Critter's Cave

[Ed. Note: Well, 3 months late it better than never, but I had to catch up on a few episodes before I made up my mind. The paragraph and a half were written right as the series premiered, and the rest was written in the last week.]
The SciFi Channel has introduced a spinoff of Stargate SG-1, the successful science fiction series that continues the story of the original Kurt Russel/James Spader movie. The set up for Stargate Atlantis, which premiered on Friday July 16th, 2004 can be likened to the relationship between Star Trek: TNG/DS9 and Star Trek Voyager, with the only difference being that the new Stargate Atlantis team knows going in they may never make it back to earth. The setup is ok, but if the producers aren’t careful the show can quickly degenerate into Stargate: Gilligan’s Island.

All the standard sci-fi series archetypes are present: The wise commander; the hotshot 2nd in command; a doctor (two, actually, counting the wise commander), the “alien” (who, in the Stargate mythos, is actually human since her planet and out planet were colonized by the same beings that created the Stargate…and I really couldn’t follow much after that). And they start the series off with a nearly-indestructible adversary – The Wraith (***coughBORGcough**) – ooohhhhh…
After having watched a few episodes, I can’t say it’s a bad show – it’s just not as good as it might have been. So far, a lot of the plots are just recycles of old science fiction tv episodes. For instance, the team came across the planet where there were no older adults – to prevent the Wraiths from “harvesting” them, the inhabitants would commit suicide at 25 (and no, they didn’t have lifeclocks ); in another, a mysterious cloud-like entity that feeds off of energy makes its way around the base, causing injury and havoc as they try to capture it; advanced aliens create illusions in the team members’ minds of what they would most like to see, etc – any of this sounding familiar? Yeah, I thought so too.
The production values and acting are enough so as not to be completely unwatchable – it’s fine to kill an hour with before hitting the town, but it is not “must-watch” like Farscape or Firefly, both of which were far more original than this series. So I can’t recommend it for people wanting good Sci-Fi. Maybe that’ll change in December with the Battlestar Galactica series starting, but we’ll see.