iainjclark&#39;s Mysterious World

I'm not entirely sure why I'm still watching. I'm also not entirely sure how it's reached 200 episodes. I feel certain these two things are related.

(You should actually ave watched the two-parter that was up for the Hugo the other year, as that was at least trying to be Art. Most of the time SG-1 is trying to fill an hour of TV in a vaguely undemanding fashion.)

But yes, this one looks worth watching, in a Smile Time kind of way.

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Which episode was up for the Hugo?

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"Heroes", a two-parter with Saul Rubinek as an annoying journalist doing a piece on the Stargate Program. It starts out looking like one of those stories where an outsider views the regular characters, but ends up being a quite heartfelt story about news journalism and freedom of speech. It's patchy, but it gets steadily better as it goes along and I was quite impressed by it. Then again, it's hands down the most ambitious thing SG-1 has put out in at least five years, so the benchmark is low.

More here.

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Oh, I remember that one (I do watch SG-1 as a rule); I really liked it. The second ep was definitely better than the first, but lie you say, as a pair, they worked much better than almost any other "message" episode that SG-1 has tried.

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My theory about Stargate's resilience is that it's the Law & Order of genre television. It's a show that never gets any better or any worse, it rarely tries to step out of a very simple mold, and you can jump in and out and in again at just about any point without needing any sort of introduction. It has just the right level of mediocrity to go on forever.

Continuing the analogy, Stargate: Atlantis is the Special Victims Unit of the franchise. It pretends to be working within the same framework as its parent show (to the point that most of its stories are outright ripoffs of SG1 episodes, as well as other shows and movies) but its writers haven't quite managed to replicate the older show's steady clip. Instead, they constantly veer into increasingly fantastic and operatic storylines, which are for the most part quite terrible, but with occasional glimmers of something resembling quality.

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My theory about Stargate's resilience is that it's the Law & Order of genre television.

So, Law &Order isn't genre TV?

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I call this comment as the most blatant Niall-bait in recent memory.

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And yet, he hasn't touched it :-p

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Apparently even the lure of a discussion about genre can't overcome his lack of interest in cops on TV...

(Oh, and by the way I notice that Elizabeth Rohm from Angel is now on Law & Order)

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I'm not sure he'd quite understand the "genre != SF" argument :-p

(And I've only rarely seen episodes of Law & Order, oddly enough - it's the sort of thing that would really appeal to me, I've just never gotten around to watching it).

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coalescent.livejournal.com

How has this become about me when it was Abigail that used the expression? :p

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You and discussions about genre have become inextricably linked. For some reason.

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Oh, and by the way I notice that Elizabeth Rohm from Angel is now on Law & Order

Well, she was. I think she only lasted a season.

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Ah! We're several years behind in the UK.

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I agree, although from my limited viewing of Law & Order: SVU I find it bears a closer resemblance to actual drama than its parent show (which is basically an unrelenting series of expository scenes presented slightly too quickly for them to register any impact.)

Atlantis veers between being suffocatingly inoffensive and genuinely offensive. Some of the recent episodes have veered into an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that is no doubt intended to feel gritty but leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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Yeah, it's true that Atlantis suffers from moral schizophrenia. To be honest, I think you might be giving the writers too much credit when you suggest that they're aiming for a gritty tone. I think they really do believe that their characters' actions are moral, which makes for a very strange and, at times, almost unbearable viewing experience.

But given SVU's sensationalistic tone and the way it whole-heartedly buys into (and in many ways, propagates) the culture of pedophile hysteria (which is not to say that pedophiles are not something to get hysterical about, but SVU treats them as something inhuman, at times almost supernaturally so) and actively promotes an ends-justify-the-means approach to such individuals, I'm not sure that my analogy doesn't hold.

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I agree about the way SVU (and other US detective drama such as Without a Trace or CSI) plays into pedophile hysteria - rather as they do for serial killers. TV often loves to characterise such types as visibly abnormal, their sin written all over their shifty, pallid, leering faces. It's convenient for TV writers to have a villain who can be safely characterised as absolutely and irredeemably evil without the need to worry about characterisation, motive etc. It also comfortingly and rather complacently labels such criminals as Other - not part of society, and not people we may know.

(Obviously I don't condone crimes as abhorrent as pedophilia or rape in any way, any more than I condone any kind of violent crime or abuse, but you're right about the way that SVU plays into the OTT media stereotypes.)

Atlantis of course invented the ultimate in one-dimensional motiveless villains in the Wraith, only to slightly humanise them at the very time that it condones their abuse.

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And now, apparently, the show is cancelled. So much for my L&O analogy.

I'm hardly upset, but it does seem a little mean to drop the axe in the middle of the 200th episode celebrations.

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Stargate's been cancelled?

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Yup.

Atlantis has been renewed, though (although cynics in the fan community have pointed out that a fourth season is necessary for the show to go into syndication, and there's a lot of speculation that if its ratings don't pick up, Atlantis will be in the dustbin this time next year), and there are some rumors about SG1 actors crossing over.

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It's funny because I was under the (probably mistaken) impression that Atlantis was sllightly outperforming SG-1 and even Battlestar Galactica in the ratings.

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From what I've gathered, Atlantis is outperforming SG1, but not to the point where its ratings are impressive. No idea on BSG, but that show has other factors keeping it afloat - as one of the most critically beloved shows on TV, it gives the Sci Fi channel some much needed cachet.

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Damn :-(

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OMDFG, that's... that's burning my eyes *and* my brain.

*shudder*

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ajp.livejournal.com

Hmm...

I could quite happily have lived without seeing that first picture. It's quite disturbing, it many different ways.

And the puppets aren't much better...

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See, now you can join me in the scrubbing of the brain.

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ajp.livejournal.com

Thanks... :-)

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majuran.livejournal.com

Sheer genius :D

I just got in, and you're now making me want to stay up to watch it. You're a bad, bad man :P

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tizzle-b.livejournal.com

I really really really really really liked it.

It was - well - quality.

ESPECIALLY the ending.

And the Furlings.

Quality.

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The Furlings were quality.

I especially liked the fact that they played with the "Previously on" sequence in order to include scenes from a disturbingly convincing ~~Ewok~~ Furling episode. Having a fake "Previously" is about as meta as it gets.

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despotliz.livejournal.com

I haven't really watched Stargate for years, but I think I will have to download this one. Does it require any prior knowledge? I've seen Wormhole Xtreme!.

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majuran.livejournal.com

I /think/ that will do. There's a few references to bits that have happened in between though natch (so meta it hurts probably sums up the ep quite nicely :)).

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so meta it hurts

Sounds good. I'm still waiting for it to download - seems to be taking an age.

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tizzle-b.livejournal.com

WAS ACE
(am SG1 fan and have watched constantly, well - downloaded past 3 seasons and before that using Sky. And lots of Sky One daily repeats back when they used to share Buffy/SG1 on the primetime repeat-frenzy).

So have patches on eps but mostly good)

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coalescent.livejournal.com

I thought the very end was a nice touch. But I would, of course.

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Waxing lyrical about the infinite potential of SF would have had more resonance if Stargate actually bothered using SF to make a point these days. :-)

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