Well, naturally. They had just found themselves on a ship that had been running on autopilot for millennia without maintenance. Life support was doing pretty poorly. But once they had those sorted out in the first half of the first season, life on the ship got more or less comfortable and they moved on to other problems.
I do think the focus on the interpersonal drama went a bit overboard. I don’t care about the people back home. I like Eli as a character, but whenever he visited back home I was bored silly.
That said, I didn’t see anything wrong with the characters (except useless Chloe), but the plot left something to be desired. On their own, the characters were pretty cool, but they were made to act in weird ways according to the whims of the script.
Heroes and LOST were both very successful. That they didn’t run forever is hardly an indictment, both ran for as long or longer then BSG, which you count as a successful series. If SGU was even slightly as popular as either of those shows, I’m sure Syfy would call it a success.
But people still watched.
It’s coming back for a second season.
I’m not sure why your argument should be limited to sci-fi shows. But in anycase, unless your metric for successful sci-fi is that they never end but run forever, I’ve given several examples of ones that have used the serial format and been successful.
As long as it runs forever. If its ever canceled it will retroactively become a failure by your measure. Its had fewer seasons the LOST or Heroes, after all.
BSG was successful because it had a very impressive start, it faded badly later on but I was willing to hang in there just because they had worked so hard at the overall fiction.
I wanted to like this Stargate given the scottish guy and its attempt to be non shlocky sci-fi but it just never grabbed me. I dont know if it felt too contrived, or it was too big a departure from the other Stargates or what, but it just never took off for me.
I just don’t think Sci-Fi people are interested in aimless drivel like 24. I don’t think people were happy with the ending of BSG, and I’m certain that Lost ratings dropped off toward the end. Story arcs are fine, but if you miss a show and can’t figure out where you are the next time you watch, why watch at all? V didn’t last in the eighties, it won’t last now. There needs to be a forseable win. If people realize that the resolution will never come, they will stop watching.
Unfortunately, this means one of my favorites, The Walking Dead is doomed as well.
And someone seriously suggests that BSG had good action? It had almost no action. The entire show was a damned philosophical hunt for God. “oh I’m so tortured, where are these planets in my head coming from?! Am I a cylon? No, I’m not even real!”. It was Days of Our Lives set in space.
Shame. Neat show. That said, perhaps it’s for the best - the actress playing Chloe is dreadful beyond belief, and it looks like the final episodes are likely to be Chloe-centric. Best to just take the show out behind the shed and shoot it.
It seems to me like they heard complaints about how Chloe was the one truly useless person on the ship and went overboard in giving her a purpose.
It’s a shame too, because she could have been brilliantly used. She’s the daughter of a politician, for heaven’s sake. She should have grown up gladhanding and attending functions and being groomed to enter the world of politics. I would have loved to see her act as the bridge between military and civilian leadership, working compromises and cooperation. Instead she’s relegated to little more than an object of desire. That’s just plain ridiculous.
And only one TOS actor (Richard Hatch) ever appeared on TNS. Nobody else did, not even a cameo (though Dirk Benndict & Jane Seymour were asked). TNS was totally despised by most TOS fans (not me).
I’m glad it’s dead. A friend of mine who lacks cable had me record this for him. Now, full disclosure - I’ve never been a Stargate watcher. I found the original SG series pleasant and entertaining, but not to such a degree that I actively sought it out.
So this thing comes on, and I start recording it for my friend, and we watch it together. And it’s just bad. Take the premise of Lost in Space (or Star Trek : Voyager) and the laughably relentless grimdark of Nu-Battlestar Galactica, and you get this. It had a lot of good potential, I think, as a premise - but it was squandered in their slavish attempts to recapture the BSG audience.
I can’t even believe it takes place in the SG universe - a point absolutely driven home in one of the late first-season episodes where General O’Neal is visiting the Destiny, and he’s being his usual somewhat jokey self, and sticks out like a sore thumb. (Nevermind them sending highly trained stealth commando DANIEL JACKSON to observe a secret Lucien Alliance meeting… WTF?) Every cameo from the original cast just underscores the point that this is NOT Stargate.
So what is it? It’s an excuse for exaggerated interpersonal conflict, 44 minutes at a time, with no resolution. For montages of introspective-feigning faces set against a random pop song of the week. For unlikeable characters to do tedious things.
I was big fan of SG-1 and Atlantis, but I coulnd’t make it past the 2nd or 3rd episode of SGU. The main problem that I had with the show was that it was really broing and the characters were unlikable. I also thought the acting and writing were pretty bad. I miss Carter.
