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and I like it more so far the second time around. I watched all of the first season and most of the second during the initial run but was only a bit disappointed when it was cancelled. I was still a big fan of Stargate at the time but my interest had been waning for several years by then. I loved the movie when it was released and really enjoyed SG-1 during the early/mid years with the original team (at least until Richard Dean Anderson started phoning in his performances as pure snark) but Atlantis never fully hooked me nor did late SG-1 with its Farscape cast and rehashed Ori villain archetype. SGU was something obviously new and different but didn't seem to capture the excitement of the early years of SG-1 for various reasons (and IIRC the company who made it, MGM, was having financial difficulties).

In rewatching it now, I'm surprised that I missed so many similarities in asthetics, tone, and cinematography to the BSG reboot. Obviously I knew it was a darker lost far away from home in space setting just like BSG (I watched that for its entire run and enjoyed most it) but the similarity go a heck of alot further than I initially noticed. From the lighting to the grime to the shaky off-kilter camera angles and cuts, it really feels alot more like BSG to me now a decade later than it does the original SG-1. I even frequently get a hint of Blade Runner (mainly in music) from episode to episode. Is that what turned people off? It didn't bother me the first time around (hell, I didn't even notice the similarities beyond the surface level overall tone and theme) and BSG was already ending at the time (they overlapped for one year from a quick web search) so I'm surprised more fans didn't migrate over. Has anyone else rewatched this recently and been surprised (whether pleasantly or unpleasantly) at things noticed only in the later rewatch?

They did a lame followup comic to SGU. I thought they made SGU interesting with the mission of the destiny revealed, then, true to form, they cancelled it too soon.

SG-1 ran too long, they ran it into the ground. Since then the motto of the SFC has been "Imagine the ending. You have to, because we cancel everything too soon."

Farscape, cancelled too soon. Battlestar galactica, cancelled too soon. SGU, cancelled too soon, etc.

The expanse? We'll hook you on it on our basic cable channel, then sell it to a paywall service, suckers!

I haven't rewatched it recently but I loved it back in the day. I thought it was the best Stargate had been for a long long time and was going to some really interesting places.

I’m the opposite. We watched nBSG until midway through the third season, which is when we realized the show was lost (get it?) with no idea where it was going, what anything meant, or who the characters were anymore. Everyone was a bastard and the plot/lore was as clearly made up with no planning at all. We didn’t get into nBSG for the grimdark GRITTY DRAMA aspect, and that’s all it had left.

So, naturally, when SGU brought the GRITTY DRAMA to Stargate, we were apprehensive. We watched the first season mostly to see how the setting advanced (and I enjoyed some of the actors), but by the time the second season came around we decided to treat the Stargate franchise as a grandparent with Alzheimer’s: we wanted to remember it for the good days and not how it turned all confused, paranoid and malicious at the end.

As for late stage SG1 and Atlantis...we enjoyed them. They weren’t the peak of quality, but spending time with those characters and in that setting was still fun. Atlantis was just starting to figure itself out when it got canceled.

I view the original SG-1 the same way that I do the Supernatural show... that it built up marvelously to an epic crescendo and then long overstayed that welcome with multiple shark jumping seasons. SG-1 should have ended IMO after the defeat of Anubis and Supernatural with the defeat of Lucifer. I watched the former until the end and the latter until they killed Death (yes, you read that right).

As for Atlantis, I think five seasons was enough time to figure itself out and yet (IMO) they didn't. This isn't like with Star Trek Enterprise where they actually did find their groove early in season 4 and were cancelled anyways. YMMV obviously.

I'm only 1/3 of the way through the first season of SGU can't yet formulate a solid opinion on its entirety yet; I can only say that I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. It's not perfect but it is noticeably better than I remember. I recall that I didn't enjoy the Lucian Alliance story arc that comes in later but I'm not there yet.

I can’t disagree with your opinions of SG1 and Atlantis, but they managed to give us what we wanted from them. The Farscape actors’ characters delivered enough one-liners per episode to pull their weight, and the writers’ OCD approach to keeping all the old background in mind even while expanding with new (not great) stuff satisfies the part of my brain that buys technical manuals and tie-in novels. Atlantis finally figured out they needed to focus on all the new characters (and McKay) at the expense of the old characters, and expanding past the wraith into other sources of galactic conflict/lore, a winning formula for us.


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SGU felt like season 6-7 Buffy, a lighthearted show about characters we like which became a miserable show about people we would cut out of our lives.

But that’s just us.

Is that like the royal we? I know you're talking about your wife in all likelihood but I can't pass up a corny joke.

FWIW, I actually enjoyed the same actors' contributions in Farscape but that was zany from the start. I felt that their constant jokes for the most part were too much and grated on me much like O'Neil's near constant snark in his last season on the team and moreso during his command of SG1 as general. There were a few times where the Vala and Daniel Jackson comical interactions made me laugh though but the rest felt off... just like Teal'c with a full head of (greying) hair. At only two seasons, SGU didn't have an oportunity to see whether it would either fully find its footing or overstay its welcome (or both). That's of course based on my first run through of the series years ago so maybe I'll change my mind with this rewatch. I suppose that with SGU I was ok with the drastically darker tone because it was something completely different from both SG1 and SGA. If SGA had turned grimdark (since it too started as a team separated from Earth in a giant ancient piece of tech falling apart) after some of the first couple of mostly happy go lucky lets go explore seasons with little to no consequence seasons, I'd feel that your Buffy comparison was more spot on but, at least so far, I don't feel it applies well to SGU that was consistently grimdark from the beginning.

I liked that SGU was both wrapping up the mysteries of the old "gods" and getting to the answers of the root questions the whole franchise has always been about. The signal they were heading towards was going to be a definitive end to those questions and themes. I wish we got to see it.

 Lance845 wrote:
I liked that SGU was both wrapping up the mysteries of the old "gods" and getting to the answers of the root questions the whole franchise has always been about. The signal they were heading towards was going to be a definitive end to those questions and themes. I wish we got to see it.

If they had focused on that instead of the lame interpersonal dramas of the thoroughly unlikeable cast, it might have worked.

I mean, those personal relationships can make a series... there are any number of shows that my wife and I have watched over the years because we enjoy the character interaction rather than any particular interest in the setting. But it only works if you give a damn about the characters, and SGU made sure right from the start that we didn't.


And yeah, BSG definitely doesn't belong on a 'cancelled too soon' list. It went for at least one season too long.

 insaniak wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I liked that SGU was both wrapping up the mysteries of the old "gods" and getting to the answers of the root questions the whole franchise has always been about. The signal they were heading towards was going to be a definitive end to those questions and themes. I wish we got to see it.

If they had focused on that instead of the lame interpersonal dramas of the thoroughly unlikeable cast, it might have worked.

I mean, those personal relationships can make a series... there are any number of shows that my wife and I have watched over the years because we enjoy the character interaction rather than any particular interest in the setting. But it only works if you give a damn about the characters, and SGU made sure right from the start that we didn't.


And yeah, BSG definitely doesn't belong on a 'cancelled too soon' list. It went for at least one season too long.

I suspect BSG is to blame for that indirectly. I really loved the early seasons of BSG when they were a mix of soap opera and space pew pew battles but the last season or two eschewed the latter almost exclusively for the former to its detriment IMO. The finale was emotional and satifying for me but I missed the combo of the two that were done so well in the beginning. SGU so far (first 1/3 of the first season) hasn't had any space guns fired in anger yet outside of the first couple of minutes before they arrived on Destiny and honestly I'm not missing it much to my own surprise. I know there is more of it to come but I'm ok with setting up the interpersonal drama and character motivations first on this show but admittedly that is an outlier for me personally.

Managed to get through the first season - just .

Loved (most of) SG1
Enjoyed some of Atlantis

Found this just poor from start to finish, the whole thing made no sense even by SG standards, left all the interesting characters and stuff behind, lacked humpour and charisma in story or characters.

by contrast BSG is a true masterpeice

I liked SG-1 although as said above it hung around too long, but it was still an ok watch and Vala was a decent enough character

I enjoyed Atlantis too, even though it wasn't as sharp and had too many hangover characters that should have been retired along with SG-1

but I found universe fairly unwatchable as I just didn't care enough about any of the characters, and think I probably gave up 2/3 of the way through season 1 with an occasional glance at it now and then later, none of which made me enthusiastic to start watching again properly,

Thinking back I think the new BSG in terms of look and feel is pretty good, but I think new BSG did I better (at least at first, as BobtheInquisitor says when it became clear the writers had no real idea of where they were going that became pretty dull, and by the end I was just dipping in and out and I thought the ending was awful)

 warboss wrote:
Is that like the royal we? I know you're talking about your wife in all likelihood but I can't pass up a corny joke.

FWIW, I actually enjoyed the same actors' contributions in Farscape but that was zany from the start. I felt that their constant jokes for the most part were too much and grated on me much like O'Neil's near constant snark in his last season on the team and moreso during his command of SG1 as general. There were a few times where the Vala and Daniel Jackson comical interactions made me laugh though but the rest felt off... just like Teal'c with a full head of (greying) hair. At only two seasons, SGU didn't have an oportunity to see whether it would either fully find its footing or overstay its welcome (or both). That's of course based on my first run through of the series years ago so maybe I'll change my mind with this rewatch. I suppose that with SGU I was ok with the drastically darker tone because it was something completely different from both SG1 and SGA. If SGA had turned grimdark (since it too started as a team separated from Earth in a giant ancient piece of tech falling apart) after some of the first couple of mostly happy go lucky lets go explore seasons with little to no consequence seasons, I'd feel that your Buffy comparison was more spot on but, at least so far, I don't feel it applies well to SGU that was consistently grimdark from the beginning.

Yes, me and my wife. I probably wouldn’t have made it more than a season into Atlantis, but she liked the show and it wasn’t unenjoyable for me. By the last season (and probably sooner) there were enough plot threads and likes me characters that I was glad we were watching it.

I guess the Buffy comparison seems fitting to me because Atlantis and SG1, and even SGU, took pains to show continuity and make them feel like they were happening in the same universe with many of the same people. Buffy and Angel felt like far more different shows than SG1 and Atlantis to me.

A big part of our problem with SGU (and later Buffy) is that we just weren’t enjoying watching the shows any more. We didn’t feel good while watching.

I've never actually seen the second season of SGU, although I did see the entire first season. To me, it was way too much interpersonal drama and not enough of what made the other Stargate series good. Felt too much like a soap opera set in space. That same kind of reasoning is why I have no interest in Game of Thrones (soap opera with dragons and incest) or The Walking Dead (soap opera with zombies). Maybe that kind of thing is some people's cup of tea, but it ain't mine.

SGU didn't ever get to being what I wanted from it, but the finale episode was really quite good.

I do recall liking the finale even if it was a cliffhanger IIRC due to the abrupt early cancellation.

I'm a dozen episodes in and it took almost that long to have the first space battle aboard the Destiny. That's a refreshing change from the space combat focused pew pew laser explosions of recent scifi like modern Star Trek.

I still think about the one guy in the finale quoting it’s the journey not the destination, as a kind of meta comment about the series. Would have been nice if Universe got a movie like SG1 though. Also wish Atlantis had gotten a movie. Iirc an Atlantis movie was planned, but I think it was the bombing of Universe that made them cancel it.

There were bright spots throughout SGU's run, but it lost me during that first season finale when the Lucian Alliance invade.

They have the ability to cut off oxygen supplies to any part of the ship they want, but won't do it to the gateroom during an invasion for fear of killing Telford. Umm... you can cut off their air supply for 30-60 seconds, enough to incapacitate the invaders, and when they're all gasping, you rush in (with air) and take 'em.

Such bad plotting, and it's what made me finally realise that in the Mallozzi/Mullie writing partnership, Mullie was the one with the better ideas.

And speaking of Joseph Mallozzi, we may get some follow-up to all of the SG series.

That'd be nice.

I thought SGU was terrible. Didn't enjoy anything about the show. Until the end of season 2 with the alternate timeline stuff. That was a little interesting. Then they canceled it.

Maybe you should rewatch an episode or two. I thought it was middling at best before and rather like it now overall so far.

I just finished the first season and it's been a good rewatch except for the Lucian Alliance story arc that they used as a season finale/opener crossover. I'd have preferred if the only intrusion of the Milky Way galaxy into the show was via the commuication stones and flashbacks. The biggest complaint (other than the Lucian Alliance subplot) that I have is the frequency of mournful, slow rock soundtrack that was prevalent a decade ago when the show was made; there is an occasional orchestral tune that reminds me of Blade Runner but the major depression version of early Ed Sheeran is much more common.

Well, it took a while longer to get through the second season as I got sidetracked by watching a few films instead but I finished my series rewatch... And I enjoyed it overall (more than I did watching it piecemeal during the original run). I'd say the second season is a bit weaker than the first in large part due to the mostly pointless Lucian alliance story arc. There are some other dangling plot points that likely were meant to be explored in future seasons but the early cancellation stopped that and I won't fault the show for trying to layer in future storylines ahead of time.

Never a fan of the Stargate tv shows although had some time for the one where they made home in the big water city. Which is strange because I'm rather fond of the 1994 Stargate film...

Universe seemed to be riding on the coat tails of BSG, which itself was a remake of 70s BSG but without the fun. Held against my will, I watched a couple of episodes...didn't feel it at all.

I did express these feelings with mates at work, while having lunch. They then demanded that I sit at another table...

Rush (and Carlyle's performance) was pretty much the only thing that carried the show for me and made it worth watching, the story arcs he was involved in were far more interesting and well-written than a lot of the filler in the show.

First season great on visuals and survival -based plots, but wasted too much time with the corny communication stone B-plots set on Earth.

Second season far, far better with a lot of excellent high-concept sci-fi and good drama, really enjoyed it.

Carlyle was my favorite actor of the show. I think hes a much better actor then he gets credit for.