Glademaster said:
Ok if you don't like it fair enough I know it departed far from the Stargate norm but I just want to make a point that the series was in decline anyway. If it wasn't the things like Ark of Truth and Continuum wouldn't of been the movies. SGA also did quite crap in its first and second seasons as far as I remember but back then the show had enough steam to keep it going to a point where it was viable. The problem I have with SGU being cancelled is that they needed to set up those big story arcs they planned for which is why it was shit at the start. It was only starting to find itself. So take from that what you will.
I liked Ark and Continuum. I think SG-1 had a good run, it needed to have a good ending and it did. The reason it didn't fair so well in the last couple of seasons, is that Richard Dean Anderson was a large part of the shows charm. SGA gained good enought praise, because it was adding to the ancient storyline.
If you want to blame someone for SGU getting canceled, blame the writers. I understand trying something different, but there is such a thing as doing something different in a set formula.
The set formula being worked with in SG-1 and Atlantis, was the Sci-Fi genre style of storytelling. In that formula plot that deals with technology, science, space, or aliens is key. Characters are always a second priority. Characters are to be slowly written in over time. We find out little bits about them, but not in giant bursts. Plus, in TV shows, episodes can only center but not totally be about 1 or 2 characters, only one strong relationship an episode. They overflowed the episodes with character stories, and that just can be done. In main episodes, it wasn't clear who or what the episode was truly about, because the episode would be cut into these sections:
Sci-fi Plot: 10 minutes at the most.
A Colonel and Rush story, mixed with the medic: 10 minutes
Ely, Chloe, and Scott stupid love triangle: 10 minutes
Meeting of all the scientists: 7 minutes
Every other episode almost, the civilian leader going back with the stones to have her lesbian relationship: A horrible waste of 5 minutes.
That adds up to 42 minutes, the usual length of an episode once commercials are removed.
That is not a sustainable formula. It doesn't have enough time devoted to Sci-fi plots. There is only room for one plot really so they either have to make it just an episode plot or an arching season plot.
This is a good formula:
Sci-fi plots: 30 minutes at least. Gives room for an episode Sci-fi plot and an arching Sci-fi plot as well.
Character plots: 12 minutes. They can either use the whole twelve minutes on one character or a relationship between two or three characters, or they can brake that in half and have 6 minutes for two separate quick character plots.
They concentrated heavily on characters for the sake of the plot being pushed aside. Sci-Fi is a genre that hangs on plot, one cannot push it aside, it will most certainly kill whatever story is being told.
Character stories in Sci-fi literature are around and succeed, but only if one puts the plot on the back burner from the start. The writers of SGU gave us this huge Sci-fi plot with the people being stranded on this ancient ship without anybody knowing where it is going and wondering what is with the older than normal technology involved. In the realm of Sci-fi, they can't give us a major plot like that and then relatively ignore it for as long as they did. I have never seen a show with a plot that big going so slow and succeeding. The only way for a show to spread out a plot like that so slowly, over seasons, is if they subtly added it in over time, but they have to have another major Sci-fi plot to deal with and finish in each episode, and a major one that archs for a season.
SGU did not have any really good major Sci-fi plot archs that lasted for a season. Plus, they didn't have a very good enemy, the enemy aliens were way too mysterious and didn't come up in the show enough.
In the end, SGU was a failure because the writers skipped too far off the norm, Sci-fi is a heavily structured genre where such skipping off can't be done successfully, unless one ignores the structure from the start, one can't start with the structure and then randomly abandon it.
They should have stayed with the formula that worked, if they had, the show would be succeeding.