Stargate Foo
Sep. 10th, 2006 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Thoughts on Stargate SG1/Atlantis episode 8 of year 10 and 3 respectively, behind the cut. Spoilers.
So, for SG1 we had "Momento Mori" involving Vala getting kidnapped by the trust and winding up with amnesia (with an opening that should have been called 'A History of Valalence'). I'd say it was a medium episode. Nothing terribly special. The ending, with Vala being made 'officially' part of the team fell a little flat for me because it didn't seem like she did anything in particular to earn it _in this episode_. They either should have made her part of the team earlier or held off for a while longer until she does something exceptional. Here it's like, 'You got kidnapped, yay, you're part of the team!' Which might be a fair enough qualification in a meta sense, I guess.
Also a little tired of the Goa'uld on Earth plots. Which is odd because I do want to see more Goa'uld in the series, I'd just rather it not be Goa'uld in positions of power on Earth. I want to see Goa'uld join the Ori, Goa'uld _actually_ joining with Earth against them out of self-interest (and for that matter I've long wanted to see a non-Tok'ra Goa'uld who behaves as a benevolent ruler, not because he's good, but because he realizes it's smarter - still a self-interested bastard, but one you could get along with as long as the benefits of working cooperatively with you in the future outweigh those of immediate betrayal). But they've done too many 'Goa'uld in the Trust' stories that I think they should just introduce symbiote poison into the atmosphere. Or maybe I'm just annoyed that the Goa'uld was Athena.
Atlantis once again pulls out a better performance than SG1 with "McKay and Mrs. Miller", about Rodney and his sister. Great job all around, nice performances, nice chemistry between the actor who plays Rodney and his real-life sister, and a fun plot (if trodding on territory that's been a bit overused). Wasn't quite as 'tight' as I'd have liked it (that would have required some acknowledgement that a second Rodney staying permanently in their universe would have bad consequences. Oh, and there were a couple of spots where the two Rodney's interacting didn't really look right), but it was good, and I liked that, when it could have just been a fun-but-ultimately-unimportant-in-the-grand-arc episode, they made it count, by having Rodney deplete their ZPM. Even though I think I like the series better with a ZPM and having a regular, non-Daedalus connection to Earth, it was still a big move (and maybe not all that big since it's mentioned they're still working on the inter-galactic gate relay system). I just hope they get another ZPM soon - my big fear is that all the threats they face are going to be conveniently remarkably easy to defeat without one (which seems kinda ass-backwards, but it makes sense - with a ZPM they have a reasonable in-story explanation for being able to put up a serious fight, to whatever the level the story requires. Without one, either that have to be remarkably lucky enough to only face puny threats that wouldn't require a ZPM, extremely dumb down and power down their opponents, or they have to pull improbable defeats out of their butts on a regular basis). But I suspect they'll steal or otherwise obtain a new ZPM from the Pegasus replicators, who have the ability to make them.
A couple icons just for amusement's sake:
(I had to improvise on the Sorry one because when they actually said it they had the back of their heads to the camera so I never really got a particularly good 'sorry' look).
Edit: Oh, and the opposite of condescending? Conascending. Or maybe proascending. One or the other. I'm going with Conascending because if you reverse both parts you might end up where you started. (Or I suppose prodescending, but that's just silly). So Conascending. Write it down.
Random thought: This past week I discovered that one of the regular guest actors in Stargate, who plays a variety of heavily made-up or costumed roles (in particular, many of Anubis' supersoldiers and the bald Wraith hunting Ronan)... also plays the dumb dad in the mediocre Canadian sitcom 'Alice, I think'.
Is it wrong to wish he played one of his Stargate roles and just started walking around in the supersoldier costume blasting everybody?
So, for SG1 we had "Momento Mori" involving Vala getting kidnapped by the trust and winding up with amnesia (with an opening that should have been called 'A History of Valalence'). I'd say it was a medium episode. Nothing terribly special. The ending, with Vala being made 'officially' part of the team fell a little flat for me because it didn't seem like she did anything in particular to earn it _in this episode_. They either should have made her part of the team earlier or held off for a while longer until she does something exceptional. Here it's like, 'You got kidnapped, yay, you're part of the team!' Which might be a fair enough qualification in a meta sense, I guess.
Also a little tired of the Goa'uld on Earth plots. Which is odd because I do want to see more Goa'uld in the series, I'd just rather it not be Goa'uld in positions of power on Earth. I want to see Goa'uld join the Ori, Goa'uld _actually_ joining with Earth against them out of self-interest (and for that matter I've long wanted to see a non-Tok'ra Goa'uld who behaves as a benevolent ruler, not because he's good, but because he realizes it's smarter - still a self-interested bastard, but one you could get along with as long as the benefits of working cooperatively with you in the future outweigh those of immediate betrayal). But they've done too many 'Goa'uld in the Trust' stories that I think they should just introduce symbiote poison into the atmosphere. Or maybe I'm just annoyed that the Goa'uld was Athena.
Atlantis once again pulls out a better performance than SG1 with "McKay and Mrs. Miller", about Rodney and his sister. Great job all around, nice performances, nice chemistry between the actor who plays Rodney and his real-life sister, and a fun plot (if trodding on territory that's been a bit overused). Wasn't quite as 'tight' as I'd have liked it (that would have required some acknowledgement that a second Rodney staying permanently in their universe would have bad consequences. Oh, and there were a couple of spots where the two Rodney's interacting didn't really look right), but it was good, and I liked that, when it could have just been a fun-but-ultimately-unimportant-in-the-grand-arc episode, they made it count, by having Rodney deplete their ZPM. Even though I think I like the series better with a ZPM and having a regular, non-Daedalus connection to Earth, it was still a big move (and maybe not all that big since it's mentioned they're still working on the inter-galactic gate relay system). I just hope they get another ZPM soon - my big fear is that all the threats they face are going to be conveniently remarkably easy to defeat without one (which seems kinda ass-backwards, but it makes sense - with a ZPM they have a reasonable in-story explanation for being able to put up a serious fight, to whatever the level the story requires. Without one, either that have to be remarkably lucky enough to only face puny threats that wouldn't require a ZPM, extremely dumb down and power down their opponents, or they have to pull improbable defeats out of their butts on a regular basis). But I suspect they'll steal or otherwise obtain a new ZPM from the Pegasus replicators, who have the ability to make them.
A couple icons just for amusement's sake:
(I had to improvise on the Sorry one because when they actually said it they had the back of their heads to the camera so I never really got a particularly good 'sorry' look).
Edit: Oh, and the opposite of condescending? Conascending. Or maybe proascending. One or the other. I'm going with Conascending because if you reverse both parts you might end up where you started. (Or I suppose prodescending, but that's just silly). So Conascending. Write it down.
Random thought: This past week I discovered that one of the regular guest actors in Stargate, who plays a variety of heavily made-up or costumed roles (in particular, many of Anubis' supersoldiers and the bald Wraith hunting Ronan)... also plays the dumb dad in the mediocre Canadian sitcom 'Alice, I think'.
Is it wrong to wish he played one of his Stargate roles and just started walking around in the supersoldier costume blasting everybody?
