You speak true of Sam. I didn't know until I'd seen half the eps or so that Bill Macy and Felicity Huffman are married.

Now you have me thinking of my new favourite show Out of Order, with the above and Eric Stoltz and Kim Dickens and Justine Bateman.

Anyone else watching that?

maybe the folks on the ground should be left to die because the germ cells in the sky are the last of their kind, and gee, they're awfully *advanced*, aren't they?

Well, wait, now... I mean, it was a real moral crisis, but it wasn't actually "the super-evolved but technically dead alien things or the friendly earth-type people we're responsible for DIE!" The people could have gone back through the Stargate and relocated... again. Perhaps all going blind in the process. Which sucks, yes, but there was an alternative. As usual, it was an extremely difficult situation which SG handled... by having people take extremely simplistic sides. Argh. And the ending... yeah. Ass pull... to the X-TREME! But, eh.

Yeah, I just saw the woman-in-ice episode last weekend, and... what the fuck? Not only was it a crappy episode, the main plot of which was essentially Outbreak on a very small scale and really didn't need that woman there at all -- the same function could have been served by a box of some kind -- but they brought up some seriously weird issues, and totally abandoned them.

"Oh, look, humans were around millions of years before... humans were around. And they looked quite a lot like Caucasian supermodels. Plus, there's this totally ridiculous freezing thing, but just never mind that for a... oh hey, we're all sick! Better put aside the whole complete upheaval of things we know as fact about our species until this is over and -- oh damn, she's dead. Oh well. So I was thinking beige for the outer wall..."

But the plots all suck. Except the robot duplicates thing, that was cool. The point is the characters. It's just like Docter Who.

Most of the Star Trek plots suck nearly as badly but it matters more, cause you (or me, anyway) feel like you're supposed to take them seriously. Stargate's whole premise is that the pyramids are actually alien spacecraft.

the plots all suck

SG1? What's your frame of reference?

Okay, perhaps 'suck' is the wrong term. 'Tend to have very large plot holes I need to overlook'?

Most of them function technically but don't draw me in. I'm drawn in by either what the characters are dealing with or the cool premise. Wheras with Buffy, I could be drawn in by plot, character, and premise.

Hmm. I agree it's not as complex and tightly woven as Buffy at its top, but I don't think it has a preponderance of plot holes.

It's simple plots, mostly, with compelling characterisation, and insane continuity.

But I'd say it has its share of good plots. 2010/2001 drew me in, for instance.

I agree that the continuity's pretty darn good. I really like the show, I just don't think it's plots are it's strongest point. That's actually more or less what I was trying to say, that weak plots don't bother me very much on Stargate, compared to Star Trek where it's more of a crisis.

Have you seen Tin Man? It's pretty early in the series but it's fantastic. Just thinking about the concepts it touches on makes my brain go fizz.

I like 2010, but mainly for the 'all hope is nearly lost' thing, sort of wishverse. Something about that tag team getting the note through the gate, even though they're all dying. The Aschen just make me go 'eh'.

The aliens of the week are the most inconsequential parts for me. Enkarans, Aschen, whatevers. I'm more likely to remember "the one where they totally don't have a Prime Directive and tell the locals their benevolent god is a hoax"

But yeah, mostly characterisation. I don't care how many times I see them die, episodes all out of order and everything. 2010, Double Jeopardy, whatever. I get sniffly.

The main problem is, I watch them with my mum and she's a big action fan. It drives her nuts when the characters start getting sentimental and spoils my mooshy enjoyment. But yeah, they're just so well-characteristed. You can identify with all of them really easily, whether or not you have anything in common with them, which I think is a sign of excellant characterisation.

I really liked 2010, but I wanted some kind of tag where Janet came back and said that the blood on the note was from Jack and Daniel--did Sam bleed on the note?

Jack seemed rather nonchalant about getting a blood splattered note from the future telling them not to go to a certain planet. I kept thinking it might spark Sam's curiousity. Or Daniel's. Not that Gen Hammond would let them go through see what was on the planet.