Stargate Universe
Jul. 17th, 2011 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessSo, I finally got around to finishing the second season of Stargate Universe. (And since the end actually aired in May, and I just got around to finishing it….yeah, that makes a statement right there.)
Stargate Universe had potential Decent idea: humans trapped on a spaceship several galaxies away from earth, with limited supplies and a ship they can't control. . Decent to great actors, decent sets, decent special effects for a low budget show. And, here and there, it even had some more than decent, great, even, individual episodes.
But as an overall show, it just fell apart.
The biggest problem was that the show had no idea what it was – the next Stargate? The next BSG? Alas, the previous Stargate had already tried the "stuck in another galaxy and unable to get home and chased by scary monsters" and realized that this didn't work, unless you reconnected Atlantis with earth and recruited the hotness that is Jason Mamoa to work with you. (Although I should note that this thought mostly failed because Atlantis wasn't gritty at all, and was just too cheerful for a show filled with people that (presumably) would never see home again.) And BSG had already done the gritty isolation in space bit.
Which didn't mean that Stargate Universe couldn't have gone the gritty isolation in space bit – especially since Stargate was never about isolation; it was about meetings and more meetings and more discoveries and miscommunications – but never isolation. Turning that on its head, showing a Stargate crew trained to communicate and discover, and finding themselves in a place where none of that mattered, where most of their previous knowledge was useless….This could have been brilliant, could have been the next BSG.
Alas, to repeat, it wasn't.
In season two, Stargate: Universe decided that since getting stranded out in space with limited supplies on an ancient ship that they couldn't control wasn't, you know, tense enough, they would add bad guys. (To be fair these were sorta introduced in season one.) Said bad guys included some terrorists from Stargate: SG-1, who apparently wanted Destiny despite the lack of food, water, and general supplies because….yeah, because. It was all mystical. Or maybe they wanted to know just how everyone was keeping that marvelous hair, because I have to say, that's a scientific discovery that could have been worth millions and clearly obsessed terrorists are all about money.
Or something.
The other bad guys were much cooler – little drone ships that just eliminated everything that so much as smacked of technology, even though they were technology, and blew lots of things up. Awesome. Unfortunately, as you might be guessing, their entire personality and goal could be summed up as "blow things up," and while this does allow for a lot of fear and explosions, it's not the sort of thing that encourages character development ("I'm even MORE into blowing stuff up now that I'm blown stuff up!") or much of a story resolution other than completely blowing everything up, or getting completely blown up. The show also had some aliens who made clicking sounds who might have been bad guys, or might have been good guys. It depends.
Perhaps recognizing this, the showrunners decided to drag in another idea – that thanks to some complicated time travel/space warp/gate thing, most of the Destiny crew had time travelled a couple thousand years into the past and had developed a brand new civilization and sought out new planets and everything all while speaking perfect English as long as the plot demanded it. Sigh. Although this did give the showrunners the chance to assure us that yes, yes, the inexplicable romantic pairings that they had forced on us really did work, because, see, all of those marriages turned out happy and nobody divorced at all and fortunately all of this was caught on video and preserved for 2000 years or whatever and even though everyone was getting chased by drones they had plenty of time to watch This Is Not Your Life. (Although I'm convinced that the Colonel Young and T.J. hookup only worked in that alternative timeline because T.J. died.)
And then that idea, like so many others, was dropped.
The last few episodes showed, maddeningly enough, the show's great potential – and its ultimate failure. One genuinely good episode had the Destiny crew use communication stones – little stones that allow people to switch into other bodies – to attempt to take over a not-quite allied system near Earth to try to get supplies sent to Destiny. Taut, well acted, well thought out – and then followed by a bunch of crappy episodes that included moments like:
1. The mad scientist taking a moment to yell out the current temperature – in Fahrenheit. Said scientist is a) talking to other scientists who are perfectly able to think in Celsius and b) is Scottish, and would therefore be more comfortable shouting out Celsius numbers and is c) yelling out these numbers so that the other scientists can calculate where everybody is. I have rarely seen a moment of television more intent on shouting, "HI! THIS IS FOR AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE, THANKS MUCHLY." (Speaking of which, the nice international atmosphere of the other Stargate shows, gone here.)
2. In that same episode, the rest of the characters landing on a planet founded and abandoned by their 2000 old descendants, where the buildings look suspiciously like the contemporary United States (astonishingly, in 2000 years, the apparent goal has been to make everything look like Atlanta and its suburbs) and the signs are mostly in English which is very nice, but the newspapers, for some reason, are in something that's only kinda but not exactly like English so they have to study and try to figure out what happened and it takes forever because the English is so not-English and complicated. Also, amazingly, this planet had – wait for it – coffee. And a pharmacy and some clothing stores but no shoe stores.
(I realize they were trying to save money on sets, but, seriously?)
3. In the last episode, a character is suddenly sporting sunglasses – the first pair we have seen on the show, period. I suppose they might have been picked up from the Planet of Abandoned Coffee Shops, except that no one would have known that said character needed sunglasses.
4. That same character surviving PASSING THROUGH a BLUE STAR with temperatures of about 30,000 Kelvins (hot!) after the CEILING ABOVE HER SHATTERS, "ventilating" the air as it passed through the star (I am not sure that "ventilating" is the correct word for what happens to oxygen and nitrogen suddenly exposed to the edge of a blue star) while wearing a suit and hiding in a water tank, and only getting a case of flash blindness. (Skin, untouched.) Bonus: presumably for production reasons, the artificial gravity still works even after the ceiling shatters. While I'm complaining about this scene, I'd also like to note that if you are travelling through the surface of a blue giant star, temperature is only one of your problems.
You can't do gritty, realistic science fiction – what this show sometimes wanted to do – and have people fly through blue stars. It doesn't work. I'm more than willing to believe in unrealistic science fiction or fantasy featuring people flying through blue stars for whatever reason, or, in the case of Phoenix from comic books, eating them, but in that case, give me a reason – Phoenix actually taking on the powers of a minor god, for instance – to let me believe it. I barely believed that the ship could survive going through smaller stars. This, no.
And that, in the end, was my main problem with Stargate: Universe. (Well, apart from the frustration I generally feel when I see something that could be good, or even great, turn out not to be.) I couldn't believe in it. Partly because the show never got its focus, never could decide if this a show about getting home, or a show about following Destiny, or a show about politics and fighting for survival in a small group with limited resources, or a show about blowing things up (yay!). The show didn't believe in itself. Thus, I couldn't believe in it.
In contrast, note TNT's new show, Falling Skies, which has the not terribly original idea that aliens have conquered earth killing off about 90% of humans. It has bandit groups popping out of nowhere. People squabbling over food and water and beds. People terrified about their children.
Falling Skies is decidedly scrimping on production costs by throwing everyone into temporarily open high schools and using a lot of stock footage, but the money saved there is going into various important continuity bits: people are using candles for lighting and gas for cooking since the electrical grid is out; people look exhausted from walking around and around and around; the food rescued in one episode shows up in the next, and so on. The lawns, admittedly, still look rather well mowed, and the yards are fairly well trimmed, and more than once the show decides that we need a Cute Moment or an Emotional Moment or a Let's Stop and Watch the Kid on the Skateboard So We Know What We're Fighting For Moment, Even Though We Could All Get Attacked Immediately. And yes, the show is not exactly free of plot holes and suspiciously convenient bits. But the actors believe, and the show believes, and if this isn't exactly great or original, it allows me to believe. For a bit.
Stargate Universe had potential Decent idea: humans trapped on a spaceship several galaxies away from earth, with limited supplies and a ship they can't control. . Decent to great actors, decent sets, decent special effects for a low budget show. And, here and there, it even had some more than decent, great, even, individual episodes.
But as an overall show, it just fell apart.
The biggest problem was that the show had no idea what it was – the next Stargate? The next BSG? Alas, the previous Stargate had already tried the "stuck in another galaxy and unable to get home and chased by scary monsters" and realized that this didn't work, unless you reconnected Atlantis with earth and recruited the hotness that is Jason Mamoa to work with you. (Although I should note that this thought mostly failed because Atlantis wasn't gritty at all, and was just too cheerful for a show filled with people that (presumably) would never see home again.) And BSG had already done the gritty isolation in space bit.
Which didn't mean that Stargate Universe couldn't have gone the gritty isolation in space bit – especially since Stargate was never about isolation; it was about meetings and more meetings and more discoveries and miscommunications – but never isolation. Turning that on its head, showing a Stargate crew trained to communicate and discover, and finding themselves in a place where none of that mattered, where most of their previous knowledge was useless….This could have been brilliant, could have been the next BSG.
Alas, to repeat, it wasn't.
In season two, Stargate: Universe decided that since getting stranded out in space with limited supplies on an ancient ship that they couldn't control wasn't, you know, tense enough, they would add bad guys. (To be fair these were sorta introduced in season one.) Said bad guys included some terrorists from Stargate: SG-1, who apparently wanted Destiny despite the lack of food, water, and general supplies because….yeah, because. It was all mystical. Or maybe they wanted to know just how everyone was keeping that marvelous hair, because I have to say, that's a scientific discovery that could have been worth millions and clearly obsessed terrorists are all about money.
Or something.
The other bad guys were much cooler – little drone ships that just eliminated everything that so much as smacked of technology, even though they were technology, and blew lots of things up. Awesome. Unfortunately, as you might be guessing, their entire personality and goal could be summed up as "blow things up," and while this does allow for a lot of fear and explosions, it's not the sort of thing that encourages character development ("I'm even MORE into blowing stuff up now that I'm blown stuff up!") or much of a story resolution other than completely blowing everything up, or getting completely blown up. The show also had some aliens who made clicking sounds who might have been bad guys, or might have been good guys. It depends.
Perhaps recognizing this, the showrunners decided to drag in another idea – that thanks to some complicated time travel/space warp/gate thing, most of the Destiny crew had time travelled a couple thousand years into the past and had developed a brand new civilization and sought out new planets and everything all while speaking perfect English as long as the plot demanded it. Sigh. Although this did give the showrunners the chance to assure us that yes, yes, the inexplicable romantic pairings that they had forced on us really did work, because, see, all of those marriages turned out happy and nobody divorced at all and fortunately all of this was caught on video and preserved for 2000 years or whatever and even though everyone was getting chased by drones they had plenty of time to watch This Is Not Your Life. (Although I'm convinced that the Colonel Young and T.J. hookup only worked in that alternative timeline because T.J. died.)
And then that idea, like so many others, was dropped.
The last few episodes showed, maddeningly enough, the show's great potential – and its ultimate failure. One genuinely good episode had the Destiny crew use communication stones – little stones that allow people to switch into other bodies – to attempt to take over a not-quite allied system near Earth to try to get supplies sent to Destiny. Taut, well acted, well thought out – and then followed by a bunch of crappy episodes that included moments like:
1. The mad scientist taking a moment to yell out the current temperature – in Fahrenheit. Said scientist is a) talking to other scientists who are perfectly able to think in Celsius and b) is Scottish, and would therefore be more comfortable shouting out Celsius numbers and is c) yelling out these numbers so that the other scientists can calculate where everybody is. I have rarely seen a moment of television more intent on shouting, "HI! THIS IS FOR AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE, THANKS MUCHLY." (Speaking of which, the nice international atmosphere of the other Stargate shows, gone here.)
2. In that same episode, the rest of the characters landing on a planet founded and abandoned by their 2000 old descendants, where the buildings look suspiciously like the contemporary United States (astonishingly, in 2000 years, the apparent goal has been to make everything look like Atlanta and its suburbs) and the signs are mostly in English which is very nice, but the newspapers, for some reason, are in something that's only kinda but not exactly like English so they have to study and try to figure out what happened and it takes forever because the English is so not-English and complicated. Also, amazingly, this planet had – wait for it – coffee. And a pharmacy and some clothing stores but no shoe stores.
(I realize they were trying to save money on sets, but, seriously?)
3. In the last episode, a character is suddenly sporting sunglasses – the first pair we have seen on the show, period. I suppose they might have been picked up from the Planet of Abandoned Coffee Shops, except that no one would have known that said character needed sunglasses.
4. That same character surviving PASSING THROUGH a BLUE STAR with temperatures of about 30,000 Kelvins (hot!) after the CEILING ABOVE HER SHATTERS, "ventilating" the air as it passed through the star (I am not sure that "ventilating" is the correct word for what happens to oxygen and nitrogen suddenly exposed to the edge of a blue star) while wearing a suit and hiding in a water tank, and only getting a case of flash blindness. (Skin, untouched.) Bonus: presumably for production reasons, the artificial gravity still works even after the ceiling shatters. While I'm complaining about this scene, I'd also like to note that if you are travelling through the surface of a blue giant star, temperature is only one of your problems.
You can't do gritty, realistic science fiction – what this show sometimes wanted to do – and have people fly through blue stars. It doesn't work. I'm more than willing to believe in unrealistic science fiction or fantasy featuring people flying through blue stars for whatever reason, or, in the case of Phoenix from comic books, eating them, but in that case, give me a reason – Phoenix actually taking on the powers of a minor god, for instance – to let me believe it. I barely believed that the ship could survive going through smaller stars. This, no.
And that, in the end, was my main problem with Stargate: Universe. (Well, apart from the frustration I generally feel when I see something that could be good, or even great, turn out not to be.) I couldn't believe in it. Partly because the show never got its focus, never could decide if this a show about getting home, or a show about following Destiny, or a show about politics and fighting for survival in a small group with limited resources, or a show about blowing things up (yay!). The show didn't believe in itself. Thus, I couldn't believe in it.
In contrast, note TNT's new show, Falling Skies, which has the not terribly original idea that aliens have conquered earth killing off about 90% of humans. It has bandit groups popping out of nowhere. People squabbling over food and water and beds. People terrified about their children.
Falling Skies is decidedly scrimping on production costs by throwing everyone into temporarily open high schools and using a lot of stock footage, but the money saved there is going into various important continuity bits: people are using candles for lighting and gas for cooking since the electrical grid is out; people look exhausted from walking around and around and around; the food rescued in one episode shows up in the next, and so on. The lawns, admittedly, still look rather well mowed, and the yards are fairly well trimmed, and more than once the show decides that we need a Cute Moment or an Emotional Moment or a Let's Stop and Watch the Kid on the Skateboard So We Know What We're Fighting For Moment, Even Though We Could All Get Attacked Immediately. And yes, the show is not exactly free of plot holes and suspiciously convenient bits. But the actors believe, and the show believes, and if this isn't exactly great or original, it allows me to believe. For a bit.