Stargate, SGA Season 3, Episode 16: The Game [SPOILERS]

is_that_so

Cast your votes. No idea where 14 has gone to.

User45701

14 was skipped and will be aired later like the way sg1 messed up its episode order in the middle of season 8

its a pity tho because i am actually looking forward to episode 14 it sounds good.
This episode was enjoyable enough i forgot to post a poll glad to see someone did it.
It was a funny episode ill bet at the start when you all saw Rodney's face on the flag you where all thinking "god no not another Rodney episode" i don't mind them myself i think there funny and as it turned out it was not a Rodney episode

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

meh... it was good, but the premise really had the potential to be great and they dropped the ball imo.

the more we learn about the ancients, the more they seem like absolute bastards, not really all that different from the ori. It's hard to see how such a people would have been 'pure' enough to ascend.

I really don't see how the russian scientist and the army dude would have started playing the game like an actual game seeing as they knew there were real people involved... unless they were mentally/morally ****ed up they would have worked together to improve situations and not get bogged down into stupidity like they did. It was kind of sickening to see them just playing it as if it was 1 v 1, they are supposedly fairly intelligent people who would have known full well the implications of their bickering.

bad writing overall but it's stargate, I don't really expect too much in that department.
Laughs by the barrel load, I hope the new series models itself a little on Battlestar Galactica re. realism, depth and plausability. More of the same would be unfortunate, the series has such great ideas behind it but it keeps shooting itself in the foot, arm..big toe.. if they keep going on like this they won't have anywhere left to shoot and I haven't heard of any new Star Trek on the way to keep us going once they've killed themselves.

thelordofcheese

I've gotta disagree on the whole " I hope the new series models itself a little on Battlestar Galactica" idea

don't get me wrong, i love BSG as much as the next guy, but i think there is ample space in the sci-fi 'space' , shall we say, for the serious kind of stuff that BSG does so well, and the less than serious stuff SGA and SG1 do.

Yeah, sometimes it grates, but so does BSG, neither is the definitive sci-fi show, they just do quite well, in my not so humble opinion, in their respective niches.

As for Zelenka Vs the marine point you raised, i read that as that no matter how pure your intentions, the game would just become about ego [Zelenka made the original change to help avoid starvation, but ended up in a petty trade dispute about baskets, as i recall]. Maybe that strays into BSG territory abit, but i'll leave that up to everyone else.

Overall, a solid piece of filler, suffering only from too much Mackay.
Love the character to death, but if they keep using him the way they have and i'll end up resenting his presence on screen.

ixoy

Enjoyed this one - a good bit of filler fun. Even I groaned when I thought it'd be another McKay episode, despite loving the character. Fortunately it was more balanced than that although Ronin and Teyla were as pointless as ever.

I didn't mind the Zelenka/Lorne disputes because it was petty. Obviously, it can escalate from there but I felt they wouldn't have let it. Zelenka is clearly intelligent but that's got nothing to do with morality/ethics anyway, so it'd certainly not be implausible if he had gone further astray.

Laughs by the barrel load, I hope the new series models itself a little on Battlestar Galactica re. realism, depth and plausability.

Completely disagree. A show like the one you describe is not Stargate. Stargate is light and frothy, fun and frivolous. A gritty dark-edged Stargate show would not be faithful to the spirit of the franchise - it just wouldn't *feel* like Stargate.

Leave the dark stuff to Ronald D. Moore (which I also love) and let the playfulness rest here.

User45701

Its a great balance of Sci-Fi tho isent it?
Get great fun Sg1/Sga and then real gritty and brilliant BSG

is_that_so

Felt it had the potential to go a little further alright and get a little darker but it was reasonably well-done. The squabble over the game made perfect sense to me and emphasised the point. Agree about Teyla and Ronin. What exactly are they there for any more?

Pugsley

Simple, fun, filler. Good to watch, even if it was entirely predictable as soon as you seen the games UI, ancients dont strike me as the most playful of folk. I wasnt bothered by the Zelenka/Lorne debate, they were after all making a very big deal out of what was a very small issue, so they knew they were working with peoples lives.


As for a dark, gritty stargate, thats never been what stargate is about, why bother starting now? They could possibly do with toning down the sillyness now and again, but overall the sillyness and one liners are a lot of what stargate is.

BKtje

i really felt and urge to go play civ4. I enjoyed this episode, mainly cos i saw in them how i felt myself at times while playing civ4 like games

steviec

I thought the thing with Zelenka made perfect sense - just because they know they're real people doesn't suddenly mean they'll agree with eachother on everything - just look at real world leaders.

Overall thought it was a really interesting episode and fun to watch.

DingChavez

I hope the new series models itself on pre-Anubis SG-1.

Kojak

A reasonably fine episode if not a little predictible after we learned that what McKay and Sheppard percieved to be a game was actually mimicing real life.

The attraction of so much power was shown well by Zelenka and Lorn when they had to interfere with another world, half way through the episode.

The one thing I didn't like was where have the Wraith been for the last number of episodes - when did we even see them last. Was it episode 8 (I think) where Sheppard and a Wraith escape from a Geneii prison??

The episode itself was fine, but not a bit of continuity to the end-of-season finale, be it with the Wraith or the Human Form replicators.

_Kaiser_

B-K-DzR wrote:

i really felt and urge to go play civ4. I enjoyed this episode, mainly cos i saw in them how i felt myself at times while playing civ4 like games

Ditto

robnubis

LOOK HERE: http://www.gateworld.net/atlantis/s3/index.shtml

The episode order was changed half way through season 3, so episode 11 became episode 9. ("Phantoms" was originally episode 11 as per OFFICIAL Atlantis website: http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/episodes/season03/0301/ )

So there is no episode 14 being skipped, episode 14 was in fact Tao of Rodney, but they didnt edit it to be 315 because it'd be too late, i'd say it'll be changed for dvd releases, basically every episode was moved up once 14 -> 15, 15 -> 16 and so on.

Sky one have aired everything in complete order.

senordingdong

Ugh...this was a snor.
So much potential, but the ball was well and truely dropped.

And not only were Teyla and Ronin pointless in this episode, but ****ing hell, did anyone else find Weir to be a complete asshole in this episode?

secret_squirrel

Actually I thought Weir was the only one in this episode that actually made sense.

Everyone else spent their time in childish bickering - AFTER they knew it wasnt a game. That was just pathetic and unbelievable imo.

Even Rodney can control his ego when lives are at stake, but here we had him and clone boy making things worse for most of the episode.

Wier should have confined them to quarters and let Ronan and Tayla have something to do by cleaning up their mess.