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Stargate Universe
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kaaatie made a post yesterday asking people what they thought of SGU. While I've been watching SGU I haven't really been talking about it here. However in my response to her, I basically laid out all my feelings on the show so thought it was worth reposting here. Obviously, there will be spoilers for the aired episodes, although I tried not to get into specifics too much.
My essay on SGU, let me show you it.
I've been watching SGU and actually just got all caught up this weekend. I wanted to give it a try (especially since there were so many people that were OMG against it because it killed SGA!) and have really really mixed feelings about it.
As I watch it I seem to flip back and forth between thinking "this isn't bad" and "OMG WHY DO I MAKE MYSELF SUFFER THROUGH THIS!!!" I'm pretty sure if they don't do something amazing soon I'm going to drop it because not only are some of the episodes bad, they've started to actively squick me.
I didn't watch Battlestar Galactica, personally, but I've heard that a lot of the feel they're going for in this series is what BSG had. They're trying to be dark and edgy and are throwing in a lot of interpersonal relationships and character background. They are setting up characters in a certain way, giving them issues but not actually explaining those issues until episodes later. Which, personally, I find really annoying, you're getting this unbalanced view of a character which makes the character seem off balance and then when they finally reveal why they've been acting as they do it feels really anti-climactic. It's not like the revelation is a big surprise or anything ground breaking, mostly it just makes me wonder why they didn't tell us sooner.
They've also been touching on a lot of moral topics and have been going into some really skeevy areas. And the thing is, I don't trust the Stargate writers to handle these story lines. Their strengths are in humour and writing Big Damn Heroes, etc. not in handling skeevy issues. All I can think of is how they handled date rape in the Lucius episodes of SGA as LOL so funny. Or in the SG-1 episodes where they discovered the communication crystals all they said was "oops, I think we just killed the people whose bodies we switched with." "Oh don't worry about it, the people whose bodies you're now wearing knew there was some risk in using the stones" *handwave*.
Now they're throwing a ton of consent and rape situations into the show and I just don't trust them to address them properly. They've already shown and implied some super skeevy things and no one is taking any sort of responsibility when it comes to the stones. People are just switching bodies and doing whatever the hell they want with no rules. The people in charge aren't controlling what people do, and the big wigs that are switching up bodies are the ones doing the most skeevy things.
There also isn't any indication that they're going to properly address these issues. So far all we've had is one quick scene where they did nothing more than hang a hat on one situation and one skeevy situation addressed by implying an even more skeevy revenge type situation.
Beyond the skeeviness of the show, I'm also finding a lot of their storylines uncompelling. When you watch this kind of show, you know that they're going to survive in the end, but a good show is able to keep you in suspense regardless. I'm not finding that with SGU. It seems like half of the episodes have been using a Dues Ex Machina approach where the characters run around freaking out, then the ship saves them with no actual input from the characters. I think this might be changing soon but so far that's how it's felt to me. They've started doing things that affect or will affect them later on but it was a slow start.
Finally, I don't actually like most of the characters. In fact I want to punch most of them in the face.
-Rush is mostly annoying and not in a loveable Rodney-like way. He keeps everything to himself and spends most of the time pissed off with people for wanting answers or manipulating them into doing what he wants. He's also the reason why they're all stuck on this ship instead of at home right now, yet he spends most of his time acting the martyr instead.
-Young lost any respect I might have for him after the skeevy things he's been doing.
-Telford is kind of like how Caldwell was in the beginning of SGA but way worse. He's the foil who comes in and messes things up and they just keep making him more and more skeevy and villian-like.
-Johansen, the medic, has nice moments but I can't help but find her a bit whiny at times (she keeps going on and on about how she's not supposed to be there).
-Greer just comes off as kind of crazy most of the time and his personality isn't one I can like, I can see how others might find him interesting but I don't. Also, he's a perfect example of them implying things like crazy but holding off explaining things. Like he was in jail for some reason. One of my friends said he was caught steeling things? But I so don't remember seeing that, also the animosity that Telford has for him isn't proportional to that crime. So he has this big dark past that has people not trusting him at all but they won't tell us what his past is.
-Chloe is just so... She's kind of everything I hate in female characters actually. Everyone keeps telling her that she's amazing! And the guys are fighting over her affection! And she gets all this respect from people, yet she does nothing but angst and provide romantic tension. Eli and Scott are both after her affections and totally baby her and comfort her all the time but she hasn't done anything!
-Scott is uninteresting for me. In SGA, the only reason why I cared about John at all was because he's the one everyone shipped Rodney with, and while I came to appreciate fanon John and I never really cared for canon John (although Jack was my favourite SG-1 character). So the self-sacrificing military guy just isn't my type. Throw into that his troubled past is something that is a very personal squick for me (when I say personal, I mean most people out there wouldn't even realize it's a squick, so my not liking Scott is something that is definitely less likely to be the popular opinion) and now I've moved into actively not liking him (as opposed to John that I just didn't care about).
-Which leaves Eli as the only main character that I actually like. Although there are things about how his character is handled that I don't like as much. He's fun though and enthusiastic and not belly aching as much about being there as everyone else is.
-Really, I know that it would suck to be thrown into this kind of situation with no real warning and that things can be a little desperate however the amount of time people spend complaining about being in it drives me a little crazy and gets really boring for me. That's why Riley is my other favourite character, although he's just reoccurring instead of a main character (he's kind of a merging of Chuck and Zelenka from SGA and he's awesome). I just can't believe that the SGC hires all these people that can't handle themselves in a tough situation. Wouldn't that be one of the requirements for even going off planet? Riley really is exactly what I picture as they type of person the SGC hires. I just wish more characters could be like him.
-I'm also enjoying Lt. James, another reoccurring character.
All that said, I'm still giving the show a try and will likely watch the whole season. It's gotta do something, however, to get me to watch next season (if there is one). And it's doubtful I'd ever get fannish over it (although, just watch that statement come back to bite me in the ass :P).
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I miss SGA like crazy though.
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You really are better off not watching the show. It's just getting more and more painful. And one of the links I followed from the comm lead to the old links from GateFail, the reactions of people to finding out that in a future episode the lesbian character does a body switch with a quadriplegic who then has sex in her body with a man that the lesbian doesn't like. Because having sex while in someone else's body isn't bad enough, they then have to add all these extra layers of wrong to it. *headdesk*
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I spend a lot of time in fandom, both online and in RL (pretty much all my RL friends are also fannish friends) so it can be really weird for me sometimes talking to non-fannish people. The way fandom approaches things can just be so different from the way the rest of the world does.
Taking a stand when it comes to the morals protrayed in your show is fairly normal in fandom (although you still get the whole "it's just a TV show, if you don't like, don't watch") but when you say things like that in RL most people just look at you like you're kind of nuts and add on a note to not watch if you don't like.