Geek Moments In Television
October 31, 2009
As GeekDaddy and I got caught up on DVRed episodes of Stargate Universe, it suddenly occurred to me that whomever pitched this series – and it’s predecessors – to the SciFi Channel* must’ve really been hardcore television science fiction geek… and by that? I mean “a fan of the Star Trek franchise.“**
What made me think this? It was a quick conversational moment between me and my husband. We were speculating whether or not this particular Stargate series would see the cast leaving the ship for a planet or not.
Visions of previous science fiction shows where the ship’s unending voyage flashed through my head: Farscape, Battlestar Galactica (both versions) and then naturally Star Trek.
I looked at my husband and said “huh… do you realize that this kind of mirrors the Star Trek series?”
What did I mean?
Well, there was this one really awesome television show, Star Trek (the original series), and this one really awesome movie, Stargate. They both launched franchises that have pretty much been juggernauts. Oddly, the underlying premise of the order of the series in each franchise matches up nicely.
Star Trek – the Next Generation (TNG) ===> Stargate SG-1 (SG-1)
Both revolve around people leaving their home base (TNG the ship, SG-1 the Earth base) to have episodic run-ins with the evil-or-not-so-evil aliens. Initially, everything was wrapped up during the course of one episode. TNG had the Romulans and SG-1 the Goa’uld. As things progressed, each morphed into multi-episode story arcs and got a bigger, badder, smarter, scarier enemy. TNG got the Borg and SG-1 got the Ori.
Star Trek – Deep Space Nine (DS9) ===> Stargate Atlantis (ATL)
Both take place on remote outposts. Earth isn’t in the picture here really. Sure there’s some contact. Sometimes the outpost is cut off. Both have wormholes to distant galaxies and Either way, there’s some mysterious race that provides the focus for the show – the Founders/Changelings of the Gamma Quadrant for DS9, the Ancients in the Pegasus Galaxy for ATL. The station inhabitants are usually on their own to face their problems – but somehow there’s also a bunch of local friendly aliens who get worked into the core team as trusted members.
Granted, the Founders end up being the complex bad-guys of the Dominion in DS9, while the gothy Wraith in ATL were the accidental foe of the Ancients – but hey, at least they didn’t stick with the lame Cardassians (DS9) or the Genii (ATL) who were essentially just angry, militaristic foes, rather than complex ones.
Star Trek – Voyager (VOY) ===> Stargate Universe (SU)
Granted, it’s only 5 episodes into SU as I write this, but come on now… a bunch of people, on a ship, far far from home – struggling to get back to Earth. STV only put their crew 75 years from home, a mere 70k light years away from home. SU has upped the ante by throwing their crew “billions of light years from home” in another galaxy entirely, not just a far-flung quadrant of the Milky Way. Both series have that “will they or won’t they ever get home?” element that wears thin after awhile. While it took VOY awhile to figure out how to create a method of contact between the ship & Earth, SU starts right off usings a communications device first used in the SG-1 series to have the two worlds touch base occasionally as necessary.
Still not convinced? Well, granted, the timing was a bit off, but both did have a not-as-successful-as-the-rest animated series: for Star Trek, it was Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973 & 1974 while Stargate Infinity only ran for one season starting in 2002 and barely made a blip on the radar. Still, it’s worth noting that both franchises gave it a go.
Looking into the future & seeing the past
So where does that leave us? Well, if things keep progressing, apparently the next Stargate franchise will take its cue from Star Trek and we’ll have a “Stargate Ancients” series that mirrors Stargate Enterprise in taking us “back to the beginning.” At least, if they haven’t already done it, they ought to look at it. I have to say that I never watched a single episode of the Enterprise series – but it ran for 4 seasons. Hey, why mess with a successful formula?
Are you listening Brad Wright?*** Yeah, we’re on to you. Keep up the good work.
* Now SyFy but I still hate that name change.
** I know, I looked it up near the end of writing this – but I had no idea when the thought first occurred to me.
*** Yes, I looked it up on Wikipedia just for this article. No, I don’t really think it was planned this way, but I think I might be more impressed if I thought it was, rather than it just being an uncanny coincidence. Either way, if they end up doing something similar? I’m sure it had nothing to do with this post . It’s not like anyone couldn’t think of it.
