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

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Hee! Por ded SG-1...

[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.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Sky Continuity Announcer after SG-1 this week: "Coming up next, sci-fi meets drama in Battlestar Galactica".

Paging Dave Langford ...

[fba.livejournal.com]

Forget Sci-Fi, this is real drama.

Presumably they are trying to warn people how dull BSG is...

[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.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

:-P I suppose the pilot mini-series was fairly low key but these days it's all snogging and fisticuffs.

[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

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I really don't know how many times Langford is going to be able to run marginally different iterations of the same sentence. Maybe television should be disqualified from How Others See Us. Or maybe the whole thing should be dropped as the persecution complex moaning that it is.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think these days it's not so much about a persecution complex as it is about pointing and laughing at idiots.

[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.