Stargate Atlantis
Jul. 26th, 2004 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksFinally got around to watching the pilot, which was broadcast while I was in Singapore. I kind of slid into this bass-ackwards, since I saw the second episode on Sci-Fi on Friday when I got back to Athens.
I like it. Stargate SG-1 is still okay, but it's starting to get a little tired now that it's in its Eighth Season. Take last Friday's episode, "Lockdown," for example - how many times can we have a variation on the "alien entity possesses SG team members" scenario? Nicely written script, and good acting from the cast, but they're really on autopilot these days.
Atlantis on the other hand, feels fresh, even though it's really the same Stargate story. You know. Humans exploring new worlds, ancient enemy, alien on team helping them with the territory yadda yadda yadda.
But by removing it entirely from the old Goa'uld-Tau'ri conflict, with a completely new cast (with the exception of formerly recurring character Rodney McKay) and new personalities, it's got a shot at feeling new. The new characters make it all seem new again, and the Wraith are pretty cool and scary adversaries.
Things I like already include the idea that this ancient city still holds a lot of secrets waiting to be uncovered - so the exploration is not just out on other planets, but in their immediate surroundings as well. Atlantis, basically, is a character unto itself, and I'm hoping it'll have a personality, too, so to speak. Also, the impression I'm getting is that unlike Star Trek: Voyager, which also had a "we're stranded," premise built in, here getting home is a secondary consideration, and I hope it remains so.
The pilot was well crafted - providing enough info about the Stargate and the Ancients without feeling like Mister Exposition was sitting down to dinner. There could have been a very long expository scene involving John Sheppard as our gateway character, but thankfully they avoided that, letting the bits of backstory drop over the course of the first hour and allowing the viewers to piece it together for themselves.
Rodney McKay is fast becoming my favorite character. He reminds me of M*A*S*H's Frank Burns in some ways - opinionated, cowardly, a prophet of doom, annoying... but all this is balanced out by the fact that he is highly intelligent, mostly right, and actually has a moral center to him. Not many actors can balance that, but David Hewlett manages to do it. I'll wait to see how the others turn out... Elizabeth Weir, Aiden Ford and Teyla Emmagan are still a bit too generic to make any judgements about, and John Sheppard seems to be a slightly more balanced Jack O'Neill - i.e. one with some tact.
Then again, I liked the pilot of Voyager too, and they rapidly pissed me off during the course of the first season. We'll see if Atlantis manages to disappoint me, but somehow, given the writing team's track record on SG-1, I have my doubts.
Any thoughts?
I like it. Stargate SG-1 is still okay, but it's starting to get a little tired now that it's in its Eighth Season. Take last Friday's episode, "Lockdown," for example - how many times can we have a variation on the "alien entity possesses SG team members" scenario? Nicely written script, and good acting from the cast, but they're really on autopilot these days.
Atlantis on the other hand, feels fresh, even though it's really the same Stargate story. You know. Humans exploring new worlds, ancient enemy, alien on team helping them with the territory yadda yadda yadda.
But by removing it entirely from the old Goa'uld-Tau'ri conflict, with a completely new cast (with the exception of formerly recurring character Rodney McKay) and new personalities, it's got a shot at feeling new. The new characters make it all seem new again, and the Wraith are pretty cool and scary adversaries.
Things I like already include the idea that this ancient city still holds a lot of secrets waiting to be uncovered - so the exploration is not just out on other planets, but in their immediate surroundings as well. Atlantis, basically, is a character unto itself, and I'm hoping it'll have a personality, too, so to speak. Also, the impression I'm getting is that unlike Star Trek: Voyager, which also had a "we're stranded," premise built in, here getting home is a secondary consideration, and I hope it remains so.
The pilot was well crafted - providing enough info about the Stargate and the Ancients without feeling like Mister Exposition was sitting down to dinner. There could have been a very long expository scene involving John Sheppard as our gateway character, but thankfully they avoided that, letting the bits of backstory drop over the course of the first hour and allowing the viewers to piece it together for themselves.
Rodney McKay is fast becoming my favorite character. He reminds me of M*A*S*H's Frank Burns in some ways - opinionated, cowardly, a prophet of doom, annoying... but all this is balanced out by the fact that he is highly intelligent, mostly right, and actually has a moral center to him. Not many actors can balance that, but David Hewlett manages to do it. I'll wait to see how the others turn out... Elizabeth Weir, Aiden Ford and Teyla Emmagan are still a bit too generic to make any judgements about, and John Sheppard seems to be a slightly more balanced Jack O'Neill - i.e. one with some tact.
Then again, I liked the pilot of Voyager too, and they rapidly pissed me off during the course of the first season. We'll see if Atlantis manages to disappoint me, but somehow, given the writing team's track record on SG-1, I have my doubts.
Any thoughts?
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-26 07:07 pm (UTC)A few B-movie moments when the Wraith were all Shaaaahhh with their teeth, but that was fair.
Humour! Humour is good. There was enough of that to keep us entertained and I couldn't pinpoint too many idiocies. Gets the thumbs up from me.
(Now I just have to go watch all the previous three seasons of SG1 I've missed...)
re: idiocies
Date: 2004-07-27 06:49 am (UTC)Re: idiocies
Date: 2004-07-27 04:02 pm (UTC)The symbols do light up on a connected DHD (that's how Ford saw the gate address for the Wraith world gate), but on the gate in orbit, there was no DHD to observe directly, except the ones on the gateships. And even if the Wraith darts saw the address on their DHDs, all of them were destroyed, remember? Splat.