What a season finale should truly be.

[Jill_Ion]

Thank-you!!! I get it! Rock on!!

(My extremely brief and rather incoherent way of saying I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my questions and I appreciate the discussion points you brought up. )

[Naonak]

The reason why I called the episode lazy is that the writers were saved from making tough choices about the future.

I don't really see what you're saying here. What tough choices were they saved from making?

IMO, the Stargate universe has never effectively dealt with emotional fall out. The one episode that stands out is when Janet died in SG1 but I barely remember anyone shedding a tear when Carson and Weir exited SGA. During the episode when it happened people were shocked but it was back to normal the next show. I'd expect SGA to handle death differently because the non military types play a significant role in the show.

I thought the fallout from Daniel's death was well-handled in Revelations and Redemption.

I think that part of the problem with Atlantis is that in Shep, Rodney and Ronon they've got three characters who - for their various reasons - are quite wary to talk about their feelings. In that way, in makes a kind of sense for them not to have many emotional scenes, it's just a bit weird. The scenes they do have - Rodney/Carson at the end of Sunday, Rodney/Zelenka at the end of TMC, Shep/Rodney in Outcast - are great, there's just not many of them.

[Othala08]

This is a very interesting discussion, and I think it highlights what long-term and loyal fans of SGA want and deserve - that is, more insight into the thought processes and feelings of these characters. One reason why this does not happen, apart from bitty story arcs and TPTB creating more stand-alone eps, is quite simply to be found in the dialogue. If you contrast SG1, especially the earlier shows, you had Jack and Daniel and Teal'c and Brata'c and co actually speaking sentences, phrases, speeches of dialogue - with emotion, intensity, anger, feeling - which the producers of SGA never seem to allow. If you watch any scene, characters get a phrase, a word, maybe a sentence - and that's it, onto the next scene. It's interesting that the main 'feeling' characters - Weir and Carson - have been sidelined, though of course we may see more of Carson in S5. I think the dialogue writing needs a serious looking over; the actors are doing a great job with what they have, which is not much. Joe Flanigan in particular IMO rarely seems to get enough to say - and he deserves better.

Regards Othala

[Lythisrose]

This is a very interesting discussion, and I think it highlights what long-term and loyal fans of SGA want and deserve - that is, more insight into the thought processes and feelings of these characters. One reason why this does not happen, apart from bitty story arcs and TPTB creating more stand-alone eps, is quite simply to be found in the dialogue. If you contrast SG1, especially the earlier shows, you had Jack and Daniel and Teal'c and Brata'c and co actually speaking sentences, phrases, speeches of dialogue - with emotion, intensity, anger, feeling - which the producers of SGA never seem to allow. If you watch any scene, characters get a phrase, a word, maybe a sentence - and that's it, onto the next scene. It's interesting that the main 'feeling' characters - Weir and Carson - have been sidelined, though of course we may see more of Carson in S5. I think the dialogue writing needs a serious looking over; the actors are doing a great job with what they have, which is not much. Joe Flanigan in particular IMO rarely seems to get enough to say - and he deserves better.

Regards Othala

I agree with much of this, it seems that lately Sheppard's role is mainly to give "meaningful looks" in response to whatever situation he's in. (although I think JF is a master of the "meaningful look" )

[Jill_Ion]

I've heard in commentaries on both SG-1 and SGA eps that the writers have to balance out, in some manner or another, the number of spoken lines per character. So, sometimes one might think character X would say something in real life, but in the show, the sentences would be split between a couple of characters. I don't think there's an exact percentage or scientific method, it's probably more by feel than formula, but that may explain a little bit of the shortness of discussions.

IMHO, Shep is the King of Looks (physically and emotively).

The more I think of it - and I'm not saying I should've even thought about it this long - 43 minutes is not long enough for some of the stories SGA wants to tell. There's an abbreviation, a quick coding handled by expressions and editing, to some areas of "life" in Atlantis.

[Glugory]

Wait, people actually thought The Last Man was a good season finale? It was 30 minutes of crap we knew would get retconned anyway and then a building falls on the team. Snore. This might have been interesting as a standalone episode, but a SEASON FINALE? Think back to The Siege Part 2. That was EPIC! Compare it to The Last Man. Oh wow, we get to watch all the characters get screwed up even though we KNOW Sheppard is going to fix it. SNORE SNORE SNORE!

[desh]

Wasn't this finale supposed to be very suspenseful? Weren't we all supposed to cry? I don't mean to suggest that a building falling on our heroes isn't exciting as a concept, but it is done so quickly, randomly, and seemingly cheaply that it feels like a copout.

Also, the Teyla/Michael conflict is handled very poorly in this episode, in contrast to The Kindred, when the team finds Carson and Michael's other experiments and as Carson has to come to terms with the nightmare, a devastating dilemma that is beautifully rendered. In this episode, Michael's ambition and conquest is treated with such ambiguous fatalism that it does not have the same impact. Very disappointing.