Thank goodness for the Stargate universe….
Aug. 7th, 2008 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It was discovered that I had an ovarian cyst this year, unfortunately a big one that had twisted and done nasty things to my internal workings, so I had to spend time I would have usually have spent doing something a bit more active, either lying on my right side on a sofa drugged up to the eyeballs on painkillers or in and out of hospital having tests, scans, ridiculous amounts of morphine, and finally emergency surgery. All of which was either painful and/or boring. (I was in hospital when I was told the news about Don S Davis. Such a sad thing to happen. It must have been incredibly hard on the cast, crew, directors, producers, writers etc who had worked with him for all those years. I really feel for them. He always seemed to be such a lovely man and as a viewer one always felt in completely safe hands whenever he stepped into a scene. I find it hard to believe that the wonderful humanity and dignity with which he invested Hammond didn’t come primarily from the kind of person he was himself. He must have left a huge gap in so many lives.)
Anyway, because of all the enforced inactivity, before and after the operation, I am so very grateful for a) books and b) Stargate DVDs. As well as re-reading every childhood favourite (particularly if it has a pony in it), I have re-watched all of Atlantis, seen The Ark of Truth (three times), and have just finished re-watching S9 of SG-1. I've found all of them just get better and better the more times I watch them.
I’m much more of a SG-1 fan than an Atlantis fan (by which I mean I read and write SG-1 fic but don’t read or write Atlantis fic, and probably watch SG-1 on a much greater level of (crazed fangirl) intensity) but I was very pleased to find how much I have come to love Atlantis, its characters and its world, and how jolly comforting it is to watch. There were very few Atlantis eps I didn’t really like (I think Travellers is the only one I would never bother to rewatch) and dozens that I could watch on a pretty much permanent loop. I’m really going to miss Sam in S5 (I thought she was very well written in S4, although not in it quite as much as I, as an SG-1 fan, was hoping), but I’ve always liked Woolsey so I’ll be interested to see how things go with him. I’m still unconvinced by Keller as a doctor, but I like the character when she’s not being a doctor (which is quite a lot of the time, after all). She just doesn’t have that brisk efficiency that doctors have, unlike Dr Lam, who has it in spades and who I really miss in S10 as she is so fabulous in S9. (Two of the doctors who attended to me in hospital were younger and tinier (if there is a minus zero size, those women were it) than Keller, and very pretty indeed, so I don’t think Jewel’s youth or attractiveness are a problem any more than Lam’s is, I just find Lam totally convincing as a doctor and Keller not at all convincing. Having said that, Trio was probably my favourite episode in S4, and my reservations about Keller didn’t affect my enjoyment of it at all, so hopefully that is how I will feel for the rest of S5.)
Watching it all in one go instead of here and then made me realize that S9 of SG-1 (would that we one day have a S9 of SGA as well) is even better than I remember (and I remembered it being pretty good), with one fabulous episode following another and a really good sense of the team and how much they care about one another. (The only one I don’t like is Ex Deus Machina, but to have nineteen episodes one loves and only one that one doesn’t seems like a pretty good ratio to me.)
I’m a big fan of Mitchell and the way he is never presented as a faultless hero. He seems more like the impetuous big brother who the smarter, younger siblings think is going to get them all into trouble if they can’t rein him back a bit, but who will always put himself between them and danger. Sam and Daniel seem to spend a lot of time eye rolling about him and yet they are obviously very fond of him and he would clearly walk through fire for them. Given Mitchell’s big crush on Teal’c and willingness to fling himself into any danger to save his hero, I do think Teal’c could be a bit nicer to him, but must admit it’s very amusing when he isn’t. I’m also trying to think (having watched it last night) if there has ever been a better season ender than Camelot. (Or one with a more fiendish cliffhanger.) I’ve only re-watched the first two episodes of S10 so far, but they were both excellent and I’m impatient for the evenings to come along so I can get back to the next episode. (I have a weird inability to watch TV during the daytime.) It's such a pleasure to have SG-1 episodes that I haven't watched and watched to the point where I can practically remember every line. With S9 and S10, because I've only seen most of them once, it's almost like having new episodes to watch.
I also found that Ark of Truth (which I loved and loved even more on each subsequent viewing) made me change from someone who wasn’t all that keen on the Ori arc to someone who is a complete convert (and without undue influence by priors) and so able to appreciate the story arc of S9 and S10 that much more. It was just such a good resolution and, again, watching it in a much more compressed time frame, I keep thinking how well thought out the whole story was, with the Arthurian mythology (which I think they used brilliantly) and the all powerful gods with fanatical followers. The character of Tomin was such a great idea - and they were so lucky in Tim Guinee, what a fabulous actor. I appreciated ‘Crusade’ so much more the second time around, knowing that this wasn’t a throwaway character but someone who is allowed to undergo a really believable transition – and who is allowed to keep his faith in the teachings of Origin if not in the Ori themselves. I also liked the way the Orisei gave Vala a practical reason to be on the team. It didn’t feel contrived to me as she genuinely did have influence over Adria that no one else did, and knowledge of the Ori universe that no one else had. I still wish there had been another season (or six) in which to explore the story in more depth, but I think the film did a really good job of wrapping up that plot arc without completely abandoning character moments.
Anyway, I’m just very grateful to have this show and this universe to wallow in and that it’s still ongoing. I’m sorry there isn’t another film in the works right now as I really looked forward to both Ark of Truth and Continuum and even if it was going to be a year away, it would be wonderful to know there was another film coming. Of course, I also wish Stargate: Universe had started filming as I’m fascinated to see what they do with a third series. Thank goodness that Atlantis has another sixteen episodes, for certain, and hopefully another season. (One can never tell with SciFi.) At least there will be Atlantis movies even if the show is cancelled, but, much as I love the movies, it’s not quite the same as having those week by week explorations. I think the big, sexy season ender/season premier two-or three-or four-parter ideas will still make it to being filmed as DVD movies, but I would really miss the quieter episodes like Trio and Line in the Sand that I tend to rewatch a lot, whose stories would never make big, action-packed movies. Even with my fangirly love for Ark of Truth, twenty episodes would still have been better, but, my goodness, it is light years better than nothing.
Enough burbling, but I’m feeling terribly grateful for Stargate right now, in all its forms, and hope it continues for many years to come. I know, as a Stargate fan, I was incredibly lucky to get ten seasons of that world to wallow in, but I’m feeling greedy so I really hope we get ten seasons of Atlantis and then ten seasons of Universe too, oh, and lots of Stargate movies (some of them crossovers), and puppies and cake.
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Date: 2008-08-13 11:02 pm (UTC)It's so true. It was cheesy, and occasionally the cheese would become too pungent to ignore (as with Emancipation) but there was a sweetness about the early episodes that carried me through them happily. The team were all so interested in the worlds they were visiting and had such an affection for one another. There was an innocence about it that keeps those episodes fresh for me however many times I watch them.
I expected to hate S6 and, much to my surprise, ended up liking it. I thought Jack was written and acted very consistently as a guy who had taken a severe emotional hit and was dealing with it the way we'd seen him deal with loss before - by closing himself off and not talking to anyone about it. I really felt for Sam though, who had two people with her who were as grief-racked as she was and couldn't get a sensible conversation out of either of them, but I really liked how she was written. I did wishd that they hadn't made Jonas in any way culpable in what happened to Daniel. It seemed completely unnecessary to me. I didn't like the way the poor guy was supposed to be angsty-guilt-ridden-must-continue-Daniel's-work guy one minute and happy, innocent, weather-channel-watching guy at the same time. I didn't see why he couldn't just have been the poor bugger that the Kelownans sent to Earth for whatever reason and was stuck there being a liaison, really, and so was on the team that way. They could have had 'Oops, sorry, we got your guy killed. Have one of our guys in exchange' as the reason why he was on the team and it would have led to him being written in a much less schizoid way. He was definitely likeable though, even with the weird characterization at the beginning and I thought it was a very solid season of Stargate. S7 and S8 are definitely the two seasons I like the least so far, but they have episodes I love and I will give them another shot some time this year and see if I can warm up to them more. Is the episode you liked 'Abyss'?
No, I feel the same way about Sheppard. I've become fond of him but I will never love him the way I love Jack O'Neill. The first time around I didn't pay much attention to Beckett, but on a second viewing I felt he had an important role to play as a moral compass. I liked the way he was always a Doctor first, like when the wraith is injured in 'Duet' and Beckett's first thought is how to give him medical assistance, whereas Sheppard just sees him as an enemy that needs killing. McKay never irks me either. It's one of those things, as with SG-1, where I can see that their actions/words ought to be annoying and yet they just don't know annoy me. Jack, Daniel, Sam and Teal’c have all been fairly thwappable in their time too but I'm too fond of them to find them exasperating even when they're being pains in the mikta. McKay is like that for me. I found him delightful in '48 Hours' and I always have since – even when he's being mean to Zelenka, whom I adore.
I was worried about Sam coming over to Atlantis too. I really like Weir and didn't want her replaced. I didn't like the idea of the city being under military control and I was very worried that Sam was suddenly going to have to drop fifty IQ points so McKay could still be the Saving the Day guy. But on the whole, although I thought they underused her, I was very relieved by the way she was written. I only really felt irked by the one with McKay's sister ('Miller's Crossing'?) when they called on a wraith instead of Sam for help with nanite technology when Sam was working on nanite technology back in 'Brief Candle' but weirdly doesn't get asked for her input. But I liked the rest of the episode very much and there are others in S4 I can rewatch over and over. (Yes, love Quarantine too. Zelenka saves the day! Yay!)
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Date: 2008-08-13 11:10 pm (UTC)It's more the deaths that I object to than the resurrections. I think they've been really overused as a cheap device to elicit an emotional reaction on Atlantis (even more than SG-1 which was guilty of it as well) and a zillion other shows. It's just too easy (for writers) to have a character who is kind and good and nice and then bump them off and then have everyone cry. A scene that chokes you up when you're watching it without anyone having died in it may be a lot harder to write but I wish they'd go for that a bit more often rather than just breaking out the character death as the first stop. The scene in 'The Tao of Rodney' where McKay apologises to Zelenka is one that really moves me every time, and that's just down to good writing and good acting, not pressing the 'kill beloved character here to elicit knee-jerk grief reaction from audience' button. So, I suppose my feeling with both Daniel and Beckett is that it was a lazy plot device in the first place to bump them off so at least by resurrecting them they corrected their original mistake, but it did end up being annoying twice over, by first doing the death thing again and, second, by cheapening the original death with a convenient resurrection.
Yes, absolutely. It was S3 of Angel which coincided with Firefly and there was a lot of bitching from the Angel fans about the lack of attention to scripts during that season. (Which I only found out about afterwards as I watched Angel entirely on DVD and had no idea what fan reaction was until after I’d finished watching.) I thought it had a great arc but a lot of weak individual episodes so I think it definitely did show that Joss's attention was divided because S2 was a lot more consistent. S4 of AtS was the one long crazy apocalypse story season. (Which I personally love, not least because Wesley is really hot in it, often right, only slightly crazed, and occasionally naked.) I thought S8 of SG-1 suffered somewhat the same way with the writers spread a little thinly over the two shows.
It's hard to know with Firefly. Probably Joss would have done something terribly annoying in the next season (like, say, killing Wash and Book while making Mal too annoying to live and then, perversely, not killing him) to drive away his audience, but I did think there was some fabulous writing in the little we got. I think 'Out of Gas' is one of the all round best things I've seen on any show. I just love the way it's constructed. It was only really 'Shindig' that made me roll my eyes and say 'oh puleeze', which really isn't bad out of fourteen episodes. (River dancing in 'Safe' is an example of a scene that makes me cry every single time without the writers having to kill anyone.) I thought Nathan Fillion was scary as all heck as Caleb but I found Mal too Han Solo to be interesting even before he became really, really annoying, and, to me, 'Star Wars' is this weird religion that guys-who-write-scifi have that I have never been converted to so I don't really understand their urge to homage it up the wazoo.
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Date: 2008-08-14 11:53 am (UTC)I think you nailed it with innocence - they seemed to be so thrilled to be travelling to new worlds and pushing those boundaries even if they were set on the journey by such horribly traumatic events. Of course the downside of innocence is that they sailed gaily into the event horizon without proper thought to the consequences. Was it in 'Brief Candle' Hammond said something along the lines of 'it finally bit us on the butt' when O'Neill started aging at an exponential rate? Still, it had a freshness of spirit I enjoyed, and maybe I was the one who grew too cynical rather than the show but after a while it started to get annoying that they couldn't foresee these situations coming because - hey! - did that one last season... and the season before that.. and and and.
I'm glad to hear you say you thought Jack was written and acted consistently because at the time there seemed to be so many complaints about RDA phoning it in, about his lack of care, humanity, whatever. Like you I thought he was dealing with it the same way as he dealt with the loss of Charlie only in a slightly healthier fashion than before - I couldn't imagine him ever taking on a suicide mission because Daniel was gone.
And Teal'c likewise. He was never going to be publically angsting over Daniel's loss. Even Sam - these people are all armed forces and they've all experienced such losses before. And yes, it had to hit harder because Daniel was closer to them than ordinary team mates and, I suppose, because he was a civilian. There must've been a different level of guilt there to losing fellow soldiers/airmen.
You're right, Jonas stood no chance with the way he was inconsistently written and because he was brought in to replace a fan favourite (although I always got annoyed - Michael Shanks chose to leave, it wasn't that they wrote him out for the sake of drama a la Beckett). I thought he was a good throwback to the first season, where everything was fresh and new and simply amazing, and a good counterpoint to the wearier views of the people we'd travelled with for 5 years at that point. And I did think that Corin Nemec was poorly treated by the producers (but that isn't new, is it? I have to keep reminding myself that it's showBUSINESS and their decisions are motivated by bottom lines)so that still bites a little even after all these years (don't ever ask me about Sam Seaborn! Oh boy, I could rant about producers there)
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Date: 2008-08-14 12:09 pm (UTC)On to SGA. Beckett stood out to me at first because of the faux Scots accent. And then I discovered he was Scots born and bred - oh well, he and John Barrowman are both examples of ex-pats being away too long! Ignoring that though, I liked his interplay with Mckay and as I'd already decided McKay was the most interesting character... Thing is, I could buy Beckett as a leader of a team as well as a doctor, I could even buy him following a military line although sometimes it interfered with his own interpretation of morals and ethics, I could even buy him deciding he wasn't going to follow protocol because his compassion and humanity wouldn't let him. But I don't buy any of the above from Keller. I don't understand why she didn't get sent home when she stated very clearly she didn't like leading in the aftermath of Beckett's death. At the very least they should've brought in a new leader and put her back to being a team member. I don't buy either that someone on the Atlantis mission is so 'wimpish' for want of a better word! They surely have access to far better candidates than that... And she's just too damn young but maybe that says more about me than Atlantis. But then, I often think they're weak in writing for female characters and I suspect it's too do with wish fulfilment and an obsession of sorts with Sam Carter ( I think Torchwood is similar, at least S1 when RTD et al were obsessed with Eve Myles and therefore everybody had to LOVE Gwen). Ironically, I think they almost had it right with Elizabeth but then you get into company politics and why they decided to kill her off but it's best not to go there!
Sam was better than I expected on SGA. Like you I thought they'd have to drop her IQ 50 points or - and I feared this more - drop everybody else's IQ so that she could continue saving the day. Thank god, they didn't and I thought she played very well against the established characters, walking that fine line between (military) command and friendship, and knowing when to let people have their heads. As you say, someobody forgot to update the show bible so it was 'forgotten' that Sam had experience with nanites to allow someone else to shine, but consistency isn't always their greatest skill. (Btw, I'm glossing over 'Patsy Kensit' because that would be too much of a rant at a tangent).Not sure how to split posts so I'll send this and then start another.
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Date: 2008-08-14 12:24 pm (UTC)What's not to love about Wesley? Cough.
I suppose we'd have to give Joss Whedon the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was forced to pack too much into the film because he wasn't sure he would ever get to finish his story otherwise. Mal was too damn heroic and other characters seemed to get short shrift so that the Mal and River stories could play out. I liked River but it was too much too soon for me because I saw the film before the series (my god, was I confused by Simon at first!). I still harbour a tiny hope for that second film even though I knwo I'm probably deluding myself. Star Wrs? Well, I loved it when it was released but I really have no desire to watch it again and haven't even seen the modern trilogy. Ironically I don't particularly care for sci-fi... I keep saying, it's the characterisations I'm there for (and sometimes the pretty).
So, didn't think I had as much to say as this. Nothing to do with the fact that we're so bored at work right now one of my assistants and myself watched the rain for a good ten minutes. Because we don't see it that often, right? Ha.