To me the whole Ori storyline is an unsuccessful rehash of the show's glory days. Overall, the show is an interesting example of the problems that come up with long-running shows. I can understand the need to move plots forward, but Earth became so technologically advanced that there is no real conflict, it becomes a game of technological rock-paper-scissors.Beastro wrote: It in no way went into religious bashing and it it went so far as to undermine itself in little ways coming off pussy footing. The exchange between Landry and Mitchell is the one that stood out to me, as was what I vaguely recall of the Ori drawing from real religious texts in some way when making the Book of Origin. It was the part where one of the priests was preaching by a Stargate and Mitchell marched out from the gate toward him finishing off his lines by quoting the Bible.
I could see if they wanted a Medieval feeling to make the whole Merlin subplot mesh better, but from what I gather that was raised and then never really dealt with until the TV movie about it. It was at the very least a very half-hearted and limp attempt at integrating Camelot into Stagate.
The Camelot stuff had a couple nice moments, but in the end it really didn't feel like they took a meaningful stand about anything, which cast doubt on the value of the whole enterprise.
Yep, I agree on both counts. Universe got better when it loosened up a bit in the second season, but it never really earned its drama. BSG had characters who just happened to survive an apocalyptic scenario and deal with the psychological damage that comes with that and being constantly hunted. Universe presents unhinged, unprofessional characters, conveniently ignoring the fact that these people mostly don't deal with enemies and were specifically trained (with a couple of exceptions) for a top secret offworld program. Heck, the showrunners even made the mindboggling decision of giving them a way to communicate with and visit Earth whenever they feel like it by the third episode. These just weren't the people to make that sort of show, and by 2010 the fact that they claimed it was "darker" or "more mature" shouldn't have been enough to impress anyone. "Try hard" is the right description.The problem with Universe was not so much that they went too serious compared to what was established at the the expected tone of Stargate, the light-hearted one that complemented the odd episode of dead seriousness, but that they what can only be called "try hard". It came off more like an adolescent trying to act mature and tough than true maturity.
That and the fact it came out far too late behind the BSG remake that it was long stale as a imitator. That in and of itself isn't bad, original BSG was that very thing with regard to Star Wars, and despite the whole talk of rip off and legal trouble, it presented a very different and interesting take on the spiritual Sci-Fi kicked off by Star Wars. I just wish they'd had more of the episodes that approached good than the filler since they either went into the Colonies background or the Mormon spiritual undertones of the show, which I always find intriguing since whenever you settle into thinking it's going to be just straight up a Calcedonian Christian take someone comes up that reminds of of the reasons why Mormons hover on the periphery of Christainity despite being mostly run of the mill American Prods.
As far as the original BSG, it was far ahead of its contemporary sci-fi shows in many ways, and several of the ideas they play around with would easily translate to compelling television today. It's unfortunate that some aspects of the show were either underdeveloped or simply poorly (or cheesily) done.
