Stargate Universe: "Air, Part 3"
“Gauntlet” is a magnificent episode of television. But of course it was never meant to be the final hour of Stargate Universe, which had reached the end of Year 2 in a planned five-year story.
Nevertheless, Syfy Channel’s decision to cancel the show (and, in so doing, bring an end to a 14-year television franchise) made “Gauntlet” into an accidental series finale. Finally united in common cause, the crew of the Destiny entered stasis in order to conserve power — as the ship began its long journey across the vast emptiness between galaxies.
The show’s writers were just as shocked as fans when the network cancelled the show … just when it was getting really good. Even if it didn’t end up on the air for five years, didn’t Stargate have enough clout that the ratings justified one final year?
“At the time I think we were under the impression that we might get a third and final season,” writer and executive producer Joseph Mallozzi told Dial the Gate. “And so when we produced this episode we didn’t really know whether we were coming back or not. And, sadly, we didn’t come back.”
The second season of the show brought the revelation that the Ancients had launched Destiny to gather intel on the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang (“The Greater Good”). According to Dr. Rush, the Ancients had discovered evidence of a coherent intelligence that might predate the existence of the universe itself.
With the door shut on a third season, the writers room never reassembled to spin the next chapter of the crew’s journey.
“If any show could come back, [where] we had set up a finale that would allow us to come back, it would be Stargate Universe,” Mallozzi said — even if it takes so long that the cast has grown older. With the crew in stasis, maybe “twenty years later those pods kind of malfunctioned! So maybe some of them look a little older. Some of them didn’t make it.”
Check out this short clip of their conversation:
In his first appearance on the Stargate interview show, fellow writer and executive producer Paul Mullie said that the writers had wanted to provide the audience with some sense of closure, despite the fact that the story wasn’t finished yet. The Atlantis team got a moment like that in looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge. “You have to do something like that to have some sense of closure,” he said, “otherwise it’s just so annoying to just be left hanging. But you don’t want to completely wrap it up because there’s always the possibility that you come back.”
Paul Mullie and Joseph Mallozzi
Mullie also speculated a bit about just where it was that Destiny might have ended up — although series co-creators Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper never revealed their full plan for the ship’s mission and the planned series finale to the rest of the writers room. He said there was some talk about Destiny‘s course perhaps being not a straight line out to the edge of the universe, but instead a course that would eventually loop back around to where it started.
“Yeah, we talked about that,” Mullie said. “In my mind it was always a possibility that they would come back to Earth, but it would be like a million years in the future, or a million years in the past — there would be some weird time effect to it.”
Check out the clip above for more, and don’t miss the full conversation with Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie now on Dial the Gate! While you’re there, subscribe to GateWorld’s YouTube channel for more Stargate content every single week.
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View Comments
maybe they would find the real ending to LOST there... LOL
LOST did have a very definitive ending.
such as it was. series went down the hill after the 3rd season IMHO
I am currently writing my version of a season 3 but I really did wish that SGU did go on for longer.
Well done. Send a copy out of your version when you finish
Def send it out! I'm interested!
I've been praying to the Bezos god for a new season, but I hear he only accepts blood sacrifices.
????
I wish they'd bring SGU back... but not until I see how the new Stargate is. The show is about traveling through worm holes to new worlds and meeting new people. It's sci-fi. And if the new show is going to be about woke crap and sexual identity indoctrination, count me out.
I watch sci-fi for sci-fi. Not for sexual identity politics and/or programming.
110% ! Less of that and more life in the universe struggles, over the dynamic of "what sex am feeling like today", or an alien changed me and now I identify as an oppressed alien, and want to have tenticals surgically attached ... Wait that actually sounds interesting....
Sci-fi was literally developed as a medium for exploring the "Woke crap" you're deriding. Have you never watched an episode of the original Star Trek? Minorities on the bridge, women in roles of responsibility, why racism is bullshit - it was mostly "woke crap."
I'm not sure it was developed as a medium for that purpose but it became an excellent canvas for it. I think the problem is when people feel it lies too heavily on that theme, when the characters appear to be based on one narrow aspect and not on their well.. character it doesn't translate into longevity. When a character appears "token" it doesn't resonate with any group. I'm not speaking specifically about SGU as I only watched one episode and didn't find the characters personally interesting. There are tons of minority characters who were successful and tons who were not. As a side note the "space hippie" episode of star trek was abysmal.
Star Trek: Next Generation was nothing but a vehicle for "woke crap".
Showrunner Gene Roddenberry actively fought writers who wanted to write "conventional" stories (jealousy, infighting etc), and kept driving the focus towards a harmonious society, usually interacting with less developed ones and theough that, challenging our own notions on drugs, racism, sexism, freedom of speech, justice etc.
Practically every single episode of TNG is "woke", and has a point to make. It makes this whole "woke" argument toothless and revealed as the straw mans argument that it is
Jason I think you have it right. Sci fi main story, Woke subtext works. Reverse and it doesn't. Female Doc Who was the same. Jodie Whittaker could have been a great Doctor...but they burdened her with so many "worthy" (and unfortunately themselves not entirely without prejudice) storylines, she had no chance to bring any character of her own to the role.
You're absolutely correct, the difference in my opinion is that the writing was simply better, up until Discovery and the slew of new shows. The social issues were tackled deftly, whereas even as a POC and a minority of several types I find myself cringing at the poor dialogue of the new series
ST:TNG had better writing? For Woke?
Oh, like when Tasha Yar was kidnapped by a black alien tribesman? Or Riker fell for a member of a hermaphrodite species? Yeah, i don't think you've watched the show recently. A lot has not aged well by Woke standards
I mean for starters chill out. Also, your examples aren't particularly good, the Riker episode in particular was groundbreaking. What show touched on gender identity like that at the time.
For me "The Orville" does the woke thing better than any other Sci Fi show. It's really good to see how it's status as parody/homage has shifted over the series, and asks harder questions about whether it's truly possible to "tolerate" everyone...and how far you'll bend your entry criteria if the race that entirely devalues females also happens to make really good weapons...
Sure - but ideas that were edgy and interesting in 1960 become old and tired plot devices in 2022.
Absolutely ?
If Stargate came out now, with a black guy and a woman in the main cast, you'd be screaming about it being woke. If you missed all the political statements throughout the original series, I'm not surprised you turned out this way.
It's the question about how good those characters are. Teal'c and Sam feels natural, not overpowered SJW figures, where 100% males are weak compared to them or/and being extremely racists, etc.
I agree this woke agenda that they're trying to push on everybody with sexual identity is not for me. I agree I watch Sci-Fi because I like sci-fi not gender politics.
New Stargate?!?!?!?! What when where???
Oh my god! The goa'uld were the ultimate transgender species. Stargate was as woke as it got for it’s time. Women in the military, black men pregnant with aliens, cancel culture, It had the works. You realise that the actor that played Ra was in the Crying Game and was purposely cast to be androgynous! How do you people actually watch sci-fi without being open to this stuff. It like liking a song and not having a clue what the lyrics mean.
Well u could love the sound
Indeed. Dealing with social issues in a thoughtful way invites you think - dealing with them in a 'woke' way is all about telling you what to think; often by trying hammer it into your head over and over. We don't need any more wokeism in sci-fi - hasn't it become obvious that 's the way to destroy a franchise at this point?
Basically, for at least sixty years - aka from the fifties to roughly 2010-2015 or thereabouts.... Science Fiction dealt with social topics of inequality, diversity and such things as deftly as the various productions' actors, writers, directors and producers could handle. And a deft hand could guide you without knowing it, or you know its there, know where its leading, and don't care because you know they care about trying to make a quality product that entertains you along the way too. You're not there for the social messaging, you're there for ENTERTAINMENT.
You're right Corvinus, at how Wokism uses a sledge-hammer, not to break down the 'walls separating us', but to knock you over the head onto your knees screaming 'okay okay I get it!'.
Another way to put it:
Woke: Message, no entertainment.
not woke: Entertainment... if there's a message, intentional or otherwise, well, we try to have both.
Some important decisions in the S G U were imorral and so I lost interest in the show.
Regards,
Geoff. Reeks
Sounds ideal. Challenging your morals and to think as others do is one of the most compelling ways to evaluate those morals. It's good to have the understanding that your morals are not those of others, and not necessarily inclusive of their views. It's how you can understand an enemy for gain or a friend for forgiving.
He could be referring to a certain female character made into a **** that sleeps with every scumbag she can while ignoring the one person who actually liked and cared about her. That was a pretty terrible and immoral decision for character development.
Sounds like you didn't watch the show at all. He cared for her from afar , but she only ever saw him as a friend. She had a boyfriend Sorry if that hit a nerve for you personally
Don't watch BSG then
I loved SGU possibly a bit more than SG1
but unfortunately for SGU it was ahead of it's time...
It's format screamed for binge watching (whole season launched at once) but the week format made it harder to watch....
A few years later Netflix becomes popular
I always thought the best resolution of the Stargate Universe plot was that the Destiny spaceship was traveling across the universe in order to get enough baseline distance and so interferometric resolution to see the data encoded in the fine structure of cosmic microwave background. When the ship calculates it is far enough away that the detail encoding the message can be resolved they'll fire up the chain of gates connecting Destiny back to the first end of the telescope, manufactured by the Ancients, creating an interferometer the size of an entire galaxy cluster.
It gives a reason for the ships behavior that's both scientifically plausible and fits in perfectly with the canon plot. http://superkuh.com/stargate-discovery-cmb.jpg
I love that idea!
I would give nearly anything for a 3rd season.
Anything uh?
He did say nearly
Maybe they would loop back to the beginning of time and we discover that the crew of the destiny is the ancients as they use what they learned to build the next iteration of gates. This why there are three versions of gates, which would result in four version in this next iteration of the future. A timeline that keeps building on itself over and over again.
This is why I quit watching SYFY they cancel the best shows in the peak of story.
Indeed
Agreed, the way they ended SGU is why I won't watch any new shows on Syfy. Don't get me wrong I might binge a show if it makes it to a finale.