Chris Rossi

I’m dreading tomorrow night…it could be the last time I ever get to watch a new episode of Stargate. It’s the final SGU episode, and it looks like there may not be any new series or any more SG-1 or Atlantis movies. And so ends a chapter of my life that started 14 years ago. We may never get to find out what happens to the crew of the Destiny. It’s Firefly all over again.

It’s their own fault, the network was called “The Sci-Fi Channel”, and they’d air brand new science fiction series on Friday nights. The ratings were good. Then they renamed themselves “SyFy”, moved the sci-fi programming to Mondays and Tuesdays, and started airing wrestling (?!?!?!?) on Friday nights instead. No wonder the ratings were down. What am I supposed to watch now?

Warehouse 13 and Eureka are entertaining (I enjoy both!), but they’re too “light”, the stories don’t have any real depth. Maybe that’s why they’re so popular, they’re easy to watch. But it needs to be balanced with something more intense, more complex, something you can really invest yourself in. Something where if you put in the time and energy to watch every episode and pay close attention, it will reward you for the effort.

Maybe it’s time to go back and try some older series for the first time. It’s just so hard to find something that didn’t completely jump the shark after only one or two seasons. I have Sliders series 1-3 on DVD, and the first 2.5 seasons were great. Then the Professor left, the budget was slashed, and they spent every week running around the Universal Studios backlot being chased by bad guys wearing bad prosthetics.

I own SeaQuest DSV series 1 & 2 on DVD, but I quickly realised that it wasn’t as good as I remembered it. I guess my taste has evolved since I was a 10 year old.

I gave Babylon 5 a serious go, and couldn’t make it past the 3rd or 4th episode. The captain’s acting is somehow even worse than CSI Miami’s David Caruso. And I swear the special effects were lifted out of a 1993 DOS game. Plus there was all that telepathic spiritual BS. Anyone want to buy the series 1 DVD off me? It’s wasting space on my shelf.

I might have to go back and watch Farscape all over again. It’s been a few years since I’ve watched my DVDs, but at least that show has an ending.