The Worst of Stargate (spoilers?)

Ethereal41 · Post by **Ethereal41** » 2008-05-12 07:03am

I've been dejected ever since O'Neill left the cast, and have only half-heartedly kept up with events since Season 8. Dissapointed by SG 1's lame 'final' episode (oh god! MORE time travel?!), I eagerly awaited the release of the Ark of Truth.

If I had bothered to check the AoT thread, I might have saved myself a rental fee, but no, I couldn't ruin the plot!

...

Plot? Bah! I could rant about this abysmal piece of film all day, but I decided it would be more fitting to create a "worst of gate", as a tongue-in-cheek, wistful homage to the days when bad episodes made us laugh, rather than cry. I haven't really watched Atlantis, but I guess that's open to ridicule as well.

My Contribution: Season 2 Episode 13 "Spirits"

I saw this as nerdy young teen, but even then I couldn't help but laugh. We open to Jack getting cheap-shotted by a Trinium-tipped arrow (through a window of bulletproof glass!). All fine and dandy since Trinium is an ultradense material that makes Depleted Uranium look like taffy. Cut to the planet and the Team (sans Jack *sob*) are bumbling around in a depressingly familiar locale that looks nothing like North American Forest (/sarcasm). The team then get tranq-darted by Native Americans, though why they are not little red smears considering the BRUTAL power of trinium arrows is not clear.

Anyway, the whole "Indians In Space!" theme is pretty funny, not even taking into account the reused props and stoner acting. Back and forth to the SGC with some Trinium-hungry fatcat, we realize the whole episode is apparently about CONSERVATION. I guess they should have just wadded up a ball of newspaper and thrown it through the Stargate, and then killed them all while the wept single tears.

The episode really jumps the shark (in the best way possible), with the Spirits who invade the SGC towards the end, who use some kind of freaky jive to incapacitate the base. Earth's best military personell wittled away by the power of the safety dance!

Anyway, onto you guys. And hey, don't get me wrong, I love (loved *sniff*) SG1.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2008-05-12 08:18am

Well, leaving aside the whole "we built a star fleet in just two years, and the public doesn't know" thing, the worst of Stargate is "wormhole physics". Especially that episode where Carter tells some smart cadet that "two-way travel through a wormhole" is an "assumption". That was pretty awful, because either the cadet's paper basically said "I like wormholes, because I could use them to go groceries shopping without walking a mile to the store and back, lol", or she studied the wormhole's geometry, in which case the two-way travel would not be an assumption. Not to mention we already know that the one-way travel of stargates is a result of the "break down into atoms, send to receiving gate" thing, since they can send radio both ways (but not really short radio waves like visible light. For some reason I guess), so Carter was just using her knowledge of a weird implementation of a two-way wormhole to be an asshole.

Instead of inventing "wormhole physics", when asked why you can radio both ways, but only travel one way, they should have said: "I didn't build the fucking thing!"

That raises a point about the film. How in the hell could know what the Stargate did, and the exact details of it (demolecularsation?), if they had never managed to even start the damn thing?

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 08:19am

Ark of Truth wasn't the best, but it was nowhere near as bad as to be seriously compared to Spirits.

Ethereal41 · Post by **Ethereal41** » 2008-05-12 08:37am

Especially that episode where Carter tells some smart cadet that "two-way travel through a wormhole" is an "assumption". That was pretty awful, because either the cadet's paper basically said "I like wormholes, because I could use them to go groceries shopping without walking a mile to the store and back, lol", or she studied the wormhole's geometry, in which case the two-way travel would not be an assumption.

Which one was that? Maybe my inner nerd blanked it in a desperate attempt to maintain SoD.

Ark of Truth wasn't the best, but it was nowhere near as bad as to be seriously compared to Spirits.

Teal'c doin' the iron man across New Zealand was pretty damn bad (though funny). I don't think we need to rehit the points from the Ark of Truth Thread back in April. Long story short, it was a dissapointment for many of us, including (it seems, from reading your posts), you.

Anyway, what episode would you point to as the 'Worst of Stargate.

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2008-05-12 09:05am

Ethereal41
The episode in question is season 4's 'Prodigy' I beleive.

The first season episode "Emancipation" is generally regard as pretty bad for its crappy and heavy handed approach to feminism.

And personally I intensely dislike the rampant stupidity of "Full Circle," plus the everyone ascended cop out. O'Neill trusting a Goa'uld etc. And most of Reckoning and Threads. Especially killing off Selmak in the worst way possible so they could get all shippy with Sam and Jack.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-05-12 09:14am

Ethereal41 wrote:
Especially that episode where Carter tells some smart cadet that "two-way travel through a wormhole" is an "assumption". That was pretty awful, because either the cadet's paper basically said "I like wormholes, because I could use them to go groceries shopping without walking a mile to the store and back, lol", or she studied the wormhole's geometry, in which case the two-way travel would not be an assumption.
Which one was that? Maybe my inner nerd blanked it in a desperate attempt to maintain SoD.

Ark of Truth wasn't the best, but it was nowhere near as bad as to be seriously compared to Spirits.
Teal'c doin' the iron man across New Zealand was pretty damn bad (though funny). I don't think we need to rehit the points from the Ark of Truth Thread back in April. Long story short, it was a dissapointment for many of us, including (it seems, from reading your posts), you.

Anyway, what episode would you point to as the 'Worst of Stargate.

A lot of the really dumb episodes were balanced by pretty good characer developement, I always hated the third episode in, where they meet the desecendants of the huns, crter spent the whole episode bitching about unfair treatment of women and the episode ended with a relaly trite mass enlightenment in which all of the women tore off their veils and an entire culture changed in about twenty minutes. if that could happen why do we still have poor people?

Then there was the dumb episode where jack touched a crystal, whichw as ONLY tolerable ebcause Richard Dean Anderson did a credible job acting. midway through the series there was an episode with mimes in body paint that were getting sick because a UAV crashed into a stalk of celery that hides in the ground most of the time.

I was also not a fan of the episodes with Hathor. She never lived up to her potential

Ethereal41 · Post by **Ethereal41** » 2008-05-12 09:36am

The first season episode "Emancipation" is generally regard as pretty bad for its crappy and heavy handed approach to feminism.

But Carter in a knifefight with Ghengis Khan? Priceless!

Wish she'd kept that stupid outfit, though.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 11:03am

Ethereal41 wrote: Teal'c doin' the iron man across New Zealand was pretty damn bad (though funny). I don't think we need to rehit the points from the Ark of Truth Thread back in April. Long story short, it was a dissapointment for many of us, including (it seems, from reading your posts), you.

I still went out and bought the DVD having seen it already. It wasn't great, it wasn't as good as it should have been, but I'd not say it was actually bad either. It was just mediocre.

PREDATOR490 · Post by **PREDATOR490** » 2008-05-12 11:33am

Perhaps most shockinly of all. I find most of the ancient / ascended being based plots to be the biggest pain in the ass of the series. No matter what way you look at it, the writers fucked up the situation to the point the Ancients look like complete idiots with questionable motives.

/Rant

I already went over Ark of Truth before and the main reason it sucks was a complete lack of closure to the Orii storyline. I find it exceptionally annoying this new film is supposedly going to have 'fleets' of ships attacking Earth yet they couldnt even manage a decent battle on ANY front to bring the Ascended war to a close.
They copped out by having Morgan repeat Oma's finale against 'super' Adria who spent the entire time doing fuck all. Maybe it is just me, but when I plugged in this movie I wanted it to deal with the story they left us with, instead they resorted to bringing the replicators back AGAIN to do absolutly nothing except waste screen time.
The Ori plot ended with them tipping over a box... how fucking epic is that ?

/ End rant

The majority of the first season episodes were bad but that is to be expected when looking back in hindsight. I found a lot of the Ancient wanking to be equally tiresome. On one hand you have them being played out to be 'benevolent' because they dont mess with people like the Orii do.
On the other hand they were willing to let Anubis rape the entire galaxy just to teach Oma a lesson. Oma made it pretty clear that the 'others' didnt give a shit about his planned idea to commit epic genocide.

These are the same Ancients who 'shield' the galaxy from the Orii for... why ?
The situation with the Ancients left me with the impression that the Orii might not have been entirely wrong about claiming the Ancients are using the galaxy. The Orii needed worshippers to attain their power so logically one must conclude that the Ancients must be getting THEIR power from somewhere. Added to this is the obsession with having aliens influencing Earth history.
I believe someone here mentioned the theory that the exploits of Jesus in the Stargate-verse sounded like the works of an Ancient. If thats true then we would logically have all the people on Earth worshipping god in a vein similar to the Orii worshippers. The only difference being Earth etc. has the choice to worship them and evidently 'free will' is the one thing Ancients seem to relish.

Overall, I really wish the writers had either left the Ancients alone or had at least given some element of reasoning behind their actions. This holds especially true for the Orii storyline which was epicly retarded with an unspoken 'rule book' being followed.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2008-05-12 11:45am

These are the same Ancients who 'shield' the galaxy from the Orii for... why ?

To prevent the Orii from getting more followers and therefore being strong enough to defeat the "others"

I get the impression the Ori are outnumbered but get lots of power from their followers making it a stale mate.

Taking the Milky way (this assumes the milky way is the only galaxy really worth the taking) would tip the balance.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2008-05-12 11:48am

If thats true then we would logically have all the people on Earth worshipping god in a vein similar to the Orii worshippers. The only difference being Earth etc. has the choice to worship them and evidently 'free will' is the one thing Ancients seem to relish.

Difference being though that the Jesus character wasn't ascended until he was crucified, the Ori already are.

The whole worshipping of the Ori thing is very clearly a power that is derived via the Staffs and the Priors.

Hence only needing to convince the priors of the lie, so the Ancients aren't gaining power from the milky way. There is not mechanism like the priors had.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 12:55pm

PREDATOR490 wrote:Perhaps most shockinly of all. I find most of the ancient / ascended being based plots to be the biggest pain in the ass of the series. No matter what way you look at it, the writers fucked up the situation to the point the Ancients look like complete idiots with questionable motives.

/Rant

I already went over Ark of Truth before and the main reason it sucks was a complete lack of closure to the Orii storyline. I find it exceptionally annoying this new film is supposedly going to have 'fleets' of ships attacking Earth yet they couldnt even manage a decent battle on ANY front to bring the Ascended war to a close.
They copped out by having Morgan repeat Oma's finale against 'super' Adria who spent the entire time doing fuck all. Maybe it is just me, but when I plugged in this movie I wanted it to deal with the story they left us with, instead they resorted to bringing the replicators back AGAIN to do absolutly nothing except waste screen time.
The Ori plot ended with them tipping over a box... how fucking epic is that ?

/ End rant

I felt the point was that it wasn't epic. This wasn't the massed forces of Civilization destroying Eddore with a million billion ships and the mental forces of billions of telepaths; it was a just an empty lie being revealed.

Does every epic story have to end with an enormous battle between good and evil? For all their faults, the Priors weren't evil (or rather, their means of enforcing control were, but as far as they were concerned, they had a very good ends justifying it) and their followers weren't; they were misled.

These are the same Ancients who 'shield' the galaxy from the Orii for... why ?

Self interest. The same reason as they let LeFay violate the rules a bit here. If the Ori had converted the MW, they would have been destroyed.

The Orii needed worshippers to attain their power so logically one must conclude that the Ancients must be getting THEIR power from somewhere.

Negatory. Just because I bolt a big tank of gas onto the top of my car to give it more range, doesn't mean that no one else's car contains a tank. We see quite clearly that they have inherent power as well as the 'top up' from all those prostations.

Added to this is the obsession with having aliens influencing Earth history.
I believe someone here mentioned the theory that the exploits of Jesus in the Stargate-verse sounded like the works of an Ancient.

Fan theory at best. Ba'al has a better claim to being Jesus. At least Ba'al is actually a term used of the Abrahamic god back in the day.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 01:02pm

Zac Naloen wrote: The whole worshipping of the Ori thing is very clearly a power that is derived via the Staffs and the Priors.

I expect there's something else going on. Not all prostrations are supervised by a prior, which means either Priors have a substantial 'catchment area' (covering more than one settlement... {One prior per planet? More?}) or there's some other unknown collection mechanism involved, that routes itself through the Priors.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-05-12 01:05pm

I stopped watching Stargate when the newage bullshit started to leak in, especially with the telepath shit. It's one thing to go to the logical (and then some) extreme with the anchient astronaugts, it is another to go with creationism.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 01:14pm

I believe the first 'telepaths' appeared (though it might have just been concealed technology) at something like episode six or seven...

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-05-12 01:22pm

Telepathy is fine if more thought goes into it then gobshite ripped off from a newage website, that some random hippie did on the rare occasion when he wasn't stoned.

That's why I stopped liking the Anchients wanking. It turns out that they're humans! God, can you wank any more furiously then that?

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 01:31pm

Frankly, it's a fairly likely consequence in all TV sci-fi. Humans generally have to fit into the costumes.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2008-05-12 01:43pm

Zixinus wrote:Telepathy is fine if more thought goes into it then gobshite ripped off from a newage website, that some random hippie did on the rare occasion when he wasn't stoned.

That's why I stopped liking the Anchients wanking. It turns out that they're humans! God, can you wank any more furiously then that?

They're not just humans. They're humans in white pajamas who are so very advanced. Yet, they're incredibly stupid, incapable of recognizing the most flawed of plans, and have less creativity than someone sitting at a TV or computer watching stargate. Oh, and they have a plot device factory somewhere that works three shifts to produce gadgets for someone to accidentally trigger.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 02:01pm

Nephtys wrote:They're humans in white pajamas who are so very advanced.

That's unfair.

Sometimes it's white flowy robes.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-05-12 02:07pm

Frankly, it's a fairly likely consequence in all TV sci-fi. Humans generally have to fit into the costumes.

Then why not have humanoids? Or if they are so god-fucking advanced, why not take whatever form they want and deceided to take human form when dealing with humans.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 02:20pm

Zixinus wrote:Then why not have humanoids?

They'd already established it as common in elder races with the Nox and the (ick) Asgard's physical forms. Simply having them appear however would be a serious problem when they went to Atlantis and found that all the chairs and tables were conviniently human height.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2008-05-12 03:11pm

Well I like "Spirits". Not the greatest episode ever, but not without redeeming qualities.

As for my pick, I'll throw up "Entity". The first half I actually rather like, but then it all goes downhill. For one thing, we've already done the whole "Carter is possessed" thing... if you want to do something like that, why not continue and flesh out the Jolinar storyline a little? Then there's the ridiculousness of Carter being in the computers which made me want to weep tears of pain. The whole episode was basically retconned out of continuity except for brief, off-hand mentions of the incident in "Ascension" and one other Simmons episode. Yech.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-05-12 04:48pm

NecronLord wrote:
Zixinus wrote:Then why not have humanoids?
They'd already established it as common in elder races with the Nox and the (ick) Asgard's physical forms. Simply having them appear however would be a serious problem when they went to Atlantis and found that all the chairs and tables were conviniently human height.

How annoying would it have been to be stranded in an ancient yoda scaled metropolis. There used to be a commercial for a fake reality show called "Tiny House" I think it would go along those lines.

Itd be realistic but unwatchable after two episodes. Thats the same reason they stopped having Daniel translate, it ultimately got in the way of the story line.

I think Stargate was better than average when it came to aliens. The Ancients were humans, they seeded the galaxy. Then the goa'ould came and did it AGAIN. We do have Unas Asgaard and Goa'ould as examples of non bipedal life forms (And that wierd cloud thing)

one of the great things about Stargate though was that they took episodes that by all rights SHOULD have sucked but didn't.

The episode with machello? The episode where Jack and Teal'c were stuck in a time loop? The one with Tealc stuck in a video game? All of those should have sucked but they still entertain.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-05-12 05:18pm

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Well I like "Spirits". Not the greatest episode ever, but not without redeeming qualities.

As for my pick, I'll throw up "Entity". The first half I actually rather like, but then it all goes downhill. For one thing, we've already done the whole "Carter is possessed" thing... if you want to do something like that, why not continue and flesh out the Jolinar storyline a little? Then there's the ridiculousness of Carter being in the computers which made me want to weep tears of pain. The whole episode was basically retconned out of continuity except for brief, off-hand mentions of the incident in "Ascension" and one other Simmons episode. Yech.

I believe it was also mentioned in Atlantis on some occasion or another. I don't think it's really been retconned, they've just not done a sequel.

CaptJodan · Post by **CaptJodan** » 2008-05-12 05:59pm

I'm sure there might be others that I dislike similarly (Indeed, I don't like the 3rd episode at all either, nor any Hathor episodes), but I've always had a special hatred for "Rite of Passage". It is the episode that made me wholeheartedly hate Cassandra. The angsty teenage "you're not my mother" shit made me wish that she would die. And then later she's back to being less of a wholesale bitch.