Stargate Universe

I've been casting a jaundiced eye over the newest installment of the Stargate legacy: Stargate Universe.

Well, it's not bad. The principle of the series is this:

An off-world base has a uniquely situated star gate. The core of the planet is radioactive (aren't they all?) and this might allow them to dial a new nine-symbol address.

Nine symbols?

Yeah, try to keep up.

So, the place gets attacked by the Lucian Alliance, the über-upgraded human ships (remember the end of Stargate SG-1?) are suddenly weak and pathetic again and the planet blows up. Our new heroes make their escape through the star gate, using the nine-symbol address.

And there's another flaw. Sure, we have the reasoning that the explosion of the planet could have propogated through the open wormhole and, as such, Earth was out. But are there no other stargates? One on an uninhabited planet, mayhap?

Anyway, through they go and find themselves on a ship. An Ancient ship. An Ancient ship many, many, many, many, many (done yet?), many lightyears from home.

Oh, and the ship's buggered. Not a whole heck of a lot is working. But the Ancients were smart.

Apparently, the point was to send the ship out, unmanned. Flying away before it are a number of other unmanned ships programmed to seek out certain planets and drop star gates on them. Thus, when the time was right the Ancients would use the nine-symbols to transport themselves into a new area of the universe with an already completed network of star gates. If anything went wrong, the ship would seek out the nearest star gate on a world that had what was needed and go there. Of course, the Ancients ascended before they got around to using it.

And that, more or less, is the premise of the show. The ship's on automatic, on its last legs, and it's going to be stopping off close to important places where our heroes can go get stuff.

Because, like, the Ancients had never heard of the concepts of 'spares' or 'backups'.

There are flaws in the premise, it's true, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief there. What I'm not willing to suspend is my hatred for shakycam. I'm convinced that they hired the same guy to make this new series as they did the remake of Battlestar Galactica. Either that or they just stole his ideas, that whole shaky camera work, stupid zooms and everything else that goes with that 'mockumentary' style of cinematography.

Still, I'm going to watch it. I just won't like it as much as if they had kept the style of the previous two series.