Originally posted by Arica15
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There really is no excused for Brain Storm. Yes the network may have asked for a 'green episode', but why is that an acceptable excuse for Brain Storm being terrible. I mean, was it really so far beyond them to come up with a plot reflecting green issues and make it both scifi and enjoyable?
Actually the more and more I think about it Brain Storm is a really could example of what went so badly wrong with Stargate Atlantis. It may just be me but what I take from the 'why was Brain Storm so bad' question and answer 'the network wanted us to do a green episode' is that the reason that it was as bad as it was was because the writers didn't want to do the episode and decided that if they couldn't get out of the story then they would fill it with what they really did want to write about (McKellar) and then shohorn a 'green' element round about the edges.
Why do I think this is representative of the season and show?
Quite simple. Brain Storm was not an anomaly, it was almost the final in a long line of similar decisions which damaged the show (I say almost the last, I think that 'honour' goes to Identity).
Look back to Season 1, they spent the entire year building up a plot line, isolation from earth, the growing threat of the wraith, Teyla's connection to the Wraith and then somewhere between season 1 and 2 the writers all seemed to have a massive brain storm (see what I did there!) and decided to chuck all that out the window.....why? Heaven only knows as I've yet to hear a coherent explanation. Instead we had a character dumped - for reasons that amde no sense either, Ford wasn't the best character ever written but he wasn't that bad at all - and his interesting new plot about wraith addiction and going alone in Pegasus just abandoned. Because the writers lost interest and didn't want to write it any more. Sheppard's seeming connection to the Ancients - the little hints in Home, Sanctuary and all througout season 1 were all for nothing? Why, because the writers lost interest and wanted to write only about there pet subjects (which by mid season two was clearly McKay). And lest we forget introducing strange new plot devices (weakness in wraith technology anyone) and them promptly ignoring them. Because they wanted to write about other things.
Season 3 and we had Weir and Beckett get dumped. Again as we don't have a coherent explanation for that one we can only speculate but does anyone else think they might just have gotten bored of the characters. Again. (I say coherent but maybe I should say consistent as by my count there are at least a dozen different explanations that have been offered at one time or another by TPTB, and strangely none of them ever seem to bear any relation to any of the others).
Season 4 and 5 continued the trend. Viewers were crying out to see the wraith as the terrifying villain they had once been. What did we get. Replicators. Because the writers liked them. never mind the storyline (and the replicators) had been done to death on SG-1 but the writers liked them. Ditto for Keller. After the reaction to that character why was she promoted to a series regular (everyone remeber the howls of laughter that greeted the press release when they described her as a 'fan favourite' - I never saw the character described that way again!).
Then there were the cameos from SG-1 actors. All very nice but as I've said before, the SGA fans would probably have appreciated a little more emphasis on the characters they had tuned in to watch and not the ones the writers really liked.
Teyla as a character was abandoned round about season 2 (and I'm convinced that the only reason she wasn't dropped as well after Season 3 was that they couldn't get rid of the two female characters from the show so they retained the one they disliked least. I still wonder how long Teyla would have remained on the show had they gone on.
Now I know that writers cannot write just to please every little thing that the audience wants, of course they can't. However in the case of Atlantis they seemed to take every element that was working and decide that they didn't like it so wouldn't write it any more. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't cutting edge, it was just plain bad. The disconnect between the writers and the viewers by the end of Season 5 was so great that as much as I would have loved another season I sometimes wonder if perhaps they didn't actually do us a favour by ending the show when they did. heaven only knows what they would have given us in Season Six.
Actually the more and more I think about it Brain Storm is a really could example of what went so badly wrong with Stargate Atlantis. It may just be me but what I take from the 'why was Brain Storm so bad' question and answer 'the network wanted us to do a green episode' is that the reason that it was as bad as it was was because the writers didn't want to do the episode and decided that if they couldn't get out of the story then they would fill it with what they really did want to write about (McKellar) and then shohorn a 'green' element round about the edges.
Why do I think this is representative of the season and show?
Quite simple. Brain Storm was not an anomaly, it was almost the final in a long line of similar decisions which damaged the show (I say almost the last, I think that 'honour' goes to Identity).
Look back to Season 1, they spent the entire year building up a plot line, isolation from earth, the growing threat of the wraith, Teyla's connection to the Wraith and then somewhere between season 1 and 2 the writers all seemed to have a massive brain storm (see what I did there!) and decided to chuck all that out the window.....why? Heaven only knows as I've yet to hear a coherent explanation. Instead we had a character dumped - for reasons that amde no sense either, Ford wasn't the best character ever written but he wasn't that bad at all - and his interesting new plot about wraith addiction and going alone in Pegasus just abandoned. Because the writers lost interest and didn't want to write it any more. Sheppard's seeming connection to the Ancients - the little hints in Home, Sanctuary and all througout season 1 were all for nothing? Why, because the writers lost interest and wanted to write only about there pet subjects (which by mid season two was clearly McKay). And lest we forget introducing strange new plot devices (weakness in wraith technology anyone) and them promptly ignoring them. Because they wanted to write about other things.
Season 3 and we had Weir and Beckett get dumped. Again as we don't have a coherent explanation for that one we can only speculate but does anyone else think they might just have gotten bored of the characters. Again. (I say coherent but maybe I should say consistent as by my count there are at least a dozen different explanations that have been offered at one time or another by TPTB, and strangely none of them ever seem to bear any relation to any of the others).
Season 4 and 5 continued the trend. Viewers were crying out to see the wraith as the terrifying villain they had once been. What did we get. Replicators. Because the writers liked them. never mind the storyline (and the replicators) had been done to death on SG-1 but the writers liked them. Ditto for Keller. After the reaction to that character why was she promoted to a series regular (everyone remeber the howls of laughter that greeted the press release when they described her as a 'fan favourite' - I never saw the character described that way again!).
Then there were the cameos from SG-1 actors. All very nice but as I've said before, the SGA fans would probably have appreciated a little more emphasis on the characters they had tuned in to watch and not the ones the writers really liked.
Teyla as a character was abandoned round about season 2 (and I'm convinced that the only reason she wasn't dropped as well after Season 3 was that they couldn't get rid of the two female characters from the show so they retained the one they disliked least. I still wonder how long Teyla would have remained on the show had they gone on.
Now I know that writers cannot write just to please every little thing that the audience wants, of course they can't. However in the case of Atlantis they seemed to take every element that was working and decide that they didn't like it so wouldn't write it any more. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't cutting edge, it was just plain bad. The disconnect between the writers and the viewers by the end of Season 5 was so great that as much as I would have loved another season I sometimes wonder if perhaps they didn't actually do us a favour by ending the show when they did. heaven only knows what they would have given us in Season Six.
(that was kinda what Season 5 was for me... well, that and that I kept hoping it might get better... but strangely enough, it never did...)
Seems it didn't transfer in the words or on the screen. I agree with you. 
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