Stargate: Atlantis

We watched the first episode of the new Stargate series Atlantis last night. I've been a loyal follower of the original SG-1 series as you know, but Dragon has never watched more than few episodes - and it's impossible to force him to watch anything he doesn't want to. So we sat down with not huge expectations - just watch it and see where it takes us.

The premise is sound enough - the team goes to the mystic location to a galaxy on the other side of the universe the Ancients went when they left Earth million years ago, and get trapped there (and despite how it sounds, it's not re-make of Voyager). We have all the characters that a sci-fi series needs - the token strong intelligent female character, the token black guy, the token alien, the token handsome young man and the token comic sidekick. And did I mention that the comic sidekick is a Scotsman with an outrageous accent - I'm just waiting for him to say "the engines cannot take it keptin" any time now, or - as he's a medical doctor - "it's life but not as we know it". Pretty sure he gets to do "he's dead Jim" - Stargate has always paid it's homage to Star Trek.

It's very light, and definetly on the cheesy side - but fun and entertaining. Some really good stuff I liked - for example the fact that since inventing the "old style" analogue gates in our galaxy the Ancients had since gone digital: this not only makes sense but also gives the new series a different look and feel. The new aliens - despite the awful name "wraiths" - were pretty cool too: humanoid but enough alien to be a bit scary. All in all, I think they had managed to come up with some sense of wonder since in another galaxy you really don't have any idea what's going to come next - only time will show if they manage to maintain this (and my guess would be no - but it probably doesn't matter).

Posted by kolibri at 30 July 08:32, 2004