How One Decision Can Get You Unemployed Three Years Later

Change of scenery. To be honest I’m sick of talking about politics. No matter how much is criticized nothing is or seems to be changing. Neither America nor Germany. Just one happy aspect: Canada has been voted the most stable country concerning banks! Their banks barely lost anything during the crisis. And guess what led to that? Early and restrictive state control. How I love Americans complaining about any kind of government control to be communism. I guess Canada is extremely communist and that communism is the best form of state, after all… at least concerning banks. Enough about politics. I wanted a change of scenery: How one decision can get you unemployed three years later.

Now come on: NO POLITICS! Yes, yes. I know. It’s got nothing to do with politics, but rather one of my other favorite topics: STARGATE.

Iris protecting the Stargate

There was a time when Stargate was truly a show about people going through a gate to other planets or rarely even galaxies. That’s why the movie and later the show were called Stargate. Easy to understand, isn’t it. Problem was: in order to create a far superior enemy this enemy needed a way to attack earth by other means than the Stargate since that one was protected by an iris (a protection mechanism that prevented unwanted enemies from coming through… in most cases). As in most science-fiction shows the solution presented itself in the form of spaceships – in the case of the Goa’uld they were flying pyramids with a protective shield and energy weapons.

The interim solution was to introduce the Asgard: your stereotypical grey aliens. They protected earth with their own gigantic space ships and even more superior shields and energy weapons. No big deal.

But this protection wasn’t enough at one point anymore. Earth needed to protect itself since the Asgard were busy protecting themselves against enemies which could just absorb their energy weapons.

Prometheus

Prometheus, Earth’s first space ship, was introduced. Now, I didn’t mind the decision and I also didn’t mind the decision this blog is about (which I will come to later). It probably made the show much more expensive but also introduced some of the most magnificent special effects. Battles that included spaceships were very well choreographed. It was a joy to watch these epic battles (though the best battles did not come until the ninth season of Stargate SG-1 after Prometheus was destroyed).

After Prometheus’ demise and the start of the first Stargate spin-off show, Stargate Atlantis (SGA) more Earth ships were introduced, all looking alike: 1st Daedalus, only available to Atlantis, later Odyssey and Korolev (latter one was destroyed, too) and even later the Apollo, Sun-Tzu and finally the Phoenix/George Hammond (name depends on which reality you prefer).

Yes, Earth built itself quite an army there, huh? Earth didn’t really need the Asgard to protect Earth anymore. They could protect themselves quite well. WELL, NOT EXACTLY. The engines and the energy shields were provided by the Asgard. And a lot more came. At the beginning the Asgard were very reluctant to share any weapon systems. So the Earthlings had to live with their rail guns and nuclear warheads. Not quite effective against the shielding technology of enemy ships: whether that be energy shields or smaller ships being shot down in place of the mothership.

Eventually the first Stargate show, SG-1, got cancelled, extremely short-dated. There was supposed to be an eleventh season but a few days or weeks before shooting the last episode of SG-1 the writers and producers got word that this was to be the end of the show (future direct-to-DVD movies aside). They wanted to go out with a bang… a big bang. Up until then the Asgard became the fan favorites of the show. They just had one problem: they reproduced asexually, in Jack O’Neill terms: “don’t have sex but rather clone themselves”. However, this caused their bodies to deteriorate faster and faster and eventually they were also struck by an irreversible disease. In the last episode they committed mass suicide and gave the humans their energy weapons, though many members of the Asgard High Council (their government) still opposed this move. But either their legacy was to die or to live on. More members decided for it to live on.

Asgard energy weapon

So the humans received the Asgard energy weapons: an extremely powerful weaponry which destroyed any motherships of any enemy with just a few shots. Only in the last episode of Stargate Atlantis they ran into trouble against one ship. But other than that they could easily kill off anything in their way.

Apparently this posed to be a big problem. Writers didn’t really know how to handle this power. Sci-Fi shows are only as good as their villains are bad and superior. Superior enemies in Stargate? Thanks to the energy weapons just barely any left. Either the humans were ridiculously outnumbered or they had an easy time transforming ships into space garbage.  But I guess the writers were a bit uncreative during Stargate Atlantis, anyway. It had great potential, but could not fulfill it at all. Ratings dropped and the show got cancelled again in favor for a new show (Stargate Universe) whose plot almost entirely takes place on a different ship.

Destiny

Remember the beginning of my post when I said the show was called Stargate since people actually went through this gate? This is not the central plot device in Stargate Universe anymore. Destiny, the ship is. They barely go through the gate anymore. So much emphasis is put on character development. This is not a

bad thing, if executed correctly. So far it has been way too much soap opera, crying and all that stuff. The special effects of the show are even greater (click the image below for an example).

But ultimately, the writers of the show confessed that they did have a problem with

the superiority of Earth’s weapons (Earth’s defensive weapons were even better… until they were destroyed, also in the last episode of SGA). Now a group of people is trapped on a ship which is billions of light years away from Earth and whose weapon/shield/energy systems are far inferior to the ships previously seen. An old plot device was won back again: inferior ship technology. But I guess we will see how this will turn out. However, it won’t change the fact that SGA was cancelled and a great cast was without a job after that. That show had some of the best characters of all times. I included some funny or marvelous scenes from SGA and SG-1 or behind the scenes stuff beneath.

Have a happy new year folks!

And finally, two tribute videos:

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~ by neoglobe on December 26, 2009.