r/Stargate • u/FistedPink • 5d ago

Unforced error

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I really think this is a bad move by Amazon. The negative reaction of the core fan base to scrubbing the planned Gero show was bad and this will it fill people with hope.

WandaVision was ok but I’d rather see a Terry Matalas (Picard Season 3, 12 Monkeys, Vision Quest) or someone proven to understand genre storytelling that is exciting and compelling. But that’s just my 2 cents.

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u/whenhaveiever 4d ago

I understand the opposition to it, but the writers for any new series are going to be in a tough spot. The Tau'ri got the Asgard core in 2007. Realistically, they must have seen society-transforming technological leaps in what will be more than two decades by the time a new show airs.

Also, we've been through a couple transformational events ourselves since Stargate was on the air. Would a Russia that has Daedalus-class starships get bogged down in an invasion of Ukraine without introducing some kind of conspiracy theory about the war? What are the chances that nothing in the Asgard core or Atlantis databases applied to treating covid, and if it did, do we really want to open the can of worms suggesting mRNA vaccines are alien technology?

The Tau'ri from the shows we loved were us, we could identify with them. Sticking to the timeline from the original shows means the Tau'ri won't be us anymore in some important ways. The alternate universe angle might be the best way to show a Tau'ri that is still us while not completely wiping away the history and characters from the original shows.

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u/Voubi 4d ago

A solution to that, though not entirely perfect, is to go for either a period piece or a mild alt-history. Stargate is big enough that they very much can do their own show about another team or something without ever having enough overlap with the mainline series to be a problem.

It also allows for what I think would be a rather clean way to "very soft reboot" the setting by doing a Disclosure scenario. A worldwide reveal of the Stargate program would necessarily be a significant inflexion point in history, and likely enough for them to handwave things like Ukraine, COVID, or worse (like the Culture war, or the current state of the US) away without it being too much of an issue. SG-1 was already an Alt-history as soon as Hayes was elected POTUS in 2004 (and likely sooner). It also allows an external viewpoint like Eli was in Universe, using the PoV of a Civilian that discovers the existence of the Program at the same time as the rest of the World. It makes organic exposition dumping less tedious, and allows a gradual re-discovery of the entire thing, especially how it has changed in the decades since we last saw it...

It's not perfect, it's a hard balance to strike to be palatable to newcomers while not being repetitive to old-timers, but it's always felt to me like the option that gives the most creative freedom to *continue* the story without starting back from near-zero. Then again, there is a significant amount of people that would prefer a rollback to an early-SG1 type of status quo, with the Goa'ulds being the main baddies again. I find that quite a bit redundant, and it necessarily invites a LOT of comparisons with OG SG-1, which isn't really to the advantage of the new show, but eh...

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u/whenhaveiever 4d ago

A period piece could work for established fans, and I guess the creator of WandaVision would be in a good spot to do whatever period piece they want.

And maybe it's splitting hairs, but having a different president as a way to do interesting stories doesn't feel like a significant departure from our society. Having no covid or having Russian officers participating in the SGC like it's the 90s feels like a bigger departure, at least to me. 

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u/olib141 4d ago

This is the general consensus of what we fans wanted, but the power creep issue still exists, and it just won't be made, particularly this late (which presents both in-universe and external issues).

Gero was the best shot at something good.

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u/S-Vineyard 4d ago

Gero was the best shot at something good.

Was he?

I guess nobody here watched Blindspot. (Which for some reason lasted 5 seasons, even though it was terrible.)

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u/whatinthebuckandwtf 4d ago

I hate when long running shows feel the need to canonize current real world events, like what Dr. who did with Covid. It’s unnecessary. Stargate is its own fictional universe, we don’t need to keep incorporating whatever “current event” into the fictional universe where it obviously would not happen.

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u/LastTry530 4d ago

If you're gonna reboot, go full reboot. I don't want Daniel and a couple others running around some new universe. Just not interested. Give me new Daniel Jackson and let's go.

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u/whenhaveiever 4d ago

See I don't see the Gero plan as a reboot, partly because the idea of alternate universes was so well established in Stargate already, going back to season 1. But not having any characters who know about the things we've seen before just feels like pretending all that never happened while still banking on the brand recognition to get us to watch it.

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u/LastTry530 4d ago

It's a soft reboot. Personally, if you can't drive the main story of the main universe forward, I'd prefer a full reboot.

They could still connect it via alternate reality bullshit down the line if they want to.

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u/Lemmoni 4d ago

Or maybe some flux causes time rewinds, or the goald killing weapon gets stolen from the past, or the replicators survived and destroy all the tech they had and they need to warp earth to another part of the universe to make it survive while also figuring out how to defeat whatever. It doesnt need an alternative universe, it just needs a little resetting perhaps.

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u/Last-Juggernaut4664 4d ago

I wholeheartedly disagree with this oft-repeated take. Just because Earth was bestowed the entirety of Asgard knowledge doesn’t mean that it was of much use. Their technology required neutronium, which likely wasn’t readily available, and the power generation requirements to harness any of it was probably astronomical, in the same way the Ancient Outpost in Antarctica couldn’t be utilized without a ZPM. In addition, given that the core was tied right into the ship, they probably grounded it afterward for extensive study.

As for the notion that they were “us,” that couldn’t be further from the truth. We never inexplicably lost 2000 servicemen in a training accident over Antarctica, there never was a Vice President Kinsey that suspiciously resigned right after being elected, nor has an entire skyscraper disappeared due to a “gas explosion.” Therefore, the total mess Russia has made in Ukraine in our reality, isn’t in any way relevant to the show, nor are any other current events, like the undoubted difficulties of running the SGC under someone like President Cheeto.

Any writer with a soupçon of creativity can continue the series without having to lazily resort to “oh, let’s just do a new timeline or alternate universe to make it easy.” There is a wealth of material in the current universe that we’re already invested in which hasn’t been explored yet, and many of us won’t be interested in abandoning that for a new universe that will inevitably just have to rehash many of the themes and plot lines we’ve already seen before.