After all those months of waiting, and wondering, the big premiere of the latest member of the Stargate family is finally here. The powers that be up north have decided to take things in an entirely new direction with Universe, and that gets right to the heart of the biggest question to come out of the two hour premiere. We’ll get to the inner workings of the Destiny, and the plight of the survivors, as the show moves forward. For now though, I would simply ask if Stargate Universe looks like a show you can get on board with.
It’s not a simple answer, given all the factors that go into the decision. We saw some of that in the comments on the preview for the series. There are still more than a few Atlantis fans that are holding a grudge, and simply won’t be bothered to give Universe a shot. I don’t agree with them, but I can’t fault them for their reaction. I’ve been known to hold a heck of a TV grudge on occasion.
All of the comparisons to Battlestar bring their own issues as well. The style and tone of Universe is decidedly different than what fans were used to with SG-1 and Atlantis. That’s awfully risky. SG-1 and Atlantis certainly weren’t canceled because nobody was watching. The ratings were fine. The shows just lost out to the economics of a new show being much cheaper to produce. The easy path would have been to make another show with that Stargate feel. And that is really not what Universe is.
Those changes will be very interesting to some, but are a tougher sell to the general audience. Life on the Destiny is a much bleaker existence than we’ve seen for our SG heroes in the past. There are less yuks, and less easy happy endings. I find the changes fascinating from an audience standpoint. I’m really looking forward to seeing what “the internet” has to say about the show.
Personally, I’m on board. To be honest, Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) alone is enough to keep me coming back for the foreseeable future. With such a big cast, it’s going to take a few episodes before we really get a feel for what they are trying to do with all of the characters, but I’m already sold on Rush. Everything, from his motivations, to his actions, to the reaction of the people around him, is intriguing. That’s the kind of character that can carry a show.
But for now, I’ll again leave it with that simple question. Having seen the first two hours, are you on board the SGU ride?
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Oct 02, 2009 @ 22:00 EST5EDT
The idea is shockingly good, it’s what Atlantis should have been. I enjoyed it and can’t wait until they actually go to a planet, without pine trees, next week!
However the acting is rather bad, and the camera is horrible!!! It’s like the creators went “We need something new… let’s film the show when the camera men are drunk!”
Also the mystery feel to the show is always really nice with we don’t really understand the attack, or why Baltar (I can’t remember his name) is acting the way he is.
I’m definitely on board. If it had that “Stargate feel” like you mentioned, I’d be on board for that, too. I never understood the reaction to a new science fiction show by fans. It always seems like half love it and half trash it; and that’s before a show even airs! Shouldn’t fans of science fiction be more open-minded simply by the nature of the genre they love? Being more supportive and less nit-picky would help genre shows in general.
So again, I’m along for the ride and may it be a long and interesting ride. And yes, I’m with Oreo in looking forward to a planet without pine trees!
Wow, this is just what I asked for.
https://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/09/28/stargate-universe-cliqueclack-preview/
I have to admit, when Syfy (if that is truly is their real name) canceled Stargate Atlantis, I was mortified. How they can cancel a show where the fifth (and finally) season was touted to be the show’s best season ever? I’m not privy to all of the behind the scenes and inner workings of a television show, so I didn’t know they canceled SGA because of economical problems, which I can completely understand. But, enough of my griping.
When they announced the development of Stargate Universe, I questioned, “Why would they cancel a show that was doing so well in the ratings for something else entirely different?” However, I decided early on that I would try SGU just to get my Stargate fix. Now that I’ve seen the first episode, I have to admit I’m impressed.
I really do like the new feel of the show. I like the direction they are heading. People say it’s like Battlestar Galactica with a new brand name attached, but I think it’s much more than that. I think what people crave is the drama of SciFi (which is what the channel’s name should have remained, grrr). Putting a bunch of people having absolutely nothing in common in a life or death situation and watching how they come together as a community is typical in human nature; it’s something everyone wants to be a part of.
In the scientific community, when a mainstream scientist has a theory, they adhere to it like white on rice; they will not budge from their views and convictions. I think the same mindset is instilled within the sci-fi fan. They have their set formula they do NOT want to deviate from, which makes change very hard for them. Coming away from SG-1 and Atlantis, which had their same successful formula, left people dumbfounded and annoyed. They didn’t want something different, they didn’t want change.
But I believe SGU is going to make a difference and people will finally come around to what may amount to be one of the best scifi dramas on television history, ala BSG.
I’d like to know who called the 5th season of Atlantis it’s best. The writers? Just you? The ratings for the show also weren’t that great.
Actually, Oreo, the SciFi Channel (before they switched their name) was promoting Stargate Atlantis throughout the entire fifth season as “the best season ever.” I remember because I kept saying, “Why would they cancel a show they are promoting as having the best season ever?”
Oh my god… Every season of every show in ads is “THE BEST SEASON EVER!!!”. I’m sure LOST will have “The best season ever!!!” too and it’s still ending. Even when the show sucks (like Atlantis) they aren’t going to say “This season is crap, but please watch anyways”.
I would really like two hours of my life back after watching Stargate Universe. The editing was appalling and the whole episode seemed rushed. A kid solves a computer game and gets to come on the Stargate program? Holy shades of The Last Starfighter!That was hokey in 1984 and it still is.
This episode is costing one million dollars per episode more than Atlantis did to make.
It will need better numbers to make it worthwhile to the suits.
So far ratings are so so:
https://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/10/03/syfy-continues-ratings-roll-stargate-universe-averages-2-35-million-in-premiere/29405
I’m totally on board, and it quickly became one of my favorite new shows of the season.
I appreciated the (most likely non-intentional and based on Vancouver shooting) cameo by Playa from BSG.
I will have to disagree with Brett, though … I find Dr. Rush infinitely unlikeable.
Don’t know what to think of Rush yet, except that he seems like he could have been in the band RUSH.
I do wonder why everyone’s first impulse is to distrust him……
Yes. Oh yes, I liked this show. Brooding and full of peril!
That Schild woman from BSG seems to have mastered the withering look right?
Thinking about the Frumpy Last Starfighter – at first I was annoyed by him, then it occurred to me that maybe his presence signals that this new moody/broody/dark show will also allow viewers to have some wins/happiness from time to time. That’s fine by me.
Very eager to see the next episode!
Eli = JarJar
Even so, I’ll watch. It’s Stargate. /shrug
Atlantis was canceled a year too late, so I didn’t hate Universe for that reason going in. The show had steadily declined after the first two seasons and was simply dreadful by the fifth. My biggest concern was that I had known there wouldn’t be a badly-needed infusion of new blood on the creative side with the new show.
Having watched it, it feels like they’re trying to copy the style and mood of BSG without having earned it first. Even realizing Allan Kroeker’s directing, the lighting and camerawork are lifted directly from the Galactica. The worst parts were Lt. Scott having sex with an enlisted woman while he was on duty (and I’m objecting to the dereliction, not the fraternization) even before the attack, and the random airman hoarding power bars for himself when they’d been marooned on the ship for no more than a few hours and rescue/escape had not yet been definitively ruled out. The rest of my objections are the usual plot holes we expect from Stargate, like sacrificing a human being to push a button in the shuttle rather than trying to do it with a kino first.
I agree with Ivey about the Rush character, which is unfortunate since he’s the lead. From his ridiculously clichéd sobbing over a picture of his dead wife while he listens to opera, a picture he keeps in his drawer by the way because it’s just too painful to look at every day, to the way he tries to shift the blame away from himself whenever he’s at fault (when the first dialing failed and when Chloe blames him for her father’s death), to his constant, outright and not even subtle lying to every other character, I see no reason to sympathize with him in the least. Unfortunately, the writers will make it so that this SOB somehow always gets his way. When the Sergeant starts to dial Earth on Young’s orders, Rush shoves him away from the console and changes the address, and the Sergeant and the other airmen stand around and do nothing. Wray, the senior IOA representative, challenges Rush’s assumption of command, he ignores her and talks over her, and she shuts up. Young hobbles up from his sickbed to put Rush in his place, mentions he had sent for Rush to come see him earlier, and Rush ignores him as well, setting up a jaw-dropping conversation in which Rush admits to lying to everyone and manipulating the entire situation again and again, yet is not clapped in irons, but remains a free and active member of the away team. The only difference is that Young orders Scott, sotto voce, to keep an eye on Rush. So far, that is the extent of the consequences of Rush’s Baltar-ism. It will be interesting to see if a great actor can turn around an unlikable character while hobbled by awful writing.
In regards to Rush, perhaps I’m not familiar enough will the SGU “formula” for characters (if there is one?) but could it be that that when we start exploring his secrets we’ll like him fine? And the naughty servicemen, maybe when we see their growth, we’ll be proud of them? I guess we’ll see.
In the past two Stargate shows, characters ended the series with pretty much the same values and traits with which they began. Even when characters experienced growth, it was pretty much forgotten a few episodes later, or brought up inconsistently. That was fine, as they were mainly episodic dramadies.
They do seem to be trying for character development and arcs in Universe, thus my hesitance on whether the exact same writers are capable of pulling this off organically.
The trouble with Rush is that he’s gone so far that I don’t see how they can bring him back. At least Baltar didn’t knowingly allow the enemy access to the defense mainframe. They were evacuating eighty-odd personnel from the base—soldiers, scientists and civilians, some of whom were already severely wounded—without weapons, equipment, supplies, food or water. Rush tries to claim that he dialed the ninth chevron address because he didn’t want to endanger Earth through the gate. Young points out that this is crap: there are dozens if not hundreds of uninhabited worlds they could have gated to, and if they survived, immediately turned around and dialed Earth. Rush doesn’t bother to reply, because there is no unselfish justification for what he did. He may claim he regrets the suffering and death he caused, but he at no time throughout the first two hours ever lets that affect his actions, and doesn’t even try to return the others to Earth.
This is also a universe in which Earth has received the total knowledge and technology of an extremely advanced alien race (the Asgard), enabling them to travel between galaxies in a matter of weeks and fight nearly any enemy. They have also recovered the intact capitol city of another advanced race (the Ancients), including their complete database, which Earth is still deciphering. The Ancients sent out the Destiny hundreds of thousands of years before that, so much of the technology of the ship is already known to Earth. Earth has also interacted with the Ancients and other Ascended beings in the present day. So the writers somehow have to create a discovery that is so much greater than all of that that it justifies Rush being a complete a****** with utter disregard for human life in pursuit of it.
I maintain that the writers liked what they saw in BSG and borrowed elements and scenes from it wholesale without understanding how they functioned. At least Baltar through a combination of coincidence and angelic intervention was able to conceal his perfidy for years. Here Rush has already been found out, and continues to spout lies and withhold vital information over and over while expecting the others to blindly obey him. He doesn’t even bother to pretend that he hasn’t been deceiving them at every turn.
For the airmen, there’s nothing wrong with showing their desperate behavior except that it hasn’t been earned yet. Galactica was a museum ship about to be decommissioned, crewed by the dregs and problem cases of the fleet with discipline enforced by an old drunk, even before the apocalyptic destruction of the rest of the human race. The Stargate program is still a secret on Earth, and its soldiers are drawn from the best of the best of the American, and later world special forces. They should have waited until the situation actually became dire before discipline fell apart.
Oh my, things do look different in that light. Given that, I hope Rush’s story is not about getting back to the “Nexus” to find his family or somesuch.
Thanks for that info Ryan.
Rush does have a point in a way, the Ancients didn’t share their tech with anyone, not even the Asgard. Atlantis was also ditched by them, and Atlantis didn’t use the 8th Chevron just to get to the city. This 9th Chevron seems to be supper special and Rush needed to find out why.
Also Baltar is still the bigger ass. lol
All true, except Asgard tech can kick the ass of Ancient battlecruisers in literally seconds, as we saw on Atlantis, so Earth isn’t missing out on much in that regard. Also, my point was that the city of Atlantis wasn’t ditched until long after the Destiny had departed, so if anything Atlantis would be more advanced.
I have to agree with Ryan about the cliches and BSG-borrowing. Throughout the premiere, I kept seeing things (like the aforementioned scene with Rush weeping over the photo of his wife) and thought, man they’re trying too hard. They were trying too hard 1) to manipulate the viewer’s emotions to make us actually care about these people, and 2) to make it seem “dark and edgy,” but for me it didn’t work at all. The stakes weren’t high enough. BSG’s premiere worked because it was about the destruction of humanity – it had immense stakes. With SGU’s premiere, all that is at stake are the lives of these people whom we hardly know at all. Here’s an example of a failed attempt at emotional manipulation – they kill off the Senator guy and then afterwards his daughter delivers some cheesy lines about what a great dad he was. Um, maybe if I knew what a great dad he was beforehand, I would have actually cared when he died. This premiere has all the trappings of a “dark and edgy” BSG-style show, but none of the substance. Since it’s just the premiere, I’m going to wait and see if the show improves. But let me stop here. “Trying too hard” sums up my feelings about the premiere.
Hopefully they will fly into the sun and end the viewer torture. SGU is an insult to the Stargate heritage of pretty darn good writing and great character development. It’s also insulting to viewers. Come on – using quickline (the sandy substance they found on the desert planet) to extract CO2 from the air! Yes, the folks that built a ship that can travel faster than light and seed planets with Stargates could not figure out a better way to do this. They really don’t expect viewers to be very bright.
Let’s predict the plot.
. The wife of Rush is being held by the bad guys and making him work for them.
. The ship that’s out of energy just flew through a gas giant and is now flying towards a sun. Hmmm one of the writers read about ram jets and another solar energy. Just a hunch.
Can’t wait for more folks driving (‘stoned’) around DC to inflict more ‘drama’ on us.
And more OVER acting by RC and LDP …
I watched the 2 hr and made it through the first 1 hour, but on the 2nd 1 hr my mind was wandering. I have this feeling of watching a science fiction recipe on Universe:
1 cup of Stargate SG1 and Atlantis
(canon established with plenty of Ancient’s technology and something that seems a little like Wraith for some reason, not sure of that yet completely)
1 cup of Star Trek Voyager
(ship lost in a place Star Fleet had not been before aka Delta Quadrant)
1/2 cup of Star Trek Enterprise
(the dark adventure in a dark ship which cuts down on having to pay for a great amount of flashy looking ship scenery although I did like the bridge at least I think that was the bridge)
1/2 cup BSG
(Many people with their personal suvival motives hanging out who are thinking about doing who knows what to keep from dying and are not trusting everyone elses’ motives in a large, but largely questionable ship which may or may not be fixable or predictable)
Generous dash
of Soap Opera sex anytime anywhere which is part of sci-fi, but I personally don’t want to watch it, granted some people like to watch that and some don’t.
Dashes of
a scifi-geek (comedy relief at times) gets the ultimate big ride of his life given no less by RD Anderson as O’neill,
plus a military hero who knows what to do in any situation,
with a slightly crazy military guy who may or may not kill you,
and a scientist who looks shifty and untrustworthy at times (many times actually) and Carlyle does that type of character very well.
Combine with a whole bunch of other characters that can be used in different episodes without having all of them in every episode. Paid by episode maybe.
Mix well with scripts and special effects and hope for the best.
There are more I could think of, but this was already longer than I planned.
I know this sounds goofy, but I’ve been reading and watching sci-fi for too many years.
I have the 2 episodes recorded and at a tv-watching low-point, I’ll probably watch those also.
The question in my mind is whether SG1&A fans will kill it like ST:Ent by picking it apart like scavengers or will the whole thing just be an epic fail, or will enough viewers save it.
One nice thing it has going for it is that SyFy doesn’t mind showing reruns of shows that barely made it through one season over and over and over and over….