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Stargate Universe
2009 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Robert C. Cooper, Brad Wright
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventureDrama
The adventures of a present-day, multinational exploration team traveling on the Ancient spaceship Destiny many billions of light years distant from the Milky Way Galaxy. They evacuated there and are now trying to figure out a way to return to Earth, while simultaneously trying to explore and to survive in their unknown area of the universe.
5 positive5 negative8 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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19 comments on Hacker News
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0233304/?ref_=tt_cst_t_9&_ssoLoop=1
Stargate Universe once, Atlantis twice, and SG-1 six times!
You're mixing up a lot of things that don't really belong together here.
To the broader point, Star Trek is a major cultural export of the USA, and has always shown what are now considered to be anti-right-wing ideals, from the Cage daring (by the standard of the era) to have a woman in a senior role in the command hierarchy rather than a traditional gender role, to the main series putting a Japanese officer on the bridge in the shadow of WW2 racial tension, a black woman on the bridge as a main-cast role even though US domestic politics were the Civil Rights era, and a Russian officer also on the bridge despite the US international politics being the Cold War era.
By the films (perhaps sooner, IDK I'm not that nerdy), the canon was the Federation no longer used money.
Later, Top Gun and Stargate SG-1 are both on-the-nose US military propaganda; the latter achieved success even though Sam Carter was not at all a traditional gender role, even introduced with stereotypical gender hostility before Jack O'Neill accepted her as an equal. Stargate Universe failed despite pushing the civilian scientists into military training, IMO because it was trying to be reboot-BSG with different set dressing, putting off all the people who wanted more Stargate without attracting anyone who wanted more BSG, but again, BSG itself managed to be a major cultural export despite the not-traditional-gender-role-conformant characters of Laura Roslin, Starbuck, and (even if they were not really human) Number Six and Number Eight.
In specific details of what's mixed up and why it doesn't work together:
> Yes, the "far right christian ideologies", such as masculinity, traditional gender roles, patriarchal values, self sacrifice and fighting for your kin and country, protestant work ethic and entrepreneurship, protecting your borders against foreign invaders, hierarchical social structures based on merit, the same values and ideologies that built and made the western anglo-european civilizations the envy of the world superpowers, that got us to the moon, and where the rest of the world wants to emigrate to.
Some of that is indeed far-right (masculinity, patriarchal values, and what is currently seen as "traditional" gender roles while actually missing both what those were and why they were fundamentally changed by inventions such as the washing machine and childhood vaccination).
"Self sacrifice", "fighting for your kin and country", and "protecting your borders against foreign invaders" are basically everywhere, those didn't help differentiate "the western anglo-european civilizations" from anyone else, you'll find the former in every culture we have records for, and the latter two (if you accept "territory" rather than "country") even more broadly in species whose most recent common ancestor we share was when dinosaurs still ruled the earth.
"protestant work ethic and entrepreneurship", I mean the Catholics would like a word about the former, let alone historical references like the Islamic golden age having already finished three centuries before the Protestant reformation and China being busy as the Middle Kingdom for most of world history right up until the west surprised them with the Industrial Revolution; and if "entrepreneurship" is limited to "far right" then the USSR getting to space first and China doing pretty well in the last few decades are also counter-examples.
"hierarchical social structures based on merit" covers everyone except anarchists and hereditary rule, I think?
> and where the rest of the world wants to emigrate to
No we don't.
At this point, lots of us are skipping the USA even just for holidays and business trips, let alone migration.
> That would lead me to speculate that if we were looking for messages from the previous universe (in the style of the movie/book Contact) then we should look to the signature of the background radiation (CMB).
That was the premise behind the Stargate Universe TV series.
<spoilers> The Ancients detect a pattern in the cosmic background radiation that hints at an intelligence that existed before the beginning of time and send a fleet of automated ships with FTL to research it. Millions of years later, the US Air Force manages to send a team on a one way trip to the flagship and hijinks ensue.</spoilers>
I think there was an episode of stargate universe involving something like that.
I couldn't agree more.
I'm a die hard fan. I started watching Stargate SG-1 when I was a kid in 1997 (season 1). I've seen ever single episode of every series. Every movie. All multiple times.
I REALLY don't want to see a modern reboot that is like Star Trek Discovery. I'll be so disappointed if they do.
I do think it is possible to revive the franchise and make a compelling show. However, it would be tough to pull off. I love that the show never took itself too serious. Stargate Universe was the opposite and flopped because of this.
> I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on my to-watch list.
Ooh, I _really_ enjoyed SGU. Granted, it was the kind of show that I had to try watching once, give up on, then rewatch years later during to really appreciate. It's fairly different from SG1 and SGA, but in my (humble) opinion, it's really good and I'm sad that it ended so quickly. It reminds me a bit of Lost In Space (the movie, not the relatively new tv series- I've only seen half the pilot so I can't make a comparison) but in the Stargate universe.
Unfortunately, reboots are what usually happens with developed shows. Stargate universe (not to be confused with Stargate Universe) has grown very large over the run of the TV shows, and more importantly, it evolved. By SG:Universe, Stargateverse looked much different than what it was when SG-1 started.
This creates a problem for future development - existing canon severely constraints the writers. Between writers complaining and executives looking to maximize the size of potential target audience, what usually happens is thus a reboot: the preexisting cannon gets dropped, but is often referenced to score cheap points with fans of the old show.
For reference, just look at what happened with Star Trek past its gold era (TNG-ENT).
Interesting comparison, thanks for pointing this out.
You are probably thinking of Stargate Universe, BTW, for which the plot is pretty much that: how much should we try to control that which we don't fully understand yet?
Stargate Atlantis has the same tropes to an extent, and some episodes of the earlier SG-1 reflect this as well.
I'm still in disbelief canned Stargate Universe after two seasons. Last 2 seasons of SG-1 was just garbage, Stargate Atlantis was about as cheesy as the 80s Buck Rogers series. But to me Universe stood out as kind of the anti-Star Trek -- instead of the magical space ship that can go anywhere and do anything the plot requires, you've got the dodgy rust bucket that just goes one direction and you can't really do much other then be along for the ride. Kind of like the way James Bond was more or less limited to the gadgets that Q gave him at the start of the movie vs cartoon character that can produce any object from its pocket at will.
I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.
What do you recommend watching next?
It's more common in novels and games. But it happens in TV and movies too, take HAL 9000 for example. And you also have to consider that a lot of scifi shows predate deep learning, so it's often referred to as "the computer" instead and AI is reserved for AGI, usually with personality and a humanoid avatar. In TNG the ship computer handled a lot of routines where the crew only provided high level input. It's advanced enough to run realistic holodeck scenarios. Stargate Universe also had a ship that was mostly run by the computer and made decisions that were often inscrutable to the occupants and only made sense in retrospect.
I'd personally recommend:
* The Next Generation (starting point, but be prepared to sit through the slower first seasons). * DS9 * Voyager (however optionally skip anything from the Kess seasons that you feel like)
I only liked about 1/3rd of Star Trek Enterprise episodes, the entire series is kind of filler. Has that same wasted potential feeling that I got from Stargate Universe; it COULD have been more interesting if the pacing had been better and if they had focused on fitting the stories in to an overall plotline (much more like Babylon 5; which, BTW, you should TOTALLY watch if you haven't).
Star Trek Discovery was good, but is more an edgier more action packed thriller kind of series than the earlier series. I do like where they're going with rebooting the overall universe though and I feel that this brings the modern FX capacity in to the series in a way that makes sense for today.
For something you can show to your parents or if you generally don't get Star Trek, the Orville is a GREAT comedy focused take on the ideas that Star Trek (everything) classically presented, but covering modern social issues.
I disagree with you on SG-1, though I'd like to bring up Supernatural 'spoiler mentioned as a perfect example of what you're talking about.
SG-1, compared to many other overdone shows, had one redeeming quality - the protagonists (in this case, all humans) actually progressed through the course of the show. In SG-1 humans went from 1980s level of technology in Season 1 to spaceships, teleporters and off-world colonies in Season 10. So new 'bigger bad' always made some kind of sense, and I feel there was a space for a few seasons worth of additional interesting ideas.
That, or they could have simply continued Stargate: Universe.
There is one series I'm really up in arms about it being recently cancelled - Person of Interest. That one was nowhere close to repetitive, it had tons and tons of space for good, intelligent story developments, and it got cancelled behind the crew's back anyway, because whatever. Fuck you, CBS, for cutting out what was probably the only thing in history of television that approached the topic of AI in a smart, realistic way (and also basically broke Snowden's revelations a year before Snowden).
Yeah this isn't going to be about the core of what Star Trek is about: Humanistic ideas, science, and exploration.
> a series like TNG will never be made again
I have higher hopes than ever actually. With Netflix creating their own TV shows, crowdfunding booming, as well as cheap alternative movie and CGI studios popping up worldwide, we might some day see something even better than TNG.
Edit: I mean, look at Stargate Universe, that how had incredible potential, and fit pretty much with the above "new economy / new audience" description.
I wouldn't be surprised that once the equity crowdfunding JOBS act passes properly, we'll see independent Netflix style TV series be funded, at higher per-episode funding than current TV.
In case you didn't know, some dude wrote a pretty convincing Season 3 for SG:U. I recommend it to anyone that wants some closure.
Unofficial Stargate Universe, Season 3 (scripts) http://laurencemoroney.azurewebsites.net/?page_id=2
I'm not arguing against you, I'm from the UK and there are some great shows. Skins has been technically excellent since its onset, I even got my wife (Canadian) watching it. Shameless is another example. Even shows like Hollyoaks (if it's still on) are technically great, I actually thought their quality of shooting (the clearness of camera positioning, etc.) was better than shows like 24 were managing and it's a rolling-production with 1 week to film an episode and 3 episodes airing a week.
I'm talking, look at the first episode of Primeval. It was atrocious across the board from acting to directing and 3D graphics; especially for reaching an audience of ~6.8 million. Compare that to the outstanding production qualities of Stargate Universe that only got ~2.3 million in a 5x bigger market.
My example are shows like the Canadian Flashpoint, which despite a decent budget and getting 1 million viewers can just be awful. The stories often have little reasoning behind them (shit literally just happens), the direction can often be gaudy by trying to make grand shots and just utterly failing. It often feels cold, like they're not using close-ups right. I often find this in many British shows too, comedies and traditional dramas not so much, but especially a lot of the police shows can be awful.
Sounds like one of the latest Stargate Universe episodes: "The Ancients discovered complexity and coherence, neither naturally occurring, in the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe." http://www.gateworld.net/universe/s2/207.shtml
Once technology catches up to the Avatar level in the home, coupled with ever increasing bandwidth downloading, the same people which pirate their movies now will go back to the same thing.
I think movies do to an extent go the other way, with higher production costs leading to the epic blockbuster perception the public gets which drive them to the cinemas. As long as the big budget is spent wisely on a great concept.
Innovations such as the Red camera technology and mostly green screen filming continue to drive down TV costs for those using this tech. For example I'd imagine Sanctuary is a better investment for SYFY at the moment over Stargate Universe even with low ratings just because it's production costs would be so much lower for similar effect.
As part of Google's ever-growing marketing efforts, next week's episode of Stargate: Universe will reveal that the Kinos were just unpainted prototypes of the Google Flying Spybots that will see all, record all, and send all back to the Googleplex for processing.