On Again, Off Again, Stargate Universe

November 19, 2017

Leah

What can you say about Stargate Universe that hasn't already been said?

For one, it gets a lot of heat for being something that many feel SG1 was not. This isn't a bad thing in itself, they wanted to make the story even bigger, and they should be pleased with themselves, because they did. I think that I am actually one of the few people who thought SGU was a good series. What may have turned people off was that it had a similar tone to "Battle Star Galactica", which at the time was the sci-fi show heavy weight they were up against.

But it also had a problem in the start, the first few episodes were very hard to grasp the concept of, even if you had a strong understanding of the world that was built up until that point. The main problem with this was that the show's creator decided to make a mistake, and purposefully left information out.

Maybe that makes me stupid, maybe I just didn't grasp the grand concept, but with the way it was told you kept getting confused on where everyone was and it pulled the fledgling story apart.

They used gimmicks to make this work. And honestly it took me several episodes to understand the "communication stones" was what was causing people to just "show up" at different places. They didn't introduce you to the technology until a little later. And at that point you realize they they are replacing characters, when in fact they were using the stones was to help the viewer understand what was going on. Or were they? Personally, I actually think it would have helped more had they gone ahead and changed the actor, rather than making them play a new character.

These problems were what made me think that, while it had a lot of potential, it was misguided and they didn't have room for a lot of additional error. Thus, their creativity got in their way. Mainly, because it got in the way of telling a great story.

Had they worked these quirks out early, that is to say before they actually got ready to shoot, they would have had a tighter story.

But it is not bad. SGU, when I look at it, I see Lost. It is a story based around the characters and their struggles in the world that was what made it worth watching.