Jeff Keezel's Place: Open the iris...

The new Stargate seasons premiere this Friday nite: Stargate SG1 at 9pm, Stargate Atlantis at 10pm. It is true that SG1 is past its prime - I don't know that it has officially Jumped the Shark but it seemed to slip out of focus with the demise of the Goa'ld - not unlike ST:TNG with the humanizing of the Borg in "Hugh". (Yes, I'm totally geeking out here...)

When you wipe out your ultimate enemy, then you have to come up with a new ultimate enemy and that ain't always easy. Stargate SG1 had their Borg-like replicators, but the writers couldn't help themselves and individualized them with the humaniod replicators. Not that it wasn't cool to see Rainn Wilson as a replicator nerd who was just as obnoxious as his character Dwight on The Office...

And if all that weren't bad enough, Richard Dean Anderson...

called it quits and retired to be replaced by Ben Browder...

Now Browder's a good-lookin' guy with an easy-going nature about him. But I don't know that he has the acting chops of Anderson. Browder is trying to play Lt. Col. Mitchell as a laid-back southern boy and it doesn't really work. As well his character is entirely frustrating. Anderson played Jack O'Neill as an action figure...

But Jack knew he was an action figure and understood the limitations of his abilities. So he'd step back and let the eggheads do their thing - to a point. And if Daniel and Carter couldn't come up with a solution, then Jack would definitely start blowing stuff up.

Browder's Mitchell is an action figure, who thinks he knows better than everybody else. But he's been dead wrong in many key instances. This is doubly annoying when he spent the first few episodes kissing the bottoms of the SG1 team members to stay on board and keep the team going. Now that he has them, he pretty much ignores them.

The producers have countered the issues with the main team by adding Claudia Black as a semi-regular...

Black's Vala is a great character, a shady lady with a shady past, a tough broad who prefers to look out for herself and is not the least bit impressed with the SG1 heroics...

More Claudia Black, please.

This year will see the addition of Morena Baccarin as a semi-regular baddy - Adria - the evil daughter of Vala. (I guess they just couldn't bring themselves to doing an evil twin. They should have gone for it - the only thing better than one Claudia Black would be two Claudia Blacks.) Who is Morena Baccarin? You know her from Firefly and Serenity...

There really is a Sci-Fi ghetto...

Browder and Black are both refugees from the cancelled Farscape. Morena from the cancelled Firefly. Last year SG1 featured Lexa Doig from the recently completed series Andromeda...