The original post: /r/television by /u/MCRN_Admiral on 2024-07-10 14:27:40.
My premise is that Stargate Atlantis is the best of that category we like to call on reddit “late 90’s Canadian sci-fi shows”, but really they should be called “low-to-medium budget 90’s to 00’s sci-fi shows” – so that we can include the various Star Treks and B5, despite being shot in California.
There’s been a couple of discussions on this topic lately; I think it’s because people have a hankering for those long season (22+ episodes) sci-fi TV shows which existed PRIOR to the popularity of prestige TV. Nowadays, most scripted/genre TV belongs to prestige TV so they’re big budget, heavy on VFX, and limited to 10 episodes per season. They also take forever to produce in most cases!
So anyways, when you consider all those wonderful 90’s to late 00’s shows… Stargate Atlantis really stands out. Why?
- the biggest reason is the sense of anxiety/ calamity/ doom that the show conveyed. the expedition that went to Atlantis through the stargate knew it was a one-way trip! all they had to use (food, weapons, power) was what they brought from Earth, until they started making friends in the new galaxy.
- SGA did not have the magic “self-healing ship” and “self-resurrecting crewmen” that shows like Voyager and Enterprise did. As a result, you were never really “afraid” for Voyager or Enterprise; things never seemed to be THAT dire with them.
- Even with DS9 and Babylon 5, while they had similar “dire straits”, the protagonists in both were each part of larger organizations who’d always be there to provide backup or supply drops. Something SGA didn’t have until much later.
- The best example is really the S01 season finale of SGA: i think this episode has the best portrayal of DIRE circumstances in any sci-fi show in recent memory. you really thought things were OVER for Atlantis right up until the Daedalus showed up at the absolute 11th hour
Thoughts? Every time I do a Stargate marathon I always feel that Atlantis was the peak of the franchise, and the best of this particular subgenre of TV sci-fi.