I am a big fan of SGU (though not really of the other two shows in the franchise). It had a great premise, to be lost on an ancient but powerful ship in a far off galaxy. The writing possibilities with such a foundation could be really great.
Except huge mistakes were made that ultimately doomed the show, in my opinion. Personally, I don’t think those mistakes should have caused the cancellation, because the show had a lot still going for it. With a rating of 8/10 by over 5000 votes on IMDb.com, it sounded like the show was popular. The Save Stargate Universe Facebook page has 26,549 fans.
1) The main cast of 14 people was way too big. Yes, ensemble shows do work sometimes (a most recent example is Lost). But it’s difficult, and why start a new show with difficult. At least cut it in half, 7: Young, Rush, Eli, Scott, Chloe, Johansen, and Greer (a possible eighth is Camille, but, though I like the portrayal of her homosexual relationship, I don’t like her or her conflict with Young). The two most successful science fiction shows also had 7 main characters each: i) Star Trek (7: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, & Checkov); and ii) Star Trek: The Next Generation (7: Picard, Riker, Data, Troi, Dr. Crusher, La Forge, & Worf).
2) The big advantage of being in a galaxy “at the far end of the universe” is that they are so far from Earth that they can neither get any help from Earth nor probably ever see home again (they would be looking at a generation ship). This adds a lot of suspense and angst to the show. The long-range communication stones ruined this, especially by their over-use. Very, very bad mistake. I can guess that the producers were trying to replicate the television show Lost’s time & location jumps between the island and back in the States. I’m not even sure this worked as well as J.J. Abrams et al. wanted, since it confused the heck out of their audience, not always in a good way. But the circumstances and setting of Lost was hugely different from SGU. The stones should never have existed on the Destiny. Mark Wilson, the science fiction journalist, calls it a “deterrestrialized existence”.
3) I’m not a fan of battles, especially ongoing ones (i.e. war). I like the style of the original Star Trek series: it’s mostly about exploration and character development, with the occasional battle scene or battle episode. But to put your characters into a war, when it’s not a series about war, is, first of all, very lazy on the part of the writers, and secondly, very boring for at least the intelligent and more mature viewer. For kids, it’s probably great. There was way too much war and battling on SGU. That’s not what the show was suppose to be about. Of course, they should come into contact with hostile aliens along the way. But not episode after episode after episode. It’s certainly not the way to save a show, which I’m sure was their intention with all the space battles. Yuck! Also, maybe a little too American (no offense). If I had to watch all about the two wars America is currently fighting on CNN every single day, then maybe I don’t want to see nothing but fighting on SGU once a week. By the way, I’m Canadian and we are also in the Afghanistan war, so the same goes for Canadian viewers of SGU.
4) There were some major story opportunities that were skipped. Before the nothing but battles streak occurred, SGU was in kind of a monster of the week style of writing. What that means is in each episode, you have some kind of conflict arise (usually either on the Destiny or on a planet), you have the characters struggle and then finally resolve the conflict. By conflict I’m not talking about violence or a battle, just some kind of problem that they have to solve or overcome. Every good story needs that. This is not a bad way of writing a television series. But if you are too strict on keeping that framework all the time, you miss great opportunities for making the conflict, if it’s a good one, spread out over a multiple-episode arc.
The best example of an opportunity missed was in Season 1, Episode 15: Lost, where Scott, Greer, Chloe, and Eli are first trapped in an underground cave, Greer is caught in another cave in, and the other three end up having to blindly jump from planet to planet hoping to pick up a signal from Destiny before it jumps into FTL and the inter-galactic void before them. Greer digs himself out and gets rescued by the Destiny crew through the gate. The producers missed a great side storyline, with Scott, Chloe and Eli stranded after the Destiny went back into FTL, and blindly jumping from planet to planet through the gate, first in search of water, food and shelter, and then, who knows. I think it would have been cool to see them do this. Heck, you also had the writers strand together three particular people that formed a love triangle. That couldn’t have been by accident. Yet, the producers axed it. Oh, and eventually some technology or event in the inter-galactic void could have reunited the three back with Destiny (in a better way than was written in the following episode, Sabotage).
Another good example of an opportunity provided by the writers for all kinds of exploration and conflict: that aforementioned void between galaxies could have been stretched over several episodes. There have been voids of one kind or another in the Star Trek franchise, but never an inter-galactic void, so this had new possibilities. But, no, the producers abruptly ended the void experience almost before it started. Not too bright!
Hey what happened with SGU? It was getting better towards the end of the 2nd series and it had a lot of potential with the drones being a looming factor over the ship e.g. the drones had worked out destiny’s weakness. There could have been a whole storyline based on the origins of the drones and how the crew of the destiny could find out how to overcome this by finding the central ‘control planet’. True the first series was a bit of a fail but hasn’t every Si-Fi series had at least one bad season? Well they decided to solve it by basically skipping the galaxy altogether. Although this a strait forward measure however this misses out opportunities such as meeting their descendants
that could have been on other planets plus the afore mentioned opportunity with the drones.
The show did leave itself a cliff hanger though and could be picked back up by ease. Maybe half way through the journey a malfunction causes the ship to drop out of hyperspace?
I am a big fan of SGU (though not really of the other two shows in the franchise). It had a great premise, to be lost on an ancient but powerful ship in a far off galaxy. The writing possibilities with such a foundation could be really great.
Except huge mistakes were made that ultimately doomed the show, in my opinion. Personally, I don’t think those mistakes should have caused the cancellation, because the show had a lot still going for it. With a rating of 8/10 by over 5000 votes on IMDb.com, it sounded like the show was popular. The Save Stargate Universe Facebook page has 26,549 fans.
1) The main cast of 14 people was way too big. Yes, ensemble shows do work sometimes (a most recent example is Lost). But it’s difficult, and why start a new show with difficult. At least cut it in half, 7: Young, Rush, Eli, Scott, Chloe, Johansen, and Greer (a possible eighth is Camille, but, though I like the portrayal of her homosexual relationship, I don’t like her or her conflict with Young). The two most successful science fiction shows also had 7 main characters each: i) Star Trek (7: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, & Checkov); and ii) Star Trek: The Next Generation (7: Picard, Riker, Data, Troi, Dr. Crusher, La Forge, & Worf).
2) The big advantage of being in a galaxy “at the far end of the universe” is that they are so far from Earth that they can neither get any help from Earth nor probably ever see home again (they would be looking at a generation ship). This adds a lot of suspense and angst to the show. The long-range communication stones ruined this, especially by their over-use. Very, very bad mistake. I can guess that the producers were trying to replicate the television show Lost’s time & location jumps between the island and back in the States. I’m not even sure this worked as well as J.J. Abrams et al. wanted, since it confused the heck out of their audience, not always in a good way. But the circumstances and setting of Lost was hugely different from SGU. The stones should never have existed on the Destiny. Mark Wilson, the science fiction journalist, calls it a “deterrestrialized existence”.
3) I’m not a fan of battles, especially ongoing ones (i.e. war). I like the style of the original Star Trek series: it’s mostly about exploration and character development, with the occasional battle scene or battle episode. But to put your characters into a war, when it’s not a series about war, is, first of all, very lazy on the part of the writers, and secondly, very boring for at least the intelligent and more mature viewer. For kids, it’s probably great. There was way too much war and battling on SGU. That’s not what the show was suppose to be about. Of course, they should come into contact with hostile aliens along the way. But not episode after episode after episode. It’s certainly not the way to save a show, which I’m sure was their intention with all the space battles. Yuck! Also, maybe a little too American (no offense). If I had to watch all about the two wars America is currently fighting on CNN every single day, then maybe I don’t want to see nothing but fighting on SGU once a week. By the way, I’m Canadian and we are also in the Afghanistan war, so the same goes for Canadian viewers of SGU.
4) There were some major story opportunities that were skipped. Before the nothing but battles streak occurred, SGU was in kind of a monster of the week style of writing. What that means is in each episode, you have some kind of conflict arise (usually either on the Destiny or on a planet), you have the characters struggle and then finally resolve the conflict. By conflict I’m not talking about violence or a battle, just some kind of problem that they have to solve or overcome. Every good story needs that. This is not a bad way of writing a television series. But if you are too strict on keeping that framework all the time, you miss great opportunities for making the conflict, if it’s a good one, spread out over a multiple-episode arc.
The best example of an opportunity missed was in Season 1, Episode 15: Lost, where Scott, Greer, Chloe, and Eli are first trapped in an underground cave, Greer is caught in another cave in, and the other three end up having to blindly jump from planet to planet hoping to pick up a signal from Destiny before it jumps into FTL and the inter-galactic void before them. Greer digs himself out and gets rescued by the Destiny crew through the gate. The producers missed a great side storyline, with Scott, Chloe and Eli stranded after the Destiny went back into FTL, and blindly jumping from planet to planet through the gate, first in search of water, food and shelter, and then, who knows. I think it would have been cool to see them do this. Heck, you also had the writers strand together three particular people that formed a love triangle. That couldn’t have been by accident. Yet, the producers axed it. Oh, and eventually some technology or event in the inter-galactic void could have reunited the three back with Destiny (in a better way than was written in the following episode, Sabotage).
Another good example of an opportunity provided by the writers for all kinds of exploration and conflict: that aforementioned void between galaxies could have been stretched over several episodes. There have been voids of one kind or another in the Star Trek franchise, but never an inter-galactic void, so this had new possibilities. But, no, the producers abruptly ended the void experience almost before it started. Not too bright!
wow mate i didn’t read all your post but this show is great.Very edgy sci-fi , can’t believe it was cancelled.
Hey what happened with SGU? It was getting better towards the end of the 2nd series and it had a lot of potential with the drones being a looming factor over the ship e.g. the drones had worked out destiny’s weakness. There could have been a whole storyline based on the origins of the drones and how the crew of the destiny could find out how to overcome this by finding the central ‘control planet’. True the first series was a bit of a fail but hasn’t every Si-Fi series had at least one bad season? Well they decided to solve it by basically skipping the galaxy altogether. Although this a strait forward measure however this misses out opportunities such as meeting their descendants
that could have been on other planets plus the afore mentioned opportunity with the drones.
The show did leave itself a cliff hanger though and could be picked back up by ease. Maybe half way through the journey a malfunction causes the ship to drop out of hyperspace?