Amazon's New Stargate Series Is Officially Dead (screenrant.com) 96
Amazon has reportedly killed its planned new Stargate series despite giving it a series order in 2025. According to Variety, studio executives were worried it would only appeal to longtime fans. ScreenRant reports: Reports of what became Gero's Stargate series started in 2022, after Amazon acquired MGM Studios. Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the 1994 Stargate movie with Emmerich, was another executive producer for the Amazon show, as were Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell via Safehouse Pictures. The project also had Brad Wright and Joe Mallozzi as consulting producers, with both having had extensive history working within the Stargate franchise.
On X, Michael Shanks, who played Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, posted in response to the news that: "Yep. They did that." Mallozzi was resistant to the idea that the series was being geared toward diehard fans: "Nope. No. Sorry. Gonna have to push back on this. We were ever mindful of creating a show that would have broad appeal." In an additional post, Mallozzi went into further detail about why the cancellation is so disappointing:
Before the new series was canceled by Amazon, Stargate began with Emmerich and Devlin's movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader. This paved the way for 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, followed by five seasons of Stargate Atlantis. There has also been the two-season Stargate Universe, the one-season animated show Stargate Infinity, the web miniseries Stargate Origins, and the 2008 direct-to-video movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate Continuum, along with numerous games.
On X, Michael Shanks, who played Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, posted in response to the news that: "Yep. They did that." Mallozzi was resistant to the idea that the series was being geared toward diehard fans: "Nope. No. Sorry. Gonna have to push back on this. We were ever mindful of creating a show that would have broad appeal." In an additional post, Mallozzi went into further detail about why the cancellation is so disappointing:
Before the new series was canceled by Amazon, Stargate began with Emmerich and Devlin's movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader. This paved the way for 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, followed by five seasons of Stargate Atlantis. There has also been the two-season Stargate Universe, the one-season animated show Stargate Infinity, the web miniseries Stargate Origins, and the 2008 direct-to-video movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate Continuum, along with numerous games.
Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Stargate has some of the strongest franchise potential out there, and a well developed universe that is wide open. Few properties have that.
There are whole new generations that have never seen the original, nor care to, but would respond to a modern series.
Canning it because of fears it would only attract old viewers is idiotic.
Re:Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
They had big ideas for it, but as time went on the budget got squeezed while needing more CGI on screen to represent the advanced technology and galactic stage they were portraying.
The actors started to cost more too. One of the reasons why many shows are limited to 5 seasons is that the standard contract is 5 seasons and then a re-negotiation for more money. Amazon has another trick that they used with Bosch - can the show, and start an identical one with the same characters and actors, but a slightly different name and a big reset of everyone's salaries.
It's a real shame that Universe was cancelled. Lots of potential and an interesting idea.
Maybe Amazon isn't the right place for it though. Look at the final season of The Boys. Massive budget cuts were very apparent.
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It's a real shame that Universe was cancelled.
Universe was one of the most festering pieces of garbage ever put on television. The entire premise was anti-Stargate. Instead of a competent group of dedicated heroes doing heroic things, it was a bunch of whiny, pathetic losers doing nothing.
The only character on that show that I cared whether they lived or died was Sgt Psycho, who I very much wanted to see killed by his own side, and his body rendered down for its food value, but that was clearly never going to happen. I only made it through two or three
Re:Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score:4, Informative)
It was starting to find its feet towards the end of the second season, which is obviously much too late.
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It just took too long. They leaned way too hard on the "we're stuck on this ship that's really showing it's age, and we have to solve these drastic issues with mere minutes to live" story, and it gets really annoying and repetitive when each episode is one aspect of trying to stay alive, with various characters having squabbles about their own selfish nonsense.
And then when they figured out that well was dry, then they had some oppressive mysterious alien show up who wants to kill the ship for reasons, and
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I'm sorry. While you're right and I agree, I can't help but feel that your disassembly of Universe is like a description of the first season of Battlestar Galactica.
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The first season of BSG had to have all that in it. They were just attacked. They had no military to protect them. Their home planets were being nuked. Their government was non-existent. The survivors had to make a run for it without any preparations. They had to figure out how to survive without any backup.
Aside from Apollo's "hack" to fool the cyclons, the first season was strong in what it had to be.
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The first season of BSG had to have all that in it. They were just attacked. They had no military to protect them. Their home planets were being nuked. Their government was non-existent. The survivors had to make a run for it without any preparations. They had to figure out how to survive without any backup.
Aside from Apollo's "hack" to fool the cyclons, the first season was strong in what it had to be.
The first season of the BSG reboot was tedious, and reached the point of me saying that I don't care about these people, because the utter stupidity and short-sightedness of some major characters was just too much to handle. It got better after that. *And* it felt like it was just a long string of figuring out ways to survive the situation.
SG-1 and Atlantis did not fall into either trap. Almost without exception, the characters were smart, and the ones who behaved in stupid and/or power-hungry ways were
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Too bad they spent 1.5 moping around the ship being huge assholes to each other, exactly what Stargate fans wanted right?
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I'm just surprised that it didn't air on CW since it was obviously written for it.
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Sometimes I feel like my TV shows different versions of shows to the ones other people watch.
Universe was a mostly civilian crew, because it was supposed to be a science mission. That was a different dynamic, but we already had two military shows by that point. Well, one and a half maybe, but Atlantis was mostly military in reality.
It had some interesting ideas and some good group dynamics. I don't really care for "competence porn", which I know a lot of Trek fans seem like for some reason. If anything, all
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Ehh, I liked Universe a lot, and I never could get into the main Stargate series.
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I'd say the original series is the weakest of all of them... but this is understandable, because they were finding the formula. They didn't really hit their stride until a couple seasons in there either, but there was a lot more to like sooner than SGU. The state of the art was lesser at the time as well, so that made it more appealing, because the production values were really very high. It might not seem like it if you compare S1 of SG1 to S1 of SGA, but you just have to remember that time passed there.
If
Re: Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score:2)
Stargate Voyager started getting really good by the second season but it was too late. Stargate DS9 had a lot of hokey parts and we defeated the wraith way too quickly and had to have the replicators come back
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I only made it through two or three episodes before it clearly evoked the Eight Deadly Words [tvtropes.org]. [Which are: "I don't care what happens to these people."]
That's pretty quick. Our President made it two years into his second season before (basically) saying the same thing, out loud, and (more) people finally started believing.him. :-)
Stargate is over. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stargate has some of the strongest franchise potential out there, and a well developed universe that is wide open. Few properties have that.
There are whole new generations that have never seen the original, nor care to, but would respond to a modern series.
Canning it because of fears it would only attract old viewers is idiotic.
Stargate died 15 years ago, let it rest in peace.
Stargate effectively had a single gimmick, the underdog vs incredibly powerful enemies and somehow winning. This resulted in a trope I called "Stargate Syndrome". The Underdog, in order to beat the uber-powerful enemy needs to become more powerful to defeat them, once this happens they need to create another, even more powerful enemy which the heroes need to become more powerful to defeat and then they need an even more powerful enemy to keep the series going, so on and so forth. SG1 started fighting fake gods with high tech and ended up with all the tech fighting almost literal gods.
Joe Mallozzi, one of the writers of SG1 did another series in the 2010s called Dark Matter, which started out incredibly well but suffered from Stargate Syndrome in S2, it was cancelled before the end of S3. A shame as it had a lot of potential if they didn't make the heroes effectively untouchable.
SG1 should have stayed finished at S8, Atlantis was pretty much the perfect length at 5 seasons. Leaving you wanting just a little bit more compared to SG1's a season too far (as much as I like Morerna Baccarin, it really was terribad). The reason it has a following is because it was good, the later iterations were not good (SG Universe and Origins), it will lose it's following if they keep making terrible sequels and spin offs. What we need is more original Sci-Fi, not comfort blanket spin offs.
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Andor shows that you can take a tired franchise and do something new and really interesting with it. I wish they would have at least tried.
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However that best toy is also it's bane, with bad writing. That being said we see plenty of bad writing destroying series. Parts of Earth: Final Conflict were written extremely well... with other parts being trope written stupidity.
Star Trek's various series is often at odds with itself over the quality of writing.
The entirety of Alien and/or Predator has often had writing flailing.
In the end a well written Stargate seri
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...Stargate effectively had a single gimmick, the underdog vs incredibly powerful enemies and somehow winning. This resulted in a trope I called "Stargate Syndrome". The Underdog, in order to beat the uber-powerful enemy needs to become more powerful to defeat them, once this happens they need to create another, even more powerful enemy which the heroes need to become more powerful to defeat and then they need an even more powerful enemy to keep the series going, so on and so forth. SG1 started fighting fake gods with high tech and ended up with all the tech fighting almost literal gods. ...
But even the series handled this problem fairly well in the first couple of seasons by establishing a "senior hierarchy" of (powerful) races and aligning the Tau'ri (humans) with them as sort of a client race. I think they could have gone much further with that, but unfortunately didn't. Re-imagining the series with that constraint would still be a very interesting premise, although I don't think that would work in a continuation given how the series itself evolved.
Re: Stargate is over. (Score:2)
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Joe Mallozzi, one of the writers of SG1 did another series in the 2010s called Dark Matter, which started out incredibly well but suffered from Stargate Syndrome in S2, it was cancelled before the end of S3. A shame as it had a lot of potential if they didn't make the heroes effectively untouchable.
I enjoyed Dark Matter [wikipedia.org] too, as well as Killjoys [wikipedia.org], which was a bit more of a romp. It's a shame that SyFy didn't continue them both.
Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
It was flogged to death and then some. They must've done every story variation under the sun , probably multiple times. Whats the point of just doing the same thing with new actors and slightly better CGI? Instead of reanimating corpses of old series the money should be spent on something new instead.
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That's what Stargate Universe was.
Studios are not keen on new things. Look at the backlash against the new Star Trek series. Despite what some people claim, most of it was good Trek, and very enjoyable. Some of it is the best we have ever had from the franchise.
A small but very vocal group of fans made it clear that they just want more bland, Voyager style shows, lots of filler episodes, nothing particularly challenging. Nothing like what Trek should be, or what Trek has been at its best. They attacked ever
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It was flogged to death and then some. They must've done every story variation under the sun , probably multiple times. Whats the point of just doing the same thing with new actors and slightly better CGI? Instead of reanimating corpses of old series the money should be spent on something new instead.
Sounds like U.S. politics, except for the better CGI. :-)
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Fuck franchises.
It would actually be better if someone came up with a new idea.
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As shown by the current box office, with the latest Star Wars regurgitation being pasted by not one but two indies.
Re:Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Canning it because of fears it would only attract old viewers is idiotic.
That is modern Hollywood though. Just look how many franchises have been destroyed because they insist on rewriting them for "modern audiences" that never show up, throwing away the entire existing fan base in the process--Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.
This was probably for the best. If this was the same attitude the studio obviously had then they would have kept trying to interfere repeatedly during production until they got their way.
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Also, I'd suggest not changing the show formula. Part of why SGU went bad is a change to what worked. Sure, they were stuck on a ship, but the heavy borrowing of formulas from LOST and CW shows felt very out of place for Stargate.
SG-1 poked fun at the concept of a younger, edgier version in season 10... and then three years later, the studio actually did it. I believe the word is "harbinger".
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still bummed about SG-U (Score:3)
I wish they'd done a few more seasons of Stargate Universe. I'm curious where the story would have gone, and what they would have found.
I remember enjoying the Battlestar Galactica vibe, through both setting and cast, and the whole civilians and military working together thing. It must have been pretty darned expensive though.
Re:still bummed about SG-U (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish they'd done a few more seasons of Stargate Universe. I'm curious where the story would have gone, and what they would have found.
It took too long to get to the good part, by which time it had lost people.
If they had compressed seasons 1 and 2 into one season and lost the most worthless episodes, they might have gone on.
When the show is called Stargate, you expect Stargatey stuff. They set the expectation, then failed to meet it.
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When the show is called Stargate, you expect Stargatey stuff. They set the expectation, then failed to meet it.
Disagree on this. That's like saying only shows that trek through the stars should be called Star Trek - and yet the best Star Trek series ever made was Deep Space Nine.
The Stargate is just part of the premise of the followup shows, not a required defining characteristic of them. Even for the original series, by about season 6-7 it was sharing the field with ships and other methods of travel.
As for Universe, it did stumble out of the gate (haha), for sure, but almost every show does. I think it had found
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Disagree on this. That's like saying only shows that trek through the stars should be called Star Trek - and yet the best Star Trek series ever made was Deep Space Nine.
Yeah, they had B5 to crib from.
The Stargate is just part of the premise of the followup shows, not a required defining characteristic of them
If you're putting it in the title, yes it is.
Re:still bummed about SG-U (Score:5, Insightful)
I too felt that way about SGU. Aside from introducing me to Flogging Molly - in one of the best applications of popular music to a show ever - I enjoyed the story that SGU was telling.
ON THE OTHER HAND...nostalgia is a powerful drug. ... it's palpably running out of gas. Atlantis was absolutely an evolutionary step up from the monster-of-the-week very-1990s-feeling episodic SG1. It ended when it should have, while SG1 ran about 3-4 seasons too long.
A coworker and I have watched from SG movie, SG1 through Atlantis all the way into SGU; we're in SGU S02E10 and
SGU then was an *absolute* step up in writing depth and character building but already in season two it feels adrift. From episodes where basically nothing happens to utterly-contrived conflicts (let's be honest, the entire Lucian invasion plot was incredibly stupid from s2e1). Also a tiresome (to me) emphasis on personal dramas...blech. That's not what I'm watching the show for "Peyton Place in Spaaaaaace...."
I've read JM's reddit posts on 'what might have happened' which just reinforces that none of this was already-baked, just writer-room ideas basically. Which it very much feels like.
I don't recall precisely the last half of SGU season 2, I only generally recall it ended sort of abruptly. But right now, halfway through? I'm more looking forward to getting through it and us starting our Babylon 5 watchthrough more than the 2nd half of SGU.
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That's not what I'm watching the show for "Peyton Place in Spaaaaaace...."
but the feels!
TBH i don't remember more than a few broad strokes and flashes. But am now checking out some soundtracks on YT (including these Flogging Molly fellows).
SGU then was an *absolute* step up in writing depth and character building but already in season two it feels adrift.
i definitely recall thinking more that it had great potential as deeper version of the general idea... but also that actual delivery was mixed.
no one wants a reboot. fire whoever cancelled it. (Score:1)
ok so just undo that, because that’s dumb, and for that broad modern appeal just get STEVE FROM MINECRAFT and AQUAMAN to lead a new team through the gate supported by the existing cast going on a multiverse adventure with Kurt Russell, Richard Dean Anderson, James Spader, and Michael Shanks. Pad it out to 22 episode seasons with 12 bottle episodes on a shoestring budget and 10 main arc episodes with sparse use of modern CGI.
And most importantly simply combine ALL of the pitches that have been put fort
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> 22 episode seasons
You spelled "8 episode seasons with a 2-5 year gap between them" wrong
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> 22 episode seasons
You spelled "8 episode seasons with a 2-5 year gap between them" wrong
Who knew that the 20th-century BBC would be so far ahead of its time?
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My introduction to this madness was the show "Luther".
I was like "how do you call 2 episodes of something on broadcast television a "series" ?
Re: no one wants a reboot. fire whoever cancelled (Score:2)
Re: no one wants a reboot. fire whoever cancelle (Score:3)
That's great. Oh, excuse me kids, that Stargate series is over there in the adult DVD section, behind the brown curtain. Where's your father?
Re: no one wants a reboot. fire whoever cancell (Score:1)
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That's great. Oh, excuse me kids, that Stargate series is over there in the adult DVD section, behind the brown curtain. Where's your father?
You mean like the first episode of season 1?
It's bizarre that the various streaming services don't just pick up the director's cut of Children of the Gods and make that the default first episode, and serve up the original one as a separate "show" so that they don't have to have the "nudity" caption on every episode all the way through season 10.
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The 80s definitely traumatized a bunch of kids. As a child I'm watching Mr. Belvedere and all of a sudden the camp counselor starts getting a little to touchy feely with Wesley.
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they wanted the new version to be woke to appeal to modern audiences.
But then realized that would be impossible to pull off.
It's better that they cancelled it than make shit nobody wanted
Darnit (Score:1)
Stargate SB-BF1 (Score:1)
As in: Suck Bezos's Big Fat one,
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Come now, Bezos is the one with the trophy wife (them boobs are from Jupiter) and a monument to phallic shrinkage in his rocketship.
Re: Stargate SB-BF1 (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Come now, Bezos is the one with the trophy wife (them boobs are from Jupiter) and a monument to phallic shrinkage in his rocketship.
What is remarkable is that said trophy wife looks like a cheap hooker - I have seen streetwalkers that looked more classy than her. If you have the wherewithal to purchase a trophy wife at least show a modicum of class.
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As in: Suck Bezos's Big Fat one,
Come now, Bezos is the one with the trophy wife
Yeah, but he has to close his eyes, who can successfully nut while being sucked off by The Joker?
Hope someone else picks it up ! (Score:2)
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They are sitting on it and not using it. They would be happy to take in licensing money instead. They can let someone else take the risk and get a guaranteed payout.
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They are sitting on it and not using it. They would be happy to take in licensing money instead.
Not necessarily true. They might think they can make more with it in the future, or they might just want to stop a competitor from having a success when they do not at all need the money. You are thinking like a poor.
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This isn't about wealth. You're thinking like a monopolist.
Oh no's (Score:2)
Unnecessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Stargate SG1 had a great setup for cheap production of an episodic planet-of-the-week show but that's hardly unique.
The Stargate isn't what made the show special, it was the self-aware humour and the charismatic cast. And the original cast is too damn old now, so you'd be rolling the dice with a remake.
In my opinion, it's better to build a new setting than try to reinvent the old one. At least that way you don't have baggage to worry about.
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Whatshisname McGyver who cannot follow an order if his life depended on it and had the IQ of a squashed grape
As depicted, Jack probably had an IQ of 120 or higher. He just didn't have a PhD in physics or linguistics.
That's one of the things that made Stargate work. Even the characters that weren't the most highly educated were still by and large intelligent, or at least capable of logical thinking.
There are a few of episodes where characters were genuinely stupid — not just uneducated, but failing to listen to logic outright. Those episodes were sometimes a bit cringe, but they were also rare. And none of those episodes were written that way just to add artificial drama to make people feel things (ugh), but ra
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You don't need something entirely new. You can have a story of an off world backup site that loses connection with Earth and tries to survive thinking they're the last survivors of Earth. Or the Stargate becomes public knowledge and the story follows a colony being setup on a different planet. Instead of going off world to a new planet each week you can have the visitor-of-the-week arriving at the colony and causing problems. You can have remnants of old enemies popping up which would introduce them to
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- cancelled too soon, it was just getting legs.
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The Stargate isn't what made the show special, it was the self-aware humour and the charismatic cast.
To be fair, I think Atlantis nailed that pretty well too, so it stands to reason they could pull it off again, given the same showrunners.
Bring back Wormhole Extreme! (Score:2)
Good (Score:3)
Amazon wanted to Rings of Powerify Stargate (Score:5, Interesting)
https://x.com/AI_EmeraldApple/... [x.com]
The rumor is that the show writer, Martin Gero, would not budge on compromising lore or elements within the show for a "wider modern audience" as they did with Rings of Power for LoTR lore.
Martin Gero wanted to create a show that maintained continuity in the story and lore of the old shows, including the mythology and tech, while respecting the 17 seasons of history.
Amazon instead wanted something new for the "modern audience" that's more accessible, reimagined, with more modern casual sensibilities.
Because the showrunners wanted to maintain integrity rather than turn Stargate into another "modern audience slop" like Rings of Power, Amazon leadership canceled it. The franchise heavyweight, like Joseph Mallozzi, was very excited for the fresh stories Gero worked on. Amazon says they are still open to Stargate, just not "this" version... yes they wanted to Rings of Powerify Stargate.
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Sheesh. Wasn't the total failure of Stargate Universe enough to demonstrate why this is a terrible idea?
Try 'The Long Earth' instead... (Score:3)
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Sure, it even has the Replicators :D
Real motivation for cancelling Stargate ? (Score:3)
Oh noes! (Score:2)
Now they won't have a series in the can to rerun endlessly in 20 years.
Claudia? (Score:2)
I really donâ(TM)t know the first thing about Stargate, other than once upon a time it starred Claudia Black.
Iâ(TM)d watch Claudia Black recite the phone book.
So yes, bring back Stargate, but only the Claudia Black incarnation, please and thank you.
Better Dead than Woke (Score:2)
What would be cool (Score:2)
Probably had enough Stargate, to be fair ... (Score:2)
While it constitutes a weak argument that "it won't be worth making a new StarGate series because only the original fans would watch" ... I can't argue it may not have been the best series to do more with right now.
I used to love Stargate, as did some of my good friends. But this wasn't one of the sci-fi shows that only got a couple seasons and then got canned too early. This was a very successful show that arguably ran its course, with a LOT of material to watch.
I'd say there'd be more justification to bri
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Shoot the Pyramid! (Score:2)
Shoot the Pyramid!
So what they're saying is... (Score:2)
Their writers are trash and they can only do derivative nostalgia bait.
More likely they just didn't want to work with the people running the show and this catty excuse was their way to save face.
But Rings of Power.... (Score:1)