors.

I too have watched every Stargate series (and all the movies). I Think this series ties in extremely well with the established story. I really like how they've gone away from the "every episode alien encounter" that the previous series did. It makes the encounters we do get that much more intense. I was sad to see Ginn die. I liked her character.

I was making a Stargate/Lost Eli/Hurley musical montage joke...

I think he has an iPod not a walkman.

Lost what?

Edit: The musical montages in Stargate: Universe seem to be non-diagetic. Regardless, it did get kinda heavy. I catch up with this show on Hulu, but the fan response seems strange.

They went through declining ratings on the last show and that heavily ended up being a retread of SG-1, with characters with less depth. Why do that again?

I caught that episode where Louis Ferreira had to euthanize some guy by suffocating him with his hands. That was a pretty brutal bit of television there.

That was pretty astounding. That episode right there justifies this show's existence. Not that it needed justifying, but it was that damn good.

I would have loved it if the show had traded Ginn for Chloe in the character deaths department.

Yeah, last night's was pretty damn good. At least Destiny has a shuttle again! Mid-season finale next week.

Aaaaaaaand cancelled.

Oh for fuck's sake. It's the Bonnie Hammer years all over again.

That leaves Eureka as the only watchable show on the network, and even that's nowhere near as good as it was.

That kinda sucks, the two interesting shows on the network, this and Caprica are gone. Back to mediocre programming. Though the Being Human remake might be good.

The show was probably the best looking thing the network has done. It's kinda funny too, in that it seems that in this case the fanboys of the show didn't like the darker direction, that is weird when it comes to geeks.