sg-1
I hate to admit it, but I've been watching Stargate SG-1 during its farewell tour this spring (though I missed last week's ep). It piqued my interest again once they brought in Farscape's Ben Browder to play ... well, John Crichton and then Claudia Black to spice things up a bit. It's most fun watching her act circles around everybody else.
It's sad, really, to think that this show was the flagship of science fiction for so long - after DS9, while Farscape sputtered in the ratings, and until Battlestar Galactica saved the genre. I've said it before: it's so very mediocre. It must have jumped the shark when Not David Spader left and Parker Lewis tried to take his spot, and then again when Richard Dean Anderson finally gave up on it, paving the way for Crichton Browder.
Luckily, when they tried to go the Star Trek route and sex things up for the fanboys (and girls), they chose good actors to do it: Black, Browder, and Firefly's Morena Baccarin. Even Amanda Tapping gets to wear something other than combat fatigues every once in a while. But eye candy it isn't enough - if it couldn't work for Charmed, it sure as hell wouldn't work here.
It's the writing. It just is. Not even tonight's guest appearance by the slumming Fred Willard could save it, even when it was just him and Black onscreen. The best episode I've seen was the 200th, where they spent the entire episode spoofing the writing. I wonder if Ben Browder and Claudia Black die a little inside each time they're handed a frelling SG-1 script, knowing that the SciFi Channel killed their vastly superior Farscape to pour money into this dren.
Only two more episodes left, each with Baccarin playing off Black, hopefully. And then two movies, which will also feature Baccarin, so I guess nothing is really resolved in the finale even though they've known about it in plenty of time.
I can't wait for BSG to come back in the fall.
It's sad, really, to think that this show was the flagship of science fiction for so long - after DS9, while Farscape sputtered in the ratings, and until Battlestar Galactica saved the genre. I've said it before: it's so very mediocre. It must have jumped the shark when Not David Spader left and Parker Lewis tried to take his spot, and then again when Richard Dean Anderson finally gave up on it, paving the way for Crichton Browder.
Luckily, when they tried to go the Star Trek route and sex things up for the fanboys (and girls), they chose good actors to do it: Black, Browder, and Firefly's Morena Baccarin. Even Amanda Tapping gets to wear something other than combat fatigues every once in a while. But eye candy it isn't enough - if it couldn't work for Charmed, it sure as hell wouldn't work here.
It's the writing. It just is. Not even tonight's guest appearance by the slumming Fred Willard could save it, even when it was just him and Black onscreen. The best episode I've seen was the 200th, where they spent the entire episode spoofing the writing. I wonder if Ben Browder and Claudia Black die a little inside each time they're handed a frelling SG-1 script, knowing that the SciFi Channel killed their vastly superior Farscape to pour money into this dren.
Only two more episodes left, each with Baccarin playing off Black, hopefully. And then two movies, which will also feature Baccarin, so I guess nothing is really resolved in the finale even though they've known about it in plenty of time.
I can't wait for BSG to come back in the fall.