Continued from the last post.<\/p>\n
Storywise, you\u2019ve sort of seen it before. Yep; it\u2019s mix of<\/em> Lost <\/em><\/strong>and<\/em> Star Trek Voyager<\/em><\/strong>. Visually, thematically, and stylistically though, it draws its cues from recent dramas like Battlestar Galactica<\/em><\/strong>. The show is very<\/em> dark and edgy. No more cute and fuzzy benign aliens, nor even alien of the week. Every episode is almost depressing as the Destiny\u2019s crew struggles each week against the challenges of traveling onboard a vessel that is technologically far ahead of what they can readily comprehend. And the challenges run the gamut of finding power, oxygen, water, food, then facing off radiation, unfriendly aliens, collisions with stars, marooned crew that are left to die, alien viruses that are accidentally brought onboard, military-civilian tussles for power etc.<\/p>\n Some of these interstellar travel challenges aren\u2019t new; we\u2019ve seen them before in the first season of Battlestar Galactica<\/em>, but SGU <\/em>ramps it up a couple of notches. The series kills characters with alarming frequency, and there are only so many crew members that are onboard Destiny to begin with. Many of the challenges are also \u2013 apparently \u2013 scientifically grounded (the show\u2019s producers note that NASA scientists watch the show), and while I don\u2019t claim to understand all that science and astronomical mumbo jumbo for a second, it does at least sound as though the series knows what it\u2019s talking about when a character says something about the dangers of how a white dwarf is stripping material from a neutron star in a binary pulsar and creating an accretion disc that is producing gamma radiation. I kid you not. That\u2019s exactly one of the danger scenarios that the Destiny\u2019s crew faces in one episode.<\/p>\n The cast is pretty good too, though aside from one of the two leads are all unknowns to me. I immediately recognized Robert Carlyle, who stars as Dr. Nicholas Rush, Destiny\u2019s super brilliant but also extremely arrogant and also mentally unsound scientist. With him are Louis Ferreira as Colonel Everett Young, his military opposite who\u2019s constantly bumping heads with Rush, Brian J. Smith as the loyal but conscientious Lt. Matthew Scott, Jamil Walker Smith as Master SGT Ronald Greer, the crew\u2019s hot-tempered bulldog, and David Blue as Eli Wallace, a civilian who starts off as slacker but also a genius, and grows to be a real asset to the crew.<\/p>\n The civilian-military antagonism isn\u2019t too different from the Adama-Roslin tug of war in the early seasons of Battlestar Galactica<\/em>, and as good as Ferreira is as an actor, he\u2019s not in Edward James Olmos\u2019 <\/strong>class. Carlyle\u2019s Rush is a different story though. You love-hate his character. You hate his ruthlessness and single-mindedness in pursuing his scientific goals, but it\u2019s hard to fault his cold-minded logic. Exactly the characterizations that make for great series viewing.<\/p>\n What\u2019s unquestionably impressive is the Computer Generated graphics work. Unlike Battlestar Galactica<\/em>\u2019s numerous and very large-scale space battles, the CG work for SGU <\/em>is mostly in Destiny, the worlds they explore – some of them look truly alien – and also a couple of space battles. It\u2019s somewhat sparing, but when you do see it, it\u2019s all pretty good.<\/p>\n All in; not too bad. I\u2019ll put this series at below Battlestar Galactica<\/em>. but since that series has completed its run and until the prequel series, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome<\/em><\/strong>, is released, SGU will do.=)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Continued from the last post. Storywise, you\u2019ve sort of seen it before. Yep; it\u2019s mix of Lost and Star Trek Voyager. Visually, thematically, and stylistically though, it draws its cues from recent dramas like Battlestar Galactica. The show is very<\/p>\n