When Stargate Universe was first on the horizon, I had high hopes for it. After all Stargate SG-1 was awesome, and Stargate Atlantis was just as good, if not better (Editor’s Note: We like to pretend that Stargate Infinity doesn’t exist). Unfortunately, my high hopes for the new series were not to be realized in the first season. I’ll give a new show a chance though, because sometimes they just need to work out the kinks. I mean, Chuck was good when it started, but now (Season 4) it’s great. So let’s take a quick look back at Season 1 of SGU, and how SGU season 2 started.
WARNING: Spoilers abound
SGU Season 1 starts with our intrepid heroes rushing onto an ancient ship a million, million light years from home. The first “hook” (to draw you in) is their fight to survive. That is interesting, but can only go on for so long. Quickly, the writers move onto the drama of “home”. Basically, the ship people used the communication stones to cause all sorts of trouble at home, and vice versa. A lot of people didn’t enjoy this drama, but I thought it was reasonable, maybe not “Stargate” but reasonable. Season 1 ends with bad guys coming and invading the ship all sorts of excitement!
Season 2 starts with the resolution of the bad guys invasion. The resolution itself is fine, Rush does some ballsy things, nearly gets everyone killed… the usual. The problem is the writers start tossing in all sorts of random mysterious shit. Chloe was shot, but now her leg is completely healed. Suddenly 100% healed, not even like bleeding stopped and she’ll be okay — good as new. Then there is TJ, the medic. She was pregnant but got shot in the gut. She’s fine, but her baby has apparently been teleported to a planet a few thousand light years away where some of the Earthers got off. Oh, and her baby was still 3-6 months from birth, but now it is born and growing… so it got a 6-9 month timewarp. She might have thought this was all a dream/hallucination, but she saw some strange wispy stuff in the sky in her “dream” and then saw it again the next time Destiny dropped out of FTL.
Okay… so… we’ve gone from “OMG! We’re might not survive” to “OMG! She screwed who?” to “OMG! Mysterious powers have intervened”. This is definitely a downhill jaunt in terms of story telling. Stargate was supposed to be about action, science fiction, and comedy (Come on, Jack & Rodney were hilarious). Stargate Universe is about drama and angst. I know it is a “darker” series… but you can still do dark while retaining the core of what it means to be Stargate.
Let’s just hope this doesn’t continue. Else I don’t expect SGU to survive too much longer.
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