rgforest

Just before Stargate: Atlantis begins you hear the words "A Sci-Fi Channel Original Production". They could be sued for false advertising, since there is not one original thing in this production.

Stargate SG-1 was about to end and the producers didn't want to stop the money train. The answer, turn it into a franchise. The show's origin is as derivative as everything else surrounding it.

Strand a cast far from home with a strong, smart and pretty lady in charge. Kill off a few of the crew in the pilot episode to make room for a second group needing a new place to stay. Star Trek: Voyager or Stargate: Atlantis?

In the first regular episode a black cloud was terrorizing the complex until it was lured by a heroic crewman through the Stargate to a barren wasteland. I'd watched the exact same plot on Stargate SG-1 an hour earlier. If you are going to steal a plot, don't seal one from the show that's your lead in, let alone one airing the same night, that's just bad manners.

The characters are incredibly formulaic. From the nerdy scientist to the sexy alien girl, from the renegade pilot to the downright racist depiction of the comic Scotsman, there is not one ounce of originality in this show.

Instead of SG-1's body snatching Goa'uld you get the soul sucking "Wraith", alien vampires who harvest humans. H. G. Wells introduced the idea of humans as cattle in "The Time Machine" so I guess they were conceived as "Dracula meets the Morlocks". Long hair, Gothic makeup and clothes, and I bet they've got a standing order with the casting offices looking out for really tall anorexic actors. Maybe they're hoping for a crossover from Buffy and Anne Rice fans.

The Sci-Fi Channel will get their money's worth out of this, I'm sure. But since their track record for original productions is dismal and their treatment of successful properties even worse, I'm not expecting much from this show.

I was amazed at all the great reviews here. I couldn't get past the horrible animation and artwork. Maybe I was watching a bad transfer from the 3D version but everything animated seemed to shake and flicker. It looked like they rotoscoped the characters, because only they had the jitters, especially their heads. There were also constant obvious mistakes in the animation, things like body parts missing or incorrectly colored for a frame or two.

You could tell every time there was going to be a big special effect, because of the dirt suddenly appearing on the film (I guess they stole that from Star Wars too). The backgrounds lacked detail (the outdoor scenes at the beginning and the end were particularly poorly drawn) and the spaceships looked like origami paper airplanes. The character design was typical of the 1970's and 80's (a little better than He-Man or the Filmation Saturday morning cartoons of that era).