GateWorld Podcast: ‘Blockade’

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• Ah here it is! Thanks! Been waiting and waiting :) Will listen later today :)

• David - I was reading Foundation at the same time, too. Keep being awesome, boys!

• Thanks the podcast was as good as ever - or even better. Looking forward to next 3 SGU pods and episode pods, really cool.

• At long last I can freely cavort about Gate World without having to worry about sudden, unexpected spoiler bombs! Yay! Just finished watching #SGU Season 2 DVDs. Too bad it's too late for me to contribute. The only way to avoid spoilers is by totally tuning out of all things Stargate until the DVD release. At first blush, I really liked 'Common Descent' & 'Epilogue', but I'm gonna have to rewatch everything before passing final judgment. There is something to be said for first impressions though. I mean, we should take note of the episodes that captivate us the most on the first watch. Some eps don't have strong replay value and start losing points in our personal ratings after repeated viewings and then we forget that when we first watched it, we were totally taken by it.

• I just watched the DVD extra: "Behind the Season 2 Finale: Gauntlet" Cast & crew didn't know if they'd be back for another season, but mentioned how being put into the "stand-up coffins" and shutting down the lights of each set when they finished shooting on it, made it feel like the end. I know watching the show, I was thinking that Acme/Shark & Co. must've known that SyFy was gonna scrap 'em, but I guess they were just prepping for the worst. It all came "full circle" but sure left a lot of unfinished story!

• Without having a chance to re-watch Season 2, I don't feel in a good position to proffer my thoughts about it. I felt like the 2nd half of the season was the best. I'm mystified about why the two alien species featured in the 1st half of the season just sort of drifted out of the picture to be replaced by the drones. Also miffed as to why none of the Destiny brain-trust pitched the idea of trying to re-program, commandeer or infect the drones with a virus, since they were just computers. I think that I liked 'Common Descent' and 'Epilogue' so much because they hearkened back to the old SG-1 format of stepping out of the gate into a new world, meeting English-speaking strangers, getting attacked, saving people, underground storage vaults full of treasure-data (which of course gets immediately destroyed) and getting out into a brighter, prettier environment.

• @fwupow - agree, that's why I liked these episodes too. And yes, I was totally waiting for the drones to be reprogrammed (has been done in ST and other scifi series, so it's a given :) - interesting tidbid about the actors in the pods, thanks

• When will the new podcast be out then?

• I'll add my 2 cents here 2 late, but there are 2 reasons why SGU's ratings dropped so sharply after "Life". They are the scenes occurring from 17:00 - 17:05 and from 24:42 - 24:50. Don't kid yourself that it was anything else. The following week, the show lost 30% of its viewers. There is no other reason why so many people would have dropped out on one episode. It would have to be because of a specific thing, not because of an overall "bad episode". A bad episode might make people consider to stop watching a show, but most people would tend to give a show another episode or two. The people saying they "just didn't like it" are covering for their real reason, otherwise they know they would come across as petty.

  Take any politically "controversial" movie or show, and look at its ratings distribution in IMDB -- for example, the all female Ghostbusters. You have all of the left-sided political hardliners giving it a 10, all of the right-sided political hardliners giving it a 1, and all of the rest of us normal people actually judging the movie on its content and rating it on something that appears closer to a normal distribution, somewhere around a very "meh" 6. Now look at the voting distribution for SGU's Life. Look familiar? This is a clear indicator that people stopped watching the show for political reasons. It's unfortunate, too. You'd think by the 2010's, especially in the sci-fi community, that there would be more acceptance. There was also the CBS ratings hit in 2013, The Millers. The following season, they added Sean Hayes as a gay character, the audience dropped 25% after his first episode, and the show was cancelled three episodes later. (You'll also see the same IMDB distribution.)

  I find Life to be one the most underrated episodes of SGU. The first half was a bit slow, but the second half contained some of the most powerful scenes in all of Stargate. Young finds out that Telford is probably fooling with his wife, then he has to dress down Spencer who is going off on Franklin, then he finds Telford with his wife and finds out that Telford is undermining his relationship with her. Then, he finds out that Rush is lying and undermining his authority on the ship. This is a very important part of the show's story -- it is the beginning of Young's downward spiral -- his "bad day".