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Stargate Atlantis, Season 5
For some unknown reason, I got a free copy of Season Five of Stargate Atlantis from some media company or other in the mail. I have no idea why – it's not as if I'm mildly active, much less known, in the Stargate fan community, and as far as I remember I didn't enter any contests with this as a prize, or offer to review it for anyone, although I had vague plans to eventually catch up with season 5 on Hulu.
But for whatever reason, it's here, so I sat down to catch up on season 5, figuring that since I'd gotten the DVDs for free,
Stargate Atlantis has always been, at best, a very uneven show, starting with a cool concept - Earth folks stuck in another galaxy unable to get home, but choosing to explore that galaxy. True, this sounded quite a bit like Star Trek: Voyager and true, that galaxy seemed to largely populated by people in bad RenFaire costumes, and many of the initial episodes were snoozers, but, cool concept. Which the show entirely abandoned after the first season, allowing people to regularly travel between Atlantis and Earth. Allowing for the regular appearance of guest stars from SG-1 and a few money-saving Earth-focused episodes, but otherwise robbing the show of one potential major strength.
The show also had some racial fail: after the first season, both of the major characters who were people of color just happened to be the outsiders from more primitive cultures, and an inexplicable lack of Asians even as background characters running around Atlantis until about the fifth season, even though last I checked China has a large military and active space program and would presumably have the means to find out about and take an active interest in Stargate things.* Maybe the lack of Chinese participation was addressed in an earlier Stargate episode; I don't know. And Atlantis merrily continued the Stargate tradition of dressing many of its major female characters in hideously unflattering costumes (Rachel Lattrell managed to escape much of this, but Amanda Tapping, Torri Higginson and Jewel Staite could justifiably sue).
And in some ways, one of the show's most interesting elements – the completely contemporary setting and references – also became a weakness, especially in the plausible believability element. This showed up most greatly in a later storyline where the Atlantis doctors create DNA treatments for the show's prime antagonists, the Wraith, completely changing their basic metabolism, and later, with a few quick lab experiments, curing the resulting cancer that attacked the Wraith. This is all well and good and led to a very tense, taut, storyline, but also led to the inevitable question: if the Atlantis scientists can create a gene therapy that changes Wraith DNA, why can't they manipulate DNA to cure cancer/stop AIDS and so on? Especially since we're occasionally told that world governments are sending money to the Stargate project in hopes of finding things that will benefit mankind. And if you are arguing that this would break the secrecy back on Earth, well then, why not cure all the various diseases that are still hitting humans in the Pegasus galaxy?
And like all Stargate series, the show shied away from romance, which I don't object to, except when it suddenly decided to leap into romance in the 5th season showcasing exactly why it should have kept shying away.
But whatever. Atlantis still had strong to excellent storylines, especially with the major antagonists of the Wraith (Todd and Michael in particular were excellent reoccurring antagonists), the Replicators and the Genii. And it did a nice job with interlacing strong character moments and friendships throughout the show.
But this is all about Atlantis in general. What about the end of season 5? Well, like the show, it was decidedly mixed, with one boundary breaking (for the show) episode, Vegas, some taut moments with the always untrustworthy Todd and some great moments showcasing that finally, after five years, the Atlantis personnel have learned how to threaten and talk to the Wraith, a
The last few episodes were also marred by a bizarre decision to hook up Dr. Rodney McKay and Dr. Jennifer Keller. As I've mentioned, Stargate just does not do romance well, and while I'll agree that it's completely unrealistic to expect these characters to go for five years without having a relationship or sex, it's also completely ok to avoid writing about things that either you're bad at writing, or which fit awkwardly into the show.
Such is the McKay/Keller romance. The actors have no chemistry, which is one problem, but the far more serious problem happens in the episode where the two of them head on their first date, which happens to be a physics conference where things naturally Go Wrong (wormholes and nonsensical heat sinks and Bill Nye the Science Guy making fun of Rodney). The two bicker and yell at each other throughout the entire episode and are clearly not having any fun, until, in a sudden realization that this is a lousy start for a relationship, the writers let Jennifer nearly die of cold/drowning and have Rodney save her. Love is declared all around, la la.
Two episodes later Rodney is unable to tell that another woman's mind has taken over Jennifer's body.
Sigh.
Ronan, an earlier potential interest of Jennifer's, was able to tell, but for whatever reason that relationship was scuttled, although the show gave him another potential love interest in the last few episodes which was all very nice. (She does kickboxing, and clearly, you see, action guys belong with action girls and not cute doctor girls.) The show does make token efforts to remember that Rodney and Jennifer are supposedly in love and the actors occasionally remember to smile at each other but that's about it.
I suppose the writers felt that Rodney should be hooked up with somebody, and Jennifer was the best available, but the time spent on this baffling and unconvincing relationship was time not spent in developing other potential relationships. If the writers really felt the need to have a romance in there, I could see other possible ones – John and Teyla certainly leap to mind (although I was relieved that the show didn't go there, since it was nice to watch two characters have a completely professional relationship mixed with a deep friendship without forcing that to turn romantic), perhaps Ronan and Jennifer, Rodney with pretty much any other scientist, or Richard Woolsey with Jennifer or another person on the base (which also would have shown his acceptance and love for the Atlantis job, something well developed on the show, as Richard slowly learns the intricacies of Atlantis and the Pegasus galaxy.) Or, heck, Samantha Carter with Zelenka (I hear the shrieks of anguish, but whatever.) Or, as I said, the even better approach of skipping the romance altogether and focusing on what the show did best: tense interactions with untrustworthy Wraith out for their own agenda.
The final episode was also sadly weak, relying on a lot of plot contrivances and coincidences (everybody arrives on the Wraith ship at the same time, really? The gate on the Wraith ship is so lightly guarded, really? Nobody sailing through the Pacific is that interested in a self-described huge giant fireball hurtling through the air, really? The Navy is able to cordon off San Francisco's harbor without a giant outcry and more questions, really? And so on.) I mostly enjoyed the episodes, and they did their usual job of helping me sleep, so yay, but I'd have to say that season five just repeated too many earlier weaknesses.
* Although, at that, it's not quite as inexplicable as the one scene from Transformers that I caught before getting sick, where evil robots are attacking Shanghai and getting battled by….the U.S. army, rather than the well equipped Chinese army and its nukes. I mean, this might have made vague sense if the robots had been attacking, say, Seoul, but I'm just not feeling that much love from the Chinese government, evil robots or no evil robots, especially since they have their own army.
But for whatever reason, it's here, so I sat down to catch up on season 5, figuring that since I'd gotten the DVDs for free,
Stargate Atlantis has always been, at best, a very uneven show, starting with a cool concept - Earth folks stuck in another galaxy unable to get home, but choosing to explore that galaxy. True, this sounded quite a bit like Star Trek: Voyager and true, that galaxy seemed to largely populated by people in bad RenFaire costumes, and many of the initial episodes were snoozers, but, cool concept. Which the show entirely abandoned after the first season, allowing people to regularly travel between Atlantis and Earth. Allowing for the regular appearance of guest stars from SG-1 and a few money-saving Earth-focused episodes, but otherwise robbing the show of one potential major strength.
The show also had some racial fail: after the first season, both of the major characters who were people of color just happened to be the outsiders from more primitive cultures, and an inexplicable lack of Asians even as background characters running around Atlantis until about the fifth season, even though last I checked China has a large military and active space program and would presumably have the means to find out about and take an active interest in Stargate things.* Maybe the lack of Chinese participation was addressed in an earlier Stargate episode; I don't know. And Atlantis merrily continued the Stargate tradition of dressing many of its major female characters in hideously unflattering costumes (Rachel Lattrell managed to escape much of this, but Amanda Tapping, Torri Higginson and Jewel Staite could justifiably sue).
And in some ways, one of the show's most interesting elements – the completely contemporary setting and references – also became a weakness, especially in the plausible believability element. This showed up most greatly in a later storyline where the Atlantis doctors create DNA treatments for the show's prime antagonists, the Wraith, completely changing their basic metabolism, and later, with a few quick lab experiments, curing the resulting cancer that attacked the Wraith. This is all well and good and led to a very tense, taut, storyline, but also led to the inevitable question: if the Atlantis scientists can create a gene therapy that changes Wraith DNA, why can't they manipulate DNA to cure cancer/stop AIDS and so on? Especially since we're occasionally told that world governments are sending money to the Stargate project in hopes of finding things that will benefit mankind. And if you are arguing that this would break the secrecy back on Earth, well then, why not cure all the various diseases that are still hitting humans in the Pegasus galaxy?
And like all Stargate series, the show shied away from romance, which I don't object to, except when it suddenly decided to leap into romance in the 5th season showcasing exactly why it should have kept shying away.
But whatever. Atlantis still had strong to excellent storylines, especially with the major antagonists of the Wraith (Todd and Michael in particular were excellent reoccurring antagonists), the Replicators and the Genii. And it did a nice job with interlacing strong character moments and friendships throughout the show.
But this is all about Atlantis in general. What about the end of season 5? Well, like the show, it was decidedly mixed, with one boundary breaking (for the show) episode, Vegas, some taut moments with the always untrustworthy Todd and some great moments showcasing that finally, after five years, the Atlantis personnel have learned how to threaten and talk to the Wraith, a
The last few episodes were also marred by a bizarre decision to hook up Dr. Rodney McKay and Dr. Jennifer Keller. As I've mentioned, Stargate just does not do romance well, and while I'll agree that it's completely unrealistic to expect these characters to go for five years without having a relationship or sex, it's also completely ok to avoid writing about things that either you're bad at writing, or which fit awkwardly into the show.
Such is the McKay/Keller romance. The actors have no chemistry, which is one problem, but the far more serious problem happens in the episode where the two of them head on their first date, which happens to be a physics conference where things naturally Go Wrong (wormholes and nonsensical heat sinks and Bill Nye the Science Guy making fun of Rodney). The two bicker and yell at each other throughout the entire episode and are clearly not having any fun, until, in a sudden realization that this is a lousy start for a relationship, the writers let Jennifer nearly die of cold/drowning and have Rodney save her. Love is declared all around, la la.
Two episodes later Rodney is unable to tell that another woman's mind has taken over Jennifer's body.
Sigh.
Ronan, an earlier potential interest of Jennifer's, was able to tell, but for whatever reason that relationship was scuttled, although the show gave him another potential love interest in the last few episodes which was all very nice. (She does kickboxing, and clearly, you see, action guys belong with action girls and not cute doctor girls.) The show does make token efforts to remember that Rodney and Jennifer are supposedly in love and the actors occasionally remember to smile at each other but that's about it.
I suppose the writers felt that Rodney should be hooked up with somebody, and Jennifer was the best available, but the time spent on this baffling and unconvincing relationship was time not spent in developing other potential relationships. If the writers really felt the need to have a romance in there, I could see other possible ones – John and Teyla certainly leap to mind (although I was relieved that the show didn't go there, since it was nice to watch two characters have a completely professional relationship mixed with a deep friendship without forcing that to turn romantic), perhaps Ronan and Jennifer, Rodney with pretty much any other scientist, or Richard Woolsey with Jennifer or another person on the base (which also would have shown his acceptance and love for the Atlantis job, something well developed on the show, as Richard slowly learns the intricacies of Atlantis and the Pegasus galaxy.) Or, heck, Samantha Carter with Zelenka (I hear the shrieks of anguish, but whatever.) Or, as I said, the even better approach of skipping the romance altogether and focusing on what the show did best: tense interactions with untrustworthy Wraith out for their own agenda.
The final episode was also sadly weak, relying on a lot of plot contrivances and coincidences (everybody arrives on the Wraith ship at the same time, really? The gate on the Wraith ship is so lightly guarded, really? Nobody sailing through the Pacific is that interested in a self-described huge giant fireball hurtling through the air, really? The Navy is able to cordon off San Francisco's harbor without a giant outcry and more questions, really? And so on.) I mostly enjoyed the episodes, and they did their usual job of helping me sleep, so yay, but I'd have to say that season five just repeated too many earlier weaknesses.
* Although, at that, it's not quite as inexplicable as the one scene from Transformers that I caught before getting sick, where evil robots are attacking Shanghai and getting battled by….the U.S. army, rather than the well equipped Chinese army and its nukes. I mean, this might have made vague sense if the robots had been attacking, say, Seoul, but I'm just not feeling that much love from the Chinese government, evil robots or no evil robots, especially since they have their own army.