Stargate Universe: "Blockade"
It was 2009, and the Stargate franchise was at an inflection point.
The feature film was about to mark its fifteenth anniversary, the television franchise had been in continuous production for 12 years, and a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game was in development. SG-1 had transitioned to DVD movies, and Stargate Atlantis had just aired its final episodes on Syfy Channel.
Enter: Stargate Universe.
The third Stargate TV series was prepping its launch that fall, with a brand new setting and a new cast. Creators Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper intended to make SGU a different kind of series — more of a character drama than an action-adventure series. With a cast of characters marooned on a derelict alien ship called Destiny, SGU would tell its stories in a serialized fashion more than episodic. And it would not be afraid to have among its main cast anti-heroes who didn’t always make the best decisions.
Stargate Universe was also a pivot from a show set at a stationary base — both SG-1‘s Stargate Command and Atlantis‘s Ancient city — to ship-based storytelling. In a recent conversation with “Dial the Gate,” writer and executive producer Joseph Mallozzi talked about the changes and the new possibilities that the show offered — from a ship-based show, to a stellar ensemble cast, a ship with a continuously ticking clock, and more.
“The prospect of doing a third Stargate series but doing something very different intrigued me,” Mallozzi told host David Read. “Conceptually, I loved the idea of a ship show. It’s kind of classic sci-fi, with a Stargate angle. So that really appealed to me.”
There was also a practical production reason to avoid too much gate travel in galaxies millions of light years away from Earth. Watch the clip for the conversation:
While SG-1 and Atlantis focused on smaller casts of around five central characters, Universe was also more a true ensemble. Eight main cast members led by Robert Carlyle and Louis Ferreira (along with frequent guest star Lou Diamond Phillips) were given a chance to shine, while writers also enjoyed writing for a host of support personnel — like scientists Brody, Volker, and Park.
Mallozzi also talks about the decision to make the Ancient communication stones a regular part of the show, which also opened up stories that didn’t use the Stargate itself. The stones ended up being a controversial element in the series, both because it kept the reluctant crew of civilians and soldiers tethered to Earth and because the writers rarely explored the moral implications of their use.
But the stones proved to be a significant advantage to writing and producing the show on a budget. Using the stones “opened up the show and allowed them to not only communicate with Earth, but ultimately would also get us off the ship,” Mallozzi said. “And getting off the ship is easier said than done! Even though the Universe budget was healthier than Atlantis or SG-1, you would eat up a lot of that budget just by virtue of [the large cast and visual effects].”
Sending the crew to SGU‘s more alien landscapes was expensive – so Stargate travel did not feature as prominently in the third series. From “Water”
While the writers were often criticized for so many planets looking very much like the forests of British Columbia, Mallozzi said that there was a desire on SGU to vary the looks of the planets visited by the Destiny crew. “The problem was that if you were going to go off-world a lot of time it would bust your budget, just because you didn’t want to do forests all the time. You would have to create these amazing sets or mattes.”
“On the other hand, they felt that just being on the ship all the time would feel claustrophobic. And so that’s why they introduced the stones.”
Check out the complete interview with Joseph Mallozzi over at “Dial the Gate” on YouTube. While you’re there, consider subscribing to GateWorld’s YouTube channel for new videos every week!
What did you think of SGU’s different way of telling stories? Was it time for Stargate to evolve into something new, or did you miss the episodic adventures of its predecessors? Sound off in the comments!
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The stones were (imho) what killed SGU. They took time away from the central story and left a "chain of command" in place that the show would have worked better if it dropped. As long as Young was still taking orders, there was less a sense of responsibility for the actions taken.
I loved that the show was ship-based however, although the ticking clock was kinda pointless - you as a viewer always knew there would be enough time on the clock to tell whatever story they wanted to tell. Yes, it added some tension in that they were rushed to get back to the ship or risk getting left behind..... but other more exciting and varied approaches would have worked better.
Still - SGU was a great show that was killed before its time right as it hit its stride.
Agreed.
They did kill off the clock eventually. I suspect that they needed to create a sense of peril rather than just strandedness. The bits of the third season that became comic books continued to have a decent story, and led to further questions. A third season wouldn't cost Amazon much, for the fan base that would subscribe, and a story that hit its stride.
Hey. Rodney showed that blocking a gate works
Loved this show! I could kinda see why Stargate fans didn't like it. The drama was dialed up to 11 and it felt less like Stargate sometimes, but man was I hooked!
I loved Stargate SGU as well; completely hooked me when I went back to watch it years after the shows had ended. I think it holds up better if you separate it from the other shows. When it came out Stargate fans expected it to be another SG-1 or Atlantis and when it wasn't like those shows I think that probably turned people off. But it set out to be something different and I think it succeeded at that. In a way it was its strength and its downfall.
The idea of SGU wasn't terrible. It just wasn't well executed. I would have changed the entire reason for them being on the ship in the first place to something more meaningful. Getting trapped on the ship made for some boring stories and made the entire tone of the show very different from the typical Stargate experience.
I would have explained their presence on the ship the same way SG1 rationalized going through the Stargate in the first place. To acquire advanced technology to fight an enemy that is beyond humanity.
This series running alongside another SG series that introduces a powerful new enemy that overwhelms humanity would have give SGU familiar stakes while allowing for some different stories. Keep the ship in fairly regular contact with earth instead of being isolated. Not through the stones but through limited gate connections.
The communication stones were confusing.
Because you had actors playing other characters, and you had to remember who was inhabiting whose body. And just to further confuse matters, when they used the stones, this affected the chain of command aboard the ship and you had to also keep track of that - this complication didn't, I feel, ever add to the drama, it just added to the confusion.
And though it might have meant some scenes not aboard the ship, they were intrinsically hampered by the fact that the characters weren't physically there anyway.
So there was an inherent limit on what could happen - and it couldn't physically affect anything happening on the ship, but could only be "political intrigue" stuff... that really wasn't remotely interesting.
I'd rather have had it just be claustrophobic, and / or that every planet looked like British Columbia. That's fine. We all watched two shows that had gotten by just fine that way.
(I was always fine with the built-in explanation - all the "aliens" looked human, because they were transplanted humans. Ergo, it actually makes sense that they'd be on similar-looking planets to Earth, because they're humans.
All you'd need is a story or two with a radically different type of planet - where they might need to wear spacesuits to even breathe or tolerate the temperature / pressure - and then have the characters note that "yeah, this is why stargates are always found on habitable hospitable planets, because ancients / humans wouldn't have survived on some Venus-like hellhole of a planet".
So that's explained right there - and to arrive on one of these radically different uninhabitable planets, they have to arrive by non-stargate means to emphasise that stargates just aren't ever placed on planets where a human / ancient can't just walk through and happily survive. Because why would you ever place a stargate on "instant death, the second I walk through the stargate, planet"?)
As a long time SG1 fan who had enjoyed Atlantis quite a bit, I bounced right off SGU. I saw it as little more than an attempt to emulate Battlestar Gallacticas success and so not original at all. Reading this, I think LDP is probably what I missed out on the most.
The first time you use an acronym please say what it is. Not everyone resides in the same group of abbreviation users. Rather every specialty has its own insider jargon to make insider communication more efficient. From my time in the Navy LDP is a particular class of ships known as transport docks but I am not sure if that is what you meant. Even so I truly loved the USS Denver, LDP 9.
LDP is Lou Diamond Philips.
I have been streaming all of the Star gate series. At first I wasn't sure I liked SGU...
But was really disappointed when it ended when almost everyone was put into suspended animation for the long journey to the Mikyway galaxy? Was really hoping that there would have been another season to know if they survived or the ship made it? Kind of was left hanging ? As for those stones I really didnt like that Idea. As it took away from more interesting stories that could of been written about the other people on the ship. Or the ship itself . Being a relic of thr Ancients . And or interesting planets ?
They were going in between galaxies not to the Milky Way. Our galaxy is many many galaxies away, even too far away for hyperdrive let alone FTL.?
Interesting different people's take on these series. I was an SG1 fan, although some seasons were weak, some better, but I always felt that Atlantis was less interesting, being more typical of tv sci Fi, with stock stereotypical character types and predictable plots.
SGU, on the other hand, had complex characters, exceptional acting, and many twists. I loved it!
My only qualm was the perception (at least) of how much the style had been lifted from BSG. Even with that, I had to say it was very well done.
My issue with SGU wasn't that they were based on a ship, but that they changed the tone of the show. The 2 previous shows (SG-1 and SGA) had a light and more hopeful tone to it. I believe that since both current (at the time) shows were canceled, they felt that they needed to be more like Battlestar Galactica (which was the highest rated sci-fi show at the time). And switched to the darker (both literally and figuratively) more foreboding storyline. I enjoyed SG-1, SGA, and BSG all very much and thought both tones were fine. But SGU never seemed to find its footing, trying to emulate BSG. What bothered more than the SGU change of tone (from the general Stargate tone up to that point), was SyFy making such a big deal that SG-1 got to 200 episodes, but then canceled the show. WTF? I thought both SG-1 and SGA could've gone on for a few more seasons. Lastly, whatever happened to the SGA movies that were promised when they killed SGA off? JMHO.
This show made no sense in that the show rambled and the plot could not be followed
SGU was one of my favorite shows. They could have done so much with the show., with the ship, with the ancients, and with the cast.