Friday Night SciFi Lineup

I haven't really watched Scifi Chanel since they canceled Farscape. I made small exceptions for Peacekeeper Wars and the Dune miniseries - but that's about it. It started as a personal protest or boycott of the channel when they canceled my favorite show. Later on I realized that they really didn't have any good shows I would like to watch :P

But friends have been urging me to give BSG a try so I gave in yesterday, and I watched the whole Friday night block. And I have to say - wow, that's allot of Stargate there!

First thing first, though. I finally saw Ben Browder and Claudia Black in their new SG1 incarnations. Ben basically plays... John Crichton... No, seriously. His character really seemed like a carbon copy of John. Maybe little more stuck up, and less funny. Yes, as amazing as it is, pop culture jokes do not work that well, when most of the character's companions seem to understand them.

Claudia just seemed out of place the whole time. Maybe that's because it was some weird body switching episode. She also did not interact with Ben at all. MacGuyver showed up by the end of the episode and... Well, he looked heavily medicated and out of place too. His exchange with Ben was very wooden. Strange. I'm not a SG1 fan, so I actually have no clue why he isn't in the main cast anymore (or at least he doesn't seem to be). If someone cares to post some interesting factoids about this, and the way Ben and Claud ended up on the show, please do. I'm to lazy to look these things up.

Either way, the show doesn't seem to be the same without him.

BSG was actually watchable. I wish I saw the season from the beginning because I felt a little lost. But it seems that they do have some interesting plot lines going on for them. So I guess this BSG craze is not all hype. I think I might actually watch it again next week.

I still want to punch this guy in the head, but a little less now.

I actually did watch the mini that preceded the series. So this is not my first encounter with this show. After watching just one episode, I can't comment on how the show changed, but I can certainly point out things that stayed the same. I think that BSG suffers from the same condition as most Star Trek like shows (actually many many non SF shows as well): too many characters, too little time. This translates to lack of central focus. Farscape had a single point of focus - it was a story of John Chrichton. BSG is the story of who exactly? There is a bunch of prominent characters there, but I do not identify with any of them really. Maybe I'm wrong but this is how both the mini the episode last night felt.

I'm not saying this is wrong. Most of Star Trek shows had the same type of approach. There was really no main character (at least in the sense of Farscape's John Cricthon). Both Star Trek and BSG are doing well so far. All I'm saying is that I never got into ST, SG1 and I might never be able to really get into BSG. Or maybe I will.... I did like the episode yesterday, so I'll give it a chance.

Next stop - Stargate Atlantis. Yesterday was actually the first time I saw this show. I saw the ads for it, but I never really got around to actually watching it. It's because of that grudge I hold against SciFi channel. So I was interested how it will pan out. After all, spinoff's usually turn out to be bad. But since they had such a strong franchise and a chance to play around with the SG1 universe I figured that they really have a shot at doing something cool here.

I was wrong. The show is crap. I actually enjoyed watching some eps of SG1. This show however sucks big time. The cast blows, acting is wooden, plot is nonexistent. The only thing this show seems to have in common with SG1 is the concept of a stargate. Gah... Maybe the hard core SG1 fans get a kick out of this show, but it made me want to puke. Spinoffs suck!

Finally, at the end they showed Andromeda. This is one of these shows that gives me nightmares. When you take bunch of really bad (but relatively good looking/popular) actors, who should never be on TV, put them all on the most retarded set in the universe, and give them the cheesiest dialog ever - you get Andromeda, or as I like to call it "Hercules in Space".

The acting was so bad, it was painful to watch. I was cringing through the whole show. And I usually find bad acting amusing. Especially in old, crappy movies it is hilarious. But in this show the wooden or over the top acting is so bad, it's almost tragic. You can't laugh, because most of the line you can't even believe that a simple line could be butchered in so many ways at once...

I don't know if this show became a part of Friday lineup, or is it just a space filler but lord! This is the type of shows that made me stop watching SciFi channel! I can't believe they actually spent money on this crap. Not only is this old, but unbelievably crappy as well.

So there it is - my take on SciFi Friday lineup. Sigh.. Next week I'm tuning in for BSG and then I'm changing the channel. :P

Tags: scifi, scifi friday, scifi primetime, bsg, battlestar galactica, sg1, stargate, stargate atlantis, andromeda,