Stasis

Last weekend my Pirate Queen and I binged on rerun DVDs. After the half hour of "seen-it, seen-it, why-did-we-buy-it" divination we agreed on Stargate Universe. It has been at least four years since we've watched it, and that's longer than the show was on the air. 

As the final credits came up, I was struck by how much I missed the show. It wasn't perfect, but it was thoughtful and different, and perhaps that's why it could not be allowed to live. 

It's been just over five years since the last episode aired. I thought as a tribute, I'd repost the article I wrote for Riverside Community College's Viewpoints newspaper's online edition. Like the series, my article was canceled from the air-waves long ago.  So here is an echo from light years away.

 Some saw their fate and resigned in acceptance. Others held hope for a new future; a future shaped by their ingenuity. They all fled automaton aliens bent on destroying any technology not their own. This was how Stargate Universe began their final episode, “Gauntlet”: television metaphor seen through science fiction.

“We’re screwed,” said Eli Wallace, SGU’s everyman character, portrayed by David Blue, plotting points where relentless enemies poised to eliminate Destiny and her crew from their Monday night time-slot.

This is the third time slot given to Stargate Universe during a two-year Syfy run. Some fans blame the time changes for Stargate’s death. According to Craig Engler, Syfy’s senior vice president and general manager of Syfy Digital, the network made the changes to attract new audiences. Engler said Syfy had done all they could to save the dying series.

Like the network, Lou Diamond Phillips, as Colonel David Telford, had bad news for the Stargate Universe ship, the Destiny: “Whatever the solution is, you’re gonna have to make it happen on your own.”

They were on their own because new audiences never found the Destiny and her crew. Alone in space, Stargate Universe aired its last episode Monday, May 9, marking not only the end of a two-year series, but also the death of a 14-year Stargate franchise.

Stargate SG-1 was the wunderkind. An outer space action drama, light on the science, heavy on the campy fiction, based around the adventures of Colonel Jack O'Neil, played by Richard Dean Anderson, and his team of space travelers. Each episode followed the team through a giant stone soap bubble hoop (called a Stargate) that dialed distant planets like the ring on a combination lock. The Stargate turned up new worlds, new aliens and new adventures and fan’s followed the team through that gate’s wormhole for ten years.

In 2004 a new Stargate team uncovered the lost city of Atlantis, unearthing a whole new Stargate adventure. Stargate Atlantis was less about interstellar travel, and more about saving the universe from replicant yes-men and nasty pasty-white human-eaters while uncovering the mysteries of Atlantis.

The Stargate fan base warmly welcomed Stargate Atlantis into the Stargate family. The relationship lasted five years, until Stargate Universe replaced Atlantis.

Stargate Universe was a different Stargate. SGU was the serious brooding child that asked viewers to consider what real people would do if they were trapped on a giant spaceship built by an alien race for an unknown purpose. Lacking the ability to control the ship (appropriately called the Destiny) the crew rode through two seasons of political struggle, unrequited love, treachery, and external influence.

One external influence weighed more heavily on the Destiny than others: donned the Battlestar Gallactica or Star Trek Voyager of the Stargate world, SGU didn’t win favor with many Stargate franchise fans.  Diehard fans liked their Stargate world with more family fun tongue-and-cheek and less of the adult sex drama and intrigue that the Stargate Universe offered.

KV0921, a fan posting on gateworld.com, a Stargate fan site, posted, “For me Stargate died with Stargate Atlantis.” 

Many fans agreed.

According to Engler, Stargate Universe opened with little more than half the opening viewership of Stargate Atlantis. 

SGU was not the typical Stargate franchise fan’s program, and unfortunately for Stargate Universe, the edgy adult audience they hoped to court would not be drawn to a new Stargate program because of Stargate’s history of being campy and light. Leaving this series, like it’s characters, adrift without support.

Monday, the final SGU episode floated through ether, a portrait of life’s unrealized potential.

“What’s the point of having potential if you’re not going to step up when you’re really needed,” Said Blue’s character Wallace, as if in agreement. 

Destiny’s crew had grown during the two-year experience and experience was a brutal teacher. Outmaneuvered by an unbeatable enemy, they found their answer. Low on power, the crew climbed into cryogenic chambers to sleep, hoping to wake in a new galaxy; a galaxy of the future, inhabited by people who could accept them for who they were, and not as an ill-fitted Stargate offshoot. All the while, knowing that they may never wake again.

2016 Epilogue:
 
One of the most poignant aspects of that last episode was how the fate of the crew (their Destiny, if you will) was mirrored in the fate show. I watch now knowing, as one reliving memories, what the future of Destiny held. When seen as a metaphor of art and not a red-headed Stargate stepchild that becomes a act of beauty. 

Not all of our destinies are as grandiose as we would plan. Some are two year blips and some are great galaxies of stars. As a writer, I cannot control which one I am. All I can do is reflect my best light so that others might see. The crew of the Destiny had hoped to only go dark for three years; it's been five. And yet people like me still go back and relive their adventures. Me, I find hope in that.