S10: Critique & Contemplation

[AGateFan]

Seeing as the third to last episode is about

Spoiler:

Lam and Landry

I'd say, yep.

WTF!?!?!?!?

I thought to I'd stay on the safe side.
I didn't want to risk causing anyone to become physically ill at the prospect of another time travel story.

Ah, you are far kinder then I. I made at least TWO statements sure to cause much abuse of intoxitants followed by much hurl-age.

[Mandysg1]

Seeing as the third to last episode is about

Spoiler:

Lam and Landry

I'd say, yep.

I thought to I'd stay on the safe side.
I didn't want to risk causing anyone to become physically ill at the prospect of another time travel story.

Ahhh What!!! Thanks a lot smurf

[smurf]

I think the term you’re looking for is “Smart”. There was a time where this show assumed its audience was intelligent and didn’t dumb it down. You know before they decided their audience was too stupid to tell the difference between Daniel and Mitchell because they looked alike. I think RDA’s and Gecko’s attitude about ‘Assume your audience is intelligent and don’t talk down to them” is the one thing that really left when RDA left.

In TPTB's defence, it was MS's idea to grow the beard to differentiate them. Unfortunately, they agreed with him. Which throws that bit of PTB defending out the window.

What was that line in 200 about respecting the audience's intelligence? I'm beginning to suspect they "homaged" it from somewhere else because it sounded cool, not because they understood what it meant.

Thought on discussion of MS's acting choices: If MS acts better when playing along side Vala, and Daniel becomes less Daniel and more MS when playing along side Vala, can MS be said to be actually acting?

[Crow T. Robot]

Yeah well the same people that are celebrating the made for DVD movies are the same people that are celebrating the fact that the new Friday night line up equaled up the same ratings as the two gates.

Not good news if two original series you actually pay for actually scored the same as 1 original series and two series you just paid for the rights to show. Not good news for Atlantis at all. Add in overall numbers might be down for the BSG premier BUT demo wise Friday night is up across the board.

18-49 Demographics. 18-49 Demographics, 18-49 Demographics is what makes Sci Fi’s world go round.

[smurf]

Time travel
Time travel
Time travel
Time travel
**Clean up in aisle one please**


Here's an idea. How about:
SG-1 travel back in time to the point before Vala was taken as a host. Vala decides to save herself from becoming a Goa'uld, and we see how terrible it all is if she didn't/doesn't make the sacrifice of losing part of her life.
Valagate meets It's a Wonderful Life.
Perfect!!!

**Clean up in aisle two please**

[Crow T. Robot]

In TPTB's defence, it was MS's idea to grow the beard to differentiate them. Unfortunately, they agreed with him. Which throws that bit of PTB defending out the window.

<G> Back to lousy show running. Being the boss sometimes is all about telling an actor their being stupid, underestimating their audience and get back in to character.

[Mandysg1]

darn you smurf! look at the mess you've caused around here

[Crow T. Robot]

**Clean up in aisle two please**

Stop it! You’re scaring me!

And for crying out loud if they are going to do the whole time travel thing again. They could throw us back to Daniel’s conception, get a little ‘mature content’ in to the mix and end this whole ‘Daniel’s An Ancient’ fan argument once and for all.

They could also have Vala running around in skimpy barely hiding anything leather. Knock Sam’s top down another two inches. Put Mitchell and Daniel in tight skimpy pants that leaves nothing to the imagination. (HEY equal time with the skimpy leather boys!)

Think of the DVD sales a new “Sexed Up” Star Gate could produce!

[ReganX]

Thought on discussion of MS's acting choices: If MS acts better when playing along side Vala, and Daniel becomes less Daniel and more MS when playing along side Vala, can MS be said to be actually acting?

I would have thought that Daniel becoming less Daniel would be a very undesirable state of affairs.

Shouldn't the aim be for the audience to watch the show and see Daniel Jackson, not MS playing some kind of Daniel Jackson/MS hybrid?

[Mandysg1]

Thought on discussion of MS's acting choices: If MS acts better when playing along side Vala, and Daniel becomes less Daniel and more MS when playing along side Vala, can MS be said to be actually acting?

Deep, very deep I guess the answer would be NO, which could be one of the reasons S9 was so bad. (not including: lousy show runner, lousy writing, not knowing what cannon is [other than for blowing things up], horrible new characters....)

[Mandysg1]

I would have thought that Daniel becoming less Daniel would be a very undesirable state of affairs.

Shouldn't the aim be for the audience to watch the show and see Daniel Jackson, not MS playing some kind of Daniel Jackson/MS hybrid?

But that would be no fun

[Crow T. Robot]

Shouldn't the aim be for the audience to watch the show and see Daniel Jackson, not MS playing some kind of Daniel Jackson/MS hybrid?

Well in MS defense I wouldn’t say RDA’s Jack O’Neill is the same one as the movie. I can see why RDA did it though.... Living in a suicidal depressed character's head for 18 hours day... I don’t think I could have done it either.

[smurf]

Well in MS defense I wouldn’t say RDA’s Jack O’Neill is the same one as the movie. I can see why RDA did it though.... Living in a suicidal depressed character's head for 18 hours day... I don’t think I could have done it either.

Difference I can see is that RDA made Jack more likeable and did it for the specific reason of taking the long term view of his place in the show, and MS has made Daniel (for me) far, far, more unlikeable, and seems to be doing it because he doesn't like the character.



And I apologise to everyone for the mess. Look on the bright side; we know TPTB lurk around these threads, so if they even go near Valagate meets It's a Wonderful Life I could sue them for stealing my idea, and prevent it happening.

[JessM]

yes, it has been sorely missing

I'm not a fan of humiliation humor, aka slap stick

i find it degrading and not at all fun to watch...which is why so much of what they've done lately has been more likely to make me cringe than entertain me

i can't help but feel that 5 years down the line, some of these actors are gonna come across one of the eps on tv and see themselves acting/being made the fool and shake their head and wonder if it was really worth it

the show used to be so classy and dignified

I can't argue with that. It's just one bit of proof that the show has pretty much become a caricature of itself imho.

[JessM]

I'm glad some of the older fans can see this as well. I watched 8 seasons in one whole swoop in the spring, and then caught up to season 9. Daniel changed tremendously and lost some of the endearing qualities about him. Then I started reading old interviews with Michale Shanks, and found out he didn't like half the personality traits that the Daniel character carried over from the films. MS didn't like that Daniel had allergies. MS complained about Daniel's wardorbe when it was still much geekier. MS doesn't like the glasses, but they haven't been dumped because that's a huge part of the character. It doesn't mean that he won't do entire episodes without them though.

He has changed so much. People argue that the change was pretty gradual and he had to change after all he'd been through over the years. I guess some change would be expected, but when I compare the Season 7(or 8) and later Daniel to the Daniel of Season 1-5(or 1-3,4...) it's almost like a whole different person. I remember reading those interviews where MS wasn't thrilled about the allergies - I think one of them was actually from season 2. At that con I attended, he stressed that he didn't wear glasses but Daniel isn't a candidate for Lasik. I think at one point he even conceded that wearing the glasses could be a good thing because they can protect Daniel's eyes when they're in combat (or something like that).

He went a whole ep without wearing the glasses in Season 1 too, didn't he? In Tin Man? But I guess that was logical since the robots were supposed to be "bet-ter." (hmmm, speaking of which, maybe we can get Harlan to make the S10 characters "bet-ter" in some way )

The one that bugs me the most is the interview I read that mentioned that MS didn't like to play the character 'full of wonder' a few seasons in, so the writers stopped writing him that way. We still see bits of it, but mostly, he seems jaded and cynical and not particularly caring sometimes. The snarkyness is something I actually am okay with though, since movie-Daniel was a smartmouth and the novel version even more of a wiseass.

I haven't seen any of season 10 so far since I don't have cable or a good enough computer, but I'm afraid that even more, "daniel" has been tweaked to MS's specifactions and is nearly not the same character.

Yep, I've heard people saying on other sites that MS is putting too much of himself into the character. I can definitely see that in quite a few instances in S10. And in one ep (COT) he looked like he was trying really hard to channel Jack. That really fell flat to me. I don't mind some snarkyness because Daniel has been known to be a bit snarky as you mentioned, but I think it's been pretty OTT the past couple of seasons or so (definitely this season so far).

I feel some of the same way about Sam as well, and it worries me that AT has wanted to infuse more humor into her character. I think it depends on how that is handled, but the idea worries me in the hands of these writers.

I'm not too sure about Sam/AT... I know someone once told me back in S7 that there was one ep where it seemed like AT was trying to infuse more humor into her character. I think it might have been Space Race actually. But if it's happening this season, I think it's the fault of the writers. They have not been writing her too well and not giving her much to do. It's really ridiculous.