[General Battuta]

Maaaaaaan, it was just actually starting to get good this season. They just had to kill Chloe and Boyscout and make it the Rush-Greer Show with a side of Mulan.

ffffffff****. Televised SF is dead.

[Klaustrophobia]

i disagree.  it was getting worse by the episode.  honestly i don't think they ever should have done it.

[Mars]

Well, sci-fi as a breed is dying out. Action/adventure movies with a flavor of sci-fi will remain (Star Trek). Someday, sci-fi will be back, in the mean time there is enough sci-fi backloged in novels to last at least much of a lifetime.

[Starman01]

I didn't liked the series from the start, and in germany only the first season was aired (was there even a second ? )

I haven't watched it completly, television was just running as background noise because they got on my nerves from the first episode. I had the impression, that 90 % of the story plot was fighting wo is actually in charge, no matter where they were, or which people are involved. Always the same fight, I got sick of it.  Actors were also pretty bad IMO.

Certainly no loss if you ask me.

[General Battuta]

i disagree.  it was getting worse by the episode.  honestly i don't think they ever should have done it.

Almost all of Season 2 was pretty good, with the episode after what's-her-face got killed by what's-his-face actually being truly excellent. The one with Rush and Young trapped on the other ship was also really good. And the reveal of Destiny's mission, definitely good.

It was going good places.

I didn't liked the series from the start, and in germany only the first season was aired (was there even a second ? )

I haven't watched it completly, television was just running as background noise because they got on my nerves from the first episode. I had the impression, that 90 % of the story plot was fighting wo is actually in charge, no matter where they were, or which people are involved. Always the same fight, I got sick of it.  Actors were also pretty bad IMO.

Certainly no loss if you ask me.

Season 1 was pretty meh but Season 2 was quite good.

And it's definitely a loss whether you liked it or not - the show's end coming so soon after Caprica's cancellation means that, with Fringe on the edge of cancellation, televised SF is in serious trouble. No matter the problems with SGU's execution, it tried to do something that most shows didn't have the balls to - bring in a real SF writer as an advisor, steer clear of forehead aliens, and have actual consequences.

Its writers couldn't live up to that standard most of the time. But I'd rather have someone trying and failing than not trying at all.

Plus Robert Carlyle was just an excellent actor. The show was worth watching just for him.

[Starman01]

I agree that television Scifi is in very bad shape. I still don't get the reason why that is. Due to computertechnic, it's certainly no longer a cost factor, it's more a matter of bad authors.

Most of the stuff you people talk about here, doesn't even make it across the Ocean, and germany isn't that 3rd world actually

I think BSG made it only to Season 2 (if ever), Caprica I don't even know.

Example : I liked the extremly cool and modern special effects and CGI from BSG, even if I never get if there was a connection between the original or not, but I doubt there is, since it's more a remake. But which idiot brought up the idea, that the cylons have had an evolution towards sex addicted humans at all ? Also , the choice of actors was pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe the authors should have watched a little more at youporn, so they could have let them out of the series (not that I don't like stuff liked that, but when I want sex, I don't watch a scifi show)

There are so many good scifis out there, I don't get it why no one is able to create something. StarWars, Battletech, BSG, WingCommander, Spinoffs from those, there is so much possible.

However, it's often a case how long series exists. Example : I'm a big stargate fan. The orginal was very good and famous in germany, maybe except the stupid Ori part, that was a shot over the finish line.

SG Atlantis I didn't liked from the first season, but this series developed, and with the following seasons I really start to like it (mostly), actors also got better.

Fazit : I don't think it's a matter of the audience vanishing, but it's the authors that really suck nowadays (not in case of SGU maybe, except the command chain fighting, I found the plot quite interesting)

[General Battuta]

Sex has as much a place in televised SF as violence - it's an aspect of the human condition that's going to be examined, especially in something like Battlestar which is an intentional examination of human behavior and the line between man and machine. The sex in SGU, on the other hand, was generally pretty badly handled and didn't add much.

Universe was the first Stargate show since the first six seasons of SG-1 to really try to do something different, something closer to the quality of literary SF. It mostly failed, but I think that intent should've been rewarded.

It wasn't BSG-good, but it was headed in the right direction. (And if you only saw the first two seasons of BSG, you saw all the really good stuff.)

SGU had some major talent attached to it in the form of John Scalzi, who wrote Old Man's War. Wish they'd tapped him a little more heavily.

And no, SF authors do not suck these days; literary SF is brilliant. You just don't see that brilliance on the comparatively restrained and backwards television, except for BSG and Lost at their respective bests.

[Starman01]

Sex has as much a place in televised SF as violence - it's an aspect of the human condition that's going to be examined, especially in something like Battlestar which is an intentional examination of human behavior and the line between man and machine.

Yes, it's natural and human, I agree on that. I just don't like the way they brought it over. First scene, Blond sexy chicks get in, seduce bored guy and they get blown up.

Let's nuke a dozend colonies, and have sex while doing so.  And some more.

I just don't liked the way they portrayed that, massive violence and Genozid, combined with Sex-Addiction.  If they would have made it more subtile, like an experiment to figure out what love is, that would be great. Instead, every cylon is ****ing it's way through the population. That was bad, completly destroyed my view of the cylons as complex menacing machines with different thinkings.

And no, SF authors do not suck these days

Sorry, should have written more clearer. SF Authors do not suck generally. I meant those scripts written for television adaption, though I cannot say, is it the authors fault, or maybe the fault of the guys removing parts for budget reasons.

Going to bed now, N8

(Edit) BTW; one thing interests me with SGU What was the Destiny's original Mission ? I remember a line where they said, the Destiny was exploring, and other Lantian ships followed and deployed Stargates. Is that right ?

[MP-Ryan]

Boooo!  Tell me they're at least going to air a few more episodes =(

[General Battuta]

Sex has as much a place in televised SF as violence - it's an aspect of the human condition that's going to be examined, especially in something like Battlestar which is an intentional examination of human behavior and the line between man and machine.

Yes, it's natural and human, I agree on that. I just don't like the way they brought it over. First scene, Blond sexy chicks get in, seduce bored guy and they get blown up.

but they didn't get blown up. 

I just don't liked the way they portrayed that, massive violence and Genozid, combined with Sex-Addiction.  If they would have made it more subtile, like an experiment to figure out what love is, that would be great.

That is what it ended up being revealed as, remember?

Instead, every cylon is ****ing it's way through the population. That was bad, completly destroyed my view of the cylons as complex menacing machines with different thinkings.

Both the Cylons who were having sex with humans at the beginning of the show were infiltrators who seduced important targets as part of their mission. That's fairly complex and menacing.

(Edit) BTW; one thing interests me with SGU What was the Destiny's original Mission ? I remember a line where they said, the Destiny was exploring, and other Lantian ships followed and deployed Stargates. Is that right ?

Destiny's original mission was revealed in season 2 and turned out to be really cool. I won't spoil it.

Boooo!  Tell me they're at least going to air a few more episodes =(

Yeah, we still get the last ten, but I'm sure it'll end on a cliffhanger.

[SpardaSon21]

Caprica: Canceled as soon as it starts to get good.

SG:U: Canceled as soon as it starts to get good.

What's up next for cancellation by these guys, Firefly?

[IceFire]

Too bad... I'm a die hard Stargate fan and I was thinking that Universe was having trouble finding it's legs but it had just found them in the beginning stages of Season 2. Now all I can hope for is a reasonable ending to the series. If it ends on a cliffhanger then that'll just be a punch in the face. Get it done!

[BloodEagle]

SG:U wasn't Science Fiction.  At least, it wasn't for the few episodes that I watched.

[Rodo]

I liked it, a bump.

[General Battuta]

SG:U wasn't Science Fiction.  At least, it wasn't for the few episodes that I watched.

You sure you don't mean "this show wasn't the science fantasy I've had fed to me as science fiction"? Because for all its failings and its godawful montages and irritating characters, it paid a hell of a lot more attention to real science and to naturalism than any of the previous Stargate shows, or even, in some respects, than BSG.

Except those stupid stones.

No disrespect, but I usually find that this kind of statement boils down to 'I was scared of the sex' or 'I was scared of the people all being assholes to each other', rather than to one of the (many, legitimate) criticisms of the show's numerous faults. The popular idea of what science fiction is has been perverted by too many years of science fantasy **** like Trek or old school space opera like B5.

[Scotty]

BloodEagle:  Please allow me to direct your attention to the subgenre of science fiction titled "Fantastic Voyage."  I'll let you puzzle out exactly what means on your own.

[General Battuta]

edited

[General Battuta]

And yeah, here's someone else's comment that echoes my feelings on the show's strengths, and why I kept watching in spite of all the crap about it I found tremendously grating.

They cranked up the alien-ness of the aliens, and picked some more conservative terms for the Drake equation, and killed all the space-time woobies, and used real astronomy terms correctly, and then remembered, like most of the members of the SF canon, that half the trouble with exploring strange new worlds is the strains it puts on us little hairless apes in our tin cans, trapped with the Monsters of the Id far from the Green Fields of Earth. I know there was an audience cohort that was irritated (or judging from a handful of comments on Mallozi's blog, despondent) that there was so much time devoted to the banalities of divorces and miscarriages and all the rest, but that's what happens when you don't get to gate home victorious before dinner. An honest portrayal of any adventure, whether it's in the American West or the Pegasus Galaxy, needs to include the bittersweet truth that adventure can have costs- and what makes our heroes epic or tragic is whether those costs are worth it. SGU was trending towards that recognition....

[Klaustrophobia]

it's called science FICTION, and you go off calling it NOT science fiction because the science was fictional? 

wut?   


I call SGU not science fiction because it was essentially a soap opera set on a spaceship.

[General Battuta]

it's called science FICTION, and you go off calling it NOT science fiction because the science was fictional? 

wut? 

I don't know who this is aimed at. It's not called science FICTION, it's called 'science fiction', and most of what we get on TV is soft enough to be science fantasy - Trek, for instance.

I call SGU not science fiction because it was essentially a soap opera set on a spaceship.

No, it was a flailing attempt to be BSG. Most of its characterization was crappy, don't get me wrong, but I'll take a bad shot at actual human characters over another team of quipping cutouts any day.

And Robert Carlyle and Louis Ferrera just dominated. Also Greer was great.