So, a few quick thoughts on tonight’s Sci-Fi Friday offerings. First off, I felt Stargate SG-1 finally started to return to center with this week’s episode. I’m still so not sold on the whole idea that the Ori storyline is part of a continuum with the Goa’uld/false gods storyline rather than a weary rehash of it, but at least with this two-parter the writers have begun to address it as a continuation of what has come before, with Teal’c’s fine speech about whether power, or the manner in which it is used, is a yardstick of godhood. The ending was just a little bit of cop-out.
Atlantis: Holy cow, McKay beat the crap out of somebody. That alone’s worth the price of admission. Now, I’m not so sure about the introduction of the element of the Wraith demanding worship from enslaved humans too. Unless there’s some connecting tissue between the Wraith and the Ori yet to be revealed, one could almost get the impression that the Stargate folks are running into the folly of the Trek franchise: running out of ideas. And again, another Trekkishly neat wrap-up, with hints of divisiveness within the Wraith – again, nothing we haven’t seen before – and another hint that Ford will be back yet again, though I’m not entirely sure I care anymore. Damn it, Atlantis could, and should, be better than this.
Finally, a word about opening titles. I was one of the many fans rallying for the return of a traditional full opening title sequence for SG-1 and Atlantis with last fall’s season. Even though I’ve been watching plenty of DVDs lately with their own full titles on them, I was really happy to hear the full opening titles for the Stargate series again. Watching them, on the other hand…eh. I dunno. Something about the new SG-1 open rubbed me the wrong way – I think it was the not-even-remotely-realistic CG stargate that did it. Atlantis was a bit better, with the still photos of the cast, though I’m not sure they could’ve possibly found a more unflattering shot of Paul McGillion.
Galactica: Admittedly, we have yet another quick defuse of the cliffhanger here, but this was much more like it. I was completely stunned with Roslin’s suggestion for dealing with the situation, but then again, she’s airlocked someone without even blinking. The overall storyline couldn’t be more timely – “our heroes” have tortured and killed prisoners of war, so what differentiates them from those other guys? What makes one degree of torture any more or less humane than another?
I did enjoy seeing, finally, a hint of a deeper relationship between Roslin and Adama. It says a lot about how well-drawn these characters are when they can have Tricia Helfer laying naked (and mostly uncovered) across a bed in one scene, but it’s this other scene that gets my attention. Of course, that intercutting scene at the end of the show also gets my attention. Holy crap. No quickie wrap-up this time. And that’s why Galactica’s the best show on Sci-Fi Fridays by an incalculably vast margin.
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The great thing about Galactica is that, after one and a half seasons, the possibilities are still wide open. Anything could still happen and I’m always excited to see a new show. The Stargate shows are still entertaining but the possibilities on those shows have been limited for a while. For Atlantis it became limted quickly half way through the first season. I’m not saying the shows are bad, it’s just that they are, in a way, safe and predictable. It’s like watching a show like The A-Team or a whodunit crime series: the shows follow a familiar pattern but you don’t care. It’s about the characters in the story and not the story itself.
I’m not sure I can see why you think Atlantis could and should be better than what it is. It seems to me like it’s a Stargate show, with all the good and bad involved in that.
I think I’ve said my piece on why the revelation in Fourth Horseman I really hurt the Ori storyline, but I definitely think there’s something to be said for the fact that the issue with the Ori isn’t that they don’t have the power that they claim to have, but that they don’t use it the way beings worthy of worship should. Because that’s the central question, you get much more interesting decisions being made on the part of Gerak, the Sodan, and the Prior played by William Davis.
As for the lack of a quick wrapup on Galactica – you know that the cliffhanger was originally the Act Two break for the episode? After they filmed it, they realized they had way too much and turned it into a two-parter. So I’ll be interested in seeing what the “real” wrap-up is like.
That said, Galactica is all kinds of awesome. I like the mood, I love the acting, and I do think it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen – if not the best.
I guess my rant about why Atlantis should be better was the same as my endless similar rants about Voyager and Enterprise…that the people in front of and behind the cameras, and doing the post-production, have the chops…but the writers, if they haven’t lost their chops, are rapidly losing them before our very eyes. It’s a cast and crew that could be telling much better stories, if only the people writing the scripts would do so. But as you’ve both pointed out, it’s a function of the limitations of the format.
I didn’t know that about the Galactica episode. It must be said again, holy crap. I like Galactica for many of the same reasons I liked Babylon 5 – it’s completely off the rails and it’s not predictable. I will admit, the further away we’ve gotten from the original broadcast dates, the more I realize that B5 was still every bit as stylized as the various flavors of Star Trek were; in the book “Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion,” much is made of Ronald D. Moore’s constant drive to get away from stylized SF and more toward naturalism. I think that, and picking up the B5 standard of “anything, absolutely anything, could happen,” and its closeness to current issues that you’re just not going to see Law & Order or even The West Wing touch with a ten-foot pole, is what makes Galactica the entertaining juggernaut that it is.
With Straczynski’s monologues, I don’t think there’s any way B5 was anything other than stylized, but I may be misunderstanding your use of the term. Still, I think Moore’s whole reinventing-science-fiction thing is a bit overdone. The faux-documentary thing is as much a move away from naturalism as anything else. Many of the moves Galactica has made have been made in the past by other shows – maybe not all at the same time, but they’ve been made. Law & Order has touched on just about every issue that Galactica has, without the comfort of allegory and analogy. (I dunno about West Wing, since I haven’t watched it in years, and plotting was never that show’s strengths anyway.) What makes Galactica so good isn’t that it’s doing things differently – it’s that it’s doing them well.
As for SG-1 and Atlantis, I may be biased because I read so many of Joe Mallozzi’s message posts and blogs. But I really don’t know if it’s lacking the chops as much as it is that the Stargates are basically action-adventure shows that are primarily showcases for the characters and their interactions. I haven’t watched every SG-1 ep ever yet, but I’ve sampled from just about every season, and the writing seems pretty consistent. What may hurt SG-1 a little bit right now is its own success. It’s been on so long and the hcaracters have accomplished so much that, just like B5 had to expand way beyond the station, the show has expanded far beyond the original SG-1-explores-worlds concept. And the show is still a made-for-cable series, so it makes it harder to show the galactic scope of the stories in question.
I agree with Dave’s comments.
I think there is definitely a gap in the goals of the writers and the viewers (or fans) expectations. Many fans and viewers (including myself) expect new stories and creative plot twists. Many times it seems to me that the writers are more interested in the interactions between the characters and they simply use an often-used story or situation and work on how the characters react. Or is it the writers? Perhaps the producers (or even the directors) want the often-used plot so they can experiment with the actors and characters.
Producer: Hey, let’s have a Groundhog Day situation and see how O’Niel reacts to it!
Writers: **Groan!** It’s been done to death! Do we HAVE too?
Producer: Yes! Or I’ll find a writer who will do it!
Since the show remains popular then it’s obvious that not all viewers care only about the story. I guess the fans who whine about the stories (like me) are a minority.
Well, now that Anderson and his partner are gone, most of the producers are writers, for good or ill.
It’s kinda weird for me when I look at SG-1 message boards. There’s definitely a contingent of fans who think the plots are less interesting or less well done than they used to be, but for the life of me I can not see the difference. Maybe that’s the difference that comes from sampling across a bunch of seasons rather than regularly watching the show for the last eight years.
I’ve seen al the episodes for SG-1 and I agree more with you, Dave, then the message board fans. I thought the stories in the first season were rather mundane and I didn’t get interested in the show until the second season started. The first season had too many of what I call “Death March” episodes where you know how it’s going to end but you have to sit through the rest of the show while the characters slowly figure out what’s going on and find a solution. If the filler – or non main story stuff – is interesting, then I don’t mind a predictable main story. A show gets the “Death March” label when the filler stuff is boring and doesn’t contribute. They’re just wasting time because the writers know the basic plot of the show doesn’t fill a whole episode. There was way too much of that going on in the first season. In later seasons the filler stuff got more interesting and so I didn’t mind the predictable main story so much.
Heh. I like the “Death March” term. I’m gonna have to use that sometime in the future.
The second season of SG-1 has some episodes that I considered to be decent SF – A Matter Of Time and One False Step are good examples. I’ve just taken a breather from my SG-1 catch-up marathon after the Jolinar’s Memories / The Devil You Know two-parter – my brain just melted on that one. Decent cliffhanger, but a death march to the end of the whole thing after that. SG-1 has been good SF. Even Atlantis has been good SF (I liked Condemned from the first half of the current season quite a bit). I guess my growing beef with the Stargate franchise is that they’re boldly going where Star Trek has gone so many times, and they’re just about bulletproof enough to be in Starfleet uniforms when they go there. As OTT as Vala can be, at least she brings a new viewpoint to the proceedings, and a couple of stories as well – and I think that’s got everything to do with her regular cast member status in season 10.
(It could also be that my aforementioned SG-1 binge has left me just close enough to burnout that my perspective isn’t exactly objective.)
For what it’s worth, another good example of advancing plot and servicing your characters and intriguing the crap out of your audience is Lost. Invasion is almost there, but it isn’t quite up to the level of Lost. Even coming in cold, I don’t see how anyone could watch just one episode of Lost or Galactica and not come back for another. The twists and cliffhangers and characters are just irresistably compelling.
Yeah, I think an SG-1 binge would do more to sour you on the show than, say, a B5 binge or a BSG binge. The two latter shows have a much more unfolding story where characters go through considerable evolution over a period of episodes, so extended watching is rewarding. SG-1, on the other hand, just becomes repetitive.
I think it’s noteworthy that my wife and two newspaper reviewers cited the Mitchell/Jackson banter as a high point of Fourth Horseman Part 2. I think that’s the niche the show is going for.
And I’ll be a bit curmudgeonly on Lost. I don’t think they do a very good job of plot advancement. Between the flashbacks and the “let’s see how these events you’ve already seen happened from a different angle,” the story doesn’t really go anywhere quickly, and that definitely frustrates some viewers. I put up with it because I like the character work a lot, and when the plot does advance it’s interesting. But it is sloooooow going.
I’ve caught on to some of the grumbling about the “rewind and replay from another angle” trick on Lost this season. I’m not sure how fast folks are expecting this show to move, though, when it’s taken us a year and a half to chronicle not quite two months of events. 😀
You could argue that that’s the problem. 🙂 Between flashbacks and rewinds, there’s not a lot of time for plot advancement. Now, the result can be very interesting if you’re into the character stuff. But if you’re just in it for the plot mysteries, man, you’re gonna annoyed pretty quick.
Galactica took a good long while to cover about of month of story time as well. But man, did a lot happen in that month.
>>Galactica took a good long while to cover about of month of story time as well. But man, did a lot happen in that month.
No kidding! On the latest episode one of the characters mentioned that it had been six months since the Cylon attack. Only six months? Wow. A lot happened in that short time. I’d like to see a timeline for that series someday so I can straight in my head what went on.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how much time was covered in the original Galactica either, at least where the first season was concerned; the second season (Galactica: 1980) was practically BSG:TNG.