any news on continuing SGU

[Mnikolic]

I only recently found out about it on this very board.

It actually bothered me that there was never an episode of the full original SG-1 team fighting alongside the SGA's Sheppard's team in Atlantis. It'd be nice to introduce a one-time-only Pegasus version of the Goa'ulds (who would be revealed to be the last of their kind in Pegasus) and the entire original SG-1 would have to come to Atlantis to help them defeat tge Pegasus versions of their former enemies who would be teaming up with some Wraith forces. Plus it would be a better continuity establishment than bringing Amanda and then Robert to SGA and it would've opened more and endless story possibilities for future seasons/series/movies.

They could've easily done the same in SGU - but have the storyline go that way so BOTH SG-1 and Sheppard's team (each in their own episode(s)) would have to pay a visit to Destiny in order to help out the crew of Destiny with whatever would be their agenda for the day.

[maxrpg]

I only recently found out about it on this very board.

It actually bothered me that there was never an episode of the full original SG-1 team fighting alongside the SGA's Sheppard's team in Atlantis. It'd be nice to introduce a one-time-only Pegasus version of the Goa'ulds (who would be revealed to be the last of their kind in Pegasus) and the entire original SG-1 would have to come to Atlantis to help them defeat tge Pegasus versions of their former enemies who would be teaming up with some Wraith forces. Plus it would be a better continuity establishment than bringing Amanda and then Robert to SGA and it would've opened more and endless story possibilities for future seasons/series/movies.

They could've easily done the same in SGU - but have the storyline go that way so BOTH SG-1 and Sheppard's team (each in their own episode(s)) would have to pay a visit to Destiny in order to help out the crew of Destiny with whatever would be their agenda for the day.

I believe SGU should have had the Goa'uld in it somewhere. I don't know which "God" it would have been but there's nothing to suggest an Goa'uld of old couldn't have detected the same signal the Ancients did and set off in search of it themselves, using the sarcophagus as a stasis pod they could have kept themselves alive and just pointed the ship in the relevant direction. Obviously the Goa'uld in question would have set off thousands of years after Destiny left but they could have come up with something to explain how it got ahead of the Destiny like the Goa'uld ship was hit by the blast wave of a dying star which sent it hurtling millions of light years through space in a blink of an eye (SG1 4x22: Exodus) and then the Destiny crew finds it floating in space or crashed on the surface of a near by planet they're exploring for food, they get on board and the Goa'uld awakens and we have a nice bit of action. Before the reboot movies are released I think MGM should at least give closure to us fans by creating a TV movie (or 2) just to close everything off and give the TV side of SG a proper ending. I'm know a lot of the main cast are busy off doing other things but I'm confident they would come back for a final bow and they could just use CGI for the sets, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

[Kacenova]

I believe SGU should have had the Goa'uld in it somewhere. I don't know which "God" it would have been but there's nothing to suggest an Goa'uld of old couldn't have detected the same signal the Ancients did and set off in search of it themselves, using the sarcophagus as a stasis pod they could have kept themselves alive and just pointed the ship in the relevant direction. Obviously the Goa'uld in question would have set off thousands of years after Destiny left but they could have come up with something to explain how it got ahead of the Destiny like the Goa'uld ship was hit by the blast wave of a dying star which sent it hurtling millions of light years through space in a blink of an eye (SG1 4x22: Exodus) and then the Destiny crew finds it floating in space or crashed on the surface of a near by planet they're exploring for food, they get on board and the Goa'uld awakens and we have a nice bit of action. Before the reboot movies are released I think MGM should at least give closure to us fans by creating a TV movie (or 2) just to close everything off and give the TV side of SG a proper ending. I'm know a lot of the main cast are busy off doing other things but I'm confident they would come back for a final bow and they could just use CGI for the sets, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

The Ancients were well beyond what the Goa'uld were, plus not to mention they were a parasitic race that took the technology of others. It's not to say they're stone-age like humans were at one point, but their technology is nowhere near the level of the Ancients; Even the Asgard weren't even as advanced, which Thor admitted to in Season 8 when he was arguing with Daniel about the O'Neill-revival decision in the pod. Granted, we don't know when the Asgard were 'advanced' enough, but still -- I think it's safe to say the Ancients were the only species that had the ability to detect that signal; And even with their technology, the signal was distorted beyond recognition, which led to Destiny's launch.

Plus, if you look at Destiny... For Ancient technology, it's pretty damn low-tech when you compare it to Atlantis and there newer designs. The Ancients intercepted that signal WHEN it was being broadcast or sent out, or something. Which was MILLIONS of years ago, if I recall. With that, regardless of what races and species were around, back then, the Ancients were the only one with the capability to detect the signal. I'm not saying the Goa'uld couldn't, but it would be next to impossible given the time-frame from when the Ancients found it. I am a bit fuzzy on the CMBR-theory about the technology, but the universe keeps pushing outward, basically. Which means more technology would need to advance to detect the signal as it becomes further separated.

And to be honest... I'd love to see a Wraith/Goa'uld slugmatch to see how the two species mixed. It would be awesome to see the Wraith scoff their attempts at 'being gods' off and feeding on them, revealing them to be False Gods. Even if they're both villains... The two species contend for superiority too much to the point where I could see them going head-to-head, and the Tau'ri being asked to help. Doubt the Wraith will ask as much, maybe except for Guide (Todd), who'd approach Sheppard. The Goa'uld would probably do the 'alliance' thing they did in Season 8 premiere to get help without groveling for it.

There was just a lot of untapped potential for crossovers that I don't get WHY they never got made. An SGU/SG1/Atlantis crossover might cost a decent penny, but I'd be interested to see how they could have played it out. Who knows... Maybe if the series DOES get revived, somehow, they could explore that avenue? One could dream. Lol

[maxrpg]

The Ancients were well beyond what the Goa'uld were, plus not to mention they were a parasitic race that took the technology of others. It's not to say they're stone-age like humans were at one point, but their technology is nowhere near the level of the Ancients; Even the Asgard weren't even as advanced, which Thor admitted to in Season 8 when he was arguing with Daniel about the O'Neill-revival decision in the pod. Granted, we don't know when the Asgard were 'advanced' enough, but still -- I think it's safe to say the Ancients were the only species that had the ability to detect that signal; And even with their technology, the signal was distorted beyond recognition, which led to Destiny's launch.

Plus, if you look at Destiny... For Ancient technology, it's pretty damn low-tech when you compare it to Atlantis and there newer designs. The Ancients intercepted that signal WHEN it was being broadcast or sent out, or something. Which was MILLIONS of years ago, if I recall. With that, regardless of what races and species were around, back then, the Ancients were the only one with the capability to detect the signal. I'm not saying the Goa'uld couldn't, but it would be next to impossible given the time-frame from when the Ancients found it. I am a bit fuzzy on the CMBR-theory about the technology, but the universe keeps pushing outward, basically. Which means more technology would need to advance to detect the signal as it becomes further separated.

And to be honest... I'd love to see a Wraith/Goa'uld slugmatch to see how the two species mixed. It would be awesome to see the Wraith scoff their attempts at 'being gods' off and feeding on them, revealing them to be False Gods. Even if they're both villains... The two species contend for superiority too much to the point where I could see them going head-to-head, and the Tau'ri being asked to help. Doubt the Wraith will ask as much, maybe except for Guide (Todd), who'd approach Sheppard. The Goa'uld would probably do the 'alliance' thing they did in Season 8 premiere to get help without groveling for it.

There was just a lot of untapped potential for crossovers that I don't get WHY they never got made. An SGU/SG1/Atlantis crossover might cost a decent penny, but I'd be interested to see how they could have played it out. Who knows... Maybe if the series DOES get revived, somehow, they could explore that avenue? One could dream. Lol

I know the Goa'uld were primitive in comparison to the Ancients, there's no doubt about that. We know most of the Goa'uld came to Earth and took on the persona of God's but there's nothing to say that the other Goa'uld couldn't have gone the other way. I mean one of them could have headed out and ended up in Pegasus where they encountered one the many other super advanced races that Replicator-Weir mentioned and enslaved/killed them and took their technology and they could have easily made it through Pegasus without encountering the Wraith as they were dormant at the time.

I agree with you on the Goa'uld VS Wraith idea, I always secretly wished that would have happened just to see how it played out between them. Even a single Goa'uld vs a single Wraith would have been interesting lol.

[garhkal]

Before the reboot movies are released I think MGM should at least give closure to us fans by creating a TV movie (or 2) just to close everything off and give the TV side of SG a proper ending. I'm know a lot of the main cast are busy off doing other things but I'm confident they would come back for a final bow and they could just use CGI for the sets, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

I would dearly love that. Close us out with a TV movie (extinction) for SGA and one for SGU.

[Mister Oragahn]

If SG-1 would end after 7 seasons and the originally planned movie (Lost City - or whatever it'd be called), the writers could just do what they originally intended and just write SGA and have just that show made.

I think SGA was a very late and rushed decision. At best parts of the pilot would have been found in the Lost City movie. I remember some staff saying they were surprised how lucky they got with the overall response on season 1 and not planned anything much beyond that (and I think that's rather legit, since the show quickly started to stink after a couple of episodes in season 2).

However, instead of writing just 60 episodes in a three year time for the new show, they had to write 120 episodes for both: the old AND for the new show. During those three years, the writers simply wasted all of the ideas they could've used in later seasons of SGA and SGU. Hence why they tried to change the direction of SGA in its 4th season - they were out of ideas and weren't able to come up with a plan how to continue the story without bringing old characters back (like Carter and Woolsey). That's when both MGM and the writers had done unrepairable damage to the TV series and the franchise itself - they didn't stick to their original plan of changing the direction of the show and its story, but rather, they tried to return the story to the right track, however, they were doing it the wrong way. The writing team was no longer creative and often resorted to time travel stories in order to resolve parts of the main story or an episode arc that went on for 2-3 years. From reading JM's blog - that's what we would be getting with the John/Teyla relationship episode arc, not to mention the unmade SGA movie, which would also resort to changing timeline in order to resolve a part of SGA's main story. The same concept was and would also be incorporated into SGU - the first two seasons had TWO time travel episodes (well, three if you count the Novus people episode) and season 3 would have the characters awaken either three or a million years in the future. SG-1 itself was concluded with a time-travel story and the unmade Revolution movie would probably end up being a timeline changing story too.

SG-1 movies were rather mediocre, I had seen much better SG-1 episodes, and that SGA movie would have been equally bad. Many fans didn't mind the bad writing, while another part of fandom couldn't stomach it.
It is a very good thing that Mallozzi and Mullie got pushed off. They were hurting the production and weren't even capable of guiding writing as to get proper mini and large story arcs.
Wraith were under developed and treated in a very stereotypical way most of the time, and many characters, especially main ones, were just plain badly written, if they were lucky to be attributed a figment of overall sense of purpose, which was glaringly lacking.
MGM has been very lucky that SGA didn't bomb too hard.

The lack of new ideas for new stories also contributed to SGU being more character driven than the two series that preceded it. Almost everything, seen on Destiny, was done to depth in both SG-1 and SGA (communication stones, ancient chair, the device which downloads ancient knowledge to your bran, the plants room, stasis pods, etc.). Don't get me wrong - I LOVE SGU, but the writers should have come up with more original ideas. I liked the story, but the SGU story was just a combination of a couple of plots taken from the other two shows and spread over 40 episodes. For such a format it was made in, it needed more original and fresh ideas to be successful enough so it'd earn a 3rd season.

Yes, they were short on interesting dynamic arcs. The overrun by ex-Jaffa and other bounty hunters and scumbags wasn't really enthralling. The fleshing out of aliens was very slim. It didn't seem to get anywhere.
They had a major problem being that the plots required the ship jumping from galaxy to galaxy. There is very little you can do with that, because there's no solid background to detail over several seasons, no main enemy, empire, lost culture or whatever. It's almost empty and barren, and anything found has to be left behind for the next episode. In a way, that was rather very serialized like in the old days while the character plots were continuous.
So it had to be character driven (which is a good thing, it seems some people use that in a pejorative way).
The show lacked something more typical of TV space opera, and lacked a very light touch of campiness. Like, say, SG-1's Torment of Tantalus, but rougher and more SF oriented. That would have worked well. I think it went too far into Battlestargatica realm. Minus the cool space battles... that's another problem: space battles have always sucked big times since day one. When you want solid space battles, either look at Star Wars' ROTJ (prequels' battles simply suck, they have no energy, no gravitas to them, same as for the CGI show).
Or you take your clues from Japanese productions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXnJr2fn-Uw (got a longer version here) << and I can tell you that in comparison to some famous animes, this one does feel sloppy and ponderous. Yet it stands so many heads above anything I've seen in two decades of science fiction on TV or movies from Northern America's studios.
Contrary to popular belief, an audience can perfectly understand the concept of long range firing and hyper velocity projectiles. You just have to realize that all Japanese kids grew on the likes of Yamato and Macros/Robotech.
US TV shows seem to be tailored for 60-IQ people, with things desperately slooooow and ranges so short that it's a miracle ships don't bump into each other, because for some obscure reason it's assumed people can't understand what's going on screen if we can't see both sides squeezed inside the camera frame. o_O
It really makes US-made space battles produced for thick audiences, and that's quite enraging.
One recent exception might be the Ender's Game movie adaptation, although trade offs were needed for the "show". But we still have long range and a sense of somewhat interesting tactics, regardless of the movie's value. Mind you, the movie started from good material.
In fact, the swarming in the final battle scene would be a close fit for one of those moments when Destiny was surrounded by the drones. I have to also admit that althoug the battle in Resurgence didn't convince me that they could pull it off, it still had signs of improvement.
Anyway, all of that is making me fell it's a pity because Destiny is a beautiful ship, actually one of the bests in all of science fiction, TV and movies combined.

I'd probably have to speak about this a bit more, but since I just had a medical exam, I can't think of anything else right now. If I come up with more stuff, I'll post in this thread or just edit this post. Bottom line: SGU is never coming back. SGA is never coming back. SG-1 is never coming back. Unless the reboot fails and Joe Flanigan convinces MGM to lease him the franchise like he wanted when SGA (and later SGU) got cancelled.

Yes, SGU is most likely buried now.

[sci-fi fanatic]

I would dearly love that. Close us out with a TV movie (extinction) for SGA and one for SGU.

I do think there's still an audience for a movie in some format. I wonder if bringing in people from all three shows could give it a better chance to get sold? It might not finish each story, but at least it would continue it...

[SolC9]

There is absolutely still an audience for Stargate. At this point though, it would be incredibly risky to try to continue it after 3+ years. I've recently finished rewatching all 17 seasons of the shows, and I just finished SGU today. If they were going to continue it, they could very easily do so by writing in a stasis chamber failure for actors not returning due to other obligations. They could do a movie, but I feel there is way too much story left to tell to do it that way. I'd be fine with it if they published a novel (or series of novels) to finish it. My dream though is for MGM to allow Bethesda or Bioware to make a single player open-world RPG for consoles with gameplay similar to Mass Effect and an open world like Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

[garhkal]

Agreed on the "chamber fails' for those actors/actresses who don't want to return, but i DO hope our core (volkar, brody, parks, greer, scott, tj, rush, wray, everett, varro, lt james, the cook guy and even telford) return.

[Mister Oragahn]

I do think there's still an audience for a movie in some format. I wonder if bringing in people from all three shows could give it a better chance to get sold? It might not finish each story, but at least it would continue it...

No, that would be too much of a mess, not enough attention to all casts and would require some convoluted plot to assemble them all. SGU's cast is best faaaar away from Earth, just as much as SGA's cast would be far better doing stuff in Pegasus. As for SG-1, it's largely done and over. The Ori arc got screwed and served with a quick finish in the form of a meh movie which was to double as a decent end to SG-1 in case nothing else would be done. It's not like the Ori arc doesn't have lots of potential you know. The aftermath of such an invasion, all the bits left all around, the entire geopolitical state of two entire galaxies linked by supergates, the role of the Doci and all sorts of intrigues that could ensue, exploiting the technology, Priors still being imbued with powers, new cults rising, potential Ori having returned to the material plane well before the holocaust and having been living secluded lives for most of them, cast away or not, on many different isolated worlds, only to be found anew, some capable of tempting Priors to continue the tradition of the order, some starting their own cults, others being sort of gray area guys, some of them almost capable of reascending... and an entire galaxy to explore to learn more about the Alterans in their earliest days. OK I digress. You get the point.
I also think that pseudo grand finales wherein everything is settled within one hour and a half of movie material sucks beyond measure.

[jeri]

I also think that pseudo grand finales wherein everything is settled within one hour and a half of movie material sucks beyond measure.

I agree with you there. So much more interesting if things are left with room for the viewers to dream on.

I also love that Destiny and it's crew where so far away from just jumping back home. I was hoping along the way they would enter a section of weird space where those darn stones would not work! Ha, ha! I loved the idea of these people having to rely on their own as they traveled into the unknown. Because frankly, that is what we have done in our explorations in history and will do as we progress into space.

[Mnikolic]

They should've done without the communication stones in the first place. Plus it would get the Stargate Homeworld its own mission - locate the crewmembers without even knowing where they went.

[rushy]

Agreed on the stones. The Earth episodes were bad on both Atlantis and Universe. They just took you out of it.

[Krisz]

I'm not a fan of the stones either. The only inventive use of them for me was in 'Space' where Young ended up swapping with the blue alien. However, even then it was a shame this interesting experience wasn't explored further, such as how Young could adapt to the different sensation of being in a totally alien body.

This for me is one example of how SGU touched on some interesting ideas which were different from the previous series' but never delved further into situations such as this. In this way SGU could have focused on things more like this rather than all 'action and adventure' but that was too big a leap from the familiar Stargate formula. It's a shame, but I can see why it would not bring in the viewers due to being too ponderous and being something more in the vein of Kubric's 2001 a Space Odyssey. Closer encounters with Destiny's mysteries and interaction with the crew such as touched on in 'Trial and Error' would have been interesting as we could spend time finding out how Destiny actually worked with its crew.

The Novus descendants were a great idea I thought and had endless possibilities for development had the series continued. Whilst it solved the problem of having to think up totally alien encounters for the characters it could be argued that it was also an easy way out and went too much against the promise of totally alien aliens and worlds. Falling back onto the familiar themes of alien influences on characters with bugs and plants, coupled with the stones ended up keeping the characters within familiar scenarios more often than not, rather than facing alien ones and the challenge of understanding and interacting with the enigmatic ship Destiny itself.

I guess this is why SGU failed in a way and why it can never return. It couldn't develop what to me were some promising ideas, it would involve too much ponderous pacing which really doesn't work with today's fast and furious simplistic quick fix storytelling in TV and movies. Also SGU presented the idea of that mysterious 'stucture' at the centre of the universe Destiny was sent to seek out, an idea that could never have been realised in a truly original way I felt. Trek tried it in the movie Star Trek V and I was unfortunately wondering if SGU would end up going down that road in the same disastrous way had it continued. As much as I like SGU it would have fallen further back into the familiar the longer it went on I think.

[jeri]

Great post Kris. I agree that the show really couldn't reach it's full potential within the media of TV. I think a lot of viewers where not able to understand, or perhaps, didn't want to explore some of these ideas. The slow pace it would take to do that is better served in literature. I think it's a shame, but that's what it is today.

If only someone would write novels to that level of scifi for this series and keep the integrity of the characters intact.