Stargate and Atlantis
Sep. 10th, 2005 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gategrrlStargate SG-1 Babylon
Guest star-studded show, with Tony Todd (Candyman and Worf's younger brother from Star Trek), CSM from X-Files in a nonspeaking but incredibly creepy role of a Prior.
I'm not feeling the excitement, such as it was, of the earlier shows with a pissy, irritated Daniel; and an amused Teal'c smirking at his situation whenever he could; an outrageous Vala acting that way on purpose; a General with a sense of humor; and stories that actually moved along in a relatively cohesive arc.
This episode stuck with the single main plot with the connected subplot. The writers have relearned how to do this! They must be taking correspondance courses in plotting.
But there must have been some other way to expand Mitchell's character besides having go through training, weapons training, etc and so forth. It was blah. I guess it might have "felt" more emotionally satisfying if he'd mentioned his worry about his teammates ("Did the other people get through the Stargate?" "Did your people kill them?" "You should talk to Daniel Jackson, he's been to Kheb. Have you?") There was no connection, or very little of it, between him and the others, even in passing mention. It's like someone built the Napoleon without the custard between the layers; without the custard, it's just a dry, sugary pastry with nothing special about it.
Stargate: Atlantis - The Fly
Yeah, I can't seem to remember the real title of this episode, because, well...it might not have happened in a transport beam...but it is a direct harkener back to a Next Gen episode in which Barclay, the shy engineering officer, get regressed into a spider, along with the rest of the EnterpriseC crew, who regress each in their own special way.
I'm very tired of Beckett's loose medical ethics and magical abilties with gene engineering through retroviruses. I took that with a grain of salt on Next Gen, because it had been established that medical science had gone forward enough to do that sort of thing on a regular basis. I don't buy it that Beckett can do this magical biological science at all - without any reference to the Ancient database, or a really cool Ancient bio-retrovirus maker they found Just Last Week in an Abandoned Room. Beckett's character has lost his sense of "Shit, why ME" humor that was established last year. He had some of the funniest lines in the first season. Now he's become the kind of research doctor that Shelley was afraid of in Frankenstein. It's no accident that last week's episode of Atlantis made direct references to that story, but the effect wasn't what the writers were hoping for with this viewer. I'm starting to equate Beckett with the Dr Frankenstein who developed a god-complex.
I still didn't really give that much a shit about Sheppard. He's still a two-note character with me. It didn't help his case that his story was shoved into Weir's emotional quagmire of ShipHints and Anvils. The only character they allowed him to relate to during his predicament was Weir, who is written and played as an awkward, idiotic emotional imbecile who couldn't lead her way out of a closed room. The writers of this show are back to, or have never left, their tendency to write a woman as a one-note, one-man-one-dog person. As soon as a woman is shown to Care For Her Man, no one else may care for that Love Interest, or at least be shown to give a fuck directly to the hurting character's face.
Shoving Weir into Shep's face constantly, without allowing anyone else to show caring, minimized what *I* should feel for him. After all, if it's only Weir who's going to do it, then no one else's feelings, including the viewer (in this case, me) will give a hoot, either.
That said, I thought Rodney's little broken voice catch when he asked how Sheppard was, was a breath of fresh air in the Weir-emo-fest. And the writers did allow a short scene of the guys and Teyla commiserating over their mutating leader's condition.
No one gave a rat's ass about those two red-shirts who died in the cave helping to save Sheppard's life. The only person who mentioned them was Weir, and only as Sheppard was strangling her. She rightly didn't want to tell Sheppard that some men had died saving him, because he'd have gotten all pissed off about that; and didn't want him to know that gee, maybe others people's lives might be just as important - but it had to be dragged out of her. This was a strange reversal. Sheppard wouldn't have wanted them to continue, but I think she would have, if she were following the usual Stargate Ship Template (tm). But once they were mentioned as a reason for why there would not be another expedition, so long Redshirts. They did their job. I hope Sheppard angsts a bit over them in a later episode.
And what was with BitchWeir when she was talking to the Colonel? He's the one with the big ship who saved her ass not too long ago, who's been relatively cooperative, although not perhaps enthused with her leadership (and who would be? this episode showed why Weir should be removed from command).
Overall, the Leader in Danger trope was better structured this week on Atlantis than on SG-1. On this show, there was more sense of danger that something permenant might happen to Sheppard; but, since they already covered the superbug ground with Ford, and he already has Ancient gene abilities, not gonna happen.
It was a night of mediocre television.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 06:38 am (UTC)Was Mitchell that out of shape? What ELSE has been going on with the Priors? How many other planets have been converted? That's a huge hunk of time to just fritter away! It also lets you know how much of these characters' lives that we know nothing about!
Also, the producers have stated that SG's and Atlantis' timelines run concurrently, so logically speaking, the Bug!Shep episode probably took about two months also.
Hmm. Poor Mitchell. He didn't have a love-lorn pretty married woman panting after him, unlike Daniel in Icon. Nothing much happened in THAT episode, either. But then, we don't know Mitch's orientation, so who knows....
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 06:39 am (UTC)