It’s time for the keepers of the “Star Trek” franchise to start looking in the rearview mirror — “Stargate” is catching up. With the premiere on Friday night of “Stargate Universe,” the score when it comes to live-action television series is now “Trek” 5, “Gate” 3.
“Universe” was developed for the Syfy channel by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, the same pair responsible for “Stargate Atlantis,” which ended its run in January. Mr. Wright was also a creator of the first “Gate” series, “Stargate SG-1,” which ran for an impressive 10 seasons (and was based on an original feature).
They’ve been doing this for so long that they probably don’t feel the need for lengthy explanations of the “Stargate” premise: ancient aliens scattered teleportation portals around the universe; the United States controls the ones on Earth, somehow keeping them secret from the public despite the trouble they cause, like intergalactic wars. Friday night’s two-hour premiere includes a very quick video lecture covering this history, which we watch along with a young math whiz who has been forcibly enlisted into the stargate program.
But all you really need to know is that when you walk into the white light inside the big circle, you pop out somewhere else far, far away. The premiere wastes no time demonstrating this. People come hurtling toward us through a stargate in quick succession, crashing on top of one another in a bloody scrum. We don’t know where they’ve been or where they’re arriving.
The answers follow in a series of flashbacks that sap most of the momentum of that nifty opening. The band of 80 or so people has escaped an alien attack by jumping through a gate whose other side had not been determined. Eventually they discover that they are on an unmanned alien spaceship, locked on autopilot several billion light years from Earth. And there’s your show: how will they get back?
If the setup sounds familiar — a small group of humans stranded in space finding their way home — it’s because it’s similar to that of “Battlestar Galactica,” Syfy’s other popular interstellar franchise (which has its own new series, “Caprica,” coming in January). The premise was the best thing about “Galactica,” so give Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wright credit for choosing their models well.
Syfy has promoted “Universe” as an “edgier” show than the earlier, jokier “Stargate” entries, which in space opera terms were Puccini to the Wagner of “Galactica.” And there’s plenty of tension in the premiere. The refugees’ troubles are only beginning when they escape to the alien ship, which is starting to break down after eons of travel. Already fault lines are developing between the soldiers and the civilians, just as in “Galactica.”
All this stress affords abundant opportunities for the overacting that characterizes “Universe,” as it does most large-cast cable dramas. But the show has one ace up its sleeve: Robert Carlyle, who stars as Dr. Nicholas Rush, the renegade scientist who assumes command of the ship. Mr. Carlyle is an actor of an entirely different caliber than past “SG-1” and “Atlantis” leads like Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks and Amanda Tapping (all of whom make guest appearances on “Universe”). He has a gravity that allows him to sell the most implausible science-fiction hokum, making you realize that performance as much as writing makes this kind of thing work.
He doesn’t have a lot of help here, though David Blue is quite likable as Eli Wallace, the young genius। The onus is on the producers to take their band of survivors in interesting directions as they try to go where only “Star Trek” has gone before.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/arts/television/02stargate.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment