Wow, awesome discussion guys! Wish I could have been here sooner!
This was a wonderful post and ITA. My complaints are the same as yours, and there's a difference between writing characters darker and painting the walls darker and calling it a darker show. That inconsistency you mention haunts Season 5 in particular, because the writers were all over the place with the characters. The stories were good, but the center was missing and that's the most noticeable difference to me. Not surprising when they lost the heart of Atlantis. And I don't say that as an Elizabeth fan per se, but because in Seasons 4 and 5 the 'leader' of the city was not consistently there like Elizabeth was in the first 3 seasons. They were sort of treated like Keller or Zelenka. When they took out Elizabeth as head, they shifted the focus away from the city as 'home base', and I don't think they truly realized that everything in SGA revolved around it--that was the thread that kept everything flowing.
Love the comments on Elizabeth and John being each other's moral compasses, because that's very true and I've never thought of it that way--but it's so evidenced based on John's actions in Miller's Crossing and the end of Season 5, and Elizabeth's in Ghost in the Machine.
Have a safe & good trip!
Originally posted by Infinite-Possibilities
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Ah, this old Seasons 4/5 conversation. I know that I generally had an opinion that was often in the minority here but I always appreciated I could have a reasonable discussion here. Although I often wonder how I can have most of the exact complaints about seasons 4 and 5 as you guys and still like them. 
I figure it largely comes down to interpretation of what was happening onscreen.
I do agree with you about Elizabeth's presence though. I think the thing that made the later seasons feel darker was not only the changes in John due to Elizabeth's departure but the very fact that she wasn't there cast a very different tone over the overall chemistry of the cast. Now the way they often handled her void (in season 4 in particular) was sort of as "The unspoken elephant in the room" rather than addressing it head on like it should have been handled. And that caused no small amount of frustration in me but still, the principle of Atlantis and John in particular needing to stand up to all the new challenges without the support of Elizabeth was something that interested me quite a lot as a viewer. I think in a lot of ways Elizabeth and John sort of relied on each other keep their moral compasses straight, after she was captured both of them started to lose their way a little more often. And they had struggled with a number of moral choices even before that, and one thing that I felt made the show more "human" was that occasionally the protagonists were fallible enough to make dubious or perhaps wrong choices.
Generally, I've been a fan of shows taking a darker turn. It's just my personal taste of course but many of my favorite pieces of television have been where the heroes suddenly have their status quo shattered and suddenly have to deal with some sort of new danger on a different level than what they'd previously triumphed over. Actually I'd probably have to go back to Transformers to cite some of the best examples of that. But my point is that when I was growing up, well executed "darker turns"were arguably the most powerful television that I ever watched. And I found the subtle loss of innocence from before Adrift to after to be up there with some of my favorite TV.
At the same time, I can see why certain fans might be disappointed by the change. In addition to the fact that I know that not everybody likes darker turns, I've also learned over the years that even for a fan of it, a show going darker doesn't automatically make it better.
Battlestar is a show that I've really enjoyed over the years. I've seen up to the end of the third season and while I've begun to notice a number of serious flaws in the narrative, I still can say I love the show. But BSG is a show that is really pretty exceptionally far on the er... "dark-o-meter", I think a show can still be "dark" without being that dark.
Anyway The main defining thing about Stargate: Atlantis in my mind is probably this sense of pervasive inconsistency. In many areas, such as how dark or light it is or how strong or weak the writing is. In season 5 especially I think The PTB manged to include some of their very best and very worst stuff. And I think the writers are probably the biggest aspect of that because all of the writers all have a lot of excellence and stupidity to their credit. So I don't think any of them can really be dismissed as "good" or "bad."
*phew* I think that was everything I had meant to type. That took a while to post.
I figure it largely comes down to interpretation of what was happening onscreen.I do agree with you about Elizabeth's presence though. I think the thing that made the later seasons feel darker was not only the changes in John due to Elizabeth's departure but the very fact that she wasn't there cast a very different tone over the overall chemistry of the cast. Now the way they often handled her void (in season 4 in particular) was sort of as "The unspoken elephant in the room" rather than addressing it head on like it should have been handled. And that caused no small amount of frustration in me but still, the principle of Atlantis and John in particular needing to stand up to all the new challenges without the support of Elizabeth was something that interested me quite a lot as a viewer. I think in a lot of ways Elizabeth and John sort of relied on each other keep their moral compasses straight, after she was captured both of them started to lose their way a little more often. And they had struggled with a number of moral choices even before that, and one thing that I felt made the show more "human" was that occasionally the protagonists were fallible enough to make dubious or perhaps wrong choices.
Generally, I've been a fan of shows taking a darker turn. It's just my personal taste of course but many of my favorite pieces of television have been where the heroes suddenly have their status quo shattered and suddenly have to deal with some sort of new danger on a different level than what they'd previously triumphed over. Actually I'd probably have to go back to Transformers to cite some of the best examples of that.
But my point is that when I was growing up, well executed "darker turns"were arguably the most powerful television that I ever watched. And I found the subtle loss of innocence from before Adrift to after to be up there with some of my favorite TV.At the same time, I can see why certain fans might be disappointed by the change. In addition to the fact that I know that not everybody likes darker turns, I've also learned over the years that even for a fan of it, a show going darker doesn't automatically make it better.
Battlestar is a show that I've really enjoyed over the years. I've seen up to the end of the third season and while I've begun to notice a number of serious flaws in the narrative, I still can say I love the show. But BSG is a show that is really pretty exceptionally far on the er... "dark-o-meter", I think a show can still be "dark" without being that dark.
Anyway The main defining thing about Stargate: Atlantis in my mind is probably this sense of pervasive inconsistency. In many areas, such as how dark or light it is or how strong or weak the writing is. In season 5 especially I think The PTB manged to include some of their very best and very worst stuff. And I think the writers are probably the biggest aspect of that because all of the writers all have a lot of excellence and stupidity to their credit. So I don't think any of them can really be dismissed as "good" or "bad."
*phew* I think that was everything I had meant to type. That took a while to post.
Love the comments on Elizabeth and John being each other's moral compasses, because that's very true and I've never thought of it that way--but it's so evidenced based on John's actions in Miller's Crossing and the end of Season 5, and Elizabeth's in Ghost in the Machine.
Originally posted by Southern Red
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