I'm weak. Weak as water.
I broke down and watched SGU via Megavideo. I'll put all my other thoughts behind a cut, but I do want to say that about ten minutes into the show, I got an almost overwhelming sense of longing for my boys. God, I miss John and Rodney. :-(
We open with a long, almost endless-seeming pan of dark, dreary hallways - obviously the ship, Destiny. After what seems a lifetime, we get to the gateroom where the gate activates, and a young man in uniform comes hurtling through closely followed by others.
This is the beginning of the show. We are treated thereafter with choppy, abrupt flashbacks introducing the characters and the back story. Apparently the base is being attacked by Travelers (Oops, my bad. Wrong show) the Lucien Alliance, and the planet is so unstable that it's going to blow up from the bombardment, so instead of dialing a nice, safe planet, Rush dials the ninth chevron after Eli suggests how to do it.
The young man hurtling through the stargate is, of course, Lt. Scott, our erstwhile juvenile lead (I use the old-timey term for young male lead). We're introduced to him in the flashback by seeing him boinking some woman up against a wall. This is to put all you filthy slashers on notice that the boy is heterosexual. Got it? HE'S NOT QUEER, OKAY!????? Although I'm not sure who slashers would hook him up with since the other men in the show are singularly unattractive - at least to me they are - except maybe Greer. But then he's fucking insane so unless your thing is rape fic, I can't see hooking him up with Scott either.
Anyway, we meet the various characters, some via flashback, some not.
Eli is not unlikable, and the actor seems capable of giving him a personality. He solves a complex mathematical problem that Rush embedded into a game which earns him entre into Stargate program while wearing his pajama bottoms.
TJ, the medic, also seems likable, as does Scott. I didn't see enough of Ming-Na's character to know whether I like her or not.
Col. Young and Chloe the Senator's daughter didn't impress me. In fact, at the point where they're wondering who is worthless enough to sacrifice their life to manually close the jumper shuttle door, I thought, "Use Chloe. She's totally worthless on this voyage." Alas, they did not, using her father the Senator instead, since he had an owie and was dying anyway, luckily for them.
I think we have two men of color on the show - one, Greer, is the guy with the anger management issues, and the other is the cook, (Don't expect to see him again. I'm sure he was just there to hand Rush his lunch in an earlier scene.) Well, at least they're not aliens, right?
I think Dr. Rush is supposed to be Enigmatic with a Hidden Agenda. Whatever; if he turns out to be a Dr. Smith or Giaus Baltar, I'll hate him simply because I hate those kinds of characters.
They are using the communication stones from S9 of SG-1. Apparently for some reason I didn't understand, the gate to the Icarus outpost (yeah, nice name for a base if you want it to crash and burn) couldn't be dialed in, so I guess they used the stones for communication. And the Stargate writers find it impossible to cut the umbilical cord with with SGC, so we have to put up with the creepy bodyswap episodes.
It's inevitable that I compare this show with SGA. SGA was all light and color and characters that had personalities. There were shots of real beauty and wonder in Atlantis, and no one who's seen the show could ever forget the Rising of Atlantis. There's nothing like that in SGU so far. It's dark and dreary and humorless. Instead of a beautiful city, it's set on a rusty old scow that appears to be falling apart. Not one of the characters stood out as someone I could latch onto. Granted, I went into watching this show with a chip on my shoulder, so I was going to look for negatives.
Surprisingly, I didn't hate the show. It kept me interested enough that I'll probably watch Friday's episode simply to see what the alien planet looks like they're gating to at the end of the episode. Hold up your hands if you think it'll look like the forests around Vancouver Whether or not I watch any episodes after that remains to be seen.
We open with a long, almost endless-seeming pan of dark, dreary hallways - obviously the ship, Destiny. After what seems a lifetime, we get to the gateroom where the gate activates, and a young man in uniform comes hurtling through closely followed by others.
This is the beginning of the show. We are treated thereafter with choppy, abrupt flashbacks introducing the characters and the back story. Apparently the base is being attacked by Travelers (Oops, my bad. Wrong show) the Lucien Alliance, and the planet is so unstable that it's going to blow up from the bombardment, so instead of dialing a nice, safe planet, Rush dials the ninth chevron after Eli suggests how to do it.
The young man hurtling through the stargate is, of course, Lt. Scott, our erstwhile juvenile lead (I use the old-timey term for young male lead). We're introduced to him in the flashback by seeing him boinking some woman up against a wall. This is to put all you filthy slashers on notice that the boy is heterosexual. Got it? HE'S NOT QUEER, OKAY!????? Although I'm not sure who slashers would hook him up with since the other men in the show are singularly unattractive - at least to me they are - except maybe Greer. But then he's fucking insane so unless your thing is rape fic, I can't see hooking him up with Scott either.
Anyway, we meet the various characters, some via flashback, some not.
Eli is not unlikable, and the actor seems capable of giving him a personality. He solves a complex mathematical problem that Rush embedded into a game which earns him entre into Stargate program while wearing his pajama bottoms.
TJ, the medic, also seems likable, as does Scott. I didn't see enough of Ming-Na's character to know whether I like her or not.
Col. Young and Chloe the Senator's daughter didn't impress me. In fact, at the point where they're wondering who is worthless enough to sacrifice their life to manually close the jumper shuttle door, I thought, "Use Chloe. She's totally worthless on this voyage." Alas, they did not, using her father the Senator instead, since he had an owie and was dying anyway, luckily for them.
I think we have two men of color on the show - one, Greer, is the guy with the anger management issues, and the other is the cook, (Don't expect to see him again. I'm sure he was just there to hand Rush his lunch in an earlier scene.) Well, at least they're not aliens, right?
I think Dr. Rush is supposed to be Enigmatic with a Hidden Agenda. Whatever; if he turns out to be a Dr. Smith or Giaus Baltar, I'll hate him simply because I hate those kinds of characters.
They are using the communication stones from S9 of SG-1. Apparently for some reason I didn't understand, the gate to the Icarus outpost (yeah, nice name for a base if you want it to crash and burn) couldn't be dialed in, so I guess they used the stones for communication. And the Stargate writers find it impossible to cut the umbilical cord with with SGC, so we have to put up with the creepy bodyswap episodes.
It's inevitable that I compare this show with SGA. SGA was all light and color and characters that had personalities. There were shots of real beauty and wonder in Atlantis, and no one who's seen the show could ever forget the Rising of Atlantis. There's nothing like that in SGU so far. It's dark and dreary and humorless. Instead of a beautiful city, it's set on a rusty old scow that appears to be falling apart. Not one of the characters stood out as someone I could latch onto. Granted, I went into watching this show with a chip on my shoulder, so I was going to look for negatives.
Surprisingly, I didn't hate the show. It kept me interested enough that I'll probably watch Friday's episode simply to see what the alien planet looks like they're gating to at the end of the episode. Hold up your hands if you think it'll look like the forests around Vancouver Whether or not I watch any episodes after that remains to be seen.