Sci-Fi, meet Drama

[iainjclark]

Sky Continuity Announcer after SG-1 this week: "Coming up next, sci-fi meets drama in Battlestar Galactica". Because, as we know, sci-fi and drama are normally mutually exclusive. Last week the same announcer's line was: "Forget Sci-Fi, this is real drama." Bad enough he says these things over the end credits of Stargate SG-1, but what is this fascination with trying to promote Battlestar Galactica by simultaneously distancing it from and belittling other Sci-Fi shows?

Meanwhile this week's episode of SG-1 included a not so subtle dig at the programme's cancellation:

Guest Character: I'm a bit disapointed at this facility, I was expecting more.
Carter: Well at times so do we, the truth is the Stargate program doesn't get the support it used to from the people in charge.
Guest Character: That's too bad 'cause after all your Stargate program has accomplished for this network - of planets, I would think the decision makers would show it the respect it deserves.

There were a couple of other sly digs in there too. Luckily, although the news of cancellation came too late to wrap up the show's plot threads, there are a couple of TV movies in the pipeline, one of which will apparently deal with the Ori storyline.

Comments

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I might have felt more inclined to sympathize with the show's writers if the episode containing this scene wasn't such a stultifying waste of air time. Three episodes to go, and this soporific dreck is what they come up with? I don't expect great things from SG-1, but at the very least the show should be entertaining.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

It was a fairly atrocious episode, I agree. Probably one of the least entertaining I've seen, and all the worse for being 'funny' and 'charming'.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say that I think this stultifying episode was commissioned before they knew they only had a few episodes to go - although that's not really an excuse.

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

It is very much SG1's equivalent of "The Girl in Question".

Both episodes left me quite, quite annoyed with the lack of progress when you've just two episodes to follow.

Stupid

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Aaaaah fuck. Years of repressing undone in an instant, Tommeh.

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

I had to watch it on Sky One (or Sky Two?) a while ago.

It hurt me.

Luckily VM/Sky being kids has repressed it for me again now.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I see the parallel, but "The Girl in Question" does have, in theory, a reason for existing. Three episodes before the end of Angel's show, it makes a certain amount of sense to return to the Buffy issue. There's absolutely no conceivable reason to drag Vala's paint-by-numbers family issues on screen with only three hours left to go in the show.

Also, "The Girl in Question", for all its many problems, was not boring.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I think I saw a suggestion that in the Buffy S8 comic Buffy's liaison with The Immortal will be assumed never to have happened, it being a decoy who was in Rome. This would be a good thing, I think.

[majuran.livejournal.com]

The Girl in Question was GENIUS!

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

You're sick.

Consult yourself.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that The Girl in Question was a surefire comedy winner - on paper. The premise is comedy gold. It's just that it's a one-joke episode and the execution of that one joke falls utterly flat. I don't know if it's the writing, the acting, or just the fact that it sits at a point in the season where the last story you want to be watching is the one they made.