EPISODE REVIEW: Stargate Universe: “Gauntlet” (Season 2, Episode 20, Series Finale)

>>>At the end of day, it comes down to what I like, and what you like, and that's okay, right?<<<

Oh, certainly. I'm not saying you have to hate TNG because it doesn't hold up for me, nor am I saying you have to like B5 because it fascinates me, just, you know, explaining myself.

>>>My interest in SGU came from wondering why I like scifi as much as I do, and why the show (including the later seasons of SGA) did not do better. DVRs and especially internet downloads seem to have a lot to do with it, because the international audience is there.<<<

Yup. And at root SF has always been a niche audience. Trek expanded beyond the niche because it became a cultural touchstone: everyone knew it, and given their general avoidance of extended storylines, it was easy to jump into at any given point with little effort. SG1 expanded beyond the niche because of its Right Here, Right Now, USAF in space aspects, which have a lot of appeal to people who traditionally don't like SF. Lost expanded beyond it because most people didn't realize it was SF, and when they figured it out, they were too invested in the characters to just ditch it.

>>>As for SGA, I'm still not sure why the got rid of Dr. Beckett in season 3 (budgeting?).<<<

The Sci-Fi Channel dictated "Someone must die in season 3." No explanation why, just typical suit screwing-around-with-the-show stuff. Beckett was chosen because the producers felt he was the least-popular character, who's death would least affect the show.

>>>I actually preferred Dr. Weir over Carter or Woolsey, because I liked her dynamic with Rodney and Sheppard, and along with Beckett she was the moral conscience of Atlantis.<<<

Yeah, Carter just didn't work, did she? A huge disappointment, given that SGA was initially intended to be *her* show. (She'd have been in the Weir role, had SG1 not been extended for another three years.)

>>The changing cast for me is the weakest part of Atlantis, that and the painting scheme the Ancients used ...<<<

A little of it was ok - Ford/Ronon, Becket's death was well handled, but yeah, the Weir/Carter/Woolsey thing was very disorienting and put the whole show off balance.

>>>Yep, Star Trek, especially TNG and Voyager tried hard to be socially relevant, maybe a little too hard.<<<

See, I think TOS did social relevancy better. TNG seldom tackled it, and then in muddy fashion ("Ozone Layer Depletion is bad and will ultimately lead to kidnappings." "The Drug Trade is bad, but not as bad as us actually stopping the drug trade would be, since...uhm....well, I'm not sure why that would be bad, but we're not gonna' do it." "Riker's dating a clumsy gay allegory this week, excepting it gets sillier the closer you look at it since they're monosexual.")

>>> I really enjoyed both TNG and Voyager, annoying, I know, but so true :). Rick Berman talked about creating charming characters that people would want to come back week after week to see, and to be fair, watching 'Trek after a hard day at school/work, whether TNG, DS9 or Voyager was an escape I looked forward to. Michael Piller had said Star Trek was a wonderful world to come back to, and for me (sniff, sniff ... :) that has a ring of truth. But poorly cast ... I just can't see that through my glasses made of rose ...<<<

Well, ok, compare the TNG cast to the SGA one. Or the TOS cast to the TNG cast. Any character (Excepting Chapel) on TOS is kind of inherently interesting. You'd want to have lunch with 'em, maybe hang out. The same goes for the actors, who are sort of interesting. Scotty is interesting, and Jimmy Doohan is interesting. Sulu is not very interesting, but George Takai is. The actors are merely adequate at best, but they're just engaging and that tends to come out in the characters they play.

Compared to the TNG cast: Johnathan Frakes isn't very interesting, and neither is Riker. Ditto Sirtis, McFadden, Wheaton (Yes, I know, he's *BECOME* interesting now, but he's the first one to admit he wasn't then), Crosby. Bland actors playing bland parts, not a spark of life to any of 'em. Stewart and Spiner were far and away the bright lights on that show, and Worf. Michael Dorn is a nice guy, a merely-adequate actor, but he had an actual character to play, unlike most of the rest of the cast.

Voyager had the opposite problem: I think it was probably the best cast of any Trek show (Excepting Beltran), and the characters were better defined than any other Trek show, but then they kinda' didn't give 'em anything to do. This could just be me. Since you like the show, clearly you're getting something from it that I'm not: no offence meant.

I'm not just bagging on Trek, btw, B5's initial casting was pretty terrible, and they spent the first several seasons fixing that. Attrition was pretty high. Of the human characters in the pilot, only one was still on the cast five years later. Great show, but, hey, obvious problems.

Compare *any* of these shows to SGA, which was very well cast (Excepting Lt. Ford and though she had her good days, Weir) with immediately engaging actors playing immediately engaging characters who seemed to know who they were from the outset, more or less.

>>>-That's- the fun I've always had with Stargate, looking for that journey towards peaceful co-existence, only to get a wry comment from Jack O'Neill, and then blasted by a nuke from SGA, or Teal'c's staff weapon, about nearly as powerful>>>

There was a saying in the '90s: "Don't apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem." I like the difference in perspective. None of the 'Gate characters have *ever* been warmongers, or particularly bloodthirsty (Well, Teal'c, I guess, and Ronon that one week he quit caffeine). Ok, none of the military characters have ever been bloodthirsty, or even astoundingly aggressive, and are as likely as not to try to avoid a fight when possible, it's just that there's a time for talk and a time for bang bang. The thing that bothered me about TNG in particular (Less in DS9 and Voy) was that it seemed like it was *always* a time for talk. Likewise, I enjoy the fact that in 'Gate the scientists characters generally seem to realize this as well.

>>But, what a great musical score for SG1 and SGA: kept me coming back.>>>

Yeah! I was a bit disappointed with the SGU's Blade-Runner-Lite Derivative score

>>>BSG felt at times like a master manipulator, yet as you mentioned, in a mean-spirited way, in trying to break apart the characters and bringing the audience with them to all the dark places.<<<

It reveled in hurting its characters. It creates people only to torture them. I was along to the bitter end, but it was a fracked up show on a psychological level.

>>there was a time I asked myself "I actually paid money for this???" (bought some of the DVDs).<<

I got rid of my DVDs at a recent garage sale.

>>>I differ on this, having grown up enjoying TNG. I find that TNG reallys heavily on the strength of its writing, because a space ship battle on TNG is really a mexican standoff: TNG had character stories and developed suspense<<<

All TV shows are products of their time, and all suffer and benefit from that. The first couple seasons of TNG were really weak because they were trying to do, basically, TOS in the '80s, and not realizing how quaint and antiquated that was. It wasn't until season 3 that they found themselves, and, again, the show fell apart in season 7. Added to which, a *LOT* of the episodes simply weren't worth telling, like all the "Childcare in Space" episodes in season 5, I think it was. Compare to TOS, which started off great, and tapered off gradually into silliness.

It's not that I need a battle every week, it's just that the show was really timid. It was poorly cast (Excepting Spiner and Stewart), the characters, despite all their screentime, were simply not all that engaging. Does anyone in the world give a crap about Troi and Riker? And whereas TOS had writers like Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison and Ted Sturgeon, TNG had writers like...uhm...well, I don't think there was a single published SF writer who wrote a single episode of the show, really.

Which is *NOT* intended to dump all over your opinions or preferences. I openly cop to loving some utterly terrible shows, far, far worse than TNG or even Voyager, simply because of my exposure to them in my formative years (See: Retrospeculative TV) In fact my preference for TOS might be just that. I'm just sort of a fair-weather Trekie at best.

>>>Things I've read about the production of both Star Trek and SG1 have struck me, in that I get the sense Brad Wright & Co created a really fun space to work and thrive, where the writing staff, actors, directors, etc, had great energy and interaction. On Star Trek, RDM and others have talked about the barriers between the writers and other production staff, the restrictions and the hostile atmosphere (regarding Voyager) in the writing room. Now SG1 had a lower budget, but that chemistry between actors and between staff really translates onscreen to a greater extent than Star Trek, to my mind.<<<

Yeah. Absolutely. This is why I feel the 'Gate series is the real heir apparent to TOS, and is far more faithful to its tone and sense of adventure and drama than TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENT were. And 'Gate, never the smartest show, has always been smarter than it needs to be, as was TOS. 80s/90s Trek wasn't stupid, but it was never quite as smart as it seemed to think it was.

>>>Something about SGA caught me offguard, in that the Wraith and the Replicators were almost always seen as enemies to be destroyed, rather than as sentient lifeforms with more depth and complexity. SGA's episode "Be All my Sins Remember'd" with an awesome space battle, had Rodney and Sheppard destroy a whole race, then joke about it and go out for lunch at the end of the show: what the heck was up with that???<<<

Different sensibilities, and no real dogma. The Wraith are predators, they kill humans, and have for 10,000 years or more. That can't be allowed. It's a time for action, not a time for introspective agonizing over idealized moral questions. Added to which, the Replicators were wiped out *after* attempts to use them for their intended purpose had gone horribly wrong, and resulted in even more death. In fact, pretty much everything that went wrong in the Pegasus Galaxy was the result of the Atlantis crew, and they were desparately attempting to fix it.

I find it interesting (And heartening) that it was Todd who did the 'trying to understand' thing, without liking his enemies, and for entirely selfish reasons. Which, when you think about it, makes sense. Again: different sensibility. Trek has always been about peaceful co-existence, ultimately. 'Gate has generally been about war.

>>I think it already is, to be honest. The only real problem is that the stories tend to come out feeling like those "Choose your own adventure" books, a bit...uhm....limited and artificial. But that's an obstacle that *will* be overcome, and then, we, so much for passive viewing. <<

There was an old game called Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, that came out before the Internet caught on, that is what I had in mind, a kind of cinematic, choose your own adventure: this is largely superseded by the multi-player online games or 3D immersive movies today (although to be fair, I don't play games any longer, I'm just inferring).<<<

>>>It's hard for me to think of SGU as epic, because many of its characters (Young,Rush,Camille) were unlikeable in the beginning, plotting/fighting with each other and creating "drama". However, the production was expensive the 1st season, and did feel like a 20 hour movie with an "awe factor" in scenes from Light (diving into a star), Space (meeting the unknown, the Blue aliens), and the Lucian Alliance Arc (Subversion/Incursion with its exciting espionage/invasion plot). The 2nd season was less cinematic, without the expensive cgi and bladerunner like synth score, but the cast became much more likeable as they pulled together in season 2.5.<<<

The promotional material in the first season stressed that "These are not the right people, this was not their intended mission." They *appear* to have been assigned a 'dysfunctional mandate' from the network, so had to start out like that, and I didn't like it at first, but it gradually became apparent to me that they were growing to *suit* the mission, rising to the challenge fitfully. As opposed to BSG where they suck at the start and they suck at the end.

>>>It was also the most expensive looking Stargate, when SG1's success came partly from being a relatively cheap production (no ships till season 5 or 6!). Even BSG used its cool CGI sparingly.<<<

Agreed. SG is, at root, about walking around in the woods and occasionally visiting renaissance festivals.

>>BSG came at the right time (2003) and tapped the unresolved pain of people in a way other shows at the time did not. In its 3rd and 4th seasons, the religious mythology of "God and the Final Five", as well as the alien aspect of the Cylons, made the show more sci-fi and niche: hence its rapid ratings decline.<<<

Also major plot erosion. They claimed at the outset that they didn't want it to be a simple remake of the original Galactica, that they didn't want to feel limited by it, and then they ended up doing almost exactly everything TOG did, just in mean-spirited ways. They started loosing focus in the mid-2nd season, hit a narrative peak during the "New Caprica" arc, and then crashed and burned. The final season was a total writeoff (Excepting the Mutiny 2-parter) and the finale has been rightfully called "The worst finale in the history of television."

The problem I think is twofold: Firstly, they had no clear idea where they wanted to go, or how they wanted to get there. Secondly: I think a LOT of the show was dictated by RDM's pent up aggression at Trek: I can't do this, this, this, or this on Trek, so I'll put 'em ALL into BSG...which isn't enough to build a series around.

>>>I would like scifi (outer space & other worlds) to have more broad appeal, but understand that it's far removed from shows set in today's familiar world, and has a niche audience.<<<

And this really was the appeal of SG1: Fighting aliens by day, going to see "Old School" in Colorado by night.

>>>It did not help that Stargate Atlantis was not renewed<<<

I've heard that Syfy killed it, I've also heard that MGM decided to cancel it to start work on SGU. Either way, it was a bad decision in retrospect.

>>>to standout you need high production standards and expensive cgi, which is hard to justify given the niche audience.>>>

The reason we still like Star Trek TOS, but that TNG doesn't hold up, is that the money went to the writers. Same goes for The Twilight Zone: when you've got a limited budget, put most of it into the writers. If the story is good, people will make allowances for the plywood sets. If the story is crap, the best sets in the world won't save you (See: Star Wars Episode 1)

>>I may be wrong, but immersive multiplayer gaming and storytelling could be a big part of the future of scifi storytelling: i.e. you are part of the story.<<

I think it already is, to be honest. The only real problem is that the stories tend to come out feeling like those "Choose your own adventure" books, a bit...uhm....limited and artificial. But that's an obstacle that *will* be overcome, and then, we, so much for passive viewing.

>>>It will be interesting to see the impact of future shows like Battlestar: Blood & Chrome>>>

It's got the potential to be the most popular Galactica show yet, given that it's *FINALLY* giving fans the only thing they really want: Fighitng old-school cylons.

I count at least 25 novels...
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&fie...

>>> didn't hate the second Matrix. The first one didn't blow me away to begin with, I liked the second, and then the third just totally dropped the ball.<<<

The second was, in some ways, smarter than the first, but not as satisfying, and it suffers from the lack of an ending. The third was crap, completely dropping the ball, yes.

>>Fair enough. I'll admit they should have been a little smarter when they negotiated their original deal. When George Lucas sold Star Wars to Fox way back before I was born, he knew he had 2 other stories to tell and he negotiated the rights to tell those stories come Hell or high water, even if Star Wars was a colossal failure. It wasn't, so Fox was more than happy to produce the others films. Devlin and Emmerich should have gotten some kind of a sequel guarantee.<<

Probably not an option. Lucas had two movies prior to 'Wars, one of which was a huge success, so he was in a better position to negotiate. Devlin/Emmerich were (as I recall) basically untested in US markets.

>>>Obviously, I want as much Star Trek as Paramount and CBS are willing to give me. Which brings me back to my original point, why can't we have both? Back in the 80's there were fans of TOS who would never touch TNG, but they saw the Kirk-era movies in the theaters. There is a market for these other films and I think MGM is stupid not to tap it. And if their finances are so rough, they should sell off their big properties to become solvent again. The same with Bond. MGM financial trouble is why no third Daniel Craig movie has been made yet. Do you know how much they could sell the Bond franchise for? That alone would get them solvent. That's a billion dollar franchise.<<<

See, here we agree. There's no particular reason you couldn't have had the RDM galactica on TV, and the TOS galactica in movies at the same time. Alas, studios don't think like comic books, where you can have multiple continuities running concurrently, and they just never do that. What they do in actual practice is claim they love something forever until it fails, then claim 'it's lost its way' and reboot it. The Spiderman movies, for instance. Or the Trek reboot. So there's no reason why they couldn't but they simply won't.

>>>Did they really? When did they have time for that. Stargate came out in 94, Independance Day in 96, Godzilla in 98. Those movies are huge and I don't see where would have had the time to rabidly develop sequels. It may have been that MGM didn't want to wait around on them and developed the series, ok, but now they're ready so at least hear them out and see what they have<<<

Yeah, ok, I overstated that, sorry. You may get your wish, though, with SG basically dead, they might let the originals take another crack at it. Thing is: scores of millions more people have seen the TV shows than ever saw the movie. Anderson and Shanks *own* those characters now, it'd be hard for many to accept Russel and Spader.

>>The thing is: Sometimes the creator of a show is too close to his creation and doesn't know what to do next with it. It happens.<<

>>>I don't think I even know what that means. Can you be too close to your children to be able to raise them correctly? I just don't get that.<<<

Ok, let's look at Lucas: The first two films are great, he's clearly phoning it in by the third one, and one of the producers quit because he felt Lucas had lost his way and just couldn't deal with it anymore. When he finally gets around to making the prequels, he's clearly not got a freakin' clue, and they all just kinda' suck (Though admittedly they suck less as they go along). And he's just kind of abandoned chapters 7,8, and 9. So the point is that old Lucas didn't have a clue, while young Lucas did. Clearly he's not the best person to shepherd his franchise anymore. That's not a value judgement, it's just his vision and instincts aren't what they once were.

Another example would be Roddenberry, who created Star Trek, and had a darn fine show for two years, then was burned out (And/or forced out, depending on who you talk to). He was solidly involved with ST:TMP which sucked, and the movie franchise was basically taken away from him. He was put back in a position of power for TNG, but again, he was too close to it, his instincts were poor at the time, and I don't think anyone will disagree that the first season is way weak. Second season is somewhat better, but the show really doesn't get going until the third season when Gene was basically booted upstairs to get him out of the way, and the whole thing was turned over to Berman/Piller (Who themselves eventually got too close to it, and had to be removed, but that's another story)

Or take Glen Larsen: Galactica was good, Galactica: 1980 was as terrible as terrible could be. Now, there's mitigating factors on both of these, but the fact is that his second show was absolutely miserable, and he thought it wasn't. His movie revival ideas were terrible ("Ok, let's not have the Galactica in it at all! And let's do it as a 40-minute Imax film!") And he was openly opposed to the RDM reboot (Though he took producer's credit and a paycheck from it), which shows he was kind of out of touch (I'm not a fan of the RDM galactica, btw) while RDM had way more success with the concept than Larsen ever did.

>>>You're perfectly free to have your own opinion regarding the feature (even if it is ass-backwards and wrong), but you have to admit that Devlin and Emmerich created the thing (it was actually an amalgamation of separate ideas each of them had) and so they should be given the opportunity to tell the story they originally intended<<<

They had the opportunity. Lemme ask you this: The Wachowski brothers created "The Matrix." They made buttloads of money, and had a trilogy in mind. The next two movies kinda' sucked, drove people away in droves, and nobody likes The Matrix anymore. Now should the studio have allowed them to blow 500 million on movies that basically eroded the profitability of the first movie?

I agree they've got the right to tell their own story, but the story may not have been worth telling. I've not read the pitches, but MGM was not at all impressed with them, and didn't think they measured up to the first film.

>>Imagine if something of yours was hijacked by the studio and perverted into something it wasn't intended to be. Wouldn't you at least want to be able to tell your version of the story? This was their baby and it's made MGM a ton of cash, I think they're owed. Also, there are fans of the movie who never got into the series (like myself) and we would like to see where they would have taken the story.<<<

It wasn't hijacked. It was bought by the studio, which gave them lots of money, and development deals on other films. They sold the car. You're saying they should still be allowed to drive it even though they don't own it anymore.

>>>Why? Brad Wright has already pretty much said that the feature film is not necessarily canon to his "true" Stargate universe. This is evident with all of the times he has contradicted the original story willy nilly whenever he saw fit.<<<

In fact, he's remained pretty true to it. He's retconned the significance quite a bit, but it's pretty true to the film. But which would you rather have? a Star Trek series that picks up some point after Voyager and continues on into the future of the Trekiverse, or *just* this movie reboot, with 2 hours every three years or so? Which is preferable? The show, obviously. I'm invested in the characters and their exploits, I want them to continue.

>>>I think they are owed at least the opportunity to finish telling their story.<<<

And they were. And they pitched it. And they had three years, after which MGM decided to stop waiting for something good, and went with the series. Which, in retrospect, was a wise decision as they made a TON of money off of it up until the Canadian dollar went above ours.

The thing is: Sometimes the creator of a show is too close to his creation and doesn't know what to do next with it. It happens.

>>>Given what we've seen (or heard, more exactly, at least in last season) I expected some more music at the end. They've put in several pop songs set to montages, to varied response, along the way, and for some reason I pretty much had that slow female-singer version of "Que Sera, Sera" running in my head all during the last bit of the show tonight.<<<

That's Doris Day. From "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)

>>>Kinda disappointed that it was imaginary and wasn't actually there. Anyway, my take on the ending is that Eli probably did get that last tube working before he ran out of time. But I guess we'll never be sure without some DVD movie or some other callback to it some day. Que Sera, Sera.<<<

The Number Two complaint about season 1 were those Ally McBeal-styled montages of life on the ship set to a song. I didn't mind 'em, and *once* I thought it really added a lot (When Chloe got kidnapped).

>>>Maybe now the franchise can be given back to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to finish out the trilogy the original Stargate film was intended to be.<<<

Oh, God, I hope not! Firstly: terrible movie. Secondly: Emmerich and Devlin kinda' suck (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, 2012, etc). Thirdly: It'd be a huge, huge, huge mistake to simply blow off 350 hours of a TV show by attempting to cram it all back into the box. Fourthly: If their pitch for the sequels was any good, MGM would have picked it up back in the day, when they still had money.

I doubt they'd turn it down if the option presented itself, but based on past experiences - SG1 and SGA didn't get reprieves, SGA never even got a cruddy DVD movie - it's not too likely.

I think the producers also realized that this is likely the end of Stargate as a whole. Expanding expenses, shrinking revenues, a somewhat fickle audience... this is their "Star Trek Enterprise." Next comes reboot, if anything comes at all.

So in the end, we'll never know what happened.

"Unending" is the SG finale most similar to this one, yes. In the case of that one, however, it had been written as the season finale, and they just shot it as written, with no changes. In this one, I suspect it was specifically written *after* the news of cancellation came, to be a conceptual end. Or 'resting place' as I said above. The 2/3rds of the galaxy they're skipping refers to all the missions we'll never see. Rush's rumination about how the journey is part of the answer is likewise a reference to this, I think. The answer separated from the experience of *finding* the answer results in knowledge, but no wisdom. "Three Years" probably refers to the thee seasons and 60 episodes they'd hoped to film after this one, but won't now. Bottom line: the Destiny may find out the answer, but we never will.

Good call on the communications stones. That hadn't occurred to me.