The Stargate Franchise

I checked to see if there was already a Stargate thread. There are a few, but they're pretty old at this point. So, I'm creating a brand new thread for the franchise in general. There was originally a movie, Stargate (1994), but since this is the tv section this is obviously about the various tv shows. There were several: Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis, Universe, and the short lived cartoon no one remembers called Stargate: Infinity.

I consider SG-1 to be the best of the franchise, but there are a lot of differing opinions. Atlantis was okay. Universe was an attempt at taking taking Stargate in a darker and grittier direction. I personally didn't care for it. Not because it was dark, but just because I felt it wasn't good.

What do other people think? What was the best show, and why? Does anyone think there's a chance of the franchise being revived at some point? If so, what direction should it go?

I kind of agree with SG-1 being the best of the series, though Atlantis was also pretty solid. Destiny was...eh? I tried to like it but it didn't really hold my interest the same way as the other two series did.

As for a revival, I'm not sure really. The story arcs for both of those series are done after all.

SG-1 is definitely the best in my opinion. However I liked Atlantis as well. I found Universe meh. I have never watched the cartoon.

IF anything Universe didn't do one of the main things that keeps shows like this going: the characters.

I'm serious, the vast majority of the characters in Universe were unlikeable, and one of them was the main reason that they were stuck on the Destiny in the first place.

It felt like they were trying to imitate Battlestar Galactica and it just didn't work, to say nothing of the plot setup. Part of the fun of it was being able to discover new planets and the societies on them, but Universe was just "Hey here's a barren planet where there's nobody as we address the Crisis of the Day' on the ship, and we have no chance of ever getting back home so there's no reason for us to do any of this."

Seriously, the series ends with everyone getting into cryo pods to wait until Destiny loops around the entire fucking universe in like...what, several hundred thousand years?

Seems to me like the Stargate franchise is kind of Deader Than Disco right now. I don't think people really dislike it or anything, but I don't hear people talking about it much anymore, which I think is a shame.

I don't think the franchise was ever as open ended and versatile as Star Trek proved itself to be. The idea of the Stargate is budget saving but the ubiquity of conventional space travel later in the series made it less important. Still, 15-ish years and three shows is better than most sci-fi franchises.

I imagine it was because it didn't take place in the future where that sort of thing became commonplace. The only interstellar colonies the Earth had was the various Alpha Sites on various planets and those were military outposts and safe havens for government officials.

The end of Universe was them going into the cryopods for three years. The idea was that the ship was going to skip to the next galaxy to avoid the rest of the berserker drones. It wasn't intended to be a series finale, it was just supposed to be a season finale.

I think Universe got better as it was going on. The first season had way too much "we're out of something, we're stopping at a convenient planet" and it never really got out of panic mode. The second season gave the characters some degree of control and gave them some space to breathe, so to speak. A season 3 would have probably ironed out the remaining issues.

Another thing to mention is that a few years ago there was actually a new webseries called Stargate: Origins, which was apparently meant to test the waters to see if there was still interest in Stargate. From what I heard, it wasn't very good, and was very low budget.

As for Universe, I liked the idea of a darker and more dramatic Stargate series, and felt that there was potential to tell interesting stories there. Unfortunately, it ended up being kind of dull and not compelling from what I saw.

The thing is, in the past few years I've noticed that pretty much all tv shows have turned into dark and gritty soap operas, where the characters are mostly unlikable and selfish. Which is why I decided to go back and watch SG-1. It is a change from what you would normally see on tv these days. If they do make another Stargate show now, it would probably be more like Universe, or even Star Trek: Picard.

Edited by Neveratall on Mar 24th 2020 at 10:38:53 AM

I liked some of the atmospheric changes, like how Destiny is a really mysterious location, having truly ALIEN aliens and having local stargates be on more exotic worlds instead of the same four Canadian forests, plains and valleys. The emphasis on Hotter and Sexier didn't help it, especially as "200" had already parodied that.

Mallozzi and Wright are trying to get the franchise going again in the existing continuity (ie. not a reboot).

Here's hoping for something more like SG-1, and not an attempt to follow the leader of another franchise like Universe was.

The article says Mallozzi claimed they're going to continue the Universe plotline, among other things.

Blerg.

Well hopefully they wont stick to Universe's "We want to be BSG so bad" tone.

Actually, I feel that Universe went in the opposite tonal direction as BSG. The situation started out really bad in Universe but got slightly better over time as more and more of Destiny became available, while the situation in BSG started out bad and deteriorated even further as time went by to the point where they were barely holding on by the end.

It's a longshot, but I can't help but be interested in an idea of that isolated crew having spent another 8 years exploring the universe and becoming more and more familiar with their situation.

The only new thing I know that they are doing is raising funding for RPG set back when they their main enemies ere the Goa'uld, Stargate SG 1 Roleplaying Game

A strategy game called Stargate Timekeepers being teased today. It's being developed by Creative Forge Games (Phantom Doctrine, Hard West, Ancient Space)

Stargate: Timekeepers departs from the end of season 7 of the Stargate SG-1 main plot to create a wholly original story starting during the Battle of Antarctica, where [Commander] Eva McCain and her team are tasked with supporting the SG-1 against Anubis's fleet. The aftermath of the battle sees Commander McCain and her squad face an epic adventure that spans multiple original locations.

With "Time" in the title and hints of an Alternate Timeline getting the feeling of a time travel centred plot though it might to be to early in the canon for the Time Jumper though there is still the solar flare method

Thoughts?

Without seeing more, hard to say. That said I do think Stargate lends itself well to an X-Com like game, so in the hand of a competent development team, this could be good.

Definitely. I can imagine it being sort of XCOM-like.

I came into SG-1 from the film, which I really did like, so I struggled to pick it up initially. However, it started improving towards the latter half of Series 1, so it became more enjoyable. The big problem with the early episodes was from male writers having the traditional panic about how to write a female character, resulting in misfires like Sam's "reproductive organs on the inside" quote or the third episode that sticks her in a dress until she fights the bad guy and liberates the women. Once they calmed down and started writing "strong military scientist" instead of "woman", things got a lot better.

One of SG-1's long-term problems was dumbing certain characters to make Sam come across as smart. That's a shame because they had a decent balance initially and then went pear-shaped: with Sam handling the "hard" science and Daniel the "soft" sciences, and showing they overlap by quickly catching what the other is explaining. It felt like good team working. Then there was the humour of O'Neill dropping in astrophysics references every so often as a nod to the fact that astronomy was a hobby of his. And then they moved away from until even Daniel was useless at anything that wasn't "understanding people" and Sam was getting into the kind of social science observations that Daniel should have been given.

So, it did have its flaws, but I was a big fan of the show. I really hated the Arthurian element of the Ori storyline, but that's because I'm Welsh and I've been oversaturated with the mythos since childhood. It would have been more fun for them to have brought out the older, lesser known Arthurian tales as a comparison against the more familiar Mallory versions, but never mind. (And I did hate Daniel's botching of the pronunciation of "Myrddin".) But that storyline really took off, and I did like the way that it built on themes that went right back to Series 2, even Series 1. It did a good job of tying those themes together.

I was a big fan of Atlantis, too. I liked the direction it went in, and I thought they did a good job of developing Rodney's character from his SG-1 origins. I wasn't such a fan of the films, and I haven't seen any of the other spin-offs.

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 19th 2021 at 7:47:04 PM

While I found Universe to be meh, it did have some things going for it. Namely being set mostly from the scientist perspective as opposed to the lead soldier, and of course, Robert Carlyle was great as usual.

Anyone still remember the Foothold episode with those weird mimetic aliens a.k.a. Stargoth? Now do you think those are a Shout-Out to the Brotherhood of Nod? Even though their exoskeleton only remotely resembles Nod soldier's armor they seem to be equally zealous and willing to blow themselves up instead of letting themselves get captured.

Yes, one of the best episodes that I ever watched. Was hoping there might be a sequel/follow up episode to that showing their culture/leader(s)/species name, etc for a good few years afterwards… but alas, it wasn’t to be.