Stargate: Boring (Pilot)

I'd been holding off on watching Stargate: Universe for two reasons. The first, because I (gasp) haven't finished Stargate SG-1. I find it difficult to finish a beloved show, but that's another psychiatrist visit.

The second reason was that I had heard uninspiring things about SG:U. However, I love the world of Stargate and knew I would have to give Universe a try eventually. So finally I decided to watch 'Air', the first episode.

I didn't make it even half way.

A while back, I watched two versions of the same pilot of a tv show and lamented how, within the first few minutes, a viewer could already sense problems in the show.

I found SG:U played right into this same issue of struggling before it had started. Being the third in a franchise, it-- like that Life on Mars pilot-- invites comparisons to its stargate predecessors. Both SG-1 and Atlantis had their troubles but were overall highly successful shows loved by many. Both had very tight pilot episodes that sucked me in.

Spoilers!

Universe, starring Robert Carlyle and Brian J. Smith, among others, opens with a large ship gliding in space. So far, so good. Seconds later, we are watching people get tossed at speed through a stargate, presumably aboard the ship. They are landing with enough force to be injured and frequently be hit by flying luggage and other travellers. Initially, I was drawn in, but my content was almost immediately crushed by a single line spoken by Brian J. Smith:

Slow down the evac! We're coming in too hot!

What is it about this line, spoken two minutes and fifty two seconds into the show that stopped me from believing in what was happening? It may have been the self-consciously military phraseology that lacked the specifics to make it interesting, perhaps it was the inevitable knowledge that a lot more people were going to leap through that stargate and lie there shrieking and crying before it was closed and we could get on with things. Perhaps it was also the obvious nature of the statement. Aside from the word "evac", which hopefully you guessed from what you could see, everything the lieutenant says is obvious.

So that's the three minute mark and the air is filled with confused cries. If you listen to the soundtrack alone, you hear two things. One, these confused cries. Two, clearly spoken above the shrieks, some lines of dialogue which only compound the tragedy unfolding.

MAN: My God! Where are we?

WOMAN: What is this place?

Aaah! How awful! These lines are separate from the scene, edited on top of the random screams and crying in an artificial way, evenly spaced. They are spoken in a very amateurish way that sets them apart from the general environment of shock and confusion. Lastly, they are poorly written. Who says, "what is this place?" People in period films written in the fifties. Not only that, these two lines say precisely the same thing and it was something we already knew.

So now my heart is sinking. The writing is unimaginative, the sound editing is bad and nothing about the setting suggests we're going to get some idea of what is going on any time soon.

Other thoughtless actions occur while evacuees continue to fly out of the stargate. A medic identifies herself with a shout. There are people all around unconcious and bleeding and we watch her dealing with a man with a broken arm. The medic says, "hold still, I'm going to put your arm in a sling, okay?"

Hang on. We just saw a picture of a woman, unconcious, with a bleeding head wound. There are still more poeple pouring through the stargate while others lie on the ramp in danger of more injuries and this woman is going to start dealing with a broken arm right now?

Now I start to realise not just in bad writer territory, we're in bad character and environment development territory. The writers have just shown us that they are out of touch with the very situation they have written.

And it goes on. The Colonel is the last through the stargate, thrown much further than the others. There is blood all over him and he slumps to the ground, clearly close to death. The Lieutenant asks the Medic, "Is he okay?" If it was intended to convey the lieutenant's confusion, it didn't quite work. The colonel was clearly badly wounded before he came through the stargate. Of course he's not okay.

Except for quick glimpses of various characters, we've not yet been introduced to any characters. Now, however, the camera focuses on Eli (David Blue) for a moment. And suddenly, we're in flashback mode.

For me, Eli's how-did-I-get-here flashback was the nail in the coffin of Universe's opening sequence. We learn in the next few minutes that Eli was hired by the Stargate program by breaking a secret code hidden in a Prometheus video game. He is, in short, the geek fantasy character-- the audience. Within a minute of opening the door, Eli is offered a non-disclosure agreement (which he doesn't initially sign; he is basically kidnapped by the Air Force and emotionally blackmailed into signing) and we're beamed up into space to have the Stargate Program explained to us by a recording Daniel Jackson.

The crucial ten minute mark has been and gone and we know almost nothing about the characters or the situation. Worse, we do not care about the characters or the situation-- Daniel Jackson's recorded cameo has more personality than the main characters. Nobody's particularly believeable or likeable and the situations are hamfisted stereotypes of scenes most science fiction fans have seen if not on screen, then in their dreams.

Lastly, this flashback has no common link to what is happening in Eli's present at the stargate on this mysterious. Sure, that's the bizarre story that got him off world and no doubt the whole story will be told, but as of yet the audience is not making the link. So far, neither story is really improved by having the presence of the other one. In short, Eli's backstory was entirely unnecessary.

So, compare, if you will, Universe's opening ten minutes to SG-1's.

SG-1 opens with five unimportant Air Force plebs playing cards near something Very Unimportant deep underground. We know all these things in the first thirty seconds of the show after two lines of dialogue. Within a minute, we know that the Very Unimportant object is actually Very Important. Within two and a half minutes, we're already being invaded by aliens. This, if you remember, was the appproximate time of that first disastrous line in Universe. At five minutes, the invasion is over and the wheels of the show are in motion and we meet the first main character of the show.

Colonel Jack O'Neill is on the roof of his house, looking up through a telescope at the place we know this show is going because we saw the promos. We learn in a word and a non-action that he's retired and bitter and he delivers some beautiful opening lines for a show:

A little piece of advice, Major? Get re-ass'ed to NASA. That's where all the action's gonna be. Out there.

That is the main character's first real line. The audience knows: The lead is going to be dry, grouchy and funny. It's going to be space, and it's going to be action. That's at five minutes and fifty-six minutes.

And so the set-up is over and the real plot can begin. Already we're into that moving-right-along feeling that the middle of a show gets. Things are unfolding, introductions being mode, detailed conversations are occuring. At ten minutes, everyone is up to speed: the aliens are here and we have to take action.

The show would be taking action for ten seasons and movies after that.

Back to Universe at ten minutes: The plot was already plodding, the characters were dull, dumb and lifeless, the explanatory flashback unnecessary and too far separated from the action, the action itself thoughtless and grating.

Universe was mostly dead on impact, just like that unfortunate Colonel.

Review: Warehouse 13 (Pilot)

It's pilot season again!

For those of you not paying attention to this kind of thing, you may not have heard that the Sci Fi channel, in a desperate bid to attract more viewers, recently rebranded itself as "Syfy" with a cheerful purple, vaguely feminine colour scheme. The idea, I think, is to attract all those women scared off by the "Sci Fi" label.

You can watch their rather hilariously sparkly! promotional commercial here.

Warehouse 13 is the first of the new shows to come out of the Syfy name. The concept is a reasonably simple one: somewhere in South Dakota there is an enormous warehouse containing a large collection of magical or historically advanced artifacts and technologies from all over the world. Two Secret Service agents are recruited to "snag, bag and tag" stray artifacts causing hijinks across the United States.

I enjoyed this show. I want to make that clear from the beginning, because I have a feeling a lot of what I'm going to say is going to be negative. It was fun, watchable, light, and never made me want to turn it off. I liked the characters.

That said, it was more along the lines of a warm cup of tea that a piping hot one.

I have said that the show was light. I think that most of this episodes luke-warmness stems from its failure to capture the right balance of darkness and light. The writers were Rockne O'Bannon (The Twilight Zone), D. Brent Mote (not very much) and Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica). Jane Espenson brought you some of your favourite funny Buffy episodes and her kind of undermining wit was very obvious throughout the episode. I think, though, that these three writers together lacked the gravity to bring the show down to Earth.

There were plenty of moments where I think seriousness was intended to take over, but I think overall they were too brief for any kind of tension to build up. Scenes that I think were meant to be eerie were cliche and campy and never allowed to progress for very long before someone broke the silence. Moments where a character was genuinely shaken were steamrollered over by humour. Wit and humour can be used to great effect but without establishing a base, too much humour is like too much helium in a hot air balloon. Once the show gets too high off the ground, anything serious (and there were some moments that could have been very serious) is lost.

The characters, although likeable, were part of this helium pulling the show up. The two agents were played by Joanne Kelly (right brain character) and Eddie McClintock (left brain character). Both characters, despite having traditionally dark reasons for being the way they are, lacked a genuine darkness or seriousness in the way they acted or the way they spoke. Nor did they convince me as Secret Service agents.

Saul Rebinek, playing the kooky milk-drinking keeper of Warehouse 13, curiously managed to pack more of a punch than either Kelly or McClintock. He did manage to scratch the surface of gravitas. However, it was not enough to undo the bumbling, strange-gadget using way his character was written. With Rebinek, however, I felt that there were depths we hadn't plumbed and so of the three main characters I found him most convincing.

I don't think the writing and acting was helped by the direction (Jace Alexander, who directed the Burn Notice pilot). From a waitress going around a genteel occaision calling "champagne!" quite loudly (although, who knows, maybe that's how some genteel parties work?) to editing misdirection that was a felt too deliberate once you realised it was misdirection, I think that it was slightly off. The light, fun writing needed someone who would work to find the gravity in the situation, and I'm not sure Alexander really managed to do this.

Aside from the lightnes, there were a few other issues, mostly plot related. There were things that didn't quite hang together, especially with regards to the way characters interacted with each other and their environment. I think more attention needs to be paid to reality and logic as well as to the fantastical side of the show.

But for a show with a simple premise, Warehouse 13 coughed up a few memorable things-- mostly moments of humour. It's got definate potential, and I feel that there is certainly space for darkness, should a writer or a director go looking for it.

What would I like to see? I think I've answered this question already! A little bit more gravitas from writers, director and actors (or, just two out of three), and a little less corn, would be lovely.

Review: Life on Mars (US) - Pilot Remake

Remember this? This was a June entry in this blog, comparing two lines from various makes of the show Life on Mars. The former was from the UK version, starring John Simm, the latter from the US pre-air pilot released over the summer and widely panned.

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

This is what I wrote about these two lines, summing up my views on the pre-air episode:

The first is precise, human, delighted with the memory, evocative, and harkens back to another era, if not quite this one. It reveals detail about the character.

The second is boring, entirely uninventive, vague, and perhaps refers to the very first years of the 21^st century, when Sam bought ‘his CDs’. I understand that the choice of artist might need to be different, as may the language used to express the sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that a slick, fat line can be replaced by a shoddy thin one. The lines were there for the adapters (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg) to see. They turned a fat line into one there purely for plot purposes.

But there's a new contender for this line. Yes, they remade the episode and wrote a new line for this moment in the show. Here's the new lineup:

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

SAM TYLER: Wow! My mom used to take me here. I bought my first Hall & Oates album-- er, my, my, first Led Zeppelin album here.

Let's pause for a second to review these lines again, because the gods have indeed been kind to us.

Yes, as evidenced by the above dialogue, this new version of the remake is better than the pre-air. In this new version, the writers fixed many of the problems I noted in my original blog post. Whereas the pre-air was bland, uninspired by the era and muddled the characters in such a way that they lost much of their quality, this new pilot captures more of what made the original UK pilot so excellent.

I've heard it said that the pre-air was much closer to this September pilot script-wise, but I would argue that they are both equally distant. While the pre-air kept many of the exact same lines as the UK version, it seemed to stray exactly in the wrong places, muddling the script so much it seemed . The woman police officer in a man's world Annie lost her moment to be the hero, for example, and it was given to the lead Sam. In the September pilot, the line was returned to Annie, but re-written for her. The words are different, but the important bits are once again the same. The writers, who as far as I can tell are the same fellows who wrote the pre-air, seem to have woken up and the show has woken up again with them.

The writing is only part of the improvement. I wrote before about how I felt nothing evocative from the era to which Sam returns. There was no joy in an era long past but still remembered by so many people. This joy is back- perhaps the transplant of the show to New York opened a few doors in the creators memory. The music of the era once again dominates, the culture is vivid, the camera-work, photography and art direction is more inventive, expansive and full of delicious details.

Here's what I said I would like to see in the remake:

A slicker, wittier, more evocative, far more compact, more detailed and more nuanced performance from the writers and cast, and more expansive, scene-sensitive work from the director.

We got all of this. The show was almost ten minutes shorter than the pre-air, getting right to the details with none of the meaningless, slow talk that we saw before. I've already mentioned the increase in details in the writing and the production.

All that remains is the acting and the actors. It was better, even from the lead Jason O'Mara, who was wholly slab-like in the pre-air. The reintroduced details in the script gave everyone, including Jason O'Mara, a little more to cling onto. It is much easier to deliver the first and third lines of dialogue listed above than the middle one. That said, O'Mara still pales in comparison with John Simm's Sam Tyler, as do all the cast, even with the improved script. The only main actor who really seemed to be making the role his own was Harvey Keitel, playing the role of Gene Hunt. Keitel was, like most of the Life on Mars actors, taking over from another actor played in the pre-air by Colm Meaney. Although I preferred the actor playing Annie (Gretchen Mol), I don't think that any of the replacements were necessary. Perhaps the move from Los Angeles to New York played a significant role in which actor were available.

Although this September pilot mostly sticks to the plot of the UK version, there is a small plot change in the way the pilot unfolds, especially towards the end. I didn't mind hugely, except it seemed a little shoddily handled. (An eyebrow-raising key plot detail had to be explained with the the cringeworthy line, "you're not going to believe this, but..."). However, this new show already has several episodes under its belt and needs to tread its own path, even if it means a few missteps at the beginning.

I must say, having three versions of the same television episode made no more than a few years apart is amazing. I doubt it has ever happened before. It is a unique opportunity to really see what makes a show tick and what makes it grind to a halt.

Will I watch more of Life on Mars? Perhaps. For all the improvement on the dire pre-air it has achieved, the US show must make itself stand apart from the UK show before it can truly catch my attention as the original did. The good news is that from what I've heard it has improved, which is a good thing from a reasonably promising beginning.

I just wonder what was going through the writers heads when they wrote that pre-air.