The main problem with Atlantis.

Mal-Adjusted

ixoy wrote: »

Trek is far from the worst - SG-1 employed the two main leads in 'Farscape' and about half the cast of 'Firefly' have appeared regularly in the franchise. Trek gets off lightly enough, although at least one actor from each of the modern Trek franchises has appeared at some point in the SG franchise!

Adam Baldwin was i 1 episode of SG-1, Morena Baccarin was in 5 episodes. Jewel staite was a semi regular on atlantis from season 4 and a regular from season 5. hardly half the cast.

They actually wanted Ben Browder for Major Shepard, but used Joe Flannigan 'coz Ben was filming the Peacekeeper wars...now, Just try to imagine the actors for Sheppard and Mitchel swapping roles...

Overheal

in fairness its just a case of needing to have a talented actor pool that is interested in the work. you very often will see the same actors working within the same loose genre their entire lives. I've noticed the BSG actors popping up all over the place myself. And some people that got their start as extras and guest stars on SG-1 are still doing science fiction today.

Ben Browder as Shepphard? to be honest, I worry it would have really flared Atlantis's spin-offness. It wouldn't have lasted.

Mal-Adjusted

it was mentioned somewhere back the line that Atlantis just recycles some old SG-1 storeylines for it's (stand alone?) episodes. i can't really find any of these on eps i've seen. can anyone give an example please?
Thanks!

P.S. this show would have been better if Wolsey had just been brought in during season 4! he's not in it much, but when he is, he's pure gold!

TheIrishGrover

now I believe it's just that we don't care about the characters. They're all uni-dimensional clicjes we've seen time and time again:

Shepherd: ST:TNG Riker Season 1-2. Action man.
Tayla (Or however you spell it: ST:TNG Troi. Exotic semi telepathic female alien
Ronin: St:TNG Worf. Warrior alien
McKay: ST:DS9 Bashir. Genius Doc

You could go through every single character the same way. The thing is, regarding the characters above: Their counterparts in their series' (With the possible exception of Troi) all developed over the years. Especially the Riker/shepherd character. Where have the Atlantis characters gone from and to? They're exactly the same as day one and you know that they will be exactly the same at the end. No development. no chance of a character getting written off at the drop of a hat. They need Joss Whedon to write the next spinoff series

I mean, look at what they did to Chriton... I mean... whatever-Ben-Bowder's-Character's-name-was in SG1. A fine actor with great comic timing who SHOULD have fitted in well with SG1 but they just tried to make another O'Niell to keep everything at a nice level status quo.

Mal-Adjusted

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

now I believe it's just that we don't care about the characters. They're all uni-dimensional clicjes we've seen time and time again:

Shepherd: ST:TNG Riker Season 1-2. Action man.
Tayla (Or however you spell it: ST:TNG Troi. Exotic semi telepathic female alien
Ronin: St:TNG Worf. Warrior alien
McKay: ST:DS9 Bashir. Genius Doc

You could go through every single character the same way. The thing is, regarding the characters above: Their counterparts in their series' (With the possible exception of Troi) all developed over the years. Especially the Riker/shepherd character. Where have the Atlantis characters gone from and to? They're exactly the same as day one and you know that they will be exactly the same at the end. No development. no chance of a character getting written off at the drop of a hat. They need Joss Whedon to write the next spinoff series

I mean, look at what they did to Chriton... I mean... whatever-Ben-Bowder's-Character's-name-was in SG1. A fine actor with great comic timing who SHOULD have fitted in well with SG1 but they just tried to make another O'Niell to keep everything at a nice level status quo.

i'mgoing to have to correct you there, of course characters can be gotten rid of...just look at Beckett! nobody saw that coming, the way they wrote out Fort and Weir (Wier?) not to mention numerous recurring characters...

Ronan has gone from a gruff, untrusting, shifty runner who's lost everything to him except hate, to a steadfast, loyal, humorous character, though not the best at interpersonal relationships. Teyla was living in a tent and had only just mastered fire, she is slowly intigrated into contemporary society.

You seem to be comparing the SGA cast to the ST cast by either millitary position or job, you say nothing about their actual characters. fair enough, i never really liked ST, (except for Voyager) but of what little i have seen, Sheppard is nothing like Riker, Ronans only resemblance to Worf is that he's gruff...and Cam Mitchell is in no way shape or form trying to be O'Niell

Lobelia Overhill

(Haven't read all of thread yet, just had to reply to this post!)

i-bloodhound wrote: »

I thought the episode stunk and turned it off before the end.

Oh thank you so much - I finally found someone who agrees with me that Whispers was bile!!

I was told that it was creepy and disturbing, I was neither creeped, nor disturbed by it, I was however disappointed to see a re-hash of Vengeance, (chasing monsters in catacombs/tunnels) and Instinct (villagers frightened of a monster in the woods). This seems to have been the "main problem" (IMO) during Seasons 4 and 5, re-using old stories from previous seasons of SGA and SG-1.

Seasons 1, 2 and 3 were fine, great even. It was funny, exciting, the sets were amazing and the cast were likable guys and gals who you'd buy a pint for in any pub, the Wraith were scary (in an "I'm glad they ain't real" way), and the concept of the series was fine, group of people from Earth find the Lost City of Atlantis, chaos ensues.

Lt Ford was an annoying OTT "kid" and he was removed from the cast with an option to return as "super Ford" with his Wraith enhancements but someone decided he wasn't coming back again ...

Ronon replaced him and initially seemed to be an interesting character, he's from one of the most technologically advanced civilisations in Pegasus (he must have been, the Wraith destroyed the planet, something they only do to planets with advanced civilisations) and he'd been made a Runner. Somewhere during Seasons 4 and 5 he turned into a knuckle dragging Neaderthal from planet Braveheart. Remember Perna telling Carson (in Poisoning The Well that a man had come to Hoff many generations ago who was found to have a protein that was toxic to the Wraith, and they'd spend the intervening years trying to perfect a 'vaccine' from that protein? Remember in Runner how we saw [in flashback] and heard Ronon say a Wraith tried to feed on him and stopped ... was there a conection between these two things? Apparently not ...

Elizabeth Weir was (IMO) a perfectly acceptable leader of the expedition but suffered from the "curse of the Stargate writers" (ie she's a civilian woman) and they apparently ran out of ideas for her, so they killed her off after trying to turn her into something else.

I dunno what the point of killing off Carson was, but (IMO) the way it was handled off-set was disgraceful, the fans got up in arms, but instead of a simple "it's part of an ongoing story arc and Beckett will return" fans were [from what I can tell] encouraged to fill out petitions, and get themselves on the evening news in a bid to get Carson brought back. Uh yeah, you were planning on bringing him back anyways - the clues are there in Vengeance and a few S4 episodes (I forget which ones, but the one where there's a plague which turns out to be the Hoffan 'vaccine'), there was only one way Micheal could have gotten that information.

Teyla's pregnancy was a waste of space, done to cover up Rachel Luttrel's real life pregnancy, things started to look interesting when the Wraith Queen in whatever that episode was (I've blanked the titles of Seasons 4 and 5 from my memory) said that Teyla's baby was "helping" her, then it turned out the baby was 'normal', and subsequently went away for a while until he could be used as a plot device ... And why did she call him Torren, didn't she introduce herself as the daughter to Tegan? Who's Tegan then?

Rodney was always great, David Hewlitt really showed his acting chops on several occassions, and Rodney did develop, if you watch the epsiodes of SG-1 that he was in you'll see a difference! I think I'll miss him most of all,

Sheppard was ... well I'm not sure what to make of him. He knew nothing about the Stargate Program until the pilot of SGA, but thereafter he seemed to be a font of information on all things 'Gate related, and he handled the most oddball situations will nary a "OMG WTF?!?". Still I liked him.

Zelenka, Lorne and Col Caldwell were excellent additions to the cast, albeit sadly underused.

Carter's stint on Atlantis was (IMO) a waste of space, and ruined the character we'd grown to love over 10 years on SG-1. I still can't figure out what 'excuse' they used for removing her from SG-1 (who were, after all, still saving the Milky Way, just not every week on Sky One), and sending her to Atlantis as the Earth's formost expert on the Ancients (or words to that effect) um, I was under the impression she was our formost expert on Gate operations, wormhole physics and blowing up suns ... as well as a sideline in Where To Keep Your Reproducive Ograns

Woolsey was supposed to be the annoying Bureaucrat who got on everyone's nerves, so why bring him to Atlantis?

And what the feck happened to the Wraith?! They went from scary bastards to helpful fellas willing to co-operate with the humans ...

I've noticed an awful lot of people (cast and crew) seem to have abandoned ship since the end of S3 ... seems like they had the right idea. I've gotten rid of my S4 boxed set and have taken S5 off my pre-order list.

I'm sad that the show is ending, but I'm not sorry that they can't ruin it any further than they already had.