Instead of being sharp and gripping, SGU (especially in season 1) was a dismal outer space soap opera that relied too heavily on characters returning to earth via the communication stones. While SGU perhaps thought it was being edgy by showcasing a lesbian relationship on the show, the relationship itself was dull, boring and didn’t advance the plot whatsoever. Who cares about the strains of being in outer space on a long-distance lesbian relationship? We want to see some action! If we cared that much more about characters’ love lives then we’d be watching Desperate Housewives and not science fiction – and the writers forgot that.

Fortunately, the worst excesses of the relationship drama were weeded out by season 2. So the question is:

Did SGU redeem itself? If you haven’t watched it yet, is it worth it to sit through season 1 to get to the improved season 2?

Yes and no. Yes, in that, if you’ve watched all of Star Trek, all the Star Wars films, Firefly, Farscape, BSG, and every other conceivable space show out there, then by all means, you’ll want to rent SGU and watch it. It’s got some good points. I’d recommend, if you are really hating the relationship drama in season 1, to simply fast forward past it. Trust me, you aren’t missing anything.

By season 2, SGU started to gel a little bit and the writers added some much needed comic relief to the dreary landscape. By the end of season 2, the show had started to get its legs. Despite that, it was still a highly flawed series and suffered from a variety of problems, including (in no particular order):

1. Too much death and disappointment. Yes, it’s realistic, but in today’s “Great Recession” we need more hope and vision than that. I got tired of people dying, getting sick, or otherwise ending up deflated and disappointed.

2. Too much in-fighting, not enough camaraderie. We get it, Rush is an asshole, and the Colonel doesn’t like him. Next!

3. Wooden female characters. Camille Ray (the aforementioned lesbian) was the absolute worst and bypassed Chloe as my most hated female character. The female medic was only somewhat appealing. The best female characters were peripheral ones who outshone the main performers in their brief appearances on the show.

4. Big gaping plot holes or unresolved issues. (SPOILERS: Eli’s and Rush’s electronic girlfriends being put into quarantine with nary a mention or sniffle afterwards; the descendants of the alternate Destiny being dumped on a planet without us getting to see this, never mind that they were traveling in a hostile universe filled with psychopathic drones bent on destruction.)

5. Lack of a common goal. Rush wanted to find out what the message was from the edge of the universe, and everyone else wanted to get home. Or did they? No-one seemed to be motivated or excited about anything. Such a far cry from the optimism and vision of Star Trek.

There were a few things I liked about SGU: I actually liked Eli, as well as Rush, and Greer was probably my favorite character. The two science geeks on the bridge ended up being quite funny and they added much in season 2. I only wish they’d done more with the alien Chloe.

The bottom line for me is that SGU was an extremely flawed show that might have gotten a bit better if given a little more time. But in this instance, I don’t blame SyFy for dumping it, as much as I hate SyFy’s lack of loyalty to its shows and its fans. All that said, in two seasons of SGU, there were many decent moments and interesting things going on. If you’re jonesin’ for some outer space scifi then SGU might not be a bad thing to catch up on. Just don’t have high expectations for it.

A defunct superhero turns in his wings and manages to get elected Mayor of New York after he stops one of the planes from plowing into the World Trade Center.  Not your classic super hero stuff – much more interesting.

And then there’s ‘The Last Man’.

A mysterious plague wipes out all of the men bar one.  Interesting alternate future stuff.  Not mind-blowing, but damned entertaining.

If you’re into ‘comics for the thinker’ then Brian K Vaughan’s your man.

And how was it?  Artistically, very cool indeed.  Beautiful images all around – can’t fault it.  Conceptually?  Groovy.  Spidey’s plunged into Red Sonja’s D&D universe, as is a decent chunk of New York, by an evil sorcerer from Sonja’s world.  The story?  Not too shabby.  Nothing surprising, but nothing too clunky either.  The writing?  Oeming’s usual style.  State the obvious whenever you can because of course the images can’t do a lot of that work for you.  Of course.  And lets have oaths galore.  I think Red Sonja makes an oath to disembowel some man every three or four frames.  She never does.

Still, aside from the dialogue, it’s an entertaining read.  Worth a quick look.

Edwin

www.edwinmcrae.com

Ben Hibon has done an amazing job with his animated short, Codehunters.  Absolutely beautiful, and a must for cyberpunk/steampunk fans out there.   At first glance it reminded my of Jamie Hewlett’s work (Gorillaz/Tank Girl) and there are touches of Peter Chung in there too (Dark Fury).  Mad Max meets Akira.  The near-dark future stuff that nightmares are made of.

Words from The Edwin.

http://edwinmcrae.com

Some 25 years later, I still remember the main characters from V: The nice, shy, sweet alien (played by Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street). The beautiful but evil Diana. And our main hero, the adventurous cameraman. The miniseries spawned a second miniseries and then a one-season TV show, but for its brief lifespan it sure had an impact.

I recently watched the original V miniseries again and also the new ABC version of V, which premiered as a one-hour television episode. I was surprised at how well the old V held up, though the new V is also quite promising.

Old V

The old V does look dated now (if just that everyone watching news of the aliens is doing so on old console TV sets), but it is still a very compelling story. The basic plot is that aliens (the “Visitors”) land on earth, promising peace and harmony, but they are hiding a sinister plot instead.

The original V, dedicated to “resistance fighters,” shows parallels between the transition to martial law under the Visitors and Nazi Germany. Scientists are the Jews in the original V, and we are shown scenes of families hiding out and being persecuted as scapegoats as the Visitors use a concocted plot to clamp down on American freedoms.

The original V, despite being born of a more innocent age on television, does a surprisingly good job at showing the differing reactions and motivations of people living under the new regime. Some help others, while others turn their neighbors in to the “authorities” due to ego and a lust for power.

The special effects of the original V are actually surprisingly good for 1983; while the spaceships are a little clunky, the flying scenes are decent, and I actually kind of miss those obvious blue laser beams used in old sci-fi.

One thing we loved as kids when the original V came out were the alien voices. The strange reverberation is a neat effect to this day. As a 13-year-old in the 80s, this was seen as pretty darn “cool.”

(SPOILERS!) The original V also had some great reveals missing in the new version. The alien Diana eating a live mouse and guinea pig was probably one of the most shocking and surprising things ever shown on TV. And who can forget the alien hybrid baby that came about later?

New V

Of course, one of the main things that gets updated with a redo of an old sci-fi show is the special effects. The new V, of course, benefits from the enhanced special effects of our day, but these still would mean nothing without decent characters and plot. Special effects done for their own sake can get tired. Fortunately, the special effects in the new V are used to good effect. The visual of the alien commander Anna giving her initial greeting to the world through a big screen created on the bottom of each spaceship was exceptionally memorable.

It was also quite dramatic to show the city undergoing an earthquake as the large mothership descended.

As for the plot, so far, the new V keeps the general theme of the old, with some new twists.

The new V, for example, does not hit you over the head over parallels between the Visitors and Nazi Germany in the way the old V did (at least so far). Instead, the Visitors are greeted with a hysteria that some journalists have compared with the Obamamania that hit the nation in 2008. I personally did not see the first episode of V personally attacking Obama per se (except for one obvious “HOPE” sign). Still, you could find some vague parallels to the Obama craze with the selling of V t-shirts and merchandise. The show seems to caution against getting too enthralled before all the facts are known. But the parallels with Obama end there.

My feeling is this: It’s not that the show was trying to say that Obama was like the Visitors; rather, I think the show was trying to say: Look at what might happen should blind devotion be given without critical thought.

The biggest threat, we are told, is that the Visitors have a powerful weapon…”devotion.” So it looks like we’ll be seeing more exploration of the idea of “celebrity hype” and the Visitors.

(Perhaps we are lucky Obama isn’t secretly a reptile – though David Icke and other conspiracy theorists might dispute that!)

As for the Visitors themselves, they are updated from the original in that they are sleeker and better dressed. The old red uniforms, hats and cheesy sunglasses are out: Fashion-forward beige dress suits are in.

The alien commander, “Anna,” is a beautiful woman with a trendy pixie haircut. Diana’s big 80’s hair is out.

They are still lizards underneath the human-looking skin, but instead of showing us rigid masks underneath the fake skin, we just get to see glimpses of reptile in a more subtle fashion. Sometimes less is more.

As for our dear alien leader: The casting of Anna was perfect. She manages to give the creepiest smiles in her role as Supreme Stepford Wife.

As for the plot itself: Instead of the aliens going after scientists as in the original, we have aliens acting as terrorists who are infiltrating all aspects of American life and government. A counter-insurgency group is the only resistance at this point. This is a sophisticated and modern update of the original V story. I find both versions interesting.

I would say the only thing that I missed about the old V in the new V was the lovely pacing. The old V took a bit of time to do its revealing – of course, that was due in part to the mini-series format. The new V hit us over the head in a single episode with the whole shebang: “Here are the Visitors. They are promising peace. Whoops, they are actually evil reptiles. Surprise!”

So the new V has a little less mystery than the old V…but that’s OK. It seems to be starting off in a good direction.

If I have one minor gripe it’s that they flipped the use of the spraypainted Vs in the new version. In the old version the “V” spraypaint was a sign of the resistance – it meant “Victory.” In the new V, the “V” stands for the Visitors, and for some reason they are encouraging their followers to “tag” with it. Kind of silly, really.

Otherwise, I think the new V looks really promising.

P.S. Doesn’t Joel Gretsch (the priest from the new V) look like the long lost brother of Marc Singer (the cameraman of the old V)? Maybe that’s just me.

I initially gave SGU a good review. The first episode was very promising.

Seven episodes later, the show is failing to live up to its initial promise.

We’re treated to the “Big Problem of the Week” instead of the “Big Adventure of the Week.” More and more, the focus of the show is on the lame sex lives of the characters, instead of science fiction.

An excessive focus of the show has been the love life of Chloe, who is probably the weakest, least interesting, and most annoying character on SGU. (In fact, I’d make her one of the worst characters I’ve seen on TV in a while).

In the most recent episode of SGU, we were treated to an extensive trip into a nightclub, where we got to see Chloe (trading consciousness with someone on earth), get upset at her best friend for now dating her ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Chloe is sleeping with a young soldier on the ship – so why should she care? It’s not like she’s being loyal to said boyfriend. Meanwhile, Eli is in love with her.

THIS IS NOT SCI-FI! I do not care about Chloe and her stupid love life!

Chloe is a good example of how useless most characters are made on SGU. Chloe is there because she’s a senator’s daughter. She does not offer anything of value to the efforts to save the people on Destiny, yet she’s regularly given special perks due to her political status. She has yet to display any bravery, intelligence, creativity, or anything else useful (other than talking back to Rush in one brief instant).

Among the women on Destiny: We have a boring human resources manager, a boring blonde medic, and that’s about it. The male characters are slightly better but not one of them has any lasting charisma to make the show inspiring. Eli is a character I do like, but he irritates half the audience, and Rush is probably the only thing saving this show.

If the writers at SGU don’t get it together soon, this show is going to go down in history as one of the worst, most mind-numbingly painful sci-fi shows ever. And that’s a lot for me to say, considering how much I liked the first episode.

Get it together, SGU people. You can start by diminishing Chloe’s role and finding some other more interesting female to bring to the forefront, someone who has more dramatic interest other than the fact that she sleeps around a lot and confuses cheap sex with love.

I am giving SGU about one or two more episodes. If they continue the obsessive focus on Chloe’s personal life rather than science fiction, I am done.

I was never drawn in to watch Stargate: SG1 on a regular basis. It was one of those shows I would watch once in a while when I happened to catch it. I was a Farscape fan, and SG1 really didn’t cut the mustard compared to Farscape. Bringing on Ben Browder and Claudia Black did not convert me to SG1 – it actually kept me away. Why ruin my good Farscape memories just to see Ben and Claudia in an inferior show?

I caught Stargate Atlantis a few times and found it entertaining, but not so much that I wanted to include it on my regular TV schedule. It was always one of those “well, I’ll watch this series at some point on DVD when nothing else is good on TV” type of shows.

So I wasn’t waiting for the premiere of Stargate Universe with baited breath. Since the SciFi channel turned into the watered down SyFy I haven’t really paid much attention. But I just happened to see SGU was available on Hulu and decided to give it a go.

Not being attached to the previous Stargate shows, I was able to watch SGU with fresh eyes. I liked that it was a little less shiny and plastic than previous Stargate incarnations. The quality of the filming seemed to be more cinematic. (Notably, some of the desert cinematography was particularly well-done for a TV show in the last installment of the opener.)

While some of the plot elements were a little canned (such as – SPOILER ALERT – the ridiculous sacrifice on behalf of the politician with his daughter stupidly freaking out and trying to stop what obviously could not be stopped), I liked the idea of a group of refugees being stuck on a mysterious ship way out in the middle of nowhere.

The characters on SGU are a mixed bag. Geeky Eli who is a fish out of water is my favorite (loved his comments on the desert planet about finding a half-buried Statue of Liberty). The military guys are pretty good, and the amoral scientist with the requisite accent is also an intriguing character. The women I am not so fond of. Chloe, the daughter of a senator, is whiny, moody, and very unappealing personality-wise. She’s not even that attractive so I have to wonder why on earth she was cast. (As I noted on Twitter, there seems to be this bizarre trend lately towards girls with really huge foreheads.) We also have a female medic who one Internet fan called a “7 of 9″ clone, and Ming Na, who has not really done much so far, so I can’t really judge.

If I have one minor nitpick, I hate the fact that when they use their “communication stones” to talk to people on earth, they make it look like the people have switched bodies when they haven’t. I understand this is a device to make the audience understand a new personality is taking over the body on earth, but it would make a lot more sense to me if the actors simply mimicked being the character that is inhabiting the body. It really takes me out of the story when they use a device like that. (Kind of like the silly body switch they’ve been doing lately on Ghost Whisperer.)

Stargate Universe does have problems sometimes with pacing – the show can drag a bit at times, and it has yet to find a good rhythm and rapport with all the diverse characters. I am intrigued, however, and Hulu gives me an easy way to watch the show at my convenience. So I’ll be tuning in for more…for as long as SyFy keeps the show alive.

Now if SyFy would get it together and actually offer a Farscape spin-off…ahhh, a girl can dream…

Voltron was probably the first thing I watched that introduced me to the concept of the giant robot. I wasn’t so much into the Transformers but Voltron I dug. I’m not sure why…maybe it was the way the lions roared when Voltron swung his mighty fists out.

At any rate, you can enjoy Voltron episodes, in order, on Hulu, for free. And when you are done, watch He-Man and She-Ra. Yeah!

Here’s the first episode of Voltron…which, ironically, doesn’t actually include a real appearance by the big bot:

I finally got caught up on Warehouse 13 via the magic of Hulu. (Side note to Hulu and TV execs: Why not leave all the episodes and seasons up there?) After seeing the first episode, I was pleasantly surprised. After all, Warehouse 13 is not an original premise by any stretch of the imagination. We have:

1. A warehouse taken from Indiana Jones.
2. The “collect the cursed object” theme, ala Friday the 13th: The Series (which I’d love to rewatch at some point, actually).
3. Secret agents Mully and Sculder in comedy format, who are actually more reminiscent of…
4. Bones…with a lead guy who actually looks like David Boreanaz’s brother.
5. Somewhat insane gruff, anti-social scientist ala Fringe.

The show manages to pull all these already done ideas together in a way that is surprisingly fresh and entertaining. A few things make this work: First, the casting is excellent. The characters are likeable and the rapport between the main characters terrific. But more than that, we have the Warehouse and its fun steampunk gadgets.

“Steampunk” is a term I’ve only heard recently via discussions of Warehouse 13. It refers to a combination of modern technology and retro styling, with a heavy emphasis on an ornate Victorian feel.

I’ve always loved steampunk without knowing exactly what it was. The first steampunk movie that got my notice was Brazil (from way back in the 80s) with its strangely retro but cyberpunk typewriters and futuristic regression. I just loved the gadgets in Brazil – it was part of what made the movie a classic for me.

Anyone remember The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne? This was a steampunk fantasy show that was on SciFi back in 2000. It included a dirigible and all sorts of anachronistic, futuristic gadgets. (It’s a shame that show went bye-bye…I would love to see it again!)

Even Farscape, I felt, had a slightly steampunk feel to it…not that the gadgets were Victorian or overly ornate, but we had gotten away from that sterile cold look that had dominated the new Star Trek shows. The videophone on Farscape was a golden clamshell, and all the instruments on Moya were a rusty copper instead of the slick modern look of Voyager.

I also loved Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow…more Art Deco steampunk than Victorian…but a delicious visual feast. And the Golden Compass was similarly underrated – the design in that film was absolutely beautiful!

So Warehouse 13 brings us a show that would mostly be mind candy were it not for its scrumptious steampunk aesthetic. The secret agents do have cellphones, but they are more likely to use a two-way video phone that was made in the 1920s. Artie, the mad scientist of the lot, types away at a Victorian-style keyboard. (This keyboard was designed by a steampunk artist called Datamancer who sells custom-built computers and accessories in lush steampunk style.) The gun of choice for our heroes is a retro raygun built by Tesla (who is often brought into steampunk-inspired fantasies…if you recall, he played a big part in the film The Prestige).

Warehouse 13 also demonstrates some knowledge of the steampunk fashion currently hitting the underground by donning young Claudia, computer genius, with her own pair of steampunk goggles. (I wasn’t sure if I was too crazy about Claudia at first, but I do feel she’s a better foil for Artie than boring Aura Girl.)

Of course, a few steampunk gadgets will not keep the show afloat on its own. While I do feel a lot of the show’s plots are a bit banal and could have easily been written for Friday the 13th, the saving grace here is that Warehouse 13 is simply enjoyable. A lot of that has to do with the humor, and both the leads have an excellent delivery that sets this show apart from the much drearier Fringe.

We’ll see how the show evolves…and if SyFy will keep it around for more than their usual 13 episodes.