I'm not entirely sure why I'm still watching. I'm also not entirely sure how it's reached 200 episodes. I feel certain these two things are related.

(You should actually ave watched the two-parter that was up for the Hugo the other year, as that was at least trying to be Art. Most of the time SG-1 is trying to fill an hour of TV in a vaguely undemanding fashion.)

But yes, this one looks worth watching, in a Smile Time kind of way.

"Heroes", a two-parter with Saul Rubinek as an annoying journalist doing a piece on the Stargate Program. It starts out looking like one of those stories where an outsider views the regular characters, but ends up being a quite heartfelt story about news journalism and freedom of speech. It's patchy, but it gets steadily better as it goes along and I was quite impressed by it. Then again, it's hands down the most ambitious thing SG-1 has put out in at least five years, so the benchmark is low.

More here.

My theory about Stargate's resilience is that it's the Law & Order of genre television.

So, Law &Order isn't genre TV?

And yet, he hasn't touched it :-p

I'm not sure he'd quite understand the "genre != SF" argument :-p

(And I've only rarely seen episodes of Law & Order, oddly enough - it's the sort of thing that would really appeal to me, I've just never gotten around to watching it).

You and discussions about genre have become inextricably linked. For some reason.

Oh, and by the way I notice that Elizabeth Rohm from Angel is now on Law & Order

Well, she was. I think she only lasted a season.

I agree, although from my limited viewing of Law & Order: SVU I find it bears a closer resemblance to actual drama than its parent show (which is basically an unrelenting series of expository scenes presented slightly too quickly for them to register any impact.)

Atlantis veers between being suffocatingly inoffensive and genuinely offensive. Some of the recent episodes have veered into an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that is no doubt intended to feel gritty but leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I agree about the way SVU (and other US detective drama such as Without a Trace or CSI) plays into pedophile hysteria - rather as they do for serial killers. TV often loves to characterise such types as visibly abnormal, their sin written all over their shifty, pallid, leering faces. It's convenient for TV writers to have a villain who can be safely characterised as absolutely and irredeemably evil without the need to worry about characterisation, motive etc. It also comfortingly and rather complacently labels such criminals as Other - not part of society, and not people we may know.

(Obviously I don't condone crimes as abhorrent as pedophilia or rape in any way, any more than I condone any kind of violent crime or abuse, but you're right about the way that SVU plays into the OTT media stereotypes.)

Atlantis of course invented the ultimate in one-dimensional motiveless villains in the Wraith, only to slightly humanise them at the very time that it condones their abuse.

Stargate's been cancelled?

It's funny because I was under the (probably mistaken) impression that Atlantis was sllightly outperforming SG-1 and even Battlestar Galactica in the ratings.

Damn :-(

See, now you can join me in the scrubbing of the brain.

I really really really really really liked it.

It was - well - quality.

ESPECIALLY the ending.

And the Furlings.

Quality.

I /think/ that will do. There's a few references to bits that have happened in between though natch (so meta it hurts probably sums up the ep quite nicely :)).

WAS ACE
(am SG1 fan and have watched constantly, well - downloaded past 3 seasons and before that using Sky. And lots of Sky One daily repeats back when they used to share Buffy/SG1 on the primetime repeat-frenzy).

So have patches on eps but mostly good)

Waxing lyrical about the infinite potential of SF would have had more resonance if Stargate actually bothered using SF to make a point these days. :-)