I am not yet sold on this SGA thing

[merrily]

Because there's a dearth of sci-fi to watch, I'd given in to the rampant SGA-love on my flist and decided to give it a go. I'm still trying. But. Someone tell me it gets better.



Rising was pretty good: it has an arresting premise -- that the city of Atlantis exists, and I'm a sucker for the one-way trip trope. Post-Firefly, I've grown to dislike the "future as a sterile, tidy, Toronto built by ROBOTS" aesthetic that Star Trek, especially ST: TNG, seems to have made the generally accepted version. But SGA circumvented that objection by having made Atlantis mothballed under the ocean for thousands of years. I still think, what, the Ancients didn't leave anything behind in the fridge to go bad? but okay, whatever, the point is, this isn't a human future. It's not really a future, either: it's living archeology.

So. I'm fine with that part. But the ep "Suspicion" made me disgusted. And I watched most of "Childhood's End" yesterday and finally couldn't handle it anymore and put the disc in the Zip envelope and mailed it back.

This was all fairly impulsive.

Today, though, I seem to have hours and hours on my hands before I am supposed be out on my weekly pub crawl with the boys (yes, you read that right), and I'm trying to figure out why I hate it so much. Suspicion as a plot device, that is, not SGA. I was also, along the same lines, trying to figure out who else used it in a TV show I watch, and if I was okay with it before.

At the moment, the only previous example I can think of was that Buffy ep (name, o flist?) which made fans very angry by suggesting that the Buffyverse might not be real -- where Buffy kept "waking up" and finding herself in a psychiatric ward with doctors and her parents hovering over her telling her that Sunnydale didn't exist and the way to end the confusion was to kill Dawn.

I don't know if that even counts as "suspicion as plot device," considering that it required Buffy to be suspicious of reality, not of a particular person, but I think it's the only way it surfaces in the Buffyverse. (I could be totally wrong -- I still haven't watched season one -- but I have faith that the Buffy writers consistently put in more than a sophomoric effort at relationships.)

And I'm okay with how it's used in Buffy, even in that ep, which I am still uncomfortable about, because it only happens because Buffy is high on goof-balls, or the demon equivalent there-of, and acid-trips causing suspicion? Totally understandable. (I'm also okay with it in "Othello," where it's the result of being maniplated by a psychopathic genius.)

It doesn't work in the two SGA eps named because in both cases, for suspicion to be a plot device it has to be false suspicion. And that's fine insofar that no-one is actually omniscient and of course characters, like the rest of us, aren't always operating with all possible information, but still. It's so lame. It's lame because the audience knows what's going on and gets impatient (and throws cheesies at the screen and swears), and because while it serves to set up tension between characters, it also requires reducing characters to stock (no, not soup) to make it work. I'm happy for there to be characters who are simple on my shows, but I draw the line at totally dense. Also at "totally dense and unable to think of the simplest reasons, which are usually the right ones".

I think that's as analytical as I can get this aft. Am going to go find food, hopefully of the chocolate variety, and tea. Tell me what you think? Also, if I push through, does SGA get better?

Comments

You're right --

[merrilily.livejournal.com]

Nobody is praising the writing. I think I got spoiled by Joss & co and now by Rob Thomas. All TV should be like the TV they produce.

*sigh*

Re: You're right --

[inalasahl]

It really should.