'Stargate Universe' on Syfy HD - Page 59

I hold no delusions that this show was cancelled b/c of the criticisms in this thread however I find it interesting that after 1.5 seasons,
- the musical montages are gone
- Lt Chesty rarely appears
- the dark depressing storylines are gone
- the amount of comic relief in comparison to SG1 & SGA has picked up
- the civillian/military conflict has all but vanished


In general the show has done a 180degree turn from season 1. Basically the show is turning into a toned down SG1/STDS9. Producers may not be listening to AVS specifically but they're certainly tuned into the scifi geek community. The same ones that panned the show and ultimately led to its demise. Don't misunderstand I'm not ranting at anyone specifically in this thread I'm just ticked that another show that I actually like (much like Firefly) is being cancelled for poor ratings, while in hydra-like fashion 3 new reality shows will pop up in its place. God do I hate reality tv...

I find it hard to put SGU in the same catagory as Firefly, but understand that not everyone likes the same things I do. And I'd rather watch so-so sci-fi than the best reality TV has to offer.

I've been enjoying Firefly all over again on HDNET the last few weeks.

Yes, the SGU producers know the difference between a solar system and a galaxy.

Don't be ridiculous.

This show got cancelled because nearly half it's audience didn't like it and stopped watching. And that was coming from a solid Stargate fanbase.

They never made it to comment and see the repetition of the many elements that viewers (and critics) complained about in nearly every forum on the internet talking about this show and that it was a toned-down BSG when it started. The show lost almost half it's viewers before it reached the middle of the first season.

If anything the only reason this show is still on the air are the people who stuck with it despite the dull, self-indulgent writing and trying far too hard to be "cool" and "gritty" that plagued the first half of the season one.

Without them this show wouldn't have made it to a second season and the people still watching in this thread are more persevering than the rest. Right now this show is getting ratings below the million mark.

How about Ritchie Valens!! LPD could stone into him and add to Volker's mp3 player.

Noooooo! Not my Ritchie!

Hah! Now the Destiny has a built in doctor. Shades of Voyager! Ironically Robert Picardo is going to appear in the next episode.

As far as the show not being dull and depressing, I still think it is. The plot about bringing back dead people and subplot about someone needing a kidney transplant isn't exactly a yuck a minute.

Maybe, but at least I don't have to sit and watch people sitting and looking out a window for minutes at a time. I found the old pace to be extreemly painful to view. The new pace works better for me.

Do you think that Picardo will get a sceen with the new Doc? Does he get off earth to visit?

Oh I liked it better when you said
Still talking to my friends and out of 4 of us only I really enjoyed it. They complained about the shows slow pacing. Oh well that's one more Sci-fi show gone How many sci-fi shows are on SyFy that will be space related?

I enjoyed the last episode. The humor of the three scientist was a nice change. I think those three have a nice chemistry. I am glad they brought back the "girlfriends".

Those that complain about this show, would you rather watch Ghostbusters, wrestling or cooking on this channel?

Most of us who have complained here are fans. We just wanted some improvements IMO. It was the people who gave up and went away that helped to cancel the show. Why did they give up and go away? Maybe the show didn't hold their interest. Maybe they were all immature and couldn't appreciate an “adult” sci-fi show. Maybe they wanted to be entertained. Either way, it wasn’t the people here complaining who canceled the show.

At this point does it really matter why the show was canceled? What is done is done, the show is no longer in production for whatever reason. Some people did not like the direction of the show, and some people did like the direction of the show. There are a lot of good and bad shows that are canned each year.

Very true, but it's still fun to talk about.

Ghostbusters ghostbusters or those lousy Ghost Hunter shows? Because I'd be happy with Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II over Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

Hell, I'd watch cooking if you could get me original Iron Chef with original audio and English subtitles.

I'm a Top Chef junky and Marcell was one of my favorite contestants on that show. So when I saw he was getting his own show on Syfy I was pretty excited but confused at the same time. I mean what he is doing has NOTHING to do with Science Fiction, it doesn't belong on the Syfy network!!

I love the show though (not as much as SGU), just don't understand what Syfy has been doing lately with programming.

Faceoff was interesting though (if anyone here watched it). I hope they make a second season but try to break away from the reality competition side of it. Maybe follow around a few of the contestants as they go about working on projects..

Better yet!!

Have Syfy comission a movie and we get to have a series that follows around the special effects people as they create and over come those obsticles!

That's a false dichotomy. Wanting SGU to improve doesn't mean that we would rather watch those other things.

Also, I would just like to point out, that the people complaining are actually still watching the show. The problem is they lost too much audience too early by basically trying to write beyond their talents and take the franchise in a completely new direction. You alienate the people who have invested a lot of time in the franchise while at the same time preventing newcomers from giving it a try since they are intimidated by trying to jump into a long running franchise at this point. Above all that, they simply didn't have the writing and directing chops to pull off the kind of gravity they were attempting and the whole thing fell flat.

I will say this though (and likely isn't a popular opinion among some circles) even though I'm bummed that the Stargate franchise is effectively dead and how I loathe the infiltration of reality TV on to Syfy, they still manage to have a handful of things that rank VERY highly in my enjoyment list. Warehouse 13, Eureka, and now Being Human continue to be highly entertaining for me and honestly put the network at near the highest point since the SG-1/BSG heydays. No, those shows aren't hard science fiction. They are, however, genre shows that simply wouldn't survive anywhere else nor given the creative freedom they evidently have.

So, in the long run, I can't be too depressed. For the first time in decades I don't have a "space opera" to entertain me which sucks, but at the same time genre shows are having a massive revival (with great production values) and actually managing to carve out a decent audience. I can't help but applaud that.

Just a minor change, but I think it reads better this way.

Face Off-and Being Human were both picked up for second seasons.

Just chalk it up to the increasingly poor attention span of the American viewing population. I was diagnosed as having ADHD, as a child, and the behavioral criteria used for me would be blown away by virtually any random person tested today.

That freaking Numa Numa song on Brody's iPod cracked me up pretty good.

Not to pick on you, but people say this kind of stuff all the time. These type of SciFi shows hardly ever last that long. There are only a hand full of shows that have lasted on the air for a significant amount of time. Very few of them break out to be popular beyond a narrow audience of sci fi fans.

I'm not sure it's so much ADHD as much it is the society we now live in that is making shows like SGU much harder to succeed.

Hell I remember when I was a kid watching STNG and before that was on they ran a show (on the tip of my tongue) about a race of aliens who came to earth as slaves and get drunk on bad milk, one of them became a cop. Anyways my point is we had limited amount of channels and no way of watching something we missed unless we had and programmed a VCR or they showed a repeat.

Today, so much different. I have over 80 channels, shows on at the same time that I DVR and watch later, and if I have to possibly watch it if available ONdemand and the ability to get on the net and procure me an episode if I can't find it another way. So if I was only 12 or 13 again today and wanted to watch TV at 9:00pm I would have 50x the amount of options, would a show like SGU even be a blip on my tv viewing map?

The problem was Syfy started carving out the core audience of SGU once they started hitting this "Ghost Hunter" stuff so hard. It's hard for me to believe that with all the problems they had during the first season with potential viewers that they even had enough viewers to start with.

It was called Alien Nation and was based on a theatrical film. hehe - I think it was that movie or show that had an insult that I love: "Your mother mates out of season."

STNG was one of the few I was thinking of. It also had the advantage of being in syndication which meant it did not have to worry about a network looking for ratings.

Yeah ... UPN (and to a lesser extent WB) killed SciFi. Once they tried to make a network out of it (Trek franchise) the syndication outlets dried up.

And based on recent opinions here and around the Web, where the show is now is a lot better than when it started. Unfortunately 1.5 million viewers never stuck it out to reach this point.

If we did a quick poll I think the general consensus - now the show has reduced or dropped all the elements viewers were complaining about for the first season - is that SGU is pretty good now.

I agree. The show finally found its legs. All the problems I thought the show had in the beginning were worked out. Too bad its too late, it is really good now and a shame that it will be over soon.

Last night's episode got in a couple of good lines about Dr. Rodney McKay, pervert:

Lt. Benson: "I'm UP HERE." (Rodney's eyes go from her breasts to her face.)

Dr. McKay (big grin): "Lead the Way!" (Benson stares him down.)

In general, I can tell they are setting up for some sort of final episode that will hopefully tie up some of the dangling plot lines. It would basicly be VERY DECENT of them to do so, versus the usual frustrating chop-off when a series is cancelled.

Considering this week was the return of McKay and this thread is almost dead I think we can see how much the interest level has dropped off.

Not a great episode but fairly solid and a change from the usual. They did finally address the McKay on Destiny hole and how they are trying to get to the Destiny by other means which was good to see. Still doesn't solve the stone issue of why they don't just get Rodney up there for a week or month to do the same job Telford was asking of him. McKay even asked to stay when he beamed up.

McKay as usual was a scene stealer and Picardo as always is great value, but why was he on Earth? Woolsey is supposed to be commanding Atlantis.

Nice callback from Young saying "Sheppard was right about you."

They used the stones in a pretty imaginative way this week, although I could have sworn Ginn said she shutdown the FTL drive which should have caused the stones to break link and wreck the plan earlier.

I could have done without the dream world of Rush. Nice as it was to see Carlyle get something more interesting to do than just look annoyed, the entire story was pretty cliched and tiresome. Although it did fool me when he wasn't actually out.

I think Atlantis is in Earth orbit or thats how SGA ended although my memory could be faulty.