going back to o'neill a sec, his character is NOT by any means 3dimentional. Given any situation, you can guess his attitude straight away. He's got no depth to him, in fact the only depth you ever get out of the man is whenever the subject of his son comes up, then he gets all angry and changes the subject. Shades of grey, thats what these characters need, and SG1 are so damned black and white its untrue. Teal'C should have a really freakish sex fettish or carter should become insane. How good was that episode when Daniel was insane? pretty good. I want my tv characters to establish themselves as one thing, then blow my perceptions out of the water. I want them to act a certain way and have a long and realistic life experience that made them that way. Goody two shoes characters are all good and well, but even the worlds greatest hero Jack Bauer has a dark history and you can never quite tell how close he is to breaking and just killing every mofo he sees. Thats good tv, when a character changes and you can see it happening to him/her. Not just an instantanious, one episode deal, if the strains and situations of the scenario of the show take its toll on a character and an amicable person becomes an asshole, or if a badguy (i.e. spike from buffy) becomes a good character because of the extenuating circumstances. And, as we may or may not know about spike, he in the end falls in love with buffy and tries to rape her. Thats three damned dimentional characters, taking them and exploring all sides of them. I dont think Stargate has really explored ANYTHING of the SG1 crew besides establish that they're 100% trustworthy and reliable. How about now jack is in charge of SGC, have him slowly corrupted by political power plays, how about he fights his war against the goa'uld in a dirty way, becoming personally obsessed with vengeance and the combination of power and desire for revenge makes him into something quite different.
Hell, these characters are just WAITING to become three dimentional.

I wont argue that they are the model characters that fully repersent human beings to the max but i think your pushing it there.

O'Niel may not be the most complex charcter but some people arent complex. Teal'c actualy did seem more real to me then any other charcter, mianly becuase he had the ability to. Over the series he became more open, devolped a sense of humor and even started to really enjoy ben and jerry's ice cream. I'm not going to lie, the characters could use some work but you have seen Jack's nasty side over the years. And Hell teal'c spent half of his life killing inceont defenless people for a race he hated and then he betrayed them.

Also BSG charcters 3D HA! Adama Is purley "This is a grim time and action must be made!" Guy. And Starbuck, the wild younge pilot who's tacticts amaze the big boys... come on



Edited by - DSQrn on 3/20/2005 9:05:57 AM

but theyve ONLY done 13 episodes of the series. Theyve only really started to explore these characters you have to understand. I can see them taking them and running with them. I mean we already have the fact that starbuck had a major role in the getting adama's son killed, who she was knobbin', the second in command has a serious drinking problem, the doctor chain smokes, the president of the humans has gone insane and there was a mutiny, theres a guy who has sex all the damned time in his head and is quite insane. These are not run-of-the-mill characters. And just from the first series, i can see these characters will not turn into cardboard cutout, generic folks. Stargate has had 8 YEARS to develop their characters and the only difference is that teal'c has a sense of humor? Not to be a snob here but that is the sloppiest but of writing i've ever seen. In Galactica's first year its done more interesting and inventive things with its characters than Stargate has since it first aired. Hell, i think the most inventive thing SG1 did was when they betrayed 5th on the replicator planet, they could have really made something more out of his return but they pussied out. And the Deus Ex Machina of having the Asgard or some other alien race turn up at the end, just at the last second and fix everything. Formulaic!!! Why not have the knowledge stay in O'neill and he starts going insane, talking only in ancient etc. Theres no tension anymore. When Anubis turns up at earth and there's a race against time to get the ancient weapons online before we're all destroyed, thats not even worrying anymore because you KNOW whats going to happen, you know in the last second how its all going to work out. There's never any lasting effects from one episode to the next, if daniel is posessed by some alien being, you KNOW he'll be fine before the episode is out. Killing Daniel was the smartest thing they did in a long time.

Okay maybe your right, but even with underdevolped characters they do things with them.
I dont see much of that on stargate myself.

Adn there are two types of series, a overall thread series where every episode go's of the last oen, and a self contained one.

Besides as for BSG, EVERY series that is considered good starts off best. The orginal episodes of stargate were the best episodes, as was the CIA show alias in the first season before the CIA was stopping the world fom ending becuase of a religous kook.

If BSG lasts as long as stargate, i garantuee it will degrade.

I came to the new Bg expecting noting. I actually was convinced it would be ****e. Instead it totally gobsmacked me with its depth and gritty realism. It looked and sounded totally convincing - the direction is superb. I new the battle scenes would be good but I wasn't prepared for how deep the characters would nbe and how i would actually end up reallyw anting to know what they were going to do next. And there weren't many formulaic denouments to stories, yknow when youve figured out how its gonna end 15minutes from the final credits. it surprised me, kept me guessing. bet no-one sussed what would happen to Adama did they? And I have to see Starbuck and Halo get back to the fleet. I really can't wait!

As for Sg, well, tis looking rather tired is it not? very much ran out of ideas some time ago. oh dont get me wrong, some of the episodes have been excellent and occasionally the humour is genuinely well-placed. I thought that final battle over the Antarctic was superb X-Fighters and Death Gliders battling it out, ace. and the Prometheus is always impressive. BUT then its back to some medieval planet or Daniel dying/not dying or Coinheads family or Jack not thinking he's man enough for General Hammonds boots or Sams' dad blah blah blah all wrapped up i some Star-trek plot. oh yes there've been q a few, some very blatant.

Enterprise, awful. sorry I hoped for something good and now i dont know who anyone is anymore.

Atlantis. please. one good episode so far? Ive fallen asleep in q a few episodes now, it just doesnt grab the attention does it? until recently anyway.

I have to admit, the new BG is definately not like the old one. But having said that I think they have improved on it drastically with what they can do in todays filming technology.

I like the way they made it gritty and added a real depth to it. The Cylones have a wide variety of 'robots' and have infiltrated the human fleet. It is interesting to watch to see and figure out who is really who. When they show scenes of the 'same' person in two differant places you are still left scratching your head at the end as to who is the 'real' one. The battles in space are ausome and the fact that they don't have 'lasers' but use something of a lower order that makes more sense. All the problems within the fleet and political intrigue is also nice considering you have a large group of people together, but that doesn't mean that they all agree on what to do next.

Still the Frame problem.... the FRAME PROBLEM!!! Oh well, there goes a whole catagory of Sci-fi Goodbye AI

you've mentioned this before but characteristically given no actual evidence or explaination...WHAT THE FRAK IS THE FRAME PROBLEM???

-arc

Look it up, i dont say that to be mean i say that becuase i dont feel like writting a entire page of detailed huzza on why AI doesnt work. Its quite well known and actualy drove the few odd people insane.

wow, you know what, maybe YOU should look it up:

---

In artificial intelligence, a variety of workable solutions to the logical frame problem have been developed, and it is no longer considered a serious obstacle even for those working in a strictly logic-based paradigm (Shanahan, 2002).

---

Source: linky
So leeds university says this isnt a real problem any more, i guess AI really CAN exist eigh? I cant believe for a second though that this was the real reason you didnt like BSG, because lets face it, if you cant suspend your disbelief about a programming logic error in artificial intelligence, then the outrageous LEAPS in quantum physics and other sciences that Stargate makes must send you stark raving bonkers.

BSG ISNT about the science though, they never technobabble, they never go on and on about the ways and means of this and that, they just present it in a "matter of fact" way and go about telling the story. When the science becomes more important than the fiction, you loose something.

-arc

Edited by - Arcon on 3/20/2005 4:32:00 PM

I'll take a look but you find out what the frame problem is. It is interesting anyhow....

I know stargate's are impossible but i dont understand why, thats why i can suspend disbelief

---

but you find out what the frame problem is. It is interesting anyhow....

---

You're driving me mad little man, i just SAID i found out what the frame problem is. and its NOT interesting, its a terribly boring and awfully un-fun field of computing. Its why i hate having to program artificial intelligence.

Due to the hour that the new BSG is on here, I don't get to see it often, hopefully I will more in the future. I have always enjoyed SG-1, though I'm not sure why. Star trek was my favorite by far. SG-1 is quite cheesy, but it somehow holds some kind of appeal for me. The first half of the season finale episode was pretty darn awesome, and I enjoyed the concept of seeing the program from a different timeline, although the dead horse concept of going back in time has been beat more than a whipping boy from the middle ages. Somehow the blatant ignorance of Richard Dean Anderson's character is funny... sometimes. Star Trek has held its appeal for me, mainly because of the movies. Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, are absolute classics, and First Contact, and Generations were rather enjoyable. In its later episodes, TNG was a great show, far better than the few good episodes of Voyager, DS9, or the other knockoffs. Anyone ever see an old sci-fi movie (series maybe?) called "Space, Above and Beyond?"

Hehehe my bad heheh (i still cant find where you said it but im sure you did, been a bit nuts over the past few days)

Well i found it interesting.... does that make a nerd?