Stargate Universe Opens the Gate
October 9th, 2009Categories: Articles, Carl Lawrence, Television Reviews
By Carl Lawrence
Stargate: Universe airs its first one-hour episode tonight following its two-hour series movie premiere last Friday that unfortunately delivered poor-to-marginal ratings at best for the SyFy Channel. I think the network would have been better off airing the movie premiere Monday night of last week instead, followed by an encore rebroadcast where it had debuted on Friday, which most likely would have assured considerably better ratings for the show’s opening installment. The show will either sink or swim now based on the audience it manages to keep, and what the ratings for the opener indicate is that it pulled in numbers comparable to its predecessor, Stargate: Atlantis, which may well be enough to satisfy the network, at least for now.
The sad thing about the disappointing ratings for the premiere, however, is that overall it was a pretty solid and enjoyable pilot that should have been watched by more people, and it was a decidedly different entry to the Stargate universe that was originally launched on the Showtime network before migrating over to the SyFy Channel a few seasons later. I’ve never been much of a Stargate fan to be perfectly honest. I didn’t care for the big screen feature that starred Kurt Russell and James Spader. In fact, I didn’t like it at all, but I gave Stargate SG-1 a shot once they decided to turn it into a weekly series on premium cable. I hung in there for its first two seasons before simply tuning it out. I just couldn’t take it anymore, it just wasn’t for me. Once the series jumped to SFC however, and talks began to surface that they were interested in producing a spin-off, I started to pay a little more attention and decided to give Stargate: Atlantis a shot once it debuted. It wasn’t a particularly great show, sort of a poor man’s sci fi series, but since there was very little else, if not anything at all for a science fiction fan to tune into, I kept on watching, although SG-1 never managed to woo me back. I just wasn’t interested.
Stargate Universe started off somewhat differently in that it didn’t debut with an arch villain species like the Goa’uld or the Wraiths for its characters to have to deal with on an ongoing basis the way SG-1 and Atlantis had; it was more subdued and the adversary here was more the ancient ship that the characters find themselves transported to following an alien attack on the base where they were temporarily stationed. And one of the main characters, Dr. Rush (played by Robert Carlyle from 28 Weeks Later), may well prove to be a villain within their ranks, since he was responsible for sending them all there, and his impetuousness may prove to be his own undoing, along with everyone else if they’re not careful and they don’t keep him in check, and he always seems to find a way around attempts by the others to do just that.
The producers of Stargate: Universe were able to produce an interesting and compelling pilot movie without feeling the need to throw a major alien villain race in the face of the audience, which was somewhat bold and to their credit, but of course, they’ve had a lot of practice at this point, so they should be confident in their abilities to try and do something different, and if you haven’t yet seen the premiere I would recommend you go back and watch it. In the meantime, episode two airs tonight at 9 PM EST on the SyFy Channel. Check it out.
Catch Previouse Seasons of the Stargate Shows on DVD:
