This is actually getting pretty amusing. As you’ll recall, last week we posted a blog posting by “Stargate: Universe” producer Joseph Mallozzi, who fired back at critics of “SGU” through his blog. Today, SciFiWire has another intriguing fight with another “SGU” producer over the show, except this time “SGU” producer Brad Wright is picking the fight not with fans, but with a newspaper columnist who dared to call his show anything but great.
So, it begins with Chicago Tribune’s TV reviewer Maureen Ryan writing this during her positive review of ABC’s new show “V”:
(And let’s face it, we sci-fi fans are a frequently disappointed lot. ABC hasn’t quite managed to quite recapture the magic of “Lost” with any of its subsequent genre-flavored offerings. “FlashForward” still seems like a show that is more about its concept than its characters. And the other notable fall genre offering, Syfy’s “Stargate Universe,” is a boring, poorly plotted, lamentably sexist mess.)
Brad Wright apparently reads reviews on the net, or at least reviews from actual, honest-to-goodness “pro” critics (aka the ones who get paid to actually write them), and took great umbrage, and replied to Ryan’s last-second slagging of his show in the comments section:
“Maureen, I find people who write ‘I have no axe to grind’ are often the ones most likely to grind axes. Taking the time to slam ‘SGU’ in your review for ‘V’ is not politically tinged, it’s just petty. I really wish you hadn’t given up on our show so quickly. I was surprised, considering your past (occasional) support of the franchise. You can’t have seen a finished version of ‘Darkness’ or ‘Light’ because the weren’t even closed to being finished at the time of your review. I don’t know what the network sent you. ‘SGU’ seems to be a love it or hate it sort of show. You obviously fall in the latter camp, but fortunately there are enough viewers and reviewers who think ‘SGU’ is neither boring, poorly plotted, or sexist to keep us on the air long after ‘V’ is just a letter in the alphabet again.”
Ryan has since responded to the comment, writing:
First and foremost, I can’t think of anyone in the mainstream media who, before “Stargate Universe” premiered, was more predisposed to give it a chance.
I’ve watched every episode of “Stargate SG-1″ and probably about half of “Stargate Atlantis,” and I’ve done multiple features and reviews on both shows. And I’ve watched and championed many dark, multilayered, complicated dramas such as “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Shield,” among others. I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve used the word “gritty” or “ambiguous” in a review.
So the idea of show that combined elements of the “Stargate” franchise with the kind of morally complex storytelling we saw on those shows certainly sounded good to me on paper.
After I watched the first three hours of “SGU,” well, you could say I had reservations. At that point, I asked Syfy for additional episodes. So before I wrote my review, I’d seen a total five hours of the show (“Air,” Parts 1-3, “Darkness” and “Earth”). In other words, I went out of my way to see as much of the show as I could before writing about it.
In short, she wanted to like it, and she saw more episodes than we did, and she still thinks it’s total shit.
It certainly seems like all the negativity towards the show is getting to the producers. They tried something new without taking into consideration the franchise’s massive fanbase, or perhaps they did it anyway and taking the fanbase for granted, and it, well, just didn’t quite work out as they expected.
This is all very unfortunate, because as we’ve made it clear on SciFiCool, we’re actually fans of the show, even if I’m starting to get a little worn out by all the “survival storylines”. This week’s episode, though, looks incredibly promising: a pure sci-fi/thriller of an episode that finally stops with the moping around looking for water, air, Earth, etc, and actually gets back to what makes thrilling sci-fi. An actual — gasp! — cool plot.
We know what'll shut those nerds up. More cleavage! Woot!
