Review: SGU 0101-02 "Air" Pt. 1 & 2
SGU, where do we begin? I suppose the beginning is as good a place as any.
The thing about this show is, I've been hearing about it for about to years. They canceled Stargate Atlantis, and it was like this show was meant to take it's place, and I was a little bitter. I followed the blog of Joseph Mallozzi, so I saw I was up to date on the casting process and the production of the show. The last few months, though, I stopped following his blog on a regular basis. There was a lot of uproar about the fail going on with the plot of certain episodes...and it was just too much. I figured it would be healthier just to wait and see and judge the show by the final product.
I took the opportunity to download the premier free from iTunes (yay!), so I got to watch the whole thing commercial-free. So, here are my thoughts as best I can remember.
Oooh, no opening title sequence showing pictures of the cast to a lively theme song. This is a plus, and it gives us a nice extra 30 seconds or so for some exposition, pretty establishing shot, whatever... In place of that, we have the show title appearing from the vacuum of space, cuz the show is serious, see. And the names come opening credits appear in text as the scene is unfolding.
We have one of the main characters, Eli Wallace (David Blue) playing an online game. He beats this super difficult level only to have nothing happen and the game take him back to the beginning of the level. Seriously?! Ok, I guess one can reason that the puzzle was so difficult that no one ever got that far, so it wasn't important to have anything behind that point. But again, seriously?
Uhm...you can't just show up at someone's door and beam them up to your space ship just because they won't sign your nondisclosure agreement. And he conveniently has a sick mother whose medical bills/care will be taken care of while he's gone? I'm not faulting the character this, but the writing is just...not what I expected. On second thought, it does make him look kinda bad, because you have a degree from MIT, and your mom needs money for medical bills and you're putting 22hrs into an online video game instead of like, bringing income into the house. He could be teaching math, or something, because-especially with-the No Child Left Behind stuff, he could so have a regular job. /rant
I did like the scene in the mess where Chloe and Eli first meet. I'm thinking he decided to sit next to her because she was the only normal looking person there. Or are we meant to see her as lovely, yet approachable? I suppose the latter, as shown later in the show, she really cares about helping people. I guess that's why she majored in political science. And she was the one to come up with the idea of putting the problem in an online game, because she's young and hip, see.
The planet gets attacked and everyone has to evacuate because THE STARGATE IS TIED INTO THE PLANET'S VERY UNSTABLE CORE, drawing power from it even?! How is that even safe, people???
Cut back to the opening scene, Lt. Matthew Scott is the first to come careening through the gate, then a bunch of people follow. My initial thoughts go to a scene in Galaxy Quest, where the self-designated Red Shirt proclaims, "Is ther AIR?! You don't know." People still go through gates without sending forth a MALP to see what's on the other side. They could have been jumping through a space gate for they knew.
Sending people out in teams of three to explore the severely damaged Ancient spaceship? Bad idea. Reasoning that you should force open a bulkhead with a flashing red sign ("Red usualy means bad," points out our resident kid-genius, Wallace) on the computer, overriding safety measures just because, "It could be the Engine Room for all we know." This is the person in charge saying this, folks, the daring and handsome Liet. Scott. I know this is Stargate, but if I'm meant to take this show seriously, you could at least take me seriously as a viewer.
Sgt. Ronald Greer. (I am impressed and disturbed at my ability to remember all these names) The black guy. Yeah, I said it. We first see him as everything is south on the base. Col. Everett Young (Louis Ferreira/Justin Louis) comes in, drops whatever charges he'd leveled (court marshall, I think), throws him his gear and orders him to help evacuate the people. I knew from early on that his character had anger issues and that would be his thing. And of course, it's not at all stereotypical, and, to his credit Jamil Walker Smith plays it pretty well... that is, until he tries to roll up on IOA Official Camille Wray, played by Ming-Na, just because she questioned his being allowed to walk among the free. Then he later claimed that she needed to "stay out of your face." Dude, she wasn't "in your face" and I wasn't worried that he would attack her or anything in the slightest; he was just trying to be intimidating. I hate however, that someone had to come up and hold him back, implying that either he was or they thought he was the type of person to get physical with a woman. Not cool.
There is another moment that I liked for his character, when he stepped aside and let things play out.
Back to Chloe Armstrong, daughter of Senator Armstrong. When her dad sacrificed himself, I was so expecting her to rage at Sgt. Greer. She totally passed him, ran down the hall, and proceeded to beat the crap out of Dr. Rush, the man who had led them all there.
Don't have much to say about Dr. Nicholas Rush. He's meant to be disliked so it seems to easy to just write him off an an evil character. I'm not familiar with Robert Carlyle's work, but he does do a wonderful job making me actually care about this character.
Then there's Tamara "T.J." Johansen played by Alaina Huffman. I'm a little biased here, because, having seen nothing she'd been in previously and only having knowlege of her role as Black Canary on Smallville...I like her. There's this inexplicable soulfulness and warmth that I get from her person. The little background given on her character is that she's a just a medic, not a doctor, and she was supposed to have already transferred off the base and be teaching at some college on a scholarship. I'm sorry, it wasn't really clear to me. Either way, she had some kind of relationship with Col. Young. The very much married Col. Young. Incidentally, his wife was played by the same woman who played the Ancient that they found barried in the ice at the base in Antartica. She's quite gorgeous.
And lemme tell you, Tamara did a waaaaaaaay better job of acting cool, like she wasn't involved with Col. Young, while Lt. Scott completely fumbled acting like he didn't know James, the young woman he'd previously been shown having sex in some small secluded space on the base. He couldn't even manage to look her in the eye, and then after that had the gall to ask her if she was "okay" while they were searching the ship.
The visuals on the show were the most impressive, I guess. I liked the design of the ship, Destiny, and the kinos (floating camera balls) were cool. This also sets up the undoubted abuse of this technology in the future.
I know that this is just the beginning, the premier is actually a 3-parter. Right now, I can't say that I care about the characters yet, and I'm not all giddy like I was the first time I saw Stargate Atlantis. Still, I'm interested to see where this show goes with things, and there is room to grow. I'm not expecting perfection or anything. I do hope they work out the kinks in the camera works, because the hand-held feel was distracting in some moments, particularly in what was meant to be a quiet and moving moment for Dr. Rush.
Honestly, I didn't get that familiar warm fuzzy feeling about this show until the end of the episode. Everyone was suiting up to finally go on a mission to the planet, and I thought, and for a moment, I found what I'd been missing for an hour-and-a-half.
The thing about this show is, I've been hearing about it for about to years. They canceled Stargate Atlantis, and it was like this show was meant to take it's place, and I was a little bitter. I followed the blog of Joseph Mallozzi, so I saw I was up to date on the casting process and the production of the show. The last few months, though, I stopped following his blog on a regular basis. There was a lot of uproar about the fail going on with the plot of certain episodes...and it was just too much. I figured it would be healthier just to wait and see and judge the show by the final product.
I took the opportunity to download the premier free from iTunes (yay!), so I got to watch the whole thing commercial-free. So, here are my thoughts as best I can remember.
Oooh, no opening title sequence showing pictures of the cast to a lively theme song. This is a plus, and it gives us a nice extra 30 seconds or so for some exposition, pretty establishing shot, whatever... In place of that, we have the show title appearing from the vacuum of space, cuz the show is serious, see. And the names come opening credits appear in text as the scene is unfolding.
We have one of the main characters, Eli Wallace (David Blue) playing an online game. He beats this super difficult level only to have nothing happen and the game take him back to the beginning of the level. Seriously?! Ok, I guess one can reason that the puzzle was so difficult that no one ever got that far, so it wasn't important to have anything behind that point. But again, seriously?
Uhm...you can't just show up at someone's door and beam them up to your space ship just because they won't sign your nondisclosure agreement. And he conveniently has a sick mother whose medical bills/care will be taken care of while he's gone? I'm not faulting the character this, but the writing is just...not what I expected. On second thought, it does make him look kinda bad, because you have a degree from MIT, and your mom needs money for medical bills and you're putting 22hrs into an online video game instead of like, bringing income into the house. He could be teaching math, or something, because-especially with-the No Child Left Behind stuff, he could so have a regular job. /rant
I did like the scene in the mess where Chloe and Eli first meet. I'm thinking he decided to sit next to her because she was the only normal looking person there. Or are we meant to see her as lovely, yet approachable? I suppose the latter, as shown later in the show, she really cares about helping people. I guess that's why she majored in political science. And she was the one to come up with the idea of putting the problem in an online game, because she's young and hip, see.
The planet gets attacked and everyone has to evacuate because THE STARGATE IS TIED INTO THE PLANET'S VERY UNSTABLE CORE, drawing power from it even?! How is that even safe, people???
Cut back to the opening scene, Lt. Matthew Scott is the first to come careening through the gate, then a bunch of people follow. My initial thoughts go to a scene in Galaxy Quest, where the self-designated Red Shirt proclaims, "Is ther AIR?! You don't know." People still go through gates without sending forth a MALP to see what's on the other side. They could have been jumping through a space gate for they knew.
Sending people out in teams of three to explore the severely damaged Ancient spaceship? Bad idea. Reasoning that you should force open a bulkhead with a flashing red sign ("Red usualy means bad," points out our resident kid-genius, Wallace) on the computer, overriding safety measures just because, "It could be the Engine Room for all we know." This is the person in charge saying this, folks, the daring and handsome Liet. Scott. I know this is Stargate, but if I'm meant to take this show seriously, you could at least take me seriously as a viewer.
Sgt. Ronald Greer. (I am impressed and disturbed at my ability to remember all these names) The black guy. Yeah, I said it. We first see him as everything is south on the base. Col. Everett Young (Louis Ferreira/Justin Louis) comes in, drops whatever charges he'd leveled (court marshall, I think), throws him his gear and orders him to help evacuate the people. I knew from early on that his character had anger issues and that would be his thing. And of course, it's not at all stereotypical, and, to his credit Jamil Walker Smith plays it pretty well... that is, until he tries to roll up on IOA Official Camille Wray, played by Ming-Na, just because she questioned his being allowed to walk among the free. Then he later claimed that she needed to "stay out of your face." Dude, she wasn't "in your face" and I wasn't worried that he would attack her or anything in the slightest; he was just trying to be intimidating. I hate however, that someone had to come up and hold him back, implying that either he was or they thought he was the type of person to get physical with a woman. Not cool.
There is another moment that I liked for his character, when he stepped aside and let things play out.
Back to Chloe Armstrong, daughter of Senator Armstrong. When her dad sacrificed himself, I was so expecting her to rage at Sgt. Greer. She totally passed him, ran down the hall, and proceeded to beat the crap out of Dr. Rush, the man who had led them all there.
Don't have much to say about Dr. Nicholas Rush. He's meant to be disliked so it seems to easy to just write him off an an evil character. I'm not familiar with Robert Carlyle's work, but he does do a wonderful job making me actually care about this character.
Then there's Tamara "T.J." Johansen played by Alaina Huffman. I'm a little biased here, because, having seen nothing she'd been in previously and only having knowlege of her role as Black Canary on Smallville...I like her. There's this inexplicable soulfulness and warmth that I get from her person. The little background given on her character is that she's a just a medic, not a doctor, and she was supposed to have already transferred off the base and be teaching at some college on a scholarship. I'm sorry, it wasn't really clear to me. Either way, she had some kind of relationship with Col. Young. The very much married Col. Young. Incidentally, his wife was played by the same woman who played the Ancient that they found barried in the ice at the base in Antartica. She's quite gorgeous.
And lemme tell you, Tamara did a waaaaaaaay better job of acting cool, like she wasn't involved with Col. Young, while Lt. Scott completely fumbled acting like he didn't know James, the young woman he'd previously been shown having sex in some small secluded space on the base. He couldn't even manage to look her in the eye, and then after that had the gall to ask her if she was "okay" while they were searching the ship.
The visuals on the show were the most impressive, I guess. I liked the design of the ship, Destiny, and the kinos (floating camera balls) were cool. This also sets up the undoubted abuse of this technology in the future.
I know that this is just the beginning, the premier is actually a 3-parter. Right now, I can't say that I care about the characters yet, and I'm not all giddy like I was the first time I saw Stargate Atlantis. Still, I'm interested to see where this show goes with things, and there is room to grow. I'm not expecting perfection or anything. I do hope they work out the kinks in the camera works, because the hand-held feel was distracting in some moments, particularly in what was meant to be a quiet and moving moment for Dr. Rush.
Honestly, I didn't get that familiar warm fuzzy feeling about this show until the end of the episode. Everyone was suiting up to finally go on a mission to the planet, and I thought, and for a moment, I found what I'd been missing for an hour-and-a-half.