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Meagen
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
Poland
93 Posts |
 Posted - 07/28/2006 : 11:13:23 PM
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It's probably not a good sign when the newest episode of Stargate Atlantis makes you think of Ken's writeup of The Hitchhiker.
John Sheppard and his team arrive on a planet. They enter a medieval town and meet a fatty guy called Lucius that everyone seems to like (especially the women). Lucius welcomes them cordially, treats them to lunch, and immediately starts hitting on the female member of the team. As they're leaving, Lucius takes a drag from a small bottle. This was about 8-10 minutes into the 45-minute episode.
I turned to my boyfriend who was sharing the couch and told him, "It's Love Potion Nr. 9." Having figured this out, my reward was to sit through approximately 30 minutes of the entire female cast fawning over the sleazy fat guy, and desperately trying to keep my lunch down.
Sure enough, Lucius gets back to Atlantis, charms everyone on board, and manovers them into going to a planet full of Wraith to get him some herbs that grow there. John Sheppard (who had been nursing a carefully-established cold) is the only one immune to the effects, he discovers that Lucius was using blah blah extract blah blah secrete pheromones blah, kidnaps the doctor with the funny accent, takes him through "detox" and helps him engineer a cure. To administer it to everyone, they lure Lucius away from Atlantis with a ruse my boyfriend saw coming a mile away. The end.
In short, the episode was really, really clicheed and predictable. The boyfriend contrasted it with Brief Candle, an episode back from the first season of SG-1. There, the technoblabble plaguing the villagers (nanobots that caused them to age at a very fast rate) was only a backdrop for seeing how a character (O'Neill) reacts to suddenly being old and how he interacts with the villagers.
In this one, conflict is introduced, escalated, then resolved without the audience learning a single interesting thing about the characters. At the end you just have to ask yourself, "what was the *point* of that?". |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2006 : 4:13:36 PM
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| I never got into the series, although I find the film very enjoyable. A friend of mine got sat TV and tried to introduce me into season 7 or 8, but after a couple of episodes I decided either the good episodes had been on earlier seasons or that the show himself had become too dark to decipher for non-regulars. |
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tam1MI
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
558 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2006 : 10:48:27 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
I never got into the series, although I find the film very enjoyable. A friend of mine got sat TV and tried to introduce me into season 7 or 8, but after a couple of episodes I decided either the good episodes had been on earlier seasons or that the show himself had become too dark to decipher for non-regulars.
I had something similar happen to me with FARSCAPE. At the urging of a friend who was a major, major fan and who kept raving about how great the show was, I finally sat down and watched in episode from about the 3rd or 4th season. I came away thinking, "That looks like a pretty good show, and if I could just figure out WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON in it, I might even get into it!". It was just one of the shows where I got the feeling that had you had to watch it religiously from the first epiosde on to make any sense out of it whatsoever. |
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Prehumous
Altar Boy of Jabootu
1 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2006 : 02:17:04 AM
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| You have to approach it with the right mindset, too. I've found that for someone like me who doesn't really like science-fiction type settings that the series was hard to get into. I still recommend it though, even though I've never seen more than two episodes. |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2006 : 02:27:54 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by tam1MI
quote:
Originally posted by Neville
I never got into the series, although I find the film very enjoyable. A friend of mine got sat TV and tried to introduce me into season 7 or 8, but after a couple of episodes I decided either the good episodes had been on earlier seasons or that the show himself had become too dark to decipher for non-regulars.
I had something similar happen to me with FARSCAPE. At the urging of a friend who was a major, major fan and who kept raving about how great the show was, I finally sat down and watched in episode from about the 3rd or 4th season. I came away thinking, "That looks like a pretty good show, and if I could just figure out WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON in it, I might even get into it!". It was just one of the shows where I got the feeling that had you had to watch it religiously from the first epiosde on to make any sense out of it whatsoever.
Ironically, I'm a huge Farscape fan. And yes, it's one of those shows you must follow it from episode 1, ignore all the crappy episodes and then learn to love all the characters. Then, and only then, it's better than sex.
I tried to introduce a friend to it, but whenever Scorpius poped up inside of Crichton's mind or he turned havoc, he would look at me like I was playing a prnak on him. Weird, weird show. |
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MikeC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
749 Posts |
Posted - 07/31/2006 : 10:33:49 AM
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Granted, I am not a huge SG-1 fan, but I do like the
shows I've seen (even if sometimes O'Neill is a bit
too flip & dense for believability). The ep that
really sold me on the show was the one where they
opened the gate onto a world falling into a black
hole, and they portrayed the relativistic effects
plausibly (if not completely believably, but hey
its REAL SCIENCE on an SF TV show, which itself is
quite refreshing).
SG:A seems to me to be a bit off the point, as if
they decided to continue the 'franchise' without
having to pay the old actors. Its not bad, but
it does seem rather flat & lifeless.
Still, SG-1 is the longest-running American SF
TV show (The original incarnation of DOCTOR WHO
has the record by a long shot, but its British
and it did have year-long stretches between series,
especially toward the end of its run), and I'll
give it props for at least being mildly interesting
for most of that time.
MikeC |
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