Wrote this in response to an email from someone who wanted to know what I thought about the current Stargate franchise. Might as well post it here too, since I've done very little with it in the last few months. Warning: contains spoilers.

Having now watched the Stargate: Universe pilot, I'll have to say that the new show must be pretty good for the environment, because it contains a high percentage of recycled material:

• Nerdy kid wins video game, which turns out to have been a recruitment tool, and as a result of his brilliance, he ends up going into space: The Last Starfighter.
• A team of civilians and military personnel go through a stargate, end up further from Earth than anyone's ever been before, in a habitat built by the Ancients which has fallen into disrepair and is low on power; they are unable to return to Earth: Stargate: Atlantis.
• The main characters are living in a habitat which continues to move further and further from Earth; they cannot change its course, and are attempting to survive on limited resources. Frequently, though, they come within range of a habitable planet, which they have a limited time to explore and obtain necessary materials (and, I would imagine, interact with the inhabitants) before their "home" moves out of range for them to return: Space: 1999.
• Hand-held, shaky camera work and dim lighting. An egotistical, stubbled scientist with apparent ulterior motives, who feels free to ignore the dictates handed down by the military hierarchy. Heralded in promotional material as "dark and gritty", with "flawed and unprepared characters" who blur the line between good and evil: the Battlestar Galactica remake.

So they don't seem to be pioneering very far onto untrodden ground with the new show's overall concept.

As to the pilot episode itself: for an hour and a half of running time, it didn't really feel like they covered a whole lot of ground, plot-wise. There really wasn't much differentiation between most of the characters (especially the military men, and all the women who aren't the senator's daughter). But it was a pilot episode, and those do tend to give short shrift to characterization in lieu of setting the scene and simply introducing the characters to the audience, so I'll give it a few more episodes to improve in that area.

I was quite annoyed by the "air leaking out of the shuttlecraft" subplot. By an astounding coincidence, they managed to arrive just hours before the leaking air became a fatal problem. When they couldn't close the stuck doorway, they didn't even attempt to block it off (crates, plastic sheeting duct-taped around the sides, etc). Though The Last Starfighter kept looking back over his shoulder at the floating camera as he stood near the stuck doorway, it didn't occur to him to use it to press the controls in the shuttlecraft to close the door (I would have been satisfied if they had at least tried it and discovered that the control panel would only react to the touch of a living organism). And although they showed that the ship was clever enough to seal the doors leading to sections leaking air, when the shuttle airlock door didn't close, it wasn't clever enough to seal the next doors closest to the stuck one? All in all, it was a pretty artless way to force the plot to a point where the senator sacrificed himself for the good of everyone else.

So... not impressed with the current state of the franchise. Like I said, I won't write it off just yet - I'll give it a chance to improve - but I was not terribly thrilled by the pilot.

(But if Gordie MacScientist starts hallucinating his dead wife à la Number Six, I'm shutting it off right then and there.)