SG1, SGA, BSG 01-06-06
Jan. 7th, 2006 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eregyrnFor once I'm going to go out on a limb and write about SciFi Friday before I trawl around reading everybody else's reactions... The reactions below aren't really comprehensive, they're just what I can remember.
SG-1: The Fourth Horseman Pt. 2
I'm afraid that I have to categorize this as "worst 2nd part of a 2-part mid-season cliffhanger EVER", with the caveat that it had a few bright spots that we liked. But, look... apparently, Damian Kindler's awful writing style has just infected M&M. Because I swear that M&M used to be able to write episodes that were not SOLID BLOCKS OF EXPOSITION. Seriously. The entire episode was absolutely NOTHING but a series of tableaus in which people either stood around, or sat around, and talked at each other -- sometimes, telling each other things that really everybody in the room should have known already, and therefore it was only being rehearsed out loud for the benefit of the audience.
Remember on SG-1, when there was, like, ACTION? When stuff used to happen without paragraphs'-worth of words telling us about it? Dude.
When the "action" highlight of the episode is really the 3 minutes that Ben Browder spends hanging somewhat goofily in mid-air wirework... um...
I will grant you that in some cases, the *subjects* they were dealing with were interesting -- I don't mind Jaffa politics, I really don't. But even though I love Teal'c and Bra'tac to death, by the time we got to THEM just standing there talking to each other, I was like, enough already, people. Do something. No. Bringing Orlin to talk haltingly at the Smoking Prior isn't actually what I meant.
Also... in 7 seasons, I believe you can count the number of times Hammond went offworld on 1 hand. It usually took a pretty good reason to get him offworld, didn't it? And Jack... in his brief tenure as SGC commander, he got to do it only twice, on occasions where there was no choice but to take him because of the Ancients' Gene thing. So riddle me this -- why was Landry offworld? Why was he necessary to escort Orlin to confront the Prior? I'm still thinking, and I can't think of a reason. Except to put him in jeopardy, of course, by creating a direct way for him to contract the virus... and I'm so bored with that.
The discussion between Landry and Lam in sickbay may win the prize, for me, of Most Painful Inappropriate Heart-to-Heart EVER on this show. For the record: I'm okay with Lam, I kind of like her; I still don't like Landry (but I don't outright dislike him, I just fail to be won over by him). I'm hinky about the father-daughter professional relationship thing in the first place. Scenes like that... DON'T HELP. They especially don't help when I'm all too aware that this painful personal conversation is taking place when Landry is lying there with, like, 6 other sick people in beds around him, and nurses going in and out, and crap. Way to be discreet there, kids. Yeah, yeah... I get that he's in quarantine and he might die and the only way they can have this conversation at all is "publicly" but... *so* didn't work for me, when all I could think of was the poor fellow sufferers in the adjacent beds, forced to listen to this and thinking, "will you two shut the hell up so I can get some sleep?"
Now... just so I don't end this rant without *anything* positive to say...
The Bright Spots: Ben Browder. Consistently enjoyable to watch as Mitchell. I liked how he was written and I liked how he was playing it. I do not love him with the intensity that I love Jack, but I found myself thinking that he was fun to watch. Also, there were several really nice Mitchell-Daniel interactions. Cute. And their own brand of connection, not anything like a copy of the Daniel-Jack connection. Good. *waves* Hi, Garry Chalk! Good to see Gen. Chekov's still around. Always love Bra'tac, too, and I totally agree with Teal'c that if anyone should be Leader of the Free Jaffa, it ought to be him. We really liked the former Moloch First Prime, too -- for once, another First Prime who strikes you as First-Prime-like. And then... DON S. DAVIS! Oh, how we have missed you! Please, sir! Don't go! We beg you! (That said, hey writers -- a "Jack says hi" would have been, you know... nice.)
But the rest of the ep was FAR too much work to make up for those bright spots. I'm sorry... but I thought it was bad. For a big cliffhanger resolution, I thought it was draggy, slow, wordy, and lacked actual drama. And it felt really... I don't know if claustrophobic is the right word, but the scope of it felt limited, which I think was a function of it being confined so much to static action in various rooms.
Finally -- so, how many people out there kind of winced at the "Flowers for Algernon" ending? Actually, how many people out there recognize what I'm even talking about? We debated that, too.
Moving onward...
SGA: The Hive
Better. Dare I say it even... good. Plenty of action to go with the exposition. Plenty of it. It really felt, after watching SG-1, like SG-1 had most of its budget siphoned away in order to make SGA this week. The knife-throwing sequence was quite funny. David Hewlett's monologue after making it back to Atlantis was brilliantly done. Good for Shep, for seeing right through that chick from the start. Only one thing bugged me, I guess... though maybe it shouldn't have. I guess that Ford is now in such an ambiguous status that there isn't really the same emotional hit of "leaving him behind" that you'd get if he was still a part of an SGA team, you know? I guess I'm anomalous in having trouble thinking of him as "non-Atlantean", but Shep's not. As soon as the hive ships started shooting at each other, and I knew that Shep was out of there along with Teyla and Ronon, I had that moment of... "but wait, Ford is... oh". Shep's dismissal of his probable death struck me as a bit glib, though. *shrug*
And rounding out the night...
BSG: Resurrection Ship Pt. 1
*Damn*. Also: sheesh, is Roslyn hard-core, or what? But I was totally with her, because that was the conclusion I'd pretty much come to. Who is in authority over Caine? Apparently it's not the President... or, Caine had already made it clear that she doesn't recognize Roslyn's authority as president. So you're left with a "whoever has the biggest guns rules" situation, and... no. Can't let that stand. And that was even before the further revelations about Caine. (Which... I'm ambivalent about, as a dramatic device. Because it leaves little ambiguity to the decision to remove her, at this point... it would seem more in keeping with the show for it to be less clearly a moral imperative.) So, next week ought to be "fun".
(Sorry, don't have many more thoughts than that, because BSG is a show that I watch -- and think is really really good, mind you -- but I'm not sure if I "enjoy" as such. It's a little too relentlessly grim for me, and it usually hits me at a biorhythmic low-point, at the end of a long night when I'm tired from a long week. So I'm not deeply into it, even as I realize that it's a good show and in the final analysis, I'm probably glad for its position in the line-up that means that I sort of *have* to watch it. If it were on a different night, I don't know that I would expend the effort to catch it... but I'd be the poorer for that.)
SG-1: The Fourth Horseman Pt. 2
I'm afraid that I have to categorize this as "worst 2nd part of a 2-part mid-season cliffhanger EVER", with the caveat that it had a few bright spots that we liked. But, look... apparently, Damian Kindler's awful writing style has just infected M&M. Because I swear that M&M used to be able to write episodes that were not SOLID BLOCKS OF EXPOSITION. Seriously. The entire episode was absolutely NOTHING but a series of tableaus in which people either stood around, or sat around, and talked at each other -- sometimes, telling each other things that really everybody in the room should have known already, and therefore it was only being rehearsed out loud for the benefit of the audience.
Remember on SG-1, when there was, like, ACTION? When stuff used to happen without paragraphs'-worth of words telling us about it? Dude.
When the "action" highlight of the episode is really the 3 minutes that Ben Browder spends hanging somewhat goofily in mid-air wirework... um...
I will grant you that in some cases, the *subjects* they were dealing with were interesting -- I don't mind Jaffa politics, I really don't. But even though I love Teal'c and Bra'tac to death, by the time we got to THEM just standing there talking to each other, I was like, enough already, people. Do something. No. Bringing Orlin to talk haltingly at the Smoking Prior isn't actually what I meant.
Also... in 7 seasons, I believe you can count the number of times Hammond went offworld on 1 hand. It usually took a pretty good reason to get him offworld, didn't it? And Jack... in his brief tenure as SGC commander, he got to do it only twice, on occasions where there was no choice but to take him because of the Ancients' Gene thing. So riddle me this -- why was Landry offworld? Why was he necessary to escort Orlin to confront the Prior? I'm still thinking, and I can't think of a reason. Except to put him in jeopardy, of course, by creating a direct way for him to contract the virus... and I'm so bored with that.
The discussion between Landry and Lam in sickbay may win the prize, for me, of Most Painful Inappropriate Heart-to-Heart EVER on this show. For the record: I'm okay with Lam, I kind of like her; I still don't like Landry (but I don't outright dislike him, I just fail to be won over by him). I'm hinky about the father-daughter professional relationship thing in the first place. Scenes like that... DON'T HELP. They especially don't help when I'm all too aware that this painful personal conversation is taking place when Landry is lying there with, like, 6 other sick people in beds around him, and nurses going in and out, and crap. Way to be discreet there, kids. Yeah, yeah... I get that he's in quarantine and he might die and the only way they can have this conversation at all is "publicly" but... *so* didn't work for me, when all I could think of was the poor fellow sufferers in the adjacent beds, forced to listen to this and thinking, "will you two shut the hell up so I can get some sleep?"
Now... just so I don't end this rant without *anything* positive to say...
The Bright Spots: Ben Browder. Consistently enjoyable to watch as Mitchell. I liked how he was written and I liked how he was playing it. I do not love him with the intensity that I love Jack, but I found myself thinking that he was fun to watch. Also, there were several really nice Mitchell-Daniel interactions. Cute. And their own brand of connection, not anything like a copy of the Daniel-Jack connection. Good. *waves* Hi, Garry Chalk! Good to see Gen. Chekov's still around. Always love Bra'tac, too, and I totally agree with Teal'c that if anyone should be Leader of the Free Jaffa, it ought to be him. We really liked the former Moloch First Prime, too -- for once, another First Prime who strikes you as First-Prime-like. And then... DON S. DAVIS! Oh, how we have missed you! Please, sir! Don't go! We beg you! (That said, hey writers -- a "Jack says hi" would have been, you know... nice.)
But the rest of the ep was FAR too much work to make up for those bright spots. I'm sorry... but I thought it was bad. For a big cliffhanger resolution, I thought it was draggy, slow, wordy, and lacked actual drama. And it felt really... I don't know if claustrophobic is the right word, but the scope of it felt limited, which I think was a function of it being confined so much to static action in various rooms.
Finally -- so, how many people out there kind of winced at the "Flowers for Algernon" ending? Actually, how many people out there recognize what I'm even talking about? We debated that, too.
Moving onward...
SGA: The Hive
Better. Dare I say it even... good. Plenty of action to go with the exposition. Plenty of it. It really felt, after watching SG-1, like SG-1 had most of its budget siphoned away in order to make SGA this week. The knife-throwing sequence was quite funny. David Hewlett's monologue after making it back to Atlantis was brilliantly done. Good for Shep, for seeing right through that chick from the start. Only one thing bugged me, I guess... though maybe it shouldn't have. I guess that Ford is now in such an ambiguous status that there isn't really the same emotional hit of "leaving him behind" that you'd get if he was still a part of an SGA team, you know? I guess I'm anomalous in having trouble thinking of him as "non-Atlantean", but Shep's not. As soon as the hive ships started shooting at each other, and I knew that Shep was out of there along with Teyla and Ronon, I had that moment of... "but wait, Ford is... oh". Shep's dismissal of his probable death struck me as a bit glib, though. *shrug*
And rounding out the night...
BSG: Resurrection Ship Pt. 1
*Damn*. Also: sheesh, is Roslyn hard-core, or what? But I was totally with her, because that was the conclusion I'd pretty much come to. Who is in authority over Caine? Apparently it's not the President... or, Caine had already made it clear that she doesn't recognize Roslyn's authority as president. So you're left with a "whoever has the biggest guns rules" situation, and... no. Can't let that stand. And that was even before the further revelations about Caine. (Which... I'm ambivalent about, as a dramatic device. Because it leaves little ambiguity to the decision to remove her, at this point... it would seem more in keeping with the show for it to be less clearly a moral imperative.) So, next week ought to be "fun".
(Sorry, don't have many more thoughts than that, because BSG is a show that I watch -- and think is really really good, mind you -- but I'm not sure if I "enjoy" as such. It's a little too relentlessly grim for me, and it usually hits me at a biorhythmic low-point, at the end of a long night when I'm tired from a long week. So I'm not deeply into it, even as I realize that it's a good show and in the final analysis, I'm probably glad for its position in the line-up that means that I sort of *have* to watch it. If it were on a different night, I don't know that I would expend the effort to catch it... but I'd be the poorer for that.)
