Whoo!  Stargate is back!  My love of Stargate is well documented so I’m glad to report that SGU is still delivering the gatey goodness.  The 2-hour premiere gave us lots of fun cameos to bring us back into gateland and retained the “feel” of Stargate.  Except it’s grittier, a new direction I hope they’ll keep steering towards.

As many have already noted, SGU has a similar plot to ST: Voyager but it also borrows from its predecessor Stargate: Atlantis.  A bunch of peeps stranded somewhere with no hope of return home.  But while both Voyager and Atlantis started out with much promise of gritty conflict and troubled times, they quickly devolved into sunshine lollypops.  I mean, nothing against those shows.  I have much love for them both but gritty they were not.  So far the best thing about SGU is how grimy the ship is and how they are royally fucked and things keep going wrong and everyone sort of hates each other.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like shows about people constantly arguing and screwing each other over but a show where everyone gets along and is perpetually awesome has already been done expertly with ST: TNG and Stargate: SG1 (which let’s face it, was pretty much the poor man’s TNG, or if not poor… then middle class) and there’s no need to revisit that idea.  So far SGU borrows not only from the aforementioned shows but there’s also a bit of BSG in there, what with the decaying ship and egomaniac who thinks he’s always right but everyone else wants to shove out an airlock (Baltar in BSG, Rush in SGU).  

My one complaint is that so far there are no characters to love.  Stargate was always great, in my opinion, at giving us awesome characters to root for.  I’ve already blogged about them, so I’ll spare you but SGU has no such characters.  I can see that they’re trying.  There is a young version of Sheppard, the standard volatile soldier, there is the McKay stand-in… but… meh.  Eli is the most entertaining character so far but it really is obvious that he’s SGU’s answer to McKay (except younger and humble) and I like him but I don’t love him.  We’ll see if he grows on me over time.  And everyone else… I barely even remember them.  The only character who stands out is Rush and I think mad props need to be given to Robert Carlyle who plays the role with such intensity that he can’t help but be compelling.  He is not the least bit likeable but I still find myself more or less on his side, ‘cause he actually has a point of view, and everyone else is a dipshit.  Seriously, could daddy daughter shut up now?  It took forever *SPOILER ALERT* for daddy to die and I doubt I was alone in not giving the slightest shit about her little arc of sadness. Ugh.  And why is Ming-Na even in this show?  She’s an established actress, doesn’t she have other offers on her plate?  They’d better give her something to do in the coming episodes or I will call foul.  Her character so far is so blandly generic she makes Random Gate Technician Dude seem fascinating.  

Also, so far, too many characters.  I almost can’t tell who is actually in the main cast, i.e. who I’m supposed to be paying attention to.  Which is actually good, come to think of it.  That way I’ll be surprised when some characters start dying off.  And to be fair, they had a lot of ground to cover in 2 hours, so not everyone could be properly focused on.  I assume in the coming weeks things will start to fall into place.  I just hope, as previously mentioned that they fall into a gritty, troubled place and that they meet some aliens who are interesting to watch, ‘cause blonde medic chick?  I care not for your stupid missed scholarship, you are boring.  Relatively old soldier guy?  I wish you had died from your injuries, your face is annoying.  Aforementioned volatile soldier dude?  Stop being so volatile, it’s lame and predictable and just makes me roll my eyes impatiently.  And um… why was Lou Diamond Phillips there?  He’s in all the promo pics and yet he was on screen for about 2.5 seconds and didn’t join the gang on the ship.  ‘Sup wit dat?

Well whatevs, I remain optimistic.  [rating:35]