Stargate World

from my online journal as Kerry Burgess

Aug 21, 2018 10:48am

Now that I've watched more of the "Stargate SG-1" television series episodes, a production I never followed when it was active on television and that I have only recently started watching many of the episodes, I have decided to again watch the "Stargate: Continuum" version for a DVD I bought long ago.

I bought it long ago but never watched it until only a few years ago.

The internet tells me that production was released 10 years ago last month.

I watched it once before but was probably half-drunk.

Regardless, much of it was hard to follow. I didn't know most of the characters. Much of the stuff they talked about was foreign to me.

The reason I'm thinking about that is because, as I have the video paused in the first few minutes of the DVD to make this note, I remember reading, if I remember correctly and without going back to check, that it was supposed to be a feature film, the way the original version of "Stargate" from 1994 was a movie released in the theatres.

But they didn't release it in the theatres.

And watching the first few minutes I am still puzzled over that.

I find myself comparing it to the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series. After the series ended, there was a movie. That was the 1994 "Star Trek: Generations".

Got a lot of press.

So what's the difference?

William Shatner?

The production values are the same. TNG was just a bunch of prop work sets in a movie studio. "Continuum" doesn't look all that different from TNG.

What struck me most, I remember most of all from a vague memory of going to watch "Generations" in a movie theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the brightness of the rooms on the starship Enterprise.

They were in orbit around a star and there was a brightness that I didn't recall from the television series.

"Continuum" was interesting as a production. Now that I'm more familiar with series I have been wanting to go back and watch it again.

If everything I theorize about is true - AND IT MUST BE TRUE! - then I exist today in some sort of trap I - the previous version of myself - created for me. Seems to me that previous version would have left behind some clues, some keys, for me to find at some point in the future and to use to free myself.

Considering everything I have documented - and that is completely lost on you dim-witted dullards - then there is good reason to believe I could find my way out by reviewing productions such as "Stargate".

My notes even tell me so. And I began to suspect a while back that my notes, all that stuff I published online and offline, is a deliberate and complex LIE created by past versions of myself.








https://www.gateworld.net/news/2018/11/brad-wright-talks-about-cancelled-stargate-movies-industry-evolution/

GateWorld

Brad Wright Talks About Cancelled Stargate Movies, Industry Evolution

VIDEO: Stargate's co-creator tells fans at Gatecon about why Stargate: Revolution and Extinction were shelved.

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

Brad Wright (Gatecon 2018)

It’s been fully a decade since The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum arrived on DVD. It was a new era for long-form storytelling in the Stargate universe, and the show’s writers hoped that the DVD market would remain strong enough to support new SG-1 and Atlantis adventures for years to come.

History proved otherwise, of course. In his appearance on stage at Gatecon: The Invasion last month, Brad Wright — co-creator of all three Stargate television series — told fans about that day when MGM pumped the breaks on additional Stargate movies.

“I called MGM and they said, ‘Could you just slow development back a bit? We’ve got some weird numbers coming out …'” Wright told the crowd. “And we said, ‘OK.'”

Jack O’Neill would have been at the center of the third SG-1 movie.

“About a month went by and they said, ‘OK, we’re going to have to put the movies on hold.’ And I went, ‘Really?‘”

Two movies were on the drawing board in 2009, following the successful DVD releases of the two Stargate SG-1 films. Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie completed a script for Stargate: Extinction, continuing the story of the city of Atlantis. And Wright and Carl Binder were working on SG-1’s third film — the Jack O’Neill-centric Stargate: Revolution.

The production studio fought to keep Stargate’s sets in Vancouver standing for as long as possible, despite the ongoing costs to rent the sound stages. Eventually that proved to be a losing battle, and the S.G.C. and Atlantis sets were struck. MGM went into bankruptcy at the end of 2010.

“Ark of Truth and Continuum did very well,” Wright said. “For MGM is was a huge home run. And they may have been the last successful DVD releases. Because once streaming kicked in and you could just choose a movie from your house, and didn’t have to go to a video store any more, people found out that was better.”

Wright suggested that at the time online streaming was little more than an after-thought for the various production studios (including MGM).

Despite the best laid plans, Stargate: Continuum (2008) ended up being the team’s last adventure.

“All the studios had just sort of given shows to Netflix as an extra revenue stream, without recognizing the paradigm shift that was actually happening,” he said. So they sold the streaming rights to various catalog films and series to Netflix below what they were worth.

Ironically the industry factor that helped to cut the legs out from underneath the home video sales a decade ago is today driving new programming — on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other digital streaming services. And it could be responsible for Stargate’s own return. MGM launched Stargate Command last fall, with the short-form Web series Stargate Origins streaming exclusively online earlier this year.

In his full, hour-long panel Wright also encouraged fans with the news that he is talking with MGM again. The studio wants to keep the Stargate franchise alive, he said, and is currently working toward that end.



- posted by Kerry Burgess 10:55 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 13 November 2018