Sci Fi Alert

Wow, did I dislike this episode.  I don’t even feel the need to discuss it.  I wish the writers of Stargate: Atlantis would forget the character of Lucius Lavin because I really hate him.

Wow, this was an exceptional episode and probably the most political of any Stargate episode to date.
***SPOILERS***
After lamenting in previous posts that Amanda Tapping and her character Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter have been relegated to the background we finally get an episode that is all Carter, all the time.  And it was great,  Tapping even sported a sexy party dress.
In this episode an experiment goes awry that send Carter into another dimension.  In this dimension, when Anubis attacked Earth, the Stargate program became known to the world and it did not turn out well.  There was civil unrest all over the world, which leads the United States to declare martial law and suspend elections.  Then Ori show up, but Earth is able to fend them off with the chair in Antarctica.  This caused an even greater clamp-down on personal freedom.  The kicker is Carter shows up just as another Ori battle group is about to attack the planet and manages to save this alternate Earth using the Merlin device, not to mention the entire planet’s power supply to shift it out of phase.  Earth is saved and Sam is a hero.
As Sam begins to play the role of hero for President Landry she begins to see that things are not right.  She discovers that personal liberties have been suspended in the name of national security.  The United States and Stargate Command attack at will anyone they deem to be a threat to national security.  There is no freedom of speech or press to prevent more civil unrest.  Sam realizes she’s become a pawn in this power play and begins to resist.  The president, however, isn’t about to let that happen and Sam ends up kidnapped off the street.  In the end, Sam is persuasive enough with President Landry that he allows her to return.
Of the entire 10-year run of this series, this is the first time an episode has been so overtly political.  The entire episode was devoted to the idea that security without freedom is wrong.  That nations who think anything goes for the sake of national security are traveling down a slippery slop that is very difficult to return from.  As I’ve often said in relation to Battlestar Galactica science fiction is at its best when it uses sci-fi elements to speak out about the times in which we live.  BSG often does this quite well.  It was nice to see SG-1 step up and do so, as well.  Especially with Samantha Carter at the center of the episode.

For awhile, the Sci Fi channel seemed to be on the rise.  The Stargate series continued to do well, but not great, in the ratings; BSG was drawing in good numbers while Eureka aired to spectacular numbers and maintained a good chunk of that audience through its first season. Lately, things have not been so great for Sci Fi.  BSG’s ratings have declined by nearly a million viewers, the Stargate series continue to bleed their already small viewership, The Dresden Files has barely caught on with viewers, and new series Painkiller Jane is a disaster (it’s a deserved disaster because the show is atrocious). It must be equally annoying to parent company NBC Universal when they get stellar numbers for freshman series Heroes, which usually draws 10-12 million more viewers per week than any Sci Fi series currently airing.  Of course, as much as I like Heroes I also think it’s a pop culture phenomonon much like Lost.  While I’ll be watching next season, it will be interesting to see if they can maintain those ratings.
Scienc Fiction and other genre series have always had niche audiences.  The success of a show like Heroes has as much to do with the fact that it draws viewers from across the board, not just a genre television niche.  However, the Stargate series and BSG are good enough they should be drawing double their audience.  I think a large part of the blame for the series’ decline can be laid at the feet of the Sci Fi Channel executives.  The waited half a year between new episodes of the Stargate series; they premiered BSG in the middle of the networks’ fall schedule, then they moved it to an equally, if not more, difficult night, Sunday; when they get ideas for interesting new series like The Dresden Files they make them on the cheap; instead of investing their meager budget in quality science fiction/fasntasy projects they blow money on less-than-B-movie crap for their ”most dangerous night of television.”  Sci Fi used to take some chances on quality projects like Dune, Children of Dune, and Taken, all of which drew millions of viewers to their channel and allowed them to cross-promote their other series. Now all they air are crappy horror flicks that no one saw in the theater and garbage like The Lost Room.
I will give Sci Fi some credit for some of their upcoming projects.  Flash Gordon is actually beginning to sound interesting and they’ve greenlit the great science fiction novel, The Diamond Age, which is to be produced by George Clooney.  In the meantime Sci Fi needs to spend a little money to get some return on their ratings.  Everywhere you turn on cable you see advertisements for Sci Fi’s sister network, USA, and their series.  Some of that love need to come Sci Fi’s way.

I don’t know if I hate change or if I’m just a purest when it comes to accepted mythology for characters and shows that I’ve enjoyed over the years.  I hated the Rick Berman and Brannon Braga walked all over accepted Star Trek canon when they were making Star Trek: Enterprise.  I was annoyed with some of the changes Bryan Singer made to the X-Men, but they were liveable; however, I hated how Brett Ratner bastardized the Dark Phoenix storyline in X-Men: The Last Stand. I don’t always dislike change.  I really liked the subtle changes Sam Raimi made to the Spider-Man mythology that brought it more into the modern era.  With Raimi you could tell he had a real respect for the character.
All that being said,  in a recent interview Avi Arad, the Marvel Comics bigwig, said the Hulk in the sequal film, The Incredible Hulk, may not even be green!  Yeah, I know Hulk was not originally green, but over the years it has become accepted canon for the character to have the greenish, radiation-like color and it would seem stupid to change that.

If you’re not watching Lifetime’s vampire series, Blood Ties, you’re missing a well-acted and well-written series.  No, it’s not a perfect series, but most of the imperfection can be chalked up to a low budget.  What it has is an interesting cast of characters.  As the lead, Christina Cox, is perfectly cast as Vicki Nelson, a former police detective suffering from macular degeneration which will eventually make her go blind.  Along for the ride is her former friend/lover/partner, Mike and Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year-old vampire who also happens to be the bastard son of Henry VIII. 
The show suffers a little bit from sticking with Night Stalker-like plots, but the characters are so interesting it can be overlooked.  If the show lasts through its first season, and I have no idea what kind ratings Lifetime is getting for the show, the series will be better if some more time can be spent exploring the past life of Henry Fitzroy; how he became a vampire and what life was like in the court of Henry VIII.

Again, I have to say the writers of the Stargate series do such a better job at writing filler episodes than BSG and Stargate: Atlantis “Echoes” was another prime example of that.  I think what I liked most about this episode is that it empasized the science in science fiction.  Spoilers after the jump.

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If there’s one thing the writers of Stargate SG-1 do better than the writers of Battlestar Galactica it’s write filler episodes.  As filler episodes go I thought “Line in the Sand” was rather good.  It also answered two of my gripes from posting I wrote about “The Quest, part 2″:  more Samantha Carter and working on making Cam seem more of a team member.  In one episode the writers accomplished that.  Spoilers after the jump.

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If the chuckleheads at The Sci Fi Channel thought taking their Stargate franchise off the air for six months was going to make people want to see more than ever they got a rude awakening this past Friday.  Ratings, while “moderate” according to GateWorld, were actually down from the summer season finales; and these are shows that can’t afford to lose any more viewers.  In fact, the entire night saw a steady decline with each successive show.  I’m sure Painkiller Jane was a big disappointment for everyone; I know it was for me.  SciFi has never seen great ratings for its weekly series, with the exception of Eureka and Battlestar Galactica in its first two seasons.
A lot of this can be explained away because Sci Fi is definitely a niche cable network and you can expect that they aren’t going to get series to draw more than 2 to 3 million viewers.  According to Nielsen Media Research a rating of 1 mean 1.102 million people are watching a particular series.  That means less than 2 million people are watching the Stargate series and note even 1.5 million tuned in to Painkiller Jane.  I know these series are done on the cheap compared to broadcast network series, but they still cost a pretty penny, so I doubt Sci Fi is thrilled with these ratings.
This is really a shame.  For the most part, Sci Fi has some really great series on its network.  Both Stargate series and BSG are great science fiction and Eureka is fun take of the small-town lawman genre with sci-fi elements, while The Dresden Files has a lot of potential that’s getting wasted by a poor production.  NBC Universal, the parent company of Sci Fi and USA Network, has to share some of the blame for this.  They put more time and effort into promoting the series on USA than they’ve ever put into Sci Fi, not to mention they’re wasting money on less than B-grade slasher flicks for their “most dangerous night of television.”  If they would sink some money into quality production for mini-series and few good stand-alone movies that could bring in the viewers they would see a return on ther investment by bringing viewers to their other shows, which would be advertised during those higher quality movies and mini-series.  But who the hell am I.

SyFy Portal is reporting the CBS is set to renew its struggling, but well-crafted post-nuclear series, Jereicho, for a second season.  When Jericho debuted in the fall to very respectable ratings and a lot of buzz CBS gave it a full season, but since returning in January and going up against American Idol (a show I hate by the way!) ratings are down by half.  This led to speculation earlier this year that CBS might not renew the series for a second season.  Fortunately, the writers and producers behind the series have been promising since episode one they would not pull a Lost and dole out the reveals a pittance at a time.  Sure enough there are only four episodes left and we’re on the road to knowing why the bombs were set off and who was responsible.  In between that we’ve also been treated to an interesting drama about a small town trying to survive after a nuclear holocaust.  Granted, there have been a few melodramatic moments, but the acting and writing is so top notch you can forgive those moments.  This series should damn well get a few Emmy nominations, especially for the writing and for cast members Skeet Ulrich, Pamela Reed, and Gerald McRaney.
It now looks like CBS may be considering a second season renewal and a move to a different time slot.  Personally, I think this is the kind of series that would work on a Saturday or Sunday evening.  However, since the networks have been dumping nothing but repeats on Saturdays for years and Sunday is already crowded with hit shows I doubt that will happen.  They should also consider running the series non-stop either in the fall or the spring.  Taking four months off between the fall and spring episodes didn’t do well for viewership either.
If the people behind the show get a second season it will be intersting to see where they go.  There is still a lot of material to mine with the small-town angle, but also with the struggle to survive in a post-nuclear world.  I know I’ll be watching.

I’m not sure what to think about the idea of Edward Norton playing Bruce Banner, aka Hulk, in the sequel to the less-than-stellar previous movie starring Eric Bana.  It’s a shame they couldn’t get Bana back because I thought he was perfect in the role.  The film itself was not perfect (neither was it as bad as some said), but Bana really captured the tortured nature of Bruce Banner.  Can Norton do the same?  Well he’s certainly a damn fine actor.  I absolutely loved his recent film The Illusionist and Norton has hsown himself to be an excellent actor in such films as Primal Fear and American History X.  A lot of this will depend on how well the movie turns out to be.  Now that the first film had laid the groundwork of the origin story there really is a lot any writer or director could do with the franchise.

After eagerly anticipating the TV series based Jim Butcher’s fantastic books The Dresden Files, I have to say I was more often than not disappointed in the TV show.  It wasn’t completely terrible, but it just wasn’t all that great either.  There were some good things about it.  I liked that they gave Harry’s spirit assistance, Bob, a human form.  It works in a visual medium like TV to have Bob in a human form and Terrence Mann is perfect in the role and his interaction with Paul Blackthorne is one of the best things about the series.  Blackthorne, however, is a different issue.  From the beginning I though he was too old for the role and while the actor has certainly inhabited the role well, making it his own, I still think someone five to ten years younger would have been a better choice.  I also wasn’t a big fan of Valerie Cruz has Murphy, but I think that had mostly to do with the lack of development for the character.  In the novels Murphy is such a strong character, a good foil for Harry’s naiveté, but in the series that role is reversed.  Murphy is the naive one and it detracts from the character.  I will say by the end of the first season that was beginning to change and by the season finale, “Second City,” a stronger Murphy was beginning to appear.
All of that was fine, for the most part, because first seasons of TV series are always slow to develop the supporting characters.  More time was spent this first season of The Dresden Files on developing the character of Harry and setting up his conflict with the High Council of Wizards.  So that was understandable, but what really began annoying was the lack of magic (and don’t get me started on Harry’s staff being turned into a hockey stick!).  Magic is such a major part of the
Dresden novels yet the writers and producers seemed more interested creating a detective series; a poor man’s The Night Stalker.  I’m sure some of that is a budget constraint and it did start to improve as the series progressed, but to have a series about a wizard lacking in what makes him a wizard is just shoddy writing and a lack of understanding for the series and the characters.
I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that The Dresden Files series is not watchable because it really is.  The problem for anyone who’s read Butcher’s wonderful novels is that the series is lacking some of the essence of the books that made them so much fun to read and quite addictive.  The series certainly has lit a fire under Sci Fi’s ratings numbers, but it seems to do respectable compared to their other shows, so I don’t know if it will return for a second season.  If it does, I hope the writers use the opportunity to develop Harry’s world a little more, bring in some more of the supporting characters from the novels, and bring in some damned magic.  He’s a wizard, after all, and a very powerful one at that.  It would also be nice if Sci Fi took the series off Sundays and paired it with something else besides Battlestar Galactica.  They are just not that compatible.  Dresden is much more compatible with shows like Doctor Who or Eureka.  Put BSG back on Fridays following Stargate where it belongs.

Wow, this was a very bad episode for a very underwhelming series.  I will admit I saw some potential, but it’s going to require a lot of work to bring out that potential.

Again, another solid episode.  If Atlantis has done anything with it’s third season it’s come into its own as something different than big sister, Stargate SG-1.  If you’ve read my previous post about the absence of Jack O’Neill and its affects on SG-1 that should be apparent in this episode.  I’d almost forgotten what a great leading man and action hero Richard Dean Anderson can be given the right role.  And wasn’t great to see Robert Picardo once again; another great actor who doesn’t get enough work.
As with SG-1, Atlantis picks up almost immediately where the summer season finale left off.  Atlantis is under the control of the Replicators, O’Neill and Woolsey are hiding, and the Atlantis team is on their way back in an attempt to do something to save their city and friends.  Things get going rather quickly with the Atlantis team jumping through the Stargate into the Atlantis command center to plant a bomb that blows everyone and everything to bits.  This buys the team some time to go find the Replicator that tossed into space several episodes ago in order to hatch a plant to destroy the Replicators.  In order to complete the plan they have to get back into Atlantis, which leads to some tricky flying and eventually submerging the jumper to get at a flooded docking bay.  Unfortunately, for the team they are unable to get the water out and the ship springs a leak.
This brings Jack O’Neill to the rescue.  He does some daring underwater swimming and manages to drain the docking bay so the team can get out of the ship.  Sadly, Jack and Woolsey get captured at this point.  Meanwhile, Sheppard and the team spread out to do something I didn’t quite understand while McKay attempts to slowly power up the frozen Replicator in order to feed a virus into the Atlantis Replicators so the team can destroy them, but the Replicator wakes up and McKay is forced to destroy it with a pulse weapon.  This leads to the development to a new plan.
We’re led to believe the team is setting up the shield generators to act as an explosive device, which will leave Atlantis defenseless so Daedalus  can destroy it, at least that’s what Sheppard and McKay tell O’Neill and Woolsey when they make an attempt at a “rescue.”  Later, when the rest of the team is captured, we learn that was all a ploy.  What the team actually did was place the crystals from their pulse weapons into the shield generators’ crystal chamber, so when the Replicators activate shield a pulse is sent out over the entire city that destroys every Replicator.  I have to admit they had me going from minute with this one, and the flashback was very ingenious.
Of course, all’s well that ends well.  Daedalus doesn’t have to destroy Atlantis and thanks to the Ancient’s ZPMs along with the Replicators rebuild of Atlantis Stargate Command the team is in better shape than ever.  They have a almost fully functional city with weapons and shields, and while the stardrive is destroyed they can at least defend themselves.  More importantly, Dr. Weir is also back in control and her team is allowed to stay in Atlantis.  This was really good episode I hope sets up an exciting end to Atlantis’ strongest season to date.

***SPOILERS***
Well, it seems like it’s been forever since we last saw an original episode of Stargate SG-1 — and it has been too long.   If this episode proved anything, it’s that SG-1 is still a kick-ass sci fi adventure (but that doesn’t change my opinion that it’s time to go).  This episode begins right where the summer season finale left off with the Stargate team, Adria, and Ba’al facing off with a dragon.  I have to say the dragon was a bit disappointing, the CGI really sucked.  It looked like something out of a bad video game, but I quibble.  The dragon is dispensed with rather quickly when Daniel, of course, figures out the “password” needed to stop the dragon, which promptly disappears in a puff of smoke.  This leads the team back to the cave so they can attempt to take the Sangreal, but when Daniel (being pure of heart) attempts to touch the stone it’s still a hologram, but there’s a twist this time around:  the entire team is transported to a cave; that is, the entire team minus Adria who is less than thrilled.
From this point forward the writers do an excellent job of melding the Athurian legend of Merlin and Morgan le Fey with the story of the Ancients.  The team finds Merlin encased in crystal in the same manner as Jack O’Neill when the team discovered the Ancient’s defense system on Earth.  The team’s presense activates a “melting” program and out steps Merlin!  While Daniel begins discussing their plight with the Ancient, the team realizes they are being transported every two hours to a different planet in order to keep Merlin from being discovered and at first they have no way of stopping it.  This is a good thing since Adria is not far behind them at each transport. 
While I find myself growing annoyed with the writer’s constant need to use Daniel Jackson as their Deus Ex Machina I have to say his interaction with the Merlin being was the most interesting.  The Ancient wants to help the humans stop the Ori, but he’s grown too old and no longer has the strength to accompish the task, so he transfers his memories and a few of his abilities to Daniel who then begins putting together the Sangreal.  Unfortunately, the machine he interfaces with saps his strength each time.
Meanwhile, Carter and Ba’al beging working on a way to stop the constant transports and open the Stargate up so they can get back to Earth.  This leads to one of the funniest moments of the night when Sam finally grows tired of Ba’al’s constant disregard for her opinion just because she happens to be a human and a woman.  She decks him; knocks Ba’al right on his ass.  I just have to mention how much fun is to watch Cliff Simon in this role.  He does the menacing Go’auld thing quite well, but more often than not he is simply hilarious.  Sam’s little love tap causes Ba’al to have a change of heart and they work together to stop the Stargate from shifting to a different planet every two hours.  Unfortunately, this gives Adria the opportunity to find them and attack.  In a last ditch effort Daniel uses most of the Merlin’s powers to stop the Ori attackers and open the Stargate to Earth.  Adria steps up to kill everyone, including her mother, Vala, but again Daniel uses an Ancient power to stop her.  The team escapes to Earth, but Danile is captured by Adria.  Daniel denies having any of the Ancient knowledge left in his head, but Adria is’t buying that answer.
Overall, this was a really good episode and shows off why Stargate has always been, and continues to be, one of the best action/adventure Sci Fi series on television. This episode has a relentless pace and the acting was top notch.  Morena Bacarrin is especially good as Adria; it’s sometimes hard to believe someone that beautiful can be so dangerous.  My one quibble is the writers constant need to use the Daniel-knows-all plot twist over and over again.  We know the character is intelligent and he was once an Ancient, but it really takes away from the rest of cast.  The character of Samantha Carter has been the most affected by this.  She was once a strong character at the center of the team, but since the departure of Jack O’Neill she’s been relegated to comic relief and boringness (if that’s a word).  In addition, with the departure of Richard Dean Anderson and the Jack O’Neill character the show lacks a really good leading male character.  As much as I like Ben Browder as an actor he’s just never fit in with the series; cerainly not in the way Claudia Black’s Vala has become such an integral part of the team.  Black has been a breath of fresh air to the series.
Anyway, Stargate SG-1 is back and I’m enjoying the ride.  We’ve only got nine episodes left leading up to the straight-to-DVD movie this fall.

I’ll be honest:  before I saw the Sci Fi movie Painkiller Jane over a year ago I’d never heard of the comic book upon which it was based.  Moreover, I was unimpressed with the movie.  Granted, it was OK for what it was, but it was nothing great.  When I heard Sc Fi had greenlit a series based on that movie and the comic book I didn’t really give it much thought.  It was planned to follow the Stargate series when they returned (which, by the way, happens this Friday!), so I knew I would be checking the Jane out.  Now, I’m not really holding my breath with anticipation this will be anything groundbreaking (par for the course with Sci Fi these days).  I haven’t been able to find one, not one, positive review of the series and the latest only backs up what every other review has been saying.  Of course, I rarely take reviewers’ opinions for anything, so I’ll be watching Friday but I sure won’t expect much.