dearth of television

so farscape season one on dvd, both the overpriced original edition, and the more reasonable but still somewhat unreasonable three piece ’starburst’ edition, are out of print. fantastic.

and it’s not even like i have the money to buy it right now, even if it WERE in print. and i can’t pirate the damn thing. nobody is hosting it.

disappointment on all fronts.

meanwhile, i pirated the season premiere of atlantis, which was almost good, and stargate: continuum, which was fantastic.

continuum is exactly like all the big two-parters from sg-1. bombastic, clever, well written, and not afraid to both screw with and embrace expectations. it’s also well shot and scored, doesn’t feature ridiculously cinematic shots for no reason, and is just satisfying entertainment. much better than ark of truth.

the atlantis premiere, meanwhile, is just like atlantis has been lately. a solid base to work from but you can’t quite figure out what went wrong. did the script need another pass, was the direction off, or have they really and truly lost their way somewhere? not ostensibly bad, but not terribly original. it’s just bland. unimaginative. average.

the one moment that could have been interesting, woolsey taking over for carter, was both poorly executed, and given away months ago in promotional material. they should probably have ended season 4 on that note.

stargate can do better. at this point i’d almost rather not see a third series start up. put some life and effort back into atlantis, or cancel it and let the franchise go quietly into that good night. unlike farscape, sg-1 had it’s run, and even managed to pull it back after resolving the main storyline and still be worth watching right up until the end.

but since sg-1 ended, atlantis has been sinking into irrelevance and it feels like the crew knows it. they were too close to being voyager from the beginning, so it’s not promising to see them repeating all of voyagers mistakes.