One thing I'm wondering, is part of the problems of Stargate Universe that they tries to make it too much like Battlestar Galactica (Battlestar Galactica is space, if you will).

I like both shows but SGU is much more like Galactica that previous shows. Would it have been more sucessful if the tried to make it like SG-1 or Atlantis.

Only saw a little of Reboot Galactica so I couldn't say how much SGU resembled it. However a few things do come to mind.

1. Not as funny as previous Stargates.
It was as if the producers cut the funny budget.

2. Way more depressing than previous Stargates.
While not at "Slit your wrists" levels the writers seemed to enjoy shooting the shaggy dog whenever possible. "Oh look! There's a moment of hope. Oh look, the writers are kicking it to death with their hob-nailed boots!" Yeahhhhhhh...

3. The brain-dead idiots they populated the ship with.
Okay, they were not expecting to get trapped on a ship several galaxies from home with no way back, but they were supposed to be experts in their various fields & should have something resembling a survival instinct, but the writers seem to think that treating them as idiots was something the viewers could relate to.

4. Stoned Trips.
Yeahhhhhhhhh... someone shows up at your door claiming to be someone you love.
Do you 1. Think they're crazy? or 2. Jump their bones & have wild monkey sex?
The writers seemed to think 2 was somehow a viable & normal reaction which goes to show just how out of touch they are with normal people & behavior.

2. Way more depressing than previous Stargates.
While not at "Slit your wrists" levels the writers seemed to enjoy shooting the shaggy dog whenever possible. "Oh look! There's a moment of hope. Oh look, the writers are kicking it to death with their hob-nailed boots!" Yeahhhhhhh

The same problem happened in the first two seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. They would find a way home, only to have the rug pulled out from under them at the last moment. Who wants to see these people get kicked in the face every week?

Thankfully, in the third season of Voyager, steps were taken to address this, and the series stopped doing that. For the remander of the run, the crew embraced the adventure they were on.

Maybe they would have eventually done this with Universe. But, alas, we'll never know.

I can only speak personally but I didn't have an issue with SGU being like BSG. I wasn't wild about SGU's choice to mimic the hand-held wobbly camera work, but otherwise I liked this new darker Stargate series. Atlantis had also started off darker than SG-1 and then gradually drifted into SG-1.2, becoming a clone of its older sibling.

Now I loved SG-1 (at least for its first seven years), but Atlantis was initially new and fresh and an interesting change from the "big adventure, lots of drama, huge explosive climax and everyone gets home in time for tea" format which SG-1 had copied from series like Star Trek TNG.

If SGU had also been a clone of earlier series, I think that even the die-hard fans would have complained that it was same-old same-old and why couldn't the writers come up with something new. In many ways, SGU was doomed to failure: if it had stayed the same as its predecessors it would have been boring and repetitive; yet its attempts to be different made it too different and many older fans couldn't make the adjustment.

Keith has brilliantly summed up the main problems with the series. Just because the producers wanted to go darker, they didn't have to remove every last moment of humour. Season 2 has had some glorious moments - from characters like Brody and Volker in particular - where there have been a few seconds of laugh-out-loud hilarity which have eased the tension for a moment without taking away from the drama. My only complaint is that the writers have relied a little too much on those two characters for the comic relief: if other characters were also given humorous moments, it would be more convincing.

I can't even comment on the whole "stoned trips" fiasco without using language that isn't permitted on Nitcentral. I will never understand what the writers were thinking and why they ever thought that such behaviour from their characters would be acceptable in the eyes of the viewing public.

Overall I feel that the producers were so desperate to keep telegraphing the message "Hey, everybody! We're not SG-1 or SGA!" that they went too far in the opposite direction, made the series too dark (and, yes, too BSG-like) and forgot that there could be a happy medium between the "home in time for tea" era and the "oh, it's all doom and gloom and we're all going to die" darkness. They were starting to get the balance better by the end of season 2, but way too late to save what was starting to become a really nice little series.

Damned if they did and damned if they didn't, it seems.