Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Thought it was a perfectly respectable SG-1 season-ender, didn't think it was quite worth $20 or all the hype.
Yep, that about sums up my feelings too. I still can't think of anything of substance to post about the episode movie. I'll just point people in your direction and danceswithwords since I can't come up with anything to add.
I think danceswithwords and I posted more or less simultaneously. If I'd read hers first, I might have just directed people there!
I'm not terribly sold on this episode/movie hybrid genre that seems to be something of a thing all of a sudden. Razor worked better than this one (because the BSG writers are better than the SG-1 writers, I think), but in both cases there was no small amount of identity crisis, I think. If you're going to make a movie and charge me the price of a DVD to see it/the full version of it, I want a proper movie: budget, big story, epic coolness. I don't particularly want a $20 episode.
You know, I kept hearing about all the extra money they spent on the DVD 'film' and I wasn't seeing it on my TV screen. They recycled that same old village set for the umpteenth time, the ruins of the Ancient city looked like styrofoam, and one scene actually looked like it utilized a painted backdrop. Sigh.
Right during the opening shots with the mountains I got hopeful because hey, that looked like a movie, and then...nope, just the same old village set. Remember when they used to have a few different village sets?! Oh Stargate!!!
I can't decide if it's good or bad that I now read all Adama/Roslin stories like a beta reader. Every sentence, I wonder if it's something that they would utter, I turn it over in my head and play with it a little bit. And this story almost worked for me on that level, but not quite--though I suspect that is because I've gotten use to the Laura Roslin in your head.
That being said, yes, I liked it! But being able to discuss it with the author would be so much more fun than just leaving a comment at the archive.
As for AoT . . . this: These didn't feel like people who have worked together for years and know each other intimately.
That was my biggest gripe with SG-1 season 8, and one of the (many) things that provoked my disinterest in hopping back on the bandwagon for the later seasons, and it's really kind of too bad to hear that the feeling persists. I know it's not a universal seasons 9 and 10 thing, not to worry. Just more of a . . . thought.
because I've gotten use to the Laura Roslin in your headYes, I've gotten pretty used to her, as well. :) In some ways it may be weirder to read stories like this one that are really close to the way I see her but just a hair off than the stories that are way out of character. I still much prefer stories like this, of course, but it's weird to read along feeling like this is almost something I could have written and then to get bumped out of that sense by one or two little things. I don't think it's terribly fair to read other people's fics like that--after all, we're all entitled to our own views of the character--but neither am I sure I can help it. Oh well
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I think my biggest disappointment was that aside from Sam and Cam, and the obvious sense of helpless panic that Daniel and Vala feel when Teal'c gets shot, there just wasn't much team interaction. They were all doing their thing, working on their parts of the plot, but it didn't really feel like they were working together.
Thank you for pinpointing the underlying disappointment I had with the way the characters were handled. There were a few nice one-on-one interactions, but it was pretty thin gruel, and the rapid cutting back and forth between the Odyssey and the planet went on too long, I think, and emphasized how little the two plots were connected. Cam and Sam were, basically, engaged in an entirely separate conflict from the problem Vala and Daniel and Teal'c were dealing with; they really weren't working together.
I also felt like even within the two groups they weren't really working together. Sam and Cam more so, but Daniel, Vala, and Teal'c each had a separate storyline: Daniel with Morgan, Vala with Tomin and Adria, Teal'c with his walk to Mordor.
I think this is all symptomatic of the writers' conviction that they and their plots are the most important thing going on. They come up with their story, and the characters just become cogs in the plot wheel. The fact that this particular writing and directing came from Robert C. Cooper doesn't surprise me at all; I've never had a great deal of respect for his treatment of the characters (though this mostly because I'll never forgive him for killing Janet).
I think my biggest disappointment was that aside from Sam and Cam, and the obvious sense of helpless panic that Daniel and Vala feel when Teal'c gets shot, there just wasn't much team interaction. They were all doing their thing, working on their parts of the plot, but it didn't really feel like they were working together.
You know what's funny? I don't disagree with you on this point at all and yet, this was my biggest complaint about "Unending" and I didn't feel it nearly as badly in "Ark of Truth"
I'm not sure what that says exactly...
I do wonder if half my glee is that I've been so down about SGA S4 that it was so nice to get even this, you know? That even with it's faults, there was enough solid stuff I *liked* and enough potential (if sometimes unrealized) and, just, my team back onscreen, that I'm giving it a lot of leeway.
I think there must be some part of our respective brains that is wired in exactly opposite ways!
Though I do see why it's a complaint-worthy offense in "Unending." In that ep we do see the individual team members doing their own thing rather than all interacting together very much. They also aren't working together so much as just living together in the same space. Yet there was still so much more real emotion in "Unending," so much more of a sense that these characters were personally affected by their situation and by each other within that situation. *shrug*
But I do find that my judgment and tolerance for Stargate varies on what bar I'm using. Love it as I do, I've never thought it was a very good show. If I'm using it as a benchmark, AoT did pretty well--and from what I hear of SGA s4, AoT was probably brilliant. But most of what I've been watching lately has not been Stargate, and it's been, er, better than Stargate, and sometimes I forget that this is a show I tend to love in spite of
( ... )
Well, you are the humanities person and I am the science person, but, yes, apparently different wiring. And yet we share similar tastes, it seems. Odd
( ... )
See, most of that stuff from "Unending" didn't really bother me so much because after 50 years with the same five people, I'm surprised they hadn't killed each other, much less weren't always working together. The bits of antagonism, Cam running endlessly, etc. actually struck me as fairly realistic touches. And I'm not sure that Sam would quite get Daniel's drive just to know for its own sake in quite the same way. For all her aptitude with theoretical physics, the vast majority of what we ever see her doing is applied science of some sort--she's solving problems, working to some particular end. She works for 50 years to solve a problem, not just because she's curious. Whereas she and Daniel both know that he's not going to be able to use any of that knowledge from the Asgard database, and while she gets intellectually why he's still interested in studying it, I think there may be another part of her--the part of her that's been working to a particular end for all those years--that doesn't quite get it. I think that was actually one
( ... )
Comments 18
Yep, that about sums up my feelings too. I still can't think of anything of substance to post about the episode movie. I'll just point people in your direction and danceswithwords since I can't come up with anything to add.
Reply
I'm not terribly sold on this episode/movie hybrid genre that seems to be something of a thing all of a sudden. Razor worked better than this one (because the BSG writers are better than the SG-1 writers, I think), but in both cases there was no small amount of identity crisis, I think. If you're going to make a movie and charge me the price of a DVD to see it/the full version of it, I want a proper movie: budget, big story, epic coolness. I don't particularly want a $20 episode.
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That being said, yes, I liked it! But being able to discuss it with the author would be so much more fun than just leaving a comment at the archive.
As for AoT . . . this: These didn't feel like people who have worked together for years and know each other intimately.
That was my biggest gripe with SG-1 season 8, and one of the (many) things that provoked my disinterest in hopping back on the bandwagon for the later seasons, and it's really kind of too bad to hear that the feeling persists. I know it's not a universal seasons 9 and 10 thing, not to worry. Just more of a . . . thought.
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Thank you for pinpointing the underlying disappointment I had with the way the characters were handled. There were a few nice one-on-one interactions, but it was pretty thin gruel, and the rapid cutting back and forth between the Odyssey and the planet went on too long, I think, and emphasized how little the two plots were connected. Cam and Sam were, basically, engaged in an entirely separate conflict from the problem Vala and Daniel and Teal'c were dealing with; they really weren't working together.
Reply
I think this is all symptomatic of the writers' conviction that they and their plots are the most important thing going on. They come up with their story, and the characters just become cogs in the plot wheel. The fact that this particular writing and directing came from Robert C. Cooper doesn't surprise me at all; I've never had a great deal of respect for his treatment of the characters (though this mostly because I'll never forgive him for killing Janet).
Reply
You know what's funny?
I don't disagree with you on this point at all and yet, this was my biggest complaint about "Unending" and I didn't feel it nearly as badly in "Ark of Truth"
I'm not sure what that says exactly...
I do wonder if half my glee is that I've been so down about SGA S4 that it was so nice to get even this, you know? That even with it's faults, there was enough solid stuff I *liked* and enough potential (if sometimes unrealized) and, just, my team back onscreen, that I'm giving it a lot of leeway.
Reply
I think there must be some part of our respective brains that is wired in exactly opposite ways!
Though I do see why it's a complaint-worthy offense in "Unending." In that ep we do see the individual team members doing their own thing rather than all interacting together very much. They also aren't working together so much as just living together in the same space. Yet there was still so much more real emotion in "Unending," so much more of a sense that these characters were personally affected by their situation and by each other within that situation. *shrug*
But I do find that my judgment and tolerance for Stargate varies on what bar I'm using. Love it as I do, I've never thought it was a very good show. If I'm using it as a benchmark, AoT did pretty well--and from what I hear of SGA s4, AoT was probably brilliant. But most of what I've been watching lately has not been Stargate, and it's been, er, better than Stargate, and sometimes I forget that this is a show I tend to love in spite of ( ... )
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