There is that expensive show about the Irak war, made some years ago, which benefited of a greater visual quality, I'd like to see more of it to know if there's any goo critique.
This aside, what I meant is the US army is, besides some small hickups, passionate murders or perhaps one guy smuggling drug or being easily corrupted, it's all white and clean and powerful. Is there even one show which would be courageous enough to call the army on its detention camps, for example, or dubious evidence of WMDs? There was a reference to some recent real world conflict in late SG-1, I think it was Cameron Mitchell, or John Sheppard. The first one, I think, was a pilot of bomber and attacked bombed a group of people in Middle East, but these people were civilians, and Sheppard had once been stuck after crashing his helicopter and losing his teammate or some such. But it's the traditional, cliché and unengaging tragic event, the hero's dark secret that makes him flawed I suppose.
Pretty tame and superficial in fact.
Now, we can recenter the topic on B&B vs. M&M, because it initially hinged on the question of ethics, and quality of scripts as well.
I won't repeat myself too much here, since I've already spent more hours talking about the failures of SGA and late years of SG-1 than the writers spent on their own scripts.
I'd have pointed you to some board which closed recently, it contained a LOT of detailed critiques against these two shows, but there's Gateworld, where I also post, where my comments can be found.
For the few things I've read from him, I happen to sit with SDN's Predator guy on how I view Stargate. It's really turned into a crapfest very rapidly.
But M&M are not the lone culprits. Wright is surely playing an enormous part of this shit.
The highest outrage, among other things, is to turn Children of the Gods into a DVD movie, by removing the full frontal nudity of Sha're, and trimming down dialogue between Jack and Daniel.
As you have probably observed with the shithouses that Continuum and Ark of Win are, there's literally no hope for future Stargate material to be good.
These two DVD flicks have demonstrated:
- an utter lack of sense and talent when it comes to script quality. No sense, no logic, plenty of loops, convenience and incoherence.
- a desperate addiction to dei ex machinis.
- a shameful love to exploit fans. Fan pandering, that's what it's called.
- no idea of how actually shooting a CGI action scene.
- an extremely disputable sense of pacing.
- a resolute spirit to exploit and necro the former glory and lore of the show, with no originality whatsoever.
- a total failure to make things even look epic.
- a wish to milk more by blasting what could and should have remained mysterious, like the origin of the stargates for example (we got a guy scribbling notes in a goddamn batcave, and oh my, that naive drawing... what was I supposed to do when I saw that? Cry before the beauty and emotion of thing shameless string.
- a lack of care to build real characters beyond the usual pitfalls of late.
- a pathological lack of courage and an overreliance on the Big Reset button. These guys need to see a doctor.
If we need to return to M&M, one will notice how Frtizell, the actress playing 99.9% of the Wraith queens, was really interested in the Wraith culture, their values and social structure.
She clearly demonstrated not only a taste and curiosity for the concept, but a better understanding of it far beyond anything the "writers" ever put down.
We could also talk about how Flanigan (Sheppard) suggested to the writers that maybe after Weir's death, the characters should actually feel something about her in at least the following episode. You know, show that
the characters are affected and cared, that something has changed.
The damn stupid writers and managers were like, oh yes, of course, that's a very good idea!
...
WTF?
It was even more painful since at the same time, nBSG was airing an episode where a lengthy yet humble toast was raised to the semi-redshirt pilots who died since the beginning of the exodus... which on the same hand completely ridiculed SGA's over the top funerals of Carson, bagpipes and all that shit... the same Carson brought back in the most pathetic and forced way... yet M&M had the gall to pretend that they had left clues about Caron's true fate since Misbegotten! This, because in truth, they could not publicly admit they had been pandering to the whining whumping wet fans.
Season 1 of SGA was a good introduction. It had many flaws, but they could have been corrected to make a better show. Instead, the show bombed after a few episodes of season 2, and it took four fucking years for those guys to admit having produced some stuff which was not as rich as they tought.
Anyone who has followed SGA would know that scribbling a few notes on one sheet of paper about Teyla and Ronan already was a thousand times greater than the development they ever got in three years, and it took all that time for the writers to "realize" that they may have no developped characters sufficiently. Of course, what came after that was barely better.
One thing Stargate has established thus far is closing its shows with the most pathetic finales ever written. Unending on one side, Enemy at the Gates on the other.
I long for a massive overhaul in the staff, in order to return to a quality which defined the first 3~5 years of SG-1, and a clear will to present and epic and exotic tale which would equal the fantastic movie from 1994.