Stargate Disappointment

So, I bought the Stargate cartoon that came out, Stargate Infinity. I have to say, I am pretty disappointed. I knew going into it that this was a show that was a) intended for kids, and b) supposed to be completely separate from the parent show. Even so, the creators fell far short of meeting my expectations of the kind of quality I have come to expect from this franchise. I was only able to watch the first disc of the four, which I think was about six episodes. A part of me hopes that maybe it got better, but I kind of don't think there's any way that it did.

So today I'm going to use this space to share my primary beefs:

• Lack of any kind of introduction. Here's the thing. As far as I can figure, this show was intended for a completely new audience, not supposed to be familiar with the Stargate mythology/canon. But the first episode just jumps into the story (which honestly wasn't that good). There's no explanation of what the Stargate is, what the purpose of Stargate Command happens to be, how Stargate teams are chosen or made up, etc. The closest thing we get is when someone refers to naquadah, they state that it is the same material that makes up the Stargate. That's cool, except they continue to state that every time they talk about naquadah. Okay, we get the point already. Also, this is supposed to be set in the future, when the SGC is no longer a secret. Okay, there's no actual mention of any of that, no context of when this is actually set or what the program does now. It feels to me like the creators expected the audience to be familiar with the general Stargate story, but if that's the case, then they are really stupid, because they really should have given some exposition in the opening episode about how things have changed in the program. What we have here is something designed to immediately lose anyone who doesn't already have a general idea of what's going on as well as to piss off anyone who does. Also, there's a human character that is psychic. When did that start being normal? That, at the very least, deserved some attention or explanation and got none.
  
• Total disregard for the existing canon. I'm sorry, but if it is going to carry the Stargate name, it needs to follow the Stargate rules. Okay, yes, as far as I can tell, no one who was involved in the original show had anything to do with this, but it's like the cartoon show-runners just got handed a basic summary of the Stargate universe and started making shit up. Not cool man. My biggest issue is the character of Draga. She's this big orange alien looking thing that they have decided is an Ancient. WTF?????? Okay, I realize, looking at the dates on this, that this ran about the same time as season 6 of SG-1, and that is the season we find out that the Ascended beings are actually what is left of the Ancients, and that the Ancients are therefore humanoid. So at the outset of the cartoon the general Stargate viewer didn't know that the Ancients weren't orange aliens, but come on, someone somewhere had to already know this and this information should have been passed along, darn it. Watching it now, when we know exactly what the Ancients were and where their home planet was, etc. it just gets my blood bubbling. That one may have been an honest mistake, but there were also other issues. For example, in the first couple of episodes the team had gone through the Earth gate then gone through another gate. Then they sat around worrying that the bad guys would show up at any moment. How? It has been clearly established that the Stargate doesn't have redial. At best you can pull the last fifty addresses dialed and try to figure out which one someone used by trial and error, but that takes some time. Sure, since it's set in the future, maybe someone has figured out that particular obstacle, but we find out several episodes later that no, there's still no way to figure out the last address dialed on a gate. So why were they acting like there was in the start? Ergh.
• General stupidity on the part of the characters. Again, I realize this is geared towards kids. But still. Kids aren't necessarily idiots. They've got grown people in a government organization, who have been given all kinds of responsibility making stupid mistakes just to get a lesson across at the end of the episode. I'm sorry, but someone who made it into the SGC, even in a time where it's not classified and top-secret, has to be the best of the best, whether they be a scientist or a soldier. There are other ways to get lessons across to the audience. Give the character a specific, believable, flaw and use that. That's how they do it on SG-1 and Atlantis. I am not sure why they couldn't have done it that way on Infinity as well. Maybe it's just lack of the right writers.
• Crappy animation. Seriously. This hearkens back to the stuff that was out when I was a kid. We're talking Kid Video level animation. I'm sorry, but cartoons have come too far for that to be acceptable these days. And maybe that was a stylistic choice (again, maybe they were doing a very poor job of trying to aim this also at the adult Stargate audience), but it just didn't work. In addition to the style, the, I guess costuming is the word, was atrocious. People in a military organization were running around with mullets and punk rock hairdos. Everyone had weird facial tattoos that I didn't get, and everyone was dressed like something out of the Laser Tag cartoon. It drives me nuts when people set things in the future and decide they need to do extreme makeovers on how people dress and do their hair. It's one thing to give aliens a radically different appearance, but if this truly was only set a generation into the future as the back of the box says, then there's no way people are dressing like that. Grr.
  

Okay, so yeah, this was pretty much just a rant, but I had to get it out there.

I feel like I am in general a pretty indiscriminate and forgiving television fan, especially when it comes to something I've been proven to like in the past. With any adaptation, there are bound to be changes or disappointments, but for the most part, and with few exceptions (*cough* Eragon *cough*) I am usually able to accept the new form of something for what it is. This one though, it just wasn't possible. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis are witty, fun, action filled shows that even when they border on ridiculous still make sense. Very rarely do they give us a setting or costume choice that completely distracts from the story. They even, after 12 years, have managed to stay pretty consistent with canon. The potential for a Stargate cartoon to be just phenomenal is there, and I think, had it been kept within the creative family of the rest of the franchise, it would have been. As it is, I don't think that Infinity deserves to bear the name of Stargate.

Anyhoo, that's my two cents for this week. I'll try to write something happier next time.

Till then, take care.

C