Stargates

I thought i would have written a post about this by now...but i have started to watch Stargate, and more recently, Stargate Atlantis.  I'm not really sure anymore why i even started watching Stargate Universe.  I vaguely remember seeing part of the second part of the pilot on TV and wanting to know what happened.  There were definitely actors that i know from other programs...Ming Na, Christopher McDonald, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Robert Carlyle.  It's not like i was a fan of any of them, but i was interested in seeing more.  In fact, i like how actors from other sci fi shows tend to show up (John de Lancie, Marina Sirtis, Armin Shimerman, John Billingsley, Kevin Durand, Grace Park, Aaron Douglas, Tahmoh Penikett, and Alessandro Juliani, just to name a few...though some of these actors may have been on SG-1 before the show i know them from).  So i eventually made the effort to watch SGU.  There was so much i didn't fully understand, which show it came from, where it worked into the lore, and i still don't, but it made me interested enough to go back and try watching Stargate again.

I was never a fan of the Stargate film.  I don't think i could really understand what was going on, and didn't care for then-O'Neill and then-Jackson.  I know i tried watching the show on more than one occasion...but i have no idea what episodes i saw and decided that i didn't like.  So far, i only remember seeing one episode of the first season before...one that featured Teal'c hiding in an abandoned apartment building while sick.  So since watching SGU i had been considering going back to the beginning of Stargate and seeing if i could get into it now that i've aged a bit.  Plus there was a certain part of me that was nostalgic to see Richard Dean Anderson in something again (i really liked MacGuyver when i was a kid, though i hardly remember any of it now).

So i started with season one and have been working my way though from there.  I just finished season six.  I like the humor in these shows, and they have a certain predictability to them.  It's not that they're boring (well..sometimes they are), it's that i can figure things out, they follow a pattern that ends in a pleasing way.  No matter how bad things get you know that SG-1 will figure out a way to get out of the bind they're in.  And the humor...O'Neill's humor appeals to me in particular.  The writers', producers', whoever PTB, their sense of humor just leaves me in stitches from time to time.  And i would say that i hate the obligitory end-of-the-season flashback episode...except they have done some really original things with some of them.  Humorous and relationship-changing things.  And of course...the obligatory ship.  I want O'Neill and Carter to end up together.

As far as the content...okay, i'm a little tired of the Ancients stuff at the moment.  The whole "we're too impressive to die" and the "we're on a higher plane so we can't be bothered to help our grandchildren or any other innocents" tripe is getting to me (moreso now that i've started watching Atlantis).  From my pov, death isn't a bad thing, so i'm not sure that's a message that's good to send, but i know that i'm probably alone in this.  I want to know more about the Ancients, especially how it relates to SGU, but SG-1 just appeals to me more.  I like the characters on Atlantis, but the missions can be pretty lame.  SG-1 goes through phases, so SA might improve, but right now i just am tired of them being stranded (couldn't Earth have at least dialed to say hello/are you still there already?) and their prefer ship-in-a-bottle episodes usually.  The Wraith are cornier than the Goa'uld...dark in a different way, and i'm not sure i like it.  But the Ancients, if they were as wonderful as we are lead to believe in SGU, certainly seem too fallible.  Why doesn't the stupid city have solar panels or cold fusion or SOMETHING to recharge its batteries?

It's interesting, most of SG-1 happens/originates from Earth.  The crew visits a new planet every week (for varying lengths of time), but the show is centered around the secret facility.  Stargate Atlantis turns out to be the same way, set in a very static place (though it has a sense of mystery and hostility that doesn't exist on Earth.  SG-1 sometimes brings the danger home with them, but SA lives in the middle of the danger).  It wasn't until SGU, i guess, that they graduated to the Star Trek thing of actually flying around from planet to planet to explore the galaxy as a thing that is just as regular as using the stargate.

What i love about this show and its spinoffs is that they make fun of themselves, are not afraid of being nerdy/geeky, and blatantly so.  There is so much techno babble.  Now on SG-1 this works really well because Carter, Jackon, or Teal'c will brief O'Neill, who acts everyman/dumb, and has something amusing to say about it, and his heroism is so ordinary, he doesn't even act like it's a big thing, and i love that.  But it's not really working on Atlantis.  What is Weir a doctor of exactly?  She's not a scientist, she's not a medical doctor, she doesn't seem to be anything but an administrator.  There was this one episode where a (fake) Hammond tells her that she's not going to be in charge of the project anymore and she's shocked and i'm thinking...why?  What has she even contributed???  She's not a scientist, she looks at all the facts and makes a decision, but half the time that decision doesn't make sense and is overruled by Sheppard or ostensibly unforeseen circumstances.  She lacks credibility and her main function seems to be exposition and that's it.  I can't even ship her with Sheppard.  I kind of ship him with Teyla but not really.  I dig Teyla's outfits.  Now Teyla, she is a strong leader even while she retains her femininity.  But the show is really stolen by McKay for me (who i never would have thought that i would like when i first saw him on SG-1 and SGU).

Overall...i do like this series (and to a lesser extent its spinoffs).  I'm not going to say that it's my favorite, but it is definitely worth watching.  Right now SG-1 has ended on a high point for me and i can hardly wait to see the next season.  And of course i keep hoping that O'Neill and Carter will have more relationship development.  I can dream, can't i?  But what i like about the Stargate is how it takes old questions (to me, a long time sci fi addict) and turns them on their head to look at them a slightly different way.  It's more military than Star Trek, and i like how SG-1 in particular is unapologetic about it (though their guns are often very obvious, it's also closer to our current military reality, i'm sure).

The irony is that MacGuyver refuses to use guns.  I just finished the first season of MacGuyver and was surprised that i didn't remember any of the episodes.  Well, i remembered one line of one episode, but that was all i remembered about that episode.  So i guess i didn't start watching it at the beginning.  So far, the pilot has been my favorite episode.  It got a little better at the end of the season but i'm not really enjoying it all that much so far.  Maybe it gets better later on?  Maybe it's one of those shows that you can't really watch later on because it's so dated.  I felt very insulated from the Cold War as a child, only knew about it from War Games and one other kids film as i recall (the name of which escapes me at the moment), it did not feel real to me as a child at all.  But MacGuyver deals with it quite a bit.

One of the things i don't like about Mac is how he's kissing a new woman every other episode.  But i have realized something, partially because of who produced/created the show:  Terry Nation.  You know, the man who created the Daleks?  The reason Mac doesn't use a gun...is because he's the Doctor without a Tardis.  He seems to nearly-instantly travel around the planet, and he fights humans rather than aliens, but he's the Doctor, no doubt.  He uses what's on hand to save the day, rights wrongs, interacts well with children, the whole she-bang.  So i guess that when i was watching Mac as a kid what i was really doing was getting ready for the Doctor.  Does that mean that Richard Dean Anderson is my first Doctor?