As a massive Stargate fan, this sounds like an absolute blast. And a kiss to our Big Damn Heroes too! Weeeee!

rockgoddes | March 28, 21:04 CET

Wow, a return to SpaceMacGyver! Huzzah!

Mort | March 28, 21:19 CET

This makes me happy. :) I love GoofyStargate, so, a return to Wormhole X-treme with a nod to Firefly/Serenity is about as good as it gets!

lisaspo | March 28, 22:06 CET

Yay! I love Stargate SG1. The most recent season was sorely lacking RDA.

Simon | March 28, 22:28 CET

Stargate has 200 episodes? Jebus I had no idea.

war_machine | March 28, 22:41 CET

I think the new RDA-less episodes are the best the show has produced since season 3. He was really pulling the show down with his limited availability.

cowmuf | March 28, 23:53 CET

I love Stargate SG-1 and miss RDA tremendously but, like Cowmuf said, his barely there appearances the last season or two took a lot away from the story and feel of the show. I like Ben Browder but am hoping they start doing more with his character. They practically ignored him for most of the first half of the season. And Claudia Black as Vala was a great edition to the show. Looking forward to her being a full time member of the team!

Firefly Flanatic | March 29, 00:23 CET

A lot of people elsewhere are bashing Stargate for the fact they were on the air so long and Firefly got cancelled. It's really nice of the producers to do this despite the fact. I've always felt that Stargate SG1 is the Simpsons of sci fi television and never had problem watching it.

delirium_haze | March 29, 00:58 CET

Yeah, i'd have to agree that whilst RDA was one of the reasons that i became such a fan of the show, having to write around his personal schedule was starting to tell on the quality of the episodes. I absolutely understood that he wanted to spend more time with his daughter but at the same time the show was starting to suffer so i was actually kinda glad when he made the choice to quit. Not that i wanted him to go, by any means. I just felt that he needed to choose either to stay full time or to leave altogether, as the half and half option he was taking was not really working anymore.

I've been a massive fan of Ben and Claudia ever since i first caught Farscape so having them on the show has definately helped me deal with the lack of RDA. I'd agree with Firefly Flanatic though that they seriously need to establish Mitchell's character more in the new season. He has been severely underused so far.

Edit:



Well, given RDA's (and O'Neill's) love of the Simpsons, i think that is very appropriate. :)

[ edited by Primeval on 2006-03-28 23:04 ]

The Arcane | March 29, 00:58 CET

I think the only reason he did season 8 is because they promised him they would get Dan Castellaneta to appear on the show.

delirium_haze | March 29, 01:13 CET

I enjoy Stargate (both shows) a lot. In terms of pure 'sit back and enjoy' television, it's just very succesfull, even if not all of the episodes are 'high quality' in literal sense of the word. There's a reason it's going into its tenth season, after all :-).

Anyway, this looks like a fun devellopment, and I think it's very noble to do this nod to Firefly/Serenity, when I've heard more than one browncoat complain about the Stargates being on, and Firefly being cancelled.

Only thing I'm not looking forward to, though, is the return of Claudia Black's Vala next season as a (I believe) regular character. I mean, she's a good actrice, and she's fun to have around for a couple of episodes now and then, but her presence completely destroys the show's dynamic and remakes SG-1 into 'the Vala show'. So I'm kinda dreading that.

Other than that: I've enjoyed SG-1 (and Atlantis) to bits and I'll probably keep enjoying the shows untill they stop making 'em. Unless this Vala thing gets unbearable ;-).

GVH | March 29, 02:05 CET

I thought the current season was the worst to date. No tension and no dramatic pacing. Not the fault of the actors, it's just that I think that the writers had run out of ideas.

Simon | March 29, 02:06 CET

I actually quite like the idea of 'the Vala show', but then i like the character of Vala a lot. Her being on the team will add the kind of disruption that Spike or Anya brought to the Scoobies, or Rygel brought to the crew of Moya. A sense that not everything will always run smoothly within the team dynamic, something very rare for SG-1 when we are used to the relatively smooth relationships of the original four core members.

That said, i do suspect that the change in dynamic may be too much for the die hard SG-1 fans who still have not accepted Cameron on the team yet. As much as i love SG-1 and the characters we have seen over the past 9 seasons, part of me wishes that this had been the last season of the current show and that they had used it as a transition into a whole new series. Introduced us to Cameron and Vala and then moved them away from Stargate Command and used them to front a third Stargate series. Stargate: Camelot or something similar. You could still have SG-1 make guest appearances on the new show or Atlantis but this idea would help prevent the complaint that the show had changed too much and the new characters didn't work. It would simply be a whole new show.

The Arcane | March 29, 04:50 CET

I have to say that the main reason why I never got into Stargate SG1 was because of Richard Dean Anderson. I thought his performance on the show was embarrassingly bad, I just couldn't handle the pain of having to watching him try to be funny. Now that he has left the show I have actually started watching.

Zoic_Fan | March 29, 05:57 CET

Really, Zoic_Fan? I'm very surprised at that. RDA's acting and the comedy his character brought to the show was one of the selling points for me. There have been a couple of episodes in the past where i felt that the writer of the episode overplayed his sarcastic side to the point it became annoying. Entity, the episode where Carter is taken over by an artificial intelligence springs to mind. That episode saw O'Neill written VERY poorly. For the most part though, he was one of the main reasons i had for tuning in. The comedic rapport between Anderson and Michael Shanks was particularly good, in my opinion.

The Arcane | March 29, 13:19 CET

Wonderful! Stargate can do comedy pretty damn well and I love the reference to Firefly

be_found | March 29, 13:41 CET

Well, actually, Primeval, I wouldn't watch 'The Vala Show', even if it had nothing to do with SG-1. I can only take her character in small doses, to be honest. She's just very, very present and it gets tiring very soon. I was actually physically tired after watching those earlier Vala episodes ;-)

GVH | March 29, 13:56 CET

I really miss RDA and thought he was hilarious throughout (horses for courses, I guess Zoic_fan ;), very dry, appropriately cutting but you could still see why they respected him as C.O. The way Carter would become infuriated at his dismissal of her scientific explanations was a hoot and the friendship that developed between chalk and cheese O'Neill and Jackson felt genuine, true and sometimes actually moving. Great team dynamics can cover a lot of cheesy plots.

Although I thought the first 10-11 episodes of Season 9 were pretty bad, it really picked up after that. The turning point, for me, was Fourth Horseman Pt 2 e.g. one part where Daniel and Mitchell are talking to the Prior who's pontificating about the Ori's grand design and one of the team says flippantly 'Yeah, yeah, They Have A Plan' with the slightest raised eyebrow to the other. Clearly a good natured little dig at new kid on the block, Battlestar Galactica, which had me smiling and thinking 'Now that's the SG-1 i've been missing'.

That said, i'm still not sure about Mitchell, just seems a little bland a lot of the time and i'm really not sure about him and Vala interacting since though Vala is totally different to Aeryn Sun (and played brilliantly by Claudia Black), Mitchell is close enough to John Crichton (or maybe just acted that way) to muddy the character waters slightly.

And I also feel that SG:Atlantis hit the ground running so fast, it quickly overtook big brother and became my favourite fluff sci-fi show. Episodes like 'Aurora' or 'Grace Under Pressure' (an excellent non-cross-over cross-over episode) are just classic fun sci-fi TV. Plus, McKay is the second best TV geek ever. If him and Chloe from 24 ever reproduced, their kids would surely rule the world ;).

Both shows treat serious issues well (two different ideologies clashing violently ring any current affairs bells ?) but are usually not solemn about it and end up being entertaining and thought provoking.

Saje | March 29, 13:59 CET

GVH, the point of Vala's rather 'in your face' attitude being too much when she becomes a regular character has been addressed a number of times by the writers. It appears that they intend to dial her back a little in season ten (due to the fact she has seen the seriousness of what the Ori intend for our galaxy and now really wants to help stop them) so you may find her a little easier to handle.

Saje, i don't know if you followed Farscape at all closely but on that show there was a concept known as Unrealized Reality, sort of like alternate universes but with the usual unique Farscape twist where different realities could have a D'Argo like Rygel or a Aerynesque Chiana. It's kinda strange but, given the very obvious wormhole connection between the two shows, if you look at Cameron and Vala as unrealized reality versions of John and Aeryn it actually helps to get used to seeing them interact on a different series. Like you are actually watching the same two characters but in a very different setting where their existences happened very differently but with some remarkable similarities as well. Sort of a fanwank idea but it works. :)

All that said, i'm a big Ben Browder fan so i don't think it had anything to do with his acting ability or lack of same but i do think, as i said further up the page, that Cameron needs to be given more of a personality and soon.

[ edited by Primeval on 2006-03-29 12:51 ]

The Arcane | March 29, 14:49 CET

Yeah, I was a big Farscape fan Primeval so I know about the Unrealised Realities concept (though I don't have the DVDs - too expensive unfortunately - so haven't watched the specific episode in years).

It is kind of a crazy idea but it just might cure the slight dissonance I have when I watch them together and as you say both shows feature wormholes heavily and both have meddled multiple times with alternate realities so I think I can maybe make myself believe it the tiny amount required for it to work, and if so, thanks ;).

I also like Ben Browder and think he did a pretty good job on Farscape but Crichton was on an emotional rollercoaster most of the time so there was plenty for him to get his teeth into. I worry that though good, he's maybe not quite a subtle enough actor to use the tiny bits he gets given to bring Mitchell to life (which is to say, I agree that Mitchell needs a lot more fleshing out, not necessarily with back-story, more with the little interactions with the rest of the team that show a character's pet hates, facial mannerisms etc. - I remember in a Season 1 episode just after O'Neill has dismissed Carters's science talk, maybe for the first time ever, truly a historic moment ;), and the camera's focus has shifted to him, we see her in the background screwing up her face in annoyance. Tiny things like that bring a character to life and are the sorts of details that Mitchell has so far been lacking, IMO). Also, the way he's written has some of the down home, good old boy feel that Crichton had which again doesn't help to differentiate them.

That said though, I think he did well in the SG-1 episode where he visits his dying friend and shows him, literally, the wonders of the universe. Very poignant and he portrays Mitchell's complex mix of feelings to good effect.

(strangely, though Vala has a more defined character I think it's actually less of a stretch for Claudia Black anyway since from interviews i've seen/read they seem to share at least a similar sense of humour and possibly other character traits, not to mention stunning good looks ;)

Saje | March 29, 15:37 CET

Funnily enough, the only real problem i had with the inclusion of Mitchell on the team was it seemed like the others were a little too familiar with him. Whilst the writers went out of their way to establish the backstory and reason for the relationships that had occured behind the scenes since the battle over Antarctica it still seemed like we were asked to accept a lot at face value and that maybe it would have worked a little better for the character, certainly regarding development, if we had been able to get to know him and his personality traits through the eyes of the rest of SG-1 rather than have them all be so familiar with him right from the start.

Anyway, ultimately they chose to go the route we saw and, for better or for worse, it worked out okay in my opinion. Ben is definately one of those actors who has a style that suits larger than life characters but i think that he does pretty well with the material he gets on Stargate. They just need to stretch him a little bit.

The Arcane | March 29, 16:48 CET