S10: Critique & Contemplation

[RealmOfX]

Unfortunately they'd backed themselves into a bit of a corner in s8 (which they thought was their last at the time) re command & characters. That would've been the time to bring in another character who could 'step up' in Sam's absence (be Sam to her Jack, so to speak). Hindsight is such a wonderful thing

Sorry but I disagree with that. There was no corner to be backed into with regards to command or characters. They had plenty of time to think things through and come up with a reasonable reason for Sam to be absent and put a temporary person in charge of the team like some unknown but experienced and qualified officer from another SG Team.

They decided that it had to be a male lead for the series (God forbid that it ever be a female ) and of course the male must lead the team.
They decided not to even attempt to come up with a logical and within canon storyline.
They decided to throw out or destroy almost everything that came before S9 that made Stargate unique and "The Little Show That Could". (A campaign that I feel started just about the time RCC gained control in S7 and accelerated out of control in S9)

Hindsight is wonderful true but the horror that is Stargate Command was made because they did not do the basics. Plan out who their new characters were and how they would be woven into the existing canon. Instead they ripped apart Stargate: SG-1 and made a mockery of it by forcing the shadows of the past to fit around their new caricatures.

[Skydiver]

they focused on creating the impossible and unsustainable

needed a male lead. of COURSE that male lead couldn't take orders from the little woman (especially a little woman that sooo inconvenienced them by daring to have a life and family), thus the male lead needed to be the boss. However he also needed to appeal to the young viewers - the only ones that skiffy cares about - so he needed to be young, but he needed to be the boss, but to boss Sam - a nearly 20 year veteran of the Air Force - he should have been older than her, but an older guy wouldn't do, cause he wouldn't appeal to the young.

thus they needed an oxymoron. a experienced leader with the rank and time in service to boss around a 20 year veteran that was also young and enthusiastic and fun.

they couldn't have it both ways, and seemed unable to admit that somethihng had to give and that they couldn't create someone that fit all those requirements, because they are mutually exclusive

so they ignored the logic and instead made Cameron, a character of contradictions. And they had such a poor grasp of what he was and what he needed to be that he litrally changed from episode to episode, often little more than a plot device to make shoddily written and quickly cranked out template episodes work.

Ben did the best he could with thee situation he was tossed into, but the character of cameron was fatally flawed from his creation.

[Gregorius]

Unfortunately they'd backed themselves into a bit of a corner in s8 (which they thought was their last at the time) re command & characters. That would've been the time to bring in another character who could 'step up' in Sam's absence (be Sam to her Jack, so to speak). Hindsight is such a wonderful thing

What corner? The ending of S8 with the leaving of Jack had been started in S6 already when RDA started to reduce his scheduale. They had three seasons to prepare for it and yet they managed to screw it up.

And even if RDA left suddenly they could've written a decent arc to introduce a new character, B5 managed to do it in S2 when their main star of S1 was gone (Warren Keffer in B5 is another example). Yet somehow TPTB decided that it wasn't needed and assumed the fans would accept it with no questions asked.

Enter Cam Mitchell. A character plagued by problems from the start, he alternated in various degrees from a Mar(t)y Sue to Jar-Jar, sometimes even within the same episode. And even that wouldn't have been a huge problem if they gave him a decent storyline explaining his background to all of us and the reason why someone so instable was placed in charge of SG-1. Afterall, he was allowed to take the lead of the flagship team without any prior experience and placed in command over the flagship team's veteran which was 2nd in command for 7 years and led the team already for a single year.

Without a decent story arc to explain that, it makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

[Skydiver]

it was like they tossed him in there and thought 'hey, if all the existing characters love him, the viewers will too'...umm, no. sorry.

I miss what he could have been. If they had just put more than 5 minutes of thought into him maybe he would have stood a chance. But it's like no one ever sat down and said 'ok, who is cam mitchell?' and then typed it up and gave it to the other writers and said 'this is the new guy guidelines'

so, lacking any guidelines, each writer just made cam fit whatever they wrote. so he veered from one extreme to another because, it seems, along with making cam up as they went along, no one every talked to anyone else about what they were doing with him

[silly sally]

What corner? The ending of S8 with the leaving of Jack had been started in S6 already when RDA started to reduce his scheduale. They had three seasons to prepare for it and yet they managed to screw it up.

And even if RDA left suddenly they could've written a decent arc to introduce a new character, B5 managed to do it in S2 when their main star of S1 was gone (Warren Keffer in B5 is another example). Yet somehow TPTB decided that it wasn't needed and assumed the fans would accept it with no questions asked.

Enter Cam Mitchell. A character plagued by problems from the start, he alternated in various degrees from a Mar(t)y Sue to Jar-Jar, sometimes even within the same episode. And even that wouldn't have been a huge problem if they gave him a decent storyline explaining his background to all of us and the reason why someone so instable was placed in charge of SG-1. Afterall, he was allowed to take the lead of the flagship team without any prior experience and placed in command over the flagship team's veteran which was 2nd in command for 7 years and led the team already for a single year.

Without a decent story arc to explain that, it makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

I agree, TPTB had 3 major problems in season 9
1. Jack's leaving
2. Sam's absence
3. Cam's introduction
And they failed to solve properly all of them!
Some say season 10 got better, and of course it did they finally figured out what to do with Jack - ship him out to Homeworld Security never to be heard of again (if it weren't for BW!) Sam - hook her up with Cam make them best buddy and some
The only way I could watch S9-10 was to make a short marathon and you know what I realized? I can't remember a single memorable episode in the 'new show' that I'll ever watch!

[Gregorius]

it was like they tossed him in there and thought 'hey, if all the existing characters love him, the viewers will too'...umm, no. sorry.

Probably the whole BB was popular in Farscape and we've been writing this show for 8 years so we know what's best, played a large role. So lets introduce a Crichtonesque character which everyone loves so the Farscape crowd get what they came for and the SG-1 crowd accepts it point blank.

I miss what he could have been. If they had just put more than 5 minutes of thought into him maybe he would have stood a chance. But it's like no one ever sat down and said 'ok, who is cam mitchell?' and then typed it up and gave it to the other writers and said 'this is the new guy guidelines'

That same problem is apparant in Atlantis too. The thing is that all the characters have this huge potential but are never cashed in upon and turned into clichés. And even the whole story arc of S9 and S10 can be probably blamed on not spending enough time on it.

Or in other words the apparant lack of a show's bible was painfully made obvious.

I think one of the reasons SG-1 managed to do so well and establish a lot in S1-3 was because of the show's bible they had back then (I believe JM once said that) and after Glassner left (He left after S3 iirc) there was still Gecko bringing a singular vision to the show and providing much needed checks and balances. I can't imagine Gecko looking at S9-10 and not going "What the hell is this? This isn't SG-1."

so, lacking any guidelines, each writer just made cam fit whatever they wrote. so he veered from one extreme to another because, it seems, along with making cam up as they went along, no one every talked to anyone else about what they were doing with him

Sounds a lot like Star Trek: Voyager, and the situation with PTBs in charge for a long time.

I think the main reason is that with Gecko gone, RDA gone as an actor, BW over at Atlantis, and the increased work load due to having a single group of writers doing both shows caused a lot of the problems as the work load was probably intense and their entire support system of checks and balances, BW and Gecko, was gone.

I always wondered why the B@B didn't create two seperate teams of writers, or use a lot of freelance writers, for both shows. It's would've decreased the work load significantly for the writers and allowed for people to do some quality control.

[jckfan55]

Sorry but I disagree with that. There was no corner to be backed into with regards to command or characters. They had plenty of time to think things through and come up with a reasonable reason for Sam to be absent and put a temporary person in charge of the team like some unknown but experienced and qualified officer from another SG Team.

They decided that it had to be a male lead for the series (God forbid that it ever be a female ) and of course the male must lead the team.
They decided not to even attempt to come up with a logical and within canon storyline.
They decided to throw out or destroy almost everything that came before S9 that made Stargate unique....
Hindsight is wonderful true but the horror that is Stargate Command was made because they did not do the basics. Plan out who their new characters were and how they would be woven into the existing canon. Instead they ripped apart Stargate: SG-1 and made a mockery of it by forcing the shadows of the past to fit around their new caricatures.

they focused on creating the impossible and unsustainable

needed a male lead. of COURSE that male lead couldn't take orders from the little woman (especially a little woman that sooo inconvenienced them by daring to have a life and family), thus the male lead needed to be the boss. However he also needed to appeal to the young viewers - the only ones that skiffy cares about - so he needed to be young, but he needed to be the boss, but to boss Sam - a nearly 20 year veteran of the Air Force - he should have been older than her, but an older guy wouldn't do, cause he wouldn't appeal to the young.

thus they needed an oxymoron. a experienced leader with the rank and time in service to boss around a 20 year veteran that was also young and enthusiastic and fun.

they couldn't have it both ways, and seemed unable to admit that somethihng had to give and that they couldn't create someone that fit all those requirements, because they are mutually exclusive

so they ignored the logic and instead made Cameron, a character of contradictions. And they had such a poor grasp of what he was and what he needed to be that he litrally changed from episode to episode, often little more than a plot device to make shoddily written and quickly cranked out template episodes work.

Ben did the best he could with thee situation he was tossed into, but the character of cameron was fatally flawed from his creation.

And TPTB were arrogant enough to assume we wouldn't notice or care.

[Silverwings]

And TPTB were arrogant enough to assume we wouldn't notice or care.

What do you think Vala was for?

*these are not the characters you're looking for...*

[gateraid]

I should have been clearer (no promises this time ). 'Backed into a corner' probably wasn't the best phrase to use. I was meaning that with the benefit of hindsight, s8 would have been the logical time to bring in a full-time military SG1 member, as SG1 effectively became a 3 person team at that point.

Yes I agree that RDA's departure, AT's absence & BB's introduction were handled badly. I think part of that (the not planning ahead for s9 part, not what happened once they got there) though is due to them thinking that the series was going to end after s8 and even if it were to continue, it would be in the form of Stargate Command. Hence them killing the Gaould, the focus back on the Sam/Jack relationship, the not-bringing-in-a-guest-star-for-the-villian-and-using-one-of-the-regulars-to-save-money thing, killing the replicators (supposedly) and so on

[Silverwings]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodIsBoring

That sums up much of my complaints with TV, and this quote:

The result tends to look suspiciously unlike any real Balance Between Good And Evil, and more like a Balance Between The Author's Favorite Decadent Subculture That Nonetheless Respects Individuality and A Gross Caricature Of The Worst Hypocrisies Of The Author's Parents' Church.

sums up my annoyance with the Ori. Bleh.

[silly sally]

I should have been clearer (no promises this time ). 'Backed into a corner' probably wasn't the best phrase to use. I was meaning that with the benefit of hindsight, s8 would have been the logical time to bring in a full-time military SG1 member, as SG1 effectively became a 3 person team at that point.

Yes I agree that RDA's departure, AT's absence & BB's introduction were handled badly. I think part of that (the not planning ahead for s9 part, not what happened once they got there) though is due to them thinking that the series was going to end after s8 and even if it were to continue, it would be in the form of Stargate Command. Hence them killing the Gaould, the focus back on the Sam/Jack relationship, the not-bringing-in-a-guest-star-for-the-villian-and-using-one-of-the-regulars-to-save-money thing, killing the replicators (supposedly) and so on

Cut the crap! Replicarter was one of the coolest villains ever, I wish they wouldn't have disposed of her so easily...

[Jackie]

I preferred the replicators that were bugs. More sinister looking that way.

Fifth was okay, little weird though.

My fav villains were apothis and anubis.

[Skydiver]

pops and ba'al.

personally, i found nuby a joke. ba'al, pre clone ba'al was truly chilling because he was so calmly evil.

but once they cloned ba'al he became a joke too

[Gregorius]

Ba'al, the best villain until he was turned into a joke. Replicarter was fun too because she was an evil Carter.

[Jackie]

I liked pre clone ba'al too. But he wasn't in enough IMO.

Too bad the Wraith never found Earth. That would make a more complex villain. They are a predator above us. Not out for power...just food.

I would have liked to have seen the wraith in the milky way and going after Jaffa as well as humans. To bad they weren't intro-ed before SGA.