SGU: eh, it got better, but WAIT QUANTUM
Jul. 26th, 2012 06:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnSo. The writing, especially first season but also some second season just frustrated me so much... they took what could have been some really interesting situations and characters and just wasted them and/or made them boring (Gloria? Could have been really interesting, and then they just dropped that storyline completely), and then jump back in and demand you care for a character or relationship that they've put no work into, just because they assert that it's been going on this whole time. This is not even to mention the camera work (shaking the camera is not gritty, it just makes me carsick, and same with ten montages in a row), the fail-y bits (um, what you are doing with the communication stones do you not realize that is ethically incredibly skeevy and might in fact be rape? ew ew ew, also whaaaat torture = awesome?) and so on. (I have been told that apparently there was a LOT of cut material; this may have contributed to my perceived problems.)
But occasionally, especially in Season 2 when they seem to have found their feet a little, there are some very good and creepy scenes ("Visitation," while having the most cheesy science ever, was actually quite interesting, as was the whole time-travel arc), good character writing (the women were totally wasted first season but this got a lot better second season), good character-interaction writing -- Rush, for example, is consistently The Most Terrible At Saying Comforting Things Ever starting from the pilot and continuing through the end of SGU's run, it's hilarious -- and the actors are pretty much uniformly awesome, and WAIT WAIT HOLY HECK DID RUSH JUST ASK HIS CLASS ABOUT SHOR'S ALGORITHM?? RUSH WAS A QUANTUM INFORMATION COMPUTER SCIENTIST?? AT BERKELEY??
...Now my backstory headcanon totally has Rush having ADVENTURES at Berkeley with Scott Aaronson as a grad student and possibly psychopathic killer robots.
And then, of course, not twenty minutes later Rush is talking some sort of incredibly nonsensical "proto-encryption" gobbeldy-gook, which rather dampened my enthusiasm, but still. STILL.
(Shor's algorithm is, as they almost-correctly say in the episode "Human," an algorithm to factor a large number N that can run on a quantum computer in polynomial time (in log N). This is important because public-key cryptography schemes such as the widely-used RSA depend on the assumption that factoring large numbers is computationally infeasible (which as far as we know today is the case for classical computers; I am not entirely sure the episode understood that this is not proven. However, kudos to them for bothering to read wikipedia, though I was amused to find that they essentially plagiarized the entry, except for the part they didn't quite get).
This algorithm is important not least because it basically inaugurated the quantum information / quantum computing discipline, in that it gave a practical-ish (and, perhaps more to the point, fundable) reason for quantum computers to exist; Shor's paper is quite possibly cited in half the papers written in quantum information/computing. Also, disclaimer: I am not a computer science person.)
(HEY they just mentioned fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation BE STILL MY HEART.)
...also, one ep into SG-1, I have to say, I prefer SGU (BSG-lite-with-scientists > 80's-camp) but hi MacGyver!
[ETA 7-27-12: Rereading this, it sounds way harsher on SGU than I intended. I really liked it (I would have liked it for Carlyle alone), I thought the second half of Season 2 was quite good, and by the time it ended I was really sorry to see it go; I think it could have been a really good series. And it was put together in such a way as to have about ten thousand hooks for fic, ouch!]
But occasionally, especially in Season 2 when they seem to have found their feet a little, there are some very good and creepy scenes ("Visitation," while having the most cheesy science ever, was actually quite interesting, as was the whole time-travel arc), good character writing (the women were totally wasted first season but this got a lot better second season), good character-interaction writing -- Rush, for example, is consistently The Most Terrible At Saying Comforting Things Ever starting from the pilot and continuing through the end of SGU's run, it's hilarious -- and the actors are pretty much uniformly awesome, and WAIT WAIT HOLY HECK DID RUSH JUST ASK HIS CLASS ABOUT SHOR'S ALGORITHM?? RUSH WAS A QUANTUM INFORMATION COMPUTER SCIENTIST?? AT BERKELEY??
...Now my backstory headcanon totally has Rush having ADVENTURES at Berkeley with Scott Aaronson as a grad student and possibly psychopathic killer robots.
And then, of course, not twenty minutes later Rush is talking some sort of incredibly nonsensical "proto-encryption" gobbeldy-gook, which rather dampened my enthusiasm, but still. STILL.
(Shor's algorithm is, as they almost-correctly say in the episode "Human," an algorithm to factor a large number N that can run on a quantum computer in polynomial time (in log N). This is important because public-key cryptography schemes such as the widely-used RSA depend on the assumption that factoring large numbers is computationally infeasible (which as far as we know today is the case for classical computers; I am not entirely sure the episode understood that this is not proven. However, kudos to them for bothering to read wikipedia, though I was amused to find that they essentially plagiarized the entry, except for the part they didn't quite get).
This algorithm is important not least because it basically inaugurated the quantum information / quantum computing discipline, in that it gave a practical-ish (and, perhaps more to the point, fundable) reason for quantum computers to exist; Shor's paper is quite possibly cited in half the papers written in quantum information/computing. Also, disclaimer: I am not a computer science person.)
(HEY they just mentioned fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation BE STILL MY HEART.)
...also, one ep into SG-1, I have to say, I prefer SGU (BSG-lite-with-scientists > 80's-camp) but hi MacGyver!
[ETA 7-27-12: Rereading this, it sounds way harsher on SGU than I intended. I really liked it (I would have liked it for Carlyle alone), I thought the second half of Season 2 was quite good, and by the time it ended I was really sorry to see it go; I think it could have been a really good series. And it was put together in such a way as to have about ten thousand hooks for fic, ouch!]
no subject
Date: 2012-07-29 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 01:42 pm (UTC)So here's the thing. In the middle of second season SGU, everything sort of comes together and... and... I kind of love it. But there is a season and a half to slog through first. I did it because there was enough there (hi Robert Carlyle!) that it was worth it to me even without the second-season payoff, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't worth it to you even with the payoff. And the problem is that one of the things I love about it is the slow consistent characterization, so there's much less of a payoff if you just jump in mid-second-season, I suspect. (I suppose if you were really bored you could start off with, hm, maybe "The Greater Good," and see what you thought.)
(Your specific questions... there is indeed a non-monotonically-increasing tendency for Rush and Young to be rather less alpha-male-brats, which helps a lot -- although they backslide sometimes (Rush particularly), by mid-second season they've come to a sort of uneasy truce, which is way more interesting to me to watch. And I like that there was a distinct arc that way.
Chloe... Chloe is interesting, because she gets this arc that on one hand consists of a lot of things happening to her, but on the other hand she gets this understated character arc as well. (Thinking back on it, it reminds me a little of Crichton's arc in Farscape, only obviously way WAY more understated -- I mean only in terms of "horrible stuff being done externally, not much in the way of agency; character arc internally.")
Um. Clearly I'm a little obsessed with this show? I don't know that I'd recommend it to you, but I am obsessed with it. There's just something about ensemble working-together shows... this happened to hit all those buttons, for me. (Interestingly, Farscape, which is obviously a far better show, never hit those buttons -- although I'm wondering if some of it is because I watched it on a computer screen, which is one of those random things that bothers me, and maybe I should try it again on a more conducive mode of delivery.)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 04:03 am (UTC)SG-1 is more episodic and lighter in tone than Universe. S1 - S4 built up a stable of secondary / tertiary characters and groups in a fairly lighthearted setting. Later, writers tried to do tighter episode-to-episode arcs, and it felt like the character moments got squeezed out to make room.
Universe was always going to be a tough sell; it came with something like 15 seasons (!) of SG-1 and SGA expectations as baggage. Also, I streamed it off Hulu, which isn't the best conditions. Dark palette does not mix well with laptop screen? Universe has lots of elements I should be all over! It just also has lots of elements that don't work as well for me.
Anyway, will report back about "The Greater Good". I'd rather see Young and Rush doing the "we hate each other but it's cooperate or die" dance than the "hey, fistfights for ratings!" one. And... I'd like to see Chloe get to do something with her damage. The early eps mostly showed her as someone's daughter, or the emotional/hysterical woman, and I'd like to believe the series improved that.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 01:43 pm (UTC)I'm hearing you about laptop screens -- I am starting to think I need to try watching Farscape on a non-laptop-screen and see if that enhances my enjoyment, because I know I should love it more than I do.
But yes, I understand there are a LOT of things going on in SGU, some awesome, some terrible, and it makes perfect sense that the terrible things could outweigh the awesome things for you. (The acting really carried me through some awful writerly moments.)
Yeah, Young and Rush get beyond the fistfights, and Chloe gets to do more than be emotional. I think... yeah, like I said in the comment to your post, you might maybe start with "Subversion" through "Intervention" to get some Young-Rush cooperation and what seems a little more like old-school SG-1 action (having only watched one ep, not sure) and some backstory that is kind of necessary for the rest of it, and skip to "Pathogen" for updates on what's happening with Chloe, and then skip to "Greater Good."
(Or you really could just start iwth "Greater Good" -- if you read FoD you'll probably have the background already.)
no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 04:40 am (UTC)(The acting really carried me through some awful writerly moments.)
Let's not even start on the writing. Acting and character affection covers for many sins in the various Stargate series.