Stargate Atlantis: stale characters
February 5th, 2008
I’ve complained in the past that whilst I recognise that Stargate Atlantis is technically good as in it looks good, has special effects that don’t look like key chain kung fu guy did them and some interesting concepts. But I still found it boring and couldn’t quite say why that is.
It did occur to me today after watching the last three episodes what it is about the show that makes me yawn. It’s the reset button that they use every episode.
In a show like The Simpsons very little changes to maintain a status quot that the viewers are already familiar with and every show resets for the next. Atlantis doesn’t quite do this with their plot lines or their environment (well maybe their environment but I’ll come back to that).
At the end of every episode the core characters are reset to their original state. So nothing that happens to them will change the way they will act or react (which does not mean acting again) in future episodes. In fact they may act totally in the opposite direction that their experiences have brought them.
Now there may be spoilers for those who don’t visit… ahem cousin Larry to watch their Stargate episodes earlier than the two or three year wait for two o’clock in the morning showings that Australia tends to offer. If you wish to remain pure and unsoiled about events happening in the Atlantis universe you should sod off now.
Of course if you do decide to stay it’s not like anything I’ll say now will really impact the show because it’s not like any of the characters are going to change from one episode to another.
Dr McKay whom I may add has grown on me in that past four years decides to propose to his long suffering girlfriend. Instantly this had my attention. They’re going to add this dynamic to the show that hasn’t been in here before. A married couple? It certainly didn’t hurt Firefly and would add an interesting new group dynamic on the show. By the end of the show however they manage to get McKay to change his mind and call the whole engagement off. Also there were a couple of other hints at romance between other characters (all except Sheppard and Teyla which in my mind is disappointing) and nothing here is hinted at in the two later episodes I watched so I won’t bother wasting any more space on them.
So McKay decides he doesn’t want to get married, fine but then in the very next episode he calls dibbs on the ‘pretty sister’ without seeing her. Yeah I guess he really wasn’t ready to devote himself to the woman that he has been in love with and dating for the past year (Longer? I don’t know).
Now Sheppard’s father has died and he has to go back to Earth and face the fact that no one has known where he’s been for four years. Will the passing of his father have an effect on him as we go into the next couple of episodes? No I doubt it.
The best episodes of DS9 where towards the end when the powers that be focused on Voyager (who generally suffers the same fate) and the DS9 guys could write continuing story arcs that affected the characters and changed them. It’s what made such hits out pretty much nothing with the O.C. and Dawson’s Creek. Thin events but focused on the characters growing, Atlantis has epic events happening but no character growth.
It does seem that removing characters though is one form of growth that the writers have employed though with a couple of favourite characters dying, disappearing or becoming replicators.
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Categories: Science Fiction, Television | Tags: Dawson's Creek, DS9, Firefly, mckay, O.C., reset button, sheppard, simpsons, stargate atlantis | 8 Comments
