First Stargate: SG-1 went down after 10 years. Now, Stargate: Atlantis has hit the wall after five years. That’s all she (they) wrote. Next up… another spin-off (in the fall, I believe).
Not to knock what they did there in the finale, but… I don’t know… it felt a bit… rushed, maybe. Then again, it also felt like it took a while.
I think maybe the scheduling had something to do with it. We were getting some good action and interesting stories before the Christmas break. It felt like it was going somewhere, anyway. Then we come back to the alternate reality story “Vegas” that, while fine on its own, was really a poor choice to get you back into the action. It would have been much better (aside from the last few minutes) placed mid-way through a season. If this series finale had been a mid-season finale, I don’t think it would have been a problem. Coming into this finale with that as a lead-in, though, hurt the finale a bit, I think. This finale should have been a part 2 or 3 of a longer story.
I have to say that the finale did surprise me in one or two spots, though. A death was a bit surprising (it’s a shame how they handled it), and then a girlfriend outta nowhere… what? I know they made a quick reference before, but come on… she gets to be in the final goodbye shot?
There’s a bit left undone in the Pegasus galaxy, of course, and they are making at least one SGA movie in 2009. So there’s hope that they have a bit more of a satisfying ending in the film… but then they also want to leave it open for multiple movies, so they’ll probably never completely tie it up.
I thought it was a good story, it just didn’t pull me in the way I was hoping it would. It’s a shame, because I really like the show.
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First let me say that with the ‘girlfriend’ issue you are completely right! I couldn’t believe that she was there at the end!?! And I didn’t even realise that they had hinted at it before this.
She featured heavily in one of the episodes (I was going to say throw-away episodes but I’m not really narrowing it down there) and she was to become a larger part but then they got cancelled.
The death scene shouldn’t have been that way either – lets just say they could have taken a leaf out of the Serenity book!
Lees latest blog post..Jim’s Mowing so successful, don’t need new customers!
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Jeff says:
January 10th, 2009 at 10:02 am
There was a look between them, if I remember correctly. That’s about as much of a hint as we got.
I’m with you on the Serenity thing. That would have totally changed the tone. I thought for a minute they were going there, but then, no. It would have made the conversation with Todd at the end much more menacing, which it sorely needed.
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The death scene was really good until they frakked it up a bit later.
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For the first 20mins – I think I saw just as much in commercials as I did show. And yes, it’s exactly what I thought was gonna happen… rush, rush, problem, rush, rush, bigger problem, rush, rush, take drastic action – pull new technology (the worm hole for the city) out your ass, destroy all hope – everyone is gonna die, give hope, new tech to our rescue, we win!
The Ronin death was surprisingly great, but then disappointing with the convenient resurrection and rescue. And were there only like 50 wraith on that entire ship? Shepherd blasts his way onto the ship and lands, and no greeting party? And the Ronin girlfriend at the end – my wife and I looked at each other and at the same time said, ‘where did she come from?’ And I’m pretty sure we’ve seen every episode. I thought it was a little out or character for Todd not to make then sweat a little more to get the ZPMs, but time constained. I liked the General Hammond reference – very cool.
Did anyone take note about the Odyssey reference, being on a secret mission? I bet that is the ship that finds the SG-U ancient ship.
I was kinda hoping they were gonna do what SG-1 did when their story line got canceled… they ended it with a good cliffhanger and continued it into the first DVD movie. Then they could’ve spent more time doing it right.
Oh well, it’s over now. I’m pretty sure I will tune in for SG-U when it premiers this summer. But, now I have to go through that ‘getting to know the characters’ phase again – which isn’t so bad, I guess.
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Jeff says:
January 12th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Lol… well, so much for being spoiler-avoident on Ronan.
I totally agree. They even handled the rescue too quickly. Just enough time to bring him back and threaten him, and then he’s rescued. The writers were like “okay, we got good drama! We killed him! Yea for us! Oh, crap, we want him in the movies. We don’t have time for yet another drawn out ’save the teammate’ bit… let’s just have Shepard shoot the Wraith on his way through.”
The girlfriend: she was the secondary character with surprise fighting skills in the episode where Michael comes back and takes over Atlantis and everyone is trapped in different parts of the city. In the end, Ronan gives her a look, I think, but there’s no relationship until the finale. My understanding is, as Lee said above, they were planning on going that way before the cancellation.
General Hammond reference was very cool, and the Oddyssey… yep, that’s our first reference to SG-U.
Todd… man, there was so much more they shoulda done with that. Just fleshing that out a bit more could have pulled this into a two-parter. Plus, they needed something more drastic (hmmm… Ronan’s death, maybe?) that would have made Shepard’s final conversation with Todd more dramatic. As it is, it’s obvious he let Todd live. If he didn’t, it’s way lame to just mention that off-handed in a movie to tie up that plot line, and a flashback to it would be out of place. The best way to handle that would have been to just quickly, and off-handedly draw and fire Shepard’s pistol. End of story-line, and well-deserved treatment.
Oh, yeah… and that wormhole drive… what a plot device. Yeah, like I thought for even a half-a-second that that wasn’t going to work. That’s about 3 minutes of wasted screen time that could have been put to better use.
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