posted
OK, so I have TIVO and was watching a several week old Stargate Atlantis the other night.
Spoiler ALERT
The usual group found themselves on a planet. This one contains a wraith device, hacked by the jenii, that sends out an energy wave that drives people insane...
to be exact, it makes them hallucinate, either back to some previous traumatic time in thier lives, or in some other violent and destructive way.
Almost predicatbly, the warriors in the group, Ronnen and Shephard go into dangerous violent warrior jags, shooting at each other, as does the red-shirt, er marine LT that they had come to rescue.
McKay can't solve the problem. The more he tries, the worse his readings appear to be.
Dr. Beckett is in charge of helping the wounded marines. They keep diing on him. THen they come back to life.
What I found as the scariest, most intriguing, and by my darkest dark side, most wanted delusion was not the dangerous and ultimately suicidal warriors.
It was sweet, almost whiney good, Dr. Beckett. What is scarier than a delusional doctor with a scapel, and a helpless wounded patient at his mercy.
They showed the doctor continually reaching into the wounded stomach area and taking out peices of bloody gunk. We assume that this was dressing he was replacing, but could it not as easilly been good intestine he was removing? The poor doctor, the more he tries to help, the messier, bloodier, painful and permanent his work becomes.
That would have been chilling. It could have brought about an interesting change in the doctors almost too good character.
Instead, the doctor did no damage, and the diing and reawakening redshirt--er marine, survives. Apparently the needle of adrenaline to the heart and the rest of the drastic measures the doctor took did no harm.
Am I a bad boy for wanting the more ghastly and gruesome ending? Well, perhaps not see the gory resulst of a delusional doctor's handiwork, but to see the doctors face in that moment of realization when he sees what he's done.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
That's 'cause the guy wasn't actually on the table, I think. I'd have to go back and watch it again to be sure, but I think he wasn't actually working on who he thought he was working on. And I did like what we saw in his face when he realized that he was delusional.
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posted
Stargate Atlantis doesn't go there. It's lighter than, say, BSG which does (or would) go to that place of horror. Some shows are darker than others.
And the other young man does die without Beckett being aware of it. He hallucinates him alive for a while before discovering him dead. That's pretty horrible.
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posted
Yes, Teshi, that was horrible--but they ignore it almost at once.
I know SGA would not go there.
But a part of me wished it would. Every time he went into the bandage and pulled out a blood covered chunk, I wondered what that was, and when we discover it was nothing, I felt let down.
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I think this is why many people dislike Atlantis. It's simply not very dark. It would have been better perhaps to have a little more of the focus on Beckett's realisation that a man has died on his watch and he didn't even notice.
But Stargate in general suffers from a slight lack of... something. Focus?
I like the non-darkness of Atlantis. It's adventurous fun with a bit of worry. I can watch it and have a good time. BSG is so dark, I couldn't bring myself to begin the second season, even.
But then, I'm a wuss. Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I think I'd like Atlantis better if they didn't look like they were going to tackle something dark only to wuss out. The torture episode coming so soon after BSG's torture arc was especially disappointing.
"Did you?"
"He passed out."
Lame.
My bigest problem is probably the threat to tension ratio the show has going. The wraith are so overpoweringly fearsome that the ancients had to flee before them. But the tension in the show is fairly low key. Nothing too bad really happens to anyone. No one has to do anything too awful to survive. It's like the show isn't willing to live up to the hype of their own bad guys.
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